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That’s not limited to GOP.
Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
311–320 of 583 posts
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
As the Greeks found, the only think worse than representative democracy is direct democracy.
Vehemently disagree. I would much rather take our most contentious issues (abortion, M4A, etc) put them on a national ballot and let the general public decide. I don't agree with everything passed on ballot in my state, but I respect that at least the majority voted for it.
You have a huge, huge misunderstanding of how direct democracy turns out.
Everyone with a job gets inundated with bullshit, even eventually stops showing up (or paying attention) because it’s impossible to live and actual do that.
So then you end up with nut jobs doing whatever they want while having the votes because they are the only ones who show up at 11am on a Tuesday when the daily vote is happening.
Apps just tiktok’itize the whole process.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
Best of luck to them! I am not forced to inhale beer while walking down the street, yet there is seemingly always a pothead around.
Then you don't live, like me, in the Ballard neighborhood of seattle where there must be 50 microbreweries. Every few mornings the whole neighborhood smells like rotting bread. I'd be happy to run into someone smoking weed on the street during those times, I find that smell much more pleasent.
Or never encountered the drunks on Alki during the summer.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
76/100 senators voted to keep this provision.
Both Senators in California, my state, voted for the ban. Neither has explained why.
I didn't want to believe you so I went to the source:
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1...
wtf.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that proper legislation is a balance of interests and working through the details of the policy. If you put "abortion" on the ballot, what would that mean? There are a ton of different possible policies on what is or is not permissible.
Haven't the Swiss solved this? Maybe you Americans should figure out the first step of engineering, which is to look at existing solutions and learn from them :-p
The Swiss have a representative democracy with a slightly different way of ‘representing’.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
As the Greeks found, the only think worse than representative democracy is direct democracy.
Vehemently disagree. I would much rather take our most contentious issues (abortion, M4A, etc) put them on a national ballot and let the general public decide. I don't agree with everything passed on ballot in my state, but I respect that at least the majority voted for it.
Granted, but the problem with direct democracy is that you either let issues be decided only by the most engaged voters or you require participation from all, and issues are decided based on who can present the most sexy case on otherwise very unsexy issues.
I'm not a huge fan of representative democracy, but for direct democracy to work, we have to change society sufficiently to let ignorant lay people become informed enough on various issues to have a meaningful opinion on them.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are from a smaller state, you would think it would still make sense. Otherwise the rural concerns just get steamrolled by the urban concerns. The point still stands about trying to level out concerns between smaller and larger states, which is why it was created with years of debate and a majority even if it wasn't consensus.
I've yet to understand why 'land' should have a stronger vote than 'people'
Why even have states? Or cities? What purpose do they serve?
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
Yes, in case you didn't notice, everything we are stating is opinions. I absolutely reject the notion that the senator from Wyoming should have equal political power to the senator from Texas or California, I think it is absurd, I don't doubt that some people in Wyoming disagree. I think Wyoming joining the US as a state without equal representation as the most populous state would still be a massive win for them and…
> I think Wyoming joining the US as a state without equal representation as the most populous state would still be a massive win for them and they would have almost certainly taken the deal at the time.
I doubt that very much. But more pertinent is this: we know for a fact that the smaller founding states would not have joined without the compromise in how Congress is structured. They were, after all, the whole reason it exists. So without that compromise, the country would not exist at all (or would at minimum exist very differently to today). You can't just renege on that deal 250 years later and figure people should be ok with it.
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
This whole process was the epitome of anti-democratic principles by design: the Senate is expressly an anti-democratic institution (wildly different levels of representation/power for different voters in different states), and the whole standoff centered on protecting the filibuster, which makes the anti-democratic senate even less democratic by allowing a tiny group within that tiny group to shut down the entire law…
Hard disagree, I think time has proven that the filibuster (or some process like it) is necessary as a stabilizing effect on democracy. Making legislation easier to block than pass makes it so that small swings in representation, say 51-49 to 49-51 can't produce massive swings in policy. The minority party being able to, with effort, stop certain pieces of legislation they find abhorrent by raising the bar to it pass…
The Senate is already an antidemocratic brake/stabilizer. Adding a brake to it is stultifying.
> so that small swings in representation, say 51-49 to 49-51 can't produce massive swings in policy
Exactly, and this is bad. Voters should all know that every vote matters. The current setup creates the false impression that both parties would fundamentally steer the ship the same way ("uniparty"). The path to a government that is more responsive to the needs of citizens involves allowing winning parties to actually govern.
I would argue that we want a more responsive, dynamic government that attempts to represent us. The filibuster is in direct direct opposition to all of that.
The GOP won the last national elections. They should be allowed to end SNAP, ACA, EPA, Labor Dept, NSF, Dept. of Education, FDA, all science grants, Medicaid, put armed military checkpoints on every city block, end legal immigration, and zero out federal funding to any school that is closed on the federal MLK Jr holiday[1]. (And to the extent that those things are not legal now, they have the votes to make them legal.)
And then in '26 and '28, voters should decide whether they agree with that vision for how the country should be run.
The result will be a much more responsive, dynamic system where Congress cares more about what we voters think.
1 - taken loosely from the 2024 GOP party platform and administration statements from this year
Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill
#320The 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.
We do not live in a democracy, we live in a representative democracy. The founders simply had no option, you had to pick a person, put them in a carriage, and send them to the capitol to do your bidding (also why electoral college exists for reporting votes, but I digress). I always wonder what they would’ve created if everyone had a device in their pocket to send their preferences directly to the capitol at the spee…
Federalist papers were very explicitly against direct democracy, so... Not much?