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Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

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Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#321

Post by the_gastropod »

macintux wrote: post #239
CalChris wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My take on some of the Senate's advantages: - No gerrymandering - Longer terms mean that senators can spend more time governing, less time running for election, and they can take a longer view on the impact of their decisions - Filibuster means that a tiny minority cannot force legislation through

“No gerrymandering”. Wut? The Senate is the most egregious example of anti-democratic systems in any country you could reasonably call democratic. It’s far worse than the worst examples of gerrymandering.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#322

Post by lazide »

rootusrootus wrote: post #304
chimeracoder wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 The problem with true direct democracy isn't how people would handle high-level issues that are direct reflections on people's basic values and principles, like the two examples you mentioned. The problem with true direct democracy is that every single person…

I'd like a hybrid system like we have in a number of states. A mechanism for nationwide initiative petitions would be nice. Then we can get nationwide consensus on the high-level issues and leave the rest for the people whose job it is to work out the details.

The worst laws come from direct amendments and petitions because only the stuff no lawmaker actually wants their name on (or could pass) goes there - and it gets gamed to hell.

See the CA propositions - they turn into insane population wide gaslighting competitions.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#323

Post by swarnie »

astroflection wrote: post #296
mmoustafa wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Too bad there are no technologies that would allow the citizenry to communicate nearly instantaneously and cast their votes in a pseudo-anonymous manner.

Impossible, we must interpret the intentions of some blokes who died 220 years ago and try to assume what they would have wanted.

Its the only way.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#324

Post by wing-_-nuts »

rootusrootus wrote: post #304
chimeracoder wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 The problem with true direct democracy isn't how people would handle high-level issues that are direct reflections on people's basic values and principles, like the two examples you mentioned. The problem with true direct democracy is that every single person…

I'd like a hybrid system like we have in a number of states. A mechanism for nationwide initiative petitions would be nice. Then we can get nationwide consensus on the high-level issues and leave the rest for the people whose job it is to work out the details.

Exactly. Stop playing political football with issues. Put them to the people at let the voting public decide, and be done with it.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#325

Post by BobaFloutist »

giantg2 wrote: post #102
whimsicalism wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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'm not going to do the math, but California has a larger rural area, a larger rural population, and a larger number of rural communities than, oh, I don't know, the ten least populous states combined? So at this point we have fewer rural communities overriding more rural communities just because of where state boundaries are draw.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#326

Post by godzillabrennus »

cheschire wrote: post #265
Aperocky wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it actually be worse?

I absolutely think so. Can you imagine if voting was influenced directly by whatever memes were on Tiktok?

Given how Mamdani won in NYC I think we are already at that stage.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#327

Post by johnnyanmac »

Spivak wrote: post #259
mullingitover wrote: post #166

Earlier 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…

It hasn't done a good job stabilizing for decades in this case. The power of the people was stripped unilaterally and none of these mechanisms stopped it.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#328

Post by pwg »

Y-bar wrote: post #108
dogleash wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? Yes. If you call the "X" club the Senate and the "Y" club the House of Representatives, this is exactly how our bicameral legislature works. edit: Their votes count for passage in their chamber, not equally weighted against eachother. If you mean Y seats equal seats by population but wit…

Point is, they would not have different roles, but instead work as a single house which votes on issues and laws and then delegates the result to the executive branch. No dual ”clubs” or houses with separate votes or separate elections. This is how my country works.

Part of the point of the split when the US Congress was designed was to intentionally make it difficult for bills to pass, because they had to pass votes in two independent houses, that (presumably) were focused on differing agendas.

This inherent difficulty was the intended outcome to try to assure that only bills which had strong support overall from different perspectives and viewpoints would make it through the double gauntlet.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#330

Post by Towaway69 »

astroflection wrote: post #296
mmoustafa wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Too bad there are no technologies that would allow the citizenry to communicate nearly instantaneously and cast their votes in a pseudo-anonymous manner.

It’s a blockchain moment - finally a use case ;) /s
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