patrick.net

Norton isn't on the DC Council, she is the District's non-voting delegate to Congress.

zzyzzx says

Watch the most liberal member of the DC council try to park a car

If Eleanor Holmes Norton is the most liberal member of the DC council, then DC is way the fuck over-conservative. Back in 1980 Norton would be considered dead-center middle of the road. Read Norton's On the Issues page. There is nothing even remotely radical about it.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Abortion
She's pro-choice like 80% of the country.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Budget & Economy
She thinks home ownership is financially good for families like 99.9% of the country.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Civil Rights
She thinks that people's rights and pay shouldn't be determined by gender, sexual orientation, or race like 99.9% of the country. She approves of the 1960s Civil Rights movement like 100% of the non-racist asshole part of the country.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Corporations
Like anyone with common sense, she realizes that corporations aren't people. Texas has never executed one.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Crime
She doesn't support rapists or the murder of innocent people by the state. So she wants to require DNA testing for death penalty cases. Unless you are trying to kill an innocent person with the death penalty, why would you oppose this?

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Drugs
She supports drug sentencing standards that don't target specific minorities and political groups. Unless you want to use the War on Drugs to prevent political opponents from voting or getting jobs, why would you oppose this?

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Education
She doesn't want to see public schools fail or tax dollars going to religious indoctrination.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Energy & Oil
She doesn't want more ecological disasters like the BP oil spill.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Families & Children
OMG, she wants teenagers to know about STDs and that condoms prevent them. Doesn't she know that scaring teens works in preventing them from having sex. That's why no teenager in the past 50 years has had sex.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Foreign Policy
Open travel to Cuba and fight Ebola in Africa so it doesn't infect your ass here.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Free Trade
Repeal the most favor nation status for China until human rights violations are less egregious there. Christ, we've been embargoing Cuba for three generations for far less than what China does.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Government Reform
Ban stock trading based on Congressional insider knowledge.

Oh, I see. This is what makes her a damn liberal. She wants Congress to obey the same anti-insider-trading laws as the rest of us do. Doesn't she understand that the free hand of the market only works when the lawmakers can conduct insider trading? That is how free markets work, right? Free markets are markets in which a few powerful players are free to rig the market and fuck everyone else. At least that's the GOP stance on free markets.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Gun Control
She wants to close the gun show loophole that over 90% of the country, including gun advocates, agree with. Unless you want violent felons to have guns, why would you oppose this?

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Health Care
Spend money to cure diseases. Yep, I guess being pro-sickness is a conservative value.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Homeland Security
You know those gay people that were keeping us safe from terrorists, the ones who spoke Arabic and could prevent terrorists from getting nukes, until they were kicked out of the military for being gay? She wants them back on the job so we don't get nuked. Evidently letting your family get vaporized so that they don't own their lives to a gay soldier is a conservative family value.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Immigration
Allow more visas for STEM college graduates.

I don't agree with targeting STEM and trying to undermine STEM wages. Why not do that for other majors? Why not encourage STEM education and careers in the U.S. by making them stable and well paying like being a doctor, lawyer, judge, politician, or execute? But this hardly makes her liberal. Every politician has been undermining STEM both by promoting turning STEM into unskilled, third world labor and by actively ridiculing STEM professionals.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Jobs
Raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour by 2016.

In 1976 the minimum wage was $2.30/hr or $10.03/hr in 2016 dollars (CPI adjusted anticipating current debasement rate). That's pretty much just a cost of living increase, hardly radical unless you want an army of slave workers.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Principles & Values
She's black. I guess "liberal" is code for black when conservatives use the term. I'm white and I consider myself a liberal, but I guess I don't qualify by the conservative definition.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Social Security
Like the vast majority of the country, she wants Social Security to continue.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Tax Reform
Minimum tax rate of 30% for those earning over $1 million.

OMG! She wants Warren Buffet to pay at a higher rate than his maid! What about all those poor Congressmen engaging in insider trading? They have to pay a marginal rate of 30% on their crooked deals?

I guess to conservatives liberal also means taxing the rich more than the poor.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Technology
She thinks the Internet and the highway system have been good for the economy, but wasn't our GDP much higher when we had dirt roads and no ecommerce?

Eleanor Holmes Norton on War & Peace
She thinks it's time to end the nearly 15-year war in Iraq.

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Welfare & Poverty
She supports anti-poverty programs like the vast majority of the country. I guess starving children is another conservative family value.

So, how exactly is Eleanor Norton an extreme liberal? She seems damn middle-of-the-road based.