Ron Paul was not the chairman of a full committee and he did not hold a party leadership position during his 23 years in the United States House of Representatives. Neither was Paul focused in the House on expanding the use of government power via legislation. Nonetheless, Paul managed to use his elected office to achieve a very significant objective — helping make people aware of, and educate them about, the importance of protecting liberty and the related imperative of reducing the reach of government.
Tag: House of Representatives
Special interests already elbowed their way into including government subsidies for businesses and racial preference requirements in national marijuana legalization legislation in the form of the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act (the MORE Act) approved in the United States House of Representatives in December, toward the end of the last congress. Now, with legalization momentum so strong that a national law change appears to be around the corner, expect more and more special interests to rush in to advance their goals in the crafting of the bill that will end decades of national prohibition.
The United States House of Representatives is having a floor vote this week on H.Res. 72, a resolution to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) of her committee memberships. This is a novel and severe punishment for a House floor vote to impose on a House member.
So what exactly is Greene, who joined the House in January after winning election in November, alleged to have done that merits this extreme response? Let’s take a look at the resolution to read the accusations of nefarious behavior.
When you do not have a good case supporting taking an action, one tried-and-true strategy of persuasion is to pile up a mountain of trivial and ridiculous assertions and point to it as proof that you are right. If someone diligently digs through the mountain, he will find that there is nothing of substance there. But, many people will just see a mountain of accusations and figure there must be truth behind the assertion.
That deceitful persuasion strategy appears to be at play in the resolution (H.Res. 21) the United States House of Representatives voted to approve Tuesday evening. Through the resolution, the House calls on Vice President Mike Pence to use immediately executive branch procedure described in the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution to make Pence the acting president, removing President Donald Trump from presidential powers.
Two years back, when Republicans held the majority in the United States House of Representatives, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was criticizing the failure of the House Republican leadership to allow a vote of the House membership on ending the US government’s marijuana prohibition, which Massie predicted would have passed. Massie further argued that the Republicans could have maintained their majority in the House — lost in the November of 2018 general election — if leadership had just allowed a House floor vote on the popular proposition that marijuana policy be left up to the states.
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.”
If you would like the United States government to legalize marijuana soon, I have some good news and some bad news for you.
Speaking today on the United States House of Representatives floor, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) discussed how a committee markup of legislation dealing with reauthorization of USA PATRIOT Act provisions was terminated so the final bill could be drafted in a “backroom” by parties including “lobbyists and the deep state” and then rushed to the House floor for a vote.
A Thursday profile of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) at the Cincinnati Enquirer declares that “neighbors, colleagues and friends all agree: Massie, who is running this year for a fifth term, is one of the most unusual members of the US House.” You can read the profile here and learn about Massie’s independent voting in the House of Representatives as well as some of his activities before he became a House member, including starting a business and building his family’s off-the-grid house.
Last week there was much media coverage of the United Sates House of Representatives voting to approve a resolution (H. Con. Res. 83) commonly described as seeking to prevent the Trump administration from engaging in war against Iran. However, take a look at the wording of the resolution, says foreign intervention opponent and former House member Ron Paul, and you will find that most of the resolution is purposed “to build up animosity” toward Iran. Paul discussed the resolution in a new interview with host Anand Naidoo at the CGTN show The Heat.
Indeed, the resolution is chock-full of talking points in favor of war with Iran. It starts with declarations that Iran is “a leading state sponsor of terrorism and engages in a range of destabilizing activities across the Middle East” and that Iran General Qassim Suleimani, whose assassination was carried out upon President Donald Trump’s order, was “the lead architect of much of Iran’s destabilizing activities throughout the world.”