I read this e-mail an hour ago and the next thing I know I am off on a huge rant about Washington area unification. Oops.

Representation in themail, February 15, 2004

Dear Representatives:

Gregg Easterbrook is a liberal political commentator and columnist for The New Republic, who has his own blog on the magazine\’s web site, https://web.archive.org/web/20090107003032/http://tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml. In his current column, he heaps scorn on last week\’s decision by the International Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States that the US violates international law by not giving DC citizens full representation in Congress. I\’ll just quote three of his most provocative positions, and let you discuss among yourselves.

\”DC residents ought to have a full vote for the House and Senate, but the idea that they are suffering some form of human-rights violation is the sort of absurdity that could only be given hearing in an institution divorced from reality. If anything, DC residents are over-represented in the United States Congress. The federal government spends far more per capita on DC than in any state; about five times more per capita than on the highest-ranked state, Alaska. . . . Many members of the House, Senate, and cabinet live in the District and are keenly aware of its needs. The president himself lives in the District of Columbia. It was fear that the capital\’s concerns would be over-represented in the US national legislature that caused the framers to create a special federal district. The framers generally liked the idea of voter influence on government, but thought there should be an exception when it came to the capital district, to prevent that district from excessively favoring its own concerns. It can be argued that, even without DC having direct voting power in Congress, Washington already excessively favors its own concerns. . . .

\”A single city with two members of the United States Senate would be worse over-representation than sparsely populated states such as South Dakota having two members of the Senate, since South Dakota and a few other states would have no voice at all without Senate seats, whereas the United States capital city has many strong ways of expressing itself. A single city with two members of the Senate would pretty much make a mockery of the entire concept of representation — half a million people all living close together having the same power in the Senate as California\’s 37 million people living under highly disparate circumstances.

\”Of course, the lobby that wants DC to be treated like a state for purposes of the Senate is entirely political, assuming this would add two automatic Democratic seats. Republicans who oppose DC statehood treatment do so partly out of fear of two automatic Democratic seats, but at least opponents of DC senators have sensible political philosophy on their side. For Democrats who want two senators from DC, there\’s no philosophy, just a Senate-packing scheme.\”

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

You know… I hate to admit it, but the man (Gregg Easterbrook) makes quite a few good points there. I am still for recognizing D.C. as some form of statehood and giving those of us residents who are not in high rankings of office political representation in Congress other than a dummy vote.

Even though he makes a good point about California and South Dakota, one most also look at it like this: the state of Rhode Island in 2000 had a total population of 1,048,319. Rhode Island\’s state covers roughly 100,000 square miles, which is about 1,000 people per square mile. Washington, D.C., on the other hand, had a total population of 571,641 people in 2000, and our tiny little city only covers only 61.41 square miles, which means we have 9,309 people living in every square mile, which is 8,000 more people per square mile squashed on top of each other than in Rhode Island. We have half the population of Rhode Island, but 8,000 times the population per square mile. Think about it. Now who needs representation?

One way to solve the problem would be to take the rest of the original D.C. back — what is now Arlington county in Northern Virginia used to belong to D.C. D.C. gave the land back to Virginia because it was on the other side of the Potomac river, and therefore, costs of developing it would be far beyond the budget at the time. Virginia, who was drastically insulted, thereby deemed the land \”Arlington,\” which advanced into \”Arlington County\” as well as the city of Alexandria. All of this, nearly two hundred years ago, belonged to D.C.

Considering how liberal Northern Virginia residents are (primarily Democratic in an overwhelmingly Republican state), it would make sense for NoVA to realign with the overwhelmingly Democratic D.C. NoVA is urban and is considered Washington, D.C. suburbs — a vast majority of D.C. workers actually live in NoVA. To realign NoVA with D.C. with benefit both sides of the river.

Then there is the issue of Montgomery County, Maryland, which borders Northwest D.C. in it\’s entirety. Northwest D.C. is the largest of the four sectors in D.C. It is also the most heavily populated, and the wealthiest. The areas of Montgomery County that it borders — Potomac, Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Great Falls, Kensington, and Silver Spring — are the wealthiest areas not just in Montgomery County but also in the entire state of Maryland. There are such discrepancies between incomes and styles of living in upper and lower county that children from upper county are bussed south for the gifted and talented schools in the wealthier areas. Children are also bussed in from other areas in order to keep the area’s schools racially diverse, which has brought forth more racial tension in the schools.

If lower Montgomery County were to instead align with D.C., taxes in the state could be lowered, making it easier for the other residents. Education and health care issues could then be handled through out the state — instead of pouring the majority of the money into the wealthier areas because the residents have clout, which thereby denies residents of the rest of the state the equal state services they are entitled to, they could be evenly distributed throughout the rest of the counties and the rather impoverished city of Baltimore.

Prince George\’s County, Maryland, is the other county that borders Washington, D.C. Wrapping around the two most impoverished and crime-ridden quadrants of the city — Northeast and Southeast — Prince George\’s County has the highest levels of crime in the state of Maryland, minus occasionally the city of Baltimore. Most of the drug trafficking on the east coast goes right through the Prince George\’s/Montgomery County line, and it is generally the meth labs and pot houses in Prince George\’s that take the fall. While Montgomery County\’s public school system is ranked in the top ten in the country, Prince George\’s falls somewhere far, far below. Healthcare is abysmal, teen pregnancy rates are high, STD infection rates are skyrocketing, the drop out rate for high school students continues to climb, violence and crime and growing worse, and it all trickles — or rather, zooms — back and forth over the D.C. and Maryland line to evade police jurisdictions.

If Prince George\’s County were to instead align with D.C., Maryland would their most embarrassing and burdensome representational district. Losing lower Montgomery County would not be such a burden if the constant pull that is Prince George\’s County were eliminated. Seeing as Montgomery County is such a prosperous county, if both lower Montgomery and Prince George\’s Counties were put under D.C. jurisdiction, the assets of Montgomery would more than keep themselves and Prince George\’s afloat, as well as most of Northeast and Southeast D.C., thus solving much of D.C.\’s financial problems. Arlington\’s and Alexandria\’s added financial wealth, which are also nothing to be sneezed at, would be a considerable help as well.

These four areas that already make up \”the Metropolitan Washington D.C. area\” are already serviced by D.C.\’s public transportation system — the metro — and thus intrinsically linked. Residents of all areas frequently pass over or around one area to get to another in order to work, shop, or take in some culture. Due to the large problem of many of the District\’s residents working outside of the District in the aforementioned Virginia and Maryland areas, and the equally large problem of the outlying area\’s residents commuting into the city, this would solve the problem of commuters taxes and fees, zoning interferences, varying districts income tax guidelines, varying sales taxes, and the alienation of the constant D.C. vs Maryland vs Virginia in a triple smackdown.

Arlington, Alexandria, Washington, lower Montgomery County, and Prince Georges County are all essentially one enormous urban sprawl, anyway. Most of us refer to ourselves as Washingtonians, or at the very least \”of the Washington area.\” We rarely align ourselves with the ideas spinning in the Maryland and Virginia governments and are much more likely to know what Mayor Williams is up to than what Robert Ehrlich or Mark Warner are doing to continue to destroy the states we actually live in.

Would it not be cool if \”the Metropolitan Washington, D.C. area\” really was all Washington? Better for Washington, and better for those living in Maryland and Virginia. Problem is, once you let the idea get into the politicos hands, they\’ll spin it all out of proportion about how taking the wealthy out of their states will financially devastate them — not so. The wealthy carry themselves and then demand more from others. So let\’s give ourselves all the boot and bring Washington back to where it should be — as a spotlight of the nation instead of a varyingly crumbling and gentrifying overpriced and under-cared for mini-metropolis that its residents are fleeing by the thousands every year because they can no longer afford to live here.