Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill • Hacker News Board

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#161

Post by mullingitover » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #152

brightball wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

This idea that there's just left and right is very quaint. The bigger divide today is pro- and anti-establishment, plenty of the 'right-wing' Trump voters were also celebrating what happened to Brian Thompson.

Meanwhile, the ACA was quite frankly a love letter to conservatives.

It kept the US profit-driven system on life support, and it's a form of the same system proposed by Nixon, and again by republicans during the Clinton administration's push for healthcare reform, and the system enacted by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.

The only reason republicans opposed it on party lines during the Obama administration was politics: they were forced to denounce the system they loved due to their status as the opposition party. In another universe they would've celebrated their president signing it into law.

Actual leftists are probably fine with ending the current system because it will bring so much pain to the voting public that it might actually get them off their asses to bring in single payer. As the saying goes: "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else."

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#162

Post by ronsor » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 6:37 PM UTC

Gunax wrote: post #159

This is going to be controversial because it steps into the shutdown blame game. I think I am more interested in the mechanics of how this happens. Why do we need to attach riders / sneak in legislation? What changes could we make to the constitution to avoid this?

> Why do we need to attach riders / sneak in legislation?

Because they can't agree on anything normally, so the only way to make changes is to shove them in with things they must agree on.

> What changes could we make to the constitution to avoid this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-subject_rule

Multiple states already have this.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#163

Post by pacoWebConsult » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 6:38 PM UTC

Gunax wrote: post #159

This is going to be controversial because it steps into the shutdown blame game. I think I am more interested in the mechanics of how this happens. Why do we need to attach riders / sneak in legislation? What changes could we make to the constitution to avoid this?

The federal government has grown immensely since the early 20th century due to the interpretations of the commerce clause allowing more and more federal legislation and rules to broadly be applied to essentially override state legislation.

The 10th amendment exists for a reason. The system wasn't intended for congress to even control something like this in the first place.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#164

Post by gudnuff » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 6:39 PM UTC

candiddevmike wrote: post #149

The party of small government killing a new, billion dollar industry because Mitch McConnell's state beverage is seeing declining sales.

[dead]

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#165

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

Gunax wrote: post #159

This is going to be controversial because it steps into the shutdown blame game. I think I am more interested in the mechanics of how this happens. Why do we need to attach riders / sneak in legislation? What changes could we make to the constitution to avoid this?

Playing devil's advocate, the positive of allowing legislation to include unrelated riders is that it promotes compromise. And compromise is how a healthy democracy should operate.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#166

Post by mullingitover » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #93

mullingitover wrote: post #10

[flagged]

This whole process has shown again that a democracy can only function if everybody or at least most politicians act in good faith and respect the rules . If you constantly ignore boundaries, the whole things falls apart. I honestly have no idea how the US can return to some level of sanity. It just gets worse and worse. Lots of energy is being wasted on posturing and coherent long term policy is basically impossible.…

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 lawmaking process.

It's exactly what the founders, who all read Plato's Republic and its warnings about republics devolving into democracy, wanted.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#167

Post by saltcured » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 6:45 PM UTC

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.

Opinions on this whole topic seem to revolve around how you conceive of the states in the US. Do you seem them as legitimate and important power structures, or essentially arbitrary boundaries which are relics of the past?

To me, it is both fascinating and horrifying to imagine a periodic "fractal redistricting" of boundaries. Imagine the tension and chaos to reorganize the voting public and administrative functions based on the census, with no municipal, county, or state boundaries being set in stone...

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#168

Post by jLaForest » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 6:46 PM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #16

Alcohol lobbyists did this. Amazing swamp :( I was really stupid to think Republicans wanted a clean CR and Democrats wanted to help people with insurance. Both sides wanted to slip in something their lobbyists wanted, and they did it. Win.

Only one side wrote in million dollar payouts direct into their pocket from the Treasury...

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#169

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 6:48 PM UTC

candiddevmike wrote: post #149

The party of small government killing a new, billion dollar industry because Mitch McConnell's state beverage is seeing declining sales.

I thought that was because of the tit-for-tat with Canada.

I'd think a joint and a glass of bourbon would go hand-in-hand.

Personally, I don't drink or smoke, but I think the "war on drugs" has been a miserable failure that has been, for the most part, a footgun.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#170

Post by CalChris » Thu, Nov 13, 2025, 6:49 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #28

dawnerd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always amazes me that we allow multiple bills to be packaged together. Needs to be one bill = 1 vote. Not hundreds/thousands of pages of bills no one will read all rushed through because funding.

To do so you need an effective bureaucracy to which the legislature can delegate authority, otherwise there are too many details to be passed in bills. But the revanchist Roberts court has said that bureaucratic powers do not exist, the executive can only do things that are expressly enumerated by Congress and Congress can delegate nothing.

That was during the Biden Administration. The Roberts Court now says the Executive can do anything. Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB, Seila Law, the end of Chevron deference, and of course, immunity. Anything.