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DC statehood

Nice Guy Eddie

By Nice Guy Eddie
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Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13414

Posted
Posted

I'm sure this won't be a partisan issue across the US as everyone will learn Constitutional law via Facebook posts.

Personally I think DC should be shrunk to mainly cover the main federal govt buildings and then allow Maryland to annex the residential areas of DC. I'm sure this creates issues but they can be overcome. However since I don't think this is a likely path, I'm for statehood. 

Yes DC statehood will add to to the inequity of small states having too much power in the Senate but currently the GOP has a stranglehold on that inequity. This balances that problem a bit.

And on the population discussion, DC is larger than WY and VT and looks to surpass AK in the next decade. 

My guess is that a Dem controlled Exec and Legis branch will make DC a state next year. (Note: the new state won't be called DC.) Then Roberts casts the deciding vote on statehood sometime in 2022 as it ends up in the Supreme Court.

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Mo Horn

Mo Horn 8807

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I don't really care one way or the other, but I do believe they should have full representation in Congress, and other equalities that states have. If statehood is the only way to do that, then fine. If it can be done without statehood, I would lean toward the idea of keeping D.C. it's own entity. 

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RPM

RPM 26229

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Posted (edited)

I thought the whole idea of the District of Columbia was so that no one state could claim to be the nation's capitol and use that influence. Otherwise, you might as well let Virginia and Maryland annex the land and make Omaha the nation's capitol. 

3a79f3d85fdeba72d0d721ff02e60573.jpg

Edited by RPM
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DCA_HORN

DCA_HORN 725

Posted
Posted
I'm sure this won't be a partisan issue across the US as everyone will learn Constitutional law via Facebook posts.
Personally I think DC should be shrunk to mainly cover the main federal govt buildings and then allow Maryland to annex the residential areas of DC. I'm sure this creates issues but they can be overcome. However since I don't think this is a likely path, I'm for statehood. 
Yes DC statehood will add to to the inequity of small states having too much power in the Senate but currently the GOP has a stranglehold on that inequity. This balances that problem a bit.
And on the population discussion, DC is larger than WY and VT and looks to surpass AK in the next decade. 
My guess is that a Dem controlled Exec and Legis branch will make DC a state next year. (Note: the new state won't be called DC.) Then Roberts casts the deciding vote on statehood sometime in 2022 as it ends up in the Supreme Court.
Should have just titled this "I watched John Oliver last week"

Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk

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BabaYaga

BabaYaga 15212

Posted
Posted
9 minutes ago, RPM said:

I thought the whole idea of the District of Columbia was so that no one state could claim to be the nation's capitol and use that influence. Otherwise, you might as well let Virginia and Maryland annex the land and make Omaha the nation's capitol. 

3a79f3d85fdeba72d0d721ff02e60573.jpg

And we have ourselves a winner folks.....

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BabaYaga

BabaYaga 15212

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1 minute ago, RPM said:

Just because my HS class had 23 people doesn't mean I didn't pay attention.

Funny, my Dad was "Valedictorian" of his senior class of 13 kids.  Three of which all set off from the ass-of-nowhere-W.Texas to the "big city" of Austin many fateful years ago.  Grew hair down past his shoulders, met a hippie chick, popped out a bad-ass who terrorized the Co-Op they lived in, for which was also utterly embarrassed as a child because his hippie ass mom never wore a bra in any pics up until her 30's....sigh......

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Huckleberry

Huckleberry 32703

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45 minutes ago, The Dog said:

Puerto Rico has turned down every opportunity to become a state. There are certainly a lot of people there who want statehood, but the majority do not. 

Well except for that 97% vote for statehood a few years ago.

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The Dog

The Dog 43807

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Posted (edited)
11 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

Well except for that 97% vote for statehood a few years ago.

It was boycotted by opponents of statehood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Puerto_Rican_status_referendum

By the way, it does appear statehood in PR has more support now than in the past, but it's a very narrow majority. 

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SimonBolivar

SimonBolivar 10931

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3 minutes ago, The Dog said:

It was boycotted by opponents of statehood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Puerto_Rican_status_referendum

By the way, it does appear statehood in PR has more support now than in the past, but it's a very narrow majority. 

Yeah I wouldn't use the 2017 referendum. I'd like to see what the numbers are after Maria and the general political landscape of today. 

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Huckleberry

Huckleberry 32703

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Posted
4 hours ago, The Dog said:

It was boycotted by opponents of statehood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Puerto_Rican_status_referendum

By the way, it does appear statehood in PR has more support now than in the past, but it's a very narrow majority. 

I know it was boycotted. Who cares? It was an election where 97% said yes. The losers of that election can say whatever they want. 

We don't only count elections if they have 50% turnout. 

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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29177

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Combine North and South into "Dakota"... problem solved.

 

3 minutes ago, conVINCEd said:

Ok.  So you combine the Dakotas and turn Wyoming and Montana into Wyntana.  

can you two get your fucking stories straight, please?

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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

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Posted

North Dakota would oppose folding in with South Dakota because they wouldn't want to share their oil revenues.  Otherwise, South Dakota would be fine with it.  

Nobody was supposed to live in D.C.  It was just supposed to be federal buildings.  There are huge chunks of D.C. that serve no function to the government.  It's just apartments and stores, give it back to Maryland.  Maryland's borders are already goofy as shit, what's a few more slices.  You can carve out 70-80% of the D.C. residents easily and make part of Maryland proper again.  Start with that whole area East of 295, apportion in that park with Frederick Douglas site and that Navy-Coast Guard corridor of facilities down on the water.  Otherwise, nothing over there serves any government function or purpose.  On the other side most of the neighborhoods between Rock Creek Park and the border are also just residential.  Probably an immediate lower cost of living without the local D.C. taxes and utility costs.  This is infinitely less complicated than restructuring an entire branch of our government.  

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CowboyFred

CowboyFred 1151

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

wasn't last week about covid in jails?

yup.  and the week before was about facial recognition software.  week before that was police brutality.  week before that was mail in voting.

DCA obviously tried to make a funny and used a tv host that usually (haven't seen every show of his) hits topics that are controversial and tries to bring about the discussion with facts but mostly appeals to the liberal populace.  That and he shits on Trump.  Also a big fan of his trolling of tucker carlson constantly.

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StassneyHorn

StassneyHorn 6540

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Haven’t looked into DC too much, but Puerto Rico shouldn’t be a territory if it’s already bigger than 21 other states.

I feel like boycotting a vote against statehood tells the world you already knew you were going to lose the vote. Never been to Puerto Rico though. I should change that.

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conVINCEd

conVINCEd 21468

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

outside of partisan advantage, i dont know why we want them as a state.  does it do anything?

The people who live there would be able to elect people to (theoretically) represent their interests.

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Blotto

Blotto 23434

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Quote

Sen. Tom Cotton argued on Thursday that Wyoming, which he called a "well-rounded working-class state," is more deserving of statehood than the District of Columbia, even though the nation's capital has more citizens.

"Wyoming is smaller than Washington by population, but it has three times as many workers in mining, logging and construction, and 10 times as many workers in manufacturing. In other words, Wyoming is a well-rounded working-class state. A new state of Washington would not be," the Arkansas Republican said on the Senate floor.

Advocates of DC statehood point to the fact that residents pay taxes to the federal government but don't have representation in the US Senate and only have one non-voting delegate representing them in the US House. But Cotton argued that Democrats are only pushing for DC statehood so they can "have two new Democratic senators in perpetuity" and to "rig the rule of our democracy."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/26/politics/tom-cotton-wyoming-dc-statehood/index.html

Well-rounded in job diversity perhaps, Tom. Now lets compare racial demographics. 

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RPM

RPM 26229

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49 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

Never been to Puerto Rico though. I should change that.

Same here. I think it has potential to be a Caribbean paradise except for the ridiculously corrupt government. That and hurricanes.

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softlynow

softlynow 1783

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, shakahorn said:

My biggest question is how to put 51 or 52 white stars on the flag.  I've always thought it pretty clever how the 50 were laid out, but for the life of me I don't see how you get 51 or 52 in a nice uniform pattern.

image.thumb.png.6281c758cc9a77495a1b8f6a8e4f17b9.png

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ultimaton

ultimaton 2966

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Macanudo said:

What are we going to call it since we cant use Columbia...

Grifterland?

Fleeceton?

Careerpolitician?

Septugenarian?

New Lobbyistland?

 

Since they'd nixed the idea of New Columbia; The State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth was the latest proposal I had seen.

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32342

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/a-major-gop-nightmare-moves-a-step-closer-to-reality?ref=home

Quote

Legislation to make the District of Columbia a state is poised to pass the House on Friday, a major advance from the last time the measure came before Congress 27 years ago and 40 percent of Democrats joined with all but one Republican to defeat D.C. statehood. 

After decades of benign neglect, the movement to make D.C. the 51st state has gained new life with Black Lives Matter and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s heightened profile. President Trump’s efforts to use federal force to dominate streets around the White House exposed the subservient status of a city that must answer to Congress for how it spends money while its 706,000 residents are without full voting representation in the House or Senate. 

 

Quote

Republicans appear unmoved by pleas for equality. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton took to the Senate floor to denounce the Democrats’ move in a racially tinged speech depicting D.C. as an elitist conclave of the “deep state” and Mayor Bowser as someone who could not be trusted to keep the city and its statues safe. “Yes, Wyoming is smaller than Washington by population,” he tweeted, “but it has three times as many workers in mining, logging, and construction, and 10 times as many workers in manufacturing. In other words, Wyoming is a well-rounded working-class state."

Quote

The bill to rename D.C. “Washington, Douglass Commonwealth” is going nowhere in Mitch McConnell’s Senate. But if the Democrats win the White House and flip the Senate, statehood becomes imaginable, since statehood requires only a vote of Congress. “Trump says Republicans would have to be stupid to support D.C. statehood and that’s what the battle is about these days, maybe that’s what it’s always been about,” says Michael Brown, D.C.’s non-voting “shadow senator.” 

Actually, Trump said Republicans would have to be “very, very stupid” to support statehood for D.C. because it would add two Democratic senators, which McConnell would never let happen. “But it’s about more than McConnell,” Brown told the Daily Beast. “We can’t get one Republican (in the Senate), and there are still six (Senate) Democrats who are not on the bill.” 

 

 

Spoiler

In the modern Senate, 60 votes are needed to overcome a filibuster and proceed to a vote on legislation of any significance. The exception is judges, where Republicans exercised what is known as the “nuclear option” to confirm two Supreme Court judges and 200 lower court lifetime judges with a simple majority. Democratic leader Harry Reid opened this dangerous door by striking the filibuster for Executive Branch confirmations that McConnell was blocking. 

Several Democrats who ran for president, including Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg, favor doing away with the filibuster if Democrats win the Senate. Otherwise, they argue, McConnell (or his successor, should he happen to lose his own race) will obstruct everything Democrats try to do.  

The District of Columbia has a population of 706,000, more than Wyoming and Vermont, and D.C. residents pay more in total federal income tax than 22 states. It has long been a sore point that fighting in every war and contributing blood and treasure is not enough to gain more than a symbolic vote in Congress. D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who has served almost 30 years, has a vote in committee but not on the House floor, and if her committee vote breaks a tie, it doesn’t count. 

Even that small measure of democratic largesse was taken away by Republicans when they gained control of the House in 1994 and again in 2010. Democrats restored Norton’s limited right to vote when they won the House in 2006 and 2018, and since then Norton has been on a roll when it comes to statehood. She has 226 co-sponsors for the bill, including the No. 2 Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer from Maryland, who opposed statehood until now. 

Speaking before the Rules committee Wednesday, Norton explained how the legislation before her colleagues was personal to her own history. “My great-grandfather, Richard Holmes, who escaped as a slave from a Virginia plantation, made it as far as D.C., a walk to freedom but not to equal citizenship,” she said. “For three generations my family has been denied the rights other Americans take for granted.” 

Opponents of statehood argue that the Founding Fathers didn’t want the District to be a state, but our vaunted forebears also didn’t want women to vote, or Black people to vote, so that argument seems lame. “Whether you’re a textualist or an originalist, I don’t believe the Founding Fathers had any more reason to deny representation to people who pay federal taxes, serve in war and do everything a citizen should—than they would have wanted my neighbor down the hall to have a closet full of AK-47s,” says Ellen Goldstein, who served until recently as a neighborhood advisory commissioner for the Sheridan-Kalorama neighborhood, home to the Obamas, the Kushners, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. 

“You can unearth the minds of the Founding Fathers to justify anything,” Goldstein told the Daily Beast. “As somebody who has lived here for 50 years, I believe the only reason we’re not a state is because of race.” 

“John McMillan, a South Carolina Democrat and a segregationist, sent a truckload of watermelons to the office of appointed Mayor Walter Washington to let him know how little he thought of the budget Washington submitted in 1967 for the committee’s review.”

Race has a lot to do with it, says Brown, a former political consultant whose unpaid position’s main perk is identifying as a senator. The Constitution grants Congress jurisdiction over the District in “all cases whatsoever,” which allowed some committee chairmen of the House and Senate Committees on the District of Columbia to run the city like a plantation. 

In his recent book Class of 1974, John Lawrence recounts how John McMillan, a South Carolina Democrat and a segregationist, sent a truckload of watermelons to the office of appointed Mayor Walter Washington to let him know how little he thought of the budget Washington submitted in 1967 for the committee’s review. The District couldn’t even elect its own mayor until after Home Rule passed Congress in 1973. 

For a long time, D.C. pridefully called itself “Chocolate City,” acknowledging its majority Black population. No state has ever come into the union with a majority minority population, says Brown. In 1993, the last time Congress voted on statehood, the city was 56 percent Black, a factor in the outcome despite President Bill Clinton’s advocacy for statehood. 

During his final weeks in office, Bill Clinton had the newly authorized D.C. license plate with the slogan “taxation without representation” affixed to the presidential limousine. His successor, President George W. Bush, had the plate removed. It wasn’t until after President Obama won re-election in 2012 that he ordered the controversial plate installed on all presidential vehicles. 

In 2011, the District’s Black population fell below 50 percent for the first time in over 50 years. According to 2017 Census Bureau data, the African-American population is 47.1 percent. Unlike the Clinton-era vote, when Democrats were divided on the political merits of D.C. statehood, a newly awakened Democratic leadership is rallying around the cry for equal rights. 

“It’s beyond statehood,” says Goldstein, citing congressional meddling in District policies on marijuana legalization, gun regulation, and funding for abortion. “If we decide to do it, they take it away. They take our money and tell us how to spend it.”  

Goldstein doubts the House vote will change anything, but in her thinking, modern America cannot continue to deny D.C. is a state any more than Macy’s Department store in the movie classic Miracle on 34th Street could deny Kris Kringle was Santa when bags of letters addressed to him were delivered by the Post Office. Using the same reasoning, Goldstein notes that when she shops online on Amazon and scrolls down, D.C. is a state: “If the Post Office thinks you’re Santa, you’re Santa. And if Amazon thinks we’re a state, then by golly, we’re a state.”

Until a miracle happens on Capitol Hill, that will have to do.  

 

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