Live data from Hacker News

Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

hightimes.com

551–560 of 583 posts

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The ACA was very much a compromise that Republicans wanted over a better healthcare bill supported by the Democrats. It's basically a big cash present to insurance companies, who were free to jack up premiums and get paid by the Governement for it. Now that's gone, and the jacked up prices are now falling into the regular folk. The GOP has zero plans to improve healthcare in this country, their messaging focuses on s…

The crazy thing is that the ACA actually is bad -- it's Romneycare, a giveaway to the private health insurance industry thought up by a conservative think tank -- but the Democrats get to take the blame for it being actually bad, and Republicans get to point at it being actually bad even though any changes they would make are actually worse. It was an act of long-term political suicide by the Democrats under the Obama administration, which they doubled down on by ratfucking Bernie twice.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 reaso…

A bunch of states wouldn't have entered the union without the compromise on slavery. But we ended that "compromise" some time ago. No reason that equal Senate representation, or even general state "sovereignty" couldn't be revisited either.

Yep. In fact, those probably needed to be addressed at the same time.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#553
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So then it boils back down to 'most people are stupid' and the reason we have representative democracy is so we can cultivate a class of elites who are smart enough and have enough skin in the game to make good decisions for the rest of us. People recoil at the idea, but isn't that sort of what the founders were doing? They had beautiful, lofty ideals on paper, but they were all wealthy, white, male landowners. Their…

It doesn’t require most people to be stupid. It just requires people to have other things they need to do, and pay attention to, and limited ability to give a shit.

If everyone has to be paying attention all the time (and it would be 150% of the time with modern society), everyone is susceptible to being drowned in bullshit and either checking out or being manipulated.

Even with what we have now, that is exactly what is going on. Direct democracy would be even worse.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you're talking about, since abolishing the Senate (or at least making it the lesser of the two bodies) is anything but nonsense. edit: Since I cannot respond due to throttling, I agree with the below idea of statewide house races, but by doing Proportional representation and a ranked/approval voting system.

If anything I think we need to make the House more like the Senate by making them run state wide. That would do a lot to get rid of the hyper partisan nutjobs since there's usually more ideological diversity across a state than in a given district. As a bonus it would also get rid of gerrymandering.

Yeah -- keeping population-based apportionment of representatives per state, while making representatives elected state-wide would be a huge shift of power, for the better, especially in the South (speaking as a southerner).

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#555
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need something that essentially represents each whole state as a unit. You can have a group of people that represent each state as a unit. Political power should absolutely be proportional to population represented though.

"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…

> it would show that smaller states wouldn't have joined, and would be justified in leaving

This may have been true for the original 13 colonies. Doubtful for the subsequent joiners.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#556
post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 competit…

Yet Kratom is legal, yt is recommending to me some product called "meth" (not joking) and there are a million new research drugs coming out every decade? It's just old-school think of the kids and not in my territory. We don't know how to regulate and handle this because our politicians and more and more our citizens don't understand what is being voted on or has been happening in their own states for 7 years. Have y…

> I'm sad, flower from OR, NC, OK, IN, and others will never legally hit my lungs

You have the power to elect people that will actually represent you.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps "nefarious" is too strong a term, but the intent (at least in states that have legal cannabis) AFAICT, is to avoid the regulations around testing for adulterants, potency, etc. My (perhaps incorrect) understanding is that the majority of the sales are happening in the 26 states without recreational marijuana, however, and that many consumers in the recreational states are still choosing to go with the dispe…

>My (perhaps incorrect) understanding is that the majority of the sales are happening in the 26 states without recreational marijuana, however, and that many consumers in the recreational states are still choosing to go with the dispensary product vs. head shop/liquor store/etc. I don't know if that's the case, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. I'm not sure what you mean WRT "hemp" being more "regulated" than the b…

> I'm not sure what you mean WRT "hemp" being more "regulated" than the black market.

Just basic laws around farming. For example, lead arsenate is banned in the US, and I trust the hemp farmers to not be using it as much as I trust any similar operation, but someone illegally growing stuff? They're already breaking the law. And who knows where it was grown to begin with?

And in general, there are companies behind all of this. There are names. Legal recourse if shit goes wrong. Who am I going to sue if I find out that the shit Bob has been selling me has been full of harmful pesticides or if the oil was full of some harmful additive, etc.?

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#558
post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have a very particular idea of how direct democracy might be implemented; there's no reason it has to be "show up at 11am on a Tuesday".

There is on average over 1 new bill a day that gets voted on in Congress. Those are the bills that get past committees. Everyone still complains it is impossible to get Congress to actually do anything, since this is a huge country with 300+ million people. If we didn’t have a ton of filtering (by whom? And who gets to decide that, is who has real power!) we’d probably have 10K+ new laws a day being proposed. What do…

I don't know what I expect the voting process to look like, but you seem to be assuming the worst without even thinking it through very much.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#559
post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have a very particular idea of how direct democracy might be implemented; there's no reason it has to be "show up at 11am on a Tuesday".

There is on average over 1 new bill a day that gets voted on in Congress. Those are the bills that get past committees. Everyone still complains it is impossible to get Congress to actually do anything, since this is a huge country with 300+ million people. If we didn’t have a ton of filtering (by whom? And who gets to decide that, is who has real power!) we’d probably have 10K+ new laws a day being proposed. What do…

I don't know what I expect the voting process to look like, but you seem to be assuming the worst without even thinking it through very much. I'm not an expert, I just don't think we should throw out ideas based on poor strawman implementations.

Re: Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

#560
post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is on average over 1 new bill a day that gets voted on in Congress. Those are the bills that get past committees. Everyone still complains it is impossible to get Congress to actually do anything, since this is a huge country with 300+ million people. If we didn’t have a ton of filtering (by whom? And who gets to decide that, is who has real power!) we’d probably have 10K+ new laws a day being proposed. What do…

I don't know what I expect the voting process to look like, but you seem to be assuming the worst without even thinking it through very much. I'm not an expert, I just don't think we should throw out ideas based on poor strawman implementations.

It’s well trod history, hah. The founding fathers directly wrote about and considered it too.

There are reasons why literally nobody does it, and it isn’t because it works too well.

Post reply on HN