You Don't Have To Go Home, But You Can't Stay Here: Nothing like some nosy House Republicans to bring a protest to an end. After last week's hearing in Congress, the National Park Service and U.S. Park Police began enforcing a long-ignored ban on camping in McPherson Square today, which could be the first step toward closing up the Occupy D.C. encampment there. Now if only Congress would show similar concern about all the real problems in D.C.'s national parks. -1

Make Money Money: Turns out 2011 wasn't quite as bad financially for the D.C. government as everyone thought. An audit of the now-ended fiscal year revealed an extra $240 million in unexpected cash, thanks mostly to higher than projected capital gains and estate tax revenues. Predictably, the D.C. Council is already eyeing the windfall for an election-year tax cut. Also predictably, the city is expected to run a $150 million shortfall in the upcoming 2013 fiscal year. +3

Let Them Eat Beer: The District is suddenly awash in breweries, which means a lot of leftover zymurgical grain. The District also has a lot of people going hungry, especially with the economy the way it is. Turns out all that grain can be baked into bread. DC Brau teamed up with Pizzeria Paradiso recently to produce 65 loaves for Bread for the City, recycling barley that would have been turned into cattle feed and feeding people with it instead. The brewers eventually want to produce 500 loaves a month to donate to charity. Which could mean your bar tab is tax deductible. +3

The Circus Leaves Town: Besides the running circuses at the Wilson Building and the Capitol, the D.C. area is also home to one of the largest traveling three-ring productions in the world, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which is owned by Feld Entertainment (the same company behind Disney on Ice). That may soon be changing. Feld announced plans today to relocate 190 jobs from its Vienna headquarters to a new office in Florida. Another 100 jobs will remain in Virginia. No word on where they'll send the clowns. -1

Friday's Needle rating: 34 Today's score: +4 Today's Needle rating: 38

Whether it’s by the councilmembers, the hotel association, passengers, or the taxicab commission, drivers feel put upon.

Everyone, it seems, has done the drivers wrong: There are too many cars on the streets. License fees are too high. Customers have a chip on their shoulders. The hack inspectors are assholes. Get rid of the Taxicab Commission and bring on more hack inspectors! Testimony from a pro-medallion system advocate was met with muttering: "Go back to Chicago!" The list goes on. (And on: More than 80 people signed up to testify at the hearing. As of mid-afternoon, Chairman Mary Cheh hadn't even called the first quarter of the witnesses.)

In the hearing, the drivers are a vocal bunch. Scores of them line the walls, bursting out with frustration frequently enough for Councilmartyr St. Tommy Wells to shush them thus: “If the room is quiet, we won’t notice it’s over capacity.”

Wells was asking them to stop praising him; during his questioning of Taxicab Commission Chair Ron Linton, he was a recipient of cheers as he bore into the reasons why Linton wants to pay for the new meter, GPS, and credit card system with money from a customer surcharge. Not that the drivers want to pay for it themselves, mind you—they simply cheered any criticism of the plan because they want it dead.

And they're still unhappy about the end of the zone system. During testimony, drivers went after Wells for praising the Uber model of cab dispatch—one 30-year veteran said the abolished zone system allowed for higher fares (better for drivers, and thus, service) through shared riding. In response to a complaint from Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser that her constituents can't catch cabs right now, the zone system was brought up again: a driver insisted that picking up multiple fares was the best way to hit underserved areas.

Wells acknowledged this, wondering if allowing shared rides east of the Anacostia River at night would help residents there catch cabs home. Only if shared rides were allowed everywhere, the driver said: "If you're going to have it east of the river, you need it west of the park."

And on it went, with each driver bringing up a different gripe. With such scattershot complaints—and, likely, diversity of opinion among drivers—it's hard to evaluate their claims. But the anger is obvious, and to listen to the cabbies, everyone else is to blame.

Photo by Shani O. Hilton

Yesterday Mike Madden said that the D.C. Council's trip to New Hampshire was ill-timed. Instead of taking advantage of the hundreds of reporters up there for yesterday's Republican primary, they've opted not to send anyone until tomorrow when the New Hampshire legislature votes.

NBC4's Tom Sherwood, on the other hand, thinks the whole visit is a bad idea:

The Live Free or Die state has been supportive in the past, but with the Thomas embarrassment — and two criminal investigations, of campaigns run by Mayor Gray and Chairman Brown, still going on — we hardly think it’s time to go democracy shopping.

We are the first to attack folks who decry wrongdoing in local Washington as an excuse to oppose congressional voting rights or even the right to govern ourselves. Those critics never seem to ask Illinois to give up governing despite its two former governors in jail now.

It just seems now is not the time for this trip.

Photo via Wikipedia Commons

We were just wondering what the D.C. Council's support was looking like these days, after the most recent polling back in March showed them with 54 percent approval from registered D.C. voters—a drop from 63 percent the previous year. Clarus Research Group has come out with new numbers, and if they're right, support for the council has dropped 24 points, down to 30 percent. And the council's disapproval rate has gone up to 55 percent.

Mike Madden has more details on other poll numbers (let's just say things aren't looking so good for Mayor Vince Gray either).

This isn't a surprise, of course. Check out this week's cover, our Annotated Guide to 2011, for some of the details that help explain why our council is so very unpopular these days.

Photo by m.gifford via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 License

Hot Shoppes Is Back: The sprawling Marriott empire—with hotels everywhere from Rosslyn to Romania—started out as a root beer stand at 14th Street and Park Road NW. What came between that business and today's behemoth? Hot Shoppes. The restaurant chain closed in 1999, but in its prime, outposts were all over the District, the area, and up and down the East Coast. Now comes word it's coming back, complete with Mighty Mo sandwiches, in the Marriott Marquis downtown. Streetcars, Hot Shoppes—everything old is new again in D.C. +3

Work For All: For the most part this year, job statistics have helped underscore why economics is nicknamed "the dismal science." But new numbers out from the Labor Department today showed unemployment dropping in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, thanks to private-sector job growth that offset continued cuts in the federal payroll. The District remains the area jurisdiction with the highest unemployment rate, but it fell from 11 percent to 10.6 percent. Better news: Unlike a recent drop in the national unemployment rate, this one wasn't caused by people giving up on finding jobs and, therefore, dropping out of the labor force. +3

Highways And Byways: Most plans to build new highways these days bring out waves of protests and years of planning. The District, though, managed to bring I-695 into existence merely by putting up signs. Turns out the stretch of road between I-295 and I-395 known as the Southeast Freeway is actually an interstate highway; eventually, new roads will be built to connect the better-known interstates. Confusingly, the Baltimore Beltway shares the same numerical designation. But if you don't know whether you're in D.C. or Baltimore, you've got problems your GPS can't solve. +1

Let's Get Ethical, Ethical: Congratulations, Washingtonians—you now live in a more ethical city. The D.C. Council passed, on a second reading, a sweeping package of ethics reform, which depending on who you ask, is either exactly what the District needs (per the politicians voting for it) or a whitewash of serious flaws in the municipal government (per most people who looked at it closely). In a potentially ominous sign for embattled Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr., whose house was raided by FBI and IRS agents this month, the council now has the power to expel one of its own. But since that takes 11 votes out of the 13 members, it's not likely to happen any time soon. +1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 50 Today's score: +8 Hanukkah bonus: +2 (nu, you think it deserves +8? Easy on the slivovitz) Today's Needle rating: 60

Party At Ground Zero: It's holiday party season for everyone, the D.C. Council included. Ethics controversies notwithstanding, the council will throw a $5,000 party for members and aides tomorrow night at the Washington Court Hotel; the money comes from donations of up to $380 per member from constituent service funds. Which, every councilmember would hasten to add, are not slush funds. The good news: At least they're not spending tax money on this shindig. The bad news: The party conflicts with a Washington City Paper party, which means we probably won't see any councilmembers at our event. Or maybe that's the good news. -2

Taxation Without Sanitation, Again?: Get ready for more angst over what parts of the D.C. government can and can't operate if the feds shut down. The Obama administration is ordering agencies to prepare contingency plans in case Congress can't suddenly, at the end of the year, remember how to do its job and pass the laws that allow the government to remain in business. (A feat which, to be honest, would be something of a surprise.) A federal shutdown would mean D.C. can't spend local tax revenue, either, because technically all our local taxes are collected, then given to the feds, then appropriated back. Officials said in April, when this possibility first came up, that a shutdown would cost about $1 million a week. So remember, call up D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and urge her to vote in favor of a spending bill. Wait, what? Oh. Never mind. -4

Skinny Jeans And All: Picture Georgetown in your head, and what comes to mind? Sweater vests, maybe? BMWs? Bros (or chads)? According to the folks at CollegeMagazine.com, though, those stereotypes are way out of date, and the neighborhood actually more closely resembles Williamsburg. Because they listed the university that resides there as the 10th "most hipster campus" in America, whatever that means; the list was topped by New York University and the Fashion Institute of Technology. No word on what this means for the Hoyas' basketball uniform design next season. +1

National Disaster: Anyone who sat through some of the low points of the Washington Nationals' last few seasons would not be surprised to learn that Nationals Park is hosting a disaster drill tomorrow. The surprise, however, is that the exercise has nothing to do with the team. Marines and D.C. emergency response crews will drill at the stadium; the event, as the Associated Press helpfully noted "is not open to the public." +1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 41 Today's score: -4 Today's Needle rating: 37

Certificate of Occupation: The big worry for the people occupying McPherson Square has been that a sudden police raid–like the ones in New York, Oakland, UC-Davis, and, oh, just about every other Occupy encampment—would clear them out. This weekend's demolition notwithstanding, they shouldn't have to worry about that: A judge has ruled that authorities need to give 24 hours notice before evicting the protest. Good news for anyone who doesn't like the smell of tear gas or pepper spray. +2

Ethics R Us: Every member of the D.C. Council voted today to approve new ethics legislation–even the ones who have caught the FBI's fancy recently (like Harry Thomas Jr.). The bill would dial back, but not eliminate, the slushy constituent service funds councilmembers enjoy now; it would also set up a new body to enforce ethics complaints, apparently because the council thinks the current Board of Elections and Ethics isn't up to par. Anyone expecting the bill to immediately improve the conduct of the D.C. government, however, should probably take a look at a nice bridge we have for sale a bit to the north. -1

Turning Japanese: Tomorrow is a date that will live in infamy—especially if you attend Sidwell Friends and don't like edamame. The private school's lunch selection for Dec. 7 features the soy bean snacks, chicken teriyaki, something called "Oriental noodle salad," and other Asian-inspired dishes; its menu notes prominently that Dec. 7 is Pearl Harbor Day. School officials say it's coincidental; the food contractor chose the menu items, and the printing contractor automatically noted the date. With that mystery solved, now maybe someone can figure out why they still think it's okay to refer to anything as "Oriental." -1

Fail To The Drug Tests: Life as a professional football player isn't that easy. Sure, you get paid a lot of money to play sports, but you have a high risk of concussions and other cataclysmic injuries—and you can't just smoke weed whenever you want to. That's the lesson from the suspension the NFL handed out today to Trent Williams and Fred Davis of the Washington Redskins for failing three drug tests; they'll miss four games, starting Sunday, ending their seasons. Which is to say, don't bet on the team winning out. -2

Yesterday's Needle rating: 59 Today's score: -2 Today's Needle rating: 57

10:05 Media wait behind police car as federal agents search D.C. Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr.'s house.

More pictures after the jump.

10:15 And now MPD has police tape up, just in case @mikedebonis planned to sneak into the house.

10:19 HTJ's attorney Fred Cooke talking to one of his client's neighbors.

10:23 IRS agents (with badges) leaving HTJ's house.

Follow Madden and Loose Lips for updates as they come.

Photos by Mike Madden

This was the year that Marion Barry discovered the concept of nudge.

After a debacle—no turkeys!—at his 2010 annual giveaway, the Ward 8 councilmember announced plans earlier this fall to revamp the affair by using the prospect of a free bird to encourage positive behaviors: To get a turkey, constituents would have had to do things like attend parent-teacher conferences, go to community meetings, or register to vote. Alas, by last week, the turkey incentivization efforts had been scaled back: Under the new rules, residents may get a health screening, but otherwise just need to prove that they live in the ward.

Still, the idea of using freebies to get people to do things seems like a good one. What might it look like if it was embraced by Barry’s colleagues from other parts of town? Some suggested ward- or councilmember-appropriate turkey incentives:

Jim Graham, Ward 1

• Beneficiaries must agree to have the energetic councilmember visit their home and personally take credit for cooking the entire Thanksgiving feast.

Jack Evans, Ward 2

• Turkeys will be available to residents who give a campaign contribution of under $500 to Evans in the name of every person attending their Thanksgiving meal.

Mary Cheh, Ward 3

• Cheh will generously load free turkeys into all cars with Ward 3 parking stickers—so long as those cars also display decals advertising private Northeastern liberal arts colleges.

Muriel Bowser, Ward 4

• Turkeys available to all. But locations will only be revealed to those who ask via “Dear PoPville” questions posted to the Prince of Petworth blog.

Harry Thomas Jr., Ward 5

• Recipients must demonstrate that their most recent Hooters meal was paid for from their personal bank account.

Tommy Wells, Ward 6

• Free turkeys will only be available to those who agree to walk or bike to their turkey meal—and to tweet about how livable and walkable their Thanksgiving was.

Yvette Alexander, Ward 7

• Residents may receive free turkeys only after demonstrating that they have pre-purchased future Thanksgiving spreads at the long-desired Skyland Walmart.

Illustration by Brooke Hatfield

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has agreed to set aside a bill that would require background checks for top-level D.C. government appointees, according to D.C. government officials. Issa decided to hold off after hearing from D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown that similar provisions are included in proposed legislation before the council.

Issa's interference in District government is completely appalling. Let me share a rough estimate how many of his constituents care who gets hired by D.C. government: 0. You know what Issa's constituents care about? Unemployment and home foreclosures, just like everyone else in California. Maybe he should focus on those.

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 License

Let's All Go To The Lobby And Pay Some Taxes: Seeing movies in the theaters these days is an expensive proposition. There's the tickets themselves, which cost more than $10. There's the Metro fare to the theater. There's the $7 monthly payment to Netflix that meant you could have just held out a few months and seen the damn thing on your couch. And now, if a new proposal by Mayor Vince Gray becomes law, there's the concession tax. The additional 5 percent sales tax on popcorn and sodas would go to a dedicated fund that would either help lure a movie theater east of the Anacostia River or help lure movie productions to the District. Which means you could be paying for the next Transformers sequel. -2

Next on Fox, Schools Begging For Cash: In today's installment of "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire," we look at a sad tale of how major entertainment corporations have become the funder of last resort for cash-strapped schools. Not less than five D.C.-area elementary, middle, and high schools have entered a contest where Glee viewers can vote, in classic reality TV fashion, on which one of them should get a share of a $1 million prize. The prize would pay to keep the music education program at the school from being closed—something which, apparently, local governments can't manage on their own. -3

Ethics R Us: Various law enforcement agencies have spent an impressive amount of time lately looking into how members of the D.C. Council conduct their business. Which isn't exactly good news with an election year coming up. So the council today spent hours and hours talking about how to comport itself in a manner more befitting an august legislative body. We wonder how long it will take for the council to do like the feds do with issues they want to bury, and appoint a blue-ribbon panel to look into ethics reform. -1

Surrender, National Weather Service: The year has already brought heat waves, an earthquake, and a tropical storm to Washington. So chances are no one was particularly surprised to see a tornado warning issued for the area today. Except in this case, the impending weather doom was a hoax: the National Weather Service accidentally sent test warnings out as if they were real. You may now go back to worrying about whether it'll snow on Saturday. -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 61 Today's score: -7 Today's Needle rating: 54

Last weekend, with another D.C. statehood protest underway outside the White House, Washingtonian editor Garrett M. Graff tweeted out some thoughts: “Congress might be more willing to give DC more rights if DC elected people who seemed more worthy of power.”

For a veteran of Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, never mind the editor of a District-based publication, it seemed a strangely undemocratic impulse. Why should Washingtonians’ autonomy be contingent on who D.C. voters elect? No one’s talking about putting Congress in charge of the Illinois whose citizens elected Rod Blagojevich, after all.

So we asked Graff to expound, in more than 140 characters. His response?

My tweeted observation had less to do with voting rights—there’s no reasonable excuse for D.C. residents not to have voting rights—and more to do with the governance issues D.C. faces as a federal district. I do think there’s a certain disconnect when the D.C. Council and mayor’s office complains that Congress treats them like children, when their own behavior seems to indicate that they shouldn’t be trusted with more authority... If the mayor and the city council want to prove they’re capable of governing D.C. without Congress looking over their shoulder, they should strive to be paragons of good governance. This spring especially, I don’t think they’ve met that standard.

Consider yourself chastised, Wilson Building! But don’t worry: If Washingtonian’s disapproval leaves a bruise, the magazine can recommend a plastic surgeon to take care of it.

Screen grab from CNN

The confirmation hearing for Terry Bellamy's appointment to permanent director of the District Department of Transportation was less an examination of his skills, abilities, and progress than an airing of parochial grievances by members of the D.C. Council.

Today's four-hour hearing on Bellamy, currently DDOT's interim director, saw valuable input from testimonials by D.C. residents. But questioning by the present councilmembers was only occasionally what you'd expect to be asked of the guy who will soon head up an agency of nearly 900 employees responsible for the functionality of the city's streets. Councilmembers Muriel Bowser, Phil Mendelson, Marion Barry, Jim Graham, and Tommy Wells too often brought up points that would have been better suited for small-scale community meetings at either the ward or Advisory Neighborhood Commission level.

Bowser, for example, was emphatic that Montgomery County be made to comply with the District's institution of signal prioritization around 16th Street NW. Mendelson doggedly pressed on when parking meter signage, which is presently rather hard to understand, would be replaced with notices that clearly state when meters are and aren't monitored. Graham declared that there was absolutely no problem with Metro station names that are more like mouthfuls, and suggested Bellamy would have quite the fight ahead should he attempt to shorten "U Street-African American Civil War Memorial-Cardozo" to the much more reasonable "U Street." Barry rambled at length about the quality of bus stops along Mellon Street SE, and demanded that Bellamy inform him how much money would be spent on bus stops in Ward 8. And though Wells, who oversees the council's Committee on Public Works and Transportation, largely stuck to broader questions, the hearing's last hour was essentially a Q&A based on topics brought up by his Twitter followers.

While all of these concerns are certainly valid and fall under DDOT's purview—and some interesting tidbits, such as the fact that Bellamy rides Metrorail more than buses, and walks to work, emerged—Bellamy's character and qualifications as an administrator didn't receive the same treatment. Wells rightfully grilled him on what he thought about green alleys, Complete Streets initiatives, and the timeline for streetcars on H Street NE; Bowser asked what Bellamy believed to be his greatest accomplishment (answer: technology around parking, workforce training that has resulted in D.C. residents making up 97% of crossing guards, and the ever-vague "community outreach").

Still, councilmembers used the hearing primarily to gauge whether their pet projects would be acknowledged during Bellamy's time at DDOT, rather than exact Bellamy's expectations and goals for the agency. Then again, Bellamy isn't nearly as vivacious as his predecessor, Gabe Klein, and didn't assert any particular visions for DDOT's work.

Bellamy, formerly the deputy director of operations at DDOT under Klein, was named interim director in January and is set to be confirmed as permanent director on July 12. Unless someone finds a parochial problem with him, that is.

Photo by Flickr User DDOTDC, Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)

More Money, More Problems: Ordinarily, finding an extra $77 million in tax revenue floating around the District's budget would be great news. But since the D.C. Council was hoping to find an extra $135 million, today's announcement of new revenue projections actually came as a bit of a disappointment. The wait list for how to spend the new money is considerably longer than the new projections can pay for. What won't make the cut: More cops, Sunday library hours, and a whole bunch of other stuff the council was hoping it'd be able to deliver. -3

Does This Taxi Go To The Jail?: One way to make sure your organization doesn't receive negative press coverage for what it's doing is to avoid doing controversial things. Another is to arrest journalists who try to watch what you're doing. The D.C. Taxicab Commission apparently decided the second plan makes more sense, getting U.S. Park Police officers to detain Pete Tucker from The Fightback and Jim Epstein from Reason for recording and photographing a public meeting. Most taxi drivers at the meeting left in protest. Prediciton: If Tucker and Epstein have to pay cab fare any time in the next year, it'll only be because they're too shy to tell the drivers who they are. -2

The One That Got Away: There's nothing worse for newspaper types than to see a good story wind up running in the competition's pages before you have it—especially if you could have run it, yourself. As former Washington Post staffer Jose Antonio Vargas' moving narrative in the New York Times Magazine, exposing himself as an undocumented immigrant, made its way around the Internet today, the Times disclosed that it only ran there because the Post's Outlook section had killed it. Outlook editor Carlos Lozada says "a decision was made" to pass on it. Wonder how many people interested in the story will decide to pass on reading the Sunday Post and read the Times instead this week. -2

Are You Ready For Some Football?: Fantasy football addicts won't be the only people in the area complaining if the NFL season doesn't get on track this year. A study by the Maryland comptroller estimates the treasury will miss out on $40 million in revenue if the Baltimore Ravens and the Washington Redskins, both of which play their home games in the Old Line State, don't take the field. Which could be a reason to be glad D.C. hasn't actually built a stadium for the Redskins to return to the District—just what the city needs now is more unexpected budget cuts. (See the first item, if you had any doubts.) -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 58 Today's score: -8 Today's Needle rating: 50

Why are gas prices so high at the infamous Watergate Exxon? The District’s gas king, Joe Mamo, turned out for a D.C. Council hearing Friday toting a slide show aimed at answering that question—or at least deflecting allegations that his company, Capitol Petroleum Group, is to blame.

On June 12, when the Watergate station was peddling its black gold for a pricey $5.09 and $5.29 a gallon, the franchisee who rents the locale from Mamo was pocketing “pure profit” of $1.18 to $1.25 a gallon, compared to a national average of just 16 cents a gallon, according to Mamo’s lawyer, Al Afano.

“Here’s your answer. Take a look at what they’re making,” said Alfano, who also offered CPG’s estimates of the profits being made by five other Northwest gas station operators he characterized as part of “the leadership group” pushing for legislation that, if passed, could force Mamo to sell some of his 45 D.C. stations, which make up nearly half of the city’s total.

There was plenty more, er, fuel poured on the rhetorical bonfire at Friday’s D.C. Council hearing on the legislation. But after six hours of testimony, the only thing that was clear is that gas prices have been rising faster in the Districts than they have both regionally and nationally.

John B. Townsend II of AAA Mid-Atlantic testified that in 2007, when the council repealed the measure it’s now thinking of reinstating, D.C. gas prices were only about 5 cents higher per gallon than the national average. For several months that year, the price split between the District and the greater Washington metropolitan area was as little as 2 cents. Today, however, the average gallon of gas sold in D.C. costs 41 cents more than Virginia’s statewide average, and it’s 27 cents and 28 cents, respectively, more expensive than the Maryland and U.S. national averages, according to AAA’s price tracking data.

What has also changed in that time frame is Mamo’s business. Through a series of acquisitions, he purchased more than 200 ExxonMobils and Shells in Greater Washington and New York City, ending up with a quarter of all stations in the D.C. region and about 42 percent of the District’s gas stations.

For Team Mamo, the June 17 hearing must have had elements of déjà vu-meets-Twilight Zone. Ward 3 councilmember Mary Cheh, who led the charge to repeal the 2004 law four years ago after a lobbying campaign by Mamo, is the author of the new measure Mamo desperately opposes.

Perhaps the single most persuasive piece of evidence presented in 2007, a letter issued by the Federal Trade Commission, came under heavy attack from AAA and antitrust experts last week. The letter had provided independent backing to Mamo’s argument that the so-called “divorcement law” would lead to higher gas prices.

“It’s great to predict, but they were simply wrong,” David Balto, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former F.T.C. anti-trust lawyer, said of the position laid out by the commission four years ago.

Balto testified that the city’s gas industry is not “competitively healthy” today because repealing the earlier law had allowed jobbers to acquire the oil companies’ “market power,” a legal term referring to the extent to which a single firm or a few firms can influence the price of a product.

During a particularly vigorous faceoff with At-Large Councilmember Vincent Orange, Townsend declared that not only had the FTC gotten it wrong, but so had The Washington Post in a May 27 editorial Orange quoted repeatedly throughout the hearing, which defended Mamo as a victim of “blatant example of political scapegoating and opportunism.”

Only three councilmembers showed up for the hearing: Cheh, Phil Mendelson (who wrote an earlier version of the legislation) and Orange. Cheh and Mendelson seemed to side with the operators. But Orange, who has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and other support from the Mamo and his companies, said he hadn’t heard anything to convince him that the District needs a new divorcement law or that Mamo’s company has anything to do with surging gas prices in the District.

Orange and Cheh did clash, though, over race, prompted by letter the Rev. Jesse Jackson sent to D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown, other black councilmembers, and Mayor Vince Gray.

In the letter, Jackson praised Mamo as a role model for minority entrepreneurs and accused the council’s white members of seeking “to put in place onerous and inequitable business restrictions.”

When Orange echoed Jackson’s view, Cheh turned toward Orange, raised a finger and said the racism allegation was “deeply offensive, and I reject it.”

Orange, his voice rising, tried to continue, but Cheh cut in: “It is also perfectly clear that my legislation has nothing to do with race.”

Later, when Mamo and his entourage testified, Cheh demanded to know who had “ginned up” Jackson’s letter, in a heated exchange with Mamo’s longtime lobbyist, former councilmember and mayoral candidate John Ray.

“No one,” Ray said, “no one puts words in Mr. Jackson’s month.” Cheh responded: “You, Mr. Ray, or you, Mr. Mamo, ginned up this letter, and I want to know who it was.”

“You are using words you shouldn’t be using. No one ginned up this letter,” retorted Ray, accusing Cheh of disrespecting him.

That got Cheh to back down, saying, “Perhaps ginned up was not the right phraseology.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery