Always the Dollars, Always the Fcking Dollars with trump: 4th of July Edition

The 4th of July celebration that trump hijacked for himself was never about celebrating America, it was about trump and his buddies milking it for every penny they could get (via Josh Kovensky at Talking Points Memo): 

I visited the Great American State Fair on several days over the past week. Yes, it’s empty. Security is extremely tight, with no clear reason as to why. Federal marshals, Oklahoma state troopers, and others roam the area, providing a mini-museum of cops. The mini-arch is as half-assed as everyone says it is.

But President Trump’s Freedom250 project and the Great American State Fair is really a corruption story. And, in true MAGA fashion, there’s no real effort to hide the graft here: it’s all playing out in front of you. The fair itself showcases different forms of the rampant conflicts of interest and grifting that is coming to define the second Trump administration. On MAHA Monday, I stopped by the “Freedom stage” and listened as a doctor who runs a network of clinics pitched a top administration official on having Medicare and Medicaid cover a controversial scan that his business offers. It was hot, so I went inside an air-conditioned tent; firms funded by Don Jr. had booths on display. Government contractors like Lockheed Martin, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and others had exhibits in the tents and around the area. A Truth Social representative tried to sell me on creating an account with a video service that the president’s company is launching. 

People have compared the fair to a Potemkin Village. But my experience was more akin to stumbling upon a scam, more like Fyre Festival combined with a turbocharged form of D.C. pay-to-play. It’s eerie: the fair is mostly empty. The parts that are supposed to be for visitors are either falling apart or dramatically fail to deliver. The only real activity appears to come from large businesses using the fair as a vehicle to gain favor with the president.

Congress originally created a bipartisan America250 commission in 2016. Planning started under the first Trump administration, and continued through the Biden years. In 2024, former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush agreed to serve as the Commission’s national co-chairs.

When Trump took office a second time, he first installed a 25-year-old former Fox News producer, Ariel Abergel, and Trump campaign officials to direct it. The commission fired Abergel in September, in part over his efforts to make the celebration about Trump rather than the country’s 250th birthday. In December, Trump dispensed with the bipartisan commission entirely: he announced Freedom 250. It’s a limited liability company that exists within a congressionally chartered nonprofit, the National Park Foundation. It’s the official fundraiser for the National Parks Service. 

In November, Trump added his campaign co-manager, Chris LaCivita, to the nonprofit’s board. At one point, he reportedly asked Congress to give America250 $150 million instead of $100 million; the extra $50 million was to go to the White House. Per a report from House Democrats, Freedom250 ended up capturing the majority of the funding.

Every bit of those details deserve note. What had been a bipartisan affair turned into another trump grift.

Follow the money - Old Vulcan Proverb

Freedom 250 reportedly offers personal access to the president for those who contribute $1 million or more; $500,000 gets you “V.I.P. access.”

With any access buying, the direction of travel is often unclear from the outside. Is a firm or person purchasing a way in? Is the company there in order to maintain access? Or, in this case, are they only present in response to an existing tie to the Trump administration...

There was another, uniquely Trumpian, example of this kind of messiness. On MAHA Monday, I went to the “Freedom Stage,” where Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Director Dr. Mehmet Oz was interviewing a psychiatrist named Dr. Daniel Amen.

It was over 90 degrees and sunny outside during this interview, in which Amen showed a slideshow to a small crowd of people that featured the brain scans of people suffering from various forms of mental illness. The pitch, Amen said, was that these scans could diagnose psychiatric disorders. At the end of the presentation, he and Oz produced a blender and made “brain healthy hot chocolate” in the sweltering heat.

Around halfway through, Amen mentioned to Oz that “CMS should start covering scans,” telling him, “I bet I could save you billions of dollars. This is the MAHA moment.”

It wasn't a public forum on health, it was a goddamn late-night informercial.

As for Dr. Amen, Kavosky noted "Amen also runs a network of clinics that offer the scans, known by their acronym SPECT, for people experiencing a range of psychiatric and relational issues. It’s controversial: the American Psychiatric Association found in 2012 that this kind of neuroimaging impacted neither diagnosis nor treatment."

And we're paying this alleged quack with taxpayer money.

It’s not clear exactly how much money went from the federal government to the fair.

The National Park Foundation received a $68.3 million grant from the Department of the Interior for “semiquincentennial events.” Beyond that, it’s not clear how much money went to the fair...

It’s hard to overstate the mismatch between the tens of millions of dollars that have gone to Freedom 250 and the result on the ground (Freedom 250 is putting on other events around the country). American flags branded on a white Freedom 250 background appear to have been made out of a thick pillowcase material. The canvas that covers the tents sags; air conditioning barely works to keep the inside areas cool.

At one point, I strayed into a concessions tent. There, I found a woman who had spent $5 on a bottle of water before staff realized that they had run out. The customer was becoming increasingly irate as the staff refused to provide a refund.

This is all JAC. Just Another Con.

When sanity regains control of the federal government, every single one of these grifters deserve jail. Even if trump tries to pardon them beforehand, fuck the rules (why not? trump and his Far Right buddies do) and jail 'em anyway. This is criminal bullshit and we're stuck paying the bills for it.

And in the meantime, the tacky and cheap way it was all put together is going to get people hurt or killed. Look at this:

Whatever glue they used to put it together is melting in the heat wave. Gods help the people stuck in the middle of this.

The Downward Spiral of trump's War Against Justice and Reality: Reflect On THAT

When the farce turns into tragedy, it's the innocent who get burned first. trump's desperation to avoid getting blamed for the Reflection Pool fiasco has led to his thugs at the InJustice Department to file charges against scapegoats (via Lindsay Whitehurst and Meg Kinnard at AP News):

A former Olympian was indicted Thursday on a felony charge in what President Donald Trump has called vandalism of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, where a renovation project he launched has been riddled with problems.

David Hearn, a former Olympic canoe racer, was indicted on a single count of property destruction in Washington, D.C., court.

District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Hearn ripped up recently installed sealant on the pool in “a deliberate act” that caused more than $1,000 in damage. She accused him of “forcefully and violently” pulling up the bottom liner “with both hands” and acting belligerently toward an employee who told him to stop.

“This is a case with tremendous evidence,” she said, adding that authorities have made about six other misdemeanor arrests.

That is, coming from Pirro, a lie. Hearn's version of events:

Hearn didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment. He previously told The Associated Press that he reached into the pool on June 19 to examine the newly peeled coating. He said he briefly touched a chunk that was still attached to the side of the pool, then let go shortly after a park worker told him to.

“I’m a curious citizen,” Hearn said in a telephone interview last month. “I reached down to see what it felt like. It was very rubbery.”

Saying that he stopped by the pool during a 64-mile bike ride, Hearn said he was detained by National Guard troops and U.S. Park Police for five hours before being released.

Even before Hearn got anywhere near the Pool, there were reports of pieces of paint peeling away from the granite surface. (That Reuters report is from June 18th. Hearn was arrested on the 19th.) The algae growth in the waters had been happening for days, and the whole thing had turned into a huge embarrassment for trump who crowed how his efforts were fixing a reflecting pool that didn't need a coat of paint and needed back the filters trump's people earlier removed and failed to put back.

Accusing other people of being vandals - and abusing the legal system to pursue felony charges where you can't prove actual harm - is all part of trump's downward spiral into his own madness and willingness to destroy everything he can't control.

I hope Hearn can convince the judge overseeing this case to dismiss outright. Pirro has no real evidence, just on the timeline alone Hearn can claim he didn't do anything to damage the Pool. It was already damaged by trump. And everyone - trump himself, in the darkest void of whatever replaced his soul - knows it.

The Neverending Cycle of trumpian Failure: War With Algae Edition

This all for the record started back in April of this year when trump - high on his own narcissism regarding the desecration of the East Wing, and decades believing his own architectural tastes were above reproach - decided out of nowhere to have the great Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial get its surface painted blue.

As Collin Binkley reported for AP News back then: 

President Donald Trump is having the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool coated in a swimming pool surface hued in “American flag blue,” covering up a decades-old granite surface that he said was “leaking like a sieve” and would take years to replace.

The president announced the renovation at an Oval Office event Thursday, saying the coating had already begun. He was inspired to tackle the project after a friend visited from Germany and lamented that the water was filthy and looked disgusting, Trump said.

I don't think trump ever mentioned who the friend was - one of the many faceless "brave strong types" who come up with tears in their eyes calling trump "sir" in eternal gratitude - and I don't believe trump ever pointed to any official study into the pool's condition as justification for getting this done. I am firmly convinced trump decided to get the reflecting pool painted because he got it confused with "swimming pool," which is a different type of pool altogether.

The project is one more makeover refashioning the nation’s capital to Trump’s liking, following others such as the demolition of the White House’s East Wing to make room for a new ballroom...

In Trump’s telling, the reflection pool project is a case study in business acumen. The president said he scrapped plans to have the granite replaced, which he said was estimated to cost $301 million and would take at least three years.

Instead, Trump said he called a few pool contractors he knows from past real estate projects — “I have a guy who’s unbelievable at doing swimming pools up the road,” Trump said.

The guy in question turned out to have gotten a no-bid contract for $1.7 million or so (and cost overruns no surprise ballooned to $13 million), and that the guy once bribed Democratic congresscritter James Traficant Jr. back in the day. You can't make this shit up.

trump bulldozed ahead on this project in spite of people warning him that painting the pool surface would cause rapid algae growth. Because it turned out, yes it did (via Jenna Lee at Washingtonian):

The Trump administration’s renovations of the Reflecting Pool on DC’s National Mall held up for about a week.

Construction crews spent weeks painting the more-than-2,000-foot-long pool “American Flag Blue” at Donald Trump’s request, ahead of the country’s 250th birthday. Although the shallow Reflecting Pool has long been plagued by algae growth, a pool renovation expert told Washingtonian that the color of the paint could be exacerbating the problem.

On Wednesday, a day after the basin was refilled, workers were seen cleaning out clumps of algae—which have transformed the pool’s signature reflection to a mossy green. The algae resurfaced by Friday morning...

Steve Goodale, a Canadian swimming pool specialist who goes by “Swimming Pool Steve,” said the darker blue of the renovated pool may worsen the pool’s existing algae problem absent other mitigation efforts, because the darker color will absorb more sunlight and increase the water temperature, making the pool ripe for more algae blooms. 

“If we change nothing else except the color, and we go from a lighter color to a darker color, absolutely you’re going to have more prolific algae growth,” Goodale said. “It’s a foregone conclusion.” 

This wasn't a case study in business acumen. This was a case study in self-aggrandizing stupidity, driven by an ignorant asshole who thinks he's smart and classy and nowhere near either.

The locals have seen algae in the reflecting pool before, but by most accounts on social media they've never seen it bloom as quickly or thoroughly as it has with the painted surface.

Making things worse is that the paint isn't working: it's peeling away in chunks highlighting how cheap and ill-done the whole job had been (via Sahil Kapur and Sophie Ziedalski at NBC News):

President Donald Trump’s makeover of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ahead of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations is not going according to plan...

Then, the new Trump-branded “American flag blue” color was short-lived as algae turned the pool green, causing the administration to send crews to dump hydrogen peroxide into the expansive pool to deal with the problem.

In recent days, NBC News spotted some blue paint chipping off the surface, with strips of it peeling away and floating atop the pool for visitors and passers-by to see as the busy summer tourist season in the nation’s capital gets underway.

Not a good look at all for trump, is it?

Which is why trump's response isn't so shocking: Rather than admit a screwup, trump is blaming everyone else as "vandals" and having police - some of them from other states??? I need verification on that report - go around the pool arresting people. For example, this former Olympian (via Bailey Richards at People (yes, they've actually been doing solid reporting on trump's failures)):

Former Olympic canoeist David Carter "Davey" Hearn was arrested for destruction of government property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, hours before President Donald Trump claimed it was vandalized following its recent renovation. Hearn claims he was just touching a piece of detached liner.

United States Park Police officers arrested the 67-year-old — who competed in the canoe slalom in three Summer Olympics — on Friday, June 19, after he stopped to look at the newly renovated Washington, D.C., pool in the midst of a 52-mile bike ride, according to The Washington Post.

Hearn told The Post that after noticing a piece of liner that was partially detached from the pool, which was painted "American Flag Blue” as part of its more than $14 million renovation, he reached into the water to see what the piece felt like — and just moments later, he was being arrested.

While preparing to leave and continue his bike ride, the U.S. Park Police officers arrested and detained the former Olympian on a misdemeanor charge of destruction of government property, per The Post. Hearn claimed to the newspaper that his detainment at a Park Police facility lasted for nearly five hours, and he was allowed to leave at around 9 p.m. local time.

If the police are going around arresting people for "destruction of government property," they need to go arrest trump for how he fucked up the reflecting pool in the first place (as well as what he'd done to the East Wing of the White House).

And Hearn is not the only one: Social media is displaying other arrests going on around the poolside over the weekend. Given how trump is using the Justice Department to go after his enemies, I wouldn't be surprised of any escalation of arrests so that trump can shift blame onto any locals and tourists his thugs can grab along the Mall.

trump is desperate to have everything "look perfect" for his glorified attempt to hijack the 250th birthday of the nation this 4th of July, even if it means putting National Guard troops - they're still stuck in DC on trump's orders - around the Mall to prevent anyone getting close enough to see how algae-clogged our national landmark is. Never mind the physical damage left behind by trump's bloated and unpopular UFC staging on the White House lawn - NOW it looks like a landfill, thanks trump! - which will cost millions to landscape: Just add that to the ugliness of the pit trump has dug into the ground for his ballroom vanity project.

In the meantime, the algae keeps growing back, thanks to trump's deluded beliefs he alone can make things better.

Gods help this nation. 77 million of us elected a vain moron, and the damage is becoming more clear even without a reflective pool to show us.

Observations of the Occupation

During my emotional break(down) away from political blogging for most of this month, trump declaring a "crime emergency" in Washington DC to abuse presidential powers pretty much dominated the news traffic I read.

Deploying various National Guard units and other federal agencies to take over the metro's local law enforcement, trump issued lie after lie justifying his power grab that for all intents is his first big step into authoritarian rule that he will never leave (via Daniel Dale at CNN Politics):

President Donald Trump delivered a barrage of false claims about crime in Washington, DC, during a series of Monday comments defending his takeover of the police force and deployment of the National Guard in the nation’s capital.

Touting an ongoing 11-day period with no reported murders in Washington, Trump falsely claimed it had been “many years” since the city had previously had a murder-free stretch of even a week; in fact, Washington had three such periods since late February of this year, one of them 16 days long. Trump falsely claimed Washington now has not only no murders but “no crime” at all; while reported crime is down during his takeover, there have still been hundreds of offenses. (personal note: including the illegal use of a sandwich, but we'll talk about that a bit later)

Trump falsely claimed Washington had been at an “all-time” high in crime at the end of the Biden administration; in fact, it had been nowhere close to the violent peaks of the early 1990s. And Trump wildly overstated Washington residents’ support for the takeover, baselessly putting it at “95%” even after a poll showed overwhelming local opposition...

It's during this crisis that I look back at the window of opportunity that the Democrats had between 2021 and 2023 when they controlled the House and Senate and the Presidency to where Biden could have pushed for statehood to DC (and Puerto Rico) to avoid these kinds of abuse the federal government can inflict on the locals. Statehood is a serious thing for what is one of our nation's biggest population centers suffering under an outdated fear of the nation's capitol being under attack by its own residents. trump's own attempt at insurrection on January 6th proved it's not the locals that's the problem, it's the partisan agitators from the Republican Party side of things.

And it's still the Republicans pandering to their worst fears and biases, aimed at "urban" metros that Fox Not-News and other Far Right media outlets depict as wretched hives of minorities and liberals. You'll notice all the media attacks aimed at DC, New York City, and Chicago while the metros in Republican-controlled states like Houston and Memphis TN are suffering higher crime rates (per 100,000 people as of 2024). Speaker Mike Johnson can't admit the main city in his Louisiana district - Shreveport - has a higher crime rate than DC.

In the meantime, with all the federal officers and National Guard units deployed across the city the biggest observation is that these extra law enforcement people are... just standing there (via Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare):

I can’t say I found them threatening, though I am admittedly not an undocumented immigrant living in fear of ICE. While a few were armed, they weren’t arresting anyone or pursuing anyone or, actually, doing much of anything. They were all, well, just standing around. 

I am not the only one who has captured photographs of this deployment of National Guard being really boring.

A friend, jogging on the Mall today, noticed this gaggle of them at the World War II Memorial. Notice all the crimes they are not stopping...

The common theme here is that this deployment isn’t really about doing anything. It’s not going to do anything about D.C.’s crime problem, though I’m sure the president will make up whatever numbers he needs to to claim otherwise. And while I’m sure it is creating fear among Washingtonians who have reason to worry about immigration detention and deportation, I don’t think it’s really about that either...

The answer, I think, is nothing more or less than chest-thumping machismo. It’s a dog and fire hydrant thing. Putting troops on the streets, even bored troops who aren’t doing anything except helping people navigate public maps, is a form of dominance...

This is part of the Far Right obsession with Alpha Male status, of using power not to affect change or improvements but just to show off how manly - even the conservative women that love to pose with guns and brag about killing puppies - they are. This is vice signaling to their racist MAGA voting bloc that they are "owning the libs" and making life miserable for all the Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and "deviants" they fear existing in our major cities.

In the meantime, the Real Americans serving in our Guards are stuck outside in DC during the hot and humid month of August picking up trash because they're not really doing anything else except play to trump's dictatorial fantasies.

Even the DC residents - the ones who would be most affected if there were actual crimes taking place - know the whole thing is a staged act, and arguably violations of their own civil liberties while the "crackdown" imposes more curfews and limitations of their rights. The locals are doing what they can with civil protests, but also with more direct efforts to give trump's Justice Department lackeys serious headaches (via Quinta Jurecic at the Atlantic (paywalled)):

It’s rare for grand juries to refuse to indict. It’s even rarer for grand juries to refuse to indict multiple times in a single month—in significant part because prosecutors usually know better than to present shaky cases that might not gain jurors’ approval.

But Donald Trump’s desire to crack down on crime in Washington, D.C., seems to have come at the cost of that good judgment. Over the past month, federal prosecutors in D.C. have failed at least five times to persuade a grand jury to indict a D.C. resident for allegedly attacking federal law enforcement. These are not the only embarrassments suffered recently by federal prosecutors in the District, and judges have begun to lose their patience over missteps and sloppy cases. Despite the president’s promise to “take our capital back,” his law-enforcement surge is struggling in court.

The most recent rebuke by a grand jury involves the case of Alvin Summers, who allegedly scuffled with a U.S. Park Police officer after driving his car onto the Mall. Before that came a grand jury’s refusal to indict Sean Charles Dunn, the man now memorialized as “Sandwich Guy,” who hurled a salami sub at a Customs and Border Protection agent early in Trump’s federal deployment across the capital. The three grand-jury refusals before that all came in a single case: that of Sidney Lori Reid, whom prosecutors charged with a felony—potentially punishable by eight years in prison—over a tangle with FBI and ICE agents while Reid was protesting an immigration arrest. The agents pushed Reid up against a wall, they said, and the resulting scuffle produced a few scrapes to an FBI agent’s hand.

Even the common people who make up these juries know damn well that a Subway BMT footlong is not a lethal weapon (well, unless the gluten count is too high). The infamous saying of "a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich" now has a notable exception.

These juries know this all isn't about "cracking down on crime." They know this is all about the conservative urge to inflict cruelty on the Outsider groups they fear and hate, that this is all performative political bullshit on trump's part to justify his iron-fisted rule from the White House. They see the minor infractions getting enlarged to federal felonies and refuse to play along. They know who's inflicting the harm here - trump's street thugs - and won't accept trump and his lackeys' excuses.

What happens from here depends on the courts - at the district and appellate levels going against trump's power grabs - and on a Republican-controlled Congress now facing the growing discontent of a majority of Americans - even in their own states - who are not enjoying the preening and posing of trump as a strongman while issuing more economic hardships with inflation and disappearing jobs.

While trump is only supposed to issue these "emergencies" as temporary powers, you can see him and his legal cohorts arguing to keep such powers permanent... and to spread such powers further out across America to Blue States and Blue Cities in violation of the Constitution. It's not going to stop with Los Angeles, not with DC, not with what he's planning to do to Chicago next. There is hope that the courts can and will overturn these efforts and rein in trump's abuses... except for the fact that the Roberts Supreme Court have demonstrated they are willing to roll over and beg for anything trump wants to do to the rest of us.

This won't end until trump is out of power and all of his handlers and minions are sitting in jail cells for all the crimes they're committing in his name (at this point, I doubt trump will ever see the inside of a prison ever, goddamn him).

Keep fighting, America. It's not exaggerating to say everything is at stake here.

The Bleak Parade

Just as donald Shitgibbon trump ruined January 6th in my mind, the bastard is going to ruin June 14th on a personal level as well. 

Where June 14th is officially Flag Day for the United States and the anniversary of the official formation of the Continental Army that evolved into the US Armed Forces 250 years later, it also happens to be trump's birthday.

So we're getting the unwarranted - and in some ways offensive - spectacle of a military parade in front of the White House while trump stands there and revels in it.

If this was going to be a celebration of the Army there were better places to host such an event, like Valley Forge or one of the nearby bases, or a memorial held at Arlington National Cemetery. However, trump is not a fan of cemeteries - unless he's the focus of everything - and considering how he keeps dumping on soldiers as "suckers", he's not about to honor the troops with anything when he's too busy honoring himself.

Let Eliot A. Cohen at the Atlantic spell it out for us (paywalled):

The United States Army deserves a celebration, as do the other armed services during their upcoming birthdays. Tens of millions of Americans have passed through the Army’s ranks, and something close to a million have died in the line of duty, while many more were wounded or taken prisoner, or suffered extraordinary hardships. We owe them a lot.

The administration, however, is orchestrating a parade not to honor service, but to celebrate power. Tanks and infantry fighting vehicles will tear up the capital’s streets as helicopters thrash overhead. Tough-guy stuff, in other words, designed to show the world that we are, in the much-overused word of the secretary of defense, lethal...

Nor is this hardware relevant to the strategic choices the Trump administration has avowed, leaving Europe and the Middle East and focusing on the Indo-Pacific. Tanks will not persuade China to keep the People’s Liberation Army Navy behind the first island chain. This is about preening for the American public and indulging a kind of juvenile fascination with big, noisy armored vehicles...

If the draft-evading president and disgruntled former National Guard major running the Department of Defense better understood the American military, they would know that by sending National Guardsmen (and now Marines) to deal with riots when neither the governor of the state nor the mayor of the city concerned want them, they are courting danger. They would not promise, as Trump has, the use of “heavy force” against protesters. They would not, in other words, anticipate, almost with glee, the prospect of Americans in uniform shooting their fellow citizens. For that matter, they would know that deploying thousands of military personnel to the southern border disrupts training for war, which they supposedly value highly...

All this so a confirmed draft-dodging felon and sex offender can pretend to be an Alpha Male in front of his lackeys.

At the least, we should expect the roads of Washington DC torn up by the heavy tanks and transports rolling up and down the square (the military's promised they reinforced the roads but I doubt it will help), adding millions of wasted dollars being spent to deploy the troops and equipment this way.

At the worst, I'm dreading how trump could turn this parade into a public call of a military takeover (technically an autoglope) and declaring the Constitution suspended while he orders the entire military to join in with ICE's mass deportation pogroms across our major (mostly Democratic) cities. And attack any protests that rise up against him.

No matter what happens, I am making the rather miniscule - hello, ten readers of this blog! - call to my fellow Americans to avoid this bleak trumpian parade at all costs. Just don't be in Washington DC at all. Don't add to the numbers that trump will try to claim as turnout, make it as deserted as his 2017 inauguration.

There's a ton of other places to be this Saturday. There's these No Kings rallies happening by the by that you can register and attend across every state. If you're in Chicago, Da Pope is hosting a livestream mass as a blatant counterpunch to trump's self-indulgence (although I've heard it's sold out). If you're not inclined to protest or pray, you can always go to the beaches (it's a bit of a drive to Virginia Beach but worth it)

Just remember that this parade isn't honoring our Army, it's not for the troops to display their discipline and training, it's not anything honoring America.

This parade is for trump's vanity and his alone, and it will be as vulgar as he can make it.

Four for the Fourth 2020 Part II: Statehood for DC

One topic that's come up recently, and one that's relevant to our Day of Independence, is the state of statehood for the district that deserves to be a state. Via Barbara Sprunt at NPR:

House Democrats approved a bill Friday afternoon to make the District of Columbia the nation's 51st state.

The vote was 232-180 largely along party and the legislation is expected to go no further in the face of opposition by Republicans in the Senate.

For decades, Washington, D.C., license plates have bemoaned the District of Columbia's lack of statehood, reminding viewers in bold blue letters of its "taxation without representation."

Despite having a population larger than that of Vermont or Wyoming, the District's 700,000 residents don't have anyone voting for their interests on the floor of the House or the Senate...

The history of the District was that the fledgling nation needed a permanent home for its federal government under the Constitution - the preceding Articles of Confederation did not require a permanent address and it had proven confusing and cumbersome to move around half the time - but the Founders also feared a centralized capital would become a cesspool of violence unless Congress had direct control of their security. So they resolved that the capital have NO representation in Congress, not be part of any other state. When they carved out Washington DC, they carved away portions of Maryland and Virginia as the District and tried to make it a politics-free zone (Virginia took back its part - Alexandria, Fairfax, and Arlington - in 1847).

Back in those days, Washington was mostly undeveloped and barely populated with 50,000 by 1850, by comparison nearby Baltimore had 169,000 in 1850. The Federal government itself was minimally staffed with few departments, Congress didn't meet during the hot summers and most everything was handled at the state levels.

Didn't exactly stick.

The Civil War redefined the roles that the Federal government performed, requiring an expansion of the bureaucracy, which meant more local residents living and staying in the district. By the 1930s DC had the population equal to any major U.S. city. After the New Deal and World War II/Cold War expanded the Federal government to its current size, the surrounding metro - bleeding into Maryland and Northern Virginia - made DC a near-equal metropolis to New York, Chicago, or L.A.

As a result, there's currently 650,000 people living in a small almost 10-mile square area that are U.S. citizens... who also have no representation in Congress other than token attendees who can barely do things like show up in committee meetings and birthday parties.

By comparison, Wyoming the smallest populated state at 578,000 or so has a fully empowered House representative and two fully empowered Senators.

The lack of representation at the Federal level causes a lot of local hardships for the residents. Relying on Congressional approval for a lot of things that would normally be covered by a state government, for example. But the loss of political representation always sting.

The fears the Founders had about personal security for the Congress and Executive branches - the fear of mobs and riots - still hasn't been resolved by denying these citizens their rights. We still have mass protests in DC, we've had riots in the area, and yet there's still forces and mechanisms in place to ensure our halls of power are well-protected. None of this is going to change if DC becomes a state.

Statehood for the district is a question of fairness. It is a question of political representation - voting power, civil rights, accountability - for a block of citizens large enough to be a state under any other circumstance. Statehood for DC is a question of self-determination for its residents, and a concern for all fellow Americans.

There is a political element to this fight - given the cultural differences between urban and rural areas has become so partisan that the many rural and less-populated states (that are conservative) outnumber the heavily-populated states (that are liberal) - that makes it unlikely the Republican-controlled Senate will ever play along with DC Statehood. Which is all the more reason for the battleground states with Senate elections this 2020 cycle should vote out the Republican obstructionists and let the Democrats run both House and Senate and ensure DC becomes... um, have we figured out what to rename the place? Washington as a state's already been taken, it won't be a district anymore so DC is irrelevant... Can't call it New Columbia, the mailing address abbreviation would conflict with North Carolina... Oh here we go, the proposed renaming would be Douglass Commonwealth after famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

The polling nationwide suggests this is not a popular move, but it should be. Americans should stand for the rights of fellow Americans when it comes to our power to vote, our access to civil liberties, our abilities to elect leadership to serve us. Make DC a state, dammit.

P.S. I am totally for statehood for Puerto Rico. Its status as a territory for almost 100 years has left it vulnerable to budget crises and natural disasters that cry out for statehood to guarantee stronger national support. We've already made Puerto Ricans full citizens back in the 1910s, we need to take the full step towards commitment and make their home a full member of the United States.

Personal: Travel to DC

(edit 9/2/15: Just noticed I'm suddenly getting all this traffic from Facebook for some reason.  Where are you all coming from?  What's going on?  If you can't comment here at least tweet me at @PaulWartenberg and let me know, thanks...  In the meantime, hang out, check the other article, try the veal...)

Just saying, I'll be up in the DC Metro area soon for the 4th of July, and I wanted to point out the necessity of travel by the Metro rail system.

And also to link to a hilarious translation of the Metro map underlying the whole system.

You may notice there are NO STOPS to the Georgetown campus area, which is a damn shame because that's where the Exorcist stairs are (IT HAS ITS OWN WIKI PAGE).  Just Google search "Exorcist steps" or "Exorcist stairway" and you'll even get a map location.  I guarantee you if there was a nearby Metro station the grid would say "Exorcist steps" instead of "Boring Academia campus". ;-)

I hope to get some pictures and upload them here when I get the time.

I really hope I DON'T GET SICK ON THE FLIGHT.  I'm learning that I pretty much better not TOUCH ANYTHING on the plane.

In other news, Rick Scott's being a jerk again, but I'll save that for a separate post.

The March for Jobs

Someone in the Tampa Bay area finally made enough contacts with the groups organizing the One Nation Working Together's March for Jobs and has a bus scheduled for the trip to and from D.C. for the event.

Now comes the hard part: convincing my parents to babysit my kittehs while I go off to a ZOMG Socialist rally.  Dad, settle down!  Stop having a heart attack!  Yes, I know they're Socialists!  But Dad... DAD!  They're the only ones out there protesting for more jobs...!

Sigh.  And given my brother up in DC is openly Libertarian... this is gonna be a fun two weeks...

UPDATE: Well, I told my mom about the planned road trip.  Her primary concern is "watch out for trouble," and my reply is "I'm going Quaker," which is my code for "I'm going non-violent and will make sure my group goes that way too."  She seemed a bit upset that I was going, but I reminded her I do have this political bent and that I'm frustrated enough about my lack of success job-hunting to want to head up to DC to protest.  She taught history, so we debated a bit about FDR's New Deal with its four different Jobs programs which I argued helped reduce unemployment from 25 percent to 11 percent within 3 years (my math might be a little off, but that's how I remember it).  Mom, being fiscal conservative, argued that those programs increased the debt too much.  At least she and I agree on Marco Rubio being a crook and that the whole budgeting process is corrupt with lobbyists and hidden riders/bill attachments.
Good news is, they'll help watch over the kittehs and my car and help get me to the bus pick-up next Friday.  It better be next Friday.  Gotta call and make sure.