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Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

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Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#371

Post by youainti »

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…

Also, states have their own militaries. Some states even have multiple. All states have an Army National Guard and some have and Air National Guard. Those militaries can be federalized, but normally pertain to the state. Some states even have other military branches such as Texas, which has a State Guard which cannot be federalized.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#372

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

gspencley wrote: post #236
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…

> 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 For better or worse. I would argue that government serves you much better the closer it is to you. A municipal government is going to be a lot more responsive to people who live in that city vs the State / Provincial level, who have a much br…

> I would argue that government serves you much better the closer it is to you.

This works very well for the local wealth crowd. It is much easier to capture city or county government than it is state, and much easier to capture state government than federal. In fact, one of the reasons that we need a more powerful federal government than we did 200 years ago is precisely that local non-governmental power (read: rich folk) has grown in scale that often even state government cannot control it adequately.

There's no inherent reason federal government cannot be just as responsive as more local ones, other than an entire political philosophy and party that is committed to the idea that this is not just impossible but morally wrong.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#373

Post by cthalupa »

hnburnsy wrote: post #361
Y-bar wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You abolished the senate?

Other have pointed out that the house ("Y seats are set according to census data on population") and senate ("guaranteeing each state X seats") already do what you suggest. Amazingly some guys thought it up hundreds of years ago. Is your issue that it is bicameral? If so what advantage would one house have?

> Other have pointed out that the house ("Y seats are set according to census data on population")

This is repeated all over this thread, but it is just no longer actually true.

The Permanent Apportionment Act means that it is only partially tied to census data. The low cap and guaranteed seats mean that low population states have more power per capita in the house to a significant degree.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#374

Post by rootusrootus »

tehjoker wrote: post #44
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cong…

> ability to overrule congress at a whim

That can be stopped easily enough. The Constitution makes it clear that Congress is the ultimate source of power; the SCOTUS power of judicial review was granted to itself by itself. Congress can (and has, a few times, though not often) make legislation not subject to judicial review.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#375

Post by henryfjordan »

CalChris wrote: post #139
hemp_is_canvas wrote: post #65

Earlier 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.

Newsom recently banned hemp-based THC at the state level anyway, so there's no real change in California.

https://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/us-states/california/n...

They were taking very low % hemp that is supposed to be for textiles and extracting the little THC there was into low quality vapes. Because they didn't need the state growers licenses to grow hemp, there was no mechanism to test for pesticides and such. When we do have all that infrastructure for legal THC regulation, why allow people to sidestep all that?

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#376

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

hattmall wrote: post #250
mjamesaustin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the voters who have much more political power than is fair, would be unhappy if we transitioned to a system where all voters have an equal amount of political power. This point is always brought up as if it's inherently bad for rural concerns to get overruled by urban ones, but TOTALLY FINE if urban concerns get overruled by rural ones. Our current system is a crazy double standard, and inherently unfair.

Is it not obvious why this is the case. If rural dwellers are cut off from the outputs of a city their lives are mostly unchanged and not impacted. If the city dwellers are cut off from the output of rural areas their existence is wildly constrained. How much food / energy / and raw materials do cities typically produce? Obviously there has to be a balance but you have to look at it logically and recognize that one i…

Could be true (*)

But none of that justifies giving the tiny numbers of people who live in truly rural American outsize power over everyone else.

(*) but probably not ... I'm a rural dweller and my own and my neighbors' dependence on our cities is pretty absolute. Most rural dwellers these days are not subsistence farmers.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#377

Post by goatlover »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #147
goatlover wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to be careful with that sentiment. It plays into the hands of those who want to give the President and the current Supreme Court all the power. Congress was set up in the Constitution to be the branch that represents the people. It's supposed to be fully independent and wield the most power.

You mean like the current president that has been skipping over congress for a number of things, and the supreme court that has been doing little to stop him? Our institutions aren't failing they've already failed .

And that can change over the next couple of elections. What the current regime would like is for the electorate to think Congress is useless and not bother voting the majority out of power. There's already enough apathetic and disaffected voters who think voting doesn't matter.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#378

Post by henryfjordan »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #365
port11 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question but how is hemp competing with weed? Are these different plants?

It's the same plant, but hemp refers to the leaves and plant matter that isn't the THC-rich flower buds.

They are the same species, but it's a Brussel-sprouts vs Broccoli type situation where they started as the same plant but have been selectively bred for different purposes

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#379

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

giantg2 wrote: post #142
mjamesaustin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the voters who have much more political power than is fair, would be unhappy if we transitioned to a system where all voters have an equal amount of political power. This point is always brought up as if it's inherently bad for rural concerns to get overruled by urban ones, but TOTALLY FINE if urban concerns get overruled by rural ones. Our current system is a crazy double standard, and inherently unfair.

"Of course the voters who have much more political power than is fair," Who determines what is fair? Why is it not fair for each state to have equal representation? "This point is always brought up as if it's inherently bad for rural concerns to get overruled by urban ones, but TOTALLY FINE if urban concerns get overruled by rural ones." The urban ones have more power in the house as that chamber is designed to repre…

If you conceive of democracy as a mechanism to allow individuals to have a role in choosing their leaders (and thus policy decisions), then any part of that mechanism that allows some individuals to have more of a role than others is inherently undemocratic, and thus (if you consider democracy to be good) unfair.

If instead you consider our system of government to just be a bunch of hacks to come up with leaders and policy decisions, with those hacks there to satisfy people who believe that there are interests than just people, then sure, the system we have is as fair as any other.

For myself, the idea that "the state of Wyoming" deserves any sort of political representation above and beyond what the individual residents of Wyoming deserve is obviously non-sensical. But then I believe in democracy ...

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#380

Post by harles »

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,…

> 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.

That’s a big assertion that needs evidence. I’m strongly in favor of legalization but not deregulation. It was a pretty big loophole that allowed what’s essentially weed to sidestep the regulation their competitors faced - and there wasn’t great consumer awareness about the differences even though there were safety implications: https://drexel.edu/cannabis-research/research/research-highl...

This law seems pretty well targeted in its scope, bringing the 2018 law back to what was intended (easy legal CBD/hemp, as long as there aren’t other things in there).

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