Good morning, Washington. DCist heard from a tipster Thursday night that “several hundred” people were planning to converge on McPherson Square Saturday morning for a sister protest to New York’s “Occupy Wall Street,” a mass protest movement, with nebulous objectives, railing against excessive corporate influence.
NBC Washington reports that at the height of participation Saturday, the group called “Occupy DC” amounted to about 40 to 50 people whose protests were often drowned out by a women’s percussion practice across the square.
“You gotta start small,” Justin Rodriguez, one of the participants, told an NBC Washington reporter. “Everything has to start somewhere.”
>> The Washington Post reports that the Metrorail extension through Tysons Corner, which has two years of construction remaining, has already used up more than 70 percent of its contingency fund. Transportation experts say that jurisdictions paying for the line — as well as Dulles Toll Road drivers — could be the ones who end up with the overrun bill.
>> The Washington Times reported this week on flagrant corruption and mismanagement among D.C. ANC members, which has some people fired up. An excerpt from the story reads: “Repeatedly, when constituents brought credible complaints about regulations that were ignored or flouted, the chairman refused to provide easily obtainable documentation, and the Office of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions declined to obtain them. Reports that lacked so much as a signature were stamped by the auditor, and many reports submitted to the auditor are missing basic pieces of information. Multiple ANCs routinely failed to deduct taxes.”
>> There is a proposal to let John Hinckley, the man who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, go on weeks-long visits to his mother’s home and live there eventually. Hinckley, who has been at St. Elizabeths Hospital for three decades, has been allowed increasing amounts of time outside the facility, but government attorneys said that St. Elizabeths’ proposal is “premature and ill conceived.”
>> Donna Kay Wells Lloyd, of Catonsville, Md., said her 87-year-old father, Clarence Wells, died from eating listeria-tainted cantaloupe, and she is now suing the cantaloupe producer and distributor. Clarence Wells was a retired printer for the Department of Defense.
>> Regional power transmission organization PJM Interconnection has given Houston-based GenOn Energy the green light to close a coal-burning power plant in Alexandria, Va., which has been the biggest source of air pollution in the region. PJM concluded that closing the plant won’t make the area’s electrical grid less reliable.
>> A serial vandal was slashing seats on the Virginia Railway Express over the summer, tearing 15-inch long gashes into more than 20 seats. Now the slasher has disappeared.
>> The Newseum opened the new exhibit, “Blood and Ink,” this weekend, which showcases historic newspapers from the North and the South during the Civil War. The newspapers include coverage of President Abraham Lincoln’s election, the opening shots at Fort Sumter, S.C., the Battle of Gettysburg, and Lincoln’s assassination.
