2008-05-15T11:45:05Z tag:blog.washingtonpost.com,2008:/rawfisher//28 Copyright (c) 2008, WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive 2008-05-15T11:45:05Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-15:/rawfisher/2008/05/the_sales_tax_hike_that_rose_f.html

Six years ago, Northern Virginia voters weighed the pain of sitting in traffic against the bite that would result from a half-cent local sales tax increase to pay for transportation improvements. By a clear majority, they said, Thanks, but no thanks. Now, Gov. Tim Kaine has measured the reality of clogged roads against the message voters sent in 2002. And he's decided that what Northern Virginia needs this time is double the sales tax increase...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-14T19:08:16Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-14:/rawfisher/2008/05/the_last_klingle_road_post_eve.html

Don't bet on it. The D.C. Council yesterday voted 10-3 to try yet again to end the decades-long debate over whether to repair a city street that happens to go through Rock Creek Park. The street, Klingle Road NW, is both an extremely convenient shortcut for east-west drivers who want to avoid the congestion around Connecticut Avenue, and a bucolic passageway through a surprisingly quiet and green oasis in the heart of the city....Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-13T17:31:13Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-13:/rawfisher/2008/05/wamu_fires_jonetta_rose_barras.html

Public radio station WAMU today fired political analyst Jonetta Rose Barras, co-host of the station's popular Friday "Politics Hour" with Kojo Nnamdi, in what appears to be a dispute over pay. Barras, a longtime fixture in local media, says she was sacked for seeking to be paid as a full-time employee for her work on the Friday program. "I refused to be an abused worker and not be paid for my worth," Barras says....Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-13T11:26:56Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-13:/rawfisher/2008/05/schools_monday_music_returns_t.html

The announcement, made with great fanfare from the stage of the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, was dramatic: This spring marks "the return of music to the D.C. public schools," said deputy schools chancellor Kaya Henderson. Applause swept the sold-out hall, and the great jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis stepped to the podium to offer his praise. By embracing music education and turning away from the test-driven narrowing of the curriculum that has so deadened too...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-12T21:22:07Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-12:/rawfisher/2008/05/dc_chooses_shopping_over_arts.html

When the District tore down its old downtown convention center and opened a much larger one in the Shaw-Mt. Vernon Square neighborhood, then-mayor Tony Williams said that the new hole in the center of the city had to be filled with some powerful people magnet--a museum, library, arts center or performance space that would lure workers to stay downtown after business hours and attract suburbanites to come hang out downtown. But when the final...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-11T12:23:50Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-11:/rawfisher/2008/05/time_to_start_over_on_mlk_stat.html

Martin Luther King was never an arms-folded kind of man. He was never one to tighten up against slings of opposition, never one to choose a cocky or grandiose pose. Leaf through hundreds of photos of the man, and you see him standing before oceans of Americans, one arm raised to the sky, his mouth open in a call to unity. He reaches forward, rallying, cajoling, explaining. Or he is leaning in, head to head...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-09T13:06:14Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-09:/rawfisher/2008/05/video_unlikely_to_go_viral_the.html

Psst, pass it on: Check out the video from Tim Kaine. No, Virginia's governor isn't doing stupid human tricks. Rather, he's got his own YouTube channel where you can, for example, find Kaine expounding on the importance of saving energy. It's pretty stultifying, standard fare: Use efficient bulbs, the always-popular "set your thermostat a little higher in the summer," and, of course, use mass transit. This is about four rungs below public access cable...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-08T14:59:50Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-08:/rawfisher/2008/05/ping_pong_politics_on_connecti.html

The grainy video, shot at night from across Connecticut Avenue, reveals the menace -- caught on tape, posted on YouTube for all to see. The danger, the violation of public space, the unchecked liability, all now undeniable. Yes, it is true: For more than a year, James Alefantis, owner of the Comet Ping Pong pizza place at Connecticut and Nebraska avenues NW, kept a Ping-Pong table on the sidewalk in front of his eatery. And...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-06T21:22:45Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-06:/rawfisher/2008/05/pants_update_pants_man_sues_ci.html

It's the media's fault, of course. If it weren't for the worldwide media hysteria over Roy Pearson's $54 million pants suit against his neighborhood dry cleaners, why, he'd still have his job as an administrative law judge for the District of Columbia. So says Pearson in a federal lawsuit filed this week. Pearson, who has been keeping to himself since losing both his lawsuit against Custom Cleaners and his job last year, has emerged from...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-06T16:32:20Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-06:/rawfisher/2008/05/the_dc_quarter_a_brief_for_the.html

My vote for Frederick Douglass as the least offensive of the three weak finalists to be on the D.C. quarter may be in line with the plurality of Post readers' opinions, but there are strong voices in favor of another candidate, Duke Ellington, and Palisades resident Michael Dolan has penned a strong brief in favor of the Duke. Dolan, the author of "The American Porch," an eloquent tribute to a great and important American...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-06T11:23:21Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-06:/rawfisher/2008/05/arlington_dems_told_to_sign_lo.html

Last fall, when Virginia's Republican Party proposed to require voters in its presidential primary to sign a pledge promising that they would support the party's nominee, Democrats called the maneuver a "slap in the face to voters." Bruised by criticism from Democrats, independents and Republicans alike, the GOP backed off--there would be no loyalty oath. So imagine the surprise of some Democrats in Arlington last weekend when they arrived at a party caucus to...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-05T22:08:26Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-05:/rawfisher/2008/05/weak_choices_but_douglass_for.html

First, the U.S. Mint nixed "Taxation Without Representation" as the slogan for the D.C. quarter. Now, the Mint has narrowed the choices for the design of the coin's reverse to three figures from the city's history: Benjamin Banneker, Duke Ellington, and Frederick Douglass. Each has his merits, of course, but this is a weak field. The problem is not any lack of achievement on the part of the candidates; no, it's the tenuousness of...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-04T13:00:30Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-04:/rawfisher/2008/05/28_houses_in_51_minutes_no_buy.html

Twenty-eight houses sold in 51 minutes, each auction the final spin in a harrowing death spiral for 28 families that believed just a year or so ago that they had found security and comfort. On a blustery spring afternoon at the edge of a parking garage in Upper Marlboro, eight people stood in a semicircle in front of the auctioneers whose job it was to sell off the houses those 28 families couldn't pay for...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-03T12:43:14Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-03:/rawfisher/2008/05/the_webs_spiritual_grandfather.html

The flat voice of a police officer reading off the blotter contrasts starkly with the smooth introduction from the professional announcer who precedes him on the air: "8:09 p.m., report of juveniles setting fire to a pile of papers behind an apartment complex; 3:14 p.m., Annapolis police respond to report of an argument. The man violently resisted efforts to place him in the police car." It's the morning police report coming to you "from Radio...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher 2008-05-02T12:33:52Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-02:/rawfisher/2008/05/metro_of_the_future_beyond_sil.html

Given that it's taking decades to extend Metro rail to Dulles Airport or to connect the two limbs of the Red Line, it hardly seems prudent to predict that the region's transit system might expand even more ambitiously in the coming years. But Daniel Malouff, an urban planner for the city of Fairfax who runs an inventive blog looking at the future of the Washington region, has come up with a sprawling vision for...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Marc Fisher