METRO IN KILLER VINE, A PRIZE FOR ARTISTS
TRAVEL A TRADE MAKES STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
BUSINESS WHERE ON EARTH IS YOUR MONEY?
MAGAZINE WHEN A SLOB FINALLY SEES THE LIGHT
ABCDE Thunderstorms. 94/76 • Tomorrow: Thunderstorms. 92/71 • details, C12
In Ward 8, recovery is
By Dana Hedgpeth While much of Washington starts to
emerge from more than two years of re- cession, Angie Walker feels as if she’s in the middle of a depression, stuck, with- out knowing quite how to get out. Companies are beginning to hire, but
Walker, who at 46 is struggling to find a full-time job, hasn’t noticed. April found her driving 28 miles round trip from Southeast Washington to Inova Fairfax Hospital, where a temp agency had sent her for a kitchen job, pay $11.88 an hour. She was working about 24 hours a week but needed more.
With a high school degree and years of kitchen experience, Walker can get jobs. But they’re almost always part time, low paying and temporary, leaving her among the 8.8 million Americans count- ed as underemployed. Walker lives in the District’s Ward 8, where she and many of her neighbors lack the beefy résumés with technical skills and college degrees that snag jobs in a slowly recovering economy. Often they’re hobbled by poor transportation, lack of reliable day care, brushes with the law, substance abuse and isolation from the world of internships and job re- ferrals — problems that won’t be fixed by classes in résumé writing or 9-to-5 dressing. “Any chink in the system can make it hard for them to achieve,” said Ed Laz- ere, executive director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, which studies issues af- fecting low-income District residents. “It is a complicated web to fix.” A few miles across the Anacostia Riv-
er, Congress has spent close to $600 bil- lion on job creation and benefits for the unemployed since the downturn began. But fear of driving up huge deficits has begun to overshadow worry about jobs, and lawmakers are talking about when to trim back. The change in tone isn’t helpful in
Ward 8, where unemployment, estimat- ed at 25 percent, approaches 40 percent when counting the underemployed and those who have given up looking. Those numbers can be overwhelming, consid- ering unemployment was 5.9 percent in April in metropolitan Washington and
ward 8 continued on A8
Kandahar is both an ally and obstacle to U.S. strategy
by Joshua Partlow JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST
Angie Walker looks for work in Ward 8, where the jobless rate nears 40 percent when the underemployed are counted.
Editorial: How mayoral can- didates stack up fiscally. A14
kandahar, afghanistan — On March 8, at NATO headquarters in Ka- bul, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal presided over a classified briefing that some mili- tary officials hoped would lead to the ouster of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half- brother of Afghanistan’s president and the most powerful figure in southern Af- ghanistan. But what has emerged instead appears
to have left Karzai stronger than ever. A summertime U.S. military offensive in
Powerbroker with grip on
the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar has now been delayed, in what American offi- cials said was an acknowledgment of op- position among local officials, without singling out Karzai by name. The fact that the younger Karzai con- tinues to hold sway in Kandahar says much about how difficult it has been for the American military to assert its will in Afghanistan. The 48-year-old power- broker is regarded by some U.S. intelli- gence officials as indispensable, but he has long been viewed with mistrust by American military officers, who describe him as an obstacle in their efforts to fight corruption and bolster the rule of law. The briefing given to McChrystal in
March was intended by American offi- cers to be a “cards on the table moment,’’ according to a senior NATO official. It outlined a dossier of intelligence infor-
mation that the critics of Ahmed Wali Karzai hoped might ultimately persuade Hamid Karzai, the president, to remove his brother from power. Instead, NATO and American officials
say the presentation was so unpersuasive that McChrystal directed his subordi- nates to “stop saying bad stuff about AWK” and instead to work with him. With the offensive delayed until at least September, American officials say there is time for Ahmed Wali Karzai to prove more supportive. “I believe he wants to be on the right side of history,’’ said Brig. Gen. Frederick Hodges, a top U.S. commander in southern Afghani- stan. “We want to help him be construc- tive, not destructive.’’ Some NATO officials say the best they
karzai continued on A12 On a shallow-water gulf rig, confusion keeps crew at bay
Drillers said to be exempt from moratorium, but delays mean layoffs are looming
by Dana Hedgpeth and Steven Mufson
aboard the seahawk 2602 drilling rig, gulf of mexico — Under a sweltering sun, rig manager Joe Boop watched as three of his crew yanked with grease-stained hands on a huge red wrench to adjust long brown pipes that stretched down through 210 feet of water
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EDITORIALS/LETTERS.A13-15 GOING OUT GUIDE.MAGAZINE LOTTERIES ........................B3
and nearly a mile beneath the seafloor. Afew feet from the rig, globs of orange- brown oil floated in the sparkling ocean water — a reminder that Boop’s rig sits about 32 miles northwest of where the Deepwater Horizon sank nearly eight weeks ago. On Friday afternoon, Boop estimated
that his rig, which is about half the size of a football field, had only 24 hours of work left and then would have to sit idle be- cause of delays in permits and confusion about new safety regulations. President Obama has declared a six- month moratorium on drilling in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon accident. In shal-
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low water — up to 500 feet deep — he said drilling by rigs such as Seahawk’s could continue.
But rig owners say that confusion over
safety regulations issued last week by the Interior Department and uncertainty about additional rules Interior says are on the way could extend delays in the is- suance of shallow-water permits, creat- ing a de facto moratorium. And that could force companies to idle rigs and furlough thousands of workers. Since the April 20 accident, the number of rigs ac- tively drilling in shallow water of the gulf has dropped by half.
rig continued on A7 Printed using recycled fiber
DAILY CODE Details, C2
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Pressure building on BP The Obama administration tells the company to adopt a more aggressive strategy to collect spilled oil. A6
How they clean the birds A detailed look at what rescuers are doing to remove the oil. A6
DARREN STAPLES /REUTERS E
ngland’s Robert Green loses sight of the ball against the United States. Unfortunately for him, it was the equalizer. The teams’ World Cup opener ended in a 1-1 tie, not the monumental victory U.S. fans were hoping for, but satisfying. Sports, D1. Local fans watched in Dupont Circle. Metro, C1.
STATES, LOCALITIES Letter to lawmakers cites
layoff threat, fragile recovery by Lori Montgomery
THE BROTHER KARZAI President Obama urged reluctant law-
makers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters” and to support the still-fragile economic re- covery. In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama defended last year’s huge eco- nomic stimulus package, saying it helped break the economy’s free fall, but argued that more spending is urgent and un- avoidable. “We must take these emergen- cy measures,” he wrote in an appeal aimed primarily at members of his own party. The letter comes as rising concern about the national debt is undermining congressional support for additional spending to bolster the economy. Many economists say more spending could help bring down persistently high unemploy- ment, but with Republicans making an issue of the record deficits run up during the recession, many Democratic lawmak- ers are eager to turn off the stimulus tap. “I think there is spending fatigue,”
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said recently. “It’s tough in both houses to get votes.”
aid continued on A7 ANDREA BRUCE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Ahmed Wali Karzai sees villagers and officials alike in southern Afghanistan. “I know how to deal with these tribes,” he says.
In limbo over ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’
Subtle changes taking place throughout the military ahead of expected repeal
by Greg Jaffe The day after Defense Secretary Robert
M. Gates announced in March that the military would ease enforcement of its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, a 21-year-old soldier in Baghdad learned that he had been outed by a fellow service member. The soldier’s command opened an in-
vestigation into the charge, and he quick- ly retained a lawyer. Then, nothing hap- pened. His platoon sergeant told him that his command was going to “stick the in- vestigation in a manila envelope and put the envelope in a desk,” recalled the sol- dier, whose name is being withheld at his request. The only change he noticed was that his platoon sergeant, once prone to shouting out a derogatory term for gay men, cut back his usage. “And when he does say it,” the soldier
noted, “he’ll give me a look like he is sor- ry.”
The soldier’s case reflects the subtle, but significant, changes taking place throughout the military even before the expected repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Although it seems unlikely that changes to the policy will go into effect before next year, front-line troops, their commanders and others are already preparing them- selves for the law’s demise. Even President Obama, set to name a
7 military continued on A4
The Washington Post Year 133, No. 190
CONTENTS© 2010 $50 BILLION FOR SUNDAY, JUNE 13, 2010 Fit to be tied at World Cup
a world away As the emphasis on the Hill shifts from jobs to the deficit, one woman strives but struggles to find work: ‘Who knew it would be so hard?’
Prices may vary in areas outside metropolitan Washington.
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washingtonpost.com • $2
Obama pleads for aid package
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