It ain't enough for real estate developers to control the elected officials, they have to be the elected officials too

R. Donahue Peebles, who created the Washington Marriott, is returning to D.C. with a $300 million fund and plans to redevelop a run-down area. Photo: Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)

See Don Peebles: I may run for D.C. mayor" from the Washington Business Journal.

To learn more about Donohue Peebles, one needs to mine the backfiles of the Washington Post archives:

- Results, Washington Post archive search using the keyword "Donahue Peebles"
- "Back in the Game" a review/retrospective of Peebles' book, from the Washington Post.

He's not any different than other connected honchos, be they lawyers, bankers or others, who misuse their position to feed directly or indirectly out of the public trough.

-- "Lobbyist's salary for nonprofit questioned: Oversight of Homes Sought Board members borrowed, are paying back loans" from today's Post. David Wilmot is a connected real estate lawyer and lobbyist who is also an investor in properties and projects (Post article from today) who eats well off the plate of the city...

-- Or these articles from 2004 about shenanigans at the United Planning Organization, a community services group in the city that has received millions of dollars in federal and city funds over the years "Anti-Poverty Group Leader Steps Down" and "Living Well off the Poor" from the Post.

Or the myriad Post stories about the "Pitts Motel" and other "shelters" for the homeless during the Barry Era in the late 1980s:

- THE HOMELESS; Shelters are wasting resourses, wasting lives"
- Is This Any Way To Help Homeless Families?
- Pitts Hotel: Final Checkout
- District Will Let Homeless Families Remain at Motel Shelter During Day

-	Grim Shuttle of the Homeless

don't sound any different than the Post's coverage of the provision of shelter and other services to HIV/AIDs patients in the last couple days, "'Wasting away': The sad legacy of the District's HIV/AIDS agency" and "'It doesn't seem right': A group plagued by service, cost complaints is awarded $4.5 million. How?."

God, NOTHING CHANGES.

Also see:

-- City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place (Molotch)
-- book review, "Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C., 1964 - 1994 from the Washington Monthly of the book by DC journalists Tom Sherwood and Harry Jaffe -- as journalists they are unfamiliar with the Growth Machine thesis, but their book is a perfect illustration of it.
-- A superb lesson in DC "growth machine" politics from Loose Lips (Washington City Paper) (blog entry)
-- Do the men who own the city make more sense than we do?* (blog entry)

Like "Gang of Four" sing in "Is it Love" ...

no one lives in the future
no one lives in the past
the men who own the city
make more sense than we do
their actions are clear
their lives are unknown