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[quote=Anonymous]I'll address a few questions/concerns "mail bag" style.
[quote=Anonymous]
Show us how Home Rule is "obviously not working," with specific examples. "I don't like that the crime rate is going up" is not a reason to throw out principles of local control, nor is "I think I'm smarter than the people who win elections here" or variations on that theme. What would you expect an appointed mayor and Council to do differently on day 1?

And Home Rule is more than 50 years old, and the Control Board more than 20 years defunct, so the fact that D.C. spent most of the 19th and 20th centuries being run without local input doesn't really seem like a great support for your claim that the natural state of affairs here is for the citizens of the city to just shut up and take whatever we get.[/quote]

and

[quote=Anonymous] Except crime declined under Democratic leadership and is already Declining right now under democratic leadership, and sacrificing control of DC also means sacrificing control of women's healthcare rights against the will of DC voters (I know, I know, you are republican so don't care about women's healthcare). And crime is high in plenty of GOP led cities. [/quote]

These are the comments of people who either blew into town last Tuesday, or have the memory of a grapefruit. A refresher: [url]https://apnews.com/article/crime-district-of-columbia-biden-senate-0d9580c43711a42a3549419b23546726[/url]

DC tried to pass a "crime" bill that would have lowered the penalties for carjacking, among other things, in the midst of a carjacking epidemic. Bowser vetoed it, then every member of the council but DCUMS favorite punching bag (Trayon White) voted to overturn that veto. This was such a bad bill that Senate Democrats joined with Republicans (81-14!) and had Biden's blessing on quashing it. The Council has been slightly better on crime since this very public defenestration.

We can only speculate on how bad crime would have gotten without this federal intervention. I can't find a single person that would argue that this bill was good, just that DC should have been able to inflict it upon the residents, workers and visitors of the Nation's Capital.

For many, this was where federal intervention became welcome.

Secondly and related, regarding the Home Rule fetishists:

[quote=Anonymous] It's democracy even when the voters elect candidates you hate. When you want to get rid of democracy because the voters elect candidates you hate, that's hating democracy.[/quote]

and

[quote=Anonymous] To be clear, you don't like how DC citizens vote, so you want to override them with your own personal views like a dictator. You are free to move, but instead you just prefer to implement your views against the will of DC voters. This is what you are saying over and over again repeatedly. Maybe you should adopt your writings into your own personal Mein Kampf?[/quote]

There are more, but you get the flavor.

This is amazing considering that DC is a one-party state-equivalent, and that party seems to be going forward with a presidential nominee that skipped a lot of "democracy" to get that nomination. And I don't mean that as a "gotcha" but rather that its a good thing. By essentially being appointed, she managed to minimize her exposure to the democracy system. This will leave her in a much better position to govern the nation, if she wins the election, because she didn't have to make ridiculous promises to every group of nutjobs and single-issue donors to get there. Democrats, including many here, are down right ecstatic to have her as the nominee now.

An appointed Mayor also would avoid having to make ridiculous promises (Deal for all!) to every fringe, idiotic, and motivated group that dominates the primaries. Further, they wouldn't have to get into the pocket of wealthy donors just to get a campaign off the ground. DCUM likes to point out Bowser's dependance on developers for instance...

No one is arguing that the current system is delivering results, only that its DC voter's right to run the city into the ground. Hardly a winning message.

So if we have a long history of federal intervention, have recently need "refresher training" and would lead to better governance, then why not take it? Why continue to shoot ourselves in the foot when there is a better way? Especially when support for "democracy" seems to be so very situational. 
[/quote]

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