In most any public or private sector job, losing $31 million on your watch is a surefire way to get yourself fired. CFO Natwar Gandhi’s reputation for saving the city’s finances has thus far protected him from what is to date the District’s biggest corruption scandal. But his fortunes might be changing. Buried towards the end of an article from the Examiner today on an investigation into the tax refund scheme that milked the city…

For once, we could afford to buy a CD at Tower Records. Unfortunately, the pickings were slim and the occasion sad. In October the national record store chain succumbed to the pressure of its online competitors, selling the assets from its 85 stores to a liquidation firm and marking the end of a generation of music buyers who preferred to curiously browse through unknown bands at the advice of knowledgeable, if surly clerks. Since then,…

Brooklyn’s Bishop Allen began this year by embarking on a decidedly outside-the-box strategy—rather than pursue the typical method of writing, recording and marketing an album, they decided to spend the entire year writing songs, and releasing the fruits of their labors each month in the form of quickly assembled EP’s. The year-long series, each EP named after the month of its release, would be available by mail order from their website. Even without great songs,…

It was on April 27, 2005, that we took our first of many stabs at the District mayoral race. And it’s tomorrow, some sixteen months after we first tried to guess who would throw their hats in the ring, that voters will finally have their say. Voters in the District and Maryland go to the polls tomorrow to vote in primaries for everything from senators to council-members to ANC representatives, with more than 800 candidates…

Today the Post is reporting that WMATA’s Board of Directors is quietly discussing whether to dismiss head honcho Richard White, whose troubled nine-year tenure at the transit agency has been marked by controversy and criticism. Ironically enough, the Post notes that one of the issues that might provoke White’s dismissal is a series of articles that appeared in the newspaper in June that detailed over $1 billion in mismanaged spending. This instance serves as a…

MONDAY: >> We’ve been hearing an awful lot about certain journalists who’ve spent superfluous time in jail for ideals they supposedly believe in — but, before you make any contributions to that gravy train, why not hear from Marie-Helene Carleton, who’ll be in town discussing the travails of her filmmaker partner Micah Garen, who was taken hostage in Iraq in 2003. Even if you’re an avid news junkie, there’s still a lot you don’t know…

In October 1992, several dozen people gathered at the base of a statue outside the Labor Department building at 3rd and D Streets NW. Together they unfurled large white sheets, and with some effort, draped them over the tall statue. The costume was not part of a Halloween prank. The uninvited decorators were followers of fringe political figure Lyndon LaRouche, the sheets were stitched together to appear as Ku Klux Klan robes, and the statue…