Image for the day

Louisville, Kentucky Luke Sharrett for The New York Times; from

Say that again (in Latin, please) ...

Maneuvering Characteristic Augmentation System (MCAS) 
[JB - Emasculate?]

Image from article: A Boeing 737 Max 8.

On Monday, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg explained why the company didn't disclose the existence of the system to pilots while challenging the media's characterization of MCAS as an anti-stall system.

Boeing has come under scrutiny in recent months for its failure to disclose the presence of the Maneuvering Characteristic Augmentation System (MCAS) on its Boeing 737 Max airliners.

From: Stephen Brashear, "Boeing's CEO explains why the company didn't tell 737 Max pilots about the software system that contributed to 2 fatal crashes," businessinsider.com

[Social justice:]...Should cities subsidize housing for a family making $141,000?

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) wants to invest in “workforce” housing. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

By Peter Jamison

April 29 at 3:37 PM The Washingon Post

From coast to coast, booming American cities and suburbs are looking for ways to preserve homes for an increasingly cash-strapped middle class.

California’s governor wants to fund housing for families whose moderate income puts them beyond the scope of current assistance programs. Similar efforts are underway in Boston and Philadelphia. And in Washington, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has proposed spending $20 million to spur development of homes for families earning up to $141,000 a year.

But as public officials expand their affordable-housing initiatives to encompass the less needy, they are confronting a question: When it comes to the income of those who deserve a government handout, how high is too high?

The new investments in middle-income homes — sometimes called “workforce housing” and often marketed as help for public employees such as police officers, teachers and firefighters — reflect an undeniable reality of urban life in the 21st century: Even college-educated workers in decently paid professions are having trouble making ends meet. 

But critics of the new focus on affordable housing for the middle class say it risks diverting scarce resources from those with little or no income, including people who live in decrepit public housing conditions or on the street.

Opponents say the initiatives also carry an unmistakable whiff of political showmanship, aiming to appease a sector of the population that votes at higher rates and is often viewed more sympathetically than those living in poverty or homelessness.

“The American narrative around poverty, which is that people bring it on themselves, is harder to force on this sacrosanct group which people call the middle class,” said Michael Anderson, director of the Housing Trust Fund Project at the nonprofit Center for Community Change.

Anderson said he has watched with trepidation as local governments, many of them struggling with rampant homelessness, have embraced the idea of diverting taxpayer dollars to housing for people with six-figure incomes. 

“I think it would be a perilous mistake at this time in our history to have a focus shift upward on the income level when we still haven’t met the very clear and basic need of those at the very lowest,” he said.

Such tensions are acute in the District. A rising population and booming real estate development have brought trendy restaurants and luxury apartment buildings to neighborhoods that were once refuges for those with modest incomes.

A U.S. flag decorates a for-sale sign at a home in Washington’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. The median home price in the District was $570,000 in 2018, according to Bright MLS. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

The city has seen rapid displacement of longtime residents — the National Community Reinvestment Coalition recently determined that the District has experienced the most intense gentrification of any U.S. city — and persistent homelessness. The impending arrival of Amazon’s second headquarters across the Potomac River in Arlington is expected to further drive up D.C. rents and home prices in the coming years. 

Although Bowser has devoted substantial sums to creating or preserving affordable housing for those at the bottom of the income ladder, some advocates say her investments are insufficient, given the scope of the problem.

[‘Where’s the affordable housing for us?’ D.C. workers see homes out of reach.]

An analysis last year by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, found that less than a third of rental units produced by D.C. housing programs are accessible to those making under 30 percent of area median income, despite the fact that most households struggling to afford their rent fall into that category. Most of the affordable units are going to those making 50 or 60 percent of area median income, the institute found.

The mayor’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year does not set aside any new funding for upkeep to public housing, despite an estimated $340 million backlog in repairs for immediate health and safety hazards. 

Bowser’s proposed $20 million workforce fund would help create affordable homes for people making between 60 and 120 percent of the District’s median income — roughly $70,000 to $141,000 for a family of four.

D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post)

“I do think we have to think about how we help middle-income folks, but I’m not sure that this is the right program,” said D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large). She said some money in the workforce fund could be put to better use on public housing renovations, and that the remaining dollars should be aimed at helping those making between 60 and 80 percent of area median income.

Bowser administration officials say the mayor’s new emphasis on middle-income housing does not come at the expense of existing programs: The mayor has proposed increasing annual funding for the Housing Production Trust Fund, which caters to low-income residents, to $130 million from the current $100 million. She also wants to add $5 million to an existing $10 million fund for preserving subsidized units. 

“We are really, I think, investing heavily at that low income” level, said Polly Donaldson, director of the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development. “There’s not housing stock being specifically built at that middle level, and that is really a need that the mayor wanted to address.”

At a recent roundtable discussion, the mayor said city workers often voice frustration that they’re excluded from government programs designed to help those who earn less money.

“Oftentimes what we hear from our employees is, ‘Well, where’s the affordable housing for us?’ ” Bowser said. “ ‘We don’t qualify for, you know, a whole host of programs that the District offers because we have a good-paying job. But we are still struggling to make ends meet, quite frankly, for housing, transportation, child care, you name it.’ ” 

That sentiment resonates with some of the middle-class workers the new fund aims to help.

Yolanda Geter, who earns just over $75,000 per year as an emergency services dispatcher for the D.C. government, is in the process of buying a home in Northeast Washington’s Deanwood neighborhood. But she said she could afford the $419,000 purchase price only with the help of first-time home buyer programs for city employees and is anticipating cutting back on basic living expenses such as cable and phone plans.

She said middle-class status — at least in high-cost cities — doesn’t mean what it once did.

“Most people, on paper, it appears that they can afford things that in fact they really can’t because of the cost of living in this area,” Geter said. “I guess they would call it middle class. But once you pay your bills, there’s not a whole lot left.”

A sold sign at a home in the District. Middle-class workers say they are hard-pressed to afford a home in Washington or other expensive cities. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

Madra Harden, a 35-year-old preschool teacher for D.C. Public Schools who earns a salary of about $72,000, said the city’s high home prices drove her and her husband to move to Maryland when they began having children several years ago. 

The median home price in the District was $570,000 in 2018, according to Bright MLS.

“I’ve found that when you have small kids, it goes quickly,” Harden said. “I’m from Arkansas, and the cost of living is just so much cheaper than here.”

Experts say the shortage of affordable urban homes for the middle class has been aggravated in recent years as developers have focused on pricey condos and luxury apartments and turned away from the kind of modest houses and low-rise apartment buildings that have historically been the starter homes of middle-income workers.

“A lot of that’s just gone away,” said Christopher Ptomey, executive director at the Terwilliger Center for Housing at the Urban Land Institute. “Most of the development over the last decade has been focused on the luxury end.”

Federal housing programs, meanwhile, offer generous tax credits and other incentives for the development of low-income housing. That has left some local government officials seeking to shore up what they say is a gap in the middle of the market. 

[D.C. housed the homeless in upscale apartments. It hasn’t gone as planned.]

“If you’re a two-person household — somebody’s making $40,000, somebody’s making $35,000, y’all got a bunch of kids — you can’t find a place to live in Boston,” said Chrystal Kornegay, executive director of the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency, which over the past several years has spent or committed more than $70 million for housing for those making 61 to 120 percent of area median income. “It’s a shame that the market can’t figure out how to serve them, but what does that mean?”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

The Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority announced in February that it was expanding an incentive program for middle-income housing. Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) included $200 million for middle-class homes in a $750 million package of proposals to address the state’s affordable-housing crisis.

Such proposals have not been welcomed in all quarters.

Matt Schwartz, president and chief executive of the California Housing Partnership, said a recent analysis by the nonprofit group showed that 76 percent of extremely low-income households in the state pay more than half their income toward housing costs, compared with 4 percent of moderate-income households.

Diverting money from low-income housing to help the middle class “is a bad policy choice,” Schwartz said. “It may be good politics because you have a lot of voters that are struggling to afford the homes they want in the moderate-income category. But those people have choices, generally.”

In the District, that skepticism is shared even by some of the middle-income workers the mayor says she wants to help.

Nathan Luecking, a social worker at Anacostia High School, said he and his wife — who have a combined income of about $160,000 — recently bought a $490,000 home in Northeast Washington. With a no-interest loan available to D.C. employees and other grants from the city and his union, the purchase penciled out.

By contrast, he said, some of the students he counsels live in public housing complexes that are “absolutely uninhabitable — and I’m not even exaggerating.” Although middle-class workers like himself don’t always have it easy, he said, they shouldn’t be a top priority for the mayor.

“It’s like your ceiling’s caved in, and there’s water pouring into your house,” Luecking said. “And she’s saying, ‘Hey, look, I fixed this lock down in the basement.’ ”

Jonathan O’Connell contributed to this report.

Plastic Bottle Pickup Roundup (ongoing)

 image from

On my near-daily 45-minute jog in NW Washington DC (down Tilden Street to Rock Creek Park; along the path in Rock Creek Park

image from

to Porter Street; up Porter Street to Connecticut Avenue; jog ends at the Van Ness/ UDC metro station) I do my "citizen's thing" and pick up litter.

FYI, I jog (very slowly) with a bag (yes, I plead guilty: ... a plastic bag) in hand where I place the litter.

NW Washington DC image from

As I stretch my aging muscles, have taken a special interest in picking up plastic water bottles left empty/half empty along my joggin' way.

(Some of the plastic bottles, btw, are filled with urine, as I've noticed on several occasions on the south side of Tilden Street leading downhill to Rock Creek Park. )

FYI, below my accounting of yours truly's encounter with such a noxious industrial human-made liquid-holding object (yes, plastic bottles, not included in my numbers below are other types of plastic bottles, e.g., of "sodas.")

[Note: Given my failing memory, I may be missing, in the below assessment, a plastic water bottle or two.]

Needless to say, the bottles I stumble upon end up, thanks to my pubescent [:)] hands, in the public garbage receptacles in the National Park/along Connecticut Avenue.

Date [no hyphen means no jogging on that day]; no. of plastic water bottles pickups [on a given day, I may have miscounted, plus or minus, by a bottle or two]

4/22--15

4/23 

4/24--8

4/25--5

4/26--6

4/27--2

4/28 

4/29

4/30

5/1

5/2

5/3--7

5/4--5

P.S. But look at it on the bright side: We Americans are now evidently drinking a source of life, water, rather than sugary soda bubbly canned "drinks" (Hey, people, listen: things don't always go better with Coke) ...

Image for the day

from

Seeing Green

As I surrender to my sleep,

The green awaits me ... in die deep ...

--Anon

image from

How Trump Lost Half of Washington

The old ambassadors were willing to give him a chance. He destabilized the whole town instead.

Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal

April 25, 2019 6:54 p.m. ET

President Trump speaks in Washington, April 17. PHOTO: MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES

“How did things ever get so far? I don’t know. It was so unfortunate, so unnecessary.”

—Don Corleone, “The Godfather”

I keep thinking about the dynamics the past few years between the president and what used to be called official Washington. That relationship is ugly and broken, but it could have been otherwise.

Trump supporters have long held, and deeply believe, that none of the people in what they call the swamp were ever anything but unalterably opposed to him and meant, from day one, to remove him by whatever means possible.

This was true of about half of official Washington. They were predominately Democrats, though there were Republicans too, and certainly the media were against him, overwhelmingly.

But the other half of official Washington, though to varying degrees disapproving of Trump, often for reasons that were almost aesthetic, was willing to be surprised. They were open to persuasion. They didn’t say this but they thought it. They’d give him time and watch events closely.

I’m thinking of the old ambassadors, mostly men in their 60s, 70s and 80s. They’re woven into the town, solid citizens, friends of journalists, occasionally sources, and they know things. They’re mostly retired, and at lunch at clubs in town often begin sentences with “And so I told Zbig . . .” There’s a bit of lost glory with them, but they care about America, are personally invested in it, love it with an old-school love, and respect systems, knowing that creativity—in art, science and diplomacy—can only be born within a certain immediate order.

Donald Trump was not their type. But early on they were willing to give him a chance.

When he came in he was a shock to the system, almost literally. He didn’t act like a liberal or a Democrat, or a conservative or a Republican. It was not clear he thought, as opposed to felt. It was clear he was emotional—lots of resentments, wounds and complaints. As the first year went by and then the second the stories were out there, sometimes from his own aides. He doesn’t read, doesn’t like his briefings, he’s spending time tweeting and watching television. He’s picking fights with celebrities and haranguing the Boy Scout Jamboree about our rotten media. He’s firing people or they’re resigning—the chief of staff, chief strategist, then the generals. The travel ban, Charlottesville, he’s a “stable genius,” he’s shoving the prime minister of Montenegro and blowing up immigration talks.

Pretty quickly and to the entire edifice of Washington, it became clear Donald Trump was not a Jacksonian shock to the system, which is what his supporters think he was. He was a daily system overload, a one-man frying of the grid.

One by one the ambassadors shut down and turned away. Their objections were not about policy, they were about behavior. What they feared was not extreme conservatism or extreme liberalism. They didn’t fear originality or a new synthesis. They feared Madness of King George-ism. They’d come to think the president was, irredeemably, a screwball. In the nuclear age this is a dangerous thing.

Their fears about him weren’t assuaged by trusty old hands inside the White House because those hands weren’t there. They didn’t join the administration, because they didn’t want their résumés tainted or they thought wise counsel would never be heeded. Or because they’d signed a letter opposing him in 2016 and would never be forgiven.

So a lot of good people didn’t come in or weren’t allowed in. And those who did work for the president came to seem strange—fierce, emotional, half mad themselves. There were good people there—the generals were solid—but one by one they left.

Mr. Trump fulfilled every fear a Trump skeptic would have. So they stayed skeptics, or became active opponents. Strangely in a political figure, the president had no particular respect for his critics’ concerns or anxieties. He never understood they could be brought into the tent. They were all enemies; it was all black and white. Some supporters were like that too, but that was understandable: The job of supporters is to fight. He’s the leader, and leaders are forced to deal with reality. He would not lessen his critics’ fears through behavioral change. Heck, he won the election by not changing, why mess with his swing?

He thought he didn’t need the ambassadors. “Experts” are just guys who marinated in a little subset and memorized its clichés. If they were any good we’d be in better shape!

It was all this—the president’s disdain, his well-fed resentments—that not only left Washington thinking Mr. Trump was crazy. It made Washington itself a fertile field for crazy. It was in this atmosphere that the Steele dossier, with its whacked out third-rate spy fiction, became believable, that sober-minded officials reportedly wondered if they should wear wires when they met with the president.

He destabilized the entire town.

That, in my view, is a small sliver of how we got here.

And so a closing word on the Mueller report. I have thought since the beginning that appointing a special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election was right and justified; that Robert Mueller was an excellent choice because of his experience and integrity. Also his age and stage. He was a patriot looking to finish a distinguished career with integrity. He hired killers, tough lawyers and investigators who were hunting the whale and intended to harpoon it. They did everything they could to get the story. What they produced is a more dreadful portrait of Mr. Trump than his supporters will know, because most Americans won’t read it.

In the end, Mr. Mueller did not bring charges. He left it to Congress.

Should the Democrats move to impeach? No, not for reasons of merit but of national interest.

Progressives will want to proceed with their usual blithe rage. But the investigation lasted almost two years. It was exhaustive and consumed daily headlines. Trump supporters, almost half the country, will feel, understandably, that its work is complete. They would experience an impeachment attempt as proof of what they always assumed: that this whole thing was a cynical attempt by the left to achieve by other means what it could not achieve at the ballot box.

They would see it as subverting democracy. And anything that damages faith in democracy at this point in our national life should be rejected. We need to build trust and faith, not lessen it.

It is 2019. We elect a president in 2020. Democrats would be wise to spend the next year showing America that their party is capable of governing, up to leadership, that its ideas are not crazy but pertinent, that it actually has a philosophy.

Seriousness and calm would be nice, and after the past few years would serve as a welcome counterpoint. There is an unarticulated wish out there to return to some past in which things were deeply imperfect and certainly divided but on some level tranquil, and not half mad.