DC government is broken, it's Muriel Bowser's fault, and Matt Yglesias got us here

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bowser is shockingly bad at her job. We need term limits. The OUC failures coming to light are a perfect example of her not tackling a very serious problem and just continuing to muddle along, putting lives at risk. It's really disheartening. We need better candidates. Is there a way to strengthen the role of the city council?

What failures? Haven’t people complained about the council as much as the mayor? Are they really better?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Robert White wanted the schools to be shut down even longer. And if you looked at the debates, he was against having more police to deal with crime, pulling out the old progressive canard of claiming to want to have evidence based policies to address the root cause of the problem.

Except, schooling is possibly the most important support that is given to families, and the closure of schools (closures he wanted more of) _is_ one of the main roots of the problem. And then after causing more criminality by doing that, he doesn't want more police to protect us from the effects of the kinds of policies he supports.

This seems to be a problem with all of the progressive politicians, they're always claiming evidence based solutions, but they end up pushing whatever craziness their activist base demands. I'm no fan of Bowser, but why should I vote for someone who's even worse.

This. I wanted nothing more than to get Bowser out of office in the last election, but White was WORSE than Bowser on most key issues, and there was no evidence he would have been more effective at the management side of the job either.

It was the same with council chairman. I think Mendo is corrupt and in Bowser's pocket at this point, and I think Erin Palmer seems like a nice and competent person. But she was a huge lightweight for that role and she had nothing encouraging to say on the major issues -- schools and crime. This is true of all the progressive candidates -- they generally lack relevant experience and they like to sidestep the really knotty issues with some vague platitudes about equity that don't actually address anyone's concerns. They are afraid of pissing off a small group of frankly insane activists in DC who think school closures are awesome and have no negative impacts, and that we shouldn't prosecute any crime at all until we solve all racism. It makes them extra ineffective at actually DOING anything.

This is a rather reductive discussion of Palmer. Her points were primarily based on good governance and good, open public processes. She also happens to believe that racism is bad, corruption is bad, and that we need to take care of those left behind. Somehow, she (and others in last year's primaries and likely next year's, too) were branded as anti-cop lightweights. Even her federal attorney role was used against her, despite that being better than whatever Mendo did 30 years ago prior to being meh.

She probably should have started with at large council, not chair of council.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can't expect much out of these lawless people who are morally and ethically challenged. Below is a text message I received from one of Laura Zeilinger's staff.

"Fu_k you [my name] po as_ bitc_."

Apparently, "po" means poor in their ghetto talk.

These despicable people are ignorant, angry, and violent. A true disgrace. They will take your life, shake you down for all that you have. You can't expect these frauds to be honorable civil servants.

Let's hope for the DC government to be privatized.

Who is Laura Zeilinger? Did you report to her, the mayor or the council?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Never voted for Adrien Fenty or Muriel Bowser - and I live in Ward 4. Bowser has always been terrible - and she has to own the true decay of the city, and I have lived here 25 years. This is really the worst I have ever seen it.

Who did you vote for? Did you vote for Williams or Gray or White?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Never voted for Adrien Fenty or Muriel Bowser - and I live in Ward 4. Bowser has always been terrible - and she has to own the true decay of the city, and I have lived here 25 years. This is really the worst I have ever seen it.

Muriel Bowser is like Marion Barry. Hopefully won’t last as long as he did. No matter how the crime stats are covered up, I’ve been here long enough to know (since the 80s). It’s really bad and it’s her fault. She did a good job with COVID though. Have to give her that much. But that’s it.

She didn’t do a good job with COVID. The prolonged school closures - which went on far beyond the point at which there was a scientific consensus that schools were not driving community spread - destroyed two decades worth of learning improvements and are a good reason for lawless state of much of the city.

She did a horrible job with covid. I was on a top priority for covid vaccine because i am a front line worker. But i’m white and live in ward 3 so i had to wait in line for wards that were prioritized and overstocked with vaccines while no one in these wards were getting vaccinated. I finally had to drive to Hagerstown to get vaccinated. All that after serving the public and living in DC for 20+ years. She’s useless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Never voted for Adrien Fenty or Muriel Bowser - and I live in Ward 4. Bowser has always been terrible - and she has to own the true decay of the city, and I have lived here 25 years. This is really the worst I have ever seen it.

Muriel Bowser is like Marion Barry. Hopefully won’t last as long as he did. No matter how the crime stats are covered up, I’ve been here long enough to know (since the 80s). It’s really bad and it’s her fault. She did a good job with COVID though. Have to give her that much. But that’s it.

She didn’t do a good job with COVID. The prolonged school closures - which went on far beyond the point at which there was a scientific consensus that schools were not driving community spread - destroyed two decades worth of learning improvements and are a good reason for lawless state of much of the city.

She did a horrible job with covid. I was on a top priority for covid vaccine because i am a front line worker. But i’m white and live in ward 3 so i had to wait in line for wards that were prioritized and overstocked with vaccines while no one in these wards were getting vaccinated. I finally had to drive to Hagerstown to get vaccinated. All that after serving the public and living in DC for 20+ years. She’s useless.

Staff for a council member called for people to photo cars with DC plates pulling into Maryland pharmacies to dox them for getting the vaccine.

[Anonymous]

I attribute this mostly to the Council than Bowser, but the way COVID vaccines were effectively wittheld from so many of us at first felt really... disenfranchising. I have also lived in DC for 20 years, my adult child and I have major medical risk factors, and we live in a very modest apartment in a part of Ward I that someone decided was too "privileged" to qualify us for the basic benefits of membership in the community. Online commenters kept saying things like we can get the vaccine elsewhere through our "connections" or privileges and had to be stopped at all costs, but of course, it wasn't actually possible to get the vaccine through any other means.

The whole experience, plus my experience as a DCPS parent who often heard that my middle-income child was taking resources away from DCPS's "real" students, revealed that too many people in DC politics will never consider my family "real" constituents whose needs matter. The thing is, I don't have the means to arrange for everything the DC government should provide privately.

[Anonymous]

Odd how everyone is anonymous after the the PS left. 🤣🤣🤣

[Anonymous]

Oof

[Anonymous]

The above is before the CRE implosion is fully felt.

[Anonymous]

The Council are in denial

[Anonymous]

The chickens are really coming home to roost.

Had crime been reined in earlier maybe there would be more tax revenue and tourism dollars.

There are still a lot of existing commercial leases that will be devalued or much smaller footprints after they expire.

What then?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oof

I remember reading about the reserve fund a few weeks ago, why is this coming as a surprise to the executive? Shouldn’t they have planned for this?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/03/07/dc-budget-tax-increase-bowser-mendelson/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Never voted for Adrien Fenty or Muriel Bowser - and I live in Ward 4. Bowser has always been terrible - and she has to own the true decay of the city, and I have lived here 25 years. This is really the worst I have ever seen it.

Muriel Bowser is like Marion Barry. Hopefully won’t last as long as he did. No matter how the crime stats are covered up, I’ve been here long enough to know (since the 80s). It’s really bad and it’s her fault. She did a good job with COVID though. Have to give her that much. But that’s it.

She didn’t do a good job with COVID. The prolonged school closures - which went on far beyond the point at which there was a scientific consensus that schools were not driving community spread - destroyed two decades worth of learning improvements and are a good reason for lawless state of much of the city.

She did a horrible job with covid. I was on a top priority for covid vaccine because i am a front line worker. But i’m white and live in ward 3 so i had to wait in line for wards that were prioritized and overstocked with vaccines while no one in these wards were getting vaccinated. I finally had to drive to Hagerstown to get vaccinated. All that after serving the public and living in DC for 20+ years. She’s useless.

Bowser called that "vaccine equity." (Better than "Covid for all!" perhaps.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oof

I remember reading about the reserve fund a few weeks ago, why is this coming as a surprise to the executive? Shouldn’t they have planned for this?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/03/07/dc-budget-tax-increase-bowser-mendelson/

Undoubtedly part of the reason for this mess owes to a combination of a lack of planning and very wishful thinking on the part of both entities, but the CFO's position does not seem to be particularly well-founded. Per this: https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/685021/d-c-s-2025-budget-process-is-already-off-the-rails-thanks-to-behind-the-scenes-bickering-with-cfo-glen-lee/, the reserve fund in question is a DC (not federal) mandate and so the city should be able to exercise due discretion about how it goes about replenishing it. Insisting on paying back the full $250 mill in a single year is kinda extreme. But, yes, the mayor and the council should have seen this coming and taken the necessary legislative action months ago.