No links, no jokes, just a statement. So, DC finally rids itself of the congressionally appointed "Control Board" and gets full approval for its budget proposal. Good news, especially for me since I'm a resident of our fair, but beleaguered city. However, then I find this in the Washington Post:

House and Senate budget conference members eased a long-standing ban on District's spending money to lobby Congress. However, they maintained the prohibition on lobbying Congress for greater voting representation. Negotiators also killed a Senate-led effort to permit the city to spend local revenue on drug-needle exchange programs, a measure sought by public health and AIDS prevention groups.

I'm just curious about something. I live in America, right? I mean, I'm supposed to have the full right to vote since I'm not a convict (only because I've never been caught), but I don't having voting representation in the legislative branch of the federal government. That's right. Me and 560,000 other Americans do not have any voting representation in Congress. So, when I read that the city I live in has been granted to right to lobby, but that it can't use that right to lobby for voting rights, I am stupified. And not being able to use local revenue, revenue that is generated from the city's own residents, to pay for needle exchange programs? What kind of Nazi-fucks are making these decisions?

Sure, sure. Everyone says that if I want my voting representation so bad, I should just move to Virginia. But, what makes more sense? To give 560,000 tax paying citizens full voting representation or to expect them all to move?