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AUGUST 5: It’s the Economy, Stupid!
Today’s Event: Gray rolls out massive workforce development plan containing about 879 ideas and only partly comprised of gibberish. Gray’s plan would apparently establish enough new advisory groups, taskforces, and committees to solve the city’s unemployment problem on its own—though the city budget might be wrecked by the amount of extra government real estate these groups would have to rent. My heart actually flutters just a bit over his top agenda item: To actually enforce the District’s First Source/living wage law which Fenty seems to have little interest in doing—unlike, say, his interest in getting kids jobs at the expense of the city’s social safety net.
Influence: My twin brother is dedicated to the living-wage issue in Baltimore. It’s a family obligation to care about such things. I’ve attended enough brawling family holiday dinners to know that my brother would have my head if I didn’t support Gray’s albeit sudden emphasis on making sure city workers were given decent wages.
Net impact: Lean Gray. Alas, I’d be even more excited if Gray’s process-obsessed side weren’t on such display. For instance, I still don’t know what this means: “Empower CAPGO and NEDCO to provide much-needed capital to local businesses.”
But: A Green Team worker knocked on my door Tuesday afternoon to lobby for my support. The worker told me that he had been unemployed, but thanks to Fenty, he had worked his way up from volunteer to paid staffer. Fenty cares! I am moved enough to add my real name to his clipboard and take some pamphlets.