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Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
81–90 of 583 posts
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You need something that essentially represents each whole state as a unit. You can have a group of people that represent each state as a unit. Political power should absolutely be proportional to population represented though.
The federal government wasn't supposed to represent the people though for the vast majority of its function, it was supposed to essentially mediate interstate affairs and provide protection from foreign incursion. The vast majority of what it does now, which acts on people rather than states, is a result of exceeding the powers constrained in the 10th amendment. The federal government is breaking because it is operat…
I'm well aware of the reasoning for the design -- although I will point out that the notion of an extremely constrained federal government was controversial then, hardly consensus among the founding fathers.
But the design clearly is not fit for where our society is or the direction it is moving, people have much more affiliation with the national entity than with the state entity, and it simply does not make sense to have a pseudo-house of lords with actual political power in the 21st century.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
many non-slavery parliamentary societies have bicameral legislature, why do you think that is considering they never considered counting their slaves...?
Not a historian, but some possibilities: - some governments were explicitly modeled on the US system - others were influenced by the US system as they moved from e.g. monarchies - most countries have some sort of caste system that established interests want to preserve
Bicameralism appeared very, very early on. There’s a well known case of a missing pig in 1642’s Boston (with a population of less than 2000 at the time) that finally solidified splitting the assembly into two chambers, and that debate has been going on for a while at the time already https://www.americanantiquarian.org/sites/default/files/proc...
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#84The 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 is fundamentally a ridiculous way of representing 350 million people" They are intended to represent the states. The whole point was so that smaller states aren't overpowered by the larger states. We simply moved from the governors selecting them to the people selecting them.
I understand the motive, I think it is far outweighed by the harm it does, and it fundamentally undermines the modern American compact. We simply do not live in a federation of states in the way that the EU, this was much less clear and more contested in the late 18th century.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#85I feel like I am missing something here, and it is around it being called "hemp".
Does this actually have any impact on legal dispensaries, their products, farms, etc?
Does this make it harder to eventually de-schedule pot.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#86[flagged]
76/100 senators voted to keep this provision in the bill.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
8 individual Democrats. Don’t lump in the rest who held the line. You are “both sides”ing this when the GOP is the only side that worked tirelessly to end healthcare subsidies and allow America’s poorest to go hungry.
8 individual democrats, the exact number needed for the vote to pass, all of whom are either out the door or safe from reelection in 2026. Quite the coincidence.
Those 8 people still needed to agree to change their vote and the responsibility is ultimately on them.
And this is yet another political trope: Democrats are always blamed for everything by everyone including their own voters.
Republicans have majorities in the entire federal government, but the shutdown is the Democrats’ fault because they wanted a bill with healthcare preserved.
The majority party isn’t blamed for failing to promote a consensus because they have R’s next to their names.
If the shutdown never happened and senate democrats just voted yes on the spending bill cutting healthcare they’d be blamed for rolling over to Republican policy and failing to use their filibuster to pressure Republicans to compromise.
When will anything be the GOP’s fault?
Are we forgetting that Donald Trump blocked SNAP disbursements that a court ordered him to restore? The GOP is going above and beyond to shut down the government more than it is legally supposed to be shut down.
The Democrats actually did some political good by putting a spotlight on the GOP’s quiet attempts to demolish social programs, and they pulled back as soon as they found out that our president was willing to starve poor people over the issue, something that a normal human with basic morals would never do.
Next time Democrats are in control and Republicans pull the same government shutdown strategy to block a Democrat policy initiative, it’ll magically be the Democrats’ fault because “they are in charge.”
By the way, zero government shutdowns under Joe Biden.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
The senate kind of makes more sense the bigger the country is. You need something that essentially represents each whole state as a unit. This is also why they originally weren't directly elected. When you consider that the OG federal government mostly dealt in issues that were common to the states or very clearly interstate the reason they chose the architecture they did for the senate seems even more sensible. They…
(Non-American here). Couldn’t it also work by guaranteeing each state X seats and then the rest Y seats are set according to census data on population? For example a single house with 100 reserved seats, and on top of that one seat per 500k citizens?
this is essentially how the electoral college functions
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The senate kind of makes more sense the bigger the country is. You need something that essentially represents each whole state as a unit. This is also why they originally weren't directly elected. When you consider that the OG federal government mostly dealt in issues that were common to the states or very clearly interstate the reason they chose the architecture they did for the senate seems even more sensible. They…
> You need something that essentially represents each whole state as a unit. You can have a group of people that represent each state as a unit. Political power should absolutely be proportional to population represented though.
"Political power should absolutely be proportional to population represented though."
That's your opinion. The opinion of people in Wyoming is likely different. What the facts would show if you look into the history of why the Senate was necessary, it would show that smaller states wouldn't have joined, and would be justified in leaving. The real problem is that the scope of decisions at the federal level has gotten ridiculous due to "interstate commerce" and "taxes", so we now operate more at the federal level than the system originally intended.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#90The 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.
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I suggest you check out the debate over bicameralism when this was chosen. It was not just slaves stats that wanted a senate.