So the question becomes, is it really Home Rule if the Party manages to control what you can vote on?
Yes, Home Rule means local decisionmaking, it doesn't mean every local gets everything they want.
I hope the party loses this and ranked choice voting is adopted, because it makes sense. But let's not pretend this is a Home Rule question. If you want to vote in the Democratic Party primary, it's very easy to register Democratic just for the primary. You can switch to whatever other registration you like right after that. If you just don't like the fact that the vast majority of voters in D.C. happen to be Democrats, that's fine, too, but that alone is not a reason to wipe out their right to vote on local affairs.
I'll summarize this approach as "its our town to run into the ground as we see fit."
DC is a creature of the Federal government, and the legislation that devolved power to the city (Home Rule Act) can be revoked or modified by Congress at any time, which is something DC Democrats should keep in mind. Their voting "rights" are actually provisional. Much like having a learner's permit allows one to drive within certain parameters. The sooner the DC Democrats remember this, the less painful the inevitable correction will be.
The good news is that the people insisting on local control in DC will probably move out of the city in the next few years anyway, fleeing from the consequences of their own choices.
Again, the condescension toward the idea that your fellow Americans should be able to decide what happens in their own city (which you also maybe live in?) is extremely off-putting. Voting rights in D.C. are not akin to a learner's permit.
At any rate, I don't see what your sneering reply here has to do with what I posted, which is (a) I favor ranked-choice voting and hope the D.C. Democratic Party loses its attempts to block it and (b) there's no conflict between having local control and having party primaries.
Finally, if you think every person who wants local control of D.C. plans to move out of the city in a few years, you're badly mistaken about who supports Home Rule.
You're missing out on the irony of the whole situation. The Democratic Party while crying about statehood and Home Rule, and democracy for Americans, etc... doesn't want voters to have any choice but the pre-approved ones. The reality is that no one wants the people of DC to be making real decisions. Its just a question of which group will be making the decisions for them, and how transparent that control is. I prefer a method that is out in the open and historically effective. Some people cling to the pretend democracy that produces horrible outcomes.
Notably during the Control Board period, DC notables like Eleanor Holmes Norton were in support. For the simple reason that DC needed help fiscally which was clear to all. The current situation is totally different, with DC’s governance unfortunately becoming fodder for a culture war with no relationship to what DC actually needs.
I dislike Charles Allen, think crime is terrible, hated covid school policies. Yet even the biggest DC critics like me see the GOP fulminations about DC for what they are. You will find zero and I mean ZERO support for a control board among people who are stakeholders in DC and care about DC no matter how critical they are.
Anyone who claims they know best about how to “save DC” yet supports the obviously bad faith politicization by the GOP is full of absolute sh*t.
Its just a matter of looking at trend lines and getting out ahead of them. Some people can see where this is heading, and others can't until disaster is already happening. Its just a matter of time before the CRE collapse leads to a budget collapse, during a collapse of law and order. Luminaries will once again be holding their hat out for Congress to save them.
As much as people like to hate on the GOP, and often they have good reasons, your average GOP Congress critter at least understands that you need to put criminals in jail. That's something the super educated ruling class of DC has unlearned with tragic consequences. A period of Congressional rule is the medicine this city needs.
That being said, the President appointing a Mayor is an even better solution. They have a much better track record.
Sure, if you think it's absolutely unavoidable that the budget will completely collapse as will law and order, I guess your perspective here makes more sense. I don't personally think the "trend lines" are quite as rigid as you do (for one, violent crime is down 35 percent year over year), but whatever.
In reality, I think you're just trying to be a high-handed contrarian jerk, mostly for the sake of trolling, and I don't know whether you believe or care in anything you're saying. You're definitely succeeding in all that, so... congratulations?
DC voters have learned nothing and will try nothing new. The Feds intervened, saved the city from itself, and the city promptly forgot about it and is back to business as usual. Not being able to learn from mistakes is a hallmark of immaturity and a factor in requiring outside supervision.
There is also the rust-beltish tidbit that DC has lost population since the advent of home rule, while the metro area has more than doubled in size. What other city can say that? American or global capital? Why does this seem acceptable to so many? Why do DC voters have such low expectations?
I'm cutting your crime discourse, because I think you're trying to make points that go beyond just that and because I think the crime bill and its revisions have been very heavily chewed over on this site already and don't need more input from me.
But do you really think the population shift is because of Home Rule? White (and middle-class black) flight from D.C. revved up into overdrive in 1968, after the riots, which happened, I'd note, under federal control. And the long period of shrinking population reversed itself with the 2010 Census — under local control.
I don't think anyone "forgot" about the control board, but I also don't think the city is "back to business as usual" in any meaningful way on the budget. Even if officials wanted to go back, there are new laws in place now that make it impossible for the city to get into a fiscal position as bad as it was then. You may be worried about a CRE crash, but the city is also legally required to plan for it, to have large budget reserves ahead of time, etc.
Finally, your insistence on calling a city with more than 600,000 residents "immature" just because you disagree with the policies of elected leaders is incredibly obnoxious.
There are definitely conflating factors, but I certainly partially attribute home rule DC's population decline. The riots themselves did not empty out DC. The population drop from 1960-1970 was only 1%. It was the 70-80 drop of 15.6% that really dealt the blow to the city. That drop happened under the roll-out out Home Rule, and I would argue particularly because of the election/re-election of Walter E. Washington.
For nearly 90 years DC was run by a 3-person commission, consisting of one Republican, one Democrat and one Civil Engineer. This created a balanced and functioning city that I can only assume Lyndon Johnson found too boring, stable and above-board. He replaced the balanced commission with a Mayor/Council system that he appointed in its entirety. Enter Walter E. Washington. A year later we get riots, and he did the 60's equivalents of "giving them space to destroy." Large parts of the city burned, and rioters helped themselves to whatever they wanted. And still DC's population decline was minimal.
I would argue it was when District voters elected him Mayor in 1975 that it was a signal to abandon ship for anyone that cared about their personal safety or property. How could you not decamp to the suburbs after the city gave the guy who was running the city into the ground another shot? The schools fell apart (sometimes literally) and crime became rampant shortly after. He apparently wasn't bad enough for the remaining voters, so they brought in the Mayor for Life to finish the city off, with the city reaching its lowest population since 1930.
That is until the Control Board stepped in, and appointed Anthony Williams CFO and then nudged him into the mayorship. I don't credit his era to Home Rule, but to the Control Board era, it having appointed him in all reality. He never would have won an open election and I think everyone realizes that. The city is still riding that momentum, but you can see it starting to fade as voters assert their control over the city more and more. The city's politicized response to Covid and free-range organic criminals once again drove down the population.
In summary, once DC voters got their hands back firmly on the wheel, the population dropped again, undoing the momentum that the Control Board and Williams gave the city. Now businesses and gov workers don't want to even be in the city. That should be triggering more alarms than it currently is. You may not like me pointing these things out, but DC voters just simply refuse to react to stimuli until someone makes them. How else can you characterize such behavior?
So the question becomes, is it really Home Rule if the Party manages to control what you can vote on?
Yes, Home Rule means local decisionmaking, it doesn't mean every local gets everything they want.
I hope the party loses this and ranked choice voting is adopted, because it makes sense. But let's not pretend this is a Home Rule question. If you want to vote in the Democratic Party primary, it's very easy to register Democratic just for the primary. You can switch to whatever other registration you like right after that. If you just don't like the fact that the vast majority of voters in D.C. happen to be Democrats, that's fine, too, but that alone is not a reason to wipe out their right to vote on local affairs.
I'll summarize this approach as "its our town to run into the ground as we see fit."
DC is a creature of the Federal government, and the legislation that devolved power to the city (Home Rule Act) can be revoked or modified by Congress at any time, which is something DC Democrats should keep in mind. Their voting "rights" are actually provisional. Much like having a learner's permit allows one to drive within certain parameters. The sooner the DC Democrats remember this, the less painful the inevitable correction will be.
The good news is that the people insisting on local control in DC will probably move out of the city in the next few years anyway, fleeing from the consequences of their own choices.
Again, the condescension toward the idea that your fellow Americans should be able to decide what happens in their own city (which you also maybe live in?) is extremely off-putting. Voting rights in D.C. are not akin to a learner's permit.
At any rate, I don't see what your sneering reply here has to do with what I posted, which is (a) I favor ranked-choice voting and hope the D.C. Democratic Party loses its attempts to block it and (b) there's no conflict between having local control and having party primaries.
Finally, if you think every person who wants local control of D.C. plans to move out of the city in a few years, you're badly mistaken about who supports Home Rule.
You're missing out on the irony of the whole situation. The Democratic Party while crying about statehood and Home Rule, and democracy for Americans, etc... doesn't want voters to have any choice but the pre-approved ones. The reality is that no one wants the people of DC to be making real decisions. Its just a question of which group will be making the decisions for them, and how transparent that control is. I prefer a method that is out in the open and historically effective. Some people cling to the pretend democracy that produces horrible outcomes.
Notably during the Control Board period, DC notables like Eleanor Holmes Norton were in support. For the simple reason that DC needed help fiscally which was clear to all. The current situation is totally different, with DC’s governance unfortunately becoming fodder for a culture war with no relationship to what DC actually needs.
I dislike Charles Allen, think crime is terrible, hated covid school policies. Yet even the biggest DC critics like me see the GOP fulminations about DC for what they are. You will find zero and I mean ZERO support for a control board among people who are stakeholders in DC and care about DC no matter how critical they are.
Anyone who claims they know best about how to “save DC” yet supports the obviously bad faith politicization by the GOP is full of absolute sh*t.
Its just a matter of looking at trend lines and getting out ahead of them. Some people can see where this is heading, and others can't until disaster is already happening. Its just a matter of time before the CRE collapse leads to a budget collapse, during a collapse of law and order. Luminaries will once again be holding their hat out for Congress to save them.
As much as people like to hate on the GOP, and often they have good reasons, your average GOP Congress critter at least understands that you need to put criminals in jail. That's something the super educated ruling class of DC has unlearned with tragic consequences. A period of Congressional rule is the medicine this city needs.
That being said, the President appointing a Mayor is an even better solution. They have a much better track record.
Sure, if you think it's absolutely unavoidable that the budget will completely collapse as will law and order, I guess your perspective here makes more sense. I don't personally think the "trend lines" are quite as rigid as you do (for one, violent crime is down 35 percent year over year), but whatever.
In reality, I think you're just trying to be a high-handed contrarian jerk, mostly for the sake of trolling, and I don't know whether you believe or care in anything you're saying. You're definitely succeeding in all that, so... congratulations?
DC voters have learned nothing and will try nothing new. The Feds intervened, saved the city from itself, and the city promptly forgot about it and is back to business as usual. Not being able to learn from mistakes is a hallmark of immaturity and a factor in requiring outside supervision.
There is also the rust-beltish tidbit that DC has lost population since the advent of home rule, while the metro area has more than doubled in size. What other city can say that? American or global capital? Why does this seem acceptable to so many? Why do DC voters have such low expectations?
I'm cutting your crime discourse, because I think you're trying to make points that go beyond just that and because I think the crime bill and its revisions have been very heavily chewed over on this site already and don't need more input from me.
But do you really think the population shift is because of Home Rule? White (and middle-class black) flight from D.C. revved up into overdrive in 1968, after the riots, which happened, I'd note, under federal control. And the long period of shrinking population reversed itself with the 2010 Census — under local control.
I don't think anyone "forgot" about the control board, but I also don't think the city is "back to business as usual" in any meaningful way on the budget. Even if officials wanted to go back, there are new laws in place now that make it impossible for the city to get into a fiscal position as bad as it was then. You may be worried about a CRE crash, but the city is also legally required to plan for it, to have large budget reserves ahead of time, etc.
Finally, your insistence on calling a city with more than 600,000 residents "immature" just because you disagree with the policies of elected leaders is incredibly obnoxious.
There are definitely conflating factors, but I certainly partially attribute home rule DC's population decline. The riots themselves did not empty out DC. The population drop from 1960-1970 was only 1%. It was the 70-80 drop of 15.6% that really dealt the blow to the city. That drop happened under the roll-out out Home Rule, and I would argue particularly because of the election/re-election of Walter E. Washington.
For nearly 90 years DC was run by a 3-person commission, consisting of one Republican, one Democrat and one Civil Engineer. This created a balanced and functioning city that I can only assume Lyndon Johnson found too boring, stable and above-board. He replaced the balanced commission with a Mayor/Council system that he appointed in its entirety. Enter Walter E. Washington. A year later we get riots, and he did the 60's equivalents of "giving them space to destroy." Large parts of the city burned, and rioters helped themselves to whatever they wanted. And still DC's population decline was minimal.
I would argue it was when District voters elected him Mayor in 1975 that it was a signal to abandon ship for anyone that cared about their personal safety or property. How could you not decamp to the suburbs after the city gave the guy who was running the city into the ground another shot? The schools fell apart (sometimes literally) and crime became rampant shortly after. He apparently wasn't bad enough for the remaining voters, so they brought in the Mayor for Life to finish the city off, with the city reaching its lowest population since 1930.
That is until the Control Board stepped in, and appointed Anthony Williams CFO and then nudged him into the mayorship. I don't credit his era to Home Rule, but to the Control Board era, it having appointed him in all reality. He never would have won an open election and I think everyone realizes that. The city is still riding that momentum, but you can see it starting to fade as voters assert their control over the city more and more. The city's politicized response to Covid and free-range organic criminals once again drove down the population.
In summary, once DC voters got their hands back firmly on the wheel, the population dropped again, undoing the momentum that the Control Board and Williams gave the city. Now businesses and gov workers don't want to even be in the city. That should be triggering more alarms than it currently is. You may not like me pointing these things out, but DC voters just simply refuse to react to stimuli until someone makes them. How else can you characterize such behavior?
You're eliding a lot here: "In summary, once DC voters got their hands back firmly on the wheel, the population dropped again, undoing the momentum that the Control Board and Williams gave the city. Now businesses and gov workers don't want to even be in the city."
Williams was mayor for eight years, ending in 2007. The population continued rising in 2010 over 2000 and in 2020 over 2010. Population dropped in 2021 compared to 2020, and then... it's been rising again since 2022. https://edscape.dc.gov/page/pop-and-students-total-population-trends And how exactly did voters "assert their control more and more" once the Control Board ceased to exist? It's all or nothing. Williams wasn't guaranteed to win reelection in 2002, the Control Board had already dissolved. Not only that, but because Williams was so politically inept, he had to run a write-in campaign to even manage a second term, so I really don't see how you're claiming D.C. voters didn't have agency over that election.
And then you say businesses and government workers "don't want to even be in the city," but was it city policies that gave them the option in the first place? No, obviously, it was a global pandemic. Which, much like white flight, affected other cities nationwide in similar fashion. And which, also obviously, contributed to the population decline in 2021, as well. The city's response to the pandemic was about the same as every other city's in the United States was — closed schools, mask rules, etc.
You're considering anything that happened before Home Rule to be great, which surely isn't the case, considering the present to be utterly dismal, and certain that the future will be worse. I just don't find that to be a very persuasive underlying argument for why the people who live in the capital of a country that claims to be the greatest democracy in the world shouldn't be allowed to elect even their own local leaders (let alone the fact that we don't get a full vote for national leaders, either). Just because it's possible to have Congress step in doesn't make it the right thing to do.
After the Trayon thing, and Nadeau's give away to one realtor bill, and Allen's wife's legal bribery coming to light anyone changing their opinion on this?
So the question becomes, is it really Home Rule if the Party manages to control what you can vote on?
Yes, Home Rule means local decisionmaking, it doesn't mean every local gets everything they want.
I hope the party loses this and ranked choice voting is adopted, because it makes sense. But let's not pretend this is a Home Rule question. If you want to vote in the Democratic Party primary, it's very easy to register Democratic just for the primary. You can switch to whatever other registration you like right after that. If you just don't like the fact that the vast majority of voters in D.C. happen to be Democrats, that's fine, too, but that alone is not a reason to wipe out their right to vote on local affairs.
I'll summarize this approach as "its our town to run into the ground as we see fit."
DC is a creature of the Federal government, and the legislation that devolved power to the city (Home Rule Act) can be revoked or modified by Congress at any time, which is something DC Democrats should keep in mind. Their voting "rights" are actually provisional. Much like having a learner's permit allows one to drive within certain parameters. The sooner the DC Democrats remember this, the less painful the inevitable correction will be.
The good news is that the people insisting on local control in DC will probably move out of the city in the next few years anyway, fleeing from the consequences of their own choices.
Again, the condescension toward the idea that your fellow Americans should be able to decide what happens in their own city (which you also maybe live in?) is extremely off-putting. Voting rights in D.C. are not akin to a learner's permit.
At any rate, I don't see what your sneering reply here has to do with what I posted, which is (a) I favor ranked-choice voting and hope the D.C. Democratic Party loses its attempts to block it and (b) there's no conflict between having local control and having party primaries.
Finally, if you think every person who wants local control of D.C. plans to move out of the city in a few years, you're badly mistaken about who supports Home Rule.
You're missing out on the irony of the whole situation. The Democratic Party while crying about statehood and Home Rule, and democracy for Americans, etc... doesn't want voters to have any choice but the pre-approved ones. The reality is that no one wants the people of DC to be making real decisions. Its just a question of which group will be making the decisions for them, and how transparent that control is. I prefer a method that is out in the open and historically effective. Some people cling to the pretend democracy that produces horrible outcomes.
Notably during the Control Board period, DC notables like Eleanor Holmes Norton were in support. For the simple reason that DC needed help fiscally which was clear to all. The current situation is totally different, with DC’s governance unfortunately becoming fodder for a culture war with no relationship to what DC actually needs.
I dislike Charles Allen, think crime is terrible, hated covid school policies. Yet even the biggest DC critics like me see the GOP fulminations about DC for what they are. You will find zero and I mean ZERO support for a control board among people who are stakeholders in DC and care about DC no matter how critical they are.
Anyone who claims they know best about how to “save DC” yet supports the obviously bad faith politicization by the GOP is full of absolute sh*t.
Its just a matter of looking at trend lines and getting out ahead of them. Some people can see where this is heading, and others can't until disaster is already happening. Its just a matter of time before the CRE collapse leads to a budget collapse, during a collapse of law and order. Luminaries will once again be holding their hat out for Congress to save them.
As much as people like to hate on the GOP, and often they have good reasons, your average GOP Congress critter at least understands that you need to put criminals in jail. That's something the super educated ruling class of DC has unlearned with tragic consequences. A period of Congressional rule is the medicine this city needs.
That being said, the President appointing a Mayor is an even better solution. They have a much better track record.
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