I hear this all the time from clueless rich DC residents who get wrapped up in all sorts of granfalloons. You don't think "Arlington" is its own place with its own identity separate from the rest of Virgina? Moreover, anacostia residents probably have more in common with residents of pg county than residents of palisades, who have more in common with bethesda residents than anacostia residents.
Well considering I volunteered on the border of anacostia and pg county, I think most of them don't really give a shit, eastern ave is just another street in the neighborhood.
And yeah, is bet they would bear more resentment towards someone who lives in the Palisades than someone on the other side of eastern avenue.
Moreover, last I checked 10 years ago a good chunk of anacostia is transitioning into middle-income/federal employee Hispanic neighborhood and that process is bleeding over into pg county, because the boundaries don't really matter all that much.
Edit: southern Ave, not eastern ave; it's been a long time.
If the residents of Arlington want to form their own state and secede from Virginia, I'll support them. As it stands, they already have representation in Congress.
> Moreover, anacostia residents probably have more in common with residents of pg county than residents of palisades, who have more in common with bethesda residents than anacostia residents.
Sure, and residents of Manhattan probably have more in common with people in northern New Jersey than they do with people in Buffalo, but New York still gets to be a state. So what?
My point is: There's no shared identity among DC residents, the most of whom don't even really live there all that long, due to political cycles/fluid flight to the suburbs of MD and VA. Your statement is pure nonsense.
The most sensible solution is to give DC back to Maryland (which is where it came from) and thereby give the residents representation, which is your end goal. If you want some other end goal, it has to be weighed against the other absurdities of making DC a state.
Uhh, yeah there is, if you move beyond happy hour with the other transplants whose dads got them internships in their representative's office and talk to people who actually grew up there.
And who cares how long people live there? If I move to VA for 2 years I still get to vote for a representative if there's an election while I'm there. Why should we have a void area in the country where like "ah ah aha, gotcha! you stepped in the your-vote-doesn't-count zone, so your vote doesn't count! Too bad!" This is the government that impacts our lives not some children's board game.
> If the residents of Arlington want to form their own state and secede from Virginia, I'll support them.
This idea doesn't get enough application. NYC should be its own state. LA should be its own state. Most big cities should be their own states. They are not similar to the area around them.
It gets far too much application. We literally put down a rebellion and rewrote the Constitution over this. It didn't work before and it won't work now.
There has never been a time in all of human history where cities cordoned themselves off politically from the rural areas they rely on that did not end in rebellion, bloodshed, and/or collapse.
If you want rural America to rise up in rebellion again, I mean, I guess go for it. But there's a specific reason the vast majority of state capitals are in comparatively rural areas: to prevent exactly the kind of division you're advocating for. This was a hard-won lesson in the aftermath of Shay's Rebellion.
> There has never been a time in all of human history where cities cordoned themselves off politically from the rural areas they rely on that did not end in rebellion, bloodshed, and/or collapse.
I guess you could call this true, but only in the sense that there has never been any system of any kind that didn't end in rebellion, bloodshed, and/or collapse.
The normal pattern historically is that the city's hinterlands are subject to the city's rule. You never see the hinterlands ruling the city.
> There has never been a time in all of human history where cities cordoned themselves off politically from the rural areas they rely on that did not end in rebellion, bloodshed, and/or collapse.
Totally incorrect. Berlin and Hamburg are states right now.
According to the Wikipedia page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion ), Shays' Rebellion was prompted by taxes being set at a level well beyond farmers' ability to pay. This is an incredibly common motive for revolt.
But it escapes me how torstenvl thinks it's related to cities constituting their own governmental units.
I just reviewed that Wikipedia page, and it seems accurate to my account. May I suggest you re-read it? It had nothing to do with the level of taxes, but with the insistence on following the urban mercantile paradigm, and, when farmers couldn't, forcibly taking their land from them.
"The economy during the American Revolutionary War was largely subsistence agriculture.... Some residents in these areas had few assets beyond their land, and they bartered.... In contrast, there was a market economy in the more economically developed coastal areas of Massachusetts Bay.... The state government was dominated by this merchant class.... European business partners ... insisted that they pay for goods with hard currency, despite the country-wide shortage of such currency. Merchants began to demand the same from... those operating in the market towns in the state's interior.... The rural farming population was generally unable to meet the demands... and some began to lose their land and other possessions when they were unable to fulfill their debt and tax obligations."
> I just reviewed that Wikipedia page, and it seems accurate to my account. May I suggest you re-read it?
You didn't actually give an account. But the quote you pulled describes farmers being taxed at a level they are incapable of paying. It appears that you would like to use that to support the claim "it had nothing to do with the level of taxes", somehow. You'd need to explain how.
I did, and in explicit detail. You're misreading the text, which is about a qualitative issue, not a quantitative one. It has nothing to do with level of taxation but with enforcing an urban mercantile paradigm of taxation, one that was literally impossible to meet and for which failure to meet it resulted in execution by starvation.
Being taxed a certain amount of silver is just as much of an issue of levels as being taxed a certain amount of wheat. Assessed taxes were much more expensive than the farmers were able to pay. It doesn't matter what currency the taxes are assessed in. What matters is that the amount is too high.
Compare what the farmers said their problem was:
> A farmer identified as "Plough Jogger" summarized the situation at a meeting convened by aggrieved commoners:
>> I have been greatly abused, have been obliged to do more than my part in the war, been loaded with class rates, town rates, province rates, Continental rates, and all rates ... been pulled and hauled by sheriffs, constables, and collectors, and had my cattle sold for less than they were worth ... The great men are going to get all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors nor lawyers.
The only people who say this are Democrats who want another (presumably) safe democratic state in DC. My city doesn’t share the same “identity” as the city next to me, but nobody’s clamoring to break up the state.
I hadn't heard the annexation argument before, I suppose the fairest way would be to have an election in DC and people would vote on whether they wanted to be an independent state or part of Maryland, and whichever was chosen would be the way to go.
I personally would expect they would want to be their own state, but who knows? If on the other hand people feel the choose their own state is very likely and Maryland unlikely it would probably save money to just go with become their own state.
so then I guess that should shut down the Maryland suggestion. No idea why it would be brought up as a possible solution for democratic representation when it goes against the wishes of the people seeking representation.
No, the people don't get to vote on which solution gives them representation. Because if you could just "vote to be a state" why does that stop at DC? Why not the three houses next to mine and me vote to be a state? Congress has to approve it because becoming a state incurs an externality on the other states - dilution of voting power.
To give your idea credence, though: probably it would be fair to let arbitrary groups of people vote for statehood without congressional approval if, hypothetically, there were a flat user fee to be a state, say, $50 billion/yr. Can't pay it? Sorry you get demoted to territory, your senators are booted, and your representatives become delegates, unless you merge with another state.
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State 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.
So it seems unlikely that you would be able to become a state by voting on it yourself.
The Northwest ordinance sets the minimum population size of a state to be 6000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Ordinance therefore I doubt your household has the requisite number of people living in it, even if you combine with the households of two or three of your neighbors, to succeed.
>Congress has to approve it because becoming a state incurs an externality on the other states
I did not say that they should become a state automatically when they voted for it, but rather that they should not be forced to become a part of Maryland if that is against their wishes. The obviously still need to follow the process required to become a state.
>To give your idea credence,
My idea should be quite easy to understand, and it was not the one you outlined here.
