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"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.
an urban/commercial district revitalization and transportation/mobility advocate and consultant, based in Washington, DC.
The 1-5pm Sunday period of library service at the Central Branch should be inviolate, because it is the only public library open (excepting college libraries, most but not all of which are open to the public) during that time in the entire city. Plus this library has a variety of special collections which provide additional service to residents.
What we want is not complicated. We have enough technical knowledge and organizing ability....We have enough courage. We must put it to use. When war is done, the drive for tanks must become a drive for houses. The drive for food to prevent the enemy from starving us must become a drive for food to satisfy the needs of all people in all countries. The drive for manpower in war must become a drive for employment to make freedom from want a living reality....Just as the peoples of democracy are united in a common objective today, so we are committed to a common objective tomorrow. We are committed to the establishment of the people's democracy.
We must always remember that it is the things of the spirit that in the end prevail. That caring counts. That where there is no vision, people perish. That hope and faith count, and that without charity there can be nothing good. That by daring to live dangerously, we are learning to live generously. And that by believing in the inherent goodness of man, we may...stride into the unknown with growing confidence."
For Winant, 'every public policy was personal,' observed one historian. 'It was about people, sometimes specific individuals, and the effect of the policy on them.' The door to his capitol office was open to anybody who wanted to see him; on most days, the corridors of the statehouse were crowded with people wanting a few minutes of the governor's time. Not infrequently, Winant would use his own money to pay a medical bill, cover an educational expense, or help start a business for an impoverished state resident....During the Depression, he instructed the Concord police to allow transients to spend the night in the city jail, then feed them in the morning and send the bill to him. Walking to work, he would hand out all the money in his wallet to jobless men. Winant, said one friend, 'carried the Christian injunction, 'Give all thy goods to feed the poor,' further than any person I have ever known.'
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| Photo copyright Richard Layman |
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| Photo copyright Richard Layman |
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| Photo copyright Richard Layman |
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| Photo copyright Richard Layman |
In a world where the “paper of record”
can print one article after another touting
imagined WMDs while it beats the drum
for war; where the primary news outlet
of the nations capitol acts as the stenographer
of administration propaganda; the
launch of a newspaper not afraid to print
the truth is big news.
9/11 truth
Loss of constitutional rights
Vaccine dangers
Government corruption
‘Donoghue’s great strength – apart from her storytelling gift – is her emotional intelligence.’ – IRISH INDEPENDENT (2010)
‘A thorough, intelligent researcher… a disarming, often funny historian.’ – SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE (2010)
‘Donoghue is one of those rare writers who seems to be able to work on any register, any tone, any atmosphere, and make it her own.’ – OBSERVER (2007)
‘Her touch is so light and exuberantly inventive, her insight at once so forensic and intimate, her people so ordinary even in their oddities.’ – GUARDIAN (2007)
‘A mind that can excavate characters and lives far, far beyond her own front fence.’ – GLOBE AND MAIL (2007)
‘Donoghue has the born storyteller’s knack for sketching a personality and pulling readers into a plot in just a few pages… All-encompassing talent.’ – KIRKUS (2006)
‘Already a prolific novelist… Emma Donoghue is distinguished by her generous sympathy for her characters, sinuous prose and an imaginative range that may soon rival that of A.S. Byatt or Margaret Atwood.’ – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (2004)
‘Has an extraordinary talent for turning exhaustive research into plausible characters and narratives; she presents a vibrant world seething with repressed feeling and class tensions.’ – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (2004)
‘Her informed imaginings combined with her sheer cleverness and elegance as a writer breathe vivid life into real characters who heretofore resided in the footnotes of history.’ – IRISH TIMES (2002)
‘Every now and again, a writer comes along with a fully loaded brain and a nature so fanciful that she simply must spin out truly original and transporting stuff… Eccentric, untethered genius.’ – SEATTLE TIMES (2002)
‘Profoundly entertaining and intelligent.’ – ELLE (2000)
Dear Mary,
Yesterday, the Commission on Wartime Contracting released its final report.
The Commission reported that between $31 billion and $62 billion of the tax money spent on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan has been wasted. It also said that between $10 billion and $19 billion of what contractors billed and received was fraudulent. In fact, $360 million of our tax dollars went straight to . . . the Taliban.
Wow. Who could have imagined that?
Well . . . me.
When I saw that the Bush Administration was doing nothing about fraud in Iraq, I revived a law going back to the Civil War that allowed whistleblowers to bring lawsuits in the name of the U.S. Government. I filed case after case, which were promptly greeted by the Bush Administration with gag orders – gag orders that they kept in place for years. They didn’t want any more bad news coming out of Iraq.
So I went on CNN, spoke to the New York Times and the Washington Post, and told America whatever I could say without violating those gag orders. And when the Bush Administration finally let one case out from under those gag orders – and declined to prosecute it – I took that case to trial, and won a $14 million judgment. It was the third-largest judgment for whistleblowers in the 143-year history of that law.
Those contractors built bases without hooking up the plumbing. A general testified that when he went there, he felt like throwing up.
The Wall Street Journal reported in a front-page article that I was “waging a one-man war against contractor fraud in Iraq.” The national organization Taxpayers Against Fraud named me “Lawyer of the Year.” And people started to think, “what is going on over there?”
In Congress, I spoke out against the wars, and I voted against the wars. I wrote and introduced The War is Making You Poor Act, HR 5353. My bill pointed out that you could:
Require the Pentagon to fund the wars from its own budget of over $500 billion, not supplemental appropriations;
Take all the money that would save and eliminate taxes on everyone’s first $35,000 of income, $70,000 for married couples; and
Still have over $10 billion a year left over, to cut the federal deficit.
OpenCongress’s unscientific poll showed 91% in favor of HR 5353.
After I left Congress in January, I took up the work against contractor fraud in Iraq again. And I won an $8.7 million settlement from DynCorp and the Sandi Group. The defendants paid our attorney’s fees last Friday.
Here’s some simple arithmetic. We’ve budgeted $159.3 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, through next month. (The true cost is much more, but let’s leave that aside.) That’s:
$159,300,000,000.00.
You could take all that money and create 5,310,000 jobs here in America paying $30,000 a year, rebuilding our bridges, our roads, our schools, instead of the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. That would immediately lower the unemployment rate from 9 percent to 5.5 percent, and get money flowing in our communities again.
Now, that’s a job program. I’ll put that up against whatever President Obama proposes next week.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have killed more than 8,000 Americans, and who-knows-how-many Iraqis and Afghans. War has destroyed our economy, just as the war in Afghanistan destroyed the Soviet economy. According to the calculations of Nobel Prize-winner Professor Joseph Stiglitz, the war in Iraq alone has cost us around 8% of our $50 trillion national net worth, all of the wealth that America built up over two centuries. Over $13,000 for every single American, young and old.
We’ve taken our inheritance, and dumped it into a wood chipper.
My father served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He told me once that one of the most common questions that men of his generation heard was, “what did you do in the war?” Maybe our children will ask us, “what did you do against the war?”
That’s a question I can answer.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
