Surely we must be ignoring the rules...
Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
41–50 of 583 posts
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#42[flagged]
What actually happened is that a group of squishy Democrats and Angus King didn't actually want the filibuster nuked so when they realized Republicans weren't going to extend the ACA subsidies they called the whole thing off without even reading the bill they were going to pass.
The hemp ban isn't even the shadiest part, the self-dealing of allowing certain Senators who were connected to a putsch to loot the treasury is even more egregious.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#43[flagged]
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#44The Senate is fundamentally a ridiculous way of representing 350 million people and we’re going to continue to get absurd unrepresentative outcomes for as long as it remains a relevant body. There’s no getting around this and it will structurally just get worse and worse. Simply no way something like it exists 200 years from now, it is probably the biggest flaw in the US political structure right now.
The Senate was absolutely one of the best features of government. Unicameral legislatures are uniformly godawful. In as much as it is imperfect, it is only so because Congress has become more unicameral-like... senators are little more than representatives that stay in office six years instead of two.
The senate was explicitly designed to provide a brake on the democratic aspirations of the lower classes by the founders.
American government is a system of baffles designed to frustrate democratic will and preserve the property and political control of elites.
The senate should be abolished along with the undemocratic supreme court (as currently constituted with lifetime appointments and the ability to overrule congress at a whim) and the imperial presidency.
To be honest, we need a new constitution that promotes democracy.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Always amazes me that we allow multiple bills to be packaged together. Needs to be one bill = 1 vote. Not hundreds/thousands of pages of bills no one will read all rushed through because funding.
Isn't it usually one bill, but an omnibus bill? My understanding is that the actual guard rail that the US congress has discarded is requiring that the contents of the bill be limited to the purview described by the bill's title.
I guess technically yeah but they're usually bills that wouldn't have any chance of being law on their own. "I'll vote for it if you include this" kinda deals.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#46Even the legal weed state senators were voting for this.
It is mostly about shifting profits from mom and pop, low regulation hemp industry to wealthy corporations that own dispensaries that have gargantuan regulatory costs that gatekeep out most the competition. This ensures profits are captured by the wealthy rather than small family type setups.
Wealthy former hemp companies will shift to the "legal" weed market, while the mom and pops will get completely wiped out.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#47[flagged]
Was there every a real clean bill offramp available early in the shutdown?
I think the Democrat's mistake was as much as they were backing a popular policy, they didn't have the "clean bill" high ground, the Republicans are less concerned with government services, and they were backed into an end date with Thanksgiving travel coming up, so it would always get earmarks attached.
What the Democrats got right was they wanted a fight, and at first, the majority was on their side.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#48These are all just symptoms. The underlying vulnerability is the median US culture, which permits venality, scamming, skuldugery, shenanigans and crime in its ruling class.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
many non-slavery parliamentary societies have bicameral legislature, why do you think that is considering they never considered counting their slaves...?
There is a particular sort of partisan who loathes any process, procedure, or rule that acts as an impediment to his agenda. Never mind that, quite often, these same processes, procedures, and rules often act as impediments to his opponents when they are (temporarily) in the majority, he sees his faction as ascendant forever because the universe is designed to promote his peculiar idea of progress and thus there is no longer any need for those hurdles and obstacles. In hushed whispers he might even confess he thinks there never was a need, that those were put in place by his enemies to thwart his righteous cause.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#50The Senate is fundamentally a ridiculous way of representing 350 million people and we’re going to continue to get absurd unrepresentative outcomes for as long as it remains a relevant body. There’s no getting around this and it will structurally just get worse and worse. Simply no way something like it exists 200 years from now, it is probably the biggest flaw in the US political structure right now.
It was setup to represent states. The House represents districts of people.