Earlier this month, I wrote about a bill including marijuana legalization that United States House of Representatives Democratic leadership had planned to bring to the House floor for a vote this month. The bill — the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act (HR 3884), I noted, appears to have no chance of being approved in the Republican majority US Senate or of receiving a signature from President Donald Trump. This is because the virtually “Democrats only” bill includes race-based provisions and marijuana business subsidies that are anathema to many Republicans, including those who favor legalization.
Author: Adam Dick
The Cato Institute came out Tuesday with its Pandemics and Policy collection of coronavirus-and-pandemics-related articles described as purposed to “provide policymakers with an actionable guide to policies that can harness [old‐fashioned American ingenuity] and foster a resilient society capable of meeting the challenges ahead.” Among the articles is “Balancing Tradeoffs between Liberties and Lives” by Cato Institute Director of Economic Studies Jeffrey Miron and Cato Institute Senior Fellow Peter Van Doren.
Remember President Donald Trump saying he wanted things to open up in America by Easter? Oh well. Throughout most of America, the coronavirus crackdowns are continuing strong five months after Easter. And United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert R. Redfield said Wednesday at a US Senate subcommittee hearing that “regular life” will not begin to return until, he predicts, the “late second quarter, third quarter” of next year — around the middle of 2021.
Why the long wait? Redfield says the wait is so a coronavirus vaccine can be distributed and injected around America first.
Many state fairs across America were canceled this year. The reason offered: coronavirus.
It should be no surprise that among the states where an annual state fair did occur this year is South Dakota. South Dakota is the state whose governor — Kristi Noem — has resisted, more than has any other governor across America, the temptation to use coronavirus as an excuse to exercise dictatorial powers.
At first, coronavirus was sold as a very dangerous disease for everyone. Some people still believe that line, but the facts were clear months ago that for healthy, younger individuals the risk of severe illness or death from coronavirus is very low. And the risk diminishes the younger one is, with children being at nearly zero risk of death and tending to have no to minor symptoms if infected.
As these facts have become more generally known, politicians and media have shifted the emphasis in their promotion of fear and the continuation of coronavirus crackdowns. They have talked more about the need to protect older and less healthy individuals from coronavirus. Yet, overall, it seems like the fearmongering and governments’ coronavirus policies have brought more harm than help to these higher-risk individuals.
The United States House of Representatives appears set to have a floor vote this month on the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act (HR 3884). The bill would legalize marijuana at the national level, but, as I pointed out in a July article, the MORE Act’s “inclusion of race-based provisions and marijuana business subsidies make the bill seem incapable of gaining much Republican support.”
This week, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, has been the subject of much attention because of her on the sly visit at a salon in her hometown of San Francisco despite such being forbidden under the local coronavirus crackdown and despite Pelosi being one of the most prominent coronavirus fearmongers in America. A few months before Pelosi’s salon visit, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was similarly in the spotlight. A picture circulated in April of Lightfoot with her hair stylist at a haircut appointment after Lightfoot had been encouraging people to adhere to the local shutdown of hair cutting business operations.
College, long a fun and liberating experience for many young adults, has become a dreary and oppressive experience for many students living under the weight of a multitude of restrictions imposed at American college campuses in the name of countering coronavirus.
In interviews, Ron Paul tends mainly to be asked about events of the day. These often-short interviews help Paul advance his goal of communicating the ideas of liberty. It is interesting and illuminating in a different way when Paul on occasion takes part in longer, in-depth interviews focused largely on himself and his relationship to libertarianism.
A new interview of Paul by host Matt Kibbe at Kibbe on Liberty is such an in-depth interview.
There are hoodlums across America looting and burning down businesses, banging on people’s vehicles while ordering drivers rudely where to drive, bearing down on people to intimidate them into expressing support for this or that cause, and committing other crimes of violence and property destruction.
Many of these hoodlums say things about black lives mattering, white supremacy or systemic racism being bad, reparations for slavery being needed, or some other message related to politics or race. Other hoodlums do not say such things but take their actions while in a group of people, many of whom are saying such.
All that talk concerning politics and race is beside the point. The people taking these actions are hoodlums.