Not only that, the same bill includes a provision which allows "...eight Republican senators to seek hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages for alleged privacy violations stemming from the Biden administration's investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot." [1].
This ability to tack random unrelated legislation onto a bill makes no sense to me.
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
- Give the territories 2 Senators, the tribes in the reservations 2 Senators, and DC 2 Senators
- Find some minimum number of citizens to get a Senator and lump certain states like the Dakotas together
The House
- Same thing, add a rep per reservation, add reps for the territories, add reps for DC
- All maps drawn in a non partisan manner to encourage competitive races between the parties as opposed to unlosable districts which can never boot these representatives who literally do nothing (won't even _come to the table_ during this recent shutdown, literally left DC for 7 weeks, wtf is that shit)
- Abolish Citizens United, politics needs to be boring conversations about policy handled by decent representatives of various constituencies, not a constant never ending shit cycle where single individuals can pump tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars to promote their own agendas
- Ranked choice voting everywhere
Maybe the territories get less representation.
The Senate has actually been a decent bulwark against the more extreme positions some of these House members espouse, presumably because of the sufficiently large samples you need to get to win a Senate seat compared to some of the extremely gerrymandered unlosable House seats.
There should be repurcussions for these Senators and House members... congressional approval is famously less popular then things like cockroaches, and it's been this way for decades. Constant gridlock, totally toxic.
Time for change. Time for real representation. Time to get back to boring. Time for choice. The time is now. Cause this race to the bottom with unfettered dark money is doing nothing good for anyone.
> 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 explain it to them.
The US founding fathers learned from history and designed the US democracy to be more like the Roman system. In Greece they had a more direct democracy. That led to mob mentality. The Romans split the powers between different bodies and people. There were two executives (consuls). There were two legislative powers: the senate and the plebeian council.
The system was set up with conflicting groups. When they agreed reforms were enacted, when they disagreed the country stays the same. This was not a bug, it was an intentional feature.
The US democratic system was inspired by this.
Senators are supposed to represent states. That's why they were appointed, not elected. Senators have only been elected from 1913 when the 17th amendment passed.
---
On a separate not, this is also why the US does not have direct elections. The elector system is designed to take into account states, not just people. If it didn't exist. Candidates would only campaign in the populous east and west coast.
I could say the same thing about the House of Reps, which has been frozen since 1929 and represents 3x more people per politician than it did then, is not equally distributed, and holds far more power and rights today than it ever did in the past.
This nonsense of tacking bills onto other bills needs to end. As does this nonsensical fearmongering of Hemp and Marijuana. Absolutely none of it is actually evidence-driven from what I remember. I know the CDC has (had?) side effect stuff but I think it might be very heavily exaggerated.
> And in a letter Monday obtained by MJBizDaily, representatives from major alcohol lobbies urged senators to thwart Paul’s efforts.
> His “shortsighted actions could threaten the delicately balanced deal to reopen the federal government,” a Nov. 10 letter from the American Distilled Spirits Alliance, Distilled Spirits Council, Wine Institute, Beer Institute and Wine America reads.
is this the ongoing legacy of big pharma influence in government? there must be some reason why tapping this sign is not good enough for their purposes, maybe it’s too hard to enforce
What I learned is Democrats don't have the guts for a shutdown, and Republicans do.
Republicans are completely willing to make people suffer in order to take away their health care.
Democrats are unwilling to make people suffer temporarily in order to protect health care.
So I don't see how a shutdown should ever happen again. Democrats are going to roll over, even when it's politically beneficial to them and to the country to keep pressure on.
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.
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, while the mom and pops will get completely wiped out.
Exactly. This pattern I think accurately describes the state of the US economy in general over the last few decades. Wealthy extracting wealth from what’s left of the middle class and further extracting wealth from the already poor. The decline of the US is now openly visible and attempts to hide this through economic language / indicators / propaganda etc are now openly not reflecting reality and often come off as in a dark way comical. This applies to some other western nations like France, England and perhaps Germany.
These are all just symptoms. The underlying vulnerability is the median US culture, which permits venality, scamming, skuldugery, shenanigans and crime in its ruling class.
This is a weird one. It absolutely should not be haphazardly added as a rider. The 0.4 per container is also insane. But, this really was an unintended loophole of the 2018 farm bill. Most plants grow THCa, which turns into Delta-9 when heated. They were ignorant and straight up forgot to specify anything except Delta-9.
Cannabis is a bioremediator and absorbs basically every environmental toxin from the ground (pesticides, heavy metals, etc.). Extraction (for CBD and THC oil) increases the concentration of any present toxins.
The only way you know of the problem is by thoroughly testing every batch. Pesticides that are safe at low levels can get concentrated and become really problematic at high levels.
States where marijuana is legal require all of this testing, so the products are much safer. Hemp-derived THC does not require these tests. (Same is true for CBD, but that's a while other conversation...)
I've been a regular consumer of the results of this since about 2020 when I discovered it.
It's been quite the journey watching the industry boom and evolve and get better and better.
I've seen an incredible incredible amount of ignorance on this topic.
Prior to this, I found 1 comment on HN mentioning this last night.
On reddit, it's not on the frontpage of r/politics, r/moderatepolitics or anything relevant.
I can find it on r/news but like every other thread not a single person is mentioning something very factual.
Rand tried to stop this provision in the Senate. 76/100 senators voted for this ban to remain.
76 senators from across the political spectrum, from every state have decided to secretly try to destroy a $30b industry, 300,000 jobs, and a lot of lives.
I mean, were you posting to draw attention to it? How would people know if the people who do know aren't spreading it? Most people don't read bills themselves and it's no news that US media is captured by billionaires and special interests...
57 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 66.3 ms ] threadThis ability to tack random unrelated legislation onto a bill makes no sense to me.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/deal-end-us-shutdow...
Here's my ideas...
The Senate - Give the territories 2 Senators, the tribes in the reservations 2 Senators, and DC 2 Senators - Find some minimum number of citizens to get a Senator and lump certain states like the Dakotas together
The House - Same thing, add a rep per reservation, add reps for the territories, add reps for DC - All maps drawn in a non partisan manner to encourage competitive races between the parties as opposed to unlosable districts which can never boot these representatives who literally do nothing (won't even _come to the table_ during this recent shutdown, literally left DC for 7 weeks, wtf is that shit)
- Abolish Citizens United, politics needs to be boring conversations about policy handled by decent representatives of various constituencies, not a constant never ending shit cycle where single individuals can pump tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars to promote their own agendas
- Ranked choice voting everywhere
Maybe the territories get less representation.
The Senate has actually been a decent bulwark against the more extreme positions some of these House members espouse, presumably because of the sufficiently large samples you need to get to win a Senate seat compared to some of the extremely gerrymandered unlosable House seats.
There should be repurcussions for these Senators and House members... congressional approval is famously less popular then things like cockroaches, and it's been this way for decades. Constant gridlock, totally toxic.
Time for change. Time for real representation. Time to get back to boring. Time for choice. The time is now. Cause this race to the bottom with unfettered dark money is doing nothing good for anyone.
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 explain it to them.
The US founding fathers learned from history and designed the US democracy to be more like the Roman system. In Greece they had a more direct democracy. That led to mob mentality. The Romans split the powers between different bodies and people. There were two executives (consuls). There were two legislative powers: the senate and the plebeian council.
The system was set up with conflicting groups. When they agreed reforms were enacted, when they disagreed the country stays the same. This was not a bug, it was an intentional feature.
The US democratic system was inspired by this.
Senators are supposed to represent states. That's why they were appointed, not elected. Senators have only been elected from 1913 when the 17th amendment passed.
---
On a separate not, this is also why the US does not have direct elections. The elector system is designed to take into account states, not just people. If it didn't exist. Candidates would only campaign in the populous east and west coast.
> And in a letter Monday obtained by MJBizDaily, representatives from major alcohol lobbies urged senators to thwart Paul’s efforts.
> His “shortsighted actions could threaten the delicately balanced deal to reopen the federal government,” a Nov. 10 letter from the American Distilled Spirits Alliance, Distilled Spirits Council, Wine Institute, Beer Institute and Wine America reads.
https://mjbizdaily.com/trump-backs-hemp-thc-ban-included-in-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analogue_Act
Google Docs can do this. Why can't the Congress??
Republicans are completely willing to make people suffer in order to take away their health care.
Democrats are unwilling to make people suffer temporarily in order to protect health care.
So I don't see how a shutdown should ever happen again. Democrats are going to roll over, even when it's politically beneficial to them and to the country to keep pressure on.
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.
The more money you allow in politics, the more politics becomes about money.
These natives certainly know what they're doing with their dependant-domestic sovereign nation.
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, while the mom and pops will get completely wiped out.
The GOP hasn't been a party of small government since W. Bush. And it hasn't really claimed to be as much since Trump 1.
Cannabis is a bioremediator and absorbs basically every environmental toxin from the ground (pesticides, heavy metals, etc.). Extraction (for CBD and THC oil) increases the concentration of any present toxins.
The only way you know of the problem is by thoroughly testing every batch. Pesticides that are safe at low levels can get concentrated and become really problematic at high levels.
States where marijuana is legal require all of this testing, so the products are much safer. Hemp-derived THC does not require these tests. (Same is true for CBD, but that's a while other conversation...)
I've seen an incredible incredible amount of ignorance on this topic. Prior to this, I found 1 comment on HN mentioning this last night. On reddit, it's not on the frontpage of r/politics, r/moderatepolitics or anything relevant. I can find it on r/news but like every other thread not a single person is mentioning something very factual.
Rand tried to stop this provision in the Senate. 76/100 senators voted for this ban to remain. 76 senators from across the political spectrum, from every state have decided to secretly try to destroy a $30b industry, 300,000 jobs, and a lot of lives.
Does this actually have any impact on legal dispensaries, their products, farms, etc?
Does this make it harder to eventually de-schedule pot.