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You know, I have been following this discussion but didn’t watch the actual answer until now. I urge everyone to do so. That he saw this as a reasonable and appropriate answer to a question about how to make the ward more diverse—and that he’s doubling down—is really telling. |
If Goulet is elected, Ward 3 is f*cked. The other candidates need to get together quick and figure out how they are going to consolidate. |
My major concern in dc is crime. Who is the best on crime? Probably no one because everyone is too obsessed with lowering rates of incarceration and empathizing with the perpetrators of violent crime than actually tackling the situation with a tough response. So whoever wins will be a progressive pushover that loves taxes. I live in SE my whole life. It’s comical at this point. Like our local elected leaders are just such placaters of crime in order to curry votes. Can we just get a moderate who will let the fking police do their job? Or an actual DA not intent on keeping everyone out of jail. It’s such a fking sick joke. And then self flagellating voters in the city lap it up as they get their rims stolen and they get attacked. I read recently that humans are biologically programmed to route for the underdog. Apparently the tax paying citizens literally keeping this city running with money in its coffers aren’t the underdog. |
| You can be tough on crime while also wanting to mitigate the effects so that people coming up feel they have options other than resorting to crime. |
+1 Goulet is being asinine in doubling down on his ignorant comments. |
Was that really the question? He really needs to be called out on that. |
The question was how to attract more people of color to live in Ward 3 and his response was to talk about how most people of color in Ward 3 were on vouchers. This is why it is important not just to share the response, but the question and the responses from the other candidates. |
So his response to being racist is to try to cover it up? Nah, we don't need that on the council. |
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According to Goulet on Twitter, this was the question:
“The Ward 3 population has approximately 82,000 residents, which reflects an 8.2% increase from 2010 to 2022. History tells us that black residents who make up 5% of Ward 3 residents with a median household income of $51,000 per year as compared to the 81% of white residents in Ward 3 with a median income of $170,000 per year. These black residents are more susceptible to displacement given the hardship associated with the increase in residential and commercial values. What is your strategy to balance the increase in affordable housing, increasing density in Ward 3, while protecting the property value of current homeowners? Moreover, how would you provide for neighborhoods that are racially, socio-economically, and generationally diverse?" |
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"History tells us that black residents who make up 5% of Ward 3 residents with a median household income of $51,000 per year as compared to the 81% of white residents in Ward 3 with a median income of $170,000 per year. "
That sentence just crashed my parser. |
The implication of the question as it is typed here is that having lower income people of color automatically reduces property values. For Ward 3, I highly doubt that is the case and as such would have challenged the premise of the question. Given that was the question, Goulet's response is still absurd. |
It was a badly-phrased question. But short of saying that he doesn’t want AAs in the ward, I don’t know how he could have given a worse answer. I can only imagine the backlash from the rest of the city if Ward 3 elected him, politics being what they are now. If he really cared about the ward, he would withdraw from the race. That may seem unfair to some but it’s the right thing for him to do if he cares about anything other than his own ego. |
| Narrator: It's all about ego. |
| Tone-deaf answer to the question posed. But the right answer to a real problem in Ward 3. Is anyone else proposing solutions that problem? Or is it politically suicidal to say that mentally ill, formerly homeless people being moved into apartment buildings on Connecticut Ave are ruining the quality of life for the others who live there, many of whom are elderly and have lived in those buildings for decades. We're talking drug use, drug dealing and defecation in the hallways, domestic violence, and fire alarms that force elders to make their way out of the building with their walkers in the middle of the night. I know some of those elders, and they are terrified but can't afford to move. I'm tempted to vote for the person who wants to tackle that problem, regardless of whether or not they have mastered the Wokespeak. Sorry. |