WaPo editorial calls out “machinations… of the council’s far left wing” in trying to stop Goulet

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is this the Goulet quote you’ve been discussing:

Citation from WaPo starts

And in Ward 3, one candidate made a video about Eric Goulet after he turned a question about increasing diversity in the ward into a criticism about housing vouchers during a D.C. Chamber of Commerce debate last month.
During the debate, Goulet said that “there’s been a significant increase in the housing voucher program, which is bringing largely African American residents and families into the neighborhood without support and really without any hope of then connecting [them] to jobs and getting them into D.C.’s middle class.”

Citation ends

It is sanitized, but generally yes. The response was wildly out of context to the question, which is why it was so bad. Yes, some people on vouchers need support services, but that wasn't the question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will say just one more thing. I would be far more concerned with money flows if I didn’t acutely feel the problems people list on this board. I am at the point where I will vote for anyone with the courage to solve them FAST. I will not vote for anyone who advocates that we need to study the issue that has been demonstrated and has a solution, and used for be better, for another undetermined period of time. I don’t like where I am but there we have it.

I agree with you here. One of my issues is schools in Ward 3, and we're facing the same problem with being told we need to study the issue more and find a better spot for new schools. We can open the old GDS campus immediately and alleviate the overcrowding issues at Wilson, as is in the mayor's plan. Goulet has promised that he will obstruct that and look for "better options" which show no signs of appearing anytime soon.

Goulet is now saying his "secret plan" is to move Ellington to either UDC or IntellSat and reopen the Ellington building as Western High School. Which ignores the fact that DCPS doesn't own either site and they just spend $200 million to equip Ellington as a performing arts facility. To actually execute that plan would probably take a decade and cost half a billion dollars before it was done. At $50 million the MacArthur site is a bargain.

And if he thinks there's community opposition to the MacArthur site, just wait until the Ellington community and the Van Ness neighbors hear about this plan.

Where is he saying this? Is like every other post about Goulet? He supposedly told your neighbors friends cousin?

This is the type of astroturf crap that Jeff refuses to crack down on. It’s his site, but this is a bad look.

You keep accusing others of astroturfing and me of condoning it. Yet, the issue is that you are simply uninformed about the candidate you support. Here are Goulet’s own words:

https://foxhall.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Special-Election-2022_FCCA_FINAL.pdf

I will use the one year delay to find another site for the new high school, or possibly, propose a better location for the Duke Ellington School of the Arts that is METRO accessible, and then propose to make Ellington a by-right school serving the residents of Ward 2 and southern Ward 3.

Given your fixation on astroturf, it is fair to ask whether your support is motivated less by Goulet’s positions — which you clearly don’t know — and more by DFER’s dollar signs.

Since you are defending the post, where is the his “secret plan” to move Ellington to UDC or Intelsat?

There is no secret that he proposed moving Ellington. Show me the “secret plan” involving UDC or Intelsat.

It’s further in the link above, if you read it. On page 3, his entire quote about the McArthur option:

“ The MacArthur High School
The former site of the Georgetown Day School is the wrong site to build a citywide high school with a proposed 750 - 1,000 seats. First, from a traffic perspective the site can barely accomodate 500 students. Second, there is no con- venient way for citywide students to take public transporta- tion to reach this school. I will use the one year delay to find another site for the new high school, or possibly, propose a better location for the Duke Ellington School of the Arts that is METRO accessible, and then propose to make Ellington a by-right school serving the residents of Ward 2 and south- ern Ward 3. During this year, there will be the opportunity to identify additional sites, but two possible sites include the former Intelsat site and the University of the District of Columbia campus. I believe that the former Wardman Park site and the former Lord & Taylor site are less likely at this point, because they have proceeded forward past initial stages of planning. There will be some interim use of the high school for swing space in the 2022-2023 school year, but I would hope to redirect the $38,020,000 allocated for this project towards the construction of a new high school on another site.”

Note that he says "citywide" twice in the first two sentences. The school being planned for MacArthur will be a neighborhood school with a rather small attendance boundary. It won't be "citywide" in the sense that is usually used when referring to DC high schools, an application school. It is true that DC law says that any school that has empty seats has to make them available to anyone in the city through the out-of-boundary lottery, so in a sense every DCPS school is a "citywide" school. But that's not what he means.

That preamble gets me to the point: using "citywide" like that is a racist dog whistle. And many of the opponents of a school at that location have used similar imagery to scare the inhabitants of the neighborhood. I've heard from people who have talked to Eric directly about schools that in person he is even less reserved about using racist allusions as a scare tactic.

No, the MacArthur high school will be about 550 students from out of boundary according to the Mayor, with no way for those students to actually get to the campus. That is why it is such a horrible plan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will say just one more thing. I would be far more concerned with money flows if I didn’t acutely feel the problems people list on this board. I am at the point where I will vote for anyone with the courage to solve them FAST. I will not vote for anyone who advocates that we need to study the issue that has been demonstrated and has a solution, and used for be better, for another undetermined period of time. I don’t like where I am but there we have it.

I agree with you here. One of my issues is schools in Ward 3, and we're facing the same problem with being told we need to study the issue more and find a better spot for new schools. We can open the old GDS campus immediately and alleviate the overcrowding issues at Wilson, as is in the mayor's plan. Goulet has promised that he will obstruct that and look for "better options" which show no signs of appearing anytime soon.

Goulet is now saying his "secret plan" is to move Ellington to either UDC or IntellSat and reopen the Ellington building as Western High School. Which ignores the fact that DCPS doesn't own either site and they just spend $200 million to equip Ellington as a performing arts facility. To actually execute that plan would probably take a decade and cost half a billion dollars before it was done. At $50 million the MacArthur site is a bargain.

And if he thinks there's community opposition to the MacArthur site, just wait until the Ellington community and the Van Ness neighbors hear about this plan.

Where is he saying this? Is like every other post about Goulet? He supposedly told your neighbors friends cousin?

This is the type of astroturf crap that Jeff refuses to crack down on. It’s his site, but this is a bad look.

You keep accusing others of astroturfing and me of condoning it. Yet, the issue is that you are simply uninformed about the candidate you support. Here are Goulet’s own words:

https://foxhall.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Special-Election-2022_FCCA_FINAL.pdf

I will use the one year delay to find another site for the new high school, or possibly, propose a better location for the Duke Ellington School of the Arts that is METRO accessible, and then propose to make Ellington a by-right school serving the residents of Ward 2 and southern Ward 3.

Given your fixation on astroturf, it is fair to ask whether your support is motivated less by Goulet’s positions — which you clearly don’t know — and more by DFER’s dollar signs.

Since you are defending the post, where is the his “secret plan” to move Ellington to UDC or Intelsat?

There is no secret that he proposed moving Ellington. Show me the “secret plan” involving UDC or Intelsat.

It’s further in the link above, if you read it. On page 3, his entire quote about the McArthur option:

“ The MacArthur High School
The former site of the Georgetown Day School is the wrong site to build a citywide high school with a proposed 750 - 1,000 seats. First, from a traffic perspective the site can barely accomodate 500 students. Second, there is no con- venient way for citywide students to take public transporta- tion to reach this school. I will use the one year delay to find another site for the new high school, or possibly, propose a better location for the Duke Ellington School of the Arts that is METRO accessible, and then propose to make Ellington a by-right school serving the residents of Ward 2 and south- ern Ward 3. During this year, there will be the opportunity to identify additional sites, but two possible sites include the former Intelsat site and the University of the District of Columbia campus. I believe that the former Wardman Park site and the former Lord & Taylor site are less likely at this point, because they have proceeded forward past initial stages of planning. There will be some interim use of the high school for swing space in the 2022-2023 school year, but I would hope to redirect the $38,020,000 allocated for this project towards the construction of a new high school on another site.”

So the plan is not “secret” then? I am having trouble understanding. So he either has a secret and nefarious plan or he has willingly and publicly communicated potential options that should be considered. Which one is it?

And to be clear, if he has publicly documented and communicated what he would like to accomplish, characterizing it as a “secret plan” is a lie by commission.

I'm the PP who said "secret." I was being sarcastic.

For a long time Goulet said he had a plan for an alternative site for MacArthur High without offering specifics. When pressed he came up with what was posted above. Hence my comment about a "secret" plan. I probably should have put "secret" in quotes to avoid confusing the dimwitted. I apologize for confusing you.

Oh wait, I just went back and re-read it, I did put "secret" in quotes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will say just one more thing. I would be far more concerned with money flows if I didn’t acutely feel the problems people list on this board. I am at the point where I will vote for anyone with the courage to solve them FAST. I will not vote for anyone who advocates that we need to study the issue that has been demonstrated and has a solution, and used for be better, for another undetermined period of time. I don’t like where I am but there we have it.

I agree with you here. One of my issues is schools in Ward 3, and we're facing the same problem with being told we need to study the issue more and find a better spot for new schools. We can open the old GDS campus immediately and alleviate the overcrowding issues at Wilson, as is in the mayor's plan. Goulet has promised that he will obstruct that and look for "better options" which show no signs of appearing anytime soon.

Goulet is now saying his "secret plan" is to move Ellington to either UDC or IntellSat and reopen the Ellington building as Western High School. Which ignores the fact that DCPS doesn't own either site and they just spend $200 million to equip Ellington as a performing arts facility. To actually execute that plan would probably take a decade and cost half a billion dollars before it was done. At $50 million the MacArthur site is a bargain.

And if he thinks there's community opposition to the MacArthur site, just wait until the Ellington community and the Van Ness neighbors hear about this plan.

Where is he saying this? Is like every other post about Goulet? He supposedly told your neighbors friends cousin?

This is the type of astroturf crap that Jeff refuses to crack down on. It’s his site, but this is a bad look.

You keep accusing others of astroturfing and me of condoning it. Yet, the issue is that you are simply uninformed about the candidate you support. Here are Goulet’s own words:

https://foxhall.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Special-Election-2022_FCCA_FINAL.pdf

I will use the one year delay to find another site for the new high school, or possibly, propose a better location for the Duke Ellington School of the Arts that is METRO accessible, and then propose to make Ellington a by-right school serving the residents of Ward 2 and southern Ward 3.

Given your fixation on astroturf, it is fair to ask whether your support is motivated less by Goulet’s positions — which you clearly don’t know — and more by DFER’s dollar signs.

Since you are defending the post, where is the his “secret plan” to move Ellington to UDC or Intelsat?

There is no secret that he proposed moving Ellington. Show me the “secret plan” involving UDC or Intelsat.

It’s further in the link above, if you read it. On page 3, his entire quote about the McArthur option:

“ The MacArthur High School
The former site of the Georgetown Day School is the wrong site to build a citywide high school with a proposed 750 - 1,000 seats. First, from a traffic perspective the site can barely accomodate 500 students. Second, there is no con- venient way for citywide students to take public transporta- tion to reach this school. I will use the one year delay to find another site for the new high school, or possibly, propose a better location for the Duke Ellington School of the Arts that is METRO accessible, and then propose to make Ellington a by-right school serving the residents of Ward 2 and south- ern Ward 3. During this year, there will be the opportunity to identify additional sites, but two possible sites include the former Intelsat site and the University of the District of Columbia campus. I believe that the former Wardman Park site and the former Lord & Taylor site are less likely at this point, because they have proceeded forward past initial stages of planning. There will be some interim use of the high school for swing space in the 2022-2023 school year, but I would hope to redirect the $38,020,000 allocated for this project towards the construction of a new high school on another site.”

Note that he says "citywide" twice in the first two sentences. The school being planned for MacArthur will be a neighborhood school with a rather small attendance boundary. It won't be "citywide" in the sense that is usually used when referring to DC high schools, an application school. It is true that DC law says that any school that has empty seats has to make them available to anyone in the city through the out-of-boundary lottery, so in a sense every DCPS school is a "citywide" school. But that's not what he means.

That preamble gets me to the point: using "citywide" like that is a racist dog whistle. And many of the opponents of a school at that location have used similar imagery to scare the inhabitants of the neighborhood. I've heard from people who have talked to Eric directly about schools that in person he is even less reserved about using racist allusions as a scare tactic.

No, the MacArthur high school will be about 550 students from out of boundary according to the Mayor, with no way for those students to actually get to the campus. That is why it is such a horrible plan.

Since then DCPS has had meetings with more detailed plans. MacArthur will be the destination high school for Hardy Middle School. Hardy is growing, the current sixth grade is about 200 students. In addition, each year there are about 30 ninth graders who enroll at Jackson-Reed who live in-boundary for Hardy but didn't attend. So they're expecting 230 kids each year from Hardy. Four grades of that would be 920 kids. DCPS considers anything over 85% utilization to be full, at 1000 seats the school would be considered full.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will say just one more thing. I would be far more concerned with money flows if I didn’t acutely feel the problems people list on this board. I am at the point where I will vote for anyone with the courage to solve them FAST. I will not vote for anyone who advocates that we need to study the issue that has been demonstrated and has a solution, and used for be better, for another undetermined period of time. I don’t like where I am but there we have it.

I agree with you here. One of my issues is schools in Ward 3, and we're facing the same problem with being told we need to study the issue more and find a better spot for new schools. We can open the old GDS campus immediately and alleviate the overcrowding issues at Wilson, as is in the mayor's plan. Goulet has promised that he will obstruct that and look for "better options" which show no signs of appearing anytime soon.

Goulet is now saying his "secret plan" is to move Ellington to either UDC or IntellSat and reopen the Ellington building as Western High School. Which ignores the fact that DCPS doesn't own either site and they just spend $200 million to equip Ellington as a performing arts facility. To actually execute that plan would probably take a decade and cost half a billion dollars before it was done. At $50 million the MacArthur site is a bargain.

And if he thinks there's community opposition to the MacArthur site, just wait until the Ellington community and the Van Ness neighbors hear about this plan.

Where is he saying this? Is like every other post about Goulet? He supposedly told your neighbors friends cousin?

This is the type of astroturf crap that Jeff refuses to crack down on. It’s his site, but this is a bad look.

You keep accusing others of astroturfing and me of condoning it. Yet, the issue is that you are simply uninformed about the candidate you support. Here are Goulet’s own words:

https://foxhall.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Special-Election-2022_FCCA_FINAL.pdf

I will use the one year delay to find another site for the new high school, or possibly, propose a better location for the Duke Ellington School of the Arts that is METRO accessible, and then propose to make Ellington a by-right school serving the residents of Ward 2 and southern Ward 3.

Given your fixation on astroturf, it is fair to ask whether your support is motivated less by Goulet’s positions — which you clearly don’t know — and more by DFER’s dollar signs.

Since you are defending the post, where is the his “secret plan” to move Ellington to UDC or Intelsat?

There is no secret that he proposed moving Ellington. Show me the “secret plan” involving UDC or Intelsat.

It’s further in the link above, if you read it. On page 3, his entire quote about the McArthur option:

“ The MacArthur High School
The former site of the Georgetown Day School is the wrong site to build a citywide high school with a proposed 750 - 1,000 seats. First, from a traffic perspective the site can barely accomodate 500 students. Second, there is no con- venient way for citywide students to take public transporta- tion to reach this school. I will use the one year delay to find another site for the new high school, or possibly, propose a better location for the Duke Ellington School of the Arts that is METRO accessible, and then propose to make Ellington a by-right school serving the residents of Ward 2 and south- ern Ward 3. During this year, there will be the opportunity to identify additional sites, but two possible sites include the former Intelsat site and the University of the District of Columbia campus. I believe that the former Wardman Park site and the former Lord & Taylor site are less likely at this point, because they have proceeded forward past initial stages of planning. There will be some interim use of the high school for swing space in the 2022-2023 school year, but I would hope to redirect the $38,020,000 allocated for this project towards the construction of a new high school on another site.”

Note that he says "citywide" twice in the first two sentences. The school being planned for MacArthur will be a neighborhood school with a rather small attendance boundary. It won't be "citywide" in the sense that is usually used when referring to DC high schools, an application school. It is true that DC law says that any school that has empty seats has to make them available to anyone in the city through the out-of-boundary lottery, so in a sense every DCPS school is a "citywide" school. But that's not what he means.

That preamble gets me to the point: using "citywide" like that is a racist dog whistle. And many of the opponents of a school at that location have used similar imagery to scare the inhabitants of the neighborhood. I've heard from people who have talked to Eric directly about schools that in person he is even less reserved about using racist allusions as a scare tactic.

No, the MacArthur high school will be about 550 students from out of boundary according to the Mayor, with no way for those students to actually get to the campus. That is why it is such a horrible plan.

Since then DCPS has had meetings with more detailed plans. MacArthur will be the destination high school for Hardy Middle School. Hardy is growing, the current sixth grade is about 200 students. In addition, each year there are about 30 ninth graders who enroll at Jackson-Reed who live in-boundary for Hardy but didn't attend. So they're expecting 230 kids each year from Hardy. Four grades of that would be 920 kids. DCPS considers anything over 85% utilization to be full, at 1000 seats the school would be considered full.

Thank you for the very helpful info!

[Anonymous]

So basically the Mayor lied when she said there would be 550 out of boundary students set aside for this school.

In other words, it is basically going to be a white enclave high school with less diversity that all of the private schools in DC.

[Anonymous]

Yes. The mayor lied. She was making a marketing pitch that totally back-fired.

She thought saying it would be 500 set-aside seats would get the Council to fund it.

Turns out, the Council doesn't want the city-wide set-aside seats and have made it absolutely clear they will not fund an expansion of capacity for city-wide seats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is so nutty.

First, no one person writes any Washington Post editorial. That's not how it works. They're written by the entire board.

Second, I'm not aware of anyone on the board who hasn't lived here forever. Jo-Ann Armao has been here for 40 years. Who cares if she technically lives in Silver Spring? (Are you begrudging teachers who can't afford to live in D.C. and live in PG County?)

It seems *extremely* disingenuous to compare her or anyone else on the board to an outside dark money group.

I am not sure why you believe you can call this "nutty" when you clearly have no understanding of how Post editorials about DC are written. The entire board is not writing these. As for who cares that the primary editorial writer for DC lives in Maryland, I care. I don't know what teachers who live outside DC have to do with this. They can't vote and don't have access to DFERS's million dollars or the Post's readership.

I think we should be honest that DFER reflects the views of outside millionaires and the Post represents the views of suburban commuters. If you are good with that, that is your right. It is certainly not "nutty" for me to point it out.

1. You've obviously never worked at the Post. If you think the Washington Post (or any other major newspaper) allows its editorial writers to just write whatever they want, without the input of a whole lot of other people, you're out of your mind. The editing process at these places is no joke.

2. To compare the Washington Post, one of the greatest newspapers in the world, to some shady dark money group is just loony.

3. Who knew that a reporter who's been here for 40 years can so completely lose touch with the city simply by moving across the border into Maryland?

It is no secret that largely one person is responsible for the editorials about DC. Any additional input is very limited. Did any of the other editorial team members even interview candidates? My understanding is "no".

The Washington Post and DFER are aligned with one-another in support of the same candidates. I am not sure why you keep describing obvious things as "loony" or "nutty". I agree that it is loony for the Post to put a Maryland resident in charge of writing opinions about DC.

When did she move to Maryland? Certainly not recently. Sadly, yes, she has been out of touch with DC for some time. It's one reason that her endorsed candidates have so frequently lost.

I think anyone who has worked at the Post would be bemused by your account of how it works.

You can get free weekly online access to the Post through the public library.

If you were actually a person that lives in DC and is engaged, then you would know that you can get free access through the DC Public Library.
https://www.dclibrary.org/washingtonpostonline

Attacking the Post because you don’t like *some* of their local editorial stances is beyond petty. It’s childish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. The mayor lied. She was making a marketing pitch that totally back-fired.

She thought saying it would be 500 set-aside seats would get the Council to fund it.

Turns out, the Council doesn't want the city-wide set-aside seats and have made it absolutely clear they will not fund an expansion of capacity for city-wide seats.

It was obvious at the time to anyone who knows how DCPS works that the mayor was lying. A DCPS school is either a neighborhood school or a citywide school. There is no such thing as a neighborhood school with citywide seats set aside. How would that even work? Would in-boundary kids be turned away once all the in-boundary seats were full? DCPS would have had to come up with a new attendance policy just for this school. The existing policies are the result of decades of legislation and litigation, not something that can just be revised on a whim.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So basically the Mayor lied when she said there would be 550 out of boundary students set aside for this school.

In other words, it is basically going to be a white enclave high school with less diversity that all of the private schools in DC.

Reactions like yours are why the mayor felt she needed to lie.

DCPS has a problem. They have lots of high schools that not a lot of people want to go to, and a small number of high schools that a lot of people want to go to. They haven't been able to make the existing low-enrollment schools more attractive. If they add more schools like the ones that are attractive they get criticized for promoting inequality. They can't win.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
So basically the Mayor lied when she said there would be 550 out of boundary students set aside for this school.

In other words, it is basically going to be a white enclave high school with less diversity that all of the private schools in DC.


Reactions like yours are why the mayor felt she needed to lie.

DCPS has a problem. They have lots of high schools that not a lot of people want to go to, and a small number of high schools that a lot of people want to go to. They haven't been able to make the existing low-enrollment schools more attractive. If they add more schools like the ones that are attractive they get criticized for promoting inequality. They can't win.

DCPS should pick one high school EOTP (e.g., Eastern) and implement advanced classes with entry level criteria. That is what happened at Wilson almost 20 years ago with the Wilson Academies program and it is what caused Wilson IB families to start attending Wilson. And, since in DC doing that would result in advanced classes that are going to be more white and higher income than DCPS as a whole, DCPS needs to put effort in at the junior high level to counselling and identifying lower income students who are capable of those classes so that those students have the same knowledge base regarding course selection and goals as the kids from the higher-resourced households. That is what true equity work looks like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
So basically the Mayor lied when she said there would be 550 out of boundary students set aside for this school.

In other words, it is basically going to be a white enclave high school with less diversity that all of the private schools in DC.


Reactions like yours are why the mayor felt she needed to lie.

DCPS has a problem. They have lots of high schools that not a lot of people want to go to, and a small number of high schools that a lot of people want to go to. They haven't been able to make the existing low-enrollment schools more attractive. If they add more schools like the ones that are attractive they get criticized for promoting inequality. They can't win.

DCPS should pick one high school EOTP (e.g., Eastern) and implement advanced classes with entry level criteria. That is what happened at Wilson almost 20 years ago with the Wilson Academies program and it is what caused Wilson IB families to start attending Wilson. And, since in DC doing that would result in advanced classes that are going to be more white and higher income than DCPS as a whole, DCPS needs to put effort in at the junior high level to counselling and identifying lower income students who are capable of those classes so that those students have the same knowledge base regarding course selection and goals as the kids from the higher-resourced households. That is what true equity work looks like.

I don't disagree. On the other hand, if nothing is done Wilson will be 3,000 students by the end of the decade. MacArthur will open fall of 2023. Every option takes a lot more time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. The mayor lied. She was making a marketing pitch that totally back-fired.

She thought saying it would be 500 set-aside seats would get the Council to fund it.

Turns out, the Council doesn't want the city-wide set-aside seats and have made it absolutely clear they will not fund an expansion of capacity for city-wide seats.

It was obvious at the time to anyone who knows how DCPS works that the mayor was lying. A DCPS school is either a neighborhood school or a citywide school. There is no such thing as a neighborhood school with citywide seats set aside. How would that even work? Would in-boundary kids be turned away once all the in-boundary seats were full? DCPS would have had to come up with a new attendance policy just for this school. The existing policies are the result of decades of legislation and litigation, not something that can just be revised on a whim.

And getting back to the topic of thread, does Eric Goulet understand this? Which is worse, that he doesn't know basic facts about how the public schools work? Or that he does and goes around spreading racist dog-whistles anyway?

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’re the owner of this forum, why haven’t you clamped down on any of these anti-Goulet AstroTurf posters here who start these little small potatoes opposition research threads trying to throw mud? It seems like you censor anything too conservative, but allow folks to come on here spreading salacious rumors of racism, probably spread by campaign staffers of competing candidates?

People in attendance at the Chamber of Commerce debate say that Goulet made racist remarks. Those are first-hand reports, not rumors. If the reports are false, that could easily be demonstrated by the Chamber releasing the video of the debate. But, the Chamber has refused. Why wouldn't it want to disprove false allegations? The obvious answer is that the reports of Goulet's racist statements are true. Once again, monied business interests are backing Goulet. He definitely has the rich and powerful vote nailed down.

Jeff, this is just grossly irresponsible. First, you should us who exactly these mysterious people are who supposedly heard this (Why do I suspect it's Goulet's political opponents?). Second, you should tell us what exactly Goulet said so everyone can decide for themselves whether it's in fact racist. Third, you should give Goulet a chance to respond to accusations he said something racist.

Otherwise, you're just in the business of libeling people.

We all get a little dumber every time Jeff speaks.

I completely agree with you that Goulet's exact statements should be clarified and he should have a chance to respond. Sadly, the Chamber of Commerce has refused to release the video of the event so we have to rely on reports of those who were there.

According the The Washington City Paper:

https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/556619/eric-goulet-painted-voucher-holders-as-criminals-during-ward-3-debate-attendees-say/

such a video might be especially damaging to the Washington Post’s newly minted endorsee in the Democratic primary: Eric Goulet,

...

Goulet apparently managed to offend attendees by turning a moderator’s question about how to make the ward more diverse into an answer about Black housing voucher holders in new homes along Connecticut Avenue NW.

Of course, this could easily be clarified if the video were released.

Cool. So you actually have no idea what Goulet said? And neither does the City Paper (as it acknowledges). But you're going to go ahead and declare him racist because (checks notes) the Chamber won't release the video? How is this not libel again?

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’re the owner of this forum, why haven’t you clamped down on any of these anti-Goulet AstroTurf posters here who start these little small potatoes opposition research threads trying to throw mud? It seems like you censor anything too conservative, but allow folks to come on here spreading salacious rumors of racism, probably spread by campaign staffers of competing candidates?

People in attendance at the Chamber of Commerce debate say that Goulet made racist remarks. Those are first-hand reports, not rumors. If the reports are false, that could easily be demonstrated by the Chamber releasing the video of the debate. But, the Chamber has refused. Why wouldn't it want to disprove false allegations? The obvious answer is that the reports of Goulet's racist statements are true. Once again, monied business interests are backing Goulet. He definitely has the rich and powerful vote nailed down.

Jeff, this is just grossly irresponsible. First, you should us who exactly these mysterious people are who supposedly heard this (Why do I suspect it's Goulet's political opponents?). Second, you should tell us what exactly Goulet said so everyone can decide for themselves whether it's in fact racist. Third, you should give Goulet a chance to respond to accusations he said something racist.

Otherwise, you're just in the business of libeling people.

We all get a little dumber every time Jeff speaks.

I completely agree with you that Goulet's exact statements should be clarified and he should have a chance to respond. Sadly, the Chamber of Commerce has refused to release the video of the event so we have to rely on reports of those who were there.

According the The Washington City Paper:

https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/556619/eric-goulet-painted-voucher-holders-as-criminals-during-ward-3-debate-attendees-say/

such a video might be especially damaging to the Washington Post’s newly minted endorsee in the Democratic primary: Eric Goulet,

...

Goulet apparently managed to offend attendees by turning a moderator’s question about how to make the ward more diverse into an answer about Black housing voucher holders in new homes along Connecticut Avenue NW.

Of course, this could easily be clarified if the video were released.

Cool. So you actually have no idea what Goulet said? And neither does the City Paper (as it acknowledges). But you're going to go ahead and declare him racist because (checks notes) the Chamber won't release the video? How is this not libel again?

Here is what I wrote: “People in attendance at the Chamber of Commerce debate say that Goulet made racist remarks.” Since some of in attendance are people I know and trust, I have confidence in their version of events. If Goulet would like to pursue libel charges, I will be happy to subpoena the video. But something tells me he won’t be interested.