So some people are upset that this happening in an election season, even though they support it?
This was a lawful and thoughtful exercise of presidential power that helps some people convicted of something that really shouldn't be criminalized. It could also potentially help the Democratic Party in the upcoming election.
But if you believe in what the Democratic Party is trying to do for the country, that's not a bad thing. There's no corruption in doing popular things that can help get people in your party elected. That's just good governance and acting according to the will of the voters.
The majority of people in the US, 60%, and even a plurality of Republicans support decriminalizing recreational cannabis federally. The support for medicinal cannabis, possible if Cannabis wasn't scheduled as it currently is, is even higher.
I suspect they are just being political. It is a good move. Keep up the good work, I say.
That being said, Joe Biden has been a key player at the highest levels of US policy for decades. He only narrowly missed out on entering the US Senate to vote on the original Controlled Substances Act of 1970 that it seems people are being pardoned for violating. 1973-2009 he was part of the exact group of people helping build up the war on drugs. 2022 elections he throws out a bone to deal with the symptoms.
You can see why people like Obama or Trump do so well vs incumbent politicians. These ex-Congress people are, by and large, responsible for all the messes they campaign on fixing. The internet is making it harder for them to escape their own decisions.
The US really needs to look back and get rid of some of the people with the more appalling track records. I think there are still people in the US Congress who enthusiastically supported Afghanistan and Iraq. They shouldn't be allowed to tell people what to do any more. It is hard to do worse than that.
Wouldn't the responsibility of the government representatives be to represent the opinion of the people at the time? I wouldn't be surprised if in 1973 most Americans were also totally onboard with criminalizing possession of drugs.
And similarly now the opinion of the people has shifted, so the government representatives are adopting policies that match up with today's opinion.
I'm not saying this to defend any particular person you referenced, just that the logic of saying that in the past someone was against something and now they're for it isn't necessarily hypocrisy, or false pretense. If the opinion of the people they represent also changed and at both times were respected, that seems to be a great example of a functioning republic no?
Theoretically? Sure, that works. I have some respect for it.
As a practical matter, I don't think the US was ever in favour of locking a bunch of people up, destroying lives for nothing and the uncomfortably racial nature of where the hammer fell. They could have used methods to deal with drugs that worked. Even if the conscious plan is to vote for a chimera, it still makes sense to vote for one that implements good long-term policies as well as bowing to short term expediency.
If the policies as-implemented are so bad that he feels a need to pardon people for being charged under them, I can see why some people would be apoplectic at this bald-faced ploy. After some number of lives ruined by bad policy making, really these politicians should just resign. Although, again, I do think most people are making a show about it fright now are doing so for political reasons; there aren't a lot of people out there who care about principle. Any of the last 10 presidents would have done the same under similar circumstances.
I should start out by saying this is a delightfully well-written post despite the serious subject matter, nice ;)
I think you're giving mid-century Americans too much credit. I think they were widely ignorant of Black history and racial issues and really had no concept of institutional racism--of which the War on Drugs was certainly a scion. Crime--and let's consider all its racializations--was also pretty bad, and voters across races and political lines are generally in favor of full on human rights violations to get it under control [0].
Actually a whole hell of a lot of Americans are totally in favor of locking a bunch of people up, destroying lives for nothing, punishing people they hate, spreading diseases like HIV and COVID throughout their communities then withholding health care and clean needles and masks, and totally racist to the core. And it's always been that way.
If you want to see a whole lot of people act truly apoplectic at a bald-face ploy, then just watch the MAGA mob's reaction to the earth-shattering life-changing fact that a fictional cartoon character named "Velma" finally came out as lesbian and fell in love.
The left's reaction:
Fans cheer as Velma is shown crushing on a woman in the new Scooby-Doo movie:
Conservatives Are Now Freaking Out About [Spins Wheel] a Lesbian in ‘Scooby Doo’. The classic cartoon's Halloween special portrays Velma as queer, and right-wing pundits can't cope:
Fox guest loses his mind over Scooby Doo’s Velma being gay & compares it to bestiality. He told Laura Ingraham that Velma being gay is "really offensive" to him because it "sexualizes" her.
These people exist, but they aren't deciding elections. Pretty much the formula for winning a US election is pro-peace, pro-equality, pro-positive-vision. People have been calling each other racist till they are blue in the face, but evidence that racism wins votes is thin on the ground.
If the racists want to hide behind a war on drugs, they obviously don't think they have the numbers to carry racist policy. This undermines this idea that the voters wanted the policies that were implemented.
The notion that the drug war is a pretext for racism is utterly ridiculous. The PM’s cabinet in my home country recently approved a draft law that would impose the death penalty for dealing drugs. There’s virtually no racial minorities in my country to “oppress” through a drug war. Swedes likewise have long been harsh towards drug use, despite being a highly homogenous society.
It goes without saying that Black people aren’t inherently more likely to be drug dealers or drug users—there is no intrinsic connection between drugs and race. Prohibitions might have a disparate impact on them, but for reasons (discriminatory policing, etc.) that would apply to any prohibition. There’s lots of other laws that have discriminatory enforcement, but nobody accuses the proponents of those laws of being motivated by racism.
> The notion that the drug war is a pretext for racism is utterly ridiculous
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
-- Former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman
> The PM’s cabinet in my home country
The drug war didn't start in your country, so you have no claim to what the initial and subsequent motivations were of those who started it and popularized it around the world.
> It goes without saying that Black people aren’t inherently more likely to be drug dealers or drug users
Black people in the US are less likely to be drug dealers, however they are searched and arrested at a much higher rate.
> There’s lots of other laws that have discriminatory enforcement, but nobody accuses the proponents of those laws of being motivated by racism.
Sure they do. Just as one example, the law that felons cannot vote has frequently been cited as racially motivated. Another example is stop and frisk.
> Sure they do. Just as one example, the law that felons cannot vote has frequently been cited as racially motivated. Another example is stop and frisk.
Yes, and those accusations are stupid because e.g. the prohibition on felons voting in most states dates to before the civil war when most Black people couldn't vote. Iowa had some of the strongest felony voting rules in the country, which it adopted in 1846 when it had virtually no Black people.
Gun control laws were originally adopted to disarm Black people. Felon-in-possession and red flag laws disproportionately affect Black men. Do you go around calling contemporary proponents of gun control motivated by racism?
A major justification for abortion in the early 20th century was limiting the birth rate of minorities and poor people. Do you accuse abortion advocates of being motivated by racism?
No, you don’t because you recognize that there are independent reasons for those policies even if some advocates of those policies have (or had in the past) racist motivations.
You're doing that HN thing of trying to axiomatically defeat an argument that is supported by clear evidence. You have to do better than give us reasons you don't think the drug war makes sense as a vector for racism. You either need countervailing evidence, or something that impeaches the evidence you've been given.
It's a particularly brazen stroke of message-boardiness to put words in the mouth of someone who just rebutted your first-principles argument with evidence.
If you've decided to carry the flag of "the drug war is, contrary to popular belief, not racist" --- and I fully respect your prerogative to do that --- you should at least come prepared to knock down a bit of evidence so popular it was featured on Adam Ruins Everything. There are other easy-pickings facts to whack your argument with; for instance, you can just search AskHistorians, where this has been covered (hint: I'm pretty sure you're wrong.)
If you assert that a cluster of distinctive cancers is caused by the local chemical plant, pointing out that similar cancer clusters are cropping up other places nowhere near a chemical plant is an evidence-based rebuttal to your theory.
It’s possible that the drug war is caused by racism in the US, and by entirely different reasons in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Nigeria, Japan, or China, or Russia. But the cited “evidence” hardly suffices to establish that.
“Historians” are, as a general matter, terrible at describing why things happen. They’re not data analyzers, they’re story tellers. The same few anecdotes from people in Nixon’s orbit get spun out to explain a decades-long social phenomenon. But was Nixon in Japan and all those other places that have drug wars?
The drug war happened because America is a rigidly moralistic society, just like Japan, and such societies almost uniformly condemn drug use as a moral failing. Nixon also happened to be racist, and a hallmark of racism is the tendency to attribute immorality and lack of character to out groups. But that’s not causation.
> If you assert that a cluster of distinctive cancers is caused by the local chemical plant, pointing out that similar cancer clusters are cropping up other places nowhere near a chemical plant is an evidence-based rebuttal to your theory.
That's a sweeping generalization — it's not a rebuttal if the cancers in question have multiple causative factors, as you seem implicitly to acknowledge in your very-next paragraph about "entirely different reasons" ....
> “Historians” are, as a general matter, terrible at describing why things happen. They’re not data analyzers, they’re story tellers.
Really? "I usually don't agree with historians' descriptions of why things happen" is not an acceptable definition of "historians are terrible at describing why things happen."
(I don't know why you look down on story-tellers; as I'm sure you know professionally, narrative is often the best way to communicate a message, and the most persuasive teachers are typically great story-tellers.)
The cited "evidence" is John Erlichman stating directly that Nixon ratcheted up enforcement of drug laws to target Black people. Why did you scare-quote that?
Did you take a second to search AskHistorians about this issue? There's a bunch more stuff like this, not just in the 1970s.
> The drug war happened because America is a rigidly moralistic society
That reductive. Things can happen for multiple reasons.
> Nixon also happened to be racist... But that’s not causation.
Sure it is. If you are racist and you do things that have a racist outcome, it's racism. What kind of mental hoops are you jumping through to get to some other conclusion?
I mean, it's worse than that, right? It's, "If you're a racist, and you do things that have a racist outcome, and you do them deliberately to further that racist outcome, literally citing racism as a rationale, it's racist".
And I'll add that if you bend over backward and twist yourself into a logical pretzel to defend racists from being called racist because of their racist words and racist behaviors and racist outcomes and racist supporters, then you're most probably racist too.
Like the people who defend Eric S Raymond's racist edge lord bullshit because they think he's just trying to show off how clever he is to say manifestly racist shit to provoke people and then trying to talk his way out of it by accusing everyone of being less intelligent and open minded than he is.
Your original claim was "nobody accuses the proponents of those laws of being motivated by racism.". You were wrong. Now you are moving the goalposts.
> Do you accuse abortion advocates of being motivated by racism?
That is indeed something that conservatives accuse pro-choice people of quite often.
In all these cases you need to look at:
1. How recent the original motivations were and if they are still in place.
2. Outcomes.
In the case of the drug war, the motivations were recent and include several modern presidents from both sides of the aisle. Starting with Nixon but including Reagan and Bill Clinton.
And the outcome is jails filled with black people arrested on drug charges when the reality is that white people in the US both deal drugs and use drugs at a higher rate than black people.
You have recency, motivations still in place, and outcomes.
With abortions you neither have recency nor outcomes. The black population in the US is growing at a healthy rate. In fact, the black population in the US is young. Over a third of the U.S. Black population was 22 years or younger in 2019.
> you recognize that there are independent reasons for those policies
A policy can be motivated by both racism and other reasons. They aren't exclusive.
> Your original claim was "nobody accuses the proponents of those laws of being motivated by racism."
The phrase “those laws” refers to the immediately preceding “lots of other laws.” Not “all other laws.” The point is that people are selective about whether they throw around accusations of racism when a law has discriminatory impacts. Not that they allege racism only with respect to the drug war.
As to conservatives making accusations that abortion is racist, they’re dumb and wrong.
But the discriminatory impact of abortion on Black people is undeniable. According to Guttmacher, the Black abortion rate is five times higher than the white abortion rate. Black population growth as a percentage of the population has been stagnant for decades. That will directly lead to loss of Black political power as Hispanics have overtaken them as the largest minority group, and soon Asians will overtake them as well.
And the recency is there too. People point to the things Nixon said about the drug war. But read about Nixon’s Population Control Commission!
> The point is that people are selective about whether they throw around accusations of racism when a law has discriminatory impacts
Of course they are. Not all discriminatory laws were put into place by racists like Nixon.
> the Black abortion rate is five times higher than the white abortion rate.
So what? The birth rate for black people is higher than the birth rate for white people. And the birth rate for Hispanic people in the US is barely higher than that for black people. Birth rate is what matters. Abortion rates are almost meaningless.
> as Hispanics have overtaken them as the largest minority group
Due to immigration... not birth rates. You're doing such a poor job with data and logic that I'm not getting anything out of this. I'm stopping here.
> Not all discriminatory laws were put into place by racists like Nixon.
I thought the theory was that white people were generally racists?
> So what? The birth rate for black people is higher than the birth rate for white people.
So what is that most Black people themselves don’t think that an abortion is an inconsequential event. They are the reason for Clinton’s “safe, legal, and rare” messaging. They might support its legality, but many still think it’s killing a human life. When that happens five times as much to Black women as white women, that’s a significant burden.
> Due to immigration... not birth rates.
Hispanics have both immigration and higher birth rates. And if abortion rates between whites and blacks were equal, higher birth rates would offset both.
roenxi> These people exist, but they aren't deciding elections.
You're tragically and delusionally wrong, roenix. They're not only deciding elections, but they've been suppressing minority voters and jerrymandering their districts and winning elections and running the country and attempting to steal the elections by force and fraud and treason when they can't win.
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hidden Racist Conversation With Richard Nixon
In newly unearthed audio, the then–California governor disparaged African delegates to the United Nations.
The day after the United Nations voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China, then–California Governor Ronald Reagan phoned President Richard Nixon at the White House and vented his frustration at the delegates who had sided against the United States.
“Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said. “Yeah,” Nixon interjected. Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh.
“As you can imagine,” Nixon confided in Rogers, “there’s strong feeling that we just shouldn’t, as [Reagan] said, he saw these, as he said, he saw these—” Nixon stammered, choosing his words carefully—“these, uh, these cannibals on television last night, and he says, ‘Christ, they weren’t even wearing shoes, and here the United States is going to submit its fate to that,’ and so forth and so on.”
The president wanted his patrician secretary of state to understand that Reagan spoke for racist Americans, and they needed to be listened to. “You know, but that’s typical of a reaction, which is probably”—“That’s right,” Rogers interjected—“quite strong.”
Nixon couldn’t stop retelling his version of what Reagan had said. Oddly unfocused, he spoke with Rogers again two hours later and repeated the story as if it would be new to the secretary.
“Reagan called me last night,” Nixon said, “and I didn’t talk to him until this morning, but he is, of course, outraged. And I found out what outraged him, and I find this is typical of a lot of people: They saw it on television and, he said, ‘These cannibals jumping up and down and all that.’ And apparently it was a pretty grotesque picture.” Like Nixon, Rogers had not seen the televised images. But Rogers agreed: “Apparently, it was a terrible scene.” Nixon added, “And they cheered.”
Then Nixon said, “He practically got sick at his stomach, and that’s why he called. And he said, ‘It was a terrible scene.’ And that sort of thing will have an emotional effect on people … as [Reagan] said, ‘This bunch of people who don’t even wear shoes yet, to be kicking the United States in the teeth’ … It was a terrible thing, they thought.”
I’m not sure why I’m supposed to find some vignettes juxtaposing racism with drug prohibition persuasive. That doesn’t establish causation.
You can hear similar conversations openly in many parts of the world, especially Asia. Those countries often also tend to have harsh drug laws. But the two things are uncorrelated, given that those countries don’t have a significant domestic population of minorities that would justify drug prohibition as a pretext for cracking down on minorities.
The irony of all this is that recreational drug use is “Stuff White People Like.” Around the world, other than certain traditional plants, social acceptability and legalization of drug use is disproportionately something practiced in societies run by white people. Reading Donald Harris’s remarks about Kamala Harris impugning the dignity of Jamaicans by attempting to associate them with marijuana use is instructive.
>“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
That's a very popular quote, but it's not as slam dunk as you think. The veracity of the quote has been challenged. It was allegedly obtained 26 years after the nixon campaign, and was only published 22 years after that.
The outcomes however are a matter of historical record. Jails filled to the brim with black people. Even though white people deal drugs and use drugs at a higher rate than black people. You don't even need that quote to see what Nixon quickly "achieved".
And we also know Nixon was a racist. That's on tape. Referring to Jamaica:
“Blacks can’t run it. Nowhere, and they won’t be able to for a hundred years, and maybe not for a thousand ... Do you know, maybe one black country that’s well run?”
The misguided war on drugs was first and foremost a sincere attempt to curtail the prevalence of drugs. That the effect of this so-called "war" has disproportionately fallen on racial minorities is due to broad systemic racism, but it was not the intent or purpose of the initial declaration of "war."
Are you sincerely calling the War on Drugs sincerely motivated?
So you admit there is broad systemic racism, but insist it had absolutely no effect on the motivations of the people who started and supported the War on Drugs, and that it's unfair to call Nixon and Reagan racist, huh?
Then address my response to rayiner above, quoting their very own words recorded on tape, and John Ehrlichman's admission. And don't lie through your teeth.
I don't need to prove my anti-racist bona fides to you or anyone else.
As should be obvious from my comment, I am very much against the so-called war on drugs, and thinks it's awful in many ways, including in racist ways. However, I also don't think it would have gotten the support it did in early days unless many people, even the majority of people involved, had not felt that they were actually addressing a real problem with the sale and use of drugs. In addition, I don't think it's helpful to describe it in terms that put everybody into one of two buckets, where the only two choices are "be okay with any and all drugs" and "racist."
That drug policy in the US is horrifically racist, and has been since even before the so-called "war on drugs" began is clear. But the way out is not to pretend that the only basis for the policy from anyone, ever, is racism.
If you want to feel morally superior enough to call people you don't know on the internet liars, then go ahead. But you will probably fail to convince anyone not already convinced.
> As a practical matter, I don't think the US was ever in favour of locking a bunch of people up, destroying lives for nothing and the uncomfortably racial nature of where the hammer fell
To be honest, I have no clue, maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but also maybe that's not anything they predicted or thought to consider as second order effects in their opinion at the time.
People's personal opinion are not always hours of deep analysis, reflections and evaluation. Often times, simplistic solutions win an opinion, I can very well see something as simplistic as: these drugs are a problem, let's make them all illegal and attach prison sentences to the sale and possession, problem solved! And a lot of people at the time, fearful of those drugs, not knowing much about them, and hearing what they do to people and who generally consumes them, just feeling like that's a great idea and being onboard with the policy.
And now, people have seen those second order effect first hand, they've also learned more about those drugs, their nature, don't fear it as much, and so are now of a different opinion.
As a practical matter, I fear that your thoughts on this are at odds with the actual history of the US, the historical views of people here, and even with what a lot of folks think currently.
The question is if your politics and support base means “being political” leads to you pardoning thousands of people for something pretty much everyone agrees is not a crime and making their and their families and kids’ lives immeasurably better, and therefore making the country and the world a better place.
Or, if your political environment leads you to illegally trafficking vulnerable people and leaving the completely stranded and in general making the world a worse place.
This might be survivorship bias. If they hadn't taken popular positions back when those positions were popular, they wouldn't be here today. See how Liz Cheney is faring, for example.
There are a lot of people in congress who had opinions on the Korean War WHILE IT WAS HAPPENING.
It's a geriatrics home. No one over the age of 70 should be allowed in elected office.
And if you want to make some nebulous argument about wisdom with age, a younger elected official can have an older, wiser, ex-politician as an adviser. But ultimately the important decisions are the younger politician's call.
I just wanted to say, as someone who is now about in the middle of the average lifespan distribution, I find no compelling evidence that leads me to believe that the half of the age range that is older than I am is any wiser than the half of the age range that is younger than I am.
I don't know whether or not there should be bans on elderly politicians, but it would be very, very nice to have a stronger cultural pressure against old people trying to hang on to power so long past their expiration dates.
Congress is much older than the general population.
Older people tend to have shorter term thinking, basically not worrying about what happens after they die soon. Leaves a big mess for younger people to deal with when they are themselves older so they then just push off the problem to the next generation and the vicious cycle continues till everything is bad everywhere.
> I think there are still people in the US Congress who enthusiastically supported Afghanistan and Iraq.
Nothing bad about supporting Afghanistan in itself, the problem was (the same as with Iraq...) that the US lacked a "post-invasion" plan to rebuild the nation.
"How could we have known that sending in the army would result in the country becoming a war zone?"
The fine minds in Congress have to grapple with this sort of inscrutable mystery every day. Which is why their competence is a question of the debate.
Armies and random occupations do not build thriving countries. There was never any reason to believe it would. The only time that has worked is when the US invades global superpowers like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan - more due to the locals rebuilding than the invaders. And they'd still have been better off without being invaded - armies don't build valuable things.
> The only time that has worked is when the US invades global superpowers like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan - more due to the locals rebuilding than the invaders.
The reason why Germany is where it is now is that the US sunk billions upon billions into the Marshall Plan and had shown the commitment that they would stay in the country and provide it perspective and security if it would become and stay a healthy democracy that respects the rule of law.
The US had done everything precisely opposite in Afghanistan: they marched in and got rid of the Taliban government, but they failed to enforce a rule of law in the country and instead let local warlords and other undesirables deal with that. Corruption was rife everywhere, and there was no economic perspective for the people of Afghanistan to be a somewhat self-sufficient country. Hell even after 20 years, 75% (!) of the budget was foreign aid [1].
As a result of that lack of perspective, why should the Afghani people have any respect for its "government" that barely had any shred of legitimacy? At least Iraq has natural resources.
What the West should have done in Afghanistan was to do the same thing it had done in Germany half a century before: invest in nation building, in providing the citizens a path that is not violence, poverty and crime.
Fair enough. So if the path to prosperity is massive foreign investment, why was the invasion necessary?
They could have skipped that. Spent all the money directly on the good outcome that didn't happen at all. There is - I speculate, keeping to my rather thick sarcasm - a link.
Investment -> Prosperity.
Army -> Corpses and destruction.
I recommend not sending in an army when the goal is prosperity. Invasions are sometimes clever, but they don't make the situation better for the locals. And in the case of Afghanistan it was unnecessary.
> So if the path to prosperity is massive foreign investment, why was the invasion necessary?
The problem with dictatorships of all kinds is that there are very few foreign investors willing to invest money into them. Why should anyone invest into a country that can seize your assets for no reason at all, where female staff has virtually zero rights, where there is no educated populace that can be used for work or where there isn't any industry generating income to repay investments? Most dictatorships have a barely surviving 99% and a small elite that holds the power and skims assets for their personal wealth.
It's rare that revolutions are successful even in taking down the current regime, and the few that do succeed often fail very shortly afterwards because the security services like police and military are loyal to the old leader, too corrupt to be useful, the absence of a ruling power leads to a vacuum that draws in foreign warlords or other regimes or because the prior dictatorship has looted the country's assets and stashed the profit somewhere the post-revolution government can't access it. Additionally, some revolutions also fail and become autocracies of their own due to foreign influence (e.g. the US sanctions against Cuba).
Revolutions without an external force providing basic stability are doomed to failure and suffering.
In Germany, the US made use of low-ranking Nazis during rebuilding, and in Japan they left the institutions around the Emperor intact. IIUC, doing things this way was considered the least-bad option in order to support US anti-communist policy.
I'd argue this is one of the last things people will be thinking about in this election. No one is changing their vote over this...the economy and abortion will drive this cycle.
I think you are. Your suggestion could only work well if there was a perpetual voting season. Otherwise parties will just abuse their leverage only once every four years just to get more votes.
If it was a good thing why not do it first week of office? Why did people languish in jail for months just for an inept president to buy votes for his party?
Because people have a short attention span and republicans have moved so far right that mundane things like affordable healthcare/college, providing aid to old or disabled people, providing nutritious and affordable food, ensuring that working people of all social strata can lead dignified lives, responding with empathy and evidence backed treatments to drug addiction, etc are responded to with unhinged screeds about socialism communism and fascism and groomers. So Biden needs to respond, rationally, to the propaganda that’s endemic among conservatives which results in cynically timed actions as a part of the effort to lead a nation tearing itself apart. Don’t like it? Stop voting for self interested obstructionists like McConnell, DeSantis, Sinema, manchin, mtg, etc. and don’t fan the fire with conservative dog whistles calling Biden inept when republicans have shown themselves to be shockingly tolerant of their members that routinely and flagrantly act against their stated principles while leaving the consequences of their incompetence for a democrat to clean up.
It's really hard for me to read this and not think of a child, shouting, "BUT I WANTED THE ICE CREAM AN HOUR AGO, NOT NOW! WAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
The irrationality of this sentiment, combined with your assertion that President Biden is "inept," suggests to me that your statement is entirely political, since it seems to run contrary to the facts as I observe them.
> And the start of a major inflationary move in the middle of an inflationary crisis.
Based on what evidence? The current inflation in the US was caused by both very high employment levels along with supply chain problems. Sending out unemployment checks went way down over the past few years.
People need things like UBI far more when the economy is not booming. The opposite of inflation. In a recession what you want is for people to spend money. You want to get back to normal levels of inflation.
> I’m not convinced
At the end of the day you don't need to be convinced. What matters is if all the top economists in favor of UBI are actually right or not. As machines automate more and more of the boring work we need done, there is no rational reason that people shouldn't have more leisure time and have to work far fewer hours.
Student loans provide some evidence whereby tuition rates increase as student loans flooded the college market.
Another example is hyper-low interest rates (essentially increasing money supply), which are largely responsible for the inflation of housing which is a major portion of inflation for consumers.
Therefore a better way to handle UBI (which I believe may be needed by the way) is to gradually phase it into the system to avoid shocks like giving everyone $10,000 all of a sudden. There would still be inflation, bit it would hopefully be less dramatic.
Can’t just send out checks like that so no. But also the implication here is that someone shouldn’t undertake any action that might be perceived as popular near a mid-term election, which begs the question then why would anyone be allowed to do anything popular or critical during the same time frame? Should we have a moratorium on all of these “Biden is raising your taxes” ads since we are saying it’s unfair for him to undertake a popular action?
If you think your party's policies are good then allowing your party to win elections is a sincere and principled choice. Political strategy is important and thinking otherwise is just incredibly naive.
There were plenty of other topics at hand since Biden's inauguration. I don't know I can say that the order things have been worked on is optimal but I'm glad to see this done.
A pardon does not remove anything from your record. It is about forgiving, not expunging. As for civil rights (e.g. the rights to vote or the right to bear arms), they often are state matters and a federal pardon does not grant them back.
I find the active and continued harm those people have experienced by being felons to be of far greater value to resolve than winning another election.
And if Biden and friends really wanted to serve their people, they would continually do things their populous wanted and then when election season comes, they would say “look at what we have been doing”, not “here is a crumb, pleb.”
interesting. also from that article, he openly acknowledged that he was wrong:
> Biden has backtracked since the ’80s and ’90s. Before he left the Senate to become vice president, he pushed to pull back tougher prison sentences for crack cocaine — an effort that helped lead to a law that President Barack Obama signed in 2010. And he’s recently acknowledged his mistakes.
> “I haven’t always been right,” Biden said earlier this year, speaking to criminal justice issues. “I know we haven’t always gotten things right, but I’ve always tried.” (Asked about Biden’s record, his spokesperson pointed to this speech, but did not respond to further questions.)
They are continually trying to do things that serve both their own and the Republican party's people, but the Republican parties continually fights tooth and nail against every single thing they do in order to avoid giving them a "win" even on things the Republican base overwhelmingly supports.
It's good that it's being done, but Biden's doing it, and the Republicans are opposing it every step of the way, even policies that benefit their own people, in every way they can, even and especially by lying and cheating.
But the important difference is that the Democrats are actually trying to prevent the Republicans from doing terribly unpopular stupid things that ruin people's lives and damage the economy and discriminate against minorities, like repealing Obamacare even though it is extremely popular and saves lives and money, or building a wall that is totally ineffective and extremely expensive just because the terrible idea appeals to racists.
Oh hey, by the way, about that: didn't Trump say he was going to repeal Obamacare? How did that promise go? And what about building the wall like he promised he would do so many times, but the Democrats opposed every step of the way? How did that promise go? I'm beginning to get the idea he didn't really believe in the promises he made then broke. And how about that health care plan he kept promising to reveal next week for so many years, but never did?
>Biden still deserves the criticism that he does not believe in marijuana reform and may not follow through any further.
Trump still deserves the criticism that he does not believe in repealing Obamacare or building a wall, because he did not follow through any further, and he failed miserably. He didn't even lock Hillary up like he promised, but it looks like he's going to get locked up himself for espionage. While Biden actually followed through with his promises, and he succeeded, unlike Trump. And Biden accomplished all that without even violating the espionage act or getting impeached twice like Trump did.
So do you also believe the lie that the election was stolen from Trump and he should be immediately reinstated as president so he can pardon everyone who stormed the Capitol and attacked police and spread feces in the halls of Congress and strutted around carrying Confederate flags, and that the FBI planted classified documents at Mar-a-Lago even though he refuses to state that on the record in court, but that Trump also declassified those very same classified documents that the FBI planted with his mind?
Now are you going to claim "the other side does that too" again?
Trump does deserve full credit for convincing Republicans to kill themselves off faster than Democrats. Now THAT is leadership, convincing your followers to pointlessly and painfully die tragic preventable deaths by their own foolish behavior, by 78% higher rates! No Democrat ever inspired such loyal self destructive mass suicidal behavior in their base.
>Covid death rates are higher among Republicans than Democrats, mounting evidence shows
>Lower vaccination rates among Republicans could explain the partisan gap, but some researchers say mask use and social distancing were bigger factors.
>[...] Average excess death rates in Florida and Ohio were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats between March 2020 and December 2021, according to a working paper released last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Excess deaths refers to deaths above what would be anticipated based on historical trends.
>[...] Indeed, his paper found that the partisan gap in the deaths widened between April and December 2021, after all adults became eligible for Covid vaccines. Excess death rates in Florida and Ohio were 153% higher among Republicans than Democrats during that time, the paper showed.
In summary, the Democrats are our salvation and have no faults according to your myopic response.
What about involving the United States in needless wars and now provoking a nuclear war? Or promising single payer only to provide a massive handout to private insurance companies? Or drag the country through constant investigations of political opponents based on false information from “intelligence” agencies? Or stabbing Bernie Sanders, who was the most electable candidate, in the back to support a corrupt, corporate drone, war monger candidate who just happens to be a woman?
Please take your head out of the sand and pay attention to more than the standard talking points fed to you by the main stream corporate media. It will be enlightening, but it will also be humbling. I was once in your shoes (to a much lesser degree), and it took quite some time to realize that both parties are not looking out for the rights of people other than the elite chosen ones.
I certainly didn't say anything remotely that, and if you have to put words into my mouth to argue against, you've already lost the argument and you know it.
Answer the question instead of deflecting by making shit up:
So do you also believe the lie that the election was stolen from Trump and he should be immediately reinstated as president so he can pardon everyone who stormed the Capitol and attacked police and spread feces in the halls of Congress and strutted around carrying Confederate flags, and that the FBI planted classified documents at Mar-a-Lago even though he refuses to state that on the record in court, but that Trump also declassified those very same classified documents that the FBI planted with his mind?
Or don't you want to admit that your side and your leader is batshit crazy and delusional, and there's absolutely nothing comparable on the other side? Or do you subscribe to the right-wing conspiracy theory that the mob of Trump supporters that stormed the capital and attacked police officers and set up a gallows with a noose and tried to murder the Vice President at the January 6 insurrection was actually all Antifa crisis actors?
And what the fuck is wrong with being anti-fascist anyway?
Talk about putting words in people’s mouths. It’s obvious you are a political shill and no amount of discussion will make a difference.
My suggestion is that both Democrats and Republicans are essentially the same when it comes to the critical matters for the general public. Your implying that I am a Republican who has chosen Trump as my supreme leader just because I provided some important counterpoints to demonstrate some faults of the Democrats.
Furthermore, I don’t think you know what fascism means.
I suspect you can't just "do things," there are lawyers that determine what you can do, and there are other factors (like "do you need literally everyone's vote to pass a bill through the congress" and "will it crash and fail in the senate anyways") that make these things a drag.
Same happened with the loan forgiveness, which is now being challenged in multiple courts. However, Biden doesn't have the power to push these issues through the proper process.
Do you want a state where "do more" means "more executive orders?"
If it were a sincere and principled choice, he would have done it in his first week in office.
For some reason this reminds me of the old saw about the economist and the twenty dollar bill. “The $20 on the sidewalk doesn’t exist because the efficient market guarantees that someone else would’ve already picked it up!” the economist said, while walking past the twenty dollar bill.
I think in reality politicians have schedules and priorities and the constantly shifting demands imposed on them by world events. Sometimes the things they always wanted to do get left on the back burner until election season starts to loom over the horizon. Then they actually look for these sorts of quick fixes because it can give them a little boost in the polls for something they were going to do anyway. What’s wrong with that?
"I think in reality politicians have schedules and priorities and the constantly shifting demands imposed on them by world events."
As the chief executive of the country, the job is largely delegation. Sure, there's still going to be some limit to WIP, but it doesn't look or feel that his office is close to that based on what they've accomplished or are working on.
"Then they actually look for these sorts of quick fixes because it can give them a little boost in the polls for something they were going to do anyway."
For one, it can remove the pressure to create a proper fix. We can end up with a bunch of half measures that don't fit well. There's also an argument to be made around expansive executive power usurping the voice of the people (not on polls but elected congress members) as I doubt that blanket pardons were the intent of that power. Sort of like how executive orders can be used to say how a law can be enforced, but has started to be used to flat out ignore enforcing the law. Technically legal, but feels like a loophole (similar to how you can change senate rules requiring a supermajority by a simple majority vote).
So yeah, like many things in politics, the people that agree with the result are less likely to question the method used to get there. The people that disagree with the result will question everything. But... it might be wise for all of us to start listening to the people who agree with the result but question the methods used, lest we undermine the trust or perception of legitimacy in our system of government. I think unilateral actions further the win at all costs mindset and will continue to hurt us as a nation driving us apart.
It’s better than not ever doing it, but that’s not the only alternative.
If you can’t manage to review your campaign promises until it’s time to campaign again, that gives me reason to doubt your competence or your genuineness as an executive. There are literally thousands of people working who support the President. None of them could find time to write up an executive order and put it on the agenda in the first 100 days? (Remember, they would be allowed to “cheat” and work on this before inauguration or even before the election.)
But because the frying pan is slightly more comfortable than the fire, people keep tolerating this and voting for the lesser of the evils they’re offered, so so long as this strategy is epsilon more effective than actually leading the country and aggressively delivering on your promises, we should expect to see more, not less of it. Ultimately, the voters are partially complicit in this nonsense.
I don't see how the voters are complicit in any of this.
Human beings also have their own schedules and priorities. People are more stressed out and busy than ever. Inflation is rampant due to a war in Europe that regular people (especially those outside of Europe) had no power to avoid. Every year technology and social media get ever-more complex and sophisticated, demanding more and more awareness and discipline from people to avoid collapsing into a black hole of time-wasting.
Likewise, the problems facing societies at the national level and humanity at the global level have become unbelievably technical and complicated, yet we expect voters to navigate them like experts and deliver a miracle in the voting both? How has this idea not become widely seen for what it is: an absurd fantasy.
When voters accept “I’ll accept nonsense and still vote for whatever ‘my’ party puts in front of me”, eventually (over decades), they bear some non-zero responsibility for the outcome they get.
Not really. His promise was to build the wall AND make Mexico pay for it.
At one point congress agreed to give him almost $6 Billion to build the wall and he turned it down, never to be in that position again. If he wanted to build the wall he could have accepted that $6 billion or negotiated in good faith.
Also, his desire to build the wall was never a principled argument. "Build the wall and make Mexico pay for it" tested well with his audience so his campaign jumped on it (which was smart).
But to act like it wasn't strategic politicking from the beginning is not correct. Not to say that Biden's pardons are not politicking (they are). Just saying Trump and Biden are the same (and every other politician) when it comes to things like this.
> In January 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13767, which formally directed the U.S. government to begin wall construction along the U.S.–Mexico border using existing federal funding.[5] After a political struggle for funding, including an appropriations lapse resulting in a government shutdown for 35 days, and the declaration of a national emergency, construction started in 2018.
...
> Initially, on January 20, 2021, newly inaugurated U.S. president Joe Biden terminated the national emergency and halted construction of the wall,[6][15][16] but the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security later hinted that the construction of the wall may continue under Biden's administration.
...
> In March 2017, the Trump administration submitted an amendment for fiscal year 2017 that includes a $3 billion continuing budget for "border security and immigration enforcement". Trump's FY 2018 Budget Blueprint increases discretionary funds for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by $2.8 billion (to $44.1 billion).[82][83] The DHS Secretary John F. Kelly told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee during a hearing the Budget Blueprint "includes $2.6 billion for high-priority border security technology and tactical infrastructure, including funding to plan, design and construct the border wall".[82]
> In July 2017, U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Austin, Texas, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives would seek to pass a special supplemental appropriations bill to spend money on initial construction of the wall, a demand of the Trump administration.[84][85] Such a supplemental spending bill was supported by then-House Speaker Paul Ryan.[85] However, _SENATE DEMOCRATS EXPRESSED CONFIDENCE THAT THEY CAN BLOCK AN APPROPRIATIONS BILL FOR WALL CONSTRUCTION_, with the aid of some Republicans who also oppose the construction of a wall due to its enormous cost.
...
> From December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019, the federal government was partially shut down due to Trump's declared intention to veto any spending bill that did not include $5 billion in funding for a border wall.
...
> In February 2019, Congress amended an existing appropriations bill, adding language that specifically prohibits new funding from being used to build border barriers at several sites, including the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, the La Lomita Historical park, the National Butterfly Center, and the area "within or east of" the Vista del Mar Ranch tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.[116][117] Soon afterwards, however, Trump declared a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States, which the administration claimed invalidated the restrictions imposed by Congress.
...
> Construction progressed during the final year of the Trump administration, including the filing of land condemnation actions in court and the issuing of waivers.
These kind of arguments (and people who are so blinded to the harm of politicizing every action) are why we'll probably lose abortion rights by the end of the decade. American Democrats are playing checkers and are satiated by scraps
The system is best where moral actions emerge from rational self interest. E.g., being trustworthy is moral but also good for business. We want systems like that.
Not necessarily. A politician doing the right thing for reasons of principal and ignoring elections could result in a loss of power for the entire party. If those who gain power are truly evil then what you've done is lost sight of a far bigger "right thing" by insisting on being principled in every small action. Political naivety is a very poor excuse for doing a "right thing" that eventually causes great harm. Especially for an experienced politician.
Tell me you don't understand politics without telling me you don't understand politics. If he had done it in his first week in office we would have all forgotten by now and the republicans could sour the pot drastically in the intervening two years.
By doing it now, he gains broad appeal going into an election season so that he is potentially enabled to enact more beneficial policies down the line. Never forget that the republican party is working against the interests of the people and the party that opposes them and will do whatever they can to twist public perception to their side. Being purely sincere and principled means getting routed by people who work against your sincerity without any regard for principle.
It can be both a sincere and principled choice and an action taken based on careful political calculation. In fact, I'd say that if it really were sincere and principled, it should be as calculated as possible for maximum beneficial effect.
Jimmy Carter was so principled he served one term. He was such an honest man and a poor leader that GRRM cited him as an inspiration for his thought process behind Game of Thrones.
Being a good man doesn’t get you re elected. Reality is harsh and unforgiving.
Biden signed 30 executive orders his first week in office. In everything from climate change to the pandemic. Not sure anyone remembers but that was a big deal back in 2021.
We’ve wanted this for 50 years, Biden getting it done in under 2 years isn’t too shabby. Was it for political reasons? I hope so! It would be nice for the politically expedient thing to start lining up with what’s actually right and what people want for a change. As Milton Friedman used to say, “I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.”
Honest question: isn't it a stroke of the pen that then must be executed? The proclamation is a very short read and what I got from it is that now things need to be "administered" and "developed" and "reviewed". Maybe these things require a little more coordination, planning and capacity than you're suggesting?
False. If you look at his student loan forgiveness plan, it was immediately challenged in the courts. And when he tried to suspend family separation at the border, it was challenged in the courts. And he's been fighting to change DACA rules for 2 years straight, in the courts.
Biden can't just write whatever he wants.. He needs to get legal opinions, and structure the order so it complies with existing law, to ensure it withstands challenges.
The idea that he can just waltz into the oval office and start writing his wish list on paper.. and have everything completed the first week of his presidency is a simplistic and naive view of how the presidency works, and the restrictions we place on the office. It contributes to the erroneous view that some have, that the president is some sort of king.
Federal criminal pardons are a plenary power of the executive and aren't judicially reviewable. It's a specific constitutional provision and unlike executive orders.
It has generally been up the the DEA. When it came time to schedule MDMA it was actually challenged in court by psychologists and psychiatrists along with scientists. The judge recommended a lower scheduling. The DEA said "fuck you" to the judge, petitioners, and the American people and made it schedule 1
It’s up to Congress to make the law. Congress frequently assigns some of that power to agencies, and the courts get to review whether the agencies are following any applicable laws.
Just because a pardon can technically be signed quickly and unilaterally doesn't mean that it's pragmatic or wise to do so. As people have pointed out, there's nuances and technicalities, e.g. not applying to undocumented immigrants, that were likely researched and internally debated to limit unforeseen unintended consequences.
And of course, pardons still cost political capital. We all saw how much Biden's people struggled with covid response and getting bills passed -- all of that would be worse if there were fallout from a problematic mass pardon
I don't think it's possible to challenge a presidential pardon. Challenging distributing funds by presidential order is something very different - power of the purse constitutionally is in legislature's hands, and taking it from there, even in the current "anything goes" climate, is a pretty serious deviation. OTOH, the power of pardon has always been with the President and nobody would question it. There were some questionable pardons, for sure, but nobody doubts Biden can do it. There's no need for legal opinions to establish such right - it's long established.
But a poorly executed mass pardon can harm Biden's presidential popularity, which is highly correlated to getting laws passed by Congress. Skimming the contents of this academic book [0], it doesn't look like there has been a major mass pardon in the 20th century other than Carter's?
There have been large state mass pardons recently, but most of those are of a different political beast -- i.e. at the end of a term, and are (usually, I assume) on a case-by-case basis, i.e. 500 individually researched cases, not all 500 felony drug users. And that has its own political problems that aren't relevant to Biden's situation
I imagine there would be some cases where a real hardcore criminal was imprisoned for simple possession because that's the only thing they could get to stick, and releasing such people probably will prove unpopular. However, I estimate the large percentage of people who are convicted only on simple possession aren't hardcore criminals, and thus there may not be any large negative consequence from this. OTOH, Biden runs with the crowd that literally called for abolishing the police a while ago, and succeeded in reducing the police budgets and significantly hindering its function in some major cities. If he's not concerned about that, there's no reason for him to be concerned about the effects of the pardon either.
Biden showed sympathy toward "Defund/Abolish" protesters, but never endorsed their movements. And by virtually every metric, he's increased federal dollars for local police:
> I imagine there would be some cases where a real hardcore criminal was imprisoned for simple possession because that's the only thing they could get to stick, and releasing such people probably will prove unpopular.
No matter how popular and light a blanket pardon initiative, political rivals will always blame the president/governor if any of the pardoned do something bad, even if it's a statistical certainty that at least 1/1000 people will get arrested for a crime.
I'm sure the Biden people sussed out the numebrs and tradeoff, e.g. there's not a lot of simple possession convicts, but it's a lot less politically risky to do a bulk pardon for them.
> It's a stroke of a pen. There's no process or negotiation involved; he just methodically slow-walked it for electoral considerations.
Right, my point is that while you bemoan what this says about Biden, I am encouraged about what this says about the electorate. Who would have thought that this would be a politically savvy move 10 years ago? I will gladly take every other October becoming “get rid of laws we should have gotten rid of 50 years ago” month.
I cannot wait until someone says that future President X doesn’t really believe in copyright and patent reform, and that they’re only strengthening fair use protections and eliminating software patents because it’ll help them in the future election.
You know things take time, he didn’t inherit the Whitehouse in’s a very organised way?
Motivation is a factor too? Who cares if he was motivated by the election, he did a good thing, he could’ve tried to rile everyone up and start a new war on drugs or something similar.
He gave people a break for something which should never be criminal.
I’m motivated to work, mostly by money, the chance of a bonus and all that the money I earn brings me, I’m not a bad person for this. Sometimes I take the money and donate it too, this is similar in my opinion.
It's literally a choice for Biden to make this an issue and successfully execute on it. But I don't know how it could be "principled" by your standards. For most of his career, Biden has outright opposed the legalization of marijuana, and still has health concerns about it. By the end of 2020, he and the Democratic party made decriminalization part of the party platform, i.e. he made a policy change right before the election, so even if he had the power to decriminalize on the first day of office, wouldn't you still cynically accuse him of doing it only for election reasons?
But in any case, while Biden made the promise to pursue decriminalization, that was never his main thing. I think he should've done it by end of 2021. But seeing how difficult and surprising it was for him to execute on his bigger plans, e.g. infrastructure, clean act, and student loan forgiveness -- it's possible that pushing for pot reform would have sidelined one of his bigger priorities. I don't see how perceptions of "sincerity" obviously outweigh the virtue of actually getting it done.
Right. I dont get the criticism. He's up for a performance review, and he's delivering on the promises he made when he was hired.
I think the real problem that some people have is that they were hoping to reduce the power of the Democrats in the next election, and they dont like that this is a clearly popular move supported by the majority of americans.
If politicians always did the popular things at the beginning of their term they would be far less likely to be voted back in. Unfortunately the news cycle and therefore the voting public has a short memory.
It does suck a bit that the system incentivizes being strategic with the timing of key decisions, but politicians who didn't do so would be hurting their chances of reelection.
I would agree, but I think it is important to remember that people have very short memories, so doing it then may not benefit the election now.
The implication is that the best choice is to steadily do things like this, so the benefits are always forward in our minds. The issue is more just one off events not really matching our goals or expectations, I think.
> If it were a sincere and principled choice, he would have done it in his first week in office. Like Carter with his Vietnam pardons in January 1977.
I'm no fan of presidents in general, and especially not ones who forget what they're saying mid-sentence. But isn't it worth noting Biden has historically been pretty anti-drug, he introduced the RAVE Act[0] FFS. Maybe it took some convincing to change his attitude towards marijuana laws?
The Hunter Biden story exists and you think that family is what, a-political?
It was like the people that watched Obama make a political agreement with Hillary Clinton to get her to stop running against him and then were dismayed when he was mostly just another politician.
I'm cynical about politics--it's generally the most correct way to understand the behavior of various actors. But I don't think that's the case here, and my counterexample is student loan forgiveness. Biden's philosophically opposed to blanket forgiveness, even though it would almost certainly cement Democratic Party dominance among millennials and thus the country for the foreseeable future. He just won't do it, because he thinks it's unfair. That's a sincere and principled choice, whether you agree with it or not, despite the clear political gains.
Not an American here, but given the current state of US democracy I would argue that the less fascist party would be utterly stupid to pass on a chance at populism just to be fair towards an opposing party who openly calls for the shooting of your members and has prooved it will itself stretch every rule (even the ones they self spouted before) to e.g. put in their supreme court picks.
You cannot play it "fair" with fascists and expect your nation to stay a democracy — at least not on such a minor level. And I am not a fan of the Democrats myself, but as an Austrian living in Germany I learned enough about the Nazi rise to power to know where this is heading.
If you didn't have the Dollar, you'd be neck deep in fascism already.
I wouldn't say upset. I like this move and it should have been done long ago. However, knowing that he waited until now to play this card shows that he doesn't care in the slightest for those rotting in prison, he simply wanted to buy votes. All politicians might do it, but it still seems to me a perfectly valid reason to hate nearly all politicians.
Nobody is being released from prison. The White House said that there’s currently nobody in federal prison solely for “simple possession”, which is what is being pardoned
This. No one is getting released from prison because of this decision. It has been worded in such a way that makes it sound like it will have far more impact, which is of course intentional and political.
That’s my frustration with all the political moves in this timing category. Translation:
I know what the people need and want but I’m not going to do it because I serve corporations, except once every two years when I need to appear to care.
Some of Biden's first executive actions were environmental and the US oil industry has been highly critical of him. That doesn't fit your narrative of only serving corporations except near elections.
I could argue canceling Keystone XL was a gift to the saudis disguised as care about the environment. It’s not like delaying these permits does anything to curb oil demand or net production.
I’m extremely cynical when it comes to almost any of these people in DC, there’s always an agenda, always an ulterior motive, and the People are rarely served and last priority.
You have Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders types who appear to actually care and believe what they say but they’re ineffective even for those who agree with their positions.
> It’s not like delaying these permits does anything to curb oil demand or net production.
Sure, one action in isolation does nothing. But you cherry picked one thing he did and took it out of the context of all the other things he did. Both early things and more recent executive actions. Tell the entire story and that early action looks entirely different.
> People are rarely served and last priority.
The US has one of the highest living standards in the world. I'm not saying there's no room for improvement. But lots of good laws are passed without an agenda other than the goals of the law itself. There's no need for extreme cynicism. What we need is less cynicism and more people exercising their right to vote.
> they’re ineffective even for those who agree with their positions.
No one who impacts the national discourse in such a visible and lasting way can be said to be ineffective. Sanders, along with the help of others, has shifted the Democratic party from right central to almost central. That's highly effective.
I mean this with all due respect but you sound very naive IMHO. The Democratic party is as corporatist and right as it has ever been. Voting for either major party will do nothing to solve the problem as has been proven by a study from Princeton on this, which is summed up wonderfully in these graphs:
> Basically your vote almost doesn’t matter at all.
That's an easily disprovable claim based on recent history. Roe v. Wade would not have been turned over if Hillary had been appointing SC Justices instead of Trump appointing them. You're far too cynical.
> Perhaps there would be other poor decisions made by the Hillary judges that mitigates the Roe v Wade decision.
Sure. Bad stuff might happen no matter what choices you make. You've described cynicism in a nutshell. That adds nothing to this conversation.
Progressive leaning judges do not have a history of taking away basic human rights. The reason people lost a basic human right that was protected for decades is because of a shift in the makeup of the Supreme Court. That shift happened due to who was elected as president. Which proves that elections and who you vote for does matter.
There's very strong chances a lot of us share little with an old rich powerful white man, expecting decisions to all come out of beliefs and care would be difficult.
Biden has been in politics for 52 years. Has he ever, at any point in his long political career, shown any concern whatsoever for the plight of non-violent minor drug offenders until five minutes ago when it became politically expedient for him?
This is a genuine question, I'd love to be proved wrong.
How can you be proved wrong about a genuine question? You're making a claim, not asking a question. In which case, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. We aren't going to do your research for you.
> Has he ever, at any point in his long political career, shown any concern whatsoever for the plight of non-violent minor drug offenders until five minutes ago
I'm usually not the one to praise Biden, but here he's doing the right thing, and well within his rights. Yes, the timing is obviously related to the elections, but that's how the politics is played - you do things that the voters want, you get the votes. If the other guys wanted to do it first, they had plenty of opportunity. They didn't - well, if you lose the ball and the other team scores, then that's the game, you can be sad if you team is losing but nothing against the rules has happened.
A lot of people don’t live in the real world and see themselves as greedy actors like they should. Most people are when you get down to brass tacks. I’m 35 and can count on one hand the number of truly saintly people that I’ve met who would give everything almost to save a stranger. Politicians are people and they are calculating, I’m good he did it whether or not it was altruistic or political survival and I hope he does more of it. I know that Trump and most republicans never would have done this.
because trump was in office and didn't do it? I get why say george w bush didn't do it, but trump was in office when public opinion had already changed enough.
This. I think marijuana should be illegal (but at the state level) but this seems to me like a smart move politically. Doing popular things to get votes is a good thing. That’s kind of the whole theory of democracy.
I don’t believe in the concept of “victimless crimes.” Society should enforce moral standards and help people make good decisions. Why do you need marijuana? It doesn’t seem necessary to me. Maybe for legitimate medical uses.
Edit: To respond to the dead comment below, I think banning alcohol would probably be a good thing. Alcohol exacts a terrible toll on women and children. It’s no surprise, then, that the first thing American women did with the right to vote was ban alcohol. Alcohol is banned in my home country, and many others.
That said, I’m afraid it’s too deeply embedded in western culture to make banning alcohol a realistic possibility. But just because that’s true, how does that justify legalizing and normalizing the new vice of drug use?
What moral standards? And more interestingly whose moral standards? What moral rule is violated by allowing vice, or what utility function is reduced?
If you don't establish such axiomatic foundations in conversations about morality, you're doomed to just talk past each other. For example, I treat free will and empathy as axiomatic goods. I don't like being told what to do, and I don't like harm coming to others. By extension, others having their free will suppressed is bad, but not axiomatically bad in so much as it can cause greater suppression of the freedom of others.
Under such a framework, it should be pretty obvious why I would oppose prohibition. If someone does something that in of itself does not harm others, then that thing is at worst ethically neutral, and thus there is no good to offset the ethical evil of interceding in them doing it. On the other hand, if someone is attempting to kill someone else, or enslave someone else, or otherwise suppress the other's ability to be free, then preventing that by any means necessary is a moral good.
So what are YOUR axioms that you are operating off of? What base assumptions underlie your "moral standards"?
As I said, it might be impractical in a society where alcohol use and abuse is deeply ingrained in the culture. It works just fine in for example Muslim countries where there are social taboos to back up the law.
My point is that, even if alcohol prohibition is impractical in a western country, that’s not a reason to normalize and legalize a new and different vice.
To my knowledge, very few people want marijuana to be completely unregulated. Most seem to be very okay with an aggressive tax and regulation structure, in exchange for legal purchase.
In other words: regulation does not itself justify criminalization.
Aggressive taxes create a black market for goods. To protect the tax revenue the govt must be aggressive about prosecuting unlicensed operators who do not pay taxes. This is counter to the social politics of wanting to end the war on drugs.
As a compromise the govt heavily taxes legal businesses while allowing the black market to thrive with minimal punishment. C’est la vie.
This isn't a uniform truth about taxes, even aggressive ones: the evidence so far around marijuana legalization has been than consumers have been more than happy to pay high taxes, because the net cost of marijuana is still similar to or lower than the pre-legal cost.
We might eventually see a variant of tax stamp fraud for marijuana, the way some states do for cigarettes. But that's just the nature of these things, like you said, and I think the general trend is a "win," in terms of eliminating WoD policies.
It doesn't have to be an either-or. To be clear, I'm not personally advocating that marijuana be illegal, just answering the earlier comment that was arguing that use of marijuana affects nobody but the user, which can sometimes be true but is definitely not always true, and that is one of the main the bases for substance regulation.
The fact that how substances are regulated is irregular and inconsistent is a separate issue from whether or not it's ok for a society to regulate some substances.
I'm an advocate for the legalization of all drugs, but that it should be taxed and regulated as well.
All drug use has risks, including cannabis. But it's been so demonized in the past there's a natural reaction to sweep all concerns away because almost all of them are garbage. Reasonable regulation would be that it's not sold to minors, and that its active ingredients be accurately noted, and that the transaction is taxed appropriately.
It should be legal to sell fentanyl but not as an adulterant. Most of these opioid deaths are due to fentanyl and if they had access to regulated drugs those deaths would be greatly diminished.
My brother died of a heroin overdose many years ago, and I think he might be alive today if the drug he was abusing was at least calibrated for dosage. Maybe not. But it being illegal did not protect him or any of the others lost in the war on drugs.
The bar for "affects others" is extremely low in society.
Unless there's a very clear study, that a certain substance will cause an average human being to be aggressive, belligerent and violent - there's hardly a case for "affects others".
What do you mean by irregular or inconsistent? That some substances extremely harmful to society are loosely regulated while mostly innocuous ones put people in prison? That is troublesome. But if you mean variation by state, I think that is normal and should be moreso. I like my content labels, but I don't understand why the protection of interstate commerce means the FDA gets to tell my doctor which drugs they can prescribe for which conditions. Federal prohibition of alcohol required an amendment. The federal prohibition on any substance for any reason should require the same. There are plenty of items that are contraband in one state but not the next, that is no reason to ignore explicit limits on federal power.
Also being realistic, anyone who’s ever ever ever smoked weed in their life can tell you honestly it does not impair your ability to drive even 10% close to being drunk. yes it’s an anecdote, but it’s genuinely the truth.
This is... not my experience with marijuana. I couldn't imagine driving while high. I don't even like walking while I'm high because my balance and reaction times get really messed up.
As I noted elsewhere, I'm not at all arguing in favor of marijuana being illegal (personally, I don't care about it, and agree that if we care about how substance usage affects others, marijuana is not the highest priority).
Pretty sure that part of the phenomenon of people getting paranoid from being stoned has to do with the prosecution in the first place, the drug enhancing this perception or not.
No, the reason why Roe vs Wade is gone is because of a focused, well-funded mobilization campaign in legal interpretation, legal scholarship, and funding of judge careers in order to turn the judicial system into a tool for subverting popular progressive sentiment.
an activist tool court would have made a 3-part legislative like framework for banning abortion nationwide.
it didn't do that, it returned the question to the legislatures.
I can agree that is disruptive, and dangerous for actual individuals, because the legislature never reached consensus. I can agree that several of the justices lied in their confirmation hearings for the goal of applying logic to an abortion case. I can also agree that its a job for the legislatures.
I’m aware of the ultimate goal of the people that approached it this way - find the most compliant way to get their way - I think that way was unguarded because the democrats are barely even competing. But it is disingenuous to focus on the idea that its an odd ruling when it isn't. Its near the average of time that cases get overturned, not an improbable reality, and the reasoning wasn't a stretch of the imagination at all if you actually read it.
I don't even see how that observation needs to look like a partisan perspective. So many legal journals have pointed out how odd and shaky Roe and Casey were, for Supreme Court rulings, for decades. People just didn't want to have that conversation and now its been hoisted on them after generations.
Interesting, because the way I see it, almost the exact same thing can be said of the original roe v wade decision- the result of a focused campaign for promoting progressive sentiment.
With the recent decision, we can see where it goes back to e.g. the creation of the Federalist Society in 1982, how nearly every conservative Supreme Court nominee since Scalia has been a member (Roberts is disputed but the other 5 current justices are, as were Scalia and Bork), and how some very clever and/or very dirty procedural maneuvering resulted in the conservative majority on the Supreme Court today.
Did that happen with the Burger court that decided Roe? A quick check suggests that of the 9 justices on the Burger court, 4 were nominated by Nixon, 2 by Eisenhower, and 1 each by FDR, JFK, and LBJ. I really have no idea, I'm sure there were plenty of politics involved with all of those as well but I tend to think justices of this era were nominated more on merit than ideology.
Roe v. Wade was based on something other than the Constitution. We can tell this because the Constitution simply doesn't talk about abortion and the right to privacy used as a justification is suspiciously focused on only abortions to the exclusion of most other things. Eg, apparently it didn't extend to communication, other medical procedures more broadly (eg, topically, vaccination status), financial transactions, web browsing habits, etc. And the Supreme Court of today felt confident overturning it on the basis that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.
There also wasn't broad-based community support either, otherwise the court wouldn't have needed to step in to override the legislature.
So there must have been something happening ideologically that allowed and convinced these judges to make the decision. Whether we call that thing a 'pressure campaign' or not is political, but there was something going on.
> Roe v. Wade was based on something other than the Constitution.
No, it was not. If you read the decision, it is very clearly based on the 14th amendment:
A state criminal abortion statute of the current Texas type, that excepts from criminality only a life-saving procedure on behalf of the mother, without regard to pregnancy stage and without recognition of the other interests involved, is violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
— Roe, 410 U.S. at 164.
> the Constitution simply doesn't talk about abortion
It doesn't have to, and it's silly to suggest that it needs to. The 9th amendment, in particular, states this clearly.
> the right to privacy used as a justification is suspiciously focused on only abortions to the exclusion of most other things
It is not suspicious. The Court was asked to rule on the Constitutionality of Texas' abortion law. That law was focused on abortions. The Court does not decide a law is unconstitutional for a particular reason, then proactively apply that reason to every other extant law it can find. Honestly, the group upset about Roe would be frothing at the mouth were that to have happened.
> felt confident overturning it on the basis that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion
That was the Dobbs decision, yes. I don't think confidence enters into it, at least not in the way you're suggesting. There's no rubric or success criteria with a SCOTUS decision, and no accountability; justices are not worried about whether they can make a decision or not. They make the decisions they make, based on a vote of the opinions of the people on the Court at the time.
The only confidence that comes into play is where you know you have an unassailable majority and can do what you want.
> also wasn't broad-based community support either
Like there is today? The majority of people in the US today think Roe/Casey should have been left alone. That is as close to a fact as we can have, polling shows it clearly. If you think this decision is popular and what most people wanted, you're living in a bubble.
> So there must have been something happening ideologically that allowed and convinced these judges to make the decision.
Of course, but not in some shady conspiratorial way. The legal reasoning used to decide Roe was not new, it was not invented for that case, and has been applied in a variety of ways both before and since. I'm sure you know about all the sex and marriage related cases - Griswold, Obergefell, Loving v. Virginia, etc. Do you know that substantive due process was also used to protect parents' right to send their kids to private school (Pierce v. Society of Sisters)? Or teach them a foreign language (Meyer v. Nebraska)? There are plenty of other examples.
I am honestly astonished that people are trying to frame Roe as a decision made under duress, or the result of some third party manipulation. It just wasn't. There's no evidence of it. Please, convince me Richard Nixon was somehow manipulated into nominating Harry Blackmun, a very liberal jurist who wrote the majority opinion for Roe. Richard Nixon, who campaigned on law and order, and made 'conservative retrenchment in the court' part of his platform. Roe was decided 7-2! Republican presidents nominated 6 of those justices!
---
I'm interested in some unbiased commentary on the Federalist Society stance on things, if such commentary exists. When I read about textualism and originalism, I come away thinking these are the Calvinists of constitutional law: the word is the word, it is true and inerrant, and the writer's intent is meaningless as they were merely a conduit for the truth. IMO this is dangerous, and we've already seen why.
> No, it was not. If you read the decision, it is very clearly based on the 14th amendment:
Yes, but as the Supreme Court has since pointed out that was a flawed and incorrect understanding of the 14th amendment. To the point where the current justices felt it reasonable to go back and overturn the decision. And it seems to be quite hard to support the original decision with quotes from the constitution, as people aren't doing that.
I mean, the key part of the text is what? "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."? If we can go from that to "abortions are a right", then we can go literally anywhere. It is logically and practically a non-sequitur, especially in context of other stuff that the government does like military drafts or interference in people's other medical choices.
Not to say I'd be unhappy if "liberty" automatically meant a total autonomy over one's own body. I think that would be a great standard! But we just came through COVID and it is obvious that isn't where the standard is.
> Like there is today? The majority of people in the US today think Roe/Casey should have been left alone. That is as close to a fact as we can have, polling shows it clearly.
It is pretty obvious the current situation is also the result of a focused campaign for promoting state control of abortion legislation. I don't think there is much controversy over that particular part of the story.
see comment by throwawayacc2 - This is essentially what I am referring to.
I'll admit it is much more nebulous than what you are referring to, but the Roe v Wade decision came from a philosophical school that fundamentally undermines the purpose of the supreme court in the first place, which is to interpret the constitution. Roe v Wade was an outlandish interpretation that wrote content into the constitution that was not there to begin with. -e.g. the decision was ideologically driven and justified, not driven by the actual text of the constitution.
No, there doesn't exist anything comparable to the infrastructure of the conservative judicial system. Wealthy progressive individuals hiding behind multiple corporations were not writing affidavits to roe v wade pretending to be multiple people. That strategy didn't exist until much later. Similarly, the decades-long funding of legal scholarship to prevent progressive legislation has no progressive comparison of equal maturity. There is no comparison to the size and influence of the Federalist Society in the funding of the careers of politically-motivated law students into politically-biased judges.
The progressive equivalent is the long march through the institutions. There absolutely was an organised “progressive” drive to increase their ideological base. And yes. The same long march is now happening from the other side. Progress is not always in the direction you like.
Long march through the institutions is a thing made up by a German student activist and has no known organizational heft beyond this. The article itself cannot name a single organization or achievement under this strategy. The Federalist Society is well-documented, in was founded in and organizes within the country we're talking about, hosts multiple conventions with close ties to conservative Supreme Court members, who have known to attend and give speeches advocating for extreme political interpretation, and who has been repeatedly reported to be the de facto gatekeeper for opportunities to judicial and legal positions under Republican government.
I don't think you can exonerate the democratic establishment who ran campaigns and funding drives on the back of protecting Roe while also doing literally nothing legislatively for nearly half a century (including periods where they controlled both legislative and executive branches).
Nothing the conservatives done was done in secret. The democratic establishment's inaction cannot be excused.
is this since it wasn’t done 10 years ago, does that mean we can no longer do it, ever?
is this because theyre doing something the citizens will be happy with? shouldn’t we be celebrating that?
i’d much rather they do things to actually earn votes rather than this incessant gross slimy “vote for me because i’m not them” garbage so many modern politicians engage in constantly.
id absolutely OmgSoMuch prefer to finally be able to vote _for_ someone rather than voting _against_ someone else. earn my vote with material actions that make our lives better.
Note: The vast majority of people arrested for marijuana possession are not charged Federally. This only applies to the Federal charges specified, Biden can't do anything about the State level charges most people are charged with.
>Second, I am urging all Governors to do the same with regard to state offenses. Just as no one should be in a Federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either.
Even if he only has power to issue pardons at the federal level, this sort of measure has plenty of value as a symbolic gesture. It kind of signals a mentality shift.
He's forgiving student debt without doing free college, and pardoning those convicted of simple possession without preventing somebody tomorrow from being arrested for simple possession.
Has he made sure that people with drug convictions are eligible for student loans? That seems like a conjunction of the two things that he's half-assed. If he hasn't, there's no one in the administration that actually cares about this, it's just pure midterm pandering.
> This letter provides information about the early implementation of the FAFSA Simplification Act's removal of Selective Service and drug conviction requirements for Title IV eligibility, as well as actions that institutions must take as these changes are implemented in phases across award years 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024. Certain other aspects of the law being implemented are discussed in separate communications.
> and pardoning those convicted of simple possession without preventing somebody tomorrow from being arrested for simple possession.
He is also directing the AG and Secretary of HHS is reexamine the scheduling of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act which is the process in law which is needed to change the legal regime applicable to it without Congressional action.
He’s not a dictator who can rewrite law at a whim.
The student debt changes are substantial even if it's not free college. The more important part of the package is the changes to the terms of repayment:
From the press release[1]:
Make the student loan system more manageable for current and future borrowers by:
Cutting monthly payments in half for undergraduate loans. The Department of Education is proposing a new income-driven repayment plan that protects more low-income borrowers from making any payments and caps monthly payments for undergraduate loans at 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income—half of the rate that borrowers must pay now under most existing plans. This means that the average annual student loan payment will be lowered by more than $1,000 for both current and future borrowers.
Fixing the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program by proposing a rule that borrowers who have worked at a nonprofit, in the military, or in federal, state, tribal, or local government, receive appropriate credit toward loan forgiveness. These improvements will build on temporary changes the Department of Education has already made to PSLF, under which more than 175,000 public servants have already had more than $10 billion in loan forgiveness approved.
This perhaps by far the bigger set of changes because it ensures the terms of remaining and future loans remain serviceable and proportionate to the actual earning potential of the recipient, which is half the problem with the system (at least if you simply must run it this way).
The student loan system is not the real problem, and it's less of a problem now than before Obama (one of the few things that he did good on imo.) The problem is how expensive college is, not these games with paperwork.
He could expand funding for colleges, or create more of them, so they have to compete on prices. This would benefit everybody instead of the minority that signed up for bad loans.
I'm not constitutional lawyer, but those sound like things only the legislature can do, which is beyond his control. The things he has done are things the executive has in it's power.
I have a firm belief that presidents should be accomplishing these things in the legislature through party discipline and direct appeals to voters to help him rid himself of specific legislators, of either party, that are standing in the way of things that have overwhelming popular support.
Instead, they just throw treats to their base when they're in trouble. Treats that are written on water. If I hear another thing about the Dreamers.
People keep saying that he can't do anything because he's not a dictator. He can't do anything because he doesn't believe in it, and even if he did doesn't have any ideological standards for his Congressional party that would ever get him majority support for anything that doesn't have lobbying checks behind it.
> I have a firm belief that presidents should be accomplishing these things in the legislature through party discipline and direct appeals to voters to help him rid himself of specific legislators
That’s exactly what he just did with the pardons. He’s signaling to voters that he wants to legalize it and needs the right partners in Congress to make it happen. From your other comments I don’t get the impression you’re open to discussing the implications so much as you just want to complain about Biden.
He doesn't need congress to "legalize it" he only needs the DEA and FDA to unscheduled it. He can do that as expeditiously as he likes with an executive order.
Wait, genuinely confused here. Do we really want the president to make unilateral executive moves overriding the existing organizations with actual experts on how to do things? Isn't that kind of bad and dictatorial? Weren't these organizations originally created because the president isn't an expert in drugs and therefore should have a fleet of drug experts with the authority to make decisions?
Wow, that is certainly moving the goal posts faster than QAnon and make me question why on earth would we trust the same experts that have a history of lying. God I remember the propaganda they spewed years ago about marijuana making my testicles shrink and that it was a gateway to meth.
Ah the "expert fallacy." No, there are very few "experts." Mostly just career deep-staters or unelected-bureaucrats or whatever else you want to call them. Just look at the great results we've gotten so far from the "fleet of drug experts."
I mean yeah I think the FDA, CDC, NIH, OSHA, EPA etc. have done some really awesome shit compared to when we didn't have them. The EPA in particular is doing such a good job moneyed lobbyists are preemtively trying to cut off their ability to regulate emissions.
Yeah that opioid epidemic was some "really awesome shit." What would we ever do without the FDA and their regulatory capture in the pharma-industrial complex?
I mean frankly the opioid epidemic could only be discovered because of organizations like the CDC tracking stuff like this, so yeah that's pretty awesome. Remember that before we had organizations like the CDC and the FDA things like opioids had no regulation at all. These aren't perfect organizations and we should always be critical and pushing them to do better, but it is also vitally important to acknowledge they are worth having around at all.
> presidents should be accomplishing these things in the legislature through party discipline and direct appeals to voters to help him rid himself of specific legislators
And how, exactly, do you propose he do that, given the current political landscape in the US?
Congress is gridlocked. Incumbents almost never lose their seats. The people who care enough to vote and support the issues are already voting as hard as they can.
This announcement? This is him doing what he can, both in terms of his legal ability to change things, as the chief executive, and in terms of using the bully pulpit, making clear where his and his administrations' priorities lie.
Basically, it sounds like you're saying "if the President can't force the legislation he wants to materialize and get through a Congress that is historically dysfunctional, that means he doesn't really care about the issue."
> And how, exactly, do you propose he do that, given the current political landscape in the US?
This can always be an excuse. Things can't be done because they can't be done. The fact is that he's giving speeches about how much he hates China and Russia, and not about legalizing pot.
He's also one of the engineers of the shitty situation that we're in, he's had an abusively and militantly anti-drug pol his entire career, so I'm not ever going to be convinced by this woe is me lark. He's not doing his best, he's being pushed (if he's even being adequately informed.) The best case scenario is that some people in his administration think that drug law reform is important, either morally or politically. There is no scenario in which the actual Biden is sympathetic towards drug users, or regretful of the lives that he personally contributed to ruining over drugs.
> how, exactly, do you propose he do that
The answer is do politics. If he doesn't know how to do politics, it would be better if someone else were doing the job.
> he's had an abusively and militantly anti-drug pol his entire career
Ok sure, not only that, but he is the president who has the least number of spare brain cells to devote to an issue that he opposes on principle.
And yet of all the presidents we've had in the past 4 decades, it wasn't the B-movie star, nor the frat boy, not the draft dodger(s), nor the iconoclast reality TV star, nor even our first and only Black president -- but Biden the Old Catholic who actually got this seemingly simple reform with simple possession of pot.
As you said, he's the guy with the least reason and capacity to get it done, and yet here we are. How are you managing to complain that what he did was so simple and miniscule, and yet no one else came close to doing it?
> The best case scenario is that some people in his administration think that drug law reform is important, either morally or politically. There is no scenario in which the actual Biden is sympathetic towards drug users, or regretful of the lives that he personally contributed to ruining over drugs.
I wouldn't be too sure that Biden had staff more devoted toward drug reform than Obama [0]. But I guess you're stuck with that position since you can't fathom that Biden personally pushed for reform. So how did Biden end up with this successful drug reform team, just random chance? If Biden is so stridently anti-drug, so absolutely useless toward pushing reform as you think he must be, then how did that not trickle down to his senior staff and who they hired and what the prioritized?
> The answer is do politics. If he doesn't know how to do politics, it would be better if someone else were doing the job.
Politics is all about building consensus through compromise and collaboration. Biden may hate marijuana reform, but he prioritized and executed in a way that past presidents didn't, ostensibly because he knew it was something that lots of people love. How is that not great politics?
Biden still deserves the criticism that he does not believe in marijuana reform and may not follow through any further. For example, he excluded/discriminated members of his own cabinet that admitted to marijuana use while choosing a Vice President that admitted to marijuana use, which is puzzling.
> He's not doing his best, he's being pushed (if he's even being adequately informed.)
If this is true, then this is politics working as intended.
Seriously, that is exactly how the system is supposed to work: The officials we elect do what we, the people, want, not just push their personal beliefs at all costs.
I would 1000% rather elect someone I agree with on 50% of issues, who is willing to be swayed by popular opinion, than someone I agree with on 80% of issues, who is going to try to enforce their personal beliefs as law no matter what the people actually want.
He's being pushed? He promised to do this himself during the campaign. There is no credible evidence of any kind that he did this because he was "being pushed". In any case, it's the right move, and he did the right thing, and honestly, people like you need to pipe down, relax, smoke a fucking joint, be honest, and give him credit here where credit is due.
As for Biden "knowing how to do politics", you might want to spend some time studying Biden's astonishing legislative results over the past few months. He's apparently quite good at politics.
Just for fun: these "people in his [Biden's] administration" you speak of...who chose those people? I'm a little confused. Perhaps you can clear this point up.
Just be honest: you have 937 axes to grind and you are desperate to avoid giving Biden any credit, ever, for anything.
He did? Just not on this point or student loans. The inflation reduction act had been blocked in the senate by his own party defectors and he managed to get them to flip in a last minute political coup on what the republicans thought was going to happen
Except your argument doesn't hold water. Biden isn't "in trouble"; his approval rating has actually been steadily rising of late, and this policy change reportedly took some time to work on.
You also really need to do some homework on the US House and the degree to which gerrymandering has made it completely impossible for your dreams of "appeals to voters" to work.
Fully legalizing marijuana does require legislative action. The executive might have the power to ask the FDA to remove it from schedule 1, but by international treaty (ratified by the legislature) the US is required to enforce restrictions against marijuna according to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.
They also have the ability to initiate or request that proceedings initiate under the Convention to have cannabis deleted from the schedules.
edit: but apparently, besides that or whatever other options the executive branch review discovers, or whatever the judicial branch comes up with, you are right
> but by international treaty (ratified by the legislature)
The Senate alone.
> Fully legalizing marijuana does require legislative action
Rescheduling it subject to treaty restrictions from treaties in force, but Presidents can and have withdrawn the US from treaties without Congressional action. This may be unlikely in this case, but does not exceed executive power.
Amending the treaty requires a bunch of other countries plus the Senate, and modifying the status of marijuana inconsistent with the treaty while it is in force would take a change in law by Congress (but would violate the treaty.)
Note that the current treaty status only requires medical use / prescription requirements, so it could be substantially less restricted than it currently is federally without running into treaty issues.
> Presidents can and have withdrawn the US from treaties without Congressional action. This may be unlikely in this case, but does not exceed executive power.
Can you give an example? I am not aware of any authority granted to the executive to override the legislature in this way. Is there an explicitly granted loophole or are these cases of executive overreach?
Student debt forgiveness is also something that only the legislature can do - Nancy Pelosi admitted this as recently as a year ago. Biden doesn't have the power to forgive student debt by himself, but he's doing it anyway, it's blatantly illegal and no-one cares.
He doesn't have the power to change the law on his own. He's requested that the justice department reschedule the drug. I'm not sure what more within his power would allow him to "whole ass" this.
Tell DEMOCRATS he would veto any legislation until they pass whatever he wants. They can do it, they have the votes and have passed legislation with 0 Republican support. But that is far from necessary here.
With regard to Marijuana and the controlled substances act, Biden could issue an executive order to change the schedule of any substance right away. He could also issue an EO for the DOJ/IRS to change any regulations regarding marijuana that impact legal states or MJ related prosecutions.
He has a lot more power than this action implies, especially regarding things that aren't made law via statue but regulations set by executive branch departments.
he's also moving toward removing it from the classification that would leave it as a scheduled drug federally and urging state govs to legalize it locally.
> Third, I am asking the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to initiate the administrative process to review expeditiously how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. Federal law currently classifies marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the classification meant for the most dangerous substances. This is the same schedule as for heroin and LSD, and even higher than the classification of fentanyl and methamphetamine – the drugs that are driving our overdose epidemic.
Note that those headaches are still largely unresolved by this. It only covers possession, and it's a pardon, so possession is still technically outlawed.
Yeah, but hopefully the symbolic value adds to the momentum for actual decriminalization, sooner or later.
One of the early mini-scandals of the Biden White House was how "dozens of young White House staffers" were in trouble because they had believed "initial indications" that casual pot use would not automatically disqualify them from the job. And that seemed like a sure sign that Biden would be a real hard ass on pot use. Only 5 staffers out of "hundreds" were ultimately disqualified from the policy, and given what Biden has done today, we have some assurance he really is going to be sympathetic and reasonable about pot.
> Yeah, but hopefully the symbolic value adds to the momentum for actual decriminalization, sooner or later.
He’s directed the officials that are empowered by law to change its status without Congress doing anything to begin the process by which that would happen. So, its not just a symbolic act that may effect that sooner or later.
> Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole wrote in a memo sent Thursday to federal prosecutors that it will not be a priority to block landmark marijuana-legalization laws in the two states. The federal government also will not make it a priority to close down recreational marijuana stores, so long as the stores abide by state regulations, according to the memo.
The Attorney General de-prioritizing a crime sounds like a cop-out, but eliminating the incentive for federal agents to chase down a type of crime means those agents effectively won't enforce those laws...because they'll get dinged for wasting time that should be spent on actual priorities.
Here's an example of how the federal restriction can still be a pain to Colorado pot stores:
> Because pot is still illegal federally, banks will likely continue to refuse marijuana business accounts, employers can continue to fire workers who smoke pot off-the-job and marijuana users who receive federal aid or live in federal housing will remain at risk.
IIRC, it wasn't at all uncommon for state residents to think that they could smoke worry free b/c of state legalization, only to realize too late that their employer technically receives federal aid and now had the right to fire them. And even if the the U.S. Attorney General says "nah we probably won't care about that"...a lot of employers are going to err on the side of caution.
Since Biden said that he's directed the government to look into things that are on the path to legalization, that mentality is likely to trickle down to every part of the government. Private employers might still be anal though.
> What are the headaches and how do they solve it?
I live in California, where marijuana is legal.
The headaches here are that federal police sometimes go bonkers if they find totally minor stuff like edibles or paraphernalia during some sort of inspection or traffic stop that they do on federal land.
Oh, easy, just don’t carry anything on federal land.
Not so easy.
- Any BLM land is federal. Some people take their guns to BLM land for shooting. Better not have any marijuana related stuff on you when you do that (even if you’re just accompanying and not shooting).
- Any national park is federal land.
- Some local extracurricular activities happen on federal lands. Little league sports teams, Boy Scouts, etc. Again, not that you have to be using at the time, but if you get into an accident at one of these facilities and the federal police sees the state-legal stuff in your car, you can be charged with a federal crime for that.
- Any federal building and attached properties like parking lots. For example, if you’re going to the VA to pick up a friend who just had some medical treatment and have an accident, the investigating federal officer can charge you if you have state-legal marijuana goods.
- Sometimes you don’t even know when you are on or are traveling through federal land, so you can’t always prepare. For example, the Laguna Seca race track is near (borders on?) federal lands with federal roads and federal police, but the scope of the federal lands is not always clearly marked. So choosing which roads you take to the track determines whether you are breaking the law or not.
- Most major airports are federal. As such, even a flight from SFO to LA is supposed to be free of state-legal marijuana.
I don’t know how often possession is prosecuted in these situations, but there are enough stories bouncing around that it’s slightly concerning given that, imho, the number of stories should be zero.
The solution is to have the message from the top being that they don’t want to see these charges ever in CA and similar stares (waste of time), and any extracurricular behavior like roughing someone up or treating them like a criminal will result in an administrative action against the officer.
I doubt this will happen soon.
I think the best we can hope for is for prosecutors and senior officers to be consistently dismissive about any low key possession charges that junior officers make.
For what it's worth, the only thing stopping the federal agents from arresting you off of federal land for a joint is that it's not a priority for them, and they aren't going to be giving you a traffic ticket to notice it in passing. If you yelled that you were smoking weed across the street from FBI headquarters but on CA land they totally could go arrest you.
Or, to put it a different way. It's not that it's legal in CA. It's that the state won't do anything about it.
Not to be the bearer of bad news but it actually suggests an election season and not a mentality shift. We're gonna need to vote the average age of congress down about 20 years to see any realistic change on this IMO.
Agreed - FoxNews has already started attacking this - https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-pardoning-all-prior-f...
Just go further to the right cesspool to see what you're saying. He'll be attacked for this. I'll grant that he'll be qually praised for it and that it may rally his voters, though I doubt it's a net positive for him in the rhetoric chambers.
i just read the article you linked to - what part of it is “attacking” this? The whole article is basically a rehash of the White house press release (which is fine - it just reports the facts)
Or is the “cesspool” you are describing no longer just consist of people who disagree with you, but has now become people who could disagree with you in the future?
Did you watch the video in the article? That’s why I linked it.
The cess pool are the Mark Levins, Bonginos, etc… they are vile.
I’m willing to bet that they will attack this tomorrow.
(edit) Didn't even take until tomorrow courtesy of Hannity - https://www.foxnews.com/video/6313390453112 - (~1.30 in)
The only things above the fold on the article I see (in a full screen browser winder), are the title, a giant headline that "Study links high-THC marijuana to mental health issues" in a video player, and the same headline immediately below the video player.
Scrolling down the next thing I see is two paragraphs of un-emphasized and dry text describing the announcement, followed by "DEMOCRATIC SENATORS HIT BIDEN FOR 'EXTRAORDINARILY DISAPPOINTING' STANCE ON MARIJUANA" in all caps, highlighted, and underlined (as a link).
After that we have a picture of Biden, and four more paragraphs of text (as above). We round off with a video with the headline ""RAINBOW FENTANYL" WARNINGS OF AHEAD OF HALLOWEEN".
Edit: And finally the main body of the article closes with advertisement for their app, saying this is similar to steps taken by new york, and acknowledging AP. Just to be complete.
I think the context which fox puts this announcement in... really speaks for itself.
many people hide those videos or straight ignore them. i’d be hesitant to say most are going to watch a video, that’s certainly the quickest way for me to ignore your content.
I'll cede that point - the video, in my opinion, made my point and the fact that they went out of their way to include it, to what I concede is a rather factual article still make it seem like an attack to me.
What’s ironic is that IMHO it should be at least more of a state level decision, which should be supported by the right. Of course logical consistency isn’t a hallmark of politics. If Pres. Biden supports something then obviously it should be opposed (this works for the left as well).
The “right” has multiple factions just like the “left.” A significant chunk of the right is social conservatives that don’t really care about the legal nuances, just like a dominant chunk of the left is social liberals that feel the same way.
I’m not calling anything a “cesspool” I’m just addressing the issue of “logical consistency.” The GOP comprises Midwestern church moms and oil tycoons. Democrats include social justice activists and Silicon Valley billionaires. The fact that the policies emerging from these coalitions often aren’t logically consistent is no surprise.
I saw this on Reddit and it resonated. Yes, it’s the election season and we’re seeing democracy in action: that’s when elected officials do things you like and then you vote for them again. Not sure why you’re making it sound like a bad thing.
No federal law is changing. This is a one time get out of jail free card. People arrested for the same crimes after he pardons current people in prison don't get the benefit.
Do you have a link about this? Because he's shown hostility towards marijuana legalization, promised to veto it if it was sent to him, and in the past supported draconian drug laws.
Tweets do not official policy make. If you need examples, you need but examine his tweets all through 2019 and 2020 - they're loaded with promises and plans. This is certainly not exclusive to POTUS.
Show me a policy document along with a bill from that office and I'll consider it more than an election year symbolic gesture.
His tweets 2019 and 2020 are indeed "loaded with promises and plans", but that's because he was literally not president at that time. Now that he is president, tweets from @POTUS are intended and expected official statements. Sure he could be completely bullshitting with his tweets, but he could do the same with a "policy document"
(White House and executive offices don't produce "bills", other than signing the ones proposed and passed through Congress)
Policy or not, intent was clearly declared. Not vague statements, but specific actions including a direct callout to the secretary of HHS to initiate the rescheduling review.
Obviously we can only wait to see what comes next, but I'm not sure what more you'd want? The review process has to occur, so there's no additional "policy" to be had at the moment. Obviously there's a possibility that rescheduling doesn't happen as a result of that review, but that hardly seems likely given the current political and social climate around marijuana.
Seemed like a pretty straight-forward way to communicate "and this is step 2, which is a work in progress".
I think there's a huge difference between tweets with "promises and plans" (especially from before he was actually elected), and tweets saying "I have done this thing. I am doing this other thing."
It's reasonable to be cautious about a politician making a promise in anything but the most legally-binding possible way. It's not reasonable to straight-out call that politician a bald-faced liar if he hasn't demonstrated a propensity for such lies (unlike some I could easily name).
He doesn’t technically have the unilateral power to prevent future people from being charged federally with simple possession, but in reality, he kind of does (while he’s president).
Sends a pretty clear message to any federal prosecutor that is deciding if they want to charge this. Obviously, the prosecutor can spend the time and effort on this if they want, but it’s time that will probably be better served doing something else if they don’t want to see their work wiped away by the stroke of a pen in the future.
Technically it's not a get out of jail free card, as I understand it, no one is actually held in jail for this right now. Though it does remove it from their records.
It's a solid political play, and I don't recall seeing that done before (I've only been voting since '97). We'll likely see this kind of thing more often now.
If I elect someone to lead the country for 4 years, I’d prefer they lead the country for at least 3.75 of those years, not for two 4-6 month stints in 4 years.
I use cannabis daily and am all for it being legalized and those in jail released. However, I cannot join you in a victory lap here because Biden's pardon affects nobody. As far as I know, there isn't anybody in federal prison on simple possession charges. That being the case, this smacks of politicking, optics, and opportunism rather than anything meaningful. If Biden wanted to do something substantial, he'd sign legislation legalizing cannabis (including growing your own).
It's bad because there are people that have been sitting in prison that could have been released over a year and a half ago, but Biden would rather let them rot for a while longer just so he could score political points at a more convenient time.
Shit's illegal and people are mad. Dude tries to cut some folks a break and people are mad. Conclusion: some people are born mad and gonna stay that way regardless.
Intentionally or otherwise you're equating lifestyle choices with sexual orientation and that is not a good look for all the same reasons that the rationale behind conversion therapy is garbage.
Who got a break in this deal exactly? There isn't anybody in federal prison for simple possession charges. It's like him giving every man, woman, and child in Antarctica a pony, only not as efficacious.
Someone higher up in the tree said there wasn’t a single person sitting in federal pen for this. I’m not sure, but I can’t imagine it’s frequently charged federally
From a legal point of view, when is marijuana possession a federal offence and when is it a state offence?
Presumably if you're caught with weed in DC then it's federal. But under what circumstances could you be found in possession with marijuana anywhere else and have it be a matter for the federal government, not the state one?
The difference is that if they were winning they wouldn't do this. This is textbook vote buying. They are absolutely terrified of the election season after the market collapse, inflation, housing situation, war in ukraine, etc. Easy to lock in quite a few votes throwing a bone. Republicans did the same thing last election season and capitulated (temporarily) on a lot of their positions in order to pull in the independents.
I wish you were correct. But there's a difference between doing something because you know it's right (implore congress to pass legislation on marijuana immediately) and because you need the votes. Only one of them is virtuous even though both ostensibly benefit the people.
I thought he campaigned on this. If I'm remembering that right, then this isn't so much the case of someone doing something just to try to get reelected (is he even planning on running again?), but rather someone fulfilling the promise they made to the people who elected him the first time.
Campaigning on something and not taking action until midterms is completely different. It is clear if he wasn't scared he wouldn't have taken action at all and both him and his VP has a history of being vehemently opposed to marijuana legalization.
The timing might be strategic, but he did say he'd do it and now he has, so it seems weird to say it was clear he wasn't going to. Biden has a horrible history but he's also been a supporter of things he spoke out against in the past. The degree to which his recent actions or his past actions better reflect his actual beliefs is debatable, but even if it's just for political points, he's doing the things he said he would.
This was a campaign promise from Biden, and why shouldn't he reap credit from following through by doing this is an election season. At least he's not on the ballot, and I can think of many worse things politicians regularly do.
Consider also that these federal marijuana convicts were charged due to such simple infractions as carrying weed onto federal property such as national parks (given their greater popularity in recent times).
Hey there was a lot of money to print and send out of the country. Takes a lot of time and effort keeping the printers going. He did the best he could.
It's an election gimmick for sure. However, there's always a choice of possible election gimmicks - and in the past, this one had never been chosen. Now, it has been. There must be a reason for it - and one may reasonably assume the reason is that there is enough support for relaxing the federal prohibition on marijuana.
Legalization isn't like fixing climate change or curing cancer. It is literally just a question of getting enough voters and politicians to agree that the current laws are stupid. A 79-year-old President signing this pardon is actually a huge step in forming that consensus.
Voters already agree the laws need to change. It's congress holding us back against the will of the people who elected them. Republicans have already spoken out against this pardon.
Well, that's to be expected. If it was The Orange Man who'd done this, you can take an educated guess at who'd be speaking out against it. Congress is a middle school playground.
This was not symbolic. There are thousands of people for whom this action is the farthest thing from symbolic. Thousands of people who will be released from cages and able to see their families again. This pardon is absolutely making a difference in a lot of people's lives. If the justice department reschedules the drug, and other states pardon their prisoners as he's asked them to then the impact will be much much greater.
That's not true. First, this is not a federal act. An act is an individual law. A federal act is a federal law. This, however, comes through the use of the President's constitutional pardon power, which is only allowed for offenses against the United States. Due to the creation of The District of Columbia, offenses against that code are also included in the President's pardon power.
Biden admin has been making a lot of symbolically valuable half-measure gestures. If substantive change follows on each, he could be the greatest president since FDR. Or, he could lose re-election and we're left with a bunch of impotent symbols that are gradually undone.
I'm still cynical, but slightly more optimistic today.
Some historians believe FDR was aware of the Pearl Harbor ahead of time and allowed it to take place in order to have a pretext to enter the war, essentially starting WW2.
A) This is absolutely a fringe belief, if it is believed at all. Cite a source if you think it could be true.
B) World War II started two years earlier than Pearl Harbor, when Hitler invaded Poland. The idea that FDR started WWII is the most ludicrous, revisionist idea I've ever heard about history.
So I take it you know fully well the entirety of what people want and what the government has been willing to give? Or is this something that happens to be coincidental? The argument doesn't add up to me. Occam's Razor errs on the side of this being a political move, given the timing and the fact that a pardon isn't legalization. Did Biden ask for congress to send him a legalization bill? The federal government's reputation didn't suddenly change here. So no, this isn't really what people want.
Just like the government can give people what they want, only when it is convenient to do so, this talking point also seems to come up when convenient, but it isn't true.
What is your estimate of the number of people who are eligible for this pardon?
The way it's supposed to work is that politicians do things their constituents want all the time, rather than token gestures just as the time approaches when they risk being kicked out if they're unpopular.
Sure, that would be great. It would also be great if my socks would conveniently pair themselves off and get into my dresser when I was done with laundry. In reality, systems operate according to rules. In the case of people, they will always * act in their actual or perceived self-interest.
The whole point of relatively frequent elections is that we know politicians do this. We get a little honeymoon period when they are first elected, a little honeymoon period before the next election activity, and a period in the middle where they do whatever they can do satisfy whatever internal reward function they have. I am all about encouraging them to do the things I like for as long as possible. This is a thing I like.
how can one genuinely hold this position? just because it's the status quo, it's all we should ask of our public servants who demand that we vote for them?
posts like this make me think that democracy may have been a mistake after all.
I guess I concern myself less with how I think systems should operate and more with how I observe them to actually operate. If you assume that you see reality with your eyes instead of wish reality into existence I find that you generally get better results.
sure, but to truly observe what is actually happening, one must acknowledge that essentially nobody ever tries to truly observe what is actually happening, rather, everyone continues to willfully participate in the kayfabe delusion that elected officials Actually Do Stuff when by and large they Just Pretend To By Making Meaningless, Yet Applauded Gestures. which the not-truly-observing electorate then takes as reason to reelect them. over and over again. and nothing changes.
this reality of the situation simply must be acknowledged if ones wishes to truly observe how these systems actually operate.
What position exactly? That good things done for cynical reasons is superior to nothing ever done? To me that seems plainly logical
I appreciate your idealistic opining but when you look at the reality of the competition, what Biden has done lately is just on another level. It’s unfortunate indeed that democracy has been so thoroughly corrupted by late stage capitalism, but it doesn’t make sense to lament the times it does something useful
Okay, I'll bite. "Pontual"? Are Google and I missing something? The top result is a Google Translate rendering of the Portuguese word "pontual" as "one-off" in English, which kind of fits your intent, I guess. However, various P->E dictionaries translate the word as punctual or sporadic. (Any Portuguese speakers who can shed some light for me on the difference between Google Translate and the dictionaries?) I didn't see any Google results (in the ones I scanned) indicating pontual had been appropriated into English. Am I just not hip to the latest slang?
I don't know of a political system which doesn't work contrary to intention. You just hope they work and try to make them better. Cursing the times they do function seems weird.
Every U.S. president going back to Lincoln and before has triangulated their actions based upon the political circumstances of their moment. The Emancipation Proclamation itself was pocketed until it could be announced after a clear Union victory. I think the criticism is fine but it doesn't make Biden unique at all and keeping that context is important.
The reality is the politicians always promise to do what people want but never quite actually do it, so that they can keep getting those people to vote for them.
In general, they are. A direct democracy (or referendums etc) would more directly reflect this. Being a republic, they are supposed to also prorect the ideals/structure of the country to safeguard the rights of minority groups (not really an issue in this context, but wanted to point that out).
> Oh no please politicians stop doing things your constituents want you to do in hopes of success in future re-election campaigns!
Can you show me to the national grassroots movement/lobby to grant pardons for federal simple marijuana possession crimes? I have a cousin who was convicted of it in 1995, and he thinks it's the reason why the federal government won't accept his application for employment. I'm not looking for the legalization movement, because that's not what we were talking about here.
But I definitely want to know who the guys are that got Biden to agree to this pardon. They are clearly an effective group and I want to get involved somehow.
Which is bizarre because these midterms are projected to be incredibly non-competitive. There are very few genuine toss-ups to speak of.
Even if all toss-ups go red or blue, neither party can gain a filibuster-proof majority. Best case for Democrats, Manchin and Sinema still reign as agenda-makers.
That could be correct, I didn’t read it closely. I think the total number then is still probably quite low. I’m not disparaging the move and think it’s good but adding perspective.
The President also has pardon powers for those convicted of violating District of Columbia laws and this order also applies to those convicted under DC simple possession laws.
DC laws are, constitutionally speaking, based on lawmaking authority delegated by Congress under their plenary power over territories and subject to any legislative modifications that Congress chooses to make directly from time to time, so it's effectively federal law.
Congress does indeed delegate authority to the District of Columbia under the Home Rule Act of 1973; however, Congress's authority does not derive from their plenary power over territories because DC isn't a territory. Congress's authority over DC comes from Article I Section 8 Clause 17 of the Constitution.
The local laws of DC including those forced upon DC by Congress are not however federal law and violations of DC laws are not a violation of federal law. If you violate DC law you are prosecuted in the Superior Court of DC which is part of the DC government. If you violate federal law in DC you are prosecuted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia which is part of the federal court system.
> Congress does indeed delegate authority to the District of Columbia under the Home Rule Act of 1973; however, Congress's authority does not derive from their plenary power over territories because DC isn't a territory. Congress's authority over DC comes from Article I Section 8 Clause 17 of the Constitution.
Good catch, thanks for the correction.
> The local laws of DC including those forced upon DC by Congress are not however federal law and violations of DC laws are not a violation of federal law. If you violate DC law you are prosecuted in the Superior Court of DC which is part of the DC government. If you violate federal law in DC you are prosecuted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia which is part of the federal court system.
In terms of terminology used every day, you're right. But really, federal authority underlies both of those two legal and judicial systems. It wouldn't violate any separation of powers concern for Congress to amend the rules such that DC local law violations go straight to the US district court, unlike what would be true if DC were a state.
> Despite a burst of pardons and commutations in his last hours in office, Donald Trump used his executive clemency power less frequently than nearly every other president since the turn of the 20th century, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Justice Department data.
I mean... fine, but IMO it's not the number of pardons issued that made this top of mind, but rather the constant controversy around people given pardons, gossip about people who requested pardons, and speculation about the legality of a potential self-pardon.
Would you mind elaborating on which ones you found sketchy, preferably spanning administrations?
Above all I do not want to argue politics. I am not a supporter of the previous President. Nor am I a supporter of the current. In the past I have voted for Democrats and Republicans but I’m pretty sure it’s protest 3rd party votes for me for the foreseeable future.
I don't know... Obviously anecdata, but I'm from an area notorious for poor education standards, and civics and history were focused on very heavily there.
I'll go out on a limb and suggest that civics and history aren't going to stick any better than any other subject until critical thinking has first been taught.
> I'm from an area notorious for poor education standards, and civics and history were focused on very heavily there.
When you (plural) are making 6-figures a year, living in some high class inner suburb, working for some employer who has tons of money sloshing around, you don't need to be good at playing the game because you can just pay your way.
Poor communities need to actually be good at playing the game in order to be heard.
Can't say everyone or even most world wide are doing a great job necessarily. So I wouldn't take it too hard on oneself. But there must be improvement on the topic. The problem in the U.S. I would say is that lack of knowledge of civics and law can get you in more trouble than other countries -- there is less of the "honest mistake" mentality and approach and more of "we have a hammer and we hammer nails or anything that looks like it." Again on average, and my impression. Also the legal system is way too overcomplicated and inconsistent for my formal mind.
The problem is that because of underinvestment, or the wrong kinds of it, increasingly stringent standards without the advances in productivity or pedagogy means that every year gets closer to teaching to the test.
It is surprising that it is not typically taught in schools. One would think an understanding of how our government works and the limits of its powers would be critical for a functional democracy, but 57% of Americans have never even read the constitution nonetheless had any formal education about the context and consequences of its clauses. Of course there will always be more things we want kids to learn than there is time to teach them, but I seriously question what was prioritized over civics.
It's understandable that studying the constitution could be useful, but arguably so would studying the NEC.
In both cases it shouldn't be a requirement; we don't demand studying the NEC before using electricity.
And even those with a very good understanding of the constitution and civics probably don't have a very good handling on the actualities of how everything works, unless perhaps they're a criminal lawyer.
Also, most of that text is unchanged since 01789, and it hasn't changed at all since 01992, when one sentence was added. If you'd spent those 22½ minutes in 01992 you'd still be up to date. And it is in the public domain, so it is easy to obtain.
NFPA's National Electrical Code (I assume that's the one you mean) is over 1000 pages, and a new version comes out each year.
Because it's so short, it doesn't actually say very much. Nearly all of its application is a matter of interpretation spanning literally millions of pages.
That’s the problem. Some parts read quite simply, others require decades of study (and even then the top legal minds in the US can disagree on what the word mean).
Of course they do! The whole point of being a top legal mind is so that you can disagree convincingly about laws so that you can bring about the results you want.
On the other hand, if you're going to actually do DIY work on your house's wiring, it would be prudent to at least have some familiarity with the NEC.
Since we're in a democracy, every election involves everyday citizens adjusting the wiring of our government. Doubly so in states that allow voter-initiated statutes and constitutional amendments via referendum.
If every november everyone in the community got together and rewired eachother's houses, I think it would be very wise to require the NEC be taught to all students.
Of course most people are never going to be arguing cases before the supreme court or writing laws, and those would require far more expertise than anyone needs. At the same time, most people will never be mathematicians but we still have math classes. No one is becoming a master in a subject from primary education, but they should have some basic literacy in the subject and a foundation to build upon.
What are the tests that people have to take to gain US citizenship?
While people born in the US automatically have citizenship, my personal belief is that people should have to pass the citizenship tests to get the right to vote.
btw, I'm in Australia, and our voting is compulsory (or at least being enrolled and being crossed off as submitting a ballot paper, the vote itself is secret).
I think if we're going to set tests for citizenship for foreigners before they're allowed to become citizens, why shouldn't the same tests apply to locals?
There was such a standardized test when I was in high school, for what it's worth. And some states still have them, and some require a passing grade on them to graduate from high school.
True, but this will help the tens of thousands of people who have been affected by this that live in Washington, D.C., and provides some precedent for Governors to do the same across the country.
Also if they are in prison due to other charges, like those relating to firearms, they may remain in there. Most people are not charged for possession alone.
It's fucked up though that merely possessing weed+firearm is makes you "prohibited possessor" with 10 years in jail when a NAND of the two is legal. Such a person may be considered a violator of weapons and drug laws, even though all they did was own a legal firearm and simple possession of weed.
Fucked up yes, but anyone fucking with drugs that has half a brain knows this, so the ones getting convicted are probably not using them for target practice
Paying a guy to sit in the passenger seat packing heat while you handle the dope and the money or paying another guy to store your product at his house and all the other things you need to do to not catch a "gun stacking" multiplier on your petty dealing charge is a luxury that only successful and established dealers can afford.
You just said it though - only successful and established DEALERs can afford. The problem you are describing is a problem of a drug dealer. A drug dealer with a gun is a criminal that ought to catch a charge. That's exactly my point.
Youtube star FPSRussia was just using them for target practice. He ultimately got convicted of possession of hash oil (with intent, seemingly solely because he shared it with his girlfriend). While he plead down to the possesion w/ intent it's my understanding the original charges included prohibited possessor. I don't think he'll get the pardon either since he got a distribution charge for toking with the GF.
Yeah there are definitely scenarios where its some real bullshit, I agree. And it's fucked up that a persons decision to smoke weed essentially removes their second amendment rights. But its still a decision that you can make, you know. It's not like you HAVE to have a gun.
(idk the specifics of the FPSrussia case so won't comment on that)
> The vast majority of people arrested for marijuana possession are not charged Federally.
I would expect most of the Federal charges of simple possession occurred at national parks and monuments. But still even if violations were widespread, arrests and convictions probably weren't. You would need a really bored D.A., and I would assume they're usually just as busy as most other attorneys.
feels like the current POTUS is either signaling his parties future legislative priority at best, pandering for november votes, or performing the legislative equivalent of 'dnf clean all' as these low level offenders are becoming increasingly burdensome and expensive to house and feed during a recession.
From talking with friends, Biden isn't terribly popular with the segment of Democratic voters for which marijuana and student loans are top priority. He managed to make progress on the student loans recently, but efforts on drug reform have stalled.
There was no shortage of left leaning politicians in the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc that were harping on the whole "criminalization is making drug problems worse" thing. Prior to the homogenization of politicians rhetoric in the 2010s I'd say it was a solid 30% of politicians on the left and 20% on the right.
So excuse me for being a little cynical when one of the guys from the "no we'll just use the state jackboot to solve all the problems" camp is pardoning people.
Yes, I fondly recall his speech he gave calling out the MAGA republicans as a danger to the country and right wing media losing their mind over the “fascist” speech.
Is the guy a doddering old fool or a dangerous demagogue? It can’t be both simultaneously
...which he apparently forgot all about the very next day. I don't know what they had him juiced up with (maybe Pervitin, appropriately?) but that's the most coherent I've ever seen him before or since.
The simple solution to the contradiction you propose is: He is a doddering old fool, who is controlled by dangerous demagogues. (And actually, this might describe his predecessor as well.)
But that doesn't mean we can't appreciate when they occasionally do something good (regardless of their motivations), and this is one of those times.
Well we’re have to agree to disagree then. I also don’t think trump was being controlled. These guys are not always on, but you can see that both of them are making decisions and those decisions taking place.
There’s no drug in the world that makes someone go from doddering to able to give long speeches and stay on point.
Still, it will set an example for the blue states to follow. That's something at least. Red states would probably be less likely to do this just based on where the example is coming from. It's progress of a sort in undoing a grave injustice.
Most of the blue states are legal or decriminalized at this point.
What's odd is that there hasn't been a push for clemency/pardons when legalization happens.
I don't care about marijuana, it's never been very interesting to me, but it's absurd the amount of human capital that's gone into stopping it and sigmatizing its use in this country.
The amount of money spent for police and prison and the number of wasted human years (while in prison) is staggering. At the same time, I wish there was better data on the number of people who have permanent mental illness due to drug use. Is there much causation or just correlation?
I also didn't really know. High school was thirty years ago, at my school civics was an optional class taught by the football coach, and when learning about how the government works the details of pardons aren't terribly important.
I'm sure I read some textbook that said the president can pardon Federal crimes, but my test was something along the lines of "what powers does the executive branch have" and "the pardon" was a good enough answer.
We had the same reporting up here in Canada. The president doesn't have a power to pardon state offenders but he urged state governors to mirror the change alongside the formal pardon for federal prisoners.
It does set the stage for states to issue similar pardons. Although red states are unlikely to do so, I believe it will have second-order effects that do pressure red states.
A large part of The War On Drugs was the top-down messaging villainizing possession and use of cannabis, and that same power is now being used in the opposite direction to some extent. Combine that with an aging baby boomer generation, and you have youth growing up in red states today who are much less likely to believe that folks should be put in jail for possession.
Next the purple states will adopt similar language and policy, then the idea of criminalization well become an outside/extremist/fringe policy and – my prediction – finally within a decade or two even many red states will be decriminalizing cannabis as well.
True, but also traditionally Federal marijuana stance has been much more strict than most of the states. I think this action may signal that it is changing.
And it's still illegal going forward, which means it's still valid reason for civil asset forfeiture, something the feds are major players in, either directly or through "sharing" with the states.
I have a friend in SV who got arrested for possession in one the national parks around there. Apparently it's a federal charge and hence he is still struggling to get citizenship.
I'm not in the US and I am aware of the Fed/States law/divide but that's not the most important issue for those of us outside the US.
The truly significantly point about Biden's announcement is that the attitude to marijuana use will almost certainly change worldwide. I don't expect the world to go pot-crazy overnight or such, but as I see it it's a very noticeable (albeit small) crack in the way drug use is policed and this will be echoed to varying degrees worldwide.
The fact that the US president has done this is an indicator to the world that the all-or-nothing/black and white approach to policing drug use is not the correct approach and that it ought to be more nuanced and targeted. And, in my opinion, that's to be welcomed.
It goes without saying there are major problems with drug use and I'm not advocating a free-for-all approach to their use—far from it. However, what Biden's announcement shows the world that not all drugs have equally bad outcomes for users and that this should be reflected generally by grading drug laws more appropriately.
With Biden's words, hopefully drug use will become less of a criminal activity and more of a medical one.
FYI, I'm not a marijuana user—well anyway not a recent one, haven't used it since my student days quite some decades ago.
Not really true. This action amounts to Biden doing something about state-level charges as well. He explicitly encouraged states to follow suit. He also announced that he's reviewing the absurd Schedule 1 designation for marijuana, which is also a huge deal. And today's action moves us a lot closer to real national legalization.
The concern here is that if you are charged federally with marijuana possession, you probably weren't a light user. You were probably a drug trafficker who was associated with gangs and much stronger drugs, and I'm not sure I want those people back on the streets any sooner then necessary
Interestingly, he specifically excludes illegal immigrants who are not US citizens from the pardon, as well as (implicitly) people who used to be lawful permanent residents but no longer are (perhaps because their visa got revoked after being arrested for possessing marijuana), as well as former US citizens (if there are any who have been charged with this "crime") and people who were never residents in the US at all (perhaps they got arrested when they changed flights at a US airport). So this is a step in the right direction, but not nearly far enough. I wonder why he went to the trouble of making all those exclusions.
> as well as (implicitly) people who used to be lawful permanent residents but no longer are (perhaps because their visa got revoked after being arrested for possessing marijuana)
Oh wow, I hadn't caught that. I thought you were mistaken but went back and looked at it again, I think you are correct. That's even more evil.
I wouldn’t call it evil either. As a general rule, don’t do drugs in foreign countries when it’s illegal. If you must, do them in your home country or where they’re made legal.
Fun fact: in some countries it's illegal for citizens to take illegal drugs even if they're abroad in a place where it's legal. E.g. if a Korean smokes weed during a visit to Amsterdam, they can be prosecuted for it upon return to Korea.
Isn't that pretty common? As a Norwegian, there's AFAIK several things I can't do when abroad even if it is legal in the country I visit. Doing drugs is one of those things, I believe.
It's evil. But it's an evil that exists because of optics made necessary by the current political climate. So the blame for that needs to go to the people that make such optics necessary, if you catch my drift.
The implication to me is that you need to write something down when you deport someone, and this is one of the things that get written down. Sure seems like a strange exception to me, but I'd be curious to hear from someone involved in writing it why exactly it was the practically or politically preferred choice.
It's obvious. They want to make sure those people are ineligible (or a least seriously impeded) for a visa, green card, or citizenship. Very few offenses can absolutely torpedo immigration to the US as much as drug possession/offenses.
The US is a relatively 'free' country in many areas but they have a shockingly dystopian immigration and DHS, with border security that many travelers characterize as one of the most brutal in the world. Even as a US citizen with clean record I am subject to invasive (cavity) searches, cuffing/throwing in a cell, questioning, threats that I'll not be allowed in the country etc when I deal with CBP/DHS. If you have a marijuana offense as an immigrant you are utterly fucked, and those in power would like to keep it that way.
I'm not a US citizen, and I've been to the US a few times. The security measures are about the same level as Japan. The "worst" thing that happened to me lately on an airport was an officer talked to me in a friendly tone but took my passport for inspection and returned it to me about 15 minutes later.
The only thing that can remotely be described as "brutal" is when I entered the US via land (from Canada) the first time around 2008 if I remember correctly. They searched out stuff thoroughly and we had to wait about an hour or so. But they were very polite and professional about it. No "threats" or intimidation of any kind.
If the standard is that People don’t disappear for days and/or completely , then yes US systems is civilized and polite.
The slightest of non conforming information or a honest paperwork mistake in your application can be used to permanently reject a visa,
Even if you been living for many many years , you have to leave in very short time (10-60? Days) if your visa is revoked/expired because you lost your job and potentially upend/split your family some of whom would be citizens if they were born here
Or be deported out by ICE right after serving lengthy sentence despite living in the country your whole life , to a home country you don’t know and never even been.
Despite all the bad press and difficulties US has a better system than most other countries, however if you are unlucky US immigration can upend your life.
You're talking about people who were dragged into the US when they were children by their parents.
We were just talking about whether the US is particularly stringent when it comes to border inspections.
> Or be deported out by ICE right after serving lengthy sentence despite living in the country your whole life
Most countries would consider foreign citizens who serve lengthy prison sentences as unwanted visitors and would like very much to get rid of them as soon as possible.
I don't know of a country that welcomes such a thing. Do you know of one?
I don't think Svalbard (territory) imposes any sort of criminal background scrutiny before settlement.
I'm not sure if Vanuatu allows immigration for people who served time in Vanuatu but my understanding is they commonly "forget" to thoroughly check records when people pay the $130k or whatever it is for their passport-by-investment; Comoros was doing the same thing before they shut down their CIP program.
Most countries even emerging economies with poor human rights records have nowhere close to the insane incarceration rate that the U.S. has, so it is far lesser problem anywhere else.
Which way? That's how every country on earth operates. You are not a citizen of a country just because your parents dragged you there when you were young. In fact, the US is almost the only place on earth that grants birth-right citizenship (maybe Canada and Australia do as well?). All other countries think this is absurd.
It's not how the law is written, as I understand it. It is how it is implemented and that is up to the President, Director of Homeland Security and ICE. Applications used to be returned or clarified when they had been filled out incorrectly. Now they are perfunctorily denied, and the applicant has to file an appeal. This change was brought about by a change in executive policy. I cannot say for sure whether it was started under Obama or Trump, but I did hear that it caught immigration attorneys off-guard. For example, if there is no middle name, they are not supposed to leave it blank. But if they use the wrong magic word to fill the space or cross it out, the application is now denied.
Not a US citizen but had zero problems flying to US last couple of years. Can't even remember the questions at the passport control point... But there was even a humorous, friendly officer there one time. No bag searches. Sometimes the queues have been long tho... Especially arriving in early morn.
I normally get my bags searched at the public "nothing to declare" area entering Japan and Thailand tho at the customs check point, and sometimes leaving.
No questions or searches ever in Malaysia.
No questions or searches ever entering Hong Kong. If you're e-gate enrolled it's not even an officer at the passport checkpoint, you just scan it and go through a double sided gate. If you have a HKID you don't even need to use your passport for entry, you can scan the ID for entry from international which I think is cool.
No questions or searches ever at Turkey.
Flying into Europe they normally have more questions at passport but no searches.
I'm always honest in my ESTA applications tho, maybe that makes difference.
I have never once made it through US customs in under 3 hours (and always with full search, interrogation, and not being cleared until an HSI detective appears). That's not counting the line, I'm talking the search/interrogation/detention phase. I am a US citizen with good passport, clean criminal record, valid and legal reasons for travel, and full compliance with US border related laws.
Imagine a system which welcomes 99 out of 100 people and brutally kills one. I think if I were to read online about people's experiences, it would be dominated by the 99 telling me that no brutal killings occur.
Last time I entered I was (all without being arrested or charged with a crime)
-- forced to strip, cavity searched
-- searched by a dog, who found nothing, and agents
lamented nothing was found, but they later wrote in their report that the dog alerted.
-- tossed in a cell
-- fingerprinted / booked (without being arrested/charged). US citizens entering with passport are not supposed to be fingerprinted.
-- detained for 16 hours
-- Had officials drag me in cuffs to two different hospitals 60 miles apart by prisoner transport van. Taken to second hospital after the first doctor wasn't corrupt enough to go along with their insane claims.
-- Had officials lie to doctors suggesting there were drugs up my ass, then being personally billed for medical services I never consented to. I am still in debt for these medical services I refused and were forced on me in custody.
-- After being seen without my consent, without an official arrest, or even a court order, was served ex-post-facto a warrant signed by the judge AFTER the time a which I was searched/"cared for."
-- forced to perform intimate body functions in full view (like 2 feet in front of me) of agents, who then searched the effects
-- Prevented from sleeping, even when doing so presents no interference or risk to anyone.
-- Dumped at the border with no apology
Here's a comment sharing some of the details last time I went through the border:
And a women sent to the same hospital as me, who was forcefully penetrated in her private orifices at the direction of DHS in circumstances similar to mine:
These detentions are a regular occurrence for me. I'm a US citizen, clean criminal record, never committed a US border related offense. Yes they have also threatened to deny me entry to US and also threatened to revoke my passport as part of their intimidation.
This doesn't sound normal. Your other comment mentions something critical:
> I got thrown on something like this almost a decade ago when I fought alongside the YPG, a US backed Kurdish militia that fought against literal ISIS.
DHS/CBP put me on some fucked up list and now everytime I re-enter the US I get detained, accused of crimes, tossed in holding cell.
So, you're in some kind of a black/gray list possibly caused by involvement in a military conflict. Granted, it sounds absurd they would do this given you were on the US-backed side of the conflict, but still. Your experience is not representative of anything remotely close to what most people go through.
That's a valid point that my personal circumstances are unusual, but after my latest entry I started digging into the court records and saw far more "normal" citizens also experienced similar circumstances to this particular occasion I mentioned at Nogales port of entry (like Ms Cervantes noted above and below, who appears to have been a normal ~18 year old girl). My black/gray listing put me on the express lane into seeing the dark side of border patrol -- but the sad fact is some "unlucky" normal citizens appear to getting this treatment, and once it happens your eyes are revealed to even the normal people this is happening to (and in fact, while I was there CBP officers bragged about putting other innocents through the same thing, including one for having a trans-sexual appendage)
I recommend in particular noted pgs 7-9 under the heading "Ashley’s [redacted] Were Probed without a Warrant, Consent or Any Suspicion of Internal Drug Smuggling"
IANAL but AFAIK a US Citizen cannot be denied entry to the US under any circumstances. They can detain you, search you, seize property, and charge you with any relevant crimes... but they can't simply deny entry.
Being detained at the border is not legally denial of entry, but it effectively is. Or you can enter, but by doing so you'll forfeit any property you had with you. There are all sorts of loopholes like that, and CBP will happily exploit every one of them.
They can't but they can and will lie to you and tell you they will deny entry. They also can and will threaten to revoke your passport despite no legal basis to do so. They have made both statements to me. If you read above I said they would make "threats" to do so (of the sort a common citizen would probably believe), not that it would actually happen.
Can you point to any cases of US citizens being denied entry?
The closest I'm aware of is having US citizens overseas be put on the no-fly list, which in practice amounts to the same thing if they can't get to Canada/Mexico either. But hey, they won't be denied entry if they swim across!
Not OP, and I can't answer yes to that, but they like to waive their proverbial dicks around as though they can. You used to be able to drive from Canada back into the US by showing just your US driver's license and birth certificate. About six months before that option went away, I drove across the border with exactly those documents. I hand them over, dude spends a few minutes huffing and puffing, kinda rolling his eyes. Asks me, "Is this all you have?".
Few more minutes pass and he goes, "You know, you're lucky I let you through with this stuff now. In a few months I won't be able to and your butt would be hanging out in Canada tonight. Have a nice day."
I've never applied for any other kind than a tourist visa (and also never travelled in any other way there), and never had I seen anything different/worse than passing any other border in europe (non EU/schengen ones).
US does seem one of the only/few countries where an illegal immigrant can lead a pretty normal life for years (job, send kids to school, get a doctor, etc.) without getting noticed and deported... in my country for example, there's literally no way to get someone illegal to (eg.) school.
No, I'm leading a pretty normal life as an illegal immigrant in Argentina, and it's not legal to deport me (unless I commit a crime). Most countries don't have the level of government involvement in day-to-day life that many European countries do.
Naturally I'm sure you are law abiding, but I question how easy it is to live and work in Argentina without violating the law (I've heard it's practically a requirement to survive there -- if nothing else the tax laws). Maybe it's just a scam, but I had heard if you file for citizenship (which apparently anyone can do) it makes it harder to get deported?
I read some bizarre reports on baexpats that the easiest way to get deported is actually to follow the official legal residency pathway!
Yes, I'm from europe, here it's pretty impossible to do anything, atleast longterm (sneaking in and doing some under-the-table work for a few weeks and going back.. sure.. staying for years, having kids, etc... no way).
The US is weird because they are far more open to immigrants than many other nations, and extremely lax about illegal immigration (encouraging it even) while at the same being outright inhuman in how they treat the people that do get caught up by border patrol. We should really be doing the opposite of that and be far more strict about controlling illegal immigration while also making sure that the people we deport or turn away at the border are treated with respect and dignity and are well cared for while in our custody.
> More than 6,500 individuals with prior convictions for simple marijuana possession were impacted by the pardons, a White House official said, and thousands more through pardons under D.C. law.
To be clear, 6,500 is the number of individuals receiving a pardon. The percentage of these 6,500 who will be released from prison? Zero - none of these individuals are currently in prison solely for possession of marijuana: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/07/...
Note: the pardon potentially isn’t really the big news, directing DOJ and HHS to reexamine the scheduling of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act is potentially a much bigger deal going forward.
I'm curious if this will snowball into a more informed classification system.
It seems pretty clear that psychedelics and entactogens (LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, 2-CB, etc.) have totally different characteristics than "these will ruin your life" drugs like heroin and fentanyl. A sensible drug policy would recognize those differences.
I've never been a fan of drug control, but the scheduling system is particularly absurd. Drugs that are widely consumed without negative connotations for society shouldn't be cause for imprisoning people.
I totally agree, but a "sensible drug policy" would also point out the complete arbitrariness of our society's relation to drugs in general. A couple years ago some researchers in the UK basically did a "harmfulness" rating for tons of drugs, looking at things like potential for addiction, negative health consequences, etc.
By far the most harmful drug was alcohol. I might be confabulating, but IIRC some government officials in the UK even asked some of the researchers to downplay some of their findings, because it basically showed the ridiculousness of government drug policy.
Regardless, though, the details of the report itself are worth a read, as I think they fairly assessed harm across different criteria, e.g. harm to oneself vs. harm to others.
This study doesn't seem to be very rational, it has meth at a "harm for others" score of 2 whereas tobacco and cannabis are at 15. Second-hand smoke is bad for people but I can't see why that'd be more of a danger than your average meth head.
I think this chart that's linked on Wikipedia[0] that's from this study[1] is more accurate, alcohol is still near the top of the list but heroin, crack and meth are still higher.
> I’m curious if this will snowball into a more informed classification system.
Not without legislation. The classification system is fixed in legislation, where things fall in it has some leeway (subject to treaty obligations, which are also sometimes problematic in this regard) by executive action.
But then cocaine use is in the double digit millions as well. Drug use feels like a public health issue but drug supply is a law and order issue. Would decriminalizing the supply chain help much more than trying to enforce prohibition?
Yes. Plain and simple. Go even further and legalize. Decriminalizing doesn't solve the many issues that trafficking brings. This is low hanging fruit. Harder drugs would need to be tightly controlled but revenue could be spent on helping users... rehab facilities, safe use facilities, counseling, etc.
Same thing with prostitution. Human trafficking could be significantly reduced by legalizing prostitution. Government should not be involved in policing morals.
Morally (as opposed to politically) the theory is as follows: society forbids people from selling their body — sex, organs, wombs — to nullify any marketplace where an evil person with money can exploit someone else who desperately needs money.
This sucks for the people who aren’t in desperate need for the money and instead have made a lifestyle choice to sell their kidneys / intimacy / children but the state can’t reasonably decide who does and does not need protection from exploitation at the point of use, so they either over-protect everyone or under-protect no one.
That’s the moral choice here — how much freedom are we willing to relinquish in order to protect the vulnerable from exploitation. It’s not about whether we consider the exploited act to be moral or not, at least from a rational point of view.
Whether a person/group is defined with the label "predator" is uninteresting. Because that is about definitions of words and categories, which has no consequence on policy.
The right question is what policies help people, and what policies hurt people. Morally charged judgements cloud our thinking.
I can easily argue that alcohol sales are predatory. They are often selling to alcoholics who are damaging their bodies. They contribute to drunk driving deaths and domestic violence. But there is no policy corollary or implication to me doing that.
The whole moral crap is bullshit. Lots of European countries have gotten around the issue of pimps by legally mandating that sex needs to be sold on a 1:1 basis. I’m willing to put up with fringe human trafficking to be able to go downtown and buy sex. You can’t ban the best things in life and expect people to be happy over the long term.
I agree with you on prostitution but when it comes to drugs I feel like your views are a little idealized. If you can buy cocaine at the store, a LOT of people are going to start doing it and then will get hooked. Cocaine is by no means safe, all it takes is a couple of extra lines and you’re dead.
"Idealized". I don't disagree with you. I have thought about this a lot. I'm not suggesting full, open, commercial legalization for hard drugs. I'm saying full decriminalization, with the government tightly controlling production and distribution. As long as the price and the availability (how easy is it to get?) outperform the black market then we'd be in a much better position than we are today. It wouldn't be as easy as grabbing it off the shelf in a c-store. Users would have to go to specific facilities, possibly see a social worker, receive information about the drug, how to use it safely and legally, as well as be informed of abuse treatment options. For most people this would be enough of a barrier. The illicit drug trade brings about violence, ancillary crime, poor/dangerous quality control (fentanyl!). We can do better. Legalization wouldn't be perfect but it would be so much better than the situation we have now. I can guarantee that.
> If 48.2 million are breaking a law, it’s probably the law that’s wrong.
This is a terrible argument. In countries with weak rule of law it's probably the case that a similar proportion of of people engage in bribery (either paying or accepting them). By your logic is it also the case that "the law that’s wrong" on bribery?
> My intent by this proclamation is to pardon only the offense of simple possession of marijuana in violation of Federal law or in violation of D.C. Code 48–904.01(d)(1), and not any other offenses related to marijuana or other controlled substances.
>[Biden] will also ask the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and the attorney general to review how the drug is scheduled under current federal law.
Good luck; it's scheduled under US Treaty with the UN and governed by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs.
>>"The CND is mandated to decide on the scope of control of substances under the three international drug control conventions (1961, 1971 and 1988 Conventions)."
Well, they just voted on cannabis reforms recommended by the WHO two years ago, and the votes seemed to be split nearly 50-50.
Article 23 of the 1961 Convention will allow the eventual teatotalling minority to maintain their stricter controls while allowing the remainder of the Parties to operate without contradiction to their constitutional obligations, vis-a-vis legalization of non-therapeutic adult use of cannabis.
"A similar process is followed in deleting a drug from the Schedules or transferring a drug between Schedules. For instance, at its 33rd meeting, the WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence recommended transferring tetrahydrocannabinol to Schedule IV of the Convention, citing its medical uses and low abuse potential.[17] However, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs has declined to vote on whether to follow the WHO recommendation and reschedule tetrahydrocannabinol."
“As with all articles of the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the provisions of Article 22 are only suggestions which do not override the domestic law of the member countries:
4. The provisions of this article shall be subject to the provisions of the domestic law of the Party concerned on questions of jurisdiction.
5. Nothing contained in this article shall affect the principle that the offences to which it refers shall be defined, prosecuted and punished in conformity with the domestic law of a Party.”
Do you have a reference link to the amendment that you are claiming nullifies this?
Or are you claiming that Article 23 was amended such that Party states cannot be selectively stricter than the Convention?
What you are listing is specifically the "Penal Provisions" which are suggestions as the UN doesn't have the right to prosecute drug violations in member countries. They do, however, according to Article 6 of the Constitution (which makes all Treaties the law of the land), the right to challenge the rescheduling of drugs which conflict with treaties.
Article 6 of the US Constitution means that ratified treaties pre-empt state law. It has nothing to do with federal law. See Ware v. Hylton (1796) and McCulloch v. Maryland (1819).
Treaties that conflict with federal law are null and void; Congress has to pass legislation if they want to make any such conflicting requirements effective. The same applies to treaties that attempt to restrict constitutional rights: such provisions have no force nor can Congress enact them. That would require an amendment.
The treaty isn't about prosecuting crimes its about adhering to international drug policy so drugs don't incubate in certain countries and end up in others. In this way, the UN does have regulatory input. It's all "voluntary"; we can always withdraw from the treaty or ignore it.
Yes, you are incorrectly generalizing Article 6. It's literally saying Treaties trump state laws and is directing judges to adhere to Federal laws and Treaties over the state laws and Constitutions which conflict with that.
I was directly quoting the 2nd paragraph of article 6:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
no, i was misunderstanding the word “notwithstanding” in the clause to be an escape valve for the states, rather than as overruling the states.
again, i’m not a lawyer.
my point is that on an international level, and on a national level, the legal reforms of cannabis do appear to be well underway and nearly in full swing.
and regardless, as i noted elsewhere, according to Congress, themselves:
The US was the main driver behind those treaties. Amending, formally pulling out or just straight up ignoring them is mildly embarrassing, but in no way a showstopper.
It was not. UK/EU were large factors since it was an extension of the agreements made during the League of Nation formation. The original UN secretary notes indicate specifically this is true; especially since INTERPOL was created for drug policing in the first place.
The US has been EU/UKs oppression outlet for far too long.
I don't know about Canada's Constitution or laws; the USA has Article 6 that specifically makes Treaties the law of the land. Did Canada change the schedule of cannabis or just simply create a legal framework for possession, sale and decriminalization? Scheduling is the authority of the CND of the UN. If they didn't reschedule it perhaps that's a loophole they exploited; maybe the US can do the same, maybe our laws or Article 6 prevents us; not sure. Good question.
"The book has been denounced as alarmist and inaccurate in the scientific and medical communities because [the author] claims that cannabis causes psychosis and violence; many scientists state that he is drawing inappropriate conclusions from the research, primarily by inferring causation from correlation as well as cherry picking data that fits his narrative, and falling victim to selection bias via his use of anecdotes to back up his assertions."
While the number of people who will be materially affected by this is in the four digits, this does technically apply to every one of the millions of people who have broken this federal law by possessing marijuana.
One need not have been charged to receive a pardon.
I suppose it's quite limited; in what situations would you be charged w/ simple possession federally? I'm assuming if you came through an airport with a butt or residue, and were particularly rude maybe.
I think the joke is that the pardon is "even if not charged" so if you ever had weed in your possession and could have been charged, you've now received a presidential pardon (even if the feds never even knew of you).
One answer to your question is probably "because he spent his limited political capital trying to ensure everyone in America had access to healthcare."
Another would be that he actually laid the groundwork for this kind of action. Obama made pursuing marijuana convictions the lowest possible priority for federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials [0], effectively saying "if states want to make weed legal, the federal government isn't going to do anything about it." After that, a number of states held referenda on legalizing weed, and most passed with broad support. This is the next logical step at the federal level - pardoning anyone who was convicted during that period and taking steps towards changing marijuana from a schedule 1 drug (where it has never belonged) to something more reasonable. [1] No president can fully legalize weed at the federal level, but they can reschedule it based on the actual cost/benefits to individuals and society.
Another more cynical answer is that Obama is black, and didn't want the legacy of the first black president to also be "the one who pardoned all the drug offenders"
But you don't need political capital to make a unilateral executive decision? He could have done this after he was already a lame duck. It's not like a president can undo a pardon.
He'd be expending the political capital of his party. If he felt like this pardon would've made it harder for Democrats to get elected in 2016, that might be a reason why he didn't do it.
He was already being publicly executed by half the country for wearing a tan suit while being black, he didn't have "old white dude" lines of political credit.
Good politicians do things they know will be popular. This isn't always a bad thing. Presidential actions can influence a lot of down-ballot races. For good or ill, both Obama and Biden are politicians, and only took the steps they felt would be popular with their constituents at the time.
None of the pardoned individuals are serving prison time for their offenses. The main value of the pardon is that having a felony conviction makes it harder to get jobs and bars you from voting in some states. Around 8% of the US population has had a felony conviction.
It can prevent people from running or working for legal marijuana businesses in states where it is legal, meaning a history of uneven enforcement continues to affect the legal marijuana industry.
Us pop: 331,893,745
% Pop w/Felony: 8%
Felony pop: 26,551,499
Pardon pop: 6,500
% Felony Pardoned: 0.02%
Unfortunately, the 8% of population with a felony includes state felonies, not just federal. Wikipedia claims 6,106,327 [0] as the 2016 total felony population but only includes states. 20M federal felony population seems large. In 2020 66,761 federal felonies were adjudicated with a 94.4% conviction rate [1], so annual rate of 62,755. Of those felonies "Drug" was 18,418 with a 92.6 conviction rate, so 17,055. If the total population of pardoned people is 6,500, that is a bit over 1/3 of felony drug convictions in 2020 alone.
Given a conviction growth rate of about 5% over 30 years ending with 62,755, there would be a federal felony population of 936,422. That is barely 1M much less 20M. Something is off about the numbers.
Same as today, so that's not a compelling reason. As mentioned by someone else, Obama did make some overtures that allowed the party to feel out the base's reactions. Legalization was always going to be a process. Right now, I believe this is typical (D) politicking. I think it's likely that this is something like...Biden needs a positive press to boost for both his approval rating and visibility within his base, for the next election cycle, with a minor symbolic gesture. Obama never needed to do that.
I’d also add that this wasn’t just a mood change but a response to new laws in several states. When each of those changes happened, some people predicted the downfall of society but by now you have a number of years of evidence that the main effect is a ton of extra tax revenue. That won’t change the really committed but I know more than a few people who basically moved their position to “it’s no worse than alcohol and stoners don’t crash their cars as much” after seeing that.
First, consider Obama, who claims himself to have policies of a Reagan Republican, did not want to legalize marijuana. Then, after considering that, listen to all the excuses. Rescheduling marijuana was one pen stroke away from him for 8 years.
Obama's tenure as President was marked by a distinct attempt to meet the GOP as peers. It seems as though he was, mostly, a pretty strong believer (philosophically) in co-governance by all representatives of the people of the US in the federal government. "Reach across the aisle" was a frequently-used phrase at that time. And if he unilaterally pardoned people legally convicted of marijuana offenses without Congress first changing the law, what kind of message would that send about the nature of executive power in the United States of America?
His political peers responded by refusing to consider a Supreme Court nomination; supporting and nominating Donald Trump, whom voters then elected; and seating three Supreme Court justices, who then overturned precedent that had protected the reproductive rights of a generation and a half of Americans. Their party platform in 2020 was "That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda" with no other changes from the 2016 platform. No mention of policy; no mention of Congress.
The modern Democratic party is under no illusions that reaching across the aisle will benefit them and is now in the tit-for-tat phase of the two-party prisoner's dilemma. If this move wins Biden's party votes going into the midterms, then forget Congress. If Congress wants a say in how the country is governed, they can get their act together and do the few structural changes that would un-deadlock the Senate and allow laws to be passed.
I don't know if this is a strategy that would have worked during Obama's administration. I don't think Obama's strategies work in this era, though.
It could have worked. The problem always was that Obama was so enthralled with the concept of bipartisanship that he didn't listen to his opponents when they told the press *in 2009* that their only goal for the next four years was to destroy his presidency.
So he always bent over for the Republicans, often sabotaging things like Obamacare by pre-negotiating with his own administration to remove things he thought the Republicans would dislike.
Of course, the Republicans didn't care what he did. They were going to oppose everything they could get away with opposing. (Their voters did still expect some governance in those days, instead of the full-time vengeance mode they now expect.)
I agree that he put far too much effort into bipartisanship but I do think some of that showed how successful all of the attacks on him as some kind of radical extremist were. He felt, probably not incorrectly, that there were a fairly large number of people who were willing to give him a chance but would potentially turn on him if he pushed quickly enough that the “radical black activist” attacks started to get traction.
Contrast with Joe Biden, who is an old white guy with working class roots and half a century in politics with a solid, non-threatening track record. There’s almost nothing he could do which will get that many people to be like “I thought I knew him but not this”.
Weed wasn't as big of an issue back then, and I don't recall any states that had legalized it (except maybe for "medical" use) at the time. I mean Obama also opposed gay marriage when he started his term; the left has moved left incredibly quickly over the last ~10 years
> the left has moved left incredibly quickly over the last ~10 years
Have they? Most on the left said and would still say Obama was a relatively standard Democrat and not particularly progressive, especially compared to someone like Bernie Sanders.
The same reason Obama was opposed to gay marriage then changed his mind. The values of society change over time. You need a critical mass of support before it becomes politically viable. That takes time. Now is the time.
It was simply not a priority then. An election is coming up, and winning it is the priority right now. That is why we suddenly have movement on Marijuana, and student loans. The timing is ridiculously suspect.
It's not suspect, it's politics. Giving your constituents what they are asking for is the name of the game. Timing it to maximize your chances for re-election is good politics. Hard to imagine it could be any other way in our current system.
If you follow the news trail on this topic at all, you would be aware that the Democratic Party has been pretty loud about marihuana reform for at least a year now.
He was already dangerously unpopular at a time when democrats can't afford it. I was thinking this would be an easy win for him, I honestly don't know why he waited this long. I wouldn't be surprised if he does something else high profile to try to win approval. What else would you expect
Obama is centrist, and even basic prison and drug policy reform is not a centrist concern. Biden is too, but the Overton window on marijuana has shifted a bit.
Biden is doing the smallest tangible thing, which is great, but hardly earth shattering.
This feels revisionist. Obama won by a healthy margin in 2012 and those that subscribed to the racist politics probably would not have voted for him even if he locked up every African American in the US. He had every opportunity to push for bold change and instead disappointed his base by being timid.
“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’” - Martin Luther King Jr.
Losing Democrats was the concern, not Republicans; they were already lost. There are plenty of “tough on crime” Dems out there for Obama to navigate.
For the same reasons, Michelle Obama had to be careful with hairstyles and how she spoke, lest she be perceived as an “angry Black lady”.
I don't agree with this -- the "losing Democrats" bit -- but I don't think it should be downvoted.
Michelle Obama was treated horribly. Trump's First Lady was a Russian prostitute who literally hated Christmas, and she was given the benefit of the doubt until the very last moment.
Trump built his political base on questioning Obama’s citizenship, among other racist dog whistles he’s used. That movement was a direct reaction to having a black President.
Trump built his political base on the fact that so many non-tech areas got left behind when tech became big money.
Trump actually stood in front of a bunch of businessmen and told them to their face if they moved their manufacturing out of the US he'd slap them with tariffs.
It was a thing in VA for a while. I the governor had to sign 200k individual orders to restore voting rights to felons. Just a quirk of VA law, though
> McAuliffe, a man known for his irascibility, promised to find a way to restore voting rights anyway, using an autopen to sign individual orders for all 200,000 felons within two weeks.
IANL: How many would this be? Considering 21 U.S.C. 844 applies to federal jurisdiction, this would be those simple possession convictions at military bases, immigration/airports checkpoints, federal facilities and employees, and ? That does not sound like many people...
More interestingly, I wonder how this will apply to federal contracting. IIRC, Elon smoked a join with Joe Rogan and had to submit to a year of drug tests per his contract with the federal government, visavia NASA, etc.
According to the government, 0 people in prison, but there are many with convictions on their records that the pardons will address. The burden of a conviction extends beyond incarceration.
It’s interesting that different sources have different counts. I wonder how sure they are, and how good the records are. Hopefully some people have some measure of their lives restored.
> It’s interesting that different sources have different counts.
0 is the government’s current count of people who are in federal prison now solely on a federal simple possession charge.
149 is, per the source cited upthread, the number for Fiscal Year 2021 (not clear from the B.I. article if it is at some point in the fiscal year are total in prison at any point over the fiscal year), and the source indicates that’s been rapidly declining; also, Biden issued 75 commutations and 3 pardons in April this year for nonviolent drug offenses, which may be part of the reason that the number of prisoners on simple marijuana possession charges alone in federal prison now is 0.
That's a really good point. I wonder how it will impact those who were turned down for security clearances, maybe convicted of marijuana use in relation to government contracting, etc. Suddenly 6,500 people have opportunities.
Wow. Let's say a person within that pool ONLY had a felony for marijuana possession. This pardon restores their voting rights.
I met 2 guys while in prison that got hit on this. They worked in Federal Parks summer programs as teens and got busted with pot. Ruined their whole lives. They became repeat offenders because in their minds why not, they were never going to get a good job, never going to get ahead.
I guess prosecutors won't be as willing to offer a possession plea deal to people caught running an illegal trafficking operation. AFAIK, most of the people in jail for possession, are there due to a plea deal after being caught for something much worse.
The President doesn't have the power to legalize marijuana by proclamation. He has ordered the DEA, FDA and HHS to review the classification of marijuana under the notice and comment rulemaking process defined in the Controlled Substances Act. That is the limit of what he can do under the CSA.
Weed is scheduled by Congress, the agencies can only add substances to the schedules temporarily for "public health reasons" and there's some weed derived stuff or analogues that have been added that way but marihuana in and of itself is illegal because congress passed a law saying it's illegal: the CSA, 21 U.S. Code § 812 (c)
The CSA allows for schedules to be updated and republished annually but agencies can only recommend, the authority to remove something that's scheduled by Congress is only held by Congress.
This is not correct. Schedule 1 drugs require UN approval to downgrade; at least according to treaty. The US Congress can pass a law, but they can't undo a treaty they signed only in-part; else the UN has legal standing to contend their unilateral scheduling.
Treaties are not permanent, they can be withdrawn or terminated.
Also the UN isn't nearly as powerful as you seem to think it is. A substantial amount of the UN's power comes from the USA.
Other UN members can pass laws to keep cannabis illegal. There's no reason for the UN to create friction for POTUS on this. But even if there is friction, ask yourself what exactly can the rest of the UN do to stop POTUS. Not many UN member states are in a position to simultaneously care about the UN cannabis treaties and pose sanction threats to the USA.
The UN can file a complaint and have an injunction imposed by the Supreme Court to stop the Executive Order/Law.
Would love to see the front page of the NYTimes as the UN stops the Dem Prez from limiting drug schedules. That would be very eye opening for the liberal media and what all these climate change treaties are going to be like and hopefully will be an example as to WHY people fought the Kyoto Protocols.
“As with all articles of the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the provisions of Article 22 are only suggestions which do not override the domestic law of the member countries:
4. The provisions of this article shall be subject to the provisions of the domestic law of the Party concerned on questions of jurisdiction.
5. Nothing contained in this article shall affect the principle that the offences to which it refers shall be defined, prosecuted and punished in conformity with the domestic law of a Party.”
What you are listing is specifically the "Penal Provisions" which are suggestions as the UN doesn't have the right to prosecute drug violations in member countries. They do, however, according to Article 6 of the Constitution (which makes all Treaties the law of the land), the right to challenge the rescheduling of drugs which conflict with treaties.
The treaty isn't about prosecuting crimes its about adhering to international drug policy so drugs don't incubate in certain countries and end up in others. In this way, the UN does have regulatory input. It's all "voluntary"; we can always withdraw from the treaty or ignore it.
Yes, you are incorrectly generalizing Article 6. It's literally saying Treaties trump state laws and is directing judges to adhere to Federal laws and Treaties over the state laws and Constitutions which conflict with that.
> so drugs don't incubate in certain countries and end up in others
that’s a vast oversimplification, but sure
> you are incorrectly generalizing Article 6
no, i was misunderstanding the word “notwithstanding” in the clause to be an escape valve for the states, rather than as overruling the states.
again, i’m not a lawyer.
my point is that on an international level, and on a national level, the legal reforms of cannabis do appear to be well underway and nearly in full swing.
and regardless, as i noted elsewhere, according to Congress, themselves:
The UN can not stop congress from changing a law nor can they obtain an injunction to stop congress from changing a law nor can they obtain a court order to undue an act of congress nor can they stop congress from partially violating a treaty.
Reference:
"What happens when a treaty provision and an act of Congress conflict? The answer is that neither has any intrinsic superiority over the other and therefore the later one will prevail. In short, the treaty commitments of the United States do not diminish Congress’s constitutional powers."
That's wrong, the CSA allows for the executive to temporarily change schedules and only for a matter of safety. The spirit of that part of the law is actually adding more substances and not removing substances that are on the law.
I disagree, I believe that we should reward, positively, the behaviors that we would like to see from the government, such as simple proclamations such as this.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. In a time when one political party's leading candidates deny we hold fair elections this is huge. Would said political party do even this much? Unlikely.
If you can discriminate against smokers, which is a legal vice, can the employer discriminate on other legal vices, even taken in moderation, such as alcohol or caffeine, in a legal capacity?
I'm the furthest thing from a lawyer and this is just a question to people who may know. I understand the smoking thing is an insurance issue.
Unless it’s a protected class you can discriminate on it, from what I understand.
If they suspect that you’re using it as a stand-in for a protected class, you may be in trouble (not hiring smokers because blacks smoke, for example).
There may be edge cases where something is effectively a protected class. And it may vary from state to state.
If you want to work at BYU, abstaining from coffee is a condition of employment. This goes for even for people who are not members of its sponsoring church. Just a few years ago, BYU almost lost its ROTC program because a non-LDS colonel didn't want to abide by the university's code [1].
Some states bar or limit employers from regulating off-duty conduct by employees. Some don't. Smoking is a common one because it affects insurance costs, but the same legal theory could probably be applied to alcohol or caffeine.
Note this applies only to citizens and lawful permanent residents. I’m not sure if there’s an underlying constitutional limitation or if it’s arbitrary, but (IANAL) it seems arbitrary as the cited section has no such limitation.
I welcome any progress towards decriminalization and legalization, but I think it’s important always to be aware when and how the progress is limited.
I cam to comment on that portion too. It confuses me that those people weren't simply extradited? Albeit in the obvious cases where it will be a futile catch and release. But I would think those people have massive charges (conspiracy) vs simple possession.
I don’t know which “those people” you refer to but I don’t share your views of any subset of people and that was my point. I want everyone who could benefit under relevant jurisdiction to benefit from this pardon. I don’t want anyone extradited, I don’t have any expectation that people without permanent resident status are charged with conspiracy or otherwise predisposed to some exemption from this.
This is exactly what it is and it’s strategically stupid because they’ll campaign on that anyway. Might as well do the moral thing and at least not alienate those of us who care if you do the moral thing.
There's not many other laws where rules are applied so unevenly as drug charges. It just becomes a freebie police can use to arrest someone they don't like.
When Madison Cawthorne outed his peers recently as doing drugs, the problem was his outing, not the drugs. Let's be real, as long as the productive citizens remain productive, their drug use by and large really isn't a problem.
>When Madison Cawthorne outed his peers recently as doing drugs, the problem was his outing, not the drugs.
Do you mean that literally? Whether they're productive or not, it's in the publics interest to know if their representatives are doing cocaine or other drugs. I think that's completely relevant, it affects the thought processes of most regular cocaine users I've known.
Yeah, it's pretty wild how brazen Hunter Biden has been, with essentially zero scrutiny from the liberal media.
My meta-tinfoil hat theory is that stories of his depravity have been intentionally shared by dem insiders to conservative channels to mitigate the national security risk of someone extorting Joe - can't blackmail if the info is already public.
The order at the top says it only applies to current US citizens and lawful permanent residents.
So even if they were a lawful permanent resident at the time of their offense, if they aren't anymore at this time (and getting convicted is probably enough to have their visa's revoked), no, it doesn't apply to them. @kragen pointed this out in another comment.
Let alone someone who was never a lawful permanent resident, nope, not pardoned.
Sorry, I guess I misunderstood what if anything you were asking about, or misinterpreted the question mark on the end of your comment.
The first sentance of the order says it only applies to current citizens or permanent residents. I guess if you were a visa holder at time of offense and had somehow become a citizen or lawful permanent resident since then (which would be hard to do with such an offense), it would apply to you...
how much marijuana do you have to be in possession of to be charged at the federal level? Federal charge means it's a felony correct? It has to be a lot to be considered a felony. That charge may be pardoned but i'm sure it qualifies for intent to distribute at the state level which is a much more serious charge than possession.
Park rangers tried to do this to one of my friends and he just ran. They didn’t have guns and they’re too good of a people to really pursue someone for a useless crime. He got away.
Federal charge means it either (a) happened in land under federal jurisdiction (borders, national parks, military bases, etc.), or (b) involved interstate commerce/transportation.
Something being a felony has no relevance to whether it's a federal charge. You can have misdemeanor federal charges, as well as felony state charges.
How often do presidents issue blanket pardons like this?
Has he effectively overturned a law established by elected legislators, and how does that reconcile with separation of powers between the executive and legislative branch?
Why'd he exclude visitors/tourists (and would equivalent state pardons issued by governors)?
A very large percentage of federal possession cases are drug smuggling at border crossings. This amendment is to keep those people locked up since their initial charge of “possession” was chosen over illegal border crossing or whatever else since it was probably a) easier to prosecute, and b) carried a harsher sentence
How is it legal for a President to pardon all instances of an offense as opposed to pardoning individuals? It seems to me this would violate separation of powers since the president is effectively repealing a law, something that should be up to congress.
Pardons can not apply to _future_ crimes. So it only affects those currently convicted. People can still be charged/convicted of the same crime moving forward.
> on or before the date of this proclamation, regardless of whether they have been charged with or prosecuted for this offense on or before the date of this proclamation
The scope of this proclamation is really weird. It applies only to people who are currently US citizens or lawful permanent residents, minus any who were non-citizens not lawfully present in the US at the time of their offense.
To give two examples of how weird this scope is: (1) If someone was convicted of the offense a few years ago when they were a US citizen but has since moved abroad and renounced their US citizenship, the renunciation would prevent this pardon from applying to them. But, (2) if someone committed the offense while overstaying tourist status and had that all waived and forgiven for immigration purposes through the options that are available when marrying a US citizen, the criminal record would remain unpardoned even if they are now a citizen.
Do we know why Biden set these parameters, and if there's a chance it might get broadened to more reasonable boundaries?
As others stated it's to avoid letting smugglers free who were likely working for Mexican cartels. In many cases they were only able to be charged with possession.
Why wouldn't he legally be able to pardon them via executive order, the same as he can pardon anyone else? The president's pardon power is not restricted to citizens and permanent residents.
No, this only applies to possession until and including today. If you are caught in possession of marijuana tomorrow, you can go to jail for this exact same offense.
Yes, for going forward we need legislation - which is the other part of the proclamation - that HHS Beccera will be driving policy changes that will likely require congress.
No one is serving prison time for Federal marijuana possession charges. It is however a potential felony with all that entails (eg finding a job, renting a house, voting). So this is positive but there’s two things worth pointing out.
1. The core problem here is America’s scarlet letter system of being a felon. This forever makes you a second class citizen. This system needs to be reformed so that those who have served their time automatically get their record expunged; and
2. Let’s not forget that Biden was one of the chief architects of Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill that ushered in this era of mass incarceration and the disastrous “war on drugs”. The 1990s saw the Democratic Party hijacked by neoliberalism, which has been a disaster for working people.
> The core problem here is America’s scarlet letter system of being a felon
I wish more people understood this.
"Felons shouldn't get a vote" makes common sense on the surface, until one picks away the surface just a little and realizes that the easiest way to politically disenfranchise an opponent would be to gain just a little more power than them and then make something core to their identity illegal.
Stripping voting rights due to a conviction for any crime is a huge incentive to wield the law as a political cudgel.
(Besides, you'd think that Americans, of all people, given the way they got their country, would grok the notion that sometimes people who break the law are on the right side of history).
> "Felons shouldn't get a vote" makes common sense on the surface, until one picks away the surface just a little and realizes that the easiest way to politically disenfranchise an opponent would be to gain just a little more power than them and then make something core to their identity illegal.
As an example, if you were - for example - a tech billionaire who is on the record as describing the 19th amendment as the end of freedom in the United States, and you wanted to make it impossible for as many women to vote as possible without actually fronting a repeal of that amendment, you could relentlessly support and fund efforts to make common healthcare procedures for women a felony.
I think unequal enforcement of the law makes for a huge problem generally. I think we as a society should have throwing the book at legislators as the first order of business, and they should live under heavy scrutiny and enforcement of the letter of the law first.
As someone who is extremely dissatisfied with Biden in general - I 100% applaud this action. It's a huge step in the right direction and should have been done years ago.
I was dissatisfied until about 8 months ago but he’s changed since then. If he can get some sort of voter rights law through I will have full satisfaction.
Not gonna lie, I thought Obama or Trump or someone had already done this. Had this previously been discussed under a different presidency and not gone through? Was I thinking of a similar blanket pardon but not exactly the same?
this is more complicated than it sounds. "non violent offenders" is a myth because many offenders have their charges reduced during plea bargaining process.
Letting people out of prison is not a simple undo function there are dangerous side effects as experienced in California
>this is more complicated than it sounds. "non violent offenders" is a myth because many offenders have their charges reduced during plea bargaining process.
something like 80-90% of ALL cases at the federal level end in plea bargains, mostly for practical reasons because the legal system literally doesn't have the capacity to handle all the charges that would be brought forward. pretending it's unique to simple marijuana procession is fearmongering
>Letting people out of prison is not a simple undo function there are dangerous side effects as experienced in California
the US has 25% of the world's prison population and 5% of the world's population, the ONLY worthwhile moral consideration is the mass release of US prisoners. stuff like "think of the side effects" just perpetuates the stays quo via perpetual "considerations"
Not that many people are in jail purely for simple cannabis possession. The important part here is that these people now have their criminal records wiped clean.
Wait, what? There is no such thing as somebody having weed in their pocket in Yosemite National Park in a non-violent way?
I love this reasoning. If there are no non-violent offenders, then every crime is violence. Considering people break laws on accident all the time, it is probably safest to simply imprison the entire population of California by default and have a tribunal of police that decide parole on a case-by-case basis.
That is a hilarious position to take without any proof. I would love to see your stats on how cops and prosecutors are happy to ignore violence at scale, everywhere.
If non-violent crime is indeed rare, would you be eligible for parole in my thought experiment where everybody starts off incarcerated? How could I trust that you wouldn’t violently jaywalk or violently forget the contents of your trunk and bring an apple across state lines?
Serious question: Do you work in or for law enforcement? The only people I’ve ever spoken to that maintain “people that smoke weed are indistinguishable from rapists and murderers” are people whose income in some way relies on holding that opinion.
seems like you mis read. I’m not implying weed smokers at large are violent. Among the ones who are currently in federal prison and eligible for release in this program, the majority were likely violent because their charges were reduced and there’s no way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I’m just a civilian victim of crimes who knows that releasing criminals causes crime.
If you want to see proof, look at crime rates in CA cities, Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans . Those cities have been letting prisoners out letting suspects out with no bail.
Almost all crime is committed by a small percentage of people. You don’t have to let many criminals out for big increases in crime.
You’re concerned about the criminals and I’m concerned about the victims.
How is it possible that it is not possible to distinguish between violent and non violent crime? In most cases, violent crime has victims, be they animal, mineral or vegetable.
Your point is that people in jail for weed are probably violent? Based on what?
I’ll repeat my earlier question:
> Serious question: Do you work in or for law enforcement? The only people I’ve ever spoken to that maintain “people that smoke weed are indistinguishable from rapists and murderers” are people whose income in some way relies on holding that opinion.
Also I’ll add my second question:
Since there are only two groups of people, “violent criminals” (since all criminals must be assumed to be violent) and “victims”, what group does someone that’s wrongfully imprisoned fall into? Who exactly do I care about then? Criminal or victim of a shitty criminal system?
Also, would you get parole in the world of “guilty of violent crime until proven innocent” world? I’m fascinated about your willingness to make theoretical statements paired with your allergy to answering theoretical (and while we’re at it, basic factual) questions.
It is possible to issue a pardon like this without admitting to any government wrongdoing in crafting, passing, and enforcing the law in the first place. I don't think there's enough philosophical alignment in the US that criminalization of marijuana was actually wrong for a reparations balloon to float.
Probably not whilst the sitting vice president put 1500 people in prison for marijuana violations and then laughed about when she was asked if she'd ever smoked marijuana.
despite sounding sarcastically exasperated, this is a legitimate question asked sincerely:
when exactly, in the history of Modern Democracy, did the electorate start completely accepting token gestures and empty promises in place of actual, tangible progress enacted by their elected officials?
weird how that wasn't the way the headlines (including OP) framed it. weird how that's not the way several other people in this thread alone interpreted it.
Taking you at your word, I assume you have some examples in mind of when the U.S. government making actual tangible progress was standard operating procedure?
if that truly is the case, then doesn't it seem odd that we're still going through the motions, still, in the Internet Age? why would dozens of people in this very thread continue to openly applaud actions that they are fully aware are mere gestures and nothing but, as (they also well know) is and has always been just par for the course, out in the open for all to see?
not only is it pathetic beyond reason, but it goes to show just how shallow and "actually just all in our heads" 99% of "politics" is.
did any of the supposed doom and gloom that the previous President was supposed to be the harbinger of ever come to fruition? where were the conversion therapy concentration camps? where were the existential threats to Women and Science that necessitated political marches opposing such looming threats?
or the President before that one, the First Black President. what did he end up doing for Black America, after eight years in office? are we supposed to look back on him fondly for all that he did for Black Americans, by virtue of getting elected President while Being Black, alone? is that really the level of gesture-accepting we're at, as a nation? as a species?
it's almost as though almost (but not quite) 100% of contemporary "politics" exists solely within the confines of our skulls, transmitted via media disseminated through news organizations complicit in the perpetuation of an ongoing political regime, where the role of the citizen electorate is to play along with the professional wrestling-tier storylines presented to them, at face value, because they've established themselves as Authoritative Sources on The News, which gives them free reign to emotionally manipulate said citizen electorate at a mass scale—especially through the use of the absurdly powerful emotion of fear.
if this is the case, why do we continue to play along with it, or at the very least consider it actively virtuous to play along with it? the house is burning but "this is fine"?
you're talking about a liberal society where the two parties available both operate in extremely pro-corporate / "neoliberal" ways, and their corporate owner constituents (who now author our laws) want anything but for society to find a common enemy in them. of course the day to day politicking, narratives, and coverage are often gestural nonsense
this isn't a species-wide thing and definitely overstates the inevitability of these structures. you might be interested in recent wengrow/graeber research like the dawn of everything or their papers.
Well the contrary cases are what the recent anthro/archaeological research is showing. And this is for societies that are well beyond Dunbar’s number, after discovery of agriculture. You have a capitalist realist viewpoint it seems and are behind on anthropology
Our laws on marijuana are too strict, as there are a few legitimate medical uses, but cannabis remains a dangerous drug—and it's getting more so as producers breed plants with higher and higher THC content. https://www.amazon.com/Tell-Your-Children-Marijuana-Violence...
So some people are upset that this happening in an election season, even though they support it?
This was a lawful and thoughtful exercise of presidential power that helps some people convicted of something that really shouldn't be criminalized. It could also potentially help the Democratic Party in the upcoming election.
But if you believe in what the Democratic Party is trying to do for the country, that's not a bad thing. There's no corruption in doing popular things that can help get people in your party elected. That's just good governance and acting according to the will of the voters.
The majority of people in the US, 60%, and even a plurality of Republicans support decriminalizing recreational cannabis federally. The support for medicinal cannabis, possible if Cannabis wasn't scheduled as it currently is, is even higher.
Recreational:
https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cannabis/22/10/29166025/new...
Medical:
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...
- "So some people are upset that this happening in an election season, even though they support it?"
If it were a sincere and principled choice, he would have done it in his first week in office. Like Carter with his Vietnam pardons in January 1977.
It's difficult not to become cynical about electoral politics today, when politicians have become so transparently cynical about your vote.
Maybe I'm missing something but doing good things and getting rewarded by the popular vote seems like the way the system should work.
Contrast that with doing bad things and then trying to prevent people from voting so you can cling to power.
I suspect they are just being political. It is a good move. Keep up the good work, I say.
That being said, Joe Biden has been a key player at the highest levels of US policy for decades. He only narrowly missed out on entering the US Senate to vote on the original Controlled Substances Act of 1970 that it seems people are being pardoned for violating. 1973-2009 he was part of the exact group of people helping build up the war on drugs. 2022 elections he throws out a bone to deal with the symptoms.
You can see why people like Obama or Trump do so well vs incumbent politicians. These ex-Congress people are, by and large, responsible for all the messes they campaign on fixing. The internet is making it harder for them to escape their own decisions.
The US really needs to look back and get rid of some of the people with the more appalling track records. I think there are still people in the US Congress who enthusiastically supported Afghanistan and Iraq. They shouldn't be allowed to tell people what to do any more. It is hard to do worse than that.
Wouldn't the responsibility of the government representatives be to represent the opinion of the people at the time? I wouldn't be surprised if in 1973 most Americans were also totally onboard with criminalizing possession of drugs.
And similarly now the opinion of the people has shifted, so the government representatives are adopting policies that match up with today's opinion.
I'm not saying this to defend any particular person you referenced, just that the logic of saying that in the past someone was against something and now they're for it isn't necessarily hypocrisy, or false pretense. If the opinion of the people they represent also changed and at both times were respected, that seems to be a great example of a functioning republic no?
Theoretically? Sure, that works. I have some respect for it.
As a practical matter, I don't think the US was ever in favour of locking a bunch of people up, destroying lives for nothing and the uncomfortably racial nature of where the hammer fell. They could have used methods to deal with drugs that worked. Even if the conscious plan is to vote for a chimera, it still makes sense to vote for one that implements good long-term policies as well as bowing to short term expediency.
If the policies as-implemented are so bad that he feels a need to pardon people for being charged under them, I can see why some people would be apoplectic at this bald-faced ploy. After some number of lives ruined by bad policy making, really these politicians should just resign. Although, again, I do think most people are making a show about it fright now are doing so for political reasons; there aren't a lot of people out there who care about principle. Any of the last 10 presidents would have done the same under similar circumstances.
I should start out by saying this is a delightfully well-written post despite the serious subject matter, nice ;)
I think you're giving mid-century Americans too much credit. I think they were widely ignorant of Black history and racial issues and really had no concept of institutional racism--of which the War on Drugs was certainly a scion. Crime--and let's consider all its racializations--was also pretty bad, and voters across races and political lines are generally in favor of full on human rights violations to get it under control [0].
[0]: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/08/16/212620886...
Actually a whole hell of a lot of Americans are totally in favor of locking a bunch of people up, destroying lives for nothing, punishing people they hate, spreading diseases like HIV and COVID throughout their communities then withholding health care and clean needles and masks, and totally racist to the core. And it's always been that way.
If you want to see a whole lot of people act truly apoplectic at a bald-face ploy, then just watch the MAGA mob's reaction to the earth-shattering life-changing fact that a fictional cartoon character named "Velma" finally came out as lesbian and fell in love.
The left's reaction:
Fans cheer as Velma is shown crushing on a woman in the new Scooby-Doo movie:
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/05/1126838591/velma-lesbian-scoo...
The right's reaction:
Conservatives Are Now Freaking Out About [Spins Wheel] a Lesbian in ‘Scooby Doo’. The classic cartoon's Halloween special portrays Velma as queer, and right-wing pundits can't cope:
https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/conservatives-now-freaking-...
FOX News Goes Through the Motions Proclaiming 'Scooby Doo' is Woke Because Velma is Gay:
https://www.thebiglead.com/posts/fox-news-scooby-doo-velma-g...
Fox guest loses his mind over Scooby Doo’s Velma being gay & compares it to bestiality. He told Laura Ingraham that Velma being gay is "really offensive" to him because it "sexualizes" her.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/10/fox-guest-loses-mind-sco...
Edit:
>These people exist, but they aren't deciding elections.
You're absolutely wrong, and in denial of reality. The rest of your conclusions are based on believing a lie.
These people exist, but they aren't deciding elections. Pretty much the formula for winning a US election is pro-peace, pro-equality, pro-positive-vision. People have been calling each other racist till they are blue in the face, but evidence that racism wins votes is thin on the ground.
If the racists want to hide behind a war on drugs, they obviously don't think they have the numbers to carry racist policy. This undermines this idea that the voters wanted the policies that were implemented.
The notion that the drug war is a pretext for racism is utterly ridiculous. The PM’s cabinet in my home country recently approved a draft law that would impose the death penalty for dealing drugs. There’s virtually no racial minorities in my country to “oppress” through a drug war. Swedes likewise have long been harsh towards drug use, despite being a highly homogenous society.
It goes without saying that Black people aren’t inherently more likely to be drug dealers or drug users—there is no intrinsic connection between drugs and race. Prohibitions might have a disparate impact on them, but for reasons (discriminatory policing, etc.) that would apply to any prohibition. There’s lots of other laws that have discriminatory enforcement, but nobody accuses the proponents of those laws of being motivated by racism.
> The notion that the drug war is a pretext for racism is utterly ridiculous
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
-- Former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman
> The PM’s cabinet in my home country
The drug war didn't start in your country, so you have no claim to what the initial and subsequent motivations were of those who started it and popularized it around the world.
> It goes without saying that Black people aren’t inherently more likely to be drug dealers or drug users
Black people in the US are less likely to be drug dealers, however they are searched and arrested at a much higher rate.
> There’s lots of other laws that have discriminatory enforcement, but nobody accuses the proponents of those laws of being motivated by racism.
Sure they do. Just as one example, the law that felons cannot vote has frequently been cited as racially motivated. Another example is stop and frisk.
> Sure they do. Just as one example, the law that felons cannot vote has frequently been cited as racially motivated. Another example is stop and frisk.
Yes, and those accusations are stupid because e.g. the prohibition on felons voting in most states dates to before the civil war when most Black people couldn't vote. Iowa had some of the strongest felony voting rules in the country, which it adopted in 1846 when it had virtually no Black people.
Gun control laws were originally adopted to disarm Black people. Felon-in-possession and red flag laws disproportionately affect Black men. Do you go around calling contemporary proponents of gun control motivated by racism?
A major justification for abortion in the early 20th century was limiting the birth rate of minorities and poor people. Do you accuse abortion advocates of being motivated by racism?
No, you don’t because you recognize that there are independent reasons for those policies even if some advocates of those policies have (or had in the past) racist motivations.
You're doing that HN thing of trying to axiomatically defeat an argument that is supported by clear evidence. You have to do better than give us reasons you don't think the drug war makes sense as a vector for racism. You either need countervailing evidence, or something that impeaches the evidence you've been given.
It's a particularly brazen stroke of message-boardiness to put words in the mouth of someone who just rebutted your first-principles argument with evidence.
If you've decided to carry the flag of "the drug war is, contrary to popular belief, not racist" --- and I fully respect your prerogative to do that --- you should at least come prepared to knock down a bit of evidence so popular it was featured on Adam Ruins Everything. There are other easy-pickings facts to whack your argument with; for instance, you can just search AskHistorians, where this has been covered (hint: I'm pretty sure you're wrong.)
Just for fun:
https://www.nytimes.com/1914/02/08/archives/negro-cocaine-fi...
(AskHistorians is really great).
If you assert that a cluster of distinctive cancers is caused by the local chemical plant, pointing out that similar cancer clusters are cropping up other places nowhere near a chemical plant is an evidence-based rebuttal to your theory.
It’s possible that the drug war is caused by racism in the US, and by entirely different reasons in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Nigeria, Japan, or China, or Russia. But the cited “evidence” hardly suffices to establish that.
“Historians” are, as a general matter, terrible at describing why things happen. They’re not data analyzers, they’re story tellers. The same few anecdotes from people in Nixon’s orbit get spun out to explain a decades-long social phenomenon. But was Nixon in Japan and all those other places that have drug wars?
The drug war happened because America is a rigidly moralistic society, just like Japan, and such societies almost uniformly condemn drug use as a moral failing. Nixon also happened to be racist, and a hallmark of racism is the tendency to attribute immorality and lack of character to out groups. But that’s not causation.
> If you assert that a cluster of distinctive cancers is caused by the local chemical plant, pointing out that similar cancer clusters are cropping up other places nowhere near a chemical plant is an evidence-based rebuttal to your theory.
That's a sweeping generalization — it's not a rebuttal if the cancers in question have multiple causative factors, as you seem implicitly to acknowledge in your very-next paragraph about "entirely different reasons" ....
> “Historians” are, as a general matter, terrible at describing why things happen. They’re not data analyzers, they’re story tellers.
Really? "I usually don't agree with historians' descriptions of why things happen" is not an acceptable definition of "historians are terrible at describing why things happen."
(I don't know why you look down on story-tellers; as I'm sure you know professionally, narrative is often the best way to communicate a message, and the most persuasive teachers are typically great story-tellers.)
The cited "evidence" is John Erlichman stating directly that Nixon ratcheted up enforcement of drug laws to target Black people. Why did you scare-quote that?
Did you take a second to search AskHistorians about this issue? There's a bunch more stuff like this, not just in the 1970s.
> The drug war happened because America is a rigidly moralistic society
That reductive. Things can happen for multiple reasons.
> Nixon also happened to be racist... But that’s not causation.
Sure it is. If you are racist and you do things that have a racist outcome, it's racism. What kind of mental hoops are you jumping through to get to some other conclusion?
I mean, it's worse than that, right? It's, "If you're a racist, and you do things that have a racist outcome, and you do them deliberately to further that racist outcome, literally citing racism as a rationale, it's racist".
And I'll add that if you bend over backward and twist yourself into a logical pretzel to defend racists from being called racist because of their racist words and racist behaviors and racist outcomes and racist supporters, then you're most probably racist too.
Like the people who defend Eric S Raymond's racist edge lord bullshit because they think he's just trying to show off how clever he is to say manifestly racist shit to provoke people and then trying to talk his way out of it by accusing everyone of being less intelligent and open minded than he is.
> Yes, and those accusations are stupid
Your original claim was "nobody accuses the proponents of those laws of being motivated by racism.". You were wrong. Now you are moving the goalposts.
> Do you accuse abortion advocates of being motivated by racism?
That is indeed something that conservatives accuse pro-choice people of quite often.
In all these cases you need to look at:
1. How recent the original motivations were and if they are still in place.
2. Outcomes.
In the case of the drug war, the motivations were recent and include several modern presidents from both sides of the aisle. Starting with Nixon but including Reagan and Bill Clinton.
And the outcome is jails filled with black people arrested on drug charges when the reality is that white people in the US both deal drugs and use drugs at a higher rate than black people.
You have recency, motivations still in place, and outcomes.
With abortions you neither have recency nor outcomes. The black population in the US is growing at a healthy rate. In fact, the black population in the US is young. Over a third of the U.S. Black population was 22 years or younger in 2019.
> you recognize that there are independent reasons for those policies
A policy can be motivated by both racism and other reasons. They aren't exclusive.
> Your original claim was "nobody accuses the proponents of those laws of being motivated by racism."
The phrase “those laws” refers to the immediately preceding “lots of other laws.” Not “all other laws.” The point is that people are selective about whether they throw around accusations of racism when a law has discriminatory impacts. Not that they allege racism only with respect to the drug war.
As to conservatives making accusations that abortion is racist, they’re dumb and wrong.
But the discriminatory impact of abortion on Black people is undeniable. According to Guttmacher, the Black abortion rate is five times higher than the white abortion rate. Black population growth as a percentage of the population has been stagnant for decades. That will directly lead to loss of Black political power as Hispanics have overtaken them as the largest minority group, and soon Asians will overtake them as well.
And the recency is there too. People point to the things Nixon said about the drug war. But read about Nixon’s Population Control Commission!
> The point is that people are selective about whether they throw around accusations of racism when a law has discriminatory impacts
Of course they are. Not all discriminatory laws were put into place by racists like Nixon.
> the Black abortion rate is five times higher than the white abortion rate.
So what? The birth rate for black people is higher than the birth rate for white people. And the birth rate for Hispanic people in the US is barely higher than that for black people. Birth rate is what matters. Abortion rates are almost meaningless.
> as Hispanics have overtaken them as the largest minority group
Due to immigration... not birth rates. You're doing such a poor job with data and logic that I'm not getting anything out of this. I'm stopping here.
> Not all discriminatory laws were put into place by racists like Nixon.
I thought the theory was that white people were generally racists?
> So what? The birth rate for black people is higher than the birth rate for white people.
So what is that most Black people themselves don’t think that an abortion is an inconsequential event. They are the reason for Clinton’s “safe, legal, and rare” messaging. They might support its legality, but many still think it’s killing a human life. When that happens five times as much to Black women as white women, that’s a significant burden.
> Due to immigration... not birth rates.
Hispanics have both immigration and higher birth rates. And if abortion rates between whites and blacks were equal, higher birth rates would offset both.
Dude, you need to give up already.
roenxi> These people exist, but they aren't deciding elections.
You're tragically and delusionally wrong, roenix. They're not only deciding elections, but they've been suppressing minority voters and jerrymandering their districts and winning elections and running the country and attempting to steal the elections by force and fraud and treason when they can't win.
https://www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-webumentary/the-past...
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/ronald-rea...
Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hidden Racist Conversation With Richard Nixon
In newly unearthed audio, the then–California governor disparaged African delegates to the United Nations.
The day after the United Nations voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China, then–California Governor Ronald Reagan phoned President Richard Nixon at the White House and vented his frustration at the delegates who had sided against the United States.
“Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said. “Yeah,” Nixon interjected. Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh.
“As you can imagine,” Nixon confided in Rogers, “there’s strong feeling that we just shouldn’t, as [Reagan] said, he saw these, as he said, he saw these—” Nixon stammered, choosing his words carefully—“these, uh, these cannibals on television last night, and he says, ‘Christ, they weren’t even wearing shoes, and here the United States is going to submit its fate to that,’ and so forth and so on.”
The president wanted his patrician secretary of state to understand that Reagan spoke for racist Americans, and they needed to be listened to. “You know, but that’s typical of a reaction, which is probably”—“That’s right,” Rogers interjected—“quite strong.”
Nixon couldn’t stop retelling his version of what Reagan had said. Oddly unfocused, he spoke with Rogers again two hours later and repeated the story as if it would be new to the secretary.
“Reagan called me last night,” Nixon said, “and I didn’t talk to him until this morning, but he is, of course, outraged. And I found out what outraged him, and I find this is typical of a lot of people: They saw it on television and, he said, ‘These cannibals jumping up and down and all that.’ And apparently it was a pretty grotesque picture.” Like Nixon, Rogers had not seen the televised images. But Rogers agreed: “Apparently, it was a terrible scene.” Nixon added, “And they cheered.”
Then Nixon said, “He practically got sick at his stomach, and that’s why he called. And he said, ‘It was a terrible scene.’ And that sort of thing will have an emotional effect on people … as [Reagan] said, ‘This bunch of people who don’t even wear shoes yet, to be kicking the United States in the teeth’ … It was a terrible thing, they thought.”
I’m not sure why I’m supposed to find some vignettes juxtaposing racism with drug prohibition persuasive. That doesn’t establish causation.
You can hear similar conversations openly in many parts of the world, especially Asia. Those countries often also tend to have harsh drug laws. But the two things are uncorrelated, given that those countries don’t have a significant domestic population of minorities that would justify drug prohibition as a pretext for cracking down on minorities.
The irony of all this is that recreational drug use is “Stuff White People Like.” Around the world, other than certain traditional plants, social acceptability and legalization of drug use is disproportionately something practiced in societies run by white people. Reading Donald Harris’s remarks about Kamala Harris impugning the dignity of Jamaicans by attempting to associate them with marijuana use is instructive.
>“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
That's a very popular quote, but it's not as slam dunk as you think. The veracity of the quote has been challenged. It was allegedly obtained 26 years after the nixon campaign, and was only published 22 years after that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ehrlichman#Drug_war_quote
> The veracity of the quote has been challenged.
The outcomes however are a matter of historical record. Jails filled to the brim with black people. Even though white people deal drugs and use drugs at a higher rate than black people. You don't even need that quote to see what Nixon quickly "achieved".
And we also know Nixon was a racist. That's on tape. Referring to Jamaica:
“Blacks can’t run it. Nowhere, and they won’t be able to for a hundred years, and maybe not for a thousand ... Do you know, maybe one black country that’s well run?”
-- Richard Nixon
Well obviously Nixon's motivation for the drug ware were't purely about race. It was about hippies too! ;)
Q: How many police officers does it take to kick a hippie down stairwell?
A: None, he just fell!
The misguided war on drugs was first and foremost a sincere attempt to curtail the prevalence of drugs. That the effect of this so-called "war" has disproportionately fallen on racial minorities is due to broad systemic racism, but it was not the intent or purpose of the initial declaration of "war."
Are you sincerely calling the War on Drugs sincerely motivated?
So you admit there is broad systemic racism, but insist it had absolutely no effect on the motivations of the people who started and supported the War on Drugs, and that it's unfair to call Nixon and Reagan racist, huh?
Then address my response to rayiner above, quoting their very own words recorded on tape, and John Ehrlichman's admission. And don't lie through your teeth.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33121939
Please, calm down! Don't call me a liar.
I don't need to prove my anti-racist bona fides to you or anyone else.
As should be obvious from my comment, I am very much against the so-called war on drugs, and thinks it's awful in many ways, including in racist ways. However, I also don't think it would have gotten the support it did in early days unless many people, even the majority of people involved, had not felt that they were actually addressing a real problem with the sale and use of drugs. In addition, I don't think it's helpful to describe it in terms that put everybody into one of two buckets, where the only two choices are "be okay with any and all drugs" and "racist."
That drug policy in the US is horrifically racist, and has been since even before the so-called "war on drugs" began is clear. But the way out is not to pretend that the only basis for the policy from anyone, ever, is racism.
If you want to feel morally superior enough to call people you don't know on the internet liars, then go ahead. But you will probably fail to convince anyone not already convinced.
> As a practical matter, I don't think the US was ever in favour of locking a bunch of people up, destroying lives for nothing and the uncomfortably racial nature of where the hammer fell
To be honest, I have no clue, maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but also maybe that's not anything they predicted or thought to consider as second order effects in their opinion at the time.
People's personal opinion are not always hours of deep analysis, reflections and evaluation. Often times, simplistic solutions win an opinion, I can very well see something as simplistic as: these drugs are a problem, let's make them all illegal and attach prison sentences to the sale and possession, problem solved! And a lot of people at the time, fearful of those drugs, not knowing much about them, and hearing what they do to people and who generally consumes them, just feeling like that's a great idea and being onboard with the policy.
And now, people have seen those second order effect first hand, they've also learned more about those drugs, their nature, don't fear it as much, and so are now of a different opinion.
As a practical matter, I fear that your thoughts on this are at odds with the actual history of the US, the historical views of people here, and even with what a lot of folks think currently.
Politicians will always be political.
The question is if your politics and support base means “being political” leads to you pardoning thousands of people for something pretty much everyone agrees is not a crime and making their and their families and kids’ lives immeasurably better, and therefore making the country and the world a better place.
Or, if your political environment leads you to illegally trafficking vulnerable people and leaving the completely stranded and in general making the world a worse place.
This might be survivorship bias. If they hadn't taken popular positions back when those positions were popular, they wouldn't be here today. See how Liz Cheney is faring, for example.
There are a lot of people in congress who had opinions on the Korean War WHILE IT WAS HAPPENING.
It's a geriatrics home. No one over the age of 70 should be allowed in elected office.
And if you want to make some nebulous argument about wisdom with age, a younger elected official can have an older, wiser, ex-politician as an adviser. But ultimately the important decisions are the younger politician's call.
I just wanted to say, as someone who is now about in the middle of the average lifespan distribution, I find no compelling evidence that leads me to believe that the half of the age range that is older than I am is any wiser than the half of the age range that is younger than I am.
I don't know whether or not there should be bans on elderly politicians, but it would be very, very nice to have a stronger cultural pressure against old people trying to hang on to power so long past their expiration dates.
why is it important to you for them to be young? you only provided a counter argument (wisdom).
I think it’s important for them to be reflecting the will of the people but for better or worse, the people are kind of old.
Congress is much older than the general population.
Older people tend to have shorter term thinking, basically not worrying about what happens after they die soon. Leaves a big mess for younger people to deal with when they are themselves older so they then just push off the problem to the next generation and the vicious cycle continues till everything is bad everywhere.
> I think there are still people in the US Congress who enthusiastically supported Afghanistan and Iraq.
Nothing bad about supporting Afghanistan in itself, the problem was (the same as with Iraq...) that the US lacked a "post-invasion" plan to rebuild the nation.
"How could we have known that sending in the army would result in the country becoming a war zone?"
The fine minds in Congress have to grapple with this sort of inscrutable mystery every day. Which is why their competence is a question of the debate.
Armies and random occupations do not build thriving countries. There was never any reason to believe it would. The only time that has worked is when the US invades global superpowers like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan - more due to the locals rebuilding than the invaders. And they'd still have been better off without being invaded - armies don't build valuable things.
> The only time that has worked is when the US invades global superpowers like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan - more due to the locals rebuilding than the invaders.
The reason why Germany is where it is now is that the US sunk billions upon billions into the Marshall Plan and had shown the commitment that they would stay in the country and provide it perspective and security if it would become and stay a healthy democracy that respects the rule of law.
The US had done everything precisely opposite in Afghanistan: they marched in and got rid of the Taliban government, but they failed to enforce a rule of law in the country and instead let local warlords and other undesirables deal with that. Corruption was rife everywhere, and there was no economic perspective for the people of Afghanistan to be a somewhat self-sufficient country. Hell even after 20 years, 75% (!) of the budget was foreign aid [1].
As a result of that lack of perspective, why should the Afghani people have any respect for its "government" that barely had any shred of legitimacy? At least Iraq has natural resources.
What the West should have done in Afghanistan was to do the same thing it had done in Germany half a century before: invest in nation building, in providing the citizens a path that is not violence, poverty and crime.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/taliban-takeover-...
Fair enough. So if the path to prosperity is massive foreign investment, why was the invasion necessary?
They could have skipped that. Spent all the money directly on the good outcome that didn't happen at all. There is - I speculate, keeping to my rather thick sarcasm - a link.
Investment -> Prosperity.
Army -> Corpses and destruction.
I recommend not sending in an army when the goal is prosperity. Invasions are sometimes clever, but they don't make the situation better for the locals. And in the case of Afghanistan it was unnecessary.
> So if the path to prosperity is massive foreign investment, why was the invasion necessary?
The problem with dictatorships of all kinds is that there are very few foreign investors willing to invest money into them. Why should anyone invest into a country that can seize your assets for no reason at all, where female staff has virtually zero rights, where there is no educated populace that can be used for work or where there isn't any industry generating income to repay investments? Most dictatorships have a barely surviving 99% and a small elite that holds the power and skims assets for their personal wealth.
It's rare that revolutions are successful even in taking down the current regime, and the few that do succeed often fail very shortly afterwards because the security services like police and military are loyal to the old leader, too corrupt to be useful, the absence of a ruling power leads to a vacuum that draws in foreign warlords or other regimes or because the prior dictatorship has looted the country's assets and stashed the profit somewhere the post-revolution government can't access it. Additionally, some revolutions also fail and become autocracies of their own due to foreign influence (e.g. the US sanctions against Cuba).
Revolutions without an external force providing basic stability are doomed to failure and suffering.
In Germany, the US made use of low-ranking Nazis during rebuilding, and in Japan they left the institutions around the Emperor intact. IIUC, doing things this way was considered the least-bad option in order to support US anti-communist policy.
I don't get the complaint. If anything, it is far more risky now.
A parole action, at the start of a term, incures low risk. It will be years until midterms, and the action will be dim, distant in people's minds.
Doing it now, means that any voter who is opposed, will have this very fresh in their minds.
Even if 20% is opposed, that's still a 20% potential vote loss! And contrary to what twitter and facebook media try to claim, there are swing voters.
So taking a stance now, is very much the most democratic thing to do.
I'd argue this is one of the last things people will be thinking about in this election. No one is changing their vote over this...the economy and abortion will drive this cycle.
My point wasn't about the issue, but the timing of any issue.
> Maybe I'm missing something
I think you are. Your suggestion could only work well if there was a perpetual voting season. Otherwise parties will just abuse their leverage only once every four years just to get more votes.
It's all in the timing.
Assuming some value is delivered every month, should the party in office stop delivering value during election season?
Otherwise, there will, certainly, be some value delivered, that can be accused of being political, as it coincides with elections.
Seems better to have a steady delivery, than having to stop the government for election season.
If it was a good thing why not do it first week of office? Why did people languish in jail for months just for an inept president to buy votes for his party?
Because people have a short attention span and republicans have moved so far right that mundane things like affordable healthcare/college, providing aid to old or disabled people, providing nutritious and affordable food, ensuring that working people of all social strata can lead dignified lives, responding with empathy and evidence backed treatments to drug addiction, etc are responded to with unhinged screeds about socialism communism and fascism and groomers. So Biden needs to respond, rationally, to the propaganda that’s endemic among conservatives which results in cynically timed actions as a part of the effort to lead a nation tearing itself apart. Don’t like it? Stop voting for self interested obstructionists like McConnell, DeSantis, Sinema, manchin, mtg, etc. and don’t fan the fire with conservative dog whistles calling Biden inept when republicans have shown themselves to be shockingly tolerant of their members that routinely and flagrantly act against their stated principles while leaving the consequences of their incompetence for a democrat to clean up.
It's really hard for me to read this and not think of a child, shouting, "BUT I WANTED THE ICE CREAM AN HOUR AGO, NOT NOW! WAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
The irrationality of this sentiment, combined with your assertion that President Biden is "inept," suggests to me that your statement is entirely political, since it seems to run contrary to the facts as I observe them.
“ … since it seems to run contrary to the facts as I observe them.”
Are there any other reasons that a statement could be political in your mind or are you the sole determinant for a politically driven statement?
Maybe they just now have realized how much money from illegal drugs flows to sanctioned countries and are moving towards full legalisation to stop it.
I suppose the logic is that he delayed his good deed till now so it'd have good media timing, rather than doing it earlier and helping people sooner.
Edit: Not that I agree with this assessment!
So should each administration send a check for let's say 10 000$ before each election just to so that people will be more likely to vote for them.
Why not? Sounds like the start of UBI, which is increasingly becoming a popular idea.
And the start of a major inflationary move in the middle of an inflationary crisis.
I’m not convinced that sending out such checks won’t largely result in the purchasing power of that money being instantly eroded by massive inflation.
> And the start of a major inflationary move in the middle of an inflationary crisis.
Based on what evidence? The current inflation in the US was caused by both very high employment levels along with supply chain problems. Sending out unemployment checks went way down over the past few years.
People need things like UBI far more when the economy is not booming. The opposite of inflation. In a recession what you want is for people to spend money. You want to get back to normal levels of inflation.
> I’m not convinced
At the end of the day you don't need to be convinced. What matters is if all the top economists in favor of UBI are actually right or not. As machines automate more and more of the boring work we need done, there is no rational reason that people shouldn't have more leisure time and have to work far fewer hours.
Student loans provide some evidence whereby tuition rates increase as student loans flooded the college market.
Another example is hyper-low interest rates (essentially increasing money supply), which are largely responsible for the inflation of housing which is a major portion of inflation for consumers.
Therefore a better way to handle UBI (which I believe may be needed by the way) is to gradually phase it into the system to avoid shocks like giving everyone $10,000 all of a sudden. There would still be inflation, bit it would hopefully be less dramatic.
Unironically not a bad idea.
Can’t just send out checks like that so no. But also the implication here is that someone shouldn’t undertake any action that might be perceived as popular near a mid-term election, which begs the question then why would anyone be allowed to do anything popular or critical during the same time frame? Should we have a moratorium on all of these “Biden is raising your taxes” ads since we are saying it’s unfair for him to undertake a popular action?
And then why limit it to elections. Why not ever?
If you think your party's policies are good then allowing your party to win elections is a sincere and principled choice. Political strategy is important and thinking otherwise is just incredibly naive.
There were plenty of other topics at hand since Biden's inauguration. I don't know I can say that the order things have been worked on is optimal but I'm glad to see this done.
If I were in jail, I might be kinda cranky about losing another 18 months of my life.
Funnily enough literally zero people affected by this are in jail. No one gets sent to jail for “just” possession. They always tack on other charges.
It’s also only about 6500 people.
That makes it sound like a empty gesture, and therefore more of a political stunt.
Removing crimes from your record is hardly an empty gesture.
“They always tack on other charges.”
Yet it has less impact when there are other charges anyway. “But I was convicted of just 2 felonies not 3!”
A pardon does not remove anything from your record. It is about forgiving, not expunging. As for civil rights (e.g. the rights to vote or the right to bear arms), they often are state matters and a federal pardon does not grant them back.
It is an empty gesture.
Pardon makes it possible/easier to have your record expunged. These pardons also effectively decriminalize possession at the federal level.
It's far from an empty gesture. But at the same time it is also a token, bare minimum gesture.
I find the active and continued harm those people have experienced by being felons to be of far greater value to resolve than winning another election.
And if Biden and friends really wanted to serve their people, they would continually do things their populous wanted and then when election season comes, they would say “look at what we have been doing”, not “here is a crumb, pleb.”
It’s good that it’s being done, but, do more.
this is blaming the injust jail time on the one releasing them instead of blaming it on the ones creating the injust laws and convictions.
In this case, Biden actually was a major component of the reason they’re in jail: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/25/18282870/j...
interesting. also from that article, he openly acknowledged that he was wrong:
> Biden has backtracked since the ’80s and ’90s. Before he left the Senate to become vice president, he pushed to pull back tougher prison sentences for crack cocaine — an effort that helped lead to a law that President Barack Obama signed in 2010. And he’s recently acknowledged his mistakes.
> “I haven’t always been right,” Biden said earlier this year, speaking to criminal justice issues. “I know we haven’t always gotten things right, but I’ve always tried.” (Asked about Biden’s record, his spokesperson pointed to this speech, but did not respond to further questions.)
thanks for the pointer.
They are continually trying to do things that serve both their own and the Republican party's people, but the Republican parties continually fights tooth and nail against every single thing they do in order to avoid giving them a "win" even on things the Republican base overwhelmingly supports.
It's good that it's being done, but Biden's doing it, and the Republicans are opposing it every step of the way, even policies that benefit their own people, in every way they can, even and especially by lying and cheating.
And the Democrats do the same thing when Republicans are in control.
But the important difference is that the Democrats are actually trying to prevent the Republicans from doing terribly unpopular stupid things that ruin people's lives and damage the economy and discriminate against minorities, like repealing Obamacare even though it is extremely popular and saves lives and money, or building a wall that is totally ineffective and extremely expensive just because the terrible idea appeals to racists.
Oh hey, by the way, about that: didn't Trump say he was going to repeal Obamacare? How did that promise go? And what about building the wall like he promised he would do so many times, but the Democrats opposed every step of the way? How did that promise go? I'm beginning to get the idea he didn't really believe in the promises he made then broke. And how about that health care plan he kept promising to reveal next week for so many years, but never did?
>Biden still deserves the criticism that he does not believe in marijuana reform and may not follow through any further.
Trump still deserves the criticism that he does not believe in repealing Obamacare or building a wall, because he did not follow through any further, and he failed miserably. He didn't even lock Hillary up like he promised, but it looks like he's going to get locked up himself for espionage. While Biden actually followed through with his promises, and he succeeded, unlike Trump. And Biden accomplished all that without even violating the espionage act or getting impeached twice like Trump did.
So do you also believe the lie that the election was stolen from Trump and he should be immediately reinstated as president so he can pardon everyone who stormed the Capitol and attacked police and spread feces in the halls of Congress and strutted around carrying Confederate flags, and that the FBI planted classified documents at Mar-a-Lago even though he refuses to state that on the record in court, but that Trump also declassified those very same classified documents that the FBI planted with his mind?
Now are you going to claim "the other side does that too" again?
Trump does deserve full credit for convincing Republicans to kill themselves off faster than Democrats. Now THAT is leadership, convincing your followers to pointlessly and painfully die tragic preventable deaths by their own foolish behavior, by 78% higher rates! No Democrat ever inspired such loyal self destructive mass suicidal behavior in their base.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-death-rates...
>Covid death rates are higher among Republicans than Democrats, mounting evidence shows
>Lower vaccination rates among Republicans could explain the partisan gap, but some researchers say mask use and social distancing were bigger factors.
>[...] Average excess death rates in Florida and Ohio were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats between March 2020 and December 2021, according to a working paper released last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Excess deaths refers to deaths above what would be anticipated based on historical trends.
>[...] Indeed, his paper found that the partisan gap in the deaths widened between April and December 2021, after all adults became eligible for Covid vaccines. Excess death rates in Florida and Ohio were 153% higher among Republicans than Democrats during that time, the paper showed.
In summary, the Democrats are our salvation and have no faults according to your myopic response.
What about involving the United States in needless wars and now provoking a nuclear war? Or promising single payer only to provide a massive handout to private insurance companies? Or drag the country through constant investigations of political opponents based on false information from “intelligence” agencies? Or stabbing Bernie Sanders, who was the most electable candidate, in the back to support a corrupt, corporate drone, war monger candidate who just happens to be a woman?
Please take your head out of the sand and pay attention to more than the standard talking points fed to you by the main stream corporate media. It will be enlightening, but it will also be humbling. I was once in your shoes (to a much lesser degree), and it took quite some time to realize that both parties are not looking out for the rights of people other than the elite chosen ones.
I certainly didn't say anything remotely that, and if you have to put words into my mouth to argue against, you've already lost the argument and you know it.
Answer the question instead of deflecting by making shit up:
So do you also believe the lie that the election was stolen from Trump and he should be immediately reinstated as president so he can pardon everyone who stormed the Capitol and attacked police and spread feces in the halls of Congress and strutted around carrying Confederate flags, and that the FBI planted classified documents at Mar-a-Lago even though he refuses to state that on the record in court, but that Trump also declassified those very same classified documents that the FBI planted with his mind?
Or don't you want to admit that your side and your leader is batshit crazy and delusional, and there's absolutely nothing comparable on the other side? Or do you subscribe to the right-wing conspiracy theory that the mob of Trump supporters that stormed the capital and attacked police officers and set up a gallows with a noose and tried to murder the Vice President at the January 6 insurrection was actually all Antifa crisis actors?
And what the fuck is wrong with being anti-fascist anyway?
Talk about putting words in people’s mouths. It’s obvious you are a political shill and no amount of discussion will make a difference.
My suggestion is that both Democrats and Republicans are essentially the same when it comes to the critical matters for the general public. Your implying that I am a Republican who has chosen Trump as my supreme leader just because I provided some important counterpoints to demonstrate some faults of the Democrats.
Furthermore, I don’t think you know what fascism means.
When you're carrying the water and making excuses for batshit crazy insane people, that makes you batshit crazy insane, too.
I suspect you can't just "do things," there are lawyers that determine what you can do, and there are other factors (like "do you need literally everyone's vote to pass a bill through the congress" and "will it crash and fail in the senate anyways") that make these things a drag.
Same happened with the loan forgiveness, which is now being challenged in multiple courts. However, Biden doesn't have the power to push these issues through the proper process.
Do you want a state where "do more" means "more executive orders?"
Em... People tend to forget about good actions.
I'm sorry, but most people have short memories and short sight.
How much of that do you think could be solved with better marketing?
If it were a sincere and principled choice, he would have done it in his first week in office.
For some reason this reminds me of the old saw about the economist and the twenty dollar bill. “The $20 on the sidewalk doesn’t exist because the efficient market guarantees that someone else would’ve already picked it up!” the economist said, while walking past the twenty dollar bill.
I think in reality politicians have schedules and priorities and the constantly shifting demands imposed on them by world events. Sometimes the things they always wanted to do get left on the back burner until election season starts to loom over the horizon. Then they actually look for these sorts of quick fixes because it can give them a little boost in the polls for something they were going to do anyway. What’s wrong with that?
"I think in reality politicians have schedules and priorities and the constantly shifting demands imposed on them by world events."
As the chief executive of the country, the job is largely delegation. Sure, there's still going to be some limit to WIP, but it doesn't look or feel that his office is close to that based on what they've accomplished or are working on.
"Then they actually look for these sorts of quick fixes because it can give them a little boost in the polls for something they were going to do anyway."
For one, it can remove the pressure to create a proper fix. We can end up with a bunch of half measures that don't fit well. There's also an argument to be made around expansive executive power usurping the voice of the people (not on polls but elected congress members) as I doubt that blanket pardons were the intent of that power. Sort of like how executive orders can be used to say how a law can be enforced, but has started to be used to flat out ignore enforcing the law. Technically legal, but feels like a loophole (similar to how you can change senate rules requiring a supermajority by a simple majority vote).
So yeah, like many things in politics, the people that agree with the result are less likely to question the method used to get there. The people that disagree with the result will question everything. But... it might be wise for all of us to start listening to the people who agree with the result but question the methods used, lest we undermine the trust or perception of legitimacy in our system of government. I think unilateral actions further the win at all costs mindset and will continue to hurt us as a nation driving us apart.
It’s better than not ever doing it, but that’s not the only alternative.
If you can’t manage to review your campaign promises until it’s time to campaign again, that gives me reason to doubt your competence or your genuineness as an executive. There are literally thousands of people working who support the President. None of them could find time to write up an executive order and put it on the agenda in the first 100 days? (Remember, they would be allowed to “cheat” and work on this before inauguration or even before the election.)
But because the frying pan is slightly more comfortable than the fire, people keep tolerating this and voting for the lesser of the evils they’re offered, so so long as this strategy is epsilon more effective than actually leading the country and aggressively delivering on your promises, we should expect to see more, not less of it. Ultimately, the voters are partially complicit in this nonsense.
I don't see how the voters are complicit in any of this.
Human beings also have their own schedules and priorities. People are more stressed out and busy than ever. Inflation is rampant due to a war in Europe that regular people (especially those outside of Europe) had no power to avoid. Every year technology and social media get ever-more complex and sophisticated, demanding more and more awareness and discipline from people to avoid collapsing into a black hole of time-wasting.
Likewise, the problems facing societies at the national level and humanity at the global level have become unbelievably technical and complicated, yet we expect voters to navigate them like experts and deliver a miracle in the voting both? How has this idea not become widely seen for what it is: an absurd fantasy.
When voters accept “I’ll accept nonsense and still vote for whatever ‘my’ party puts in front of me”, eventually (over decades), they bear some non-zero responsibility for the outcome they get.
Trump actually tried to build that stupid ass wall.
Trump, the guy everyone loves to hate, actually tried to keep his campaign promises, even the stupid ones.
The timing is for political gain. It's strategically smart, but it's not principled. I see no issue with people pointing that out.
Not really. His promise was to build the wall AND make Mexico pay for it.
At one point congress agreed to give him almost $6 Billion to build the wall and he turned it down, never to be in that position again. If he wanted to build the wall he could have accepted that $6 billion or negotiated in good faith.
Also, his desire to build the wall was never a principled argument. "Build the wall and make Mexico pay for it" tested well with his audience so his campaign jumped on it (which was smart).
But to act like it wasn't strategic politicking from the beginning is not correct. Not to say that Biden's pardons are not politicking (they are). Just saying Trump and Biden are the same (and every other politician) when it comes to things like this.
You are mistaken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_wall
> In January 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13767, which formally directed the U.S. government to begin wall construction along the U.S.–Mexico border using existing federal funding.[5] After a political struggle for funding, including an appropriations lapse resulting in a government shutdown for 35 days, and the declaration of a national emergency, construction started in 2018.
...
> Initially, on January 20, 2021, newly inaugurated U.S. president Joe Biden terminated the national emergency and halted construction of the wall,[6][15][16] but the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security later hinted that the construction of the wall may continue under Biden's administration.
...
> In March 2017, the Trump administration submitted an amendment for fiscal year 2017 that includes a $3 billion continuing budget for "border security and immigration enforcement". Trump's FY 2018 Budget Blueprint increases discretionary funds for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by $2.8 billion (to $44.1 billion).[82][83] The DHS Secretary John F. Kelly told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee during a hearing the Budget Blueprint "includes $2.6 billion for high-priority border security technology and tactical infrastructure, including funding to plan, design and construct the border wall".[82]
> In July 2017, U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Austin, Texas, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives would seek to pass a special supplemental appropriations bill to spend money on initial construction of the wall, a demand of the Trump administration.[84][85] Such a supplemental spending bill was supported by then-House Speaker Paul Ryan.[85] However, _SENATE DEMOCRATS EXPRESSED CONFIDENCE THAT THEY CAN BLOCK AN APPROPRIATIONS BILL FOR WALL CONSTRUCTION_, with the aid of some Republicans who also oppose the construction of a wall due to its enormous cost.
...
> From December 22, 2018, to January 25, 2019, the federal government was partially shut down due to Trump's declared intention to veto any spending bill that did not include $5 billion in funding for a border wall.
...
> In February 2019, Congress amended an existing appropriations bill, adding language that specifically prohibits new funding from being used to build border barriers at several sites, including the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, the La Lomita Historical park, the National Butterfly Center, and the area "within or east of" the Vista del Mar Ranch tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.[116][117] Soon afterwards, however, Trump declared a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States, which the administration claimed invalidated the restrictions imposed by Congress.
...
> Construction progressed during the final year of the Trump administration, including the filing of land condemnation actions in court and the issuing of waivers.
These kind of arguments (and people who are so blinded to the harm of politicizing every action) are why we'll probably lose abortion rights by the end of the decade. American Democrats are playing checkers and are satiated by scraps
If politicians do right things for selfish reasons, it's much better than them doing wrong things for idealistic reasons, in my book.
Better still when they do the right thing for reasons of principle.
The system is best where moral actions emerge from rational self interest. E.g., being trustworthy is moral but also good for business. We want systems like that.
horse and cart.
It's good for business BECAUSE it's moral.
Not sure I agree. Paying doctors to promote pills is good for business but doesn’t seem very moral, per se.
You're making my point for me.
That only works for those doctors when there's no transparency that they're being paid for it.
Not necessarily. A politician doing the right thing for reasons of principal and ignoring elections could result in a loss of power for the entire party. If those who gain power are truly evil then what you've done is lost sight of a far bigger "right thing" by insisting on being principled in every small action. Political naivety is a very poor excuse for doing a "right thing" that eventually causes great harm. Especially for an experienced politician.
Tell me you don't understand politics without telling me you don't understand politics. If he had done it in his first week in office we would have all forgotten by now and the republicans could sour the pot drastically in the intervening two years.
By doing it now, he gains broad appeal going into an election season so that he is potentially enabled to enact more beneficial policies down the line. Never forget that the republican party is working against the interests of the people and the party that opposes them and will do whatever they can to twist public perception to their side. Being purely sincere and principled means getting routed by people who work against your sincerity without any regard for principle.
It can be both a sincere and principled choice and an action taken based on careful political calculation. In fact, I'd say that if it really were sincere and principled, it should be as calculated as possible for maximum beneficial effect.
Jimmy Carter was so principled he served one term. He was such an honest man and a poor leader that GRRM cited him as an inspiration for his thought process behind Game of Thrones.
Being a good man doesn’t get you re elected. Reality is harsh and unforgiving.
Biden signed 30 executive orders his first week in office. In everything from climate change to the pandemic. Not sure anyone remembers but that was a big deal back in 2021.
We’ve wanted this for 50 years, Biden getting it done in under 2 years isn’t too shabby. Was it for political reasons? I hope so! It would be nice for the politically expedient thing to start lining up with what’s actually right and what people want for a change. As Milton Friedman used to say, “I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.”
Honest question: isn't it a stroke of the pen that then must be executed? The proclamation is a very short read and what I got from it is that now things need to be "administered" and "developed" and "reviewed". Maybe these things require a little more coordination, planning and capacity than you're suggesting?
Maybe he had to be convinced of it
Would have been better if others had done it before, but no one did
I like that he encouraged governors to do the same thing at the state level, so an opportunity to do more good - hope all of them do it
"It's a stroke of a pen."
False. If you look at his student loan forgiveness plan, it was immediately challenged in the courts. And when he tried to suspend family separation at the border, it was challenged in the courts. And he's been fighting to change DACA rules for 2 years straight, in the courts.
Biden can't just write whatever he wants.. He needs to get legal opinions, and structure the order so it complies with existing law, to ensure it withstands challenges.
The idea that he can just waltz into the oval office and start writing his wish list on paper.. and have everything completed the first week of his presidency is a simplistic and naive view of how the presidency works, and the restrictions we place on the office. It contributes to the erroneous view that some have, that the president is some sort of king.
Federal criminal pardons are a plenary power of the executive and aren't judicially reviewable. It's a specific constitutional provision and unlike executive orders.
I think you missed the rest of his actions. The pardon was one part. The other is to review it's classification under the Controlled Substances Act.
You're right, that part is reviewable. (I was only thinking about the pardons).
I don't get it - how does the court get to decide what is a controlled substance and what is not? Shouldn't that be up to some government agency?
It has generally been up the the DEA. When it came time to schedule MDMA it was actually challenged in court by psychologists and psychiatrists along with scientists. The judge recommended a lower scheduling. The DEA said "fuck you" to the judge, petitioners, and the American people and made it schedule 1
https://maps.org/news/bulletin/making-mdma-a-medicine-ii-res...
It’s up to Congress to make the law. Congress frequently assigns some of that power to agencies, and the courts get to review whether the agencies are following any applicable laws.
Just because a pardon can technically be signed quickly and unilaterally doesn't mean that it's pragmatic or wise to do so. As people have pointed out, there's nuances and technicalities, e.g. not applying to undocumented immigrants, that were likely researched and internally debated to limit unforeseen unintended consequences.
And of course, pardons still cost political capital. We all saw how much Biden's people struggled with covid response and getting bills passed -- all of that would be worse if there were fallout from a problematic mass pardon
I don't think it's possible to challenge a presidential pardon. Challenging distributing funds by presidential order is something very different - power of the purse constitutionally is in legislature's hands, and taking it from there, even in the current "anything goes" climate, is a pretty serious deviation. OTOH, the power of pardon has always been with the President and nobody would question it. There were some questionable pardons, for sure, but nobody doubts Biden can do it. There's no need for legal opinions to establish such right - it's long established.
But a poorly executed mass pardon can harm Biden's presidential popularity, which is highly correlated to getting laws passed by Congress. Skimming the contents of this academic book [0], it doesn't look like there has been a major mass pardon in the 20th century other than Carter's?
There have been large state mass pardons recently, but most of those are of a different political beast -- i.e. at the end of a term, and are (usually, I assume) on a case-by-case basis, i.e. 500 individually researched cases, not all 500 felony drug users. And that has its own political problems that aren't relevant to Biden's situation
[0] http://cup.columbia.edu/book/mass-pardons-in-america/9780231...
[1] https://www.wlky.com/article/child-rapist-pardoned-gov-matt-...
I imagine there would be some cases where a real hardcore criminal was imprisoned for simple possession because that's the only thing they could get to stick, and releasing such people probably will prove unpopular. However, I estimate the large percentage of people who are convicted only on simple possession aren't hardcore criminals, and thus there may not be any large negative consequence from this. OTOH, Biden runs with the crowd that literally called for abolishing the police a while ago, and succeeded in reducing the police budgets and significantly hindering its function in some major cities. If he's not concerned about that, there's no reason for him to be concerned about the effects of the pardon either.
Biden showed sympathy toward "Defund/Abolish" protesters, but never endorsed their movements. And by virtually every metric, he's increased federal dollars for local police:
Fact check: Political ad saying Biden wants to defund the police is misleading https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-misleading-bide...
Biden to request $37B in annual budget to support police and prevent crime: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/3568076-bi...
> I imagine there would be some cases where a real hardcore criminal was imprisoned for simple possession because that's the only thing they could get to stick, and releasing such people probably will prove unpopular.
No matter how popular and light a blanket pardon initiative, political rivals will always blame the president/governor if any of the pardoned do something bad, even if it's a statistical certainty that at least 1/1000 people will get arrested for a crime.
I'm sure the Biden people sussed out the numebrs and tradeoff, e.g. there's not a lot of simple possession convicts, but it's a lot less politically risky to do a bulk pardon for them.
> It's a stroke of a pen. There's no process or negotiation involved; he just methodically slow-walked it for electoral considerations.
Right, my point is that while you bemoan what this says about Biden, I am encouraged about what this says about the electorate. Who would have thought that this would be a politically savvy move 10 years ago? I will gladly take every other October becoming “get rid of laws we should have gotten rid of 50 years ago” month.
I cannot wait until someone says that future President X doesn’t really believe in copyright and patent reform, and that they’re only strengthening fair use protections and eliminating software patents because it’ll help them in the future election.
My comments got upvoted, while yours got greyed-out; but your perspective seems a lot wiser and more reflective than my own. I'm glad I read it.
(I would still prefer virtuous leaders, though. If such things exist. It's very unsatisfying to settle for "wrong people doing the right thing").
> If it were a sincere and principled choice, he would have done it in his first week in office.
Are you serious? A president has one week to do it all and anything he does afterwards is insincere? How does this logic work?
You know things take time, he didn’t inherit the Whitehouse in’s a very organised way?
Motivation is a factor too? Who cares if he was motivated by the election, he did a good thing, he could’ve tried to rile everyone up and start a new war on drugs or something similar.
He gave people a break for something which should never be criminal.
I’m motivated to work, mostly by money, the chance of a bonus and all that the money I earn brings me, I’m not a bad person for this. Sometimes I take the money and donate it too, this is similar in my opinion.
> If it were a sincere and principled choice
It's literally a choice for Biden to make this an issue and successfully execute on it. But I don't know how it could be "principled" by your standards. For most of his career, Biden has outright opposed the legalization of marijuana, and still has health concerns about it. By the end of 2020, he and the Democratic party made decriminalization part of the party platform, i.e. he made a policy change right before the election, so even if he had the power to decriminalize on the first day of office, wouldn't you still cynically accuse him of doing it only for election reasons?
But in any case, while Biden made the promise to pursue decriminalization, that was never his main thing. I think he should've done it by end of 2021. But seeing how difficult and surprising it was for him to execute on his bigger plans, e.g. infrastructure, clean act, and student loan forgiveness -- it's possible that pushing for pot reform would have sidelined one of his bigger priorities. I don't see how perceptions of "sincerity" obviously outweigh the virtue of actually getting it done.
Right. I dont get the criticism. He's up for a performance review, and he's delivering on the promises he made when he was hired.
I think the real problem that some people have is that they were hoping to reduce the power of the Democrats in the next election, and they dont like that this is a clearly popular move supported by the majority of americans.
Yes, it's a political move.
Yes, it's good.
There's no chance a republican politician would do the same.
Trump did.
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/17/676771335/how-trump-went-from...
If politicians always did the popular things at the beginning of their term they would be far less likely to be voted back in. Unfortunately the news cycle and therefore the voting public has a short memory.
It does suck a bit that the system incentivizes being strategic with the timing of key decisions, but politicians who didn't do so would be hurting their chances of reelection.
I would agree, but I think it is important to remember that people have very short memories, so doing it then may not benefit the election now.
The implication is that the best choice is to steadily do things like this, so the benefits are always forward in our minds. The issue is more just one off events not really matching our goals or expectations, I think.
> If it were a sincere and principled choice, he would have done it in his first week in office. Like Carter with his Vietnam pardons in January 1977.
I'm no fan of presidents in general, and especially not ones who forget what they're saying mid-sentence. But isn't it worth noting Biden has historically been pretty anti-drug, he introduced the RAVE Act[0] FFS. Maybe it took some convincing to change his attitude towards marijuana laws?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAVE_Act
It’s only sincere if you do something when you will not benefit from it is the thinking of a 4 year old.
And thinking politics is about sincerity and morality is the thinking of a politically inclined 12 year old.
The Hunter Biden story exists and you think that family is what, a-political?
It was like the people that watched Obama make a political agreement with Hillary Clinton to get her to stop running against him and then were dismayed when he was mostly just another politician.
It's just naive.
If it were a sincere and principled choice he would have done it when it gives the biggest impact for more people like him to get elected.
> If it were a sincere and principled choice
Why should anybody care about the reasoning behind a good decision?
Know thine enemy.
I'm cynical about politics--it's generally the most correct way to understand the behavior of various actors. But I don't think that's the case here, and my counterexample is student loan forgiveness. Biden's philosophically opposed to blanket forgiveness, even though it would almost certainly cement Democratic Party dominance among millennials and thus the country for the foreseeable future. He just won't do it, because he thinks it's unfair. That's a sincere and principled choice, whether you agree with it or not, despite the clear political gains.
Not an American here, but given the current state of US democracy I would argue that the less fascist party would be utterly stupid to pass on a chance at populism just to be fair towards an opposing party who openly calls for the shooting of your members and has prooved it will itself stretch every rule (even the ones they self spouted before) to e.g. put in their supreme court picks.
You cannot play it "fair" with fascists and expect your nation to stay a democracy — at least not on such a minor level. And I am not a fan of the Democrats myself, but as an Austrian living in Germany I learned enough about the Nazi rise to power to know where this is heading.
If you didn't have the Dollar, you'd be neck deep in fascism already.
I wouldn't say upset. I like this move and it should have been done long ago. However, knowing that he waited until now to play this card shows that he doesn't care in the slightest for those rotting in prison, he simply wanted to buy votes. All politicians might do it, but it still seems to me a perfectly valid reason to hate nearly all politicians.
Nobody is being released from prison. The White House said that there’s currently nobody in federal prison solely for “simple possession”, which is what is being pardoned
This. No one is getting released from prison because of this decision. It has been worded in such a way that makes it sound like it will have far more impact, which is of course intentional and political.
That’s my frustration with all the political moves in this timing category. Translation:
I know what the people need and want but I’m not going to do it because I serve corporations, except once every two years when I need to appear to care.
Some of Biden's first executive actions were environmental and the US oil industry has been highly critical of him. That doesn't fit your narrative of only serving corporations except near elections.
I could argue canceling Keystone XL was a gift to the saudis disguised as care about the environment. It’s not like delaying these permits does anything to curb oil demand or net production.
I’m extremely cynical when it comes to almost any of these people in DC, there’s always an agenda, always an ulterior motive, and the People are rarely served and last priority.
You have Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders types who appear to actually care and believe what they say but they’re ineffective even for those who agree with their positions.
> It’s not like delaying these permits does anything to curb oil demand or net production.
Sure, one action in isolation does nothing. But you cherry picked one thing he did and took it out of the context of all the other things he did. Both early things and more recent executive actions. Tell the entire story and that early action looks entirely different.
> People are rarely served and last priority.
The US has one of the highest living standards in the world. I'm not saying there's no room for improvement. But lots of good laws are passed without an agenda other than the goals of the law itself. There's no need for extreme cynicism. What we need is less cynicism and more people exercising their right to vote.
> they’re ineffective even for those who agree with their positions.
No one who impacts the national discourse in such a visible and lasting way can be said to be ineffective. Sanders, along with the help of others, has shifted the Democratic party from right central to almost central. That's highly effective.
I mean this with all due respect but you sound very naive IMHO. The Democratic party is as corporatist and right as it has ever been. Voting for either major party will do nothing to solve the problem as has been proven by a study from Princeton on this, which is summed up wonderfully in these graphs:
https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Princ...
Basically your vote almost doesn’t matter at all.
> Basically your vote almost doesn’t matter at all.
That's an easily disprovable claim based on recent history. Roe v. Wade would not have been turned over if Hillary had been appointing SC Justices instead of Trump appointing them. You're far too cynical.
This is too simplistic. Perhaps there would be other poor decisions made by the Hillary judges that mitigates the Roe v Wade decision.
> Perhaps there would be other poor decisions made by the Hillary judges that mitigates the Roe v Wade decision.
Sure. Bad stuff might happen no matter what choices you make. You've described cynicism in a nutshell. That adds nothing to this conversation.
Progressive leaning judges do not have a history of taking away basic human rights. The reason people lost a basic human right that was protected for decades is because of a shift in the makeup of the Supreme Court. That shift happened due to who was elected as president. Which proves that elections and who you vote for does matter.
Fine. Ignore the obvious point that picking a single matter that judges consider as a sole focus of efficacy contributes nothing to the conversation.
> he simply wanted to buy votes
Isn't it the very basis or our systems ?
There's very strong chances a lot of us share little with an old rich powerful white man, expecting decisions to all come out of beliefs and care would be difficult.
Biden has been in politics for 52 years. Has he ever, at any point in his long political career, shown any concern whatsoever for the plight of non-violent minor drug offenders until five minutes ago when it became politically expedient for him?
This is a genuine question, I'd love to be proved wrong.
How can you be proved wrong about a genuine question? You're making a claim, not asking a question. In which case, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. We aren't going to do your research for you.
> Has he ever, at any point in his long political career, shown any concern whatsoever for the plight of non-violent minor drug offenders until five minutes ago
February 2021: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_policy_of_the_Joe_Bid...
I stand corrected.
I'm usually not the one to praise Biden, but here he's doing the right thing, and well within his rights. Yes, the timing is obviously related to the elections, but that's how the politics is played - you do things that the voters want, you get the votes. If the other guys wanted to do it first, they had plenty of opportunity. They didn't - well, if you lose the ball and the other team scores, then that's the game, you can be sad if you team is losing but nothing against the rules has happened.
This is a good point, that if the Republicans wanted to do this they have had ample opportunity.
I think I'm one of these, I'm having a hard time coming to terms with my thoughts
I guess most simply, it's like double dipping or expecting congratulations for keeping a commitment
Overall I'm happy for it, but I don't like the idea that this is something to be rewarded over expected
An elected official followed popular demand? Holy cow!
> There's no corruption in doing popular things that can help get people in your party elected.
What a ridiculous statement. Go study some philosophy.
A lot of people don’t live in the real world and see themselves as greedy actors like they should. Most people are when you get down to brass tacks. I’m 35 and can count on one hand the number of truly saintly people that I’ve met who would give everything almost to save a stranger. Politicians are people and they are calculating, I’m good he did it whether or not it was altruistic or political survival and I hope he does more of it. I know that Trump and most republicans never would have done this.
> I know that Trump and most republicans never would have done this.
Why not?
because trump was in office and didn't do it? I get why say george w bush didn't do it, but trump was in office when public opinion had already changed enough.
This. I think marijuana should be illegal (but at the state level) but this seems to me like a smart move politically. Doing popular things to get votes is a good thing. That’s kind of the whole theory of democracy.
Why should it be illegal? I can just order stuff online here, and get some gummies delivered. Doesn’t bother anybody.
I don’t believe in the concept of “victimless crimes.” Society should enforce moral standards and help people make good decisions. Why do you need marijuana? It doesn’t seem necessary to me. Maybe for legitimate medical uses.
Edit: To respond to the dead comment below, I think banning alcohol would probably be a good thing. Alcohol exacts a terrible toll on women and children. It’s no surprise, then, that the first thing American women did with the right to vote was ban alcohol. Alcohol is banned in my home country, and many others.
That said, I’m afraid it’s too deeply embedded in western culture to make banning alcohol a realistic possibility. But just because that’s true, how does that justify legalizing and normalizing the new vice of drug use?
What moral standards? And more interestingly whose moral standards? What moral rule is violated by allowing vice, or what utility function is reduced?
If you don't establish such axiomatic foundations in conversations about morality, you're doomed to just talk past each other. For example, I treat free will and empathy as axiomatic goods. I don't like being told what to do, and I don't like harm coming to others. By extension, others having their free will suppressed is bad, but not axiomatically bad in so much as it can cause greater suppression of the freedom of others.
Under such a framework, it should be pretty obvious why I would oppose prohibition. If someone does something that in of itself does not harm others, then that thing is at worst ethically neutral, and thus there is no good to offset the ethical evil of interceding in them doing it. On the other hand, if someone is attempting to kill someone else, or enslave someone else, or otherwise suppress the other's ability to be free, then preventing that by any means necessary is a moral good.
So what are YOUR axioms that you are operating off of? What base assumptions underlie your "moral standards"?
Well said. How do you feel requiring people to wear seat belts or helmets fits into this model?
People injured by being reckless take away medical resources from those that are injured by no fault of their own.
> I think banning alcohol would probably be a good thing.
Yes, after all this worked so well the first time.
As I said, it might be impractical in a society where alcohol use and abuse is deeply ingrained in the culture. It works just fine in for example Muslim countries where there are social taboos to back up the law.
My point is that, even if alcohol prohibition is impractical in a western country, that’s not a reason to normalize and legalize a new and different vice.
This means you also support the prohibition of alcohol, does it not?
> Why should it be illegal?
For the same reasons any other substance is regulated, because it can affect other people, see e.g. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/newsroom/feature/marijuana-and-dri....
To my knowledge, very few people want marijuana to be completely unregulated. Most seem to be very okay with an aggressive tax and regulation structure, in exchange for legal purchase.
In other words: regulation does not itself justify criminalization.
Aggressive taxes create a black market for goods. To protect the tax revenue the govt must be aggressive about prosecuting unlicensed operators who do not pay taxes. This is counter to the social politics of wanting to end the war on drugs.
As a compromise the govt heavily taxes legal businesses while allowing the black market to thrive with minimal punishment. C’est la vie.
This isn't a uniform truth about taxes, even aggressive ones: the evidence so far around marijuana legalization has been than consumers have been more than happy to pay high taxes, because the net cost of marijuana is still similar to or lower than the pre-legal cost.
We might eventually see a variant of tax stamp fraud for marijuana, the way some states do for cigarettes. But that's just the nature of these things, like you said, and I think the general trend is a "win," in terms of eliminating WoD policies.
In California the estimate is that 25% of consumers are buying from licensed retailers.
>As a compromise the govt heavily taxes legal businesses while allowing the black market to thrive with minimal punishment. C’est la vie.
And meanwhile billions were taken out of the black market, and the government increased tax receipts.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good (or in the case, 'better').
Marijuana has been legal-and-regulated in Canada for years. I assure you that the sky hasn't fallen.
As compared to now, with a thriving black market, and aggressive prosecution of all parties?
Completely agree.
That's the public excuse. The reality is that it's a powerful tool to oppress "others" -- https://www.aclu.org/post-to-social/war-drugs-racist
This is well documented, the above link is one of many.
It doesn't have to be an either-or. To be clear, I'm not personally advocating that marijuana be illegal, just answering the earlier comment that was arguing that use of marijuana affects nobody but the user, which can sometimes be true but is definitely not always true, and that is one of the main the bases for substance regulation.
The fact that how substances are regulated is irregular and inconsistent is a separate issue from whether or not it's ok for a society to regulate some substances.
I'm an advocate for the legalization of all drugs, but that it should be taxed and regulated as well.
All drug use has risks, including cannabis. But it's been so demonized in the past there's a natural reaction to sweep all concerns away because almost all of them are garbage. Reasonable regulation would be that it's not sold to minors, and that its active ingredients be accurately noted, and that the transaction is taxed appropriately.
It should be legal to sell fentanyl but not as an adulterant. Most of these opioid deaths are due to fentanyl and if they had access to regulated drugs those deaths would be greatly diminished.
My brother died of a heroin overdose many years ago, and I think he might be alive today if the drug he was abusing was at least calibrated for dosage. Maybe not. But it being illegal did not protect him or any of the others lost in the war on drugs.
Having neurosyphilis will affect "others".
The bar for "affects others" is extremely low in society.
Unless there's a very clear study, that a certain substance will cause an average human being to be aggressive, belligerent and violent - there's hardly a case for "affects others".
What do you mean by irregular or inconsistent? That some substances extremely harmful to society are loosely regulated while mostly innocuous ones put people in prison? That is troublesome. But if you mean variation by state, I think that is normal and should be moreso. I like my content labels, but I don't understand why the protection of interstate commerce means the FDA gets to tell my doctor which drugs they can prescribe for which conditions. Federal prohibition of alcohol required an amendment. The federal prohibition on any substance for any reason should require the same. There are plenty of items that are contraband in one state but not the next, that is no reason to ignore explicit limits on federal power.
Also being realistic, anyone who’s ever ever ever smoked weed in their life can tell you honestly it does not impair your ability to drive even 10% close to being drunk. yes it’s an anecdote, but it’s genuinely the truth.
This is... not my experience with marijuana. I couldn't imagine driving while high. I don't even like walking while I'm high because my balance and reaction times get really messed up.
Yes, you're incapable... because THC is a sedative.
You're more likely to eat and fall asleep, than to have reduced inhibitions.
As I noted elsewhere, I'm not at all arguing in favor of marijuana being illegal (personally, I don't care about it, and agree that if we care about how substance usage affects others, marijuana is not the highest priority).
THC is a sedative, which you feel very well.
High doses can cause underlying conditions to surface, but it's not nearly as destructive as alcohol.
People who get paranoid on THC, are way more belligerent on alcohol.
Pretty sure that part of the phenomenon of people getting paranoid from being stoned has to do with the prosecution in the first place, the drug enhancing this perception or not.
> So some people are upset that this happening in an election season, even though they support it?
Why wasn't it done 10 years ago?
My boss does this every day. Instead of thanks for getting it done, it's why wasn't this done last year? Just an exhausting way to live life.
No, the reason why Roe vs Wade is gone is because of a focused, well-funded mobilization campaign in legal interpretation, legal scholarship, and funding of judge careers in order to turn the judicial system into a tool for subverting popular progressive sentiment.
an activist tool court would have made a 3-part legislative like framework for banning abortion nationwide.
it didn't do that, it returned the question to the legislatures.
I can agree that is disruptive, and dangerous for actual individuals, because the legislature never reached consensus. I can agree that several of the justices lied in their confirmation hearings for the goal of applying logic to an abortion case. I can also agree that its a job for the legislatures.
I’m aware of the ultimate goal of the people that approached it this way - find the most compliant way to get their way - I think that way was unguarded because the democrats are barely even competing. But it is disingenuous to focus on the idea that its an odd ruling when it isn't. Its near the average of time that cases get overturned, not an improbable reality, and the reasoning wasn't a stretch of the imagination at all if you actually read it.
I don't even see how that observation needs to look like a partisan perspective. So many legal journals have pointed out how odd and shaky Roe and Casey were, for Supreme Court rulings, for decades. People just didn't want to have that conversation and now its been hoisted on them after generations.
Interesting, because the way I see it, almost the exact same thing can be said of the original roe v wade decision- the result of a focused campaign for promoting progressive sentiment.
Is this true?
With the recent decision, we can see where it goes back to e.g. the creation of the Federalist Society in 1982, how nearly every conservative Supreme Court nominee since Scalia has been a member (Roberts is disputed but the other 5 current justices are, as were Scalia and Bork), and how some very clever and/or very dirty procedural maneuvering resulted in the conservative majority on the Supreme Court today.
Did that happen with the Burger court that decided Roe? A quick check suggests that of the 9 justices on the Burger court, 4 were nominated by Nixon, 2 by Eisenhower, and 1 each by FDR, JFK, and LBJ. I really have no idea, I'm sure there were plenty of politics involved with all of those as well but I tend to think justices of this era were nominated more on merit than ideology.
What focused campaign are you talking about?
Roe v. Wade was based on something other than the Constitution. We can tell this because the Constitution simply doesn't talk about abortion and the right to privacy used as a justification is suspiciously focused on only abortions to the exclusion of most other things. Eg, apparently it didn't extend to communication, other medical procedures more broadly (eg, topically, vaccination status), financial transactions, web browsing habits, etc. And the Supreme Court of today felt confident overturning it on the basis that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.
There also wasn't broad-based community support either, otherwise the court wouldn't have needed to step in to override the legislature.
So there must have been something happening ideologically that allowed and convinced these judges to make the decision. Whether we call that thing a 'pressure campaign' or not is political, but there was something going on.
> Roe v. Wade was based on something other than the Constitution.
No, it was not. If you read the decision, it is very clearly based on the 14th amendment:
> the Constitution simply doesn't talk about abortionIt doesn't have to, and it's silly to suggest that it needs to. The 9th amendment, in particular, states this clearly.
> the right to privacy used as a justification is suspiciously focused on only abortions to the exclusion of most other things
It is not suspicious. The Court was asked to rule on the Constitutionality of Texas' abortion law. That law was focused on abortions. The Court does not decide a law is unconstitutional for a particular reason, then proactively apply that reason to every other extant law it can find. Honestly, the group upset about Roe would be frothing at the mouth were that to have happened.
> felt confident overturning it on the basis that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion
That was the Dobbs decision, yes. I don't think confidence enters into it, at least not in the way you're suggesting. There's no rubric or success criteria with a SCOTUS decision, and no accountability; justices are not worried about whether they can make a decision or not. They make the decisions they make, based on a vote of the opinions of the people on the Court at the time.
The only confidence that comes into play is where you know you have an unassailable majority and can do what you want.
> also wasn't broad-based community support either
Like there is today? The majority of people in the US today think Roe/Casey should have been left alone. That is as close to a fact as we can have, polling shows it clearly. If you think this decision is popular and what most people wanted, you're living in a bubble.
> So there must have been something happening ideologically that allowed and convinced these judges to make the decision.
Of course, but not in some shady conspiratorial way. The legal reasoning used to decide Roe was not new, it was not invented for that case, and has been applied in a variety of ways both before and since. I'm sure you know about all the sex and marriage related cases - Griswold, Obergefell, Loving v. Virginia, etc. Do you know that substantive due process was also used to protect parents' right to send their kids to private school (Pierce v. Society of Sisters)? Or teach them a foreign language (Meyer v. Nebraska)? There are plenty of other examples.
I am honestly astonished that people are trying to frame Roe as a decision made under duress, or the result of some third party manipulation. It just wasn't. There's no evidence of it. Please, convince me Richard Nixon was somehow manipulated into nominating Harry Blackmun, a very liberal jurist who wrote the majority opinion for Roe. Richard Nixon, who campaigned on law and order, and made 'conservative retrenchment in the court' part of his platform. Roe was decided 7-2! Republican presidents nominated 6 of those justices!
---
I'm interested in some unbiased commentary on the Federalist Society stance on things, if such commentary exists. When I read about textualism and originalism, I come away thinking these are the Calvinists of constitutional law: the word is the word, it is true and inerrant, and the writer's intent is meaningless as they were merely a conduit for the truth. IMO this is dangerous, and we've already seen why.
> No, it was not. If you read the decision, it is very clearly based on the 14th amendment:
Yes, but as the Supreme Court has since pointed out that was a flawed and incorrect understanding of the 14th amendment. To the point where the current justices felt it reasonable to go back and overturn the decision. And it seems to be quite hard to support the original decision with quotes from the constitution, as people aren't doing that.
I mean, the key part of the text is what? "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."? If we can go from that to "abortions are a right", then we can go literally anywhere. It is logically and practically a non-sequitur, especially in context of other stuff that the government does like military drafts or interference in people's other medical choices.
Not to say I'd be unhappy if "liberty" automatically meant a total autonomy over one's own body. I think that would be a great standard! But we just came through COVID and it is obvious that isn't where the standard is.
> Like there is today? The majority of people in the US today think Roe/Casey should have been left alone. That is as close to a fact as we can have, polling shows it clearly.
It is pretty obvious the current situation is also the result of a focused campaign for promoting state control of abortion legislation. I don't think there is much controversy over that particular part of the story.
see comment by throwawayacc2 - This is essentially what I am referring to. I'll admit it is much more nebulous than what you are referring to, but the Roe v Wade decision came from a philosophical school that fundamentally undermines the purpose of the supreme court in the first place, which is to interpret the constitution. Roe v Wade was an outlandish interpretation that wrote content into the constitution that was not there to begin with. -e.g. the decision was ideologically driven and justified, not driven by the actual text of the constitution.
No, there doesn't exist anything comparable to the infrastructure of the conservative judicial system. Wealthy progressive individuals hiding behind multiple corporations were not writing affidavits to roe v wade pretending to be multiple people. That strategy didn't exist until much later. Similarly, the decades-long funding of legal scholarship to prevent progressive legislation has no progressive comparison of equal maturity. There is no comparison to the size and influence of the Federalist Society in the funding of the careers of politically-motivated law students into politically-biased judges.
The progressive equivalent is the long march through the institutions. There absolutely was an organised “progressive” drive to increase their ideological base. And yes. The same long march is now happening from the other side. Progress is not always in the direction you like.
* Long march through the institutions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_insti...
Long march through the institutions is a thing made up by a German student activist and has no known organizational heft beyond this. The article itself cannot name a single organization or achievement under this strategy. The Federalist Society is well-documented, in was founded in and organizes within the country we're talking about, hosts multiple conventions with close ties to conservative Supreme Court members, who have known to attend and give speeches advocating for extreme political interpretation, and who has been repeatedly reported to be the de facto gatekeeper for opportunities to judicial and legal positions under Republican government.
I don't think you can exonerate the democratic establishment who ran campaigns and funding drives on the back of protecting Roe while also doing literally nothing legislatively for nearly half a century (including periods where they controlled both legislative and executive branches).
Nothing the conservatives done was done in secret. The democratic establishment's inaction cannot be excused.
i’m not clear on why you’re asking this?
is this since it wasn’t done 10 years ago, does that mean we can no longer do it, ever?
is this because theyre doing something the citizens will be happy with? shouldn’t we be celebrating that?
i’d much rather they do things to actually earn votes rather than this incessant gross slimy “vote for me because i’m not them” garbage so many modern politicians engage in constantly.
id absolutely OmgSoMuch prefer to finally be able to vote _for_ someone rather than voting _against_ someone else. earn my vote with material actions that make our lives better.
Look, you already know why it wasn't done 10 years ago, or 5, or 25, or 50, etc. You're just pretending not to know. Please don't be tiresome.
Note: The vast majority of people arrested for marijuana possession are not charged Federally. This only applies to the Federal charges specified, Biden can't do anything about the State level charges most people are charged with.
Just noting for non-American readers.
He encouraged all state governors to do the same:
>Second, I am urging all Governors to do the same with regard to state offenses. Just as no one should be in a Federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either.
(https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...)
This. The fed government started the war on drugs, and a powerful way to start shifting away is ending it at fed level.
It‘a simple leadership.
Even if he only has power to issue pardons at the federal level, this sort of measure has plenty of value as a symbolic gesture. It kind of signals a mentality shift.
Yep! And IIRC, states that have fully legalized marijuana still have has big headaches dealing with the fact that it's outlawed by the feds.
Still outlawed.
He's forgiving student debt without doing free college, and pardoning those convicted of simple possession without preventing somebody tomorrow from being arrested for simple possession.
Has he made sure that people with drug convictions are eligible for student loans? That seems like a conjunction of the two things that he's half-assed. If he hasn't, there's no one in the administration that actually cares about this, it's just pure midterm pandering.
edit:
I think this may be what I was looking for: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents//2021/06/17/2021-1...
> This letter provides information about the early implementation of the FAFSA Simplification Act's removal of Selective Service and drug conviction requirements for Title IV eligibility, as well as actions that institutions must take as these changes are implemented in phases across award years 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024. Certain other aspects of the law being implemented are discussed in separate communications.
> and pardoning those convicted of simple possession without preventing somebody tomorrow from being arrested for simple possession.
He is also directing the AG and Secretary of HHS is reexamine the scheduling of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act which is the process in law which is needed to change the legal regime applicable to it without Congressional action.
He’s not a dictator who can rewrite law at a whim.
The student debt changes are substantial even if it's not free college. The more important part of the package is the changes to the terms of repayment:
From the press release[1]:
Make the student loan system more manageable for current and future borrowers by:
This perhaps by far the bigger set of changes because it ensures the terms of remaining and future loans remain serviceable and proportionate to the actual earning potential of the recipient, which is half the problem with the system (at least if you simply must run it this way).[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
The student loan system is not the real problem, and it's less of a problem now than before Obama (one of the few things that he did good on imo.) The problem is how expensive college is, not these games with paperwork.
Seems like both are huge problems. Tuition costs is the bigger problem, but I don't think the president can force them to lower their prices.
He could expand funding for colleges, or create more of them, so they have to compete on prices. This would benefit everybody instead of the minority that signed up for bad loans.
I'm not constitutional lawyer, but those sound like things only the legislature can do, which is beyond his control. The things he has done are things the executive has in it's power.
I have a firm belief that presidents should be accomplishing these things in the legislature through party discipline and direct appeals to voters to help him rid himself of specific legislators, of either party, that are standing in the way of things that have overwhelming popular support.
Instead, they just throw treats to their base when they're in trouble. Treats that are written on water. If I hear another thing about the Dreamers.
People keep saying that he can't do anything because he's not a dictator. He can't do anything because he doesn't believe in it, and even if he did doesn't have any ideological standards for his Congressional party that would ever get him majority support for anything that doesn't have lobbying checks behind it.
> I have a firm belief that presidents should be accomplishing these things in the legislature through party discipline and direct appeals to voters to help him rid himself of specific legislators
That’s exactly what he just did with the pardons. He’s signaling to voters that he wants to legalize it and needs the right partners in Congress to make it happen. From your other comments I don’t get the impression you’re open to discussing the implications so much as you just want to complain about Biden.
He doesn't need congress to "legalize it" he only needs the DEA and FDA to unscheduled it. He can do that as expeditiously as he likes with an executive order.
Wait, genuinely confused here. Do we really want the president to make unilateral executive moves overriding the existing organizations with actual experts on how to do things? Isn't that kind of bad and dictatorial? Weren't these organizations originally created because the president isn't an expert in drugs and therefore should have a fleet of drug experts with the authority to make decisions?
Placing and maintaining marijuana as a schedule 1 drug clearly indicates that these departments are not experts.
Wow, that is certainly moving the goal posts faster than QAnon and make me question why on earth would we trust the same experts that have a history of lying. God I remember the propaganda they spewed years ago about marijuana making my testicles shrink and that it was a gateway to meth.
Ah the "expert fallacy." No, there are very few "experts." Mostly just career deep-staters or unelected-bureaucrats or whatever else you want to call them. Just look at the great results we've gotten so far from the "fleet of drug experts."
I mean yeah I think the FDA, CDC, NIH, OSHA, EPA etc. have done some really awesome shit compared to when we didn't have them. The EPA in particular is doing such a good job moneyed lobbyists are preemtively trying to cut off their ability to regulate emissions.
Yeah that opioid epidemic was some "really awesome shit." What would we ever do without the FDA and their regulatory capture in the pharma-industrial complex?
https://www.businessinsider.com/fda-chief-approved-oxycontin...
I mean frankly the opioid epidemic could only be discovered because of organizations like the CDC tracking stuff like this, so yeah that's pretty awesome. Remember that before we had organizations like the CDC and the FDA things like opioids had no regulation at all. These aren't perfect organizations and we should always be critical and pushing them to do better, but it is also vitally important to acknowledge they are worth having around at all.
> presidents should be accomplishing these things in the legislature through party discipline and direct appeals to voters to help him rid himself of specific legislators
And how, exactly, do you propose he do that, given the current political landscape in the US?
Congress is gridlocked. Incumbents almost never lose their seats. The people who care enough to vote and support the issues are already voting as hard as they can.
This announcement? This is him doing what he can, both in terms of his legal ability to change things, as the chief executive, and in terms of using the bully pulpit, making clear where his and his administrations' priorities lie.
Basically, it sounds like you're saying "if the President can't force the legislation he wants to materialize and get through a Congress that is historically dysfunctional, that means he doesn't really care about the issue."
> And how, exactly, do you propose he do that, given the current political landscape in the US?
This can always be an excuse. Things can't be done because they can't be done. The fact is that he's giving speeches about how much he hates China and Russia, and not about legalizing pot.
He's also one of the engineers of the shitty situation that we're in, he's had an abusively and militantly anti-drug pol his entire career, so I'm not ever going to be convinced by this woe is me lark. He's not doing his best, he's being pushed (if he's even being adequately informed.) The best case scenario is that some people in his administration think that drug law reform is important, either morally or politically. There is no scenario in which the actual Biden is sympathetic towards drug users, or regretful of the lives that he personally contributed to ruining over drugs.
> how, exactly, do you propose he do that
The answer is do politics. If he doesn't know how to do politics, it would be better if someone else were doing the job.
> he's had an abusively and militantly anti-drug pol his entire career
Ok sure, not only that, but he is the president who has the least number of spare brain cells to devote to an issue that he opposes on principle.
And yet of all the presidents we've had in the past 4 decades, it wasn't the B-movie star, nor the frat boy, not the draft dodger(s), nor the iconoclast reality TV star, nor even our first and only Black president -- but Biden the Old Catholic who actually got this seemingly simple reform with simple possession of pot.
As you said, he's the guy with the least reason and capacity to get it done, and yet here we are. How are you managing to complain that what he did was so simple and miniscule, and yet no one else came close to doing it?
> The best case scenario is that some people in his administration think that drug law reform is important, either morally or politically. There is no scenario in which the actual Biden is sympathetic towards drug users, or regretful of the lives that he personally contributed to ruining over drugs.
I wouldn't be too sure that Biden had staff more devoted toward drug reform than Obama [0]. But I guess you're stuck with that position since you can't fathom that Biden personally pushed for reform. So how did Biden end up with this successful drug reform team, just random chance? If Biden is so stridently anti-drug, so absolutely useless toward pushing reform as you think he must be, then how did that not trickle down to his senior staff and who they hired and what the prioritized?
> The answer is do politics. If he doesn't know how to do politics, it would be better if someone else were doing the job.
Politics is all about building consensus through compromise and collaboration. Biden may hate marijuana reform, but he prioritized and executed in a way that past presidents didn't, ostensibly because he knew it was something that lots of people love. How is that not great politics?
[0] https://www.marijuanamoment.net/new-book-obama-considered-de...
Biden still deserves the criticism that he does not believe in marijuana reform and may not follow through any further. For example, he excluded/discriminated members of his own cabinet that admitted to marijuana use while choosing a Vice President that admitted to marijuana use, which is puzzling.
> He's not doing his best, he's being pushed (if he's even being adequately informed.)
If this is true, then this is politics working as intended.
Seriously, that is exactly how the system is supposed to work: The officials we elect do what we, the people, want, not just push their personal beliefs at all costs.
I would 1000% rather elect someone I agree with on 50% of issues, who is willing to be swayed by popular opinion, than someone I agree with on 80% of issues, who is going to try to enforce their personal beliefs as law no matter what the people actually want.
He's being pushed? He promised to do this himself during the campaign. There is no credible evidence of any kind that he did this because he was "being pushed". In any case, it's the right move, and he did the right thing, and honestly, people like you need to pipe down, relax, smoke a fucking joint, be honest, and give him credit here where credit is due.
As for Biden "knowing how to do politics", you might want to spend some time studying Biden's astonishing legislative results over the past few months. He's apparently quite good at politics.
Just for fun: these "people in his [Biden's] administration" you speak of...who chose those people? I'm a little confused. Perhaps you can clear this point up.
Just be honest: you have 937 axes to grind and you are desperate to avoid giving Biden any credit, ever, for anything.
He did? Just not on this point or student loans. The inflation reduction act had been blocked in the senate by his own party defectors and he managed to get them to flip in a last minute political coup on what the republicans thought was going to happen
Except your argument doesn't hold water. Biden isn't "in trouble"; his approval rating has actually been steadily rising of late, and this policy change reportedly took some time to work on.
You also really need to do some homework on the US House and the degree to which gerrymandering has made it completely impossible for your dreams of "appeals to voters" to work.
Fully legalizing marijuana does require legislative action. The executive might have the power to ask the FDA to remove it from schedule 1, but by international treaty (ratified by the legislature) the US is required to enforce restrictions against marijuna according to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and the 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.
That is incorrect, according to Congress, themselves:
“Both Congress and the Administration have the ability to alter marijuana’s status as a Schedule I substance.”
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11204
I mention the executive branch's ability (via the FDA) to remove it from schedule 1, but that's not the same thing as complete descheduling.
They also have the ability to initiate or request that proceedings initiate under the Convention to have cannabis deleted from the schedules.
edit: but apparently, besides that or whatever other options the executive branch review discovers, or whatever the judicial branch comes up with, you are right
https://businessofcannabis.com/2022/09/16/us-court-of-appeal...
> but by international treaty (ratified by the legislature)
The Senate alone.
> Fully legalizing marijuana does require legislative action
Rescheduling it subject to treaty restrictions from treaties in force, but Presidents can and have withdrawn the US from treaties without Congressional action. This may be unlikely in this case, but does not exceed executive power.
Amending the treaty requires a bunch of other countries plus the Senate, and modifying the status of marijuana inconsistent with the treaty while it is in force would take a change in law by Congress (but would violate the treaty.)
Note that the current treaty status only requires medical use / prescription requirements, so it could be substantially less restricted than it currently is federally without running into treaty issues.
> Presidents can and have withdrawn the US from treaties without Congressional action. This may be unlikely in this case, but does not exceed executive power.
Can you give an example? I am not aware of any authority granted to the executive to override the legislature in this way. Is there an explicitly granted loophole or are these cases of executive overreach?
Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_...
The Iran nuclear deal wasn't a treaty, which is why he was able to pull out.
Remember the time Trump withdrew from the World Health Organization?
Trump certainly made a lot of noise about threatening to, but did he ever actually do that?
Kinda. The process takes too long for him to have withdrawn, but he formally started the process and Biden canceled it. https://www.axios.com/2020/07/07/trump-withdraw-world-health...
> but by international treaty (ratified by the legislature) the US is required to enforce restrictions against marijuna
Except when contradicted by the constitution or established legal process as a Party state.
Student debt forgiveness is also something that only the legislature can do - Nancy Pelosi admitted this as recently as a year ago. Biden doesn't have the power to forgive student debt by himself, but he's doing it anyway, it's blatantly illegal and no-one cares.
Given the pardon fully restores all rights I would say yes he has done that. Of course again this only applies to federal convictions
He doesn't have the power to change the law on his own. He's requested that the justice department reschedule the drug. I'm not sure what more within his power would allow him to "whole ass" this.
Tell DEMOCRATS he would veto any legislation until they pass whatever he wants. They can do it, they have the votes and have passed legislation with 0 Republican support. But that is far from necessary here.
With regard to Marijuana and the controlled substances act, Biden could issue an executive order to change the schedule of any substance right away. He could also issue an EO for the DOJ/IRS to change any regulations regarding marijuana that impact legal states or MJ related prosecutions.
He has a lot more power than this action implies, especially regarding things that aren't made law via statue but regulations set by executive branch departments.
Not waiting to the last minute, the timing is highly suspect and looks like him buying more votes.
Yes, the pardon wipes it off your record.
he's also moving toward removing it from the classification that would leave it as a scheduled drug federally and urging state govs to legalize it locally.
Reference por favor
> Third, I am asking the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to initiate the administrative process to review expeditiously how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. Federal law currently classifies marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the classification meant for the most dangerous substances. This is the same schedule as for heroin and LSD, and even higher than the classification of fentanyl and methamphetamine – the drugs that are driving our overdose epidemic.
Note that those headaches are still largely unresolved by this. It only covers possession, and it's a pardon, so possession is still technically outlawed.
Yeah, but hopefully the symbolic value adds to the momentum for actual decriminalization, sooner or later.
One of the early mini-scandals of the Biden White House was how "dozens of young White House staffers" were in trouble because they had believed "initial indications" that casual pot use would not automatically disqualify them from the job. And that seemed like a sure sign that Biden would be a real hard ass on pot use. Only 5 staffers out of "hundreds" were ultimately disqualified from the policy, and given what Biden has done today, we have some assurance he really is going to be sympathetic and reasonable about pot.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-white-house-sandbags-sta...
> Yeah, but hopefully the symbolic value adds to the momentum for actual decriminalization, sooner or later.
He’s directed the officials that are empowered by law to change its status without Congress doing anything to begin the process by which that would happen. So, its not just a symbolic act that may effect that sooner or later.
What are the headaches and how do they solve it? Just interested what it means in practice with different state and federal laws.
Here's an ancient example from 2013:
https://www.denverpost.com/2013/08/29/federal-government-won...
> Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole wrote in a memo sent Thursday to federal prosecutors that it will not be a priority to block landmark marijuana-legalization laws in the two states. The federal government also will not make it a priority to close down recreational marijuana stores, so long as the stores abide by state regulations, according to the memo.
The Attorney General de-prioritizing a crime sounds like a cop-out, but eliminating the incentive for federal agents to chase down a type of crime means those agents effectively won't enforce those laws...because they'll get dinged for wasting time that should be spent on actual priorities.
Here's an example of how the federal restriction can still be a pain to Colorado pot stores:
> Because pot is still illegal federally, banks will likely continue to refuse marijuana business accounts, employers can continue to fire workers who smoke pot off-the-job and marijuana users who receive federal aid or live in federal housing will remain at risk.
IIRC, it wasn't at all uncommon for state residents to think that they could smoke worry free b/c of state legalization, only to realize too late that their employer technically receives federal aid and now had the right to fire them. And even if the the U.S. Attorney General says "nah we probably won't care about that"...a lot of employers are going to err on the side of caution.
Since Biden said that he's directed the government to look into things that are on the path to legalization, that mentality is likely to trickle down to every part of the government. Private employers might still be anal though.
> What are the headaches and how do they solve it?
I live in California, where marijuana is legal.
The headaches here are that federal police sometimes go bonkers if they find totally minor stuff like edibles or paraphernalia during some sort of inspection or traffic stop that they do on federal land.
Oh, easy, just don’t carry anything on federal land.
Not so easy.
- Any BLM land is federal. Some people take their guns to BLM land for shooting. Better not have any marijuana related stuff on you when you do that (even if you’re just accompanying and not shooting).
- Any national park is federal land.
- Some local extracurricular activities happen on federal lands. Little league sports teams, Boy Scouts, etc. Again, not that you have to be using at the time, but if you get into an accident at one of these facilities and the federal police sees the state-legal stuff in your car, you can be charged with a federal crime for that.
- Any federal building and attached properties like parking lots. For example, if you’re going to the VA to pick up a friend who just had some medical treatment and have an accident, the investigating federal officer can charge you if you have state-legal marijuana goods.
- Sometimes you don’t even know when you are on or are traveling through federal land, so you can’t always prepare. For example, the Laguna Seca race track is near (borders on?) federal lands with federal roads and federal police, but the scope of the federal lands is not always clearly marked. So choosing which roads you take to the track determines whether you are breaking the law or not.
- Most major airports are federal. As such, even a flight from SFO to LA is supposed to be free of state-legal marijuana.
I don’t know how often possession is prosecuted in these situations, but there are enough stories bouncing around that it’s slightly concerning given that, imho, the number of stories should be zero.
The solution is to have the message from the top being that they don’t want to see these charges ever in CA and similar stares (waste of time), and any extracurricular behavior like roughing someone up or treating them like a criminal will result in an administrative action against the officer.
I doubt this will happen soon.
I think the best we can hope for is for prosecutors and senior officers to be consistently dismissive about any low key possession charges that junior officers make.
For what it's worth, the only thing stopping the federal agents from arresting you off of federal land for a joint is that it's not a priority for them, and they aren't going to be giving you a traffic ticket to notice it in passing. If you yelled that you were smoking weed across the street from FBI headquarters but on CA land they totally could go arrest you.
Or, to put it a different way. It's not that it's legal in CA. It's that the state won't do anything about it.
Not to be the bearer of bad news but it actually suggests an election season and not a mentality shift. We're gonna need to vote the average age of congress down about 20 years to see any realistic change on this IMO.
Pardoning people during election season is very, very much a mentality shift.
In the past Presidents and Governors pardoned people on their last days in office - when they’re least accountable to electors.
Now they (one anyway) is doing it right before and election.
That’s really big.
Pardons don’t happen exclusively during president’s final days in office: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-statistics
The outrageous ones that come in the news happen at the end when there is little to no accountability or blowback to worry about
Agreed - FoxNews has already started attacking this - https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-pardoning-all-prior-f... Just go further to the right cesspool to see what you're saying. He'll be attacked for this. I'll grant that he'll be qually praised for it and that it may rally his voters, though I doubt it's a net positive for him in the rhetoric chambers.
i just read the article you linked to - what part of it is “attacking” this? The whole article is basically a rehash of the White house press release (which is fine - it just reports the facts)
Or is the “cesspool” you are describing no longer just consist of people who disagree with you, but has now become people who could disagree with you in the future?
Did you watch the video in the article? That’s why I linked it. The cess pool are the Mark Levins, Bonginos, etc… they are vile. I’m willing to bet that they will attack this tomorrow. (edit) Didn't even take until tomorrow courtesy of Hannity - https://www.foxnews.com/video/6313390453112 - (~1.30 in)
Are we seeing the same article?
The only things above the fold on the article I see (in a full screen browser winder), are the title, a giant headline that "Study links high-THC marijuana to mental health issues" in a video player, and the same headline immediately below the video player.
Scrolling down the next thing I see is two paragraphs of un-emphasized and dry text describing the announcement, followed by "DEMOCRATIC SENATORS HIT BIDEN FOR 'EXTRAORDINARILY DISAPPOINTING' STANCE ON MARIJUANA" in all caps, highlighted, and underlined (as a link).
After that we have a picture of Biden, and four more paragraphs of text (as above). We round off with a video with the headline ""RAINBOW FENTANYL" WARNINGS OF AHEAD OF HALLOWEEN".
Edit: And finally the main body of the article closes with advertisement for their app, saying this is similar to steps taken by new york, and acknowledging AP. Just to be complete.
I think the context which fox puts this announcement in... really speaks for itself.
It shocks me how many people link articles they don’t even read.
What on that page is an attack?? Other than the ADs being an attack against the readers.
I thought the video they attached, which is what most people will watch is so negative that it’s an attack on the decision
many people hide those videos or straight ignore them. i’d be hesitant to say most are going to watch a video, that’s certainly the quickest way for me to ignore your content.
I'll cede that point - the video, in my opinion, made my point and the fact that they went out of their way to include it, to what I concede is a rather factual article still make it seem like an attack to me.
What’s ironic is that IMHO it should be at least more of a state level decision, which should be supported by the right. Of course logical consistency isn’t a hallmark of politics. If Pres. Biden supports something then obviously it should be opposed (this works for the left as well).
The “right” has multiple factions just like the “left.” A significant chunk of the right is social conservatives that don’t really care about the legal nuances, just like a dominant chunk of the left is social liberals that feel the same way.
Totally agree that there’s a leftist cesspool as well. Never said there wasn’t.
I’m not calling anything a “cesspool” I’m just addressing the issue of “logical consistency.” The GOP comprises Midwestern church moms and oil tycoons. Democrats include social justice activists and Silicon Valley billionaires. The fact that the policies emerging from these coalitions often aren’t logically consistent is no surprise.
It still seems to be a subject that’s rarely, if ever, covered.
I saw this on Reddit and it resonated. Yes, it’s the election season and we’re seeing democracy in action: that’s when elected officials do things you like and then you vote for them again. Not sure why you’re making it sound like a bad thing.
No federal law is changing. This is a one time get out of jail free card. People arrested for the same crimes after he pardons current people in prison don't get the benefit.
No, and that’s because he doesn’t have the power to unilaterally do that, but he is trying to get it rescheduled
> he is trying to get it rescheduled
Do you have a link about this? Because he's shown hostility towards marijuana legalization, promised to veto it if it was sent to him, and in the past supported draconian drug laws.
https://mobile.twitter.com/POTUS/status/1578097878094024712
Point 3.
Tweets do not official policy make. If you need examples, you need but examine his tweets all through 2019 and 2020 - they're loaded with promises and plans. This is certainly not exclusive to POTUS.
Show me a policy document along with a bill from that office and I'll consider it more than an election year symbolic gesture.
This feels like a too mean-spirited take. According to this[0] he may not need a bill, and in fact may have taken the first step
0: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2015/02/13/how-to-resc...
His tweets 2019 and 2020 are indeed "loaded with promises and plans", but that's because he was literally not president at that time. Now that he is president, tweets from @POTUS are intended and expected official statements. Sure he could be completely bullshitting with his tweets, but he could do the same with a "policy document"
(White House and executive offices don't produce "bills", other than signing the ones proposed and passed through Congress)
Policy or not, intent was clearly declared. Not vague statements, but specific actions including a direct callout to the secretary of HHS to initiate the rescheduling review.
Obviously we can only wait to see what comes next, but I'm not sure what more you'd want? The review process has to occur, so there's no additional "policy" to be had at the moment. Obviously there's a possibility that rescheduling doesn't happen as a result of that review, but that hardly seems likely given the current political and social climate around marijuana.
Seemed like a pretty straight-forward way to communicate "and this is step 2, which is a work in progress".
I think there's a huge difference between tweets with "promises and plans" (especially from before he was actually elected), and tweets saying "I have done this thing. I am doing this other thing."
It's reasonable to be cautious about a politician making a promise in anything but the most legally-binding possible way. It's not reasonable to straight-out call that politician a bald-faced liar if he hasn't demonstrated a propensity for such lies (unlike some I could easily name).
People can change their mind.
And when they do it like this it shows the are opportunist
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
He doesn’t technically have the unilateral power to prevent future people from being charged federally with simple possession, but in reality, he kind of does (while he’s president).
Sends a pretty clear message to any federal prosecutor that is deciding if they want to charge this. Obviously, the prosecutor can spend the time and effort on this if they want, but it’s time that will probably be better served doing something else if they don’t want to see their work wiped away by the stroke of a pen in the future.
Technically it's not a get out of jail free card, as I understand it, no one is actually held in jail for this right now. Though it does remove it from their records.
>no one is actually held in jail for this right now
6000+ people were.
He can and will suggest to the DOJ that they don’t charge anyone for simple possession of marijuana, and they won’t.
Edit: of course that’s temporary.
The scheduling of marijuana is changing.
It's being looked at, but that's not at this point guaranteed
That makes it sustainable.
Now the president can pardon people for this before every election!
It's a solid political play, and I don't recall seeing that done before (I've only been voting since '97). We'll likely see this kind of thing more often now.
Because they stop doing the things you like once the election is over
Sure, but then there is another election. After the election is before the election.
If I elect someone to lead the country for 4 years, I’d prefer they lead the country for at least 3.75 of those years, not for two 4-6 month stints in 4 years.
(Neither party has a monopoly on this BS.)
I use cannabis daily and am all for it being legalized and those in jail released. However, I cannot join you in a victory lap here because Biden's pardon affects nobody. As far as I know, there isn't anybody in federal prison on simple possession charges. That being the case, this smacks of politicking, optics, and opportunism rather than anything meaningful. If Biden wanted to do something substantial, he'd sign legislation legalizing cannabis (including growing your own).
He can only sign legislation presented to him to sign by Congress.
It's bad because there are people that have been sitting in prison that could have been released over a year and a half ago, but Biden would rather let them rot for a while longer just so he could score political points at a more convenient time.
Shit's illegal and people are mad. Dude tries to cut some folks a break and people are mad. Conclusion: some people are born mad and gonna stay that way regardless.
Hm.. can you imagine homosexuality being banned and people being mad just cause they pardon only a certain type before elections?
Intentionally or otherwise you're equating lifestyle choices with sexual orientation and that is not a good look for all the same reasons that the rationale behind conversion therapy is garbage.
Who got a break in this deal exactly? There isn't anybody in federal prison for simple possession charges. It's like him giving every man, woman, and child in Antarctica a pony, only not as efficacious.
Yeah he totally should have issued state-level pardons for possession. What in the hell is wrong with this guy...
Someone higher up in the tree said there wasn’t a single person sitting in federal pen for this. I’m not sure, but I can’t imagine it’s frequently charged federally
From a legal point of view, when is marijuana possession a federal offence and when is it a state offence?
Presumably if you're caught with weed in DC then it's federal. But under what circumstances could you be found in possession with marijuana anywhere else and have it be a matter for the federal government, not the state one?
Federal park land?
The difference is that if they were winning they wouldn't do this. This is textbook vote buying. They are absolutely terrified of the election season after the market collapse, inflation, housing situation, war in ukraine, etc. Easy to lock in quite a few votes throwing a bone. Republicans did the same thing last election season and capitulated (temporarily) on a lot of their positions in order to pull in the independents.
I wish you were correct. But there's a difference between doing something because you know it's right (implore congress to pass legislation on marijuana immediately) and because you need the votes. Only one of them is virtuous even though both ostensibly benefit the people.
I thought he campaigned on this. If I'm remembering that right, then this isn't so much the case of someone doing something just to try to get reelected (is he even planning on running again?), but rather someone fulfilling the promise they made to the people who elected him the first time.
Campaigning on something and not taking action until midterms is completely different. It is clear if he wasn't scared he wouldn't have taken action at all and both him and his VP has a history of being vehemently opposed to marijuana legalization.
The timing might be strategic, but he did say he'd do it and now he has, so it seems weird to say it was clear he wasn't going to. Biden has a horrible history but he's also been a supporter of things he spoke out against in the past. The degree to which his recent actions or his past actions better reflect his actual beliefs is debatable, but even if it's just for political points, he's doing the things he said he would.
Mentality change on marijuana? Well down that path already.
This was a campaign promise from Biden, and why shouldn't he reap credit from following through by doing this is an election season. At least he's not on the ballot, and I can think of many worse things politicians regularly do.
Consider also that these federal marijuana convicts were charged due to such simple infractions as carrying weed onto federal property such as national parks (given their greater popularity in recent times).
This shouldn't be too controversial.
Legitimate ask for citation as I don't recall this and couldn't find a reference to it now that Google is spammed by today's announcement.
Google for "biden marijuana campaign promise" brings it right up.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/16/politics/joe-biden-marijuana-...
This is absolutely about the election. Why didn’t he do this in his first 100 days? Because it wasn’t election season.
Hey there was a lot of money to print and send out of the country. Takes a lot of time and effort keeping the printers going. He did the best he could.
It's an election gimmick for sure. However, there's always a choice of possible election gimmicks - and in the past, this one had never been chosen. Now, it has been. There must be a reason for it - and one may reasonably assume the reason is that there is enough support for relaxing the federal prohibition on marijuana.
Great point, but even 20 years down still isn't all that young.
Good? Power to the people?
“But it’s symbolic” is literally the cope of our generation.
It means practically nothing and we must demand more than symbolism.
Legalization isn't like fixing climate change or curing cancer. It is literally just a question of getting enough voters and politicians to agree that the current laws are stupid. A 79-year-old President signing this pardon is actually a huge step in forming that consensus.
Voters already agree the laws need to change. It's congress holding us back against the will of the people who elected them. Republicans have already spoken out against this pardon.
Well, that's to be expected. If it was The Orange Man who'd done this, you can take an educated guess at who'd be speaking out against it. Congress is a middle school playground.
This was not symbolic. There are thousands of people for whom this action is the farthest thing from symbolic. Thousands of people who will be released from cages and able to see their families again. This pardon is absolutely making a difference in a lot of people's lives. If the justice department reschedules the drug, and other states pardon their prisoners as he's asked them to then the impact will be much much greater.
Also, cases can be brought on a state based jurisdictional level and be dropped cause of this federal act.
That's not true. First, this is not a federal act. An act is an individual law. A federal act is a federal law. This, however, comes through the use of the President's constitutional pardon power, which is only allowed for offenses against the United States. Due to the creation of The District of Columbia, offenses against that code are also included in the President's pardon power.
This absolutely does not apply to any state.
On what basis? In the US, the tenth amendment allows states to enforce their own drug laws regardless of what the federal government says.
Something something Wickard v. Filburn
Biden admin has been making a lot of symbolically valuable half-measure gestures. If substantive change follows on each, he could be the greatest president since FDR. Or, he could lose re-election and we're left with a bunch of impotent symbols that are gradually undone.
I'm still cynical, but slightly more optimistic today.
Any president that doesn't put an entire race of people into camps is better than FDR in my opinion.
Bush II caused much more harm by starting two unjustifiable wars. The victims just weren't American.
Some historians believe FDR was aware of the Pearl Harbor ahead of time and allowed it to take place in order to have a pretext to enter the war, essentially starting WW2.
A) This is absolutely a fringe belief, if it is believed at all. Cite a source if you think it could be true.
B) World War II started two years earlier than Pearl Harbor, when Hitler invaded Poland. The idea that FDR started WWII is the most ludicrous, revisionist idea I've ever heard about history.
1. Good number of former navy people seem to believe it like this guy: https://www.independent.org/issues/article.asp?id=408
2. My point is it's not really a "world" war without the US. Would've probably called it something else.
1. "Former Navy people" are not historians.
2. Adding a continent to a war is not the same as starting it. That's like saying that if the US entered the war in Ukraine, then Biden started WWIII.
The person who started the war is the person who invaded a sovereign neighbor to expand his empire.
> World War II started... when Hitler invaded Poland.
The Chinese might disagree.
> he could be the greatest president
You're good!
Giving the people what they want; I can get on board with that.
So I take it you know fully well the entirety of what people want and what the government has been willing to give? Or is this something that happens to be coincidental? The argument doesn't add up to me. Occam's Razor errs on the side of this being a political move, given the timing and the fact that a pardon isn't legalization. Did Biden ask for congress to send him a legalization bill? The federal government's reputation didn't suddenly change here. So no, this isn't really what people want.
Just like the government can give people what they want, only when it is convenient to do so, this talking point also seems to come up when convenient, but it isn't true.
What is your estimate of the number of people who are eligible for this pardon?
Oh no please politicians stop doing things your constituents want you to do in hopes of success in future re-election campaigns!
Oh, wait, isn't that how it's supposed to work?
The way it's supposed to work is that politicians do things their constituents want all the time, rather than token gestures just as the time approaches when they risk being kicked out if they're unpopular.
Sure, that would be great. It would also be great if my socks would conveniently pair themselves off and get into my dresser when I was done with laundry. In reality, systems operate according to rules. In the case of people, they will always * act in their actual or perceived self-interest.
The whole point of relatively frequent elections is that we know politicians do this. We get a little honeymoon period when they are first elected, a little honeymoon period before the next election activity, and a period in the middle where they do whatever they can do satisfy whatever internal reward function they have. I am all about encouraging them to do the things I like for as long as possible. This is a thing I like.
*mostly
how can one genuinely hold this position? just because it's the status quo, it's all we should ask of our public servants who demand that we vote for them?
posts like this make me think that democracy may have been a mistake after all.
I guess I concern myself less with how I think systems should operate and more with how I observe them to actually operate. If you assume that you see reality with your eyes instead of wish reality into existence I find that you generally get better results.
sure, but to truly observe what is actually happening, one must acknowledge that essentially nobody ever tries to truly observe what is actually happening, rather, everyone continues to willfully participate in the kayfabe delusion that elected officials Actually Do Stuff when by and large they Just Pretend To By Making Meaningless, Yet Applauded Gestures. which the not-truly-observing electorate then takes as reason to reelect them. over and over again. and nothing changes.
this reality of the situation simply must be acknowledged if ones wishes to truly observe how these systems actually operate.
As is said frequently on this forum, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
What position exactly? That good things done for cynical reasons is superior to nothing ever done? To me that seems plainly logical
I appreciate your idealistic opining but when you look at the reality of the competition, what Biden has done lately is just on another level. It’s unfortunate indeed that democracy has been so thoroughly corrupted by late stage capitalism, but it doesn’t make sense to lament the times it does something useful
Yes, but the petroleum reserve and loan forgiveness are pontual mesures at the right time with bad long term consequences.
Okay, I'll bite. "Pontual"? Are Google and I missing something? The top result is a Google Translate rendering of the Portuguese word "pontual" as "one-off" in English, which kind of fits your intent, I guess. However, various P->E dictionaries translate the word as punctual or sporadic. (Any Portuguese speakers who can shed some light for me on the difference between Google Translate and the dictionaries?) I didn't see any Google results (in the ones I scanned) indicating pontual had been appropriated into English. Am I just not hip to the latest slang?
I am french speaking, english is my second language.
yeah, punctual
OK, any other random policies you want to talk about? This thread was about a single thing.
I don't know of a political system which doesn't work contrary to intention. You just hope they work and try to make them better. Cursing the times they do function seems weird.
Every U.S. president going back to Lincoln and before has triangulated their actions based upon the political circumstances of their moment. The Emancipation Proclamation itself was pocketed until it could be announced after a clear Union victory. I think the criticism is fine but it doesn't make Biden unique at all and keeping that context is important.
The reality is the politicians always promise to do what people want but never quite actually do it, so that they can keep getting those people to vote for them.
Works painfully well all around.
Yes and no.
In general, they are. A direct democracy (or referendums etc) would more directly reflect this. Being a republic, they are supposed to also prorect the ideals/structure of the country to safeguard the rights of minority groups (not really an issue in this context, but wanted to point that out).
> Oh no please politicians stop doing things your constituents want you to do in hopes of success in future re-election campaigns!
Can you show me to the national grassroots movement/lobby to grant pardons for federal simple marijuana possession crimes? I have a cousin who was convicted of it in 1995, and he thinks it's the reason why the federal government won't accept his application for employment. I'm not looking for the legalization movement, because that's not what we were talking about here.
But I definitely want to know who the guys are that got Biden to agree to this pardon. They are clearly an effective group and I want to get involved somehow.
(If they exist)
You mean creating more debt?
This is actually doing the opposite though
oh so the bazillions of student debts magically disappear? Or they are just being paid by someone else in the end?
Rhetorical question, of course.
Yup. Same with depleting the strategic petroleum reserve and student loan "forgiveness".
Sure. But it wasn't that long ago that the way you acted on elections coming up would be to adopt a "tough on drugs" posture.
Democrats are the defund the police party nowadays
Which is bizarre because these midterms are projected to be incredibly non-competitive. There are very few genuine toss-ups to speak of.
Even if all toss-ups go red or blue, neither party can gain a filibuster-proof majority. Best case for Democrats, Manchin and Sinema still reign as agenda-makers.
They are not wrong. Biden could have done that two years ago, but chose to do it only 1 month before midterms.
This applies to somewhere in the neighborhood of 149 people[1].
[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/bidens-marijuana-pardons-won....
The way I’m reading it, it also applies to people who are not incarcerated but still have felonies on their records.
If so, that’s a whole lot more than 149 people.
6 500, according to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33113859
In 2017, there were 650 000 marijuana arrests across the states, up from the year before.
https://wayofleaf.com/blog/weed-arrests-by-state
That's just in the DC metro area. Nationally it could be higher.
Thanks for taking the time to fill in some blanks. Great links.
My pleasure and thanks for taking the time to thank.
That could be correct, I didn’t read it closely. I think the total number then is still probably quite low. I’m not disparaging the move and think it’s good but adding perspective.
"Highly symbolic" or "game changer" to be reported by newspapers
Moving from victory to victory, burnishing his progressive record. But will midterm voters recognize his overwhelming success?
The President also has pardon powers for those convicted of violating District of Columbia laws and this order also applies to those convicted under DC simple possession laws.
DC laws are, constitutionally speaking, based on lawmaking authority delegated by Congress under their plenary power over territories and subject to any legislative modifications that Congress chooses to make directly from time to time, so it's effectively federal law.
Congress does indeed delegate authority to the District of Columbia under the Home Rule Act of 1973; however, Congress's authority does not derive from their plenary power over territories because DC isn't a territory. Congress's authority over DC comes from Article I Section 8 Clause 17 of the Constitution.
The local laws of DC including those forced upon DC by Congress are not however federal law and violations of DC laws are not a violation of federal law. If you violate DC law you are prosecuted in the Superior Court of DC which is part of the DC government. If you violate federal law in DC you are prosecuted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia which is part of the federal court system.
> Congress does indeed delegate authority to the District of Columbia under the Home Rule Act of 1973; however, Congress's authority does not derive from their plenary power over territories because DC isn't a territory. Congress's authority over DC comes from Article I Section 8 Clause 17 of the Constitution.
Good catch, thanks for the correction.
> The local laws of DC including those forced upon DC by Congress are not however federal law and violations of DC laws are not a violation of federal law. If you violate DC law you are prosecuted in the Superior Court of DC which is part of the DC government. If you violate federal law in DC you are prosecuted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia which is part of the federal court system.
In terms of terminology used every day, you're right. But really, federal authority underlies both of those two legal and judicial systems. It wouldn't violate any separation of powers concern for Congress to amend the rules such that DC local law violations go straight to the US district court, unlike what would be true if DC were a state.
National parks across the country, too.
That's an example of when federal laws apply, yes. (It's not a separate legal system subject to presidential authority.)
You'd be surprised at how many Americans don't understand how Presidential pardons work either.
Pardons are so rare that it's not a good use of brain space for most people. They have been in the news more in recent years due to you know who.
The rules, in general, are simple and it's spelled out in the constitution. Why shouldn't people know it?
> Despite a burst of pardons and commutations in his last hours in office, Donald Trump used his executive clemency power less frequently than nearly every other president since the turn of the 20th century, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Justice Department data.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/22/trump-used-...
I mean... fine, but IMO it's not the number of pardons issued that made this top of mind, but rather the constant controversy around people given pardons, gossip about people who requested pardons, and speculation about the legality of a potential self-pardon.
As opposed to the non-existent controversy over Carter pardoning draft dodgers?
Or the non-existent controversy over Clinton pardoning Patty Hearst and members of the Weather Underground?
Or the non-existent controversy over Clinton pardoning his half-brother?
Or the non-existent controversy over Obama commuting the sentence of Chelsea Manning?
That last one was a win.
Between Manning and Assange, whom do you think is more deserving of a pardon?
False dichotomy; pardon them both, plus Snowden.
But if what you're fishing for is that Assange did more for the world, was more dis-proportionally persecuted with less legal justification, then yes.
The idea I’m trying to explore is the appropriateness of all the presidential pardon decisions. I agree with you, both deserve pardons.
Listing the pardons by appropriateness is just one component that may help analyze the issue. That’s what I meant by asking the question.
Fewer in number, but much higher in corrupt intent, even compared with the usual bunch of ~sketchy pardons for donors and friends.
Would you mind elaborating on which ones you found sketchy, preferably spanning administrations?
Above all I do not want to argue politics. I am not a supporter of the previous President. Nor am I a supporter of the current. In the past I have voted for Democrats and Republicans but I’m pretty sure it’s protest 3rd party votes for me for the foreseeable future.
Michael Flynn. Scooter Libby. Joe Arpaio. Steve Bannon. Paul Manafort. Roger Stone. etc. etc.
Those all check out with me as sketchy.
Are there more and do you think other administrations have participated in this affront to justice?
I can imagine the Clintons doing some sketchy stuff.
A lot of people don't know basic civics.
IMO our education system should be focused primarily understanding and respecting history, law and civics.
I think the vast majority of Americans have no idea about any of the basics of the American system, which is frankly... scary.
I don't know... Obviously anecdata, but I'm from an area notorious for poor education standards, and civics and history were focused on very heavily there.
I'll go out on a limb and suggest that civics and history aren't going to stick any better than any other subject until critical thinking has first been taught.
> I'm from an area notorious for poor education standards, and civics and history were focused on very heavily there.
When you (plural) are making 6-figures a year, living in some high class inner suburb, working for some employer who has tons of money sloshing around, you don't need to be good at playing the game because you can just pay your way.
Poor communities need to actually be good at playing the game in order to be heard.
Can't say everyone or even most world wide are doing a great job necessarily. So I wouldn't take it too hard on oneself. But there must be improvement on the topic. The problem in the U.S. I would say is that lack of knowledge of civics and law can get you in more trouble than other countries -- there is less of the "honest mistake" mentality and approach and more of "we have a hammer and we hammer nails or anything that looks like it." Again on average, and my impression. Also the legal system is way too overcomplicated and inconsistent for my formal mind.
The problem is that because of underinvestment, or the wrong kinds of it, increasingly stringent standards without the advances in productivity or pedagogy means that every year gets closer to teaching to the test.
Why ? Do they teach that in school ? If not why it would be surprising to not know how it works ?
It is surprising that it is not typically taught in schools. One would think an understanding of how our government works and the limits of its powers would be critical for a functional democracy, but 57% of Americans have never even read the constitution nonetheless had any formal education about the context and consequences of its clauses. Of course there will always be more things we want kids to learn than there is time to teach them, but I seriously question what was prioritized over civics.
It's understandable that studying the constitution could be useful, but arguably so would studying the NEC.
In both cases it shouldn't be a requirement; we don't demand studying the NEC before using electricity.
And even those with a very good understanding of the constitution and civics probably don't have a very good handling on the actualities of how everything works, unless perhaps they're a criminal lawyer.
The official original US Constitution is written out on one largish page. The original text, plus footnotes, is 10 pages in https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-110hdoc50/pdf/CDOC-.... On https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_St... it's, by my count, 4370 words. That's 12½ minutes of reading.
The amendments are another 15 pages, which is mostly taken up by footnotes about which states ratified them when. On https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights and https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Additional_amendments_to_the_... we have 809 and 2698 words respectively. That's another 10 minutes of reading.
Also, most of that text is unchanged since 01789, and it hasn't changed at all since 01992, when one sentence was added. If you'd spent those 22½ minutes in 01992 you'd still be up to date. And it is in the public domain, so it is easy to obtain.
NFPA's National Electrical Code (I assume that's the one you mean) is over 1000 pages, and a new version comes out each year.
Because it's so short, it doesn't actually say very much. Nearly all of its application is a matter of interpretation spanning literally millions of pages.
That’s the problem. Some parts read quite simply, others require decades of study (and even then the top legal minds in the US can disagree on what the word mean).
Of course they do! The whole point of being a top legal mind is so that you can disagree convincingly about laws so that you can bring about the results you want.
On the other hand, if you're going to actually do DIY work on your house's wiring, it would be prudent to at least have some familiarity with the NEC.
Since we're in a democracy, every election involves everyday citizens adjusting the wiring of our government. Doubly so in states that allow voter-initiated statutes and constitutional amendments via referendum.
If every november everyone in the community got together and rewired eachother's houses, I think it would be very wise to require the NEC be taught to all students.
Of course most people are never going to be arguing cases before the supreme court or writing laws, and those would require far more expertise than anyone needs. At the same time, most people will never be mathematicians but we still have math classes. No one is becoming a master in a subject from primary education, but they should have some basic literacy in the subject and a foundation to build upon.
Schools are optimizing for standardized tests. There's no standardized tests on civics.
What are the tests that people have to take to gain US citizenship?
While people born in the US automatically have citizenship, my personal belief is that people should have to pass the citizenship tests to get the right to vote.
btw, I'm in Australia, and our voting is compulsory (or at least being enrolled and being crossed off as submitting a ballot paper, the vote itself is secret).
I think if we're going to set tests for citizenship for foreigners before they're allowed to become citizens, why shouldn't the same tests apply to locals?
> What are the tests that people have to take to gain US citizenship?
I mean, you're not wrong, but that's not what the majority of schools' funding is staked upon.
There was such a standardized test when I was in high school, for what it's worth. And some states still have them, and some require a passing grade on them to graduate from high school.
Probably should be really. Kids should at least grow up knowing how things are supposed to work so they can fully appreciate how broken things are.
Constitution is fairly removed from practice of criminal law. It is theory that has literally hundreds or interpretations slapped on it.
True, but this will help the tens of thousands of people who have been affected by this that live in Washington, D.C., and provides some precedent for Governors to do the same across the country.
https://twitter.com/EthanSCorey/status/1578126905269780488
Also if they are in prison due to other charges, like those relating to firearms, they may remain in there. Most people are not charged for possession alone.
It's fucked up though that merely possessing weed+firearm is makes you "prohibited possessor" with 10 years in jail when a NAND of the two is legal. Such a person may be considered a violator of weapons and drug laws, even though all they did was own a legal firearm and simple possession of weed.
Fucked up yes, but anyone fucking with drugs that has half a brain knows this, so the ones getting convicted are probably not using them for target practice
Paying a guy to sit in the passenger seat packing heat while you handle the dope and the money or paying another guy to store your product at his house and all the other things you need to do to not catch a "gun stacking" multiplier on your petty dealing charge is a luxury that only successful and established dealers can afford.
You just said it though - only successful and established DEALERs can afford. The problem you are describing is a problem of a drug dealer. A drug dealer with a gun is a criminal that ought to catch a charge. That's exactly my point.
Youtube star FPSRussia was just using them for target practice. He ultimately got convicted of possession of hash oil (with intent, seemingly solely because he shared it with his girlfriend). While he plead down to the possesion w/ intent it's my understanding the original charges included prohibited possessor. I don't think he'll get the pardon either since he got a distribution charge for toking with the GF.
Yeah there are definitely scenarios where its some real bullshit, I agree. And it's fucked up that a persons decision to smoke weed essentially removes their second amendment rights. But its still a decision that you can make, you know. It's not like you HAVE to have a gun. (idk the specifics of the FPSrussia case so won't comment on that)
> The vast majority of people arrested for marijuana possession are not charged Federally.
I would expect most of the Federal charges of simple possession occurred at national parks and monuments. But still even if violations were widespread, arrests and convictions probably weren't. You would need a really bored D.A., and I would assume they're usually just as busy as most other attorneys.
> I would expect most of the Federal charges of simple possession occurred at national parks and monuments
Borders?
There were probably many smuggling cases that pled down to simple possession for various reasons. And now pardoned.
feels like the current POTUS is either signaling his parties future legislative priority at best, pandering for november votes, or performing the legislative equivalent of 'dnf clean all' as these low level offenders are becoming increasingly burdensome and expensive to house and feed during a recession.
One man's pandering for votes is another man's fulfilling of electoral mandate and promises.
A lot (most?) of what all politicians ever do is pandering for votes.
Even if it's pandering for midterms it's refreshing to get some bones thrown at us.
It's all three. Biden is a consummate politician.
From talking with friends, Biden isn't terribly popular with the segment of Democratic voters for which marijuana and student loans are top priority. He managed to make progress on the student loans recently, but efforts on drug reform have stalled.
Could it be because he used to be involved with war on drugs?
> Could it be because he used to be involved with war on drugs?
That's true of pretty much every politician who's been in office for more than, say, fifteen years.
Save a few libertarians here and there.
There was no shortage of left leaning politicians in the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc that were harping on the whole "criminalization is making drug problems worse" thing. Prior to the homogenization of politicians rhetoric in the 2010s I'd say it was a solid 30% of politicians on the left and 20% on the right.
So excuse me for being a little cynical when one of the guys from the "no we'll just use the state jackboot to solve all the problems" camp is pardoning people.
You guys talk about Biden like he's running the show. You've seen him lately, right?
Yes, I fondly recall his speech he gave calling out the MAGA republicans as a danger to the country and right wing media losing their mind over the “fascist” speech.
Is the guy a doddering old fool or a dangerous demagogue? It can’t be both simultaneously
...which he apparently forgot all about the very next day. I don't know what they had him juiced up with (maybe Pervitin, appropriately?) but that's the most coherent I've ever seen him before or since.
The simple solution to the contradiction you propose is: He is a doddering old fool, who is controlled by dangerous demagogues. (And actually, this might describe his predecessor as well.)
But that doesn't mean we can't appreciate when they occasionally do something good (regardless of their motivations), and this is one of those times.
Well we’re have to agree to disagree then. I also don’t think trump was being controlled. These guys are not always on, but you can see that both of them are making decisions and those decisions taking place.
There’s no drug in the world that makes someone go from doddering to able to give long speeches and stay on point.
Still, it will set an example for the blue states to follow. That's something at least. Red states would probably be less likely to do this just based on where the example is coming from. It's progress of a sort in undoing a grave injustice.
Most of the blue states are legal or decriminalized at this point.
What's odd is that there hasn't been a push for clemency/pardons when legalization happens.
I don't care about marijuana, it's never been very interesting to me, but it's absurd the amount of human capital that's gone into stopping it and sigmatizing its use in this country.
> What's odd is that there hasn't been a push for clemency/pardons when legalization happens.
There absolutely has been though.
California: https://www.pubdef.ocgov.com/programs/dismissal-and-re-sente...
Washington: https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/legal-pot/washington-gov-i...
Colorado: https://www.colorado.gov/governor/news/6986-governor-polis-g...
etc. etc.
"when legalization happens" is perhaps the part you missed about my comment.
These are things that have happened decades after legalization!
The amount of money spent for police and prison and the number of wasted human years (while in prison) is staggering. At the same time, I wish there was better data on the number of people who have permanent mental illness due to drug use. Is there much causation or just correlation?
I didn't know this, and I am American thanks for the clarification.
A question meant with the best intent: why didn't you know this?
For me, this kind of thing was pretty well covered in high school, and my high school was far from excellent.
I also didn't really know. High school was thirty years ago, at my school civics was an optional class taught by the football coach, and when learning about how the government works the details of pardons aren't terribly important.
I'm sure I read some textbook that said the president can pardon Federal crimes, but my test was something along the lines of "what powers does the executive branch have" and "the pardon" was a good enough answer.
From a foreign news outlet, ironically, for our American readers:
> Mr Biden, a Democrat, said he will call upon all state governors to issue their own marijuana pardons.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63166964
We had the same reporting up here in Canada. The president doesn't have a power to pardon state offenders but he urged state governors to mirror the change alongside the formal pardon for federal prisoners.
It does set the stage for states to issue similar pardons. Although red states are unlikely to do so, I believe it will have second-order effects that do pressure red states.
A large part of The War On Drugs was the top-down messaging villainizing possession and use of cannabis, and that same power is now being used in the opposite direction to some extent. Combine that with an aging baby boomer generation, and you have youth growing up in red states today who are much less likely to believe that folks should be put in jail for possession.
Next the purple states will adopt similar language and policy, then the idea of criminalization well become an outside/extremist/fringe policy and – my prediction – finally within a decade or two even many red states will be decriminalizing cannabis as well.
True, but also traditionally Federal marijuana stance has been much more strict than most of the states. I think this action may signal that it is changing.
And it's still illegal going forward, which means it's still valid reason for civil asset forfeiture, something the feds are major players in, either directly or through "sharing" with the states.
I have a friend in SV who got arrested for possession in one the national parks around there. Apparently it's a federal charge and hence he is still struggling to get citizenship.
Biden also limited the scope to possession. Serving 30 years for selling an ounce of weed? Biden doesn’t care.
The list of cannabis offenders imprisoned federally is 40k people. Biden pardoned 6.5k most of whom are not currently serving time.
"Just noting for non-American readers."
I'm not in the US and I am aware of the Fed/States law/divide but that's not the most important issue for those of us outside the US.
The truly significantly point about Biden's announcement is that the attitude to marijuana use will almost certainly change worldwide. I don't expect the world to go pot-crazy overnight or such, but as I see it it's a very noticeable (albeit small) crack in the way drug use is policed and this will be echoed to varying degrees worldwide.
The fact that the US president has done this is an indicator to the world that the all-or-nothing/black and white approach to policing drug use is not the correct approach and that it ought to be more nuanced and targeted. And, in my opinion, that's to be welcomed.
It goes without saying there are major problems with drug use and I'm not advocating a free-for-all approach to their use—far from it. However, what Biden's announcement shows the world that not all drugs have equally bad outcomes for users and that this should be reflected generally by grading drug laws more appropriately.
With Biden's words, hopefully drug use will become less of a criminal activity and more of a medical one.
FYI, I'm not a marijuana user—well anyway not a recent one, haven't used it since my student days quite some decades ago.
>Biden can't do anything about the State level charges most people are charged with
nothing whatsoever, other than you know, shuffling https://www.drugs.com/article/csa-schedule-1.html
It's a pretty empty gesture.
Not really true. This action amounts to Biden doing something about state-level charges as well. He explicitly encouraged states to follow suit. He also announced that he's reviewing the absurd Schedule 1 designation for marijuana, which is also a huge deal. And today's action moves us a lot closer to real national legalization.
The concern here is that if you are charged federally with marijuana possession, you probably weren't a light user. You were probably a drug trafficker who was associated with gangs and much stronger drugs, and I'm not sure I want those people back on the streets any sooner then necessary
Interestingly, he specifically excludes illegal immigrants who are not US citizens from the pardon, as well as (implicitly) people who used to be lawful permanent residents but no longer are (perhaps because their visa got revoked after being arrested for possessing marijuana), as well as former US citizens (if there are any who have been charged with this "crime") and people who were never residents in the US at all (perhaps they got arrested when they changed flights at a US airport). So this is a step in the right direction, but not nearly far enough. I wonder why he went to the trouble of making all those exclusions.
> as well as (implicitly) people who used to be lawful permanent residents but no longer are (perhaps because their visa got revoked after being arrested for possessing marijuana)
Oh wow, I hadn't caught that. I thought you were mistaken but went back and looked at it again, I think you are correct. That's even more evil.
"Evil" is far from the correct word here.
I wouldn’t call it evil either. As a general rule, don’t do drugs in foreign countries when it’s illegal. If you must, do them in your home country or where they’re made legal.
Fun fact: in some countries it's illegal for citizens to take illegal drugs even if they're abroad in a place where it's legal. E.g. if a Korean smokes weed during a visit to Amsterdam, they can be prosecuted for it upon return to Korea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_South_Korea#Kor...
Isn't that pretty common? As a Norwegian, there's AFAIK several things I can't do when abroad even if it is legal in the country I visit. Doing drugs is one of those things, I believe.
It's evil. But it's an evil that exists because of optics made necessary by the current political climate. So the blame for that needs to go to the people that make such optics necessary, if you catch my drift.
Uh huh. "Now look what you made me do", the eternal cry of the oppressive government or abusive family member.
A small improvement is better than no improvement, which is what we would've gotten if Biden didn't win. Those are the facts.
The implication to me is that you need to write something down when you deport someone, and this is one of the things that get written down. Sure seems like a strange exception to me, but I'd be curious to hear from someone involved in writing it why exactly it was the practically or politically preferred choice.
Non citizens can’t vote so they aren’t his constituents.
It's obvious. They want to make sure those people are ineligible (or a least seriously impeded) for a visa, green card, or citizenship. Very few offenses can absolutely torpedo immigration to the US as much as drug possession/offenses.
The US is a relatively 'free' country in many areas but they have a shockingly dystopian immigration and DHS, with border security that many travelers characterize as one of the most brutal in the world. Even as a US citizen with clean record I am subject to invasive (cavity) searches, cuffing/throwing in a cell, questioning, threats that I'll not be allowed in the country etc when I deal with CBP/DHS. If you have a marijuana offense as an immigrant you are utterly fucked, and those in power would like to keep it that way.
Really? Since when?
I'm not a US citizen, and I've been to the US a few times. The security measures are about the same level as Japan. The "worst" thing that happened to me lately on an airport was an officer talked to me in a friendly tone but took my passport for inspection and returned it to me about 15 minutes later.
The only thing that can remotely be described as "brutal" is when I entered the US via land (from Canada) the first time around 2008 if I remember correctly. They searched out stuff thoroughly and we had to wait about an hour or so. But they were very polite and professional about it. No "threats" or intimidation of any kind.
If the standard is that People don’t disappear for days and/or completely , then yes US systems is civilized and polite.
The slightest of non conforming information or a honest paperwork mistake in your application can be used to permanently reject a visa,
Even if you been living for many many years , you have to leave in very short time (10-60? Days) if your visa is revoked/expired because you lost your job and potentially upend/split your family some of whom would be citizens if they were born here
Or be deported out by ICE right after serving lengthy sentence despite living in the country your whole life , to a home country you don’t know and never even been.
Despite all the bad press and difficulties US has a better system than most other countries, however if you are unlucky US immigration can upend your life.
This is a compeltely different topic now.
You're talking about people who were dragged into the US when they were children by their parents.
We were just talking about whether the US is particularly stringent when it comes to border inspections.
> Or be deported out by ICE right after serving lengthy sentence despite living in the country your whole life
Most countries would consider foreign citizens who serve lengthy prison sentences as unwanted visitors and would like very much to get rid of them as soon as possible.
I don't know of a country that welcomes such a thing. Do you know of one?
I don't think Svalbard (territory) imposes any sort of criminal background scrutiny before settlement.
I'm not sure if Vanuatu allows immigration for people who served time in Vanuatu but my understanding is they commonly "forget" to thoroughly check records when people pay the $130k or whatever it is for their passport-by-investment; Comoros was doing the same thing before they shut down their CIP program.
Most countries even emerging economies with poor human rights records have nowhere close to the insane incarceration rate that the U.S. has, so it is far lesser problem anywhere else.
You're yet again talking about a completely different topic. "Incarceration rate".
Politicians and public discourse sees it as related . Sanctuary city laws are specifically try to address this https://sf.gov/information/sanctuary-city-ordinance
Nobody is saying the fact we have incarceration rate is a different “topic “, we will not reform immigration policy to mitigate that.
These are real problems for real people , it doesn’t matter it is different topic, As a country we fail immigrants who come here
Does anyone know the rationale for why the laws are currently written this way?
Which way? That's how every country on earth operates. You are not a citizen of a country just because your parents dragged you there when you were young. In fact, the US is almost the only place on earth that grants birth-right citizenship (maybe Canada and Australia do as well?). All other countries think this is absurd.
Looking up Jus Soli, it's quite widespread in the Americas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli
Definitely not a US only thing. Though does appear to be a New world thing.
The laws are made to make use of cheap and obedient foreign labor; and dispose of it when no longer needed.
It's not how the law is written, as I understand it. It is how it is implemented and that is up to the President, Director of Homeland Security and ICE. Applications used to be returned or clarified when they had been filled out incorrectly. Now they are perfunctorily denied, and the applicant has to file an appeal. This change was brought about by a change in executive policy. I cannot say for sure whether it was started under Obama or Trump, but I did hear that it caught immigration attorneys off-guard. For example, if there is no middle name, they are not supposed to leave it blank. But if they use the wrong magic word to fill the space or cross it out, the application is now denied.
Not a US citizen but had zero problems flying to US last couple of years. Can't even remember the questions at the passport control point... But there was even a humorous, friendly officer there one time. No bag searches. Sometimes the queues have been long tho... Especially arriving in early morn.
I normally get my bags searched at the public "nothing to declare" area entering Japan and Thailand tho at the customs check point, and sometimes leaving.
No questions or searches ever in Malaysia.
No questions or searches ever entering Hong Kong. If you're e-gate enrolled it's not even an officer at the passport checkpoint, you just scan it and go through a double sided gate. If you have a HKID you don't even need to use your passport for entry, you can scan the ID for entry from international which I think is cool.
No questions or searches ever at Turkey.
Flying into Europe they normally have more questions at passport but no searches.
I'm always honest in my ESTA applications tho, maybe that makes difference.
I have never once made it through US customs in under 3 hours (and always with full search, interrogation, and not being cleared until an HSI detective appears). That's not counting the line, I'm talking the search/interrogation/detention phase. I am a US citizen with good passport, clean criminal record, valid and legal reasons for travel, and full compliance with US border related laws.
Sounds like a terrible experience.
That's fascinating. I really want to "Google stalk" you now to figure out what this could be about.
I have no idea but my hunch is maybe you're connected to someone... Social or family... Who is somehow important to them...but you don't know.
Imagine a system which welcomes 99 out of 100 people and brutally kills one. I think if I were to read online about people's experiences, it would be dominated by the 99 telling me that no brutal killings occur.
Since almost every time I enter?
Last time I entered I was (all without being arrested or charged with a crime)
-- forced to strip, cavity searched
-- searched by a dog, who found nothing, and agents lamented nothing was found, but they later wrote in their report that the dog alerted.
-- tossed in a cell
-- fingerprinted / booked (without being arrested/charged). US citizens entering with passport are not supposed to be fingerprinted.
-- detained for 16 hours
-- Had officials drag me in cuffs to two different hospitals 60 miles apart by prisoner transport van. Taken to second hospital after the first doctor wasn't corrupt enough to go along with their insane claims.
-- Had officials lie to doctors suggesting there were drugs up my ass, then being personally billed for medical services I never consented to. I am still in debt for these medical services I refused and were forced on me in custody.
-- After being seen without my consent, without an official arrest, or even a court order, was served ex-post-facto a warrant signed by the judge AFTER the time a which I was searched/"cared for."
-- forced to perform intimate body functions in full view (like 2 feet in front of me) of agents, who then searched the effects
-- Prevented from sleeping, even when doing so presents no interference or risk to anyone.
-- Dumped at the border with no apology
Here's a comment sharing some of the details last time I went through the border:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32416424#32421655
Here's a segment of my warrant based on perjurious testimony of DHS officials:
https://i.imgur.com/ZFPgRFl.png
(and their perjurious testimony WARNING/NSFW explicit text) : https://i.imgur.com/RXNrYmv.png
Doctors noting literally nothing interesting and that I'm asymptomatic of any problems and "stable for jail":
https://i.imgur.com/h6XHm5m.png
And a women sent to the same hospital as me, who was forcefully penetrated in her private orifices at the direction of DHS in circumstances similar to mine:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.985...
These detentions are a regular occurrence for me. I'm a US citizen, clean criminal record, never committed a US border related offense. Yes they have also threatened to deny me entry to US and also threatened to revoke my passport as part of their intimidation.
This doesn't sound normal. Your other comment mentions something critical:
> I got thrown on something like this almost a decade ago when I fought alongside the YPG, a US backed Kurdish militia that fought against literal ISIS. DHS/CBP put me on some fucked up list and now everytime I re-enter the US I get detained, accused of crimes, tossed in holding cell.
So, you're in some kind of a black/gray list possibly caused by involvement in a military conflict. Granted, it sounds absurd they would do this given you were on the US-backed side of the conflict, but still. Your experience is not representative of anything remotely close to what most people go through.
That's a valid point that my personal circumstances are unusual, but after my latest entry I started digging into the court records and saw far more "normal" citizens also experienced similar circumstances to this particular occasion I mentioned at Nogales port of entry (like Ms Cervantes noted above and below, who appears to have been a normal ~18 year old girl). My black/gray listing put me on the express lane into seeing the dark side of border patrol -- but the sad fact is some "unlucky" normal citizens appear to getting this treatment, and once it happens your eyes are revealed to even the normal people this is happening to (and in fact, while I was there CBP officers bragged about putting other innocents through the same thing, including one for having a trans-sexual appendage)
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.985...
I recommend in particular noted pgs 7-9 under the heading "Ashley’s [redacted] Were Probed without a Warrant, Consent or Any Suspicion of Internal Drug Smuggling"
IANAL but AFAIK a US Citizen cannot be denied entry to the US under any circumstances. They can detain you, search you, seize property, and charge you with any relevant crimes... but they can't simply deny entry.
Being detained at the border is not legally denial of entry, but it effectively is. Or you can enter, but by doing so you'll forfeit any property you had with you. There are all sorts of loopholes like that, and CBP will happily exploit every one of them.
They can't but they can and will lie to you and tell you they will deny entry. They also can and will threaten to revoke your passport despite no legal basis to do so. They have made both statements to me. If you read above I said they would make "threats" to do so (of the sort a common citizen would probably believe), not that it would actually happen.
That is what the law says, but government officials, including Border Patrol officers, sometimes do break the law.
Can you point to any cases of US citizens being denied entry?
The closest I'm aware of is having US citizens overseas be put on the no-fly list, which in practice amounts to the same thing if they can't get to Canada/Mexico either. But hey, they won't be denied entry if they swim across!
Not OP, and I can't answer yes to that, but they like to waive their proverbial dicks around as though they can. You used to be able to drive from Canada back into the US by showing just your US driver's license and birth certificate. About six months before that option went away, I drove across the border with exactly those documents. I hand them over, dude spends a few minutes huffing and puffing, kinda rolling his eyes. Asks me, "Is this all you have?".
Few more minutes pass and he goes, "You know, you're lucky I let you through with this stuff now. In a few months I won't be able to and your butt would be hanging out in Canada tonight. Have a nice day."
I suspect that would be framed as a delay to adequately verify that you are, in fact a US citizen.
I've never applied for any other kind than a tourist visa (and also never travelled in any other way there), and never had I seen anything different/worse than passing any other border in europe (non EU/schengen ones).
US does seem one of the only/few countries where an illegal immigrant can lead a pretty normal life for years (job, send kids to school, get a doctor, etc.) without getting noticed and deported... in my country for example, there's literally no way to get someone illegal to (eg.) school.
No, I'm leading a pretty normal life as an illegal immigrant in Argentina, and it's not legal to deport me (unless I commit a crime). Most countries don't have the level of government involvement in day-to-day life that many European countries do.
Naturally I'm sure you are law abiding, but I question how easy it is to live and work in Argentina without violating the law (I've heard it's practically a requirement to survive there -- if nothing else the tax laws). Maybe it's just a scam, but I had heard if you file for citizenship (which apparently anyone can do) it makes it harder to get deported?
I read some bizarre reports on baexpats that the easiest way to get deported is actually to follow the official legal residency pathway!
All that is true, except that it's harder to file for citizenship now. Just to clarify, you can't be deported for not paying taxes.
Yes, I'm from europe, here it's pretty impossible to do anything, atleast longterm (sneaking in and doing some under-the-table work for a few weeks and going back.. sure.. staying for years, having kids, etc... no way).
The US is weird because they are far more open to immigrants than many other nations, and extremely lax about illegal immigration (encouraging it even) while at the same being outright inhuman in how they treat the people that do get caught up by border patrol. We should really be doing the opposite of that and be far more strict about controlling illegal immigration while also making sure that the people we deport or turn away at the border are treated with respect and dignity and are well cared for while in our custody.
Lacking your perspective, that thought hadn't even occurred to me.
> More than 6,500 individuals with prior convictions for simple marijuana possession were impacted by the pardons, a White House official said, and thousands more through pardons under D.C. law.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/06/biden-to-pardon-all-prior-fe...
To be clear, 6,500 is the number of individuals receiving a pardon. The percentage of these 6,500 who will be released from prison? Zero - none of these individuals are currently in prison solely for possession of marijuana: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/07/...
Note: the pardon potentially isn’t really the big news, directing DOJ and HHS to reexamine the scheduling of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act is potentially a much bigger deal going forward.
I'm curious if this will snowball into a more informed classification system.
It seems pretty clear that psychedelics and entactogens (LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, 2-CB, etc.) have totally different characteristics than "these will ruin your life" drugs like heroin and fentanyl. A sensible drug policy would recognize those differences.
I've never been a fan of drug control, but the scheduling system is particularly absurd. Drugs that are widely consumed without negative connotations for society shouldn't be cause for imprisoning people.
I totally agree, but a "sensible drug policy" would also point out the complete arbitrariness of our society's relation to drugs in general. A couple years ago some researchers in the UK basically did a "harmfulness" rating for tons of drugs, looking at things like potential for addiction, negative health consequences, etc.
By far the most harmful drug was alcohol. I might be confabulating, but IIRC some government officials in the UK even asked some of the researchers to downplay some of their findings, because it basically showed the ridiculousness of government drug policy.
Regardless, though, the details of the report itself are worth a read, as I think they fairly assessed harm across different criteria, e.g. harm to oneself vs. harm to others.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
This study doesn't seem to be very rational, it has meth at a "harm for others" score of 2 whereas tobacco and cannabis are at 15. Second-hand smoke is bad for people but I can't see why that'd be more of a danger than your average meth head.
I think this chart that's linked on Wikipedia[0] that's from this study[1] is more accurate, alcohol is still near the top of the list but heroin, crack and meth are still higher.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreational_drug_use#/media/F...
[1] - "Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17382831
> I’m curious if this will snowball into a more informed classification system.
Not without legislation. The classification system is fixed in legislation, where things fall in it has some leeway (subject to treaty obligations, which are also sometimes problematic in this regard) by executive action.
As others have noted, formal drug scheduling is a requirement of our foreign obligations.
Which foreign obligation requirements?
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33115427
If 48.2 million are breaking a law, it’s probably the law that’s wrong.
https://www.cdc.gov/marijuana/data-statistics.htm
But then cocaine use is in the double digit millions as well. Drug use feels like a public health issue but drug supply is a law and order issue. Would decriminalizing the supply chain help much more than trying to enforce prohibition?
Yes. Plain and simple. Go even further and legalize. Decriminalizing doesn't solve the many issues that trafficking brings. This is low hanging fruit. Harder drugs would need to be tightly controlled but revenue could be spent on helping users... rehab facilities, safe use facilities, counseling, etc.
Same thing with prostitution. Human trafficking could be significantly reduced by legalizing prostitution. Government should not be involved in policing morals.
Morally (as opposed to politically) the theory is as follows: society forbids people from selling their body — sex, organs, wombs — to nullify any marketplace where an evil person with money can exploit someone else who desperately needs money.
This sucks for the people who aren’t in desperate need for the money and instead have made a lifestyle choice to sell their kidneys / intimacy / children but the state can’t reasonably decide who does and does not need protection from exploitation at the point of use, so they either over-protect everyone or under-protect no one.
That’s the moral choice here — how much freedom are we willing to relinquish in order to protect the vulnerable from exploitation. It’s not about whether we consider the exploited act to be moral or not, at least from a rational point of view.
This argument was used against alcohol in the early 1900s, according to Smashing the Liquor Machine.
According to them, US alcohol prohibition was lobbied for, in some part, by the left, because they saw it as exploitation. We saw how that turned out.
The same thing happened in Russia, where the Bolsheviks banned alcohol for a period, under the same justification.
If a policy is known to lead to bad outcomes, it is not a moral policy, no matter the theory behind it.
The left has started to realize this. That's why they now advocate for decriminalization, public health campaigns, and mental health support.
I agree with you, for what it’s worth, re: booze and drugs. Bartenders and dispensaries aren’t predators. Pimps and organ harvesters are.
There are only bartenders and dispensaries because it's legal. People made the same argument before for bootleggers and drug dealers.
Whether a person/group is defined with the label "predator" is uninteresting. Because that is about definitions of words and categories, which has no consequence on policy.
The right question is what policies help people, and what policies hurt people. Morally charged judgements cloud our thinking.
I can easily argue that alcohol sales are predatory. They are often selling to alcoholics who are damaging their bodies. They contribute to drunk driving deaths and domestic violence. But there is no policy corollary or implication to me doing that.
The whole moral crap is bullshit. Lots of European countries have gotten around the issue of pimps by legally mandating that sex needs to be sold on a 1:1 basis. I’m willing to put up with fringe human trafficking to be able to go downtown and buy sex. You can’t ban the best things in life and expect people to be happy over the long term.
I agree with you on prostitution but when it comes to drugs I feel like your views are a little idealized. If you can buy cocaine at the store, a LOT of people are going to start doing it and then will get hooked. Cocaine is by no means safe, all it takes is a couple of extra lines and you’re dead.
"Idealized". I don't disagree with you. I have thought about this a lot. I'm not suggesting full, open, commercial legalization for hard drugs. I'm saying full decriminalization, with the government tightly controlling production and distribution. As long as the price and the availability (how easy is it to get?) outperform the black market then we'd be in a much better position than we are today. It wouldn't be as easy as grabbing it off the shelf in a c-store. Users would have to go to specific facilities, possibly see a social worker, receive information about the drug, how to use it safely and legally, as well as be informed of abuse treatment options. For most people this would be enough of a barrier. The illicit drug trade brings about violence, ancillary crime, poor/dangerous quality control (fentanyl!). We can do better. Legalization wouldn't be perfect but it would be so much better than the situation we have now. I can guarantee that.
> If 48.2 million are breaking a law, it’s probably the law that’s wrong.
*glances over at the IRS*
> If 48.2 million are breaking a law, it’s probably the law that’s wrong.
This is a terrible argument. In countries with weak rule of law it's probably the case that a similar proportion of of people engage in bribery (either paying or accepting them). By your logic is it also the case that "the law that’s wrong" on bribery?
> My intent by this proclamation is to pardon only the offense of simple possession of marijuana in violation of Federal law or in violation of D.C. Code 48–904.01(d)(1), and not any other offenses related to marijuana or other controlled substances.
This is a great step in the right direction. Hopefully this is laying the groundwork for federal decriminalization.
>[Biden] will also ask the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and the attorney general to review how the drug is scheduled under current federal law.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-pardons-marijuana-decri...
Good luck; it's scheduled under US Treaty with the UN and governed by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs.
>>"The CND is mandated to decide on the scope of control of substances under the three international drug control conventions (1961, 1971 and 1988 Conventions)."
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/commissions/CND/index.html
Well, they just voted on cannabis reforms recommended by the WHO two years ago, and the votes seemed to be split nearly 50-50.
Article 23 of the 1961 Convention will allow the eventual teatotalling minority to maintain their stricter controls while allowing the remainder of the Parties to operate without contradiction to their constitutional obligations, vis-a-vis legalization of non-therapeutic adult use of cannabis.
That was amended in the 70s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Psychotropic_Sub...
The UN has the final say.
"A similar process is followed in deleting a drug from the Schedules or transferring a drug between Schedules. For instance, at its 33rd meeting, the WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence recommended transferring tetrahydrocannabinol to Schedule IV of the Convention, citing its medical uses and low abuse potential.[17] However, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs has declined to vote on whether to follow the WHO recommendation and reschedule tetrahydrocannabinol."
From your link:
“As with all articles of the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the provisions of Article 22 are only suggestions which do not override the domestic law of the member countries:
4. The provisions of this article shall be subject to the provisions of the domestic law of the Party concerned on questions of jurisdiction.
5. Nothing contained in this article shall affect the principle that the offences to which it refers shall be defined, prosecuted and punished in conformity with the domestic law of a Party.”
Do you have a reference link to the amendment that you are claiming nullifies this?
Or are you claiming that Article 23 was amended such that Party states cannot be selectively stricter than the Convention?
What you are listing is specifically the "Penal Provisions" which are suggestions as the UN doesn't have the right to prosecute drug violations in member countries. They do, however, according to Article 6 of the Constitution (which makes all Treaties the law of the land), the right to challenge the rescheduling of drugs which conflict with treaties.
Broader authority rests here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_Agai...
Article 6 of the US Constitution means that ratified treaties pre-empt state law. It has nothing to do with federal law. See Ware v. Hylton (1796) and McCulloch v. Maryland (1819).
Treaties that conflict with federal law are null and void; Congress has to pass legislation if they want to make any such conflicting requirements effective. The same applies to treaties that attempt to restrict constitutional rights: such provisions have no force nor can Congress enact them. That would require an amendment.
Correct, if UN can’t directly punish or require punishment of a citizen for possession of cannabis, then it is moot, pragmatically speaking.
But yet, incorrect generalization of Article 6 of the US Constitution:
“Supreme Law of the Land … any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-6/
The treaty isn't about prosecuting crimes its about adhering to international drug policy so drugs don't incubate in certain countries and end up in others. In this way, the UN does have regulatory input. It's all "voluntary"; we can always withdraw from the treaty or ignore it.
Yes, you are incorrectly generalizing Article 6. It's literally saying Treaties trump state laws and is directing judges to adhere to Federal laws and Treaties over the state laws and Constitutions which conflict with that.
I was directly quoting the 2nd paragraph of article 6:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
no, i was misunderstanding the word “notwithstanding” in the clause to be an escape valve for the states, rather than as overruling the states.
again, i’m not a lawyer.
my point is that on an international level, and on a national level, the legal reforms of cannabis do appear to be well underway and nearly in full swing.
and regardless, as i noted elsewhere, according to Congress, themselves:
“Both Congress and the Administration have the ability to alter marijuana’s status as a Schedule I substance.” https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11204
and if UNODC is progressing as they are, it may only be a short matter of time before the weight shifts in favor of moving cannabis from Schedule I
the US was at that point about a decade ago, but look now
The US was the main driver behind those treaties. Amending, formally pulling out or just straight up ignoring them is mildly embarrassing, but in no way a showstopper.
It was not. UK/EU were large factors since it was an extension of the agreements made during the League of Nation formation. The original UN secretary notes indicate specifically this is true; especially since INTERPOL was created for drug policing in the first place.
The US has been EU/UKs oppression outlet for far too long.
How did Canada and other countries manage to do it federally?
I don't know about Canada's Constitution or laws; the USA has Article 6 that specifically makes Treaties the law of the land. Did Canada change the schedule of cannabis or just simply create a legal framework for possession, sale and decriminalization? Scheduling is the authority of the CND of the UN. If they didn't reschedule it perhaps that's a loophole they exploited; maybe the US can do the same, maybe our laws or Article 6 prevents us; not sure. Good question.
Canada was chastised by the UN for not having a reporting mechanism in place to make drug reports to the UN.
Apparently they are just flagrantly failing to comply with general portions of the Convention.
> Mr Biden, a Democrat, said he will call upon all state governors to issue their own marijuana pardons.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63166964
Alcohol is quite obviously the more dangerous drug and is clearly sold at absurdly high percentages of content, legally, as well.
Ending the prohibition of one and beginning the prohibition of another sounds like an exercise in futility and double-standards.
The alcohol lobby is quite large.
As if there’s no “medical” marijuana lobby, too?
"The book has been denounced as alarmist and inaccurate in the scientific and medical communities because [the author] claims that cannabis causes psychosis and violence; many scientists state that he is drawing inappropriate conclusions from the research, primarily by inferring causation from correlation as well as cherry picking data that fits his narrative, and falling victim to selection bias via his use of anecdotes to back up his assertions."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Berenson
More recently, from a "credible" source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/well/mind/teens-thc-canna...
> it is a dangerous drug, and getting more dangerous as dealers breed plants with more and more THC.
In your opinion, how does MJ compare to alcohol in terms of dangerousness?
> ...a full, complete, and unconditional pardon... regardless of whether they have been charged with or prosecuted for this offense...
Millions of people can now truthfully say that they've been granted a presidential pardon.
The number is in the 4 digit range, if I am not mistaken.
While the number of people who will be materially affected by this is in the four digits, this does technically apply to every one of the millions of people who have broken this federal law by possessing marijuana.
One need not have been charged to receive a pardon.
You do however need to formally accept the pardon and therein admit guilt.
https://courtmartiallaw.com/military-law/if-you-accept-a-par...
Yeah but you don’t need to do that if you haven’t been charged and probably won’t be charged at this point.
> When one accepts a presidential pardon, he or she is not admitting guilt or waiving habeas rights.
This seems to be saying the exact opposite.
> ... who committed the offense of simple possession of marijuana ... regardless of whether they have been charged with or prosecuted for this offense
You're missing the joke!
I suppose it's quite limited; in what situations would you be charged w/ simple possession federally? I'm assuming if you came through an airport with a butt or residue, and were particularly rude maybe.
I think the joke is that the pardon is "even if not charged" so if you ever had weed in your possession and could have been charged, you've now received a presidential pardon (even if the feds never even knew of you).
The can still charge you for it tomorrow.
Only if your offense occurs after the pardon.
Can someone tell me why Obama didn't do this 10 years ago? Or even 6.
One answer to your question is probably "because he spent his limited political capital trying to ensure everyone in America had access to healthcare."
Another would be that he actually laid the groundwork for this kind of action. Obama made pursuing marijuana convictions the lowest possible priority for federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials [0], effectively saying "if states want to make weed legal, the federal government isn't going to do anything about it." After that, a number of states held referenda on legalizing weed, and most passed with broad support. This is the next logical step at the federal level - pardoning anyone who was convicted during that period and taking steps towards changing marijuana from a schedule 1 drug (where it has never belonged) to something more reasonable. [1] No president can fully legalize weed at the federal level, but they can reschedule it based on the actual cost/benefits to individuals and society.
Another more cynical answer is that Obama is black, and didn't want the legacy of the first black president to also be "the one who pardoned all the drug offenders"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_policy_of_the_Barack_...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act
But you don't need political capital to make a unilateral executive decision? He could have done this after he was already a lame duck. It's not like a president can undo a pardon.
He'd be expending the political capital of his party. If he felt like this pardon would've made it harder for Democrats to get elected in 2016, that might be a reason why he didn't do it.
The entire point of being a hero is unselfish risk.
Won't someone think of the poor politicians?
I want the politicians on my side thinking about how to get their party members elected.
The question was "why didn't he do it?", not "should he have done it?".
Because he didn't want to. Why is this difficult for people to understand?
He was already being publicly executed by half the country for wearing a tan suit while being black, he didn't have "old white dude" lines of political credit.
The first black president making weed legal would definitely be abused in headlines by multiple major news organizations
Good politicians do things they know will be popular. This isn't always a bad thing. Presidential actions can influence a lot of down-ballot races. For good or ill, both Obama and Biden are politicians, and only took the steps they felt would be popular with their constituents at the time.
> But you don't need political capital to make a unilateral executive decision?
You need political capital if you make that decision and don't want to be eviscerated in the next election.
Minimal affect. Most marijuana possession charges are state, not federal, and presidential pardons don't affect state charges.
If the WH's statement that this affects 6,500 people, that seems like an actual affective.
4% given a Fed prison pop of "151,283 at yearend 2020."
https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/federal-prisoner-st...
None of the pardoned individuals are serving prison time for their offenses. The main value of the pardon is that having a felony conviction makes it harder to get jobs and bars you from voting in some states. Around 8% of the US population has had a felony conviction.
It can prevent people from running or working for legal marijuana businesses in states where it is legal, meaning a history of uneven enforcement continues to affect the legal marijuana industry.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/amandachicagolewis/amer...
I think Oregon either has made changes to address this or is close to doing so. This helps at the federal level.
Given a conviction growth rate of about 5% over 30 years ending with 62,755, there would be a federal felony population of 936,422. That is barely 1M much less 20M. Something is off about the numbers.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_t...
1. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/fjs20.pdf
Same as today, so that's not a compelling reason. As mentioned by someone else, Obama did make some overtures that allowed the party to feel out the base's reactions. Legalization was always going to be a process. Right now, I believe this is typical (D) politicking. I think it's likely that this is something like...Biden needs a positive press to boost for both his approval rating and visibility within his base, for the next election cycle, with a minor symbolic gesture. Obama never needed to do that.
People often forget just how quickly public opinion changed in this country. Case in point, Obama opposed gay marriage when he ran in 2008.
I’d also add that this wasn’t just a mood change but a response to new laws in several states. When each of those changes happened, some people predicted the downfall of society but by now you have a number of years of evidence that the main effect is a ton of extra tax revenue. That won’t change the really committed but I know more than a few people who basically moved their position to “it’s no worse than alcohol and stoners don’t crash their cars as much” after seeing that.
First, consider Obama, who claims himself to have policies of a Reagan Republican, did not want to legalize marijuana. Then, after considering that, listen to all the excuses. Rescheduling marijuana was one pen stroke away from him for 8 years.
Ironically: Donald Trump.
Obama's tenure as President was marked by a distinct attempt to meet the GOP as peers. It seems as though he was, mostly, a pretty strong believer (philosophically) in co-governance by all representatives of the people of the US in the federal government. "Reach across the aisle" was a frequently-used phrase at that time. And if he unilaterally pardoned people legally convicted of marijuana offenses without Congress first changing the law, what kind of message would that send about the nature of executive power in the United States of America?
His political peers responded by refusing to consider a Supreme Court nomination; supporting and nominating Donald Trump, whom voters then elected; and seating three Supreme Court justices, who then overturned precedent that had protected the reproductive rights of a generation and a half of Americans. Their party platform in 2020 was "That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda" with no other changes from the 2016 platform. No mention of policy; no mention of Congress.
The modern Democratic party is under no illusions that reaching across the aisle will benefit them and is now in the tit-for-tat phase of the two-party prisoner's dilemma. If this move wins Biden's party votes going into the midterms, then forget Congress. If Congress wants a say in how the country is governed, they can get their act together and do the few structural changes that would un-deadlock the Senate and allow laws to be passed.
I don't know if this is a strategy that would have worked during Obama's administration. I don't think Obama's strategies work in this era, though.
It could have worked. The problem always was that Obama was so enthralled with the concept of bipartisanship that he didn't listen to his opponents when they told the press *in 2009* that their only goal for the next four years was to destroy his presidency.
So he always bent over for the Republicans, often sabotaging things like Obamacare by pre-negotiating with his own administration to remove things he thought the Republicans would dislike.
Of course, the Republicans didn't care what he did. They were going to oppose everything they could get away with opposing. (Their voters did still expect some governance in those days, instead of the full-time vengeance mode they now expect.)
I agree that he put far too much effort into bipartisanship but I do think some of that showed how successful all of the attacks on him as some kind of radical extremist were. He felt, probably not incorrectly, that there were a fairly large number of people who were willing to give him a chance but would potentially turn on him if he pushed quickly enough that the “radical black activist” attacks started to get traction.
Contrast with Joe Biden, who is an old white guy with working class roots and half a century in politics with a solid, non-threatening track record. There’s almost nothing he could do which will get that many people to be like “I thought I knew him but not this”.
Weed wasn't as big of an issue back then, and I don't recall any states that had legalized it (except maybe for "medical" use) at the time. I mean Obama also opposed gay marriage when he started his term; the left has moved left incredibly quickly over the last ~10 years
> the left has moved left incredibly quickly over the last ~10 years
Have they? Most on the left said and would still say Obama was a relatively standard Democrat and not particularly progressive, especially compared to someone like Bernie Sanders.
Yeah we don't claim Obama or Biden as our own - they are something else more akin to a conservative (see also neoliberal)
The same reason Obama was opposed to gay marriage then changed his mind. The values of society change over time. You need a critical mass of support before it becomes politically viable. That takes time. Now is the time.
It was simply not a priority then. An election is coming up, and winning it is the priority right now. That is why we suddenly have movement on Marijuana, and student loans. The timing is ridiculously suspect.
It's not suspect, it's politics. Giving your constituents what they are asking for is the name of the game. Timing it to maximize your chances for re-election is good politics. Hard to imagine it could be any other way in our current system.
Another way to put this is let thousands of people spend years extra in jail on charges you know are morally wrong, so that you can get re-elected.
If you follow the news trail on this topic at all, you would be aware that the Democratic Party has been pretty loud about marihuana reform for at least a year now.
He was already dangerously unpopular at a time when democrats can't afford it. I was thinking this would be an easy win for him, I honestly don't know why he waited this long. I wouldn't be surprised if he does something else high profile to try to win approval. What else would you expect
Because people would have lost their shit if he'd done that.
He didnt believe in it. Obama's DOJ continued raiding and shutting down California medical marijuana dispensaries until the last year of his term.
In many ways Biden is more progressive than Obama.
> In many ways Biden is more progressive than Obama
As is society as a whole.
Obama is centrist, and even basic prison and drug policy reform is not a centrist concern. Biden is too, but the Overton window on marijuana has shifted a bit.
Biden is doing the smallest tangible thing, which is great, but hardly earth shattering.
He wasn’t as unpopular as Biden going into a midterm election.
That's kind of amazing, all things considering both for Biden and Obama.
Bc he was operating under immense pressure to not be radical or risk exacerbating the racist politics aligning against him
This feels revisionist. Obama won by a healthy margin in 2012 and those that subscribed to the racist politics probably would not have voted for him even if he locked up every African American in the US. He had every opportunity to push for bold change and instead disappointed his base by being timid.
“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’” - Martin Luther King Jr.
Losing Democrats was the concern, not Republicans; they were already lost. There are plenty of “tough on crime” Dems out there for Obama to navigate.
For the same reasons, Michelle Obama had to be careful with hairstyles and how she spoke, lest she be perceived as an “angry Black lady”.
I don't agree with this -- the "losing Democrats" bit -- but I don't think it should be downvoted.
Michelle Obama was treated horribly. Trump's First Lady was a Russian prostitute who literally hated Christmas, and she was given the benefit of the doubt until the very last moment.
Trump built his political base on questioning Obama’s citizenship, among other racist dog whistles he’s used. That movement was a direct reaction to having a black President.
Trump built his political base on the fact that so many non-tech areas got left behind when tech became big money.
Trump actually stood in front of a bunch of businessmen and told them to their face if they moved their manufacturing out of the US he'd slap them with tariffs.
I was under the impression that a blanket proclamation like this wasn't enough; he still had to sign off on every pardon individually.
Not sure why I thought that though.
It was a thing in VA for a while. I the governor had to sign 200k individual orders to restore voting rights to felons. Just a quirk of VA law, though
> McAuliffe, a man known for his irascibility, promised to find a way to restore voting rights anyway, using an autopen to sign individual orders for all 200,000 felons within two weeks.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/virgini...
Thank you; this is what I was thinking of.
Carter pardoned Vietnam draft dodgers via a similar blanket proclamation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_4483. But they're relatively rare.
I've read that the constitutionality of that blanket pardon was never really tested as no one wanted to challenge it.
How is this a controversial move? How are people upset about this?
Are there still people out there that believe Marijuana is somehow more dangerous than alcohol?
Are there people out there so absolutely partisan than correcting obvious injustices is a bad thing cause the wrong team did it?
Because this is pandering. Nothing more nothing less. He isn't defunding DEA and firing the agents there for one.
He can't do those things. That's not how anything works.
This is a great start. Being in prison for possession is unconscionable.
Hopefully it gets moved down the schedule too.
IANL: How many would this be? Considering 21 U.S.C. 844 applies to federal jurisdiction, this would be those simple possession convictions at military bases, immigration/airports checkpoints, federal facilities and employees, and ? That does not sound like many people...
More interestingly, I wonder how this will apply to federal contracting. IIRC, Elon smoked a join with Joe Rogan and had to submit to a year of drug tests per his contract with the federal government, visavia NASA, etc.
According to Business Insider[1], just 149 people.
[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/bidens-marijuana-pardons-won....
According to the government, 0 people in prison, but there are many with convictions on their records that the pardons will address. The burden of a conviction extends beyond incarceration.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/06/politics/marijuana-decriminal...
It’s interesting that different sources have different counts. I wonder how sure they are, and how good the records are. Hopefully some people have some measure of their lives restored.
> It’s interesting that different sources have different counts.
0 is the government’s current count of people who are in federal prison now solely on a federal simple possession charge.
149 is, per the source cited upthread, the number for Fiscal Year 2021 (not clear from the B.I. article if it is at some point in the fiscal year are total in prison at any point over the fiscal year), and the source indicates that’s been rapidly declining; also, Biden issued 75 commutations and 3 pardons in April this year for nonviolent drug offenses, which may be part of the reason that the number of prisoners on simple marijuana possession charges alone in federal prison now is 0.
That makes a lot more sense.
149 people in jail right now. But thousands more will have their records wiped clean.
It doesn't look like this deschedules marijuana, nor does it remove it as a potential dealbreaker with a security clearance
That's a really good point. I wonder how it will impact those who were turned down for security clearances, maybe convicted of marijuana use in relation to government contracting, etc. Suddenly 6,500 people have opportunities.
Wow. Let's say a person within that pool ONLY had a felony for marijuana possession. This pardon restores their voting rights.
It does look like descheduling will be looked into, which would be fantastic
I met 2 guys while in prison that got hit on this. They worked in Federal Parks summer programs as teens and got busted with pot. Ruined their whole lives. They became repeat offenders because in their minds why not, they were never going to get a good job, never going to get ahead.
I guess prosecutors won't be as willing to offer a possession plea deal to people caught running an illegal trafficking operation. AFAIK, most of the people in jail for possession, are there due to a plea deal after being caught for something much worse.
It’s about time.
Interesting articles if you search for https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cannabis+poses+quandary
It's actually much too little far too late, we should not be praising any effort that falls short of full federal legalization.
The President doesn't have the power to legalize marijuana by proclamation. He has ordered the DEA, FDA and HHS to review the classification of marijuana under the notice and comment rulemaking process defined in the Controlled Substances Act. That is the limit of what he can do under the CSA.
These agencies can say cannabis has medical benefits and reschedule it just as easily as they decided to make it schedule I.
Weed is scheduled by Congress, the agencies can only add substances to the schedules temporarily for "public health reasons" and there's some weed derived stuff or analogues that have been added that way but marihuana in and of itself is illegal because congress passed a law saying it's illegal: the CSA, 21 U.S. Code § 812 (c)
The CSA allows for schedules to be updated and republished annually but agencies can only recommend, the authority to remove something that's scheduled by Congress is only held by Congress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_of_cannabis_from_Sched...
This is not correct. Schedule 1 drugs require UN approval to downgrade; at least according to treaty. The US Congress can pass a law, but they can't undo a treaty they signed only in-part; else the UN has legal standing to contend their unilateral scheduling.
Treaties are not permanent, they can be withdrawn or terminated.
Also the UN isn't nearly as powerful as you seem to think it is. A substantial amount of the UN's power comes from the USA.
Other UN members can pass laws to keep cannabis illegal. There's no reason for the UN to create friction for POTUS on this. But even if there is friction, ask yourself what exactly can the rest of the UN do to stop POTUS. Not many UN member states are in a position to simultaneously care about the UN cannabis treaties and pose sanction threats to the USA.
The UN can file a complaint and have an injunction imposed by the Supreme Court to stop the Executive Order/Law.
Would love to see the front page of the NYTimes as the UN stops the Dem Prez from limiting drug schedules. That would be very eye opening for the liberal media and what all these climate change treaties are going to be like and hopefully will be an example as to WHY people fought the Kyoto Protocols.
From your earlier Wikipedia link:
“As with all articles of the Convention on Psychotropic Substances, the provisions of Article 22 are only suggestions which do not override the domestic law of the member countries:
4. The provisions of this article shall be subject to the provisions of the domestic law of the Party concerned on questions of jurisdiction.
5. Nothing contained in this article shall affect the principle that the offences to which it refers shall be defined, prosecuted and punished in conformity with the domestic law of a Party.”
What you are listing is specifically the "Penal Provisions" which are suggestions as the UN doesn't have the right to prosecute drug violations in member countries. They do, however, according to Article 6 of the Constitution (which makes all Treaties the law of the land), the right to challenge the rescheduling of drugs which conflict with treaties.
Broader authority rests here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_Agai...
Correct, if UN can’t directly punish or require punishment of a citizen for possession of cannabis, then it is moot, pragmatically speaking.
But yet, incorrect generalization of Article 6 of the US Constitution:
“Supreme Law of the Land … any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-6/
edit: may I remind you that approximately half or more of the states have legalized possession of cannabis, at this point
The treaty isn't about prosecuting crimes its about adhering to international drug policy so drugs don't incubate in certain countries and end up in others. In this way, the UN does have regulatory input. It's all "voluntary"; we can always withdraw from the treaty or ignore it.
Yes, you are incorrectly generalizing Article 6. It's literally saying Treaties trump state laws and is directing judges to adhere to Federal laws and Treaties over the state laws and Constitutions which conflict with that.
> so drugs don't incubate in certain countries and end up in others
that’s a vast oversimplification, but sure
> you are incorrectly generalizing Article 6
no, i was misunderstanding the word “notwithstanding” in the clause to be an escape valve for the states, rather than as overruling the states.
again, i’m not a lawyer.
my point is that on an international level, and on a national level, the legal reforms of cannabis do appear to be well underway and nearly in full swing.
and regardless, as i noted elsewhere, according to Congress, themselves:
“Both Congress and the Administration have the ability to alter marijuana’s status as a Schedule I substance.” https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11204
and if UNODC is progressing as they are, it may only be a short matter of time before the weight shifts in favor of moving cannabis from Schedule I
the US was at that point about a decade ago, but look now
The UN can not stop congress from changing a law nor can they obtain an injunction to stop congress from changing a law nor can they obtain a court order to undue an act of congress nor can they stop congress from partially violating a treaty.
Reference:
"What happens when a treaty provision and an act of Congress conflict? The answer is that neither has any intrinsic superiority over the other and therefore the later one will prevail. In short, the treaty commitments of the United States do not diminish Congress’s constitutional powers."
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-2/sec...
That's wrong, the CSA allows for the executive to temporarily change schedules and only for a matter of safety. The spirit of that part of the law is actually adding more substances and not removing substances that are on the law.
I disagree, I believe that we should reward, positively, the behaviors that we would like to see from the government, such as simple proclamations such as this.
edit: tit for tat, as your username promotes
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. In a time when one political party's leading candidates deny we hold fair elections this is huge. Would said political party do even this much? Unlikely.
I agree, it's not what we'd like to see. But It does not have to be binary. We must celebrate all wins, no matter how small.
A positive development, but quite funny considering staffers were let go based on confessing to past use in a background check. https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/19/politics/biden-white-house-st...
I can fully want someone to not see jail time and still not want them as an employee; I believe some companies even discriminate against smokers.
If you can discriminate against smokers, which is a legal vice, can the employer discriminate on other legal vices, even taken in moderation, such as alcohol or caffeine, in a legal capacity?
I'm the furthest thing from a lawyer and this is just a question to people who may know. I understand the smoking thing is an insurance issue.
Unless it’s a protected class you can discriminate on it, from what I understand.
If they suspect that you’re using it as a stand-in for a protected class, you may be in trouble (not hiring smokers because blacks smoke, for example).
There may be edge cases where something is effectively a protected class. And it may vary from state to state.
If you want to work at BYU, abstaining from coffee is a condition of employment. This goes for even for people who are not members of its sponsoring church. Just a few years ago, BYU almost lost its ROTC program because a non-LDS colonel didn't want to abide by the university's code [1].
[1] https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2017/08/29....
I dabble in adult content creation and could absolutely get fired for it. It's not exactly a vice though.
Some states bar or limit employers from regulating off-duty conduct by employees. Some don't. Smoking is a common one because it affects insurance costs, but the same legal theory could probably be applied to alcohol or caffeine.
https://www.workplacefairness.org/off-duty-conduct
yes, in college I worked for a christian company that had a policy of firing you if they found out you drank at all.
at-will means at-will.
Note this applies only to citizens and lawful permanent residents. I’m not sure if there’s an underlying constitutional limitation or if it’s arbitrary, but (IANAL) it seems arbitrary as the cited section has no such limitation.
I welcome any progress towards decriminalization and legalization, but I think it’s important always to be aware when and how the progress is limited.
I cam to comment on that portion too. It confuses me that those people weren't simply extradited? Albeit in the obvious cases where it will be a futile catch and release. But I would think those people have massive charges (conspiracy) vs simple possession.
I don’t know which “those people” you refer to but I don’t share your views of any subset of people and that was my point. I want everyone who could benefit under relevant jurisdiction to benefit from this pardon. I don’t want anyone extradited, I don’t have any expectation that people without permanent resident status are charged with conspiracy or otherwise predisposed to some exemption from this.
Ive lost the thread, but I think i might have meant to comment sub a different comment.
I saw that too. What’s the justification for such a carve out?
Avoiding allegations of 'rolling out the welcome mat for illegals' in GOP campaign commercials.
This is exactly what it is and it’s strategically stupid because they’ll campaign on that anyway. Might as well do the moral thing and at least not alienate those of us who care if you do the moral thing.
If rich people were charged as much as poor people for drug charges, the war on drugs would be over tomorrow.
I know so many rich people who joke about doing cocaine and other illegal substances. Even the president's son has video of him repeatedly smoking crack cocaine and no charges are put against him (https://time.com/5952773/hunter-biden-memoir-beautiful-thing...). George W Bush allegedly did cocaine and no one cared: (https://abcnews.go.com/images/pdf/800a1BushCocaine.pdf)
There's not many other laws where rules are applied so unevenly as drug charges. It just becomes a freebie police can use to arrest someone they don't like.
When Madison Cawthorne outed his peers recently as doing drugs, the problem was his outing, not the drugs. Let's be real, as long as the productive citizens remain productive, their drug use by and large really isn't a problem.
>When Madison Cawthorne outed his peers recently as doing drugs, the problem was his outing, not the drugs.
Do you mean that literally? Whether they're productive or not, it's in the publics interest to know if their representatives are doing cocaine or other drugs. I think that's completely relevant, it affects the thought processes of most regular cocaine users I've known.
Yeah, it's pretty wild how brazen Hunter Biden has been, with essentially zero scrutiny from the liberal media.
My meta-tinfoil hat theory is that stories of his depravity have been intentionally shared by dem insiders to conservative channels to mitigate the national security risk of someone extorting Joe - can't blackmail if the info is already public.
>all current United States citizens and lawful permanent residents who committed the offense of simple possession of marijuana
>This pardon does not apply to individuals who were non-citizens not lawfully present in the United States at the time of their offense.
What about non-citizens lawfully present but not permanent residents, such as tourists and short-term visa holders?
The order at the top says it only applies to current US citizens and lawful permanent residents.
So even if they were a lawful permanent resident at the time of their offense, if they aren't anymore at this time (and getting convicted is probably enough to have their visa's revoked), no, it doesn't apply to them. @kragen pointed this out in another comment.
Let alone someone who was never a lawful permanent resident, nope, not pardoned.
My point was regarding lawful temporary residents.
Right, the order does not say it applies to them, so it does not.
Thanks, Captain Obvious. My point was that it was a curious omission.
Sorry, I guess I misunderstood what if anything you were asking about, or misinterpreted the question mark on the end of your comment.
The first sentance of the order says it only applies to current citizens or permanent residents. I guess if you were a visa holder at time of offense and had somehow become a citizen or lawful permanent resident since then (which would be hard to do with such an offense), it would apply to you...
how much marijuana do you have to be in possession of to be charged at the federal level? Federal charge means it's a felony correct? It has to be a lot to be considered a felony. That charge may be pardoned but i'm sure it qualifies for intent to distribute at the state level which is a much more serious charge than possession.
A tiny amount got a friend charged in a national park. Federal Park rangers. Doesn't matter if it's in a legal state.
Park rangers tried to do this to one of my friends and he just ran. They didn’t have guns and they’re too good of a people to really pursue someone for a useless crime. He got away.
Wow that's wild! They weren't letting him off easily because someone died in the park that week and they were all on edge.
> They didn’t have guns
Wait a second... How would guns have changed things? Would it have been legal for them to shoot at your friend in this scenario?
You never know with city cops to be honest. You’ll probably atleast get tazed.
Federal charge means it either (a) happened in land under federal jurisdiction (borders, national parks, military bases, etc.), or (b) involved interstate commerce/transportation.
Something being a felony has no relevance to whether it's a federal charge. You can have misdemeanor federal charges, as well as felony state charges.
> (borders, national parks, military bases, etc.)
Or anywhere in Washington D.C.
Federal charges come from infractions in federal jurisdictions. It's not related to the severity of the crime.
How often do presidents issue blanket pardons like this?
Has he effectively overturned a law established by elected legislators, and how does that reconcile with separation of powers between the executive and legislative branch?
Why'd he exclude visitors/tourists (and would equivalent state pardons issued by governors)?
Note: Presidents can't issue pardons for future offenses (although a pardon can be issued for an offense that has not yet been charged).
What's the meaning of this part? What's an example of a person filtered out by this criterion?
> This pardon does not apply to individuals who were non-citizens not lawfully present in the United States at the time of their offense.
Is this about detaining (vs deporting) illegal immigrants?
A very large percentage of federal possession cases are drug smuggling at border crossings. This amendment is to keep those people locked up since their initial charge of “possession” was chosen over illegal border crossing or whatever else since it was probably a) easier to prosecute, and b) carried a harsher sentence
Maybe meant to exclude drug traffickers/cartel folks who could only be charged with simple possession for reasons.
non citizen not lawfully present, to me means someone that snuck over, or talked thier way over lying about thier intentions.
I get an impression from that verbiage there would be such a class as non citizen >lawfully present< at the time of offense, that would qualify.
It means
> Don't fuckin' come here and ignore the rules
How is it legal for a President to pardon all instances of an offense as opposed to pardoning individuals? It seems to me this would violate separation of powers since the president is effectively repealing a law, something that should be up to congress.
Because the President has unilateral pardoning powers.
If Congress doesn't like it, they can impeach him.
Pardons can not apply to _future_ crimes. So it only affects those currently convicted. People can still be charged/convicted of the same crime moving forward.
Is this on going? If someone gets arrested tomorrow can they apply for a pardon and be set free?
No. It clearly states there this is only for offenses today or before.
Missed that bit.
> on or before the date of this proclamation, regardless of whether they have been charged with or prosecuted for this offense on or before the date of this proclamation
Most arrests are for state charges, not federal. Presidential pardons only cover federal charges.
Where are the pardons for non-violent cannabis offenders that were not simple possession?
The scope of this proclamation is really weird. It applies only to people who are currently US citizens or lawful permanent residents, minus any who were non-citizens not lawfully present in the US at the time of their offense.
To give two examples of how weird this scope is: (1) If someone was convicted of the offense a few years ago when they were a US citizen but has since moved abroad and renounced their US citizenship, the renunciation would prevent this pardon from applying to them. But, (2) if someone committed the offense while overstaying tourist status and had that all waived and forgiven for immigration purposes through the options that are available when marrying a US citizen, the criminal record would remain unpardoned even if they are now a citizen.
Do we know why Biden set these parameters, and if there's a chance it might get broadened to more reasonable boundaries?
As others stated it's to avoid letting smugglers free who were likely working for Mexican cartels. In many cases they were only able to be charged with possession.
I suspect that anyone who had overstayed a tourist visa would not have been able to become a citizen anyway in case 2.
The law does allow for adjustment of status to Permanent Residency (and subsequently citizenship) for Immediate Family members of US Citizens/PR.
IANAL
Immediate family of US citizens only, not of PRs.
There are exceptions to that, especially for immediate family of US citizens.
This action has one major thing going for it that many executive actions lately have not had: it's actually legal for the President to do this.
Citizens and permanent residents. I wish this was extended to any person charged in the US (tourists, work permits etc).
Those people aren't his constituents, I don't think he could order an executive order for them either way
Why wouldn't he legally be able to pardon them via executive order, the same as he can pardon anyone else? The president's pardon power is not restricted to citizens and permanent residents.
This will affect only 6000 people who were not imprisoned for marijuana use/possession.
Would this mean that cannabis is effectively legal in DC?
No, this only applies to possession until and including today. If you are caught in possession of marijuana tomorrow, you can go to jail for this exact same offense.
Yes, for going forward we need legislation - which is the other part of the proclamation - that HHS Beccera will be driving policy changes that will likely require congress.
Not at this time.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33113698 for discussion about next steps delineated by the government.
Feels like a Reddit comment section. Moving on.
It’s time for prohibition to end.
No one is serving prison time for Federal marijuana possession charges. It is however a potential felony with all that entails (eg finding a job, renting a house, voting). So this is positive but there’s two things worth pointing out.
1. The core problem here is America’s scarlet letter system of being a felon. This forever makes you a second class citizen. This system needs to be reformed so that those who have served their time automatically get their record expunged; and
2. Let’s not forget that Biden was one of the chief architects of Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill that ushered in this era of mass incarceration and the disastrous “war on drugs”. The 1990s saw the Democratic Party hijacked by neoliberalism, which has been a disaster for working people.
> The core problem here is America’s scarlet letter system of being a felon
I wish more people understood this.
"Felons shouldn't get a vote" makes common sense on the surface, until one picks away the surface just a little and realizes that the easiest way to politically disenfranchise an opponent would be to gain just a little more power than them and then make something core to their identity illegal.
Stripping voting rights due to a conviction for any crime is a huge incentive to wield the law as a political cudgel.
(Besides, you'd think that Americans, of all people, given the way they got their country, would grok the notion that sometimes people who break the law are on the right side of history).
> "Felons shouldn't get a vote" makes common sense on the surface, until one picks away the surface just a little and realizes that the easiest way to politically disenfranchise an opponent would be to gain just a little more power than them and then make something core to their identity illegal.
As an example, if you were - for example - a tech billionaire who is on the record as describing the 19th amendment as the end of freedom in the United States, and you wanted to make it impossible for as many women to vote as possible without actually fronting a repeal of that amendment, you could relentlessly support and fund efforts to make common healthcare procedures for women a felony.
I think unequal enforcement of the law makes for a huge problem generally. I think we as a society should have throwing the book at legislators as the first order of business, and they should live under heavy scrutiny and enforcement of the letter of the law first.
The war on drugs started around 1971 under Nixon. Clinton added “three-strikes” in 1994.
As someone who is extremely dissatisfied with Biden in general - I 100% applaud this action. It's a huge step in the right direction and should have been done years ago.
I was dissatisfied until about 8 months ago but he’s changed since then. If he can get some sort of voter rights law through I will have full satisfaction.
Not gonna lie, I thought Obama or Trump or someone had already done this. Had this previously been discussed under a different presidency and not gone through? Was I thinking of a similar blanket pardon but not exactly the same?
Was I dreaming?
Good.
this is more complicated than it sounds. "non violent offenders" is a myth because many offenders have their charges reduced during plea bargaining process.
Letting people out of prison is not a simple undo function there are dangerous side effects as experienced in California
>this is more complicated than it sounds. "non violent offenders" is a myth because many offenders have their charges reduced during plea bargaining process.
something like 80-90% of ALL cases at the federal level end in plea bargains, mostly for practical reasons because the legal system literally doesn't have the capacity to handle all the charges that would be brought forward. pretending it's unique to simple marijuana procession is fearmongering
>Letting people out of prison is not a simple undo function there are dangerous side effects as experienced in California
the US has 25% of the world's prison population and 5% of the world's population, the ONLY worthwhile moral consideration is the mass release of US prisoners. stuff like "think of the side effects" just perpetuates the stays quo via perpetual "considerations"
Not that many people are in jail purely for simple cannabis possession. The important part here is that these people now have their criminal records wiped clean.
But that's OP's point: how many of "not that many people" were charged with possession to begin with, not pleaded down to possession?
Wait, what? There is no such thing as somebody having weed in their pocket in Yosemite National Park in a non-violent way?
I love this reasoning. If there are no non-violent offenders, then every crime is violence. Considering people break laws on accident all the time, it is probably safest to simply imprison the entire population of California by default and have a tribunal of police that decide parole on a case-by-case basis.
it’s rare and there would be no way to distinguish .
That is a hilarious position to take without any proof. I would love to see your stats on how cops and prosecutors are happy to ignore violence at scale, everywhere.
If non-violent crime is indeed rare, would you be eligible for parole in my thought experiment where everybody starts off incarcerated? How could I trust that you wouldn’t violently jaywalk or violently forget the contents of your trunk and bring an apple across state lines?
Serious question: Do you work in or for law enforcement? The only people I’ve ever spoken to that maintain “people that smoke weed are indistinguishable from rapists and murderers” are people whose income in some way relies on holding that opinion.
seems like you mis read. I’m not implying weed smokers at large are violent. Among the ones who are currently in federal prison and eligible for release in this program, the majority were likely violent because their charges were reduced and there’s no way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I’m just a civilian victim of crimes who knows that releasing criminals causes crime.
If you want to see proof, look at crime rates in CA cities, Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans . Those cities have been letting prisoners out letting suspects out with no bail.
Almost all crime is committed by a small percentage of people. You don’t have to let many criminals out for big increases in crime.
You’re concerned about the criminals and I’m concerned about the victims.
How is it possible that it is not possible to distinguish between violent and non violent crime? In most cases, violent crime has victims, be they animal, mineral or vegetable.
Your point is that people in jail for weed are probably violent? Based on what?
I’ll repeat my earlier question:
> Serious question: Do you work in or for law enforcement? The only people I’ve ever spoken to that maintain “people that smoke weed are indistinguishable from rapists and murderers” are people whose income in some way relies on holding that opinion.
Also I’ll add my second question: Since there are only two groups of people, “violent criminals” (since all criminals must be assumed to be violent) and “victims”, what group does someone that’s wrongfully imprisoned fall into? Who exactly do I care about then? Criminal or victim of a shitty criminal system?
Also, would you get parole in the world of “guilty of violent crime until proven innocent” world? I’m fascinated about your willingness to make theoretical statements paired with your allergy to answering theoretical (and while we’re at it, basic factual) questions.
reality
There should be reparations paid. Lifes have been ruined.
I don't think we're going to see that here.
It is possible to issue a pardon like this without admitting to any government wrongdoing in crafting, passing, and enforcing the law in the first place. I don't think there's enough philosophical alignment in the US that criminalization of marijuana was actually wrong for a reparations balloon to float.
Probably not whilst the sitting vice president put 1500 people in prison for marijuana violations and then laughed about when she was asked if she'd ever smoked marijuana.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxHORNMWPmg
*lives.
Lives have been ruined by cannabis usage, yes. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/well/mind/teens-thc-canna...
despite sounding sarcastically exasperated, this is a legitimate question asked sincerely:
when exactly, in the history of Modern Democracy, did the electorate start completely accepting token gestures and empty promises in place of actual, tangible progress enacted by their elected officials?
Not really a token gesture though. It's a measurable action for federal parks.
weird how that wasn't the way the headlines (including OP) framed it. weird how that's not the way several other people in this thread alone interpreted it.
Taking you at your word, I assume you have some examples in mind of when the U.S. government making actual tangible progress was standard operating procedure?
since the start, do you want examples?
if that truly is the case, then doesn't it seem odd that we're still going through the motions, still, in the Internet Age? why would dozens of people in this very thread continue to openly applaud actions that they are fully aware are mere gestures and nothing but, as (they also well know) is and has always been just par for the course, out in the open for all to see?
not only is it pathetic beyond reason, but it goes to show just how shallow and "actually just all in our heads" 99% of "politics" is.
did any of the supposed doom and gloom that the previous President was supposed to be the harbinger of ever come to fruition? where were the conversion therapy concentration camps? where were the existential threats to Women and Science that necessitated political marches opposing such looming threats?
or the President before that one, the First Black President. what did he end up doing for Black America, after eight years in office? are we supposed to look back on him fondly for all that he did for Black Americans, by virtue of getting elected President while Being Black, alone? is that really the level of gesture-accepting we're at, as a nation? as a species?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1576916509766451200
it's almost as though almost (but not quite) 100% of contemporary "politics" exists solely within the confines of our skulls, transmitted via media disseminated through news organizations complicit in the perpetuation of an ongoing political regime, where the role of the citizen electorate is to play along with the professional wrestling-tier storylines presented to them, at face value, because they've established themselves as Authoritative Sources on The News, which gives them free reign to emotionally manipulate said citizen electorate at a mass scale—especially through the use of the absurdly powerful emotion of fear.
if this is the case, why do we continue to play along with it, or at the very least consider it actively virtuous to play along with it? the house is burning but "this is fine"?
how did it get to this?
you're talking about a liberal society where the two parties available both operate in extremely pro-corporate / "neoliberal" ways, and their corporate owner constituents (who now author our laws) want anything but for society to find a common enemy in them. of course the day to day politicking, narratives, and coverage are often gestural nonsense
this isn't a species-wide thing and definitely overstates the inevitability of these structures. you might be interested in recent wengrow/graeber research like the dawn of everything or their papers.
> this isn't a species-wide thing and definitely overstates the inevitability of these structures.
well between what I described above and straight-up totalitarianism that covers more or less the majority of the population of the planet does it not
Well the contrary cases are what the recent anthro/archaeological research is showing. And this is for societies that are well beyond Dunbar’s number, after discovery of agriculture. You have a capitalist realist viewpoint it seems and are behind on anthropology
Obvious shill is obvious ◔_◔
A drug-related pardon I'd like to see: Ross Ulbricht.
His sentence "sends a message" to me that there is no justice anymore.
Same with Assange. There is no press anymore, just political mouthpieces.
Our laws on marijuana are too strict, as there are a few legitimate medical uses, but cannabis remains a dangerous drug—and it's getting more so as producers breed plants with higher and higher THC content. https://www.amazon.com/Tell-Your-Children-Marijuana-Violence...
You know how you combat increasingly high THC content? A legal and regulated market.