Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill • Hacker News Board

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#451

Post by cthalupa » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 10:00 PM UTC

xdennis wrote: post #446

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.

> The Senate is fundamentally a ridiculous way of representing 350 million people The Senate does not represent the people. The House of Representatives represents the people. The Senate represents the states. That's why there are two senators per state and the number of representatives depends on the population of the state. It's so bizarre when American's don't understand their own democracy and a foreigner has to…

> The House of Representatives represents the people.

The House of Representatives represented the people until 1929 and the Permanent Apportionment Act.

The reasoning campaigned on for this act? To protect low population states from high population ones.

The House represents the people more than the Senate, but it still provides proportionally more power per capita to lower population states than higher population ones.

Repeal the 17th, overwrite the PAA, and we're back to something more closely resembling what the founding fathers intended. In the mean time, with the House having departed from their intent, it's just as reasonable for people to suggest the Senate depart from their intent too.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#452

Post by AngryData » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 10:00 PM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #389

Where'd all this abolish the senate nonsense come from recently? I get people have been complaining about 'flyover' states for a while now, but the Republicans also have the majority in the House at the moment. At least wait until the House doesn't represent the current majority party in the Senate (like it almost certainly will again eventually) to make that argument. I'm mildly worried that it's just an attempt to…

Because people want an excuse to blame our problems on, and people living in big cities think they should be able to better dictate law as they often view poor rural people and their lives with contempt. And many politicians are happy to go along with because it means more power for themselves and less restrictions on how they use it.

Real solutions to the imbalance would be to split up big states into more smaller states, but big states don't like that because it means they have less power as individual smaller states. And we have already have congressman holding far more power than they were originally meant to because they froze congressional count in the 1929 reapportionment act which means we only have 1/3 of the amount of congressman representatives we are suppose to have.

The US political and legislative system has been corrupted beyond reason and this is just the next step to further consolidate political power and law into the hands of a few.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#453

Post by mebizzle » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 10:01 PM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #366

dfxm12 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People upthread are arguing about the senate as a system, but how much does that really matter when wildly popular things, like legalizing marijuana, are not even considered by anyone in congress? A majority of Americans are in favor of this, and have been for over a decade .

I had read a while ago, and I struggle to really argue with it, that legalizing marijuana is simply the carrot on the stick. Many Republicans are just against it out right, and many Democrats are either indifferent or know that promising to legalize it will mobilize a subset of voters who prioritize it above else (or may just not vote at all otherwise, over 30% of Americans don't vote after all). It'd explain why the…

AKA, the system at work and our issues just become bargaining chips for influence by the parties.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#454

Post by AngryData » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 10:01 PM UTC

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.

Why should cannabis be regulated at all? 99.99% of problems with marijuana that ive ever seen or heard of stem from its either its illegality or its overzealous regulation.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#455

Post by 0xTJ » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 10:04 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #209

All of this stuff is already built around loopholes. > But the provision that was inserted into the government funding bill makes illegal any hemp product that contains more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container. Now the online "hemp" industry will shift to selling gummies in "containers" that really equate to individually wrapped. You'll get bulk discounts for buying groups of 30 "containers", but what you get wi…

0.4 mg is an extremely low amount. The as far as I understand (and have seen) the limit of THC in Ontario is 10 mg/container for gummies. Some companies will get around that limit by packaging multiple 10 mg THC bags together.

While it's annoying and definitely creates more waste than is needed, 10 mg is a relatively reasonable limit. Most people aren't going to consume more than 10 mg THC worth of gummies in one sitting (at least if they're getting something government-sactioned).

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#456

Post by asveikau » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 10:05 PM UTC

cthalupa wrote: post #267

hemp_is_canvas wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

76/100 senators voted to keep this provision.

Legal weed senators were voting for it because their constituents include people growing legal weed. The hemp product market competes with these constituents. The anti-weed senators were voting for it because they are anti-weed.

Most senators who vote on this bill are not voting on the basis of the hemp thing in either direction. That's why all the headlines are about the tactic of sneaking it into a "too big to fail" budget bill.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#457

Post by cthalupa » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 10:05 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #450

cthalupa wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than a decade later, the GOP has still yet to present an alternative healthcare plan to the ACA. Actual leftists have continued to push and argue for a true single payer system. The ACA Is far from perfect but it was a significant step up from what we had before, and the party that spends all of their time trashing it has never made any sort of serious attempt at creating any sort of alternative.

A principled "small government" alternative would be ... nothing. Their view is that the federal government should have no role in providing health insurance.

Sure, but that's not actually the position of the GOP or their constituents, or even the pre-ACA situation.

The amount of people that actually want the government to have no role in providing health insurance or health care in this country is vanishingly small.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#458

Post by cthalupa » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 10:06 PM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #456

cthalupa wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal weed senators were voting for it because their constituents include people growing legal weed. The hemp product market competes with these constituents. The anti-weed senators were voting for it because they are anti-weed.

Most senators who vote on this bill are not voting on the basis of the hemp thing in either direction. That's why all the headlines are about the tactic of sneaking it into a "too big to fail" budget bill.

There was an opportunity for this bit to be removed from the bill.

76 of 100 voted to keep it. This, is like, literally the entire point of discussion in this part of the thread? I don't understand where your confusion lies.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#459

Post by AngryData » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 10:06 PM UTC

dude250711 wrote: post #200

iammjm wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similar thing can be observed in Germany: the most anti-cannabis state is the state that produces the most alcohol (Bavaria)

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.

And? There is also always people smelling like shit, with perfume, driving combustion vehicles, using grills, or working in any of the numerous industries that create smells. Why is marijuana so special that it needs to be dealt with, but I can be assaulted by some petrochemical and whale barf cocktail fumes with no restriction?

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#460

Post by nxor » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 10:06 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #261

nxor wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interacted with someone from Wyoming once. She made this point: Wyoming has a lot of Native Americans, and it struck her as contradictory when people would say "native Americans are underrepresented" alongside "Wyomingites are overrepresented." Of course there's nuance but it was interesting in any case.

Wyoming has 16k native americans. California has 762k native americans (if you agree with self-id, which I don't). Your friend clearly must be in favor of disenfranchising these native americans if she thinks her Wyoming vote should count for 67 native american votes in California. In general, I don't find the idpol defense of 67x relative voting power for Wyoming's particularly compelling.

If you could read you'd see (A) I didn't refer to her as a friend and (B) I didn't mention her political affiliation. In fact your assumption is wrong.