MAYOR FENTY: AVANTGARDE OR 'BAMA?

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty of Washington, D.C., is a thoroughly modern politicians, according to criteria used by the contemporary press. He's a "comer" who may be leading a Democrat presidential ticket in eight or ten years. This is especially true if the "movers and shakers" in D.C., including Capitol Hill, can "upgrade" the District of Columbia" into the "State of Columbia." A "make-over" certainly seems possible, especially if all the really positive, enlightened people put their shoulders to it. Governor Fenty is a better platform for president than Mayor Fenty.

Besides being, in the words of Woody Allen, a "glibe, young cosmopolitan," Mayor Fenty is a man of vision. He sees a shining city in a swamp. It's future D.C. All that's needed is a little funding. Construction will be a big part of it, and Metropolitan Washington D.C. has some of the richest builders in America just waiting for politicians to offer them a deal they can't refuse.

Therefore, Mayor Fenty appears to be a "hot" politician. He gets things done.

Still, for all the glittery facade, there is reason to believe that he's just another D.C. 'Bama.

The African American Establishment in Washington, D.C., arose from ambitious sons and grandsons of slavery. A steady train of African Americans worked their way north to D.C., as well as to other places. The liberating forces that began most significantly during the FDR/Truman years carried more of these African Americans into prosperity. The "Ole Southern Charm" of Washington, D.C., was, in a sense, preserved by the established African Americans, rather than the dwindling numbers of White Southerners who still called Washington, D.C., home. The "Gold Coast" in Washington, D.C., was the heart of "Black Dixie."

For many years observant African Americans in small towns throughout the South could see what the White leadership was doing that was working well and what they were doing that was not working well. There was no money-generating plot that worked better than "taxing" Yankee cars passing through the town. They could be "nailed" coming and going. Sheriff's could be creative about moving violations.

A favorite trick was for a major route, allowing 65 miles an hour speed for cars, to pass through a "town" of ten shacks that mandated 15 mile an hour speed limits. Additionally, car break-downs in these robber-barron citadels could end up costing a bundle, starting with the tow.

As Yankees got wealthier and yearned to sample Florida sunshine, the flood of cars heading South became a bonanza. None of this was lost on the leaders of the African America communities in these scattered but numerous towns throughout the New York to Miami corridor. They saw the Scott-Irish preying on their northern neighbors' caravans. They saw that it worked. Ambitious people don't forget money-making schemes. They may re-package them, but they are going to use them again. Why? Because they have seen that they work.

African Americans came up from the South, perhaps bearing little material wealth, but they had within their heads the knowledge of the tried and true means of making money. Tax the "strangers' cars." Money from various routes came to this core of 'Bamas during their transplant years in Washington, D.C. Many grew very wealthy. They created the African American Gold Coast and came to dominant the very important African American institution in D.C., the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge.

It is the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge that has given the local community most of its African American leaders. It has also preserved the "hidden knowledge" of the 'Bama: Tax the Strangers' Cars.

Mayor Fenty is a scion of this tradition. I would be surprised if he was not a member of the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge. I would be surprised if he were not well-known to the Gold Coast Establishment. But, even were he an alien to both, he would still bear in his soul the essence of the D.C. 'Bama: Tax the Strangers' Cars.

Mayor Fenty and former Mayor Williams were and are the High Priests of Vehicular Terrorism. It is my thesis that Robber-Barons aren't "Knights in Shining Armor." This conclusion should be perceived as a political caveat.

D.C.'S NOVEL POLITICS

Washington, D.C. is a city bred to politics, and a political ethos is everywhere evident. In no area of politics has Washinton, the District of Columbia, been more avantgarde than in absentee mayoral leadership. Mayor Fenty has now passed former Mayor Williams as "King of the Road." Whether gay Paris, a Caribbean beach, or meretricious Las Vegas, count Mayor Fenty "in." Absentee mayors are getting to be an urban norm.

Ruling by mobile phone has become very popular with politicians. A few key staff members remain in Washington, the District of Columbia, ever-ready to receive a Fenty-gram or cellphone-ukase. D.C. mayors are thinkers - doncha know? They need to leave the limelight of the Washington fast-life to think about their next five year plan. Stimulated by pleasantly undulating young hips, keeping time to exotic music, the political mind of Mayor Fenty becomes very fertile, siring ideas likety-split.

This is why they were elected - right?

Perhaps no intense political "brainstorming" by a Washington mayor equals that of the struggle against the constitutional design for the nation, which included the District of Columbia as the national seat of government. Just as Freemasons believe that God erred here and there in His design of the Universe generally and Earth specifically (if only He had been advised by the Brotherhood!), so the mayors and pols of Washington, D.C. believe that the Founding Fathers erred. How? The great bulk of Washingtonians will tell you at once: the District of Columbia should have been a state from the outset.

The vanity of these "people of politics" in Washington, D.C. make Ozimandias appear quite modest. Is there an inherent immaturity problem laying waste to sound vision in the District of Columbia? Possibly, but if so, it is an immaturity shared with a majority of "thinkers" on Capitol Hill.

The three main groups of "power-lunchers" in Washington's local government - Freemasonic Blacks, wealthy homosexual "urban pioneers" and Jewish lawyers/office-builders - want to attend meetings of the governors of the fifty states, as equal schmoozers. They yearn to proclaim to their peers that the "great sovereign State of the District of Columbia supports this or that, or opposes this or that. Nay! Not "State of the District of Columbia" but the "sovereign State of Washington II" (too?).

In Washington, D.C. status, turf, and "pecking order" are THE preeminent issues. From it money and fun flow. Hence, by this piece of information the bitter whining about not being a "sovereign state" can be made comprehensible to the "outside" world. ["They don't understand what were trying to say!"]

Every year, Congress grants the District of Columbia a few billion dollars of "other peoples' tax money" ["OPTM"] to try to run a proper government. Every year they fail miserably. It is the sort of place that overpaid "chieftains" abound. They "do lunch" a lot.

One example is the curious pavement on streets in the District that resembles a "sketeboard park" because of all the "rolls and dips" on flat terrain. Clearly, substandard asphalt/paving material is used, as contractors dilute the mix.

Another example is the recent subway train collision. No one in the District EVER thought of a "back-up" system to act as a second monitor of the positions of its speeding or stopped trains.

Still another example is the lack of water hydrants and inadequate water pressure, that seemed to combine to be the "cause" of a real-estate-enriched heiress losing her house and its "priceless" art collection to fire, recently. Sadly, she had probably "entertained" many of these same D.C. politicians at that very home, which is now in ashes.

It is my unofficial understanding that D.C. politicians are "looking into" these problems and that "blue-ribbon" committees are planned to investigate these matters, if Congress will just appropriate "investigative" money.