There is of course the unspoken danger in all of this – namely Marion Barry. If D.C. did become a state, you know he wouldn’t stay Councilman from Ward 8 for very long. I expect he’d gun for Governor, but it’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that he’d run for the Senate. shudder
–Cliffy
I don’t think it would be a possibility. Maybe ten years ago. He’s got health problems and legal problems. He is also older. He has lost the support of a lot of key people that supported him before. He won in Ward 8 which is the poorest part of the city and the part of the city that has benefited the least from the changes that have occurred under Mayor Williams. I don’t think Marion Barry would get the same level of support in Logan Circle, Adams Morgan, or even Shaw.
We can hope, certainly, but I wouldn’t bet against him if he had his eye on something.
–Cliffy
–polite cough-- like a crack pipe? :rolleyes: I’m not sure he’s the political powerhouse he once was, as other’s have said.
The comments about NoVa do raise an interesting question. While it is true that plenty of federal government agencies reside outside of D.C. ( and quite a few have gargantuan complexes ), isn’t that land a net zero for the surrounding communities? I mean, if I.B.M. built a new complex in McLean, they’d pay some serious taxes. There are various government agencies in McLean and surrounding towns, and man do they have huge complexes. Is even one red cent in tax paid to the municipalities in which those complexes reside?
If not, then at least those thousands of square acres are no loss, if NoVa or Maryland lose them to a new state.
There are Federal programs that attempt to ease the situation you describe. For example, the Department of Education has a fund called Impact Aid that compensates states and localities for being home to military bases – the kids on the military base use the schools, Uncle Sam pays the school district. There are also various payments in lieu of taxes that can be worked out.
At the very least, those government agencies have a lot of employees, who spend money in NoVa grocery stores and the like. And the grocery stores do generate taxes for the community.
That horrible thought was reason enough alone that, while I lived in DC, I did not support the District having a voting representative in Congress.
Of course, I also had a different view on the license plate motto – no taxation without representation. Most think of this as a call for representation. I would have preferred if it were a call for no taxation.
smiling bandit writes:
> Outside of the government, I understand there’s not much going on in
> Washington. Simply put, there’s no real reason to have a city there. It’s got no
> trade or marketing advantage… except the government.
This is like saying that if the financial industry, the book and magazine publishing industry, the fashion industry, the theatrical industry, and the TV and film industry all moved out of Manhattan, the city would soon become a wasteland. It’s true, but it’s also uninteresting. What do you think big cities are about these days? There are no factories in Washington, but there aren’t many in the middle of most big cities these days. Not even that large a percentage of the population of the Washington metropolitan area works directly for the federal government. Even if you include government contractors, journalists writing about national and international issues, lobbyists, law firm employees working on federal issues, employees of the headquarters of various national organizations, etc., you still wouldn’t reach a majority of the workers in the Washington metropolitan area. Furthermore, the Washington metropolitan area has its share of headquarters of large businesses. It has its share of universities and colleges. It has more than its share of good restaurants, theaters, movie theaters, bookstores, and similar entertainment venues for a metropolitan area of its size. That’s what big cities are increasingly like these days. Actual manufacturing of products takes place far away. Big cities are for headquarters, governmental offices, and knowledge industries.
Are any of you going to slisten to what I said, or are you just going to whine and make snide remarks like this?
D.C. has a very small business tax base because of all the government facilities. And the proliferation of low-income families doesn’t help. Sure, you’ve got your handful of real-upper class people, but many of them commute from nicer suberbs in VA and Maryland. Again, short tax base.
Secondly, what need would setting up DC as a state serve? How would it improve anything? How would setting up another payer of bureaucracy serve the public good?
Finally, there’s a serious problem with DC’s complaint. The city has the direct ear of the msot powerful government on the planet, which has spent a lot of time in the past cleaning up DC’s mistakes (and doing a decent, though perhaps not astounding, job). And of course, they do have non-voting representatives (IIRC) and can hardly claim to be overlooked come budget-time.
And by the by, Knoxville has Japanese, Indian, Thai, Chinese, German, French, Mexican, and Cuban restaurants and residents, and many more varieties. And it’s actually got a very solid music and club scene. More to the point, what does my current residence have to do with it? Just because I live in a smaller city doesn’t mean I’m somehow unfit to discuss the problems of DC statehood. Why does it matter? Are rural people somehow unworthy to discuss your high-and-mighty city? Now, if you weant to display your intellectual “brilliance” any further, I suggest you take it to the Pit.
I think if you step back for a moment, you’ll note that your argument was really nothing more than a strawman and has nothing to do with actual problem at hand.
I suppose I was a little defensive. Someone slings bullshit about your town, see how defensive you get. (Of course, we do see it in your last post.) But let’s just say that everything you think about the District is wrong.
The District has a significant tax base because of the plethora of large, very profitable law, publishing and consulting firms. Yes, there are a lot of poor families, but there are many more rich families than you think. And because of the astounding housing prices, the protperty tax base is astronomical. (Pros and cons to that, of course, but it’s the opposite of what you believed the case to be.) As to your question of what public good statehood would serve, I was not aware that U.S. citizens are now only allowed to vote if they have a good enough reason.
Finally, you’re overstating D.C.'s access to the federal government, which is rather paltry given how much the fed uses District services. Most of Congress’s activities towards the District are meddling at best, oppressive at worst.
You’re perfectly entitled to discuss the District’s issues no matter your location. But don’t expect not to be called to the carpet when you declaim things that are simply untrue as if they’re down from the mountain.
–Cliffy
smiling bandit writes:
> D.C. has a very small business tax base because of all the government facilities.
> And the proliferation of low-income families doesn’t help. Sure, you’ve got your
> handful of real-upper class people, but many of them commute from nicer
> suberbs in VA and Maryland. Again, short tax base.
Well, no, that’s wrong. Yes, there are a lot of government agencies which, in some sense, take up the space that would be taxable businesses, but it also has enormous amounts of taxable businesses. And that’s the purpose of the federal government’s contribution to the District’s budget, incidentally. The federal government has a policy of making a financial contribution to areas where government installations take up the space that would otherwise be taken by businesses. That’s why it makes contributions to local governments (mostly school districts) around military bases, and that’s why it makes an annual contribution to the District budget. (And that contribution is. apparently, only a small proportion of what equivalent-sized businesses would pay in taxes.) It’s not remotely true that most District residents are poor. D.C. has more than its share of middle-class to outright rich citizens. The metropolitan area is close to being the richest and most educated metropolitan area in the nation, and the disparity in income and education between the city and the suburbs is actually less than in many American cities.
Have you ever spent any significant amount of time in the D.C. area?
DC has a gross state product of $75.264 billion dollars, which would be #36 in terms of total GSP and #1 in terms of GSP per capita.
Handful? DC has the 22nd highest median income level of any major city. That’s higher than Minneapolis, Chicago, LA, Portland, NYC, San Antonio, Houston, Philadelphia or Baltimore. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.
It’s not a matter of the public good. It’s the fact that you have 500,000 people that are completely disenfranchised in Congress, but are still subject to all federal taxes and legislation. It’s a matter of what is right.
The direct ear of people who don’t particularly care about DC’s residents since those residents have no bearing on whether they’re elected or not. Congress has cleaned up some of DC’s mistakes, but they also make things more difficult. They slough off security to the city but don’t provide them the extra money to do it. Northern Virginia and southern Maryland Congress critters limit the ability of the DC government to implement a needed commuter tax in order to protect their constituents, etc., etc.
I used to say this too, since Hawaii became a state three years after I was born. 
Not only Canada. In fact, several federal nations in the world have a federal capital that belongs to a state with the same rights as the other states. This is true for Berne, Switzerland; Vienna, Austria; Berlin, Germany (although the last two ones are special in the sense that the federal capital is a state on its own, not part of another state; but no rights of the federal government to interfere with state matters); Brasília, is a Federal District, but has extensive autonomy and self-administration and possesses largely the same rights as Brasil’s other states.
It seems like we’re beginning to veer into GD territory, so let me accelerate that.
I’m not so sure a commuter tax would do any good. The only thing the DC government seems to do well is waste money. Sure, the schools suck, the police force is a joke, the roads are horrible, but let’s have taxpayers fund a new baseball stadium! The DC government wastes more damn money than any other jurisdiction I’ve ever lived in. I fear that if a commuter tax were finally enacted, they would simply find more ways to waste money and do little to actually do their jobs by fixing the schools, the police force, the roads, etc. They have plenty of money now to adequately fund the basic services a government should provide, but they can’t seem to get their act together and actually do it. Giving those financial incompetents more money won’t help.
“Completely”? DC does have an elected representative (Eleanor Norton Holmes) in Congress, who has full vote in House committees, and serves on three of them.
Whoops. That should be Eleanor Holmes Norton.
I agree with you somewhat but with the caveat that things are getting better. From the low point of the mayor for life’s reign things have gotten better. The schools are still a mess, but the police have gotten quite a bit more responsive. Hell they’ve even been fixing some of the roads around where I live. The DMV has gotten a lot better than it used to be although the Virginia ones were a lot faster.
However building a baseball stadium was a colossal waste of resources.
You are apparently unaware that: 1) roughly 10% of the DC budget is federal transfers (that is, payments in lieu of property taxes), so the impact on property taxes hasn’t been a big issue for some time now; 2) the number of families in DC who live below the poverty line has dropped by roughly a third in the past ten years, and that the poverty level in DC is the same as that of Los Angeles County, although median income in DC is about 3% greater than LA’s; 3) DC has had budget surpluses for 9 years in a row.
Actually, far from DC having the ear of key policymakers, serious issues in DC are routinely decided by people elected in faraway parts of the country who are not accountable at all to the people who live in DC. The most powerful elected officials with respect to DC politics are the Chairmen of the DC Appropriations Committee… who happen to be a Senator from Kansas and a Congressman from Michigan. Their Democratic counterparts? No, they aren’t from Virginia or Maryland… they’re from Louisiana and Massachusetts.
That means that the people of Kansas, Michigan, Louisiana, and Massachusetts have more of a say on local DC issues like school vouchers, the gun ban, and needle exchanges than do residents of DC.
No, under the current situation, your elected representative – Senator Frist – has more power to influence controversial Federal laws that impact DC and DC alone than all of my elected representatives put together. Heck, compared to me and my vote, you have more of a voice on what goes on here on various issues than I do!
I am not saying that you are not entitled to your views, but they seem to be based on a fair bit of misinformation about the actual circumstances in DC.
This reminds me an oddball “law” I once noticed in the DC Insurance Code, back when I was working as an indexer. IIRC, the city council and mayor of Washington, DC really have very little if any power, most of the city’s government being done by the U.S. Congress. We wrote the indexes based on a controlled vocabulary and following indexing rules that had been very carefully laid out. So there was this one section of the Code in which the City Council were “urging” the government to do something. One wonderes how such a section got into code of laws. And more to the point, we wondered if we needed a new indexing term, “City Council Urges”.