Senate Commitee To Consider Statehood For Washington DC

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/blog/2014/09 ... -columbia/

Good idea or bad idea?

[Thread moved from News and Current Events to Politics, Philosophy & Religion]

Good idea...

650,000 taxpaying citizens of our nation's capital have no federal voting representation in Congress. D.C. residents have fought and died in every war since the Revolutionary War, yet they lack the same rights held by Americans in fifty states of our "democracy." D.C. residents pay more than enough federal taxes annually to support statehood. They pay more than several of our states currently do, and have a per capita tax payment that is higher than the national average. The majority of D.C.'s real estate is exempt from taxation because it is gov't-owned. Most sales in D.C. are to the federal gov't or other tax-exempt organizations, producing no revenue to the D.C. gov't.

... or they could just (re)join Maryland.

having lived around DC I saw a lot of "taxation without representation" plates

also we have ...

Puerto Rico --> the residents are US citizens but may not vote in US elections, however can vote in primaries [source 1]
U.S. Virgin Islands --> the residents are US citizens but may not vote in US elections, however can vote in primaries [source 2]
American Somoa --> the residents are not US citizens, and may not vote in US elections [source 3]
Northern Mariana Islands -->the residents are US citizens but may not vote in US elections [source 4]

sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta ... in_Islands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Samoa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mariana_Islands

Plus Guam.

Good old article 2. It's tradition, and you can't change tradition; the founding fathers would not approve.

I also like Roger Pilon's suggestion, "Exempt residents from federal taxes."

Always a good idea.

I think it's a good idea. If the citizens of DC want a compromise, the Senate can just shrink down the size of the District of Columbia so that it would consist of the National Mall, the White House, and the Capitol Building. The citizens of DC can reap the benefits of being part of a state, likely Maryland, without DC being a state itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_o ... ternatives

Sounds like a plan to me. "DC" should be a fistful of government buildings. Where you live, on the other hand, should be within a state, and represented/taxed accordingly.

Then there's that whole territory/protectorate business. Which, in my uneducated opinion, is colonialism wearing a nice coat of paint.

The seat of government can't be in a single state, the populated areas of DC should just be given back to Maryland as the Virginia side was in the past. It won't effect the balance of power and the citizens get the voting representation, the only problem is does Maryland want it? DC can't and won't ever be a state on its own.

Leave it like it is. The district already has an enormous amount of power as it is.

Unfortunately true. IMO, it should be up to the citizens of Maryland if they want to take back the populated areas of Washington DC through a vote.

The people suggesting that Maryland take them back already know that's not going to happen.

And why can't D.C. be a state? Because the founding fathers "said so?"

Are the "founding fathers" infallible gods, or humans?

Slavery was legal in the times of the founding fathers, does that make it okay?

The district is a flaw in design that needs to be corrected. We have hundreds of thousands of citizens who are denied genuine self-rule and full representation in Congress. They elect a mayor and city council, but Congress and the president retain the power to overrule all the city's laws and budgets. Washington, D.C. is effectively an internal colony, and denying the residents their rights is turning a blind eye to a flaw in our system and tolerating injustice in a so-called democracy.

The sad truth is that D.C. residents are denied statehood by Republicans because the majority are African American, Democratic voters.

DC is slowly losing its black population. "African American" people may already be a minority.

---------- White-----Black----Asian---Native American-Other --Hispanic (of any race)
1980 -----26.9% ----70.3%----1.0%------ 0.2%----------- 1.6%------ 2.8%
1990-----29.6%----65.8%-----1.8%------ 0.2%----------- 2.5%-------5.4%
2000 -----30.8%---60.0%------2.7%------0.4%------------3.8%------ 7.9%
2010 -----38.5%---50.7%------3.5%------0.3%------------4.1%------ 9.1%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographi ... ngton,_D.C.

So if that is the true, then Republicans may grant statehood in the future.