[flagged]
The hemp ban isn't even the shadiest part, the self-dealing of allowing certain Senators who were connected to a putsch to loot the treasury is even more egregious.
It’s exactly 8 senators, safe seats, no comments from Schumer. There is no coup.
- You get nothing
- Eventually everyone understands they're going to get nothing, so they ask some sacrificial lambs to vote to end it while they posture and pretend they would have "kept fighting"
With Republicans this was called "RINOs" and "tea party" but it's the same thing now.
It's exactly what the founders, who all read Plato's Republic and its warnings about republics devolving into democracy, wanted.
The Veto is also profoundly undemocratic in exactly the same direction and it's also a good thing.
I’m not saying whether it’s good or bad, it is what it is, but these anti-democratic mechanisms are intentional.
> so that small swings in representation, say 51-49 to 49-51 can't produce massive swings in policy
Exactly, and this is bad. Voters should all know that every vote matters. The current setup creates the false impression that both parties would fundamentally steer the ship the same way ("uniparty"). The path to a government that is more responsive to the needs of citizens involves allowing winning parties to actually govern.
I would argue that we want a more responsive, dynamic government that attempts to represent us. The filibuster is in direct direct opposition to all of that.
The GOP won the last national elections. They should be allowed to end SNAP, ACA, EPA, Labor Dept, NSF, Dept. of Education, FDA, all science grants, Medicaid, put armed military checkpoints on every city block, end legal immigration, and zero out federal funding to any school that is closed on the federal MLK Jr holiday[1]. (And to the extent that those things are not legal now, they have the votes to make them legal.)
And then in '26 and '28, voters should decide whether they agree with that vision for how the country should be run.
The result will be a much more responsive, dynamic system where Congress cares more about what we voters think.
1 - taken loosely from the 2024 GOP party platform and administration statements from this year
Or an overwhelming switch the other direction, just as chaotic and unpopular, continuing to swing back and forth every four years.
Who knows, maybe the overreach of the current party in power (even though "won the last national elections" meaning less than 50% of the cast vote, but that's another discussion) will cause a swing the other direction so hard that the opposition party gains a supermajority in congress. Things will be more stable in that case, if not universally popular, because well-crafted legislation is a good bit harder to reverse than executive orders.
Not sure how to break Senate and highly unequal representation it gives.
Though realistically I don't think this will ever be possible.
I think the Democrat's mistake was as much as they were backing a popular policy, they didn't have the "clean bill" high ground, the Republicans are less concerned with government services, and they were backed into an end date with Thanksgiving travel coming up, so it would always get earmarks attached.
What the Democrats got right was they wanted a fight, and at first, the majority was on their side.
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.
Using farm bill hemp to produce CBD and THC is not the intended point of that bill. Plenty of states have set up actual, real legalized cannabis industries that benefit from regulation (like required mold testing).
The products created from this oversight are a dumb loophole. If you want cannabis, just vote for people to legalize it, it's really not hard. The only reason it continues to be illegal federally is the GOP, and most of their voters say they want it at minimum decriminalized. Even my brother who thinks we shouldn't give addicts narcan (let them die) thinks it's dumb that we punish people for smoking weed.
But they vote for people who want to keep it illegal so....
None of that cannabis is federally legal either, and relies on the same precarious position that 'hemp' industry will still be in of operating a massive ongoing criminal enterprise. It's just that rather than legalize the 'real' cannabis the big cannabis lobby and their politicians settled for swiping at their hemp competitor and make them go on the black market too so they could better capture the profits, as evidenced by the fact even 'legal' weed state senators voted to put 'hemp' in the same illegal category their illegal 'legal' weed sits in.
In fact, under the old hemp rules, there was pending federal regulatory framework for testing hemps products (they were still operating under deferred DEA testing regime, so currently testing is largely being done privately with COAs being furnished by most CBD farms, if you have even the slightest concern you can order from a vendor with full contamination reports and chemical breakdown). For marijuana, absolutely no federal requirement as it's just illegal with no provision. So the situation is the exact opposite as you had concerned, with regard to the part of government we are speaking of.
You are “both sides”ing this when the GOP is the only side that worked tirelessly to end healthcare subsidies and allow America’s poorest to go hungry.
If you believe the commentary of one of the defectors, he said (Paraphrasing) "I got my first good sleep since the shutdown began... I didn't have to worry about people eyeing me as I walked into work". So if you take that at face value it was everyday interactions that had him fold. Easier to crush the hopes of the invisible population you represent than look uncouth to your visible peers.
And this is yet another political trope: Democrats are always blamed for everything by everyone including their own voters.
Republicans have majorities in the entire federal government, but the shutdown is the Democrats’ fault because they wanted a bill with healthcare preserved.
The majority party isn’t blamed for failing to promote a consensus because they have R’s next to their names.
If the shutdown never happened and senate democrats just voted yes on the spending bill cutting healthcare they’d be blamed for rolling over to Republican policy and failing to use their filibuster to pressure Republicans to compromise.
When will anything be the GOP’s fault?
Are we forgetting that Donald Trump blocked SNAP disbursements that a court ordered him to restore? The GOP is going above and beyond to shut down the government more than it is legally supposed to be shut down.
The Democrats actually did some political good by putting a spotlight on the GOP’s quiet attempts to demolish social programs, and they pulled back as soon as they found out that our president was willing to starve poor people over the issue, something that a normal human with basic morals would never do.
Next time Democrats are in control and Republicans pull the same government shutdown strategy to block a Democrat policy initiative, it’ll magically be the Democrats’ fault because “they are in charge.”
By the way, zero government shutdowns under Joe Biden.
Cool, so we're hoping for a Christmas Carol to come in and show them the error of their ways in a dream?
Its the rest of the senator's responsibility to convince them. As it is their constituents. We're all a bit at fault here.
>When will anything be the GOP’s fault?
The evil within will always be worse than the evil you know. No one expects the devil to turn another leaf, but will chastise Judas for betraying Jesus.
Meanwhile the GOP has embraced the evil. They made things very easy for themselves.
Like most long-term financial bills, everyone just assumed the cliff won’t hit and new legislation will pass.
This is the actual crux, no? “We expected the funny numbers to pass again” as opposed to “we should have addressed this before Biden left office”
In Nancy Pelosi's memoir there is a story about some red-state Democrat who came out publicly against Pelosi on some issue. Turns out the entire scheme was her idea- make the representative look good to his own state by throwing herself under the bus.
I'm not saying any of this is good or bad, but this is what politics actually is. A bunch of behind the scenes scheming to advance leadership's agenda. Not individual politicians voting for what they think is best.