{"id":183586,"date":"2013-01-17T21:37:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T02:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/01\/17\/signs-of-the-apocalypse-6\/"},"modified":"2013-01-17T21:37:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-18T02:37:00","slug":"signs-of-the-apocalypse-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/01\/17\/signs-of-the-apocalypse-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Signs of the Apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that the best friend of DC self rule is \u2026\u2026\u2026 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtoncitypaper.com\/articles\/43771\/the-republican-dc-never-knew-we-needed-how-darrell-issa\/\">Darrell Issa<\/a>???<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The summons to Capitol Hill didn\u2019t bode well. It was May 2011, and Mayor Vince Gray and D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown had been called to testify on the city\u2019s fiscal stability before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee\u2019s subcommittee on the District of Columbia. The short hearing advisory offered few clues to the panel\u2019s aims, outside of one ominous paragraph.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cIn 1995 the District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Act established a five member \u2018Control Board\u2019 to oversee financial matters,\u201d the advisory read. \u201cThe Control Board was disbanded in 2001 when the District had achieved four consecutive balanced budgets and met other criteria. There are seven separate \u2018triggers\u2019 which would automatically revive the Control Board.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Their supplications quickly proved unnecessary. After listening to city officials testify and respond to a few scattered questions from his colleagues, committee chairman Darrell Issa took control of the hearing and revealed what was really on his mind: budget autonomy for the District.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI am going to be offering an alternative that I hope [Norton] will join with me on that provides a mechanism for a separate vote and separate consideration of the District\u2019s funds,\u201d Issa said, adding, \u201cI\u2019m looking for some sort of a structured mechanism to where this committee could say, \u2018They have a plan, they can live without federal dollars and still meet the requirement,\u2019 and each time that is received, it would allow us to say, \u2018We have no reason to be in the way of your spending your dollars if you can make the commitment.\u2019\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Everyone in the room was taken by surprise\u2014including Issa\u2019s aides, who had no idea their boss was going to propose the policy long sought by D.C. officials to free the city\u2019s operations from the mercy of a fickle Congress.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Seriously, <b>Darrell Issa<\/b> is DC self-rule&#8217;s best friend in Congress?<\/p>\n<p>This is so weird.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that the best friend of DC self rule is \u2026\u2026\u2026 Darrell Issa??? The summons to Capitol Hill didn\u2019t bode well. It was May 2011, and Mayor Vince Gray and D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown had been called to testify on the city\u2019s fiscal stability before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee\u2019s subcommittee &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,1009,978,1164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-government","category-politics","category-teotwawki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183586"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}