Hi.
I heard about two weeks ago that the Congressional parking at Dulles
was closed, because there is a huge parkhaus going in. There are
Congressional privileged areas at Reagan National, too. It is Reagan
National, not Dulles, where the metro goes, and which Bob Barr, a
right-leaning Congressman browbeat the metro over signs saying
"Reagan" national airport. Reagan was a champion of government saving
money and devolution (making smaller) the Federal apparatus' influence
over the "sovereign" 50 states. Reagan is Mr. Barr's hero, but Mr.
Barr has nothing in common with him when it comes to spending money
for useless sign changes and pressuring Virginians to do something he
wants. At some point the signs would have gotten old, and had to be
replaced - then, they could have been changed if they had to be.
What's really stupid is that metro station names are not always about
the place where the stops are located, and certainly almost never
carry the name of the business that it located nearby. For instance
"Metro Center" station could have been named "Citibank Station",
becuase it's right between three Citibank branches. True the airport
is a state enterprise and the Citibank only thinks it's a state :-),
but the principle is the similar between them. It could have been
named "Crystal City II", for the hotel district nearby. But no, Mr.
Barr had to have his way.
The airports are not owned by the Feds, but by a Congressionally
created authority. There's a fight going on now, because Congress'
auditors - the GAO - General Accounting Office - just issued a
criticism of procurement practices at the airport, which paplied
federal governmental contracting standards. The airport states that
it is not federal, and that government standards were not the
standards to apply. Happened yesterday.
I believe that Braniff Airways flew commercial Concordes into Dulles
earlier than the US allowed international Concorde flights - I could
be wrong, because they might have flown into New York.... I'm digging
deep into fuzzy memory, now.
I.e., the German military mission in Dulles - it is a depoendency of
the mission itself which is just off the airport grounds in Reston,
Virginia. Seven or eight years ago, the mission was in NW D.C.
on Brandywine Street. I believe the Germans still have a supermarket
around there (PX). They also have Naval facilities in Virigina down
at Richmond along with the Belgians, Dutch, Italians and some
scandinavian country forces, too. Very small, but with base rights
like the US has within NATO countries. I was happy to learn about the
location of their Canadian site. I'm not so sure they are
extraterritorial - any of them including the Germans scattered about.
NATO Status of Forces Treaties don't provide extraterritoriality, only
joint exercize of certain inherently governmental functions that
sovereigns exercize, which essentially means joint administration.
The only sovereign bases left in the world, I think, are in Cyprus.
The US had bases in the Phillipines they recently gave up, the Canal
Zone situation has gone away, and the Soviet, British and American
military liaison missions are gone from Germany. Anyone know of any
others, maybe??
Now, what was it you asked about DC retrocession - Jones Point? This
got so long, I forgot - I'll have to look back at your original
message.
Regards
Len Nadybal
--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., "shocktm" <andrew@A...> wrote:
> --- In BoundaryPoint@y..., "lnadybal" <lnadybal@h...> wrote:
> > What retrocession of territory could you be referring to? A
> > reattachment of some piece of land onto the District's territory
> > that it had earlier given back to Virginia, or a "further giving"
> > of D.C. land back to Virginia, in addition to that which Virigina
> > got in 1847 and further in 1927 (Battery Cove)?
> >
>
> I was think of Battery Cove but I had the wrong date in mind.
>
> > The D.C. airport is on Virigina territory... but which is land
> > over which Congress has taken some of Virginia's rights away.
> > (Virginia is only allowed to tax certain things there, like
tobacco
> > products sold in airport concessions, but not the airport
> > enterprise itself, among other things.)
>
> You probable also know that Dulles is also owned by the Feds and run
> by the FAA. This has allowed the Federal Government to do some
> strange things without local (Virginia/Arlington/Fairfax) approval
> such as:
>
> + Rename National Airport Ronald Reagan/National Airport (Today the
> people who run the Metro (DC's Subway) said that they will change
the
> Metro signs)
>
> + Set aside a large section of the parking at National for
> congressional use only
>
> + Allow the first commercial flight of the Concorde to land in
Dulles
> on May 24, 1976 (From a Concorde website .. Transatlantic Services
to
> Washington DC from London and Paris began with two Concorde's, one
in
> British Airways livery and the other in Air France livery landing at
> Dulles Airport, Washington. Before landing both aircraft
> simultaneously flew over the US capital and then made parallel
> approaches to Dulles Airport. Both aircraft touched down together,
> the British Concorde landed on runway 01L and the French Concorde on
> runway 01R. Special permission had been given by US Secretary of
> Transportation, William Coleman for these flights to take place.)
>
> Another interesting thing about Dulles is that it has an area of
> extraterritorial with in it. The German Military Mission is located
> there and is used to supply Germany military personnel who train in
> the US and Canada. The German Air Force does training in Holloman
> AFB in New Mexico and currently has a squadran of Tronados based
> there. The German Army performs Tank Training in Happy-Valley-Goose
> Bay, Labrador, Newfoundland, Canada. Strangly It has been reported
> that Germany has more tanks in Canada than Canada has.
>
>
> -Andrew