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Very

6 (50%)

Some

4 (33.3%)

Not sure

0 (0%)

Not really

1 (8.3%)

Not in the slightest

1 (8.3%)

Total Members Voted: 11

Voting closed: February 15, 2022, 10:51:36 AM

[facilitatorn]

But what about Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas?

Want to add 10 more Senators in Congress, and at least 10 more in the House?
...
...
Granting Senators to DC is too much, IMO.

Puerto Rico should be given statehood. This is pretty clear, especially since both major party's platforms have called for it (though the GOP currently only calls for a referendum at this point).

USVI, Guam, and the Marianas have not indicated a desire for statehood. American Samoa's residents are not equivalent - they are not American citizens and their government has indicated that they have no desire to change status.

But even if they were all admitted to the Union, it would not mean more members of the House, necessarily, let alone 10 of them. It would result in reapportionment of the 435 we already have.

DC is larger in population than Wyoming and Vermont. It would likely get one Representative, but not disrupt the whole very much.

Puerto Rico's population is larger than 20 states! They'd likely end up with 4 Representatives and 6 EVs.

That you don't want to give DC voters the right to form a state is hardly shocking.

How do you feel about the US VI?! Or Puerto Rico?

They can join a state. As I said.

No need to give outsized power to it, as creating a state would.

If you want to go that way, fold the Dakotas into one Dakota, fold Wyoming into Montana, fold Vermont into New Hampshire. The 94 senators left would better represent the nation than the 100 we do have with those pockets of outsized power.

[facilitatorn]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/21/politics/us-capitol-police-officer-investigation-radio-broadcast-lofgren/index.html

Capitol Police were told on the morning of Jan 6th to focus on anti-Trump protesters.

I want to know who told them that and why.

I want to know if it came from a higher up and what prompted that order from the higher up - and how much higher up does it go?!

We’ll find out. The sitting republicans will turn on each other faster than oath keepers and proud boys turn on each other. Birds of a feather will be baked into the same rancid pie.

[REDSTATEWARD]

The 700,000 DC residents can easily be given more voting power by amending most of the DC land to Maryland. Maryland will increase in electoral votes and get  another House seat and DC voters will be able to vote for Maryland Senators.  Adding DC as it now stands as a State needs a Constitutional Amendment 

[barton]

Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), the only two Black Democrats in the Senate, were among several high-ranking officials pointing to Bryant’s death as an example of the need to overhaul policing....     

Though I'm a Booker fan,  I have to ask here:  if police shouldn't use the lethal force of a gun to stop a knife attack (when the attacker is literally right on top of someone),  why are police carrying guns?   Even if Ms Bryant was acting out of some impulse to defend a family member, there's no getting around the fact that she grabbed a lethal weapon that can transect an artery in a split second and went after someone.   If we want protection of citizens from this kind of assault, then what's the alternative that works in this situation?  Rubber bullets, sonic weapons,  some hypothetical high-speed deescalation method?   What works when a single cop arrives in the middle of an adrenalized street fight?  Help me understand,  Mr Booker, why you think this Bryant case is an "example. "

Three cops

This underscores why an investigation is needed.  This press account makes it sounds like Reardon arrived at the driveway altercation alone and others officer were at some distance from it....

(From NPR)

Reardon was working alone when he pulled his police car up at the address given in the 911 calls. As he crossed the sidewalk, a group of people could be heard yelling, with a small crowd gathered in a driveway.

"What's going on?" he repeatedly asks in the video, as Bryant struggles first with one woman and then another. Reardon shouts, "Get down" and points his gun at Bryant, who is seen swinging her arm toward the other woman.

The officer then fired four shots. From the time he closed his police car door to when he fired the first shot, only around 10 seconds elapsed.

You see the problem.  I can't tell what role, if any, other officers were playing in those ten seconds. 

[barton]

The 700,000 DC residents can easily be given more voting power by amending most of the DC land to Maryland. Maryland will increase in electoral votes and get  another House seat and DC voters will be able to vote for Maryland Senators.  Adding DC as it now stands as a State needs a Constitutional Amendment

PR meets all the criteria of a state.  It should definitely be our 51st. 

DC I'd have to think about, since it is a city and we haven't gone the route of having city/states.  States, in their present form, combine land and towns and cities into a larger whole that calls for governance beyond a municipal governance, natural resource management, intercity agreements, land management, highway maintenance, etc.  So I can see a valid argument for shaving off the Mall and federal offices into a national square mile or two, and then having the residential areas join Maryland. 

[barton]

In eastern Nebraska, we used to have a joke:  If the NE panhandle split off and joined Wyoming, it would raise the average IQ of both states. 

[Oi!]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/opinion/climate-pledge-summit.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Whatever Mr. Biden decides, he must confront some brutal truths. Following the Trump presidency and decades of U.S. officials’ helping sabotage climate ambition, America suffers from a sizable trust deficit with the rest of the world. This week’s summit offers a decent summary of recent history: Globe-trotting officials talking up U.S. leadership and pressuring other countries to do more, with little to show for themselves at home. Rebuilding trust and reckoning with the climate crisis demands a sea change in U.S. foreign policy — tweaks around the edges will not do.

This, in turn, requires a wholesale reorientation of U.S. trade policy and institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Established at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference of allied nations to guide the global economy in the wake of World War II and the Depression, these institutions meet the needs of a world that no longer exists. Multilateralism must be radically reimagined for a hotter, ideally more democratic 21st century. The United States can help lead that process, but must forfeit the dream of steering Spaceship Earth on its own...

Yup.  If all these other countries want some sort of white picket fence American Dream, and oil companies come in offering to hotwire their economy, all the chatter about carbon neutrality could go out the window.

[Oi!]

I'll go against my usual political grain here and say that I think Reardon made the right choice.  Imagine that's your daughter who is pushed against a car and has an assailant coming at her with a knife.  If you cry genuine tears over what happened, I'm okay with that, but I don't want to see politicians crying crocodile tears over a girl who was, let's be honest here, engaged in extreme and life-threatening violence.  This incident looks in no way to be equivalent to George Floyd or Daunte Wright or others who died wrongly. 

[Hairy Lime]

The 700,000 DC residents can easily be given more voting power by amending most of the DC land to Maryland. Maryland will increase in electoral votes and get  another House seat and DC voters will be able to vote for Maryland Senators.  Adding DC as it now stands as a State needs a Constitutional Amendment

No it doesn't. What provision do you believe prevents it?

[Hairy Lime]

The 700,000 DC residents can easily be given more voting power by amending most of the DC land to Maryland. Maryland will increase in electoral votes and get  another House seat and DC voters will be able to vote for Maryland Senators.  Adding DC as it now stands as a State needs a Constitutional Amendment

PR meets all the criteria of a state.  It should definitely be our 51st. 

DC I'd have to think about, since it is a city and we haven't gone the route of having city/states.  States, in their present form, combine land and towns and cities into a larger whole that calls for governance beyond a municipal governance, natural resource management, intercity agreements, land management, highway maintenance, etc.  So I can see a valid argument for shaving off the Mall and federal offices into a national square mile or two, and then having the residential areas join Maryland.

The only thing arguably standing in its way legally is its status as the seat of the Federal Government which, being decreed by Congress can be revised by Congress in the manner you suggested.

[REDSTATEWARD]

The 700,000 DC residents can easily be given more voting power by amending most of the DC land to Maryland. Maryland will increase in electoral votes and get  another House seat and DC voters will be able to vote for Maryland Senators.  Adding DC as it now stands as a State needs a Constitutional Amendment

PR meets all the criteria of a state.  It should definitely be our 51st. 

DC I'd have to think about, since it is a city and we haven't gone the route of having city/states.  States, in their present form, combine land and towns and cities into a larger whole that calls for governance beyond a municipal governance, natural resource management, intercity agreements, land management, highway maintenance, etc.  So I can see a valid argument for shaving off the Mall and federal offices into a national square mile or two, and then having the residential areas join Maryland.

The only thing arguably standing in its way legally is its status as the seat of the Federal Government which, being decreed by Congress can be revised by Congress in the manner you suggested.

Which, of course, is not the goal of the democrats.

[Hairy Lime]

The 700,000 DC residents can easily be given more voting power by amending most of the DC land to Maryland. Maryland will increase in electoral votes and get  another House seat and DC voters will be able to vote for Maryland Senators.  Adding DC as it now stands as a State needs a Constitutional Amendment

PR meets all the criteria of a state.  It should definitely be our 51st. 

DC I'd have to think about, since it is a city and we haven't gone the route of having city/states.  States, in their present form, combine land and towns and cities into a larger whole that calls for governance beyond a municipal governance, natural resource management, intercity agreements, land management, highway maintenance, etc.  So I can see a valid argument for shaving off the Mall and federal offices into a national square mile or two, and then having the residential areas join Maryland.

The only thing arguably standing in its way legally is its status as the seat of the Federal Government which, being decreed by Congress can be revised by Congress in the manner you suggested.

Which, of course, is not the goal of the democrats.

True, the goal of Democrats is to provide representation for nearly 4 million Americans who are currently unrepresented in Congress. What I posted was the method for doing so, at least for 700000 of them.

[REDSTATEWARD]

The 700,000 DC residents can easily be given more voting power by amending most of the DC land to Maryland. Maryland will increase in electoral votes and get  another House seat and DC voters will be able to vote for Maryland Senators.  Adding DC as it now stands as a State needs a Constitutional Amendment

PR meets all the criteria of a state.  It should definitely be our 51st. 

DC I'd have to think about, since it is a city and we haven't gone the route of having city/states.  States, in their present form, combine land and towns and cities into a larger whole that calls for governance beyond a municipal governance, natural resource management, intercity agreements, land management, highway maintenance, etc.  So I can see a valid argument for shaving off the Mall and federal offices into a national square mile or two, and then having the residential areas join Maryland.

The only thing arguably standing in its way legally is its status as the seat of the Federal Government which, being decreed by Congress can be revised by Congress in the manner you suggested.

Which, of course, is not the goal of the democrats.

True, the goal of Democrats is to provide representation for nearly 4 million Americans who are currently unrepresented in Congress. What I posted was the method for doing so, at least for 700000 of them.

LOL.

[FlyingVProd]

I support programs which have the prisoners training service dogs for the disabled, it is good for the prisoners and it helps the disabled people. Service dogs should be free for the disabled people. And the prisoners can get jobs when they get out grooming dogs and training dogs, and working at dog kennels, etc. 

Salute,

Tony V.

[LarryBnDC]

I'll go against my usual political grain here and say that I think Reardon made the right choice.  Imagine that's your daughter who is pushed against a car and has an assailant coming at her with a knife.  If you cry genuine tears over what happened, I'm okay with that, but I don't want to see politicians crying crocodile tears over a girl who wyas, let's be honest here, engaged in extreme and life-threatening violence.  This incident looks in no way to be equivalent to George Floyd or Daunte Wright or others who died wrongly.

Crocodile tears for child who is dead?

It’s not the equivalence it’s the ubiquity.

Our communities are over policed and under protected.

This was an instance of the proverbial split second decision so I can see giving Reardon the benefit of the doubt pending investigation.