Results tagged “money>”

Sure, Crafty Bastards is back today. But while you're perusing the multitudes of DIY, don't forget that the arty festival is hardly your last chance to blow a rather large wad of cash over the next 36 hours. That elusive seven-inch will certainly be calling for you from the third annual D.C. Record Fair at Comet Ping Pong on Sunday, featuring 25 of the East Coast's finest purveyors of vinyl, crates of wax in tow. The Caps, Redskins, and D.C. United all have big games with available tickets this weekend too, so there's plenty of opportunities to drop some cold hard cash for the sporting-inclined amongst us. Add in the regular Friday and Saturday night tabs, and your wallet is nearly certain to be significantly thinner on Monday morning. (Looks like a Ramen kind of week.)

Are you plagued by the worry that all your friends make more money than you? Well Reuters's Patricia Reaney has filed this story to confirm all those fears! The D.C. area has "the nation's highest percentage of 25-34 year-olds making more than $100,000 a year," according to The Nielsen Company.

Or so says the Human Resource Association of the National Capital Area, which is the source for this Washington Business Journal story proclaiming it to be so. Considering how many people we talk to who say that they, due to the recession, didn't get raises this year, the 3.4 percent number just kinda feels slightly high, doesn't it? Oh wait, that explains it:

The financial services industry saw the highest salary increases at 9.3 percent. Publishing and broadcasting jobs saw the lowest raises, at 1.5 percent.

Continue reading "Average Salaries in D.C. Area Up 3.4 Percent"

We don't normally fall for naked corporate promos, but a press release from Cricket, the no credit check/no contract wireless company (and, apparently, radio station?) that's been heavily advertising all over town, caught our eye. In order to drum up some brand awareness in the D.C. metro area, the company says it has placed 2,000 wallets, most filled with discount offers, but some with actual prizes (including a free trip to New York) and, inside two of them, vouchers worth $5,000 in cash stuffed inside. So where might you be able to find these wallets? Cricket spokesperson Vickie Jones gave us some clues: "They will be in locations near [our] stores," she said. "Sort of 'hidden in plain view.' On sidewalks. On a park bench or at a bus stop. On the ledge of a window at an office building near the stores. On a flower planter. On a Metro station turnstile." DCist recently noticed that Cricket will be opening up its newest location in the space formerly occupied by Cornerstone dry cleaners at the corner of 14th and U. You can find open locations of Cricket retail outlets near you here.

Last week, the D.C. Commission on Arts and Humanities opened its call for applications for its 2010 grant season. Each year the well-funded DCCAH has hundreds of thousands of dollars to give away to the artistically-minded, and the crazy part is that they can't seem to find enough people to give it all away to every year. Free money, guys! You just have to ask!

But it's still a pretty impressive figure, nonetheless: Councilman Kwame Brown's office sent out a press release earlier this week noting that District residents, as of Taxday Eve on April 14, had fronted a total of $1,013,552,816.98 to the Feds so far in 2009. Of course, this figure has likely increased by, oh, a friggin' ton after the official deadline passed on Wednesday.

Nobody loves wagging their fingers at hypocrisy more than journalists, so D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty really should have seen this coming. In the last week, since the mayor finally disclosed that his family trips to Dubai and Beijing were both partially funded by the governments of those cities, Fenty's been on the business end of a steady stream of lecturing by the local media. First Marc Fisher and Mike DeBonis tag-teamed Fenty on the $36,000 debacle at his appearance at Nathan's on Friday, openly questioning whether the mayor's appearance at a controversial tennis tournament in the UAE might have been quid pro quo for the paid trip. And today the Washington Post's editorial board took the mayor to task for keeping the funding a secret: "Mr. Fenty promised to run a transparent administration. He heaped scorn on then-Mayor Anthony A. Williams for his extensive travels. But Mr. Williams, at least, didn't conceal anything."

D.C. Wire has a fantastic tidbit from a series of internal Office of Tax and Revenue emails between District CFO Natwar Gandhi and embezzler of $50 million Harriette Walters. The emails, written in April of 2007, about seven months before the scandal broke, came about after Gandhi sent out an announcement to his employees letting them know that had decided not to accept an offer to become Amtrak’s CFO. Walters replied to Gandhi's staff-wide email with a brown-nosing note full of bad grammar: “Sir, I would like to say thank you for keeping us inform [sic] of a decision that would have impacted the employees within the CFO Cluster. I appreciate that you respected us to provide follow up to the recent news reports that we read and heard over the pat [sic] week. Thank You!” Gandhi then wrote back to Walters: “Thank you. Keep up the good work.”

Two more sentences have been handed down in the epic story of the Office of Tax and Revenue embezzlement case. The Post reports that Patricia Steven, 73, has been sentenced to five years and two months in prison for her role in the scam, while her estranged husband, Robert, 55, got three years and 10 months. Patricia Steven was a friend of Harriette Walters, and became involved in the embezzlement ring as early as 1990. Robert Steven appears to have received a lighter sentence due to his cooperation with prosecutors and claim that he was misled by his wife about where the money was coming from. The Stevens helped steal about $8 million of the roughly $50 million believed to have been taken in the Walters scam.

Perhaps it was WTOP's reporting that did it — they seem to think so. Or maybe the D.C. Taxicab Commission spent some time reading your comments and noticed that they haven't got a lot of fans these days. Either way, the $1 fuel surcharge will disappear starting at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday.

WTOP's Adam Tuss managed to get D.C. Taxicab Commission Chairman Leon Swain on the record that he's now officially "trying to get rid of the [gas] surcharge." Trying? He's also apparently "trying" to contact members of the taxicab commission so that he can talk to them about repealing the surcharge. "I expect to take action this week," Swain told Tuss. Hmm. You may recall that FOX 5's Matt Ackland asked Swain the same question on Oct. 29, noting that gas prices had fallen and were expected to keep falling. Since then, there was a regular, full meeting of the D.C. Taxicab Commission on Nov. 12. What prevented this discussion from happening at that meeting? Average gas prices in the metro area now stand at $1.91. When the $1 gas surcharge we're paying right now was reinstated in late 2007, average gas prices were around $3.13 per gallon. The Commission approved the most recent surcharge renewal on Sept. 29, extending it through January 31, 2009.

From the Post, we learn that Richard Walters, younger brother of Office of Tax and Revenue embezzlement mastermind Harriette Walters, has been sentenced to four years and three months in prison for his role in the scheme. Richard Walters pleaded guilty in May to personally helping his sister steal $4.9 million of the over $50 million she stole altogether.

FOX 5's Matt Ackland had the smart idea to ask D.C. Taxicab Commission Chairman Leon Swain whether falling gas prices will mean an end to the $1 gas surcharge we've all been paying for such a long time now.

Money, money, money, money...mon-ey.

As expected, Harriette Walters entered a plea of guilty today, admitting to her role as the head of an elaborate scheme that pilfered almost $50 million from District of Columbia taxpayers.

Big scoop for the Examiner: Harriette Walters, the alleged mastermind behind the enormous Office of Tax and Revenue embezzlement scandal, will plead guilty. Walters is charged with heading up an elaborate scheme that resulted in $48 million worth of phony property-tax refunds. Nearly all of the eleven other people charged for their involvement in the scam have already pleaded guilty and presumably agreed to testify against Walters, had she gone forward with a trial.

D.C. Public Schools have borrowed a lot of ideas from New York City Public Schools since Mayor Adrian Fenty gained control of the system and handed the keys to Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Add one more to the list: paying students for academic achievement.

Credit City Desk for the best news of the morning -- the lawsuit between the District's two main kickball leagues has finally come to an end.

Given the record high gasoline prices consumers are paying at the pump right now, it's not terribly surprising that the D.C. Taxicab Commission took "emergency action" this week to extend the expiration date of the current $1 per trip gas surcharge by another 120 days. The previous gas surcharge, which was also an "emergency" extension, went into effect at the end of January and expired on May 28.

Several neighborhood blogs are posting information about the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority's upcoming public meetings to discuss a proposed 8.5 percent rate increase to city water and sewer rates.

Amsterdam Falafelshop now accepts payment in Euros. Is it a sign of the increasing value of the Euro, which is now worth $1.50 USD? According to Falafelier Pete Barich, it was because tourists from out of town would come into the restaurant late in the evening after banks and other currency exchange storefronts had closed. Rather than turn away paying customers, Amsterdam decided to allow payment in Euros.

Metro fares aren't the only thing going up in price in D.C. If you're in the habit of purchasing a copy of the Washington Post from a vending machine or a sidewalk hawker on your way to work in the morning, take note: the cost of the daily paper is about to go up by 15 cents. The Post's newsstand price will become 50 cents beginning on Dec. 31. The company cited a decline in the paper's circulation and advertising revenue as the reason for the increase.

Say what you will about the $515.7 billion spending bill the House of Representatives passed yesterday, there is a silver-lining for the District -- the ban on the use of public funds for needle-exchange programs was finally lifted.

The annual visit of the Mariinsky Theater's traveling opera troupe from St. Petersburg came a little early this year. The themes that unite the Kennedy Center double-bill of Verdi's Otello and Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades are self-destructive obsessions and tenor heroes who become villains. Who better to perform The Queen of Spades than the Mariinsky Theater, which hosted the world premiere of The Queen of Spades on December 19, 1890? The opera is thoroughly Russian, with a libretto based on a classic story by Aleksandr Pushkin. The libretto (see this synopsis for details) moves the setting back to the St. Petersburg of the late 18th century, which this 1999 production directed by Alexander Galibin mostly maintained.

Sure, Harriette Walters might have stolen upwards of $44 million from the District's coffers, but at least she wasn't stealing directly from low-income school children. According to a WTOP report this morning, District officials have arrested and charged a city official with submitting false expense reports totaling $11,385 for big bills at local restaurants and strip clubs. Emerson Crawley, a program manager at After School for All at Shaw Junior High School, allegedly spent the...

Living in the Nation's Capital, with so many free events going on year-round, it might seem silly to spend a princely sum of money for the privilege of becoming a Member of a local arts organization. But there are a number of good reasons to think about becoming a member -- maybe you're interested in a particular subject that's only shown at a pay-for museum, maybe you're an artist looking to grab a foothold in...

Last night, Fox 5 reported on an alarming attack of a gay man by six or seven men on the Metro. "Nathaniel," as he's referred to in the report, was riding alone on a train Friday night. As the doors closed at Metro Center, the group surrounded and beat Nathaniel, kicking him as he fell to the floor and yelling "faggot". Nathaniel managed to get off the train at the Smithsonian station, and he ran...

The Holiday season is in full swing in NYC, with holiday lights in Brooklyn, a giant snow globe in Bryan Park and Chanukah specials for ham. One citizen decided to go vigilante on annoying car alarms, a murder suspect used a fake Asian accent on the stand and a video of a man being beaten up by teenage girls on a subway shocked the city. And we interviewed soon-to-be-leaving-Gawker editor Choire Sicha, who said,...

Libertarian-leaning Republican presidential candidate and hero of the Internets Ron Paul has gotten himself a blimp, and it's headed this way. According to a just-released flight plan, the blimp, which will read "Who is Ron Paul? Google Ron Paul" on one side and "Ron Paul Revolution" on the other, will launch from Elizabeth City, N.C., Monday and flyover Washington circa 3 p.m. the same day, with a rally planned for 4 p.m. and another re-launch...

>> A fire forced students to evacuate a dorm at Catholic University. [NBC4] >> "NEWSFLASH: The Nazis killed millions of people. This gay rights organization raises money for AIDS research, breast cancer and the arts, among countless other charities." [Blade Blog] >> "Wizards players are donating $20,000 to a woman whose former boyfriend doused her with gasoline and set her on fire." [AP via WTOP] >> A D.C. man in his 50s was hit...