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Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

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Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#131

Post by hnburnsy »

whimsicalism wrote: post #4

The 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.

> Simply no way something like it exists 200 years from now, it is probably the biggest flaw in the US political structure right now.

"Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#132

Post by dmix »

bakies wrote: post #31

Cannabis needs to be reclassified. I think this is the right thing to do, actually, but only if it came at the same time as reclassifying. This is a drug market that should be regulated, but not class 1.

That seems to be an alcohol industry complaint. That it isn't taxed and regulated like booze

Most US problems come down to inability of congress to just figure out basic stuff like regulating weed. Same with the getting rid of the penny, immigration, tariffs/executive power, doing a proper and legal DOGE etc. They mostly just sit on the sidelines of the big ticket items and focus instead on spending money in their own states.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#133

Post by pogue »

Contact your representatives and let them know this is BS. [1] When Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott was trying to ban that same "loophole" the business community had time to organize & lobby against it, but in addition, regular citizens sent in over 120k letters, there's footage of people moving boxes and boxes of letters into his office. [2] In the end, he folded and kept the law as it was despite a pretty big push from his party. Was that the reason he didn't end up acting on it? It's hard to know, but it definitely showed him public sentiment was against it.

Don't be apathetic! Letters & phone calls work best, but emails through their official contact page at least get glanced at by an intern.

[1] Find and contact elected officials https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

[2] 120,000 Texans send letters and petitions against THC ban to Gov. Abbott https://www.kut.org/politics/2025-06-03/austin-tx-thc-ban-la...

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#135

Post by hnburnsy »

Y-bar wrote: post #73
potato3732842 wrote: post #38

Earlier 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?

Done!

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#136

Post by CalChris »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #101
CalChris wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHY is the Senate absolutely one of the best features of government? In Britain, its name more honestly reflected the class it represents, House of Lords.

In Britain there is no Congress. The name of the House of Lords has nothing to do with the United States' Senate. If we are to believe that its form and function were inspired by some other nation's government, then let's talk about its true namesake: the Roman Senate. I reject your Peel all apples because orange rinds are bitter! nonsense.

The Roman Senate was a unicameral form of government. Bicameralism principally comes from Britain, the country which we were formerly a colony of and which gave us our dominant language, legal code, ….

That said, again, WHY is the Senate absolutely one of the best features of government?

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#137

Post by whimsicalism »

hnburnsy wrote: post #131
whimsicalism wrote: post #4

The 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.

> Simply no way something like it exists 200 years from now, it is probably the biggest flaw in the US political structure right now. "Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"

Exactly! We are in a 'time to time' 200-year period of trying something other than equal-vote democracy, but ultimately it is not going to be sustainable.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#139

Post by CalChris »

hemp_is_canvas wrote: post #65
mothballed wrote: post #46

Even 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,…

76/100 senators voted to keep this provision.

Both Senators in California, my state, voted for the ban. Neither has explained why.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#140

Post by Y-bar »

danudey wrote: post #119
Y-bar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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?

The goal isn't about guaranteeing that all states have X number of votes; the house and the senate vote separately on things. For a bill to pass the house and the senate requires: 1. A majority vote by the house whose members are allocated by population and therefore (ostensibly) represent the general population 2. A majority vote by the senate whose members are allocated by state and therefore (ostensibly) represent…

> The distinction I think that most people from outside of the US probably don't fully understand is that, unlike in a lot of countries, each state is its own economy, government, politics, etc. rather than one sort of unified government that covers the whole country.

This is exactly how I see how my country and EU works. I feel like this is something I am intimately familiar with.

> Thus comes the senate, where a majority of states can decide that the law is inappropriate or against their interests and vote against it.

What mechanism causes the senate to be more resilient to those issues than a unified Congress?

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