Raw Fisher

Raw Fisher: Toast

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:21:14 -0500

If today's weren't the last installment of Raw Fisher, I might be writing about a small victory -- the District's decision yesterday to save the Eastern Branch and two other Boys & Girls Clubs, a cause I've tried to champion here for years -- or about Half A Tank, a new blog chronicling a journey across the Washington region and beyond by a Post photographer and writer searching for the stories of this recession. But today is the end of this particular road, and so I thought I'd use this last moment to offer readers one final chance to explain just why the positions I've taken are completely boneheaded, why the stories I've told fail to represent the truth, and why journalism is going to seed. Today marks the end of the Raw Fisher blog, and at noon, the last regular edition of the Potomac Confidential chat will be live

D.C. Library At The Cutting Edge?

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:06:48 -0500

Normally, that's a headline you'd expect to find on a piece about budget cuts or service reductions at the ever-beleaguered D.C. Public Library. But as Raw Fisher moves through its final week here on the big web site, there's good news to report about one of my biggest hobbyhorses over the nine years I've been writing the column in The Post: The sorry state of the District's public libraries. For the better part of the last decade, I've been hammering at the city government over its failure to invest in turning decrepit, pathetically underused libraries into the kind of essential community resources that, for example, Fairfax and Montgomery counties have created in recent years. But ever since D.C. libraries director Ginnie Cooper came to town two years ago, the sorry state of the city's libraries has started to show real signs of life. New buildings are being planned and

Is Fenty Vulnerable?

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:08:56 -0500

Well more than a year before Adrian Fenty asks D.C. voters to grant him a second term, the mayor who won every single precinct in the District in 2006 suddenly seems just slightly vulnerable. You'd be less than wise to bet even a halfway decent lunch on anyone coming close to Fenty in the 2010 election, but it now appears that at least two of the mayor's rivals on the D.C. Council are seriously considering a challenge. Both of the potential rivals are named Brown. Yesterday, several politically connected folks around the city received emails from Marshall Brown, the longtime campaign consultant and strategist who worked closely with Marion Barry during the former Mayor for Life's glory years and happens to be the father of council member Kwame Brown (D-At Large.) Here's the text of that email: Subject: Kwame Brown for Mayor Draft Committee Would you lend your name

Virginia Loses 1st Newspaper (More TK)

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:22:11 -0500

The Clarke Courier was a small newspaper for a small place. Its circulation was but 2,240, but in a county of just 14,000 people, that meant that if you wanted to know what was going on in Clarke, you had better check the Courier. No more. The Courier last week became Virginia's first paid circulation newspaper to die in the epidemic of closings, layoffs and cutbacks that are part of the dismantling of the American news infrastructure. It won't be the last. More than 10,000 journalism jobs have disappeared from U.S. newspapers so far this year, a pittance compared to what the automobile industry is going through, but a huge excision from the country's newsgathering and reporting capabilities. And in communities such as Clarke--located just beyond the edge of sprawl west of Loudoun County (Routes 7 and 50 go through it)-- The Courier, a weekly, had been publishing since

After 1,250 Columns, The End

Sat, 30 May 2009 11:55:13 -0500

The first of 1,250 columns, nine years ago, spoke of a time that seems impossible now, of heady young tech moguls flush with money and drunk with possibility, instructing the chef at The Palm in Tysons Corner to spell out "Netscape" for them -- in crabmeat. Today's is my last column, and as I scan the archives, I see stories of public arrogance and private foibles, but mostly, I see stories of people poking their way through life -- a quest I've tried to capture here a few times each week. Those first columns covered topics that seem all too familiar today: police beatings, dreams of a trolley line from Bethesda to Silver Spring, schools that teach little more than cynicism. But other pieces feel like relics of another world: a journey with the mapmaker scurrying to keep up with the leading edge of sprawl, a visit with city kids

The Iron Fist Of Cleveland Park's Politburo

Wed, 27 May 2009 08:24:48 -0500

A classic Only-In-Washington story is shaping up in Cleveland Park, where Not In My Backyard zealots have managed for years to stymie plans to upgrade a pathetic 1950s supermarket for fear that people might actually drive to it and use it. A relative handful of residents have been able to turn their opposition to Giant's expansion plans for its shop on Wisconsin Avenue NW into a virtual roadblock--and that has so frustrated supporters of the plan that some of those supporters decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Recently, they signed up as members of the Cleveland Park Citizens Association, with an eye on turning around that group's opposition to much-needed development. Now the neighborhood group is pushing back, hard. Its president, George Idelson, sent out this message on the local listserv Tuesday: "The Cleveland Park Citizens Association welcomes the many new members who have joined in recent

In Virginia, Who Votes Will Decide Who Wins

Tue, 26 May 2009 07:42:34 -0500

At the last three campaign events I've gone to, I've heard exactly the same opposing views from Virginians contemplating the June 9 Democratic gubernatorial primary: "It's only governor, so I don't think I need to vote" runs slam into "I'm tired of politics after last year, but this is for governor, so I guess I better get out there and vote." In the Washington suburbs, attitudes toward local and state government are different from those in most places around the country. Because of proximity to the District and the large number of people who have some connection to the federal government, voters tend to be more aware than average of how government affects their lives. But they draw entirely different lessons from that extra dose of awareness: Some decide that the president and Congress are the key votes, while others conclude that the most direct democracy is the most

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Tue, 26 May 2009 07:42:34 -0500

Michael Steele's Academic Misadventure

Fri, 22 May 2009 08:10:40 -0500

He hasn't exactly held high office, and he's neither a policy leader nor a brilliant campaigner, but former Maryland lieutenant governor and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is a hugely charming storyteller, and in a video to appear this weekend on C-SPAN, Steele keeps an audience of high school students spellbound with the scary yet inspirational tale of the time he was booted out of Johns Hopkins University. The heroine of Steele's story--as is often the case--is his mother, Maebell Turner, who managed to scare him onto the right course without ever deigning to look at her son or to stop stirring the grits. Steele told the story to students at Woodson Senior High School in the District, as part of C-SPAN's "Students and Leaders" program, which brings big-name politicians, journalists and others to five D.C. public schools. In seven minutes, Steele spells out how he "partied my

Political Tiff Blocks D.C. School Reforms

Thu, 21 May 2009 08:20:47 -0500

The biggest difference between many D.C. public schools and their suburban counterparts is the enormous and too-often-ineffectual infrastructure the city system has built to deal with a few kids in each classroom who throw tantrums, assault teachers or otherwise disrupt the proceedings. Over the years, the D.C. schools have tried everything: suspensions, alternative schools, uniformed police, security guards, walkie-talkie-wielding deans of discipline, counselors and a hugely expensive expansion of the number of kids declared to be in need of special education. Now, just as Mayor Adrian Fenty and Chancellor Michelle Rhee have hit on a strategy that gets at the roots of the behavior woes that plague the system, political sniping between the mayor and the D.C. Council is getting in the way of helping kids deal with the violence and anger of poverty and letting teachers teach. When Fenty and Rhee took over the schools, they offloaded many functions

Tip To Candidates: Change Your Names

Tue, 19 May 2009 08:26:51 -0500

In politics, image trumps substance much of the time. Candidates will do virtually anything to adopt the image they believe voters want to see. So why don't more candidates change their names? When the candidates for governor in Virginia take the stage today for The Washington Post debate in Annandale, it'll be a Terry, a Brian and a Creigh vying to take on a Bob in the fall election. A nifty new NameMapper tool demonstrates that we've got just what you'd expect: A choice of guys whose names peaked in the 1950s and 60s and have sunk down toward name oblivion in recent years. (Creigh never made any list of popular first names, ever, anywhere, so it's the outlier here, an attraction for those who like to go against the grain, or a turn-off for those who like solid American names they can trust. Like, um, Pontiac. But we

MoCo Strikes Back At D.C. Charity's Big Spending

Mon, 18 May 2009 08:05:08 -0500

Montgomery County has registered its outrage over the huge salary paid to the chief of the Food & Friends charity, which serves meals to AIDS and cancer patients throughout the Washington region. The county has stripped Food & Friends of a $55,000 earmark that helped the group serve meals to Montgomery residents. The move is a protest against the $357,000 in salary and benefits that the charity gives to its executive director, Craig Shniderman, in the most recent year for which public records are available. Shniderman's pay more than doubled in less than a decade, putting him at a level well beyond that of most similarly-sized charities, according to compensation experts consulted by The Post. The county council moved to delete the $55,000 from County Executive Ike Leggett's budget because "the Council was concerned about excessive compensation provided to the organization's executive director," said council member George Leventhal (D-At

Look Who's Partners On Gay Marriage

Sun, 17 May 2009 09:11:36 -0500

Lying on his cot in the Longworth House Office Building in the small of the night, Jason Chaffetz had a scary dream: The conservative Republican from Utah had beaten the odds, defeated an incumbent and made it to Washington, only to end up by some bizarre twist of events arm-in-arm with Marion Barry, the crack-smoking laughingstock former mayor of the District of Columbia. "Oh man, if I had run a campaign saying I'd be working closely with Marion Barry, I don't know that I would have been elected," Chaffetz says. The nightmare turns out to be reality: Chaffetz, once the placekicker on the Brigham Young University football team, is now the ranking Republican on the House subcommittee in charge of D.C. affairs, and in that role he is leading the rush against the District's decision to recognize same-sex marriages. The freshman congressman is utterly confident that his is the moral

McDonnell & Kaine Agree (On Cute Kids)

Fri, 15 May 2009 09:37:47 -0500

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Bob McDonnell's new TV commercial touting his nice family guy credentials for being elected governor of Virginia is a tribute to the folks who made Gov. Tim Kaine's very similar spot just four years ago. But if imitation in the advertising craft is seen as something closer to plagiarism, then McDonnell's "Family" spot is a sign of a campaign that's trying way too hard to divorce itself from the Republican party's damaged image as a collection of socially conservative sourpusses. Here's the McDonnell ad, which features the GOP candidate sitting on the front porch while a procession of his five children hurry by, demonstrating their good cheer and busy lives--all apparently in service of communicating the fact that one of the candidate's daughters served in Iraq, that he's a good dad who taught his boys to play soccer, and that

Mucking Around For Votes: Clinton At The Pig Sty

Thu, 14 May 2009 08:49:41 -0500

The regular weekday visitors at Frying Pan Park come for the tractor ride and a look at the goats and the pigs. Yesterday, immediately next to the pigsty, there was a bonus attraction: the former president of the United States and his buddy, who is running for governor of Virginia. Most of the park's visitors chose the pigs. (A helpful sign assured all that you can't catch swine flu from visiting Porky.) The farm park just east of Dulles International Airport in Herndon is a magnet for young mothers looking for a diversion for their preschoolers. The campaign visit by Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe was certainly the buzz of the afternoon, but most mothers weren't sticking around to see the politicians. It wasn't that they dislike Clinton or McAuliffe; a post-presidential glow has settled upon the Man From Hope, and most Fairfax residents I spoke to had only the

A Capital Success: How Did Leonsis Do It?

Wed, 13 May 2009 11:28:52 -0500

Last year around this time, I foolishly wrote that a Game 7 is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, a climax that summons everything a fan has to give and brings strangers together in a frenzy of hope, desire and expectation. Well, here it is again. The Washington Capitals, in case you haven't noticed, have gone from just another lousy D.C. sports team with thin, fickle, and emotionally uninvested crowds to the talk of the town. You don't have to look back too many years to find all manner of news stories and blog items speculating that Washington's hockey team would be a natural candidate for contraction. Caps owner Ted Leonsis still has 30 unchecked items on the 101-item To Do list he made for himself after he survived a plane crash landing in 1983 (still not done: "Support someone who makes a great breakthrough in science or art" and "Get a