Reid Wilson — Sessions will end policy that allowed legalized marijuana to prosper

Big fight shaping up now that weed has been capitalized?

Ignoring how well Prohibition worked out?

States' rights?

The Hill
Sessions will end policy that allowed legalized marijuana to prosper
Reid Wilson

Brad DeLong — Caitlin MacNeal: Mulvaney: If Your State Doesn’t Mandate Maternity Care, Change Your State

I am starting to think that the politics in the US is so divisive ideologically that it may be necessary to subdivide with those more oriented toward the welfare state moving to places like the West Coast and New England, and those more oriented toward the market state moving to the South and West, with the Midwest proving a middle ground.

There would still be the question of funding, however, with the federal government as the currency issuer. Perhaps the way to deal with this is to break the US into several countries issuing their own currency and operating on different economic policy.

Otherwise permanent paralysis or even civil war? 

Actually, the US is returning to a political situation similar to that which led up to the Civil War.

WCEG
Caitlin MacNeal: Mulvaney: If Your State Doesn’t Mandate Maternity Care, Change Your State

Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

Emma Roller and David Weigel — Give Me Amendments or Give Me Death

Inside the secretive campaign by state legislators to pass conservative amendments in 34 states and rewrite the Constitution.

Slate
Give Me Amendments or Give Me Death
Emma Roller and David Weigel
(h/t Charles Hayden on FB)

Given that the number of red states exceeds the number of blue states and the criterion is not the popular vote but the vote of state legislatures — two-thirds are required, this has a good chance of being successful. Of course, it would spell the end of US global hegemony unless the military was put off budget. Conservatives know this, of course, so they would create an exclusion. It would also limit federal subsidies to private enterprise, so that would be put off budget, too.

Whose pushing this? ALEC.

David Edwards — Ron Paul urges Obamacare ‘nullification’ from former Confederate capital (via Raw Story )

Ron Paul urges Obamacare ‘nullification’ from former Confederate capital (via Raw Story )

Tea party hero Ron Paul (R-TX) told residents of the former capital of the Confederacy on Monday that “nullification” would eventually have to be used to “ignore the feds” because President Barack Obama’s health care reform law. At a campaign…

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Steven Rosenfeld — Congressional Radical Right-Wingers Relive Confederacy Fantasies

II have been saying for some time that the US is now engaged in a civil war reminiscent of the run-up to the Civil War. Steven Rosenfeld draws the historical parallels.

I don't see this as one side being right and the other wrong. It's two very different visions for America that were in conflict from colonial times owing to different temperaments, cultures, and institutional arrangements that make federation difficult — as is clear from American history, e.g., as recorded in the Federalist papers. Without Alexander Hamilton America would almost certainly be a confederation now and world history very different, possibly with Germany as hegemon since WWI. While Hamilton prevailed, it was at the cost of a Civil War that has not yet been resolved and is in the process of being revisited.

For this reason, the attempt to force a strong political union is often unwise and premature. If America has still not been able to agree upon a common vision for a strong union, how could the EZ ever hope to chiefly on the basis of a currency union?


AlterNet — Tea Party And The Right
Congressional Radical Right-Wingers Relive Confederacy Fantasies

Steven Rosenfeld