Posted on 07/01/2020 4:03:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
The drive to make Washington, D.C., a state has been a favorite of some Democrats for years. Why wouldn't it be? If enacted, a new state, formed from deepest-blue D.C., would create two new Democratic senators and one new Democratic member of the House. For a Democrat, what's not to like?
But while there have been lots of D.C. statehood bills over the years, the issue has been voted on only once before. In 1993, it failed badly in the House, losing 277 to 153. Back then, moderate Democrats put their judgment before partisan interest, splitting on whether statehood was really necessary. Democratic stalwart Rep. John Dingell, for example, opposed it, saying if residents of the District of Columbia didn't like where they lived, they could "leave any time they want."
But times have changed. Pro-statehood leaders have portrayed statehood as a civil rights issue. That's not new, but it is particularly resonant for Democrats with Black Lives Matter protests going on around the country. So recently, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put statehood to its second-ever vote, the measure passed with almost every Democrat voting for it. (The lone exception was Minnesota moderate Rep. Colin Peterson.) Every Republican voted against it. That's where things stand until the Republican-controlled Senate stops it cold.
"This is not just an issue of local governance and fairness," House No. 2 Democrat Steny Hoyer said. "It is a major civil rights issue as well." The name of the proposed new state would be the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, for the former slave and famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Some supporters' rhetoric got far more heated. "Residents in our nation's capital cannot be who we dream to be because Republicans in Congress won't get their knees off our necks," wrote longtime Washington Post columnist Colbert King.
If passed, D.C. statehood would be a complicated affair. The Constitution specifically calls for a seat of national government that is not part of any state and that is under the complete jurisdiction of Congress. Its residents have the right to vote for president -- that was granted in the 1960s -- but not for a voting representative in either the House or the Senate.
The original 100-miles-square District of Columbia was taken from Maryland and Virginia and straddled the Potomac River. Many Virginians were not happy about it. In 1846, Congress returned the part south and west of the Potomac to Virginia. That was known as "retrocession."
Now, some suggest that if residents of the district want full voting representation, they should do the same thing with Maryland -- that is, shrink the current District of Columbia down to the bare-bones federal areas and return the rest to Maryland. That way, residents of the largest part of D.C. would become residents of Maryland and have full voting rights and representation. The much smaller remaining District of Columbia would cover mostly the White House, the Mall, federal buildings and the Capitol.
It would be complicated, but it has been done before with Virginia. But D.C. statehood advocates don't want it. Why? Because retrocession to Maryland would not create a new state with two new Democratic senators and one new Democratic representative.
If Democratic statehood advocates were concerned only with winning full voting rights for district residents, they would be open to supporting retrocession. There is a precedent, and the voting-rights argument would be untainted by partisan motive. No, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser would not become Gov. Bowser, as she would in the Democrats' bill, but hundreds of thousands of district residents, the vast majority of them Democrats, would win the right to elect voting representatives in the House and Senate in their new home state of Maryland.
Instead, under the House Democrats' plan, a new state would be created, with an entire state government and those two new senators and one new representative.
A lot of Republicans dismiss the statehood effort as impossible. It will never pass in the Senate, they say. And it won't -- for now, at least. But what if a Democrat is elected to the White House this November, and the party wins a majority in the Senate, while keeping the House? All that will stand in the way of D.C. statehood becoming law is a Republican filibuster in the Senate. And then, there is a good bet that Senate Democrats will use the nuclear option to kill the legislative filibuster. If that happens, D.C. statehood could become a reality.
Washington State as well. East of the cascades it’s conservative. West of the cascades very liberal. Just at a cultural level they have nothing in common.
Don’t care.
It removes the risk of 2 more Rat Senators and more Rat House members in perpetuity ....
Very bad idea... Any division of a liberal progressive state/district would create 2 more liberal progressive states/districts and 2 more new progressive liberal senators from each.....etc..
Interestingly, two of the biggest opponents to DC statehood were the senators from Maryland. Barbara “Barf” Mikulski’s few moments of sanity in her 30 years in the Senate coalesced around fighting DC statehood. The reason was simple: the first thing that the “State of New Columbia”, as it would be called, would enact a wage tax on all commuters coming in from Maryland, Virginia and other states (believe it or not, there are people who work in DC during the day that live in West Virginia and Pennsylvania).
The whole idea of a federal district was to protect the representative from other states from being persecuted by the government in the capital city which disagreed with them.
The new “State of New Columbia” government could well try to harass GOP representatives who simply try to eat in a restaurant or stay in a hotel near the Capitol building, as after statehood these places would not be in a federal district, but rather in a state. The state government could try to tax their wages as congresscritters. Federalist paper #43 covers the issue of a neutral federal district for the national Congress.
If DC could become a ‘state’ then LA, San Fran, Detoilet, NYC, etc could also become ‘states’.
The Senate would be just like the House of Rep, a liberal puke joke.
How can anyone entertain the thought of making any city a state. If Washington, DC becomes a state, then will NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Miami, etc soon follow? Heck, how about Portland, Maine—shouldn’t every state be allowed to make at least one city another state. Oh, then there is Little Rock, Arkansas or maybe Jackson, Mississippi. This is total insanity. We are evolving from a country of intelligent human beings into a confederacy of dunces.
Maryland too. Western maryland, middle maryland and southern / eastern mRyland. middle md qould include baltimore, baltimore county, Montgomery and prince Georges countie, you can throw in Charles county for free for the new “Maryland” statehood. .
I'm not sure.
The Constitution says in Article I Section 8: "To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States..."
First, it says that the district is to be no more than 10 square miles, but it can be smaller.
However, secondly it says that the "cession" from the states AND acceptance of Congress must occur. That already has happened. I don't think Congress can now change its acceptance at a later date, because it was ceded by the states with an understanding in place at the time.
The article says that past precedence is already there to "retrocession" the unused land back to the original ceding states. It doesn't say that Congress can ask the original ceding states for permission to reuse the land for new current purposes (such as to grant it independent statehood).
Article IV Section 3 says: "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress."
In the case of converting DC into a state, Congress would first have to declare the extra space as no longer "the seat of government." At that point, Congress would no longer "exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such" non-seat of government territory. Once that happens, Congress no longer has the authority to declare it a state; that land returns to the ceding states which must then each pass legislation allowing that land to be formed into a new state via Article IV.
-PJ
Incorporation of northern Virginia and eastern infected areas into an area with their dc kind and call it all dc. Let it be with the same intended ‘you can’t and won’t be able to vote when you’re voting for your own selves as our founding fathers so rightly saw fit. Takers not makers thats what you have here.
When DC was established in 1790, it consisted of a diamond-shaped territory 10 miles on a side, for a total of 100 square miles. If you visit the area, an interesting historic building few people are aware of is the so-called “Cornerstone of DC”, which marks the southernmost point of the original federal district. It is in a small park that sits on the Potomac River virtually underneath the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, the 10 lane monstrosity that carries I-95 and I-495 (the southern part of the Beltway) over the river. It is the only bridge in the USA that is in three jurisdictions; the drawspan is actually inside present-day DC.
Alexandria, at the time the county seat of Fairfax County, was part of the federal district; it actually remained the county seat until 1805 when it moved to present day Fairfax city. When it was part of DC, present day Arlington County was known as Alexandria County, and most of it was farm and forest largely owned by the family of the wife of George Washington. In the 31+ square miles in the VA portion of the federal district, there were probably 5,000 people circa 1800 (today that number is about 400,000, 240k in Arlington and 160k in Alexandria).
In 1790, there probably were fewer than 3,000 people in the 68+ square miles in the Maryland part of the federal district. Interestingly, the entire Potomac River adjacent to the District is part of the District, because when Lord Calvert was given proprietary ownership of Maryland in 1632 by the Crown, the southern boundary of Maryland was the mean high water mark of the Potomac on the Virginia side, giving Calvert ownership of the fishing rights in the river.
In 1790, Georgetown was the only village (there may have been a settlement in Anacostia, but it was insignificant). Georgetown University was founded in 1789 by the Most Rev. John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the USA (the Diocese of Baltimore, which included the 13 former colonies, was “erected” in 1786). During the 19th century, the federal district actually had three municipalities: Georgetown; the city of Washington (which was everything between Rock Creek and the Anacostia River and south of present day Florida avenue; and then Washington County, which was mostly farmland and mostly owned by the Riggs family, who were the founders of the famous Riggs National Bank (it arranged for the money paid to the Czar in 1867 to purchase Alaska, for example) (Riggs is now part of PNC).
Someone said that the definition of the newly reconstituted federal district described in the House DC Statehood bill is a 90-sided box. This will be a disaster.
And guess what? Not only Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa will probably also become states if the ‘Rats win this election. (I’m not sure what the situation is in the Trust Territory of the Northern Marianas). We will become a one party dictatorship.
DC was once square shaped it include Virginia. Arlington County Va was once part of the district. That’s why it has the odd regular shaped. So the Virginia part of your idea was done in the early 1800s. Now as you say the Maryland part needs to be done.
Face it, if we lose the house, the senate, and the presidency, we’re finished. A civil war may occur, but who knows if the silent majority will wake up. Hitler had the brown shirts, Pelosi has Antifa and BLM.
We’re at the point where elections don’t matter anymore.
The Left has Academia, the Media, the Corporations, soup to nuts.
That doesn’t get removed at the ballot box.
They just keep coming up with ways not to vote Bolshekrat.
Eternal Democrat control of the Senate.
That’s really what it would be all about.
“MODERATE” Democrats.
Stop talking about unicorns who do not exist anymore.
No it won’t. Find something substantive to write about.
The silent majority no longer exists. That is why I think the polls today (with Biden ahead) reflect reality.
Washington is a constitutional set-aside. There must be an amendment to change its status.
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