Hey a half a loaf. Its Zenos paradox of legalization. With progress like this, in another 40 years we’ll be another halfway there to legalization.
That all depends on when Democrats get congressional majority. Congress is responsible for legislative decriminalization.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3617
You make the assumption that Democrats (the politicians, not the voters) actually see this as a legislative priority.
Kamala has been treating it as priority, and speaking in favor of it every chance she gets. The bill was co-sponsored by 114 Democrats.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3617/cosponsors
Any day now then…
It will at least open up research for cannabis drug development into FDA approved products.
It also basically will legalize Medical cannabis federally. This could lead to many other benefits. Get a medical card, it’s legit with the state and the feds, then there shouldn’t be any grounds for drug tests to affect your employment.
Its 10 years too late for anyone to care I think. Democrats should have just straight up legalized under Obama, and even if they legalized now, they aren’t going to be making major points off this politically. Its just jerk-off material for the commentary crowd. If it isn’t going to make a difference to peoples lived experience, it isn’t worth pursuing.
You guys seem to think that the democrats had a fillabuster proof majority the entirety of obama’s terms.
They had two years. In those two years, they spent their capital on getting the ACA passed.
Then the 2010 midterms happened, and the dems lost any chance of anything meaningful happening.
And you seem to think two years is basically no time at all. Think about how much awful shit Republicans got up to under Trump. Approximately half of that got done in a two year period and that was even a historically deadlocked Congress. Democrats lost in 2010 precisely because two years is a long time and the best thing they got out of it was a shitty healthcare plan that, more than anything, ensured our current unsustainable system stays in place for at least another generation.
Democrats are obviously much better than Republicans in basically every sense of the word, but Republicans get their legislation passed when they have the chance and Democrats trip all over themselves trying to appease the idiots who will never join their coalition. They could learn a lot from Republicans about pushing their agenda but it seems pretty clear by now they aren’t going to.
Yep, it’s amazing what you can do if you ignore laws, lock out the opposite side, control all three branches of government, and literally pass shit with stuff penciled in on the side.
If Democrats are incapable of governing when given the power, maybe we should stop voting for them.
There is no point in empowering someone with my vote if they can’t do anything with it once they’ve taken power.
Republicans have gotten more done in minority positions than Democrats have when in majority position over the past 20 years.
Democrats are conveniently bad at this shit when it comes to getting the things their voters want done, done. When it comes to getting shit Republicans want done, they are also conveniently powerless.
Maybe we shouldn’t vote for Democrats.
Two years of a filibuster proof majority for a president elected on hope and change, and the best they can do is a conservative healthcare plan, packed with giveaways for the big insurers.
That’s when I lost all faith in the democratic party.
Because Joseph Lieberman wouldn’t allow it to pass without removing the public option and he was the lone vote they needed to overcome the filibuster
Yep there’s always a rotating villain, how convenient.
He wasn’t “a rotating villain”
He was always a villain.
Society is like a big vehicle. It takes time to change its course. Calm down.
Calm down.
The world doesn’t actually improve in fits an starts. Incrementalism is a fallacy. The world improves in large sweeping movements that are eventually ground backwards. We make major improvement through bold action, not trivial improvements.
I have no obligation to support a muted political movement incapable of accomplishing its purported objectives.
US Democrats could have done this a decade ago. They could have codified abortion rights. They could have made so many things a priority: they choose not to. I owe nothing to a failed approach to politics.
US Democrats could have done this a decade ago. They could have codified abortion rights. They could have made so many things a priority: they choose not to. I owe nothing to a failed approach to politics.
I must correct you there. There is a theory that says that politics has to fulfill the will of its average voter. It can not lean further left than that. Otherwise it looses voters on the righter side.
What you have is a convenient and wrong interpretation of how politics work.
Its interesting that when its a step in the authoritarian or right-wing direction, its always possible. When its a step towards humanism or the left, its never possible or only ever an epsilon of progress.
Why do you think that is?
The fallacy thats baked into your thinking that causes you to make this mistake is shown by this assumption you make:
Otherwise it looses voters on the righter side.
The idea that voters exist along a symmetrical distribution is the mistake you are making. People are not randomly coming up with their beliefs and there is no reason you should assume it would follow a gaussian.
Its a persistent and wrong assumption, that resulted in the kind of demonstrated impotence of the American Democrats.
Interestingly, the American Right wing doesn’t share that belief around real-politik. And because they don’t make this wrong assumption, their voters actually get the policy decisions they want into law.
There’s two things this changes.
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Easier to research.
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We get a lot less tax money from it.
For 1, it’s not that much of a gain, we don’t need more studies to show it’s safe. That’s been accomplished, and it wasn’t that hard to do a study the last couple years.
For 2, tax money was the biggest reason states could be convinced to legalize.
There’s a little bit of a 3 involved. I forget the specifics from an earlier article, but I read something about while a lower schedule may let them transition from cash only to banking, the DEA can still seize all their funds because it’s on the schedule. It’s just now they can do it from a computer.
When they don’t use banks, at least the DEA had to actually show up and
stealseize their cash.So say a Republican takes office and is pissed at Cali, he can tell the DEA to freeze and seize the bank accounts of every business and person connected to the cannabis industry.
And it’d all be 100% legal, take very little effort, and can easily be converted into some kind of “border security” bullshit like building a giant pointless wall.
I dunno, lately I keep getting frustrated at people never realizing what shit can naturally lead to. Maybe my standards for planning ahead need lowered?
I just don’t understand why this is acceptable when Biden told us decriminalization was the goal.
A co.plete removal from the schedule would have been that, and would have accomplished a lot and taken the same effort as this. I don’t see why we don’t try to actually fix shit.
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