The Chain of Command: Everything you need to know about mass impeachments

Early in the morning on November 9th, 2016; a former reality TV star, and National Real Estate Mogul who had a tendency to speak his mind without thinking much about the consequences, won the Federal Electoral College vote and was put in line to become the next President of the United States of America.  Later that day, one of the top Google searches was "How to impeach Trump".  To this day, starting the third official month of Mr. Trump's presidency, the most discussed topic in politics seems to continue to be how the US is going to impeach The Donald, so we can hold a special election and coronate Queen Hillary or Emperor Bernie.  Unfortunately, few people on both sides of the spectrum seem to understand what that actually entails, and what will come of it.  I'm going to avoid the topics of what the charges are that are planned to be levied against our sitting president, because all of the readers are going to believe what they want to believe.  What I want to discuss is how it works and what happens as it goes along.  

Impeachment is not firing a person from a presidency, as so many people in our country believe.  Impeachment is a lengthy process that can end with a public official being removed from office, but it's not an overnight decision.  It's actually a due process of law with two trials for elected officials, and like most criminal cases, it begins with a formal request for an investigation.  If an investigation should lead to sufficient enough evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor performed by an official while in office, the Articles of Impeachment are brought forward, and the fun begins.  It is at this point that the official is referred to as in the process of impeachment, even though most of the general population believes the official as being impeached when the investigation begins.  The next step is what is essentially an indictment, with the House of Representatives acting as the Grand Jury.  Should the indictment be reached, the official is considered to have been "Impeached", but the process of removal of office is far from over.  

If the Government is to go forward with removing an elected official from his office, the step after impeachment is a lengthy, drawn out trial by the Senate.  In any case other than the the President or Vice President being the defendant, the Vice President presides as the judge over the case.   In the cases of those two offices, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court takes on the duties.  Impeachment is a big deal in this country, and a hearing for a President has never made it past the required 2/3 vote of the present senators.  Nixon would have been the only one, but he resigned before he could be indicted by the house of Representatives.  

So assuming that the Impeachment of Trump does make it through the Senate, now it's time for the special Election day between Hillary and Bernie, right?  Well, not really.  Logically, an impeachment and conviction would leave the United States in the same position as an assassination.  The Vice President would take the Oath of Office and become the President.  Now, the fun part of this is that our friends on the right like to cite the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, saying you can impeach the Vice President and the Speaker becomes President, and then it goes down through the Cabinet.  The problem with that is, that's not quite the case either.  After Mike Pence takes the Oath of Office, he would have the option to let his term run out with a Vice Presidential Vacancy, or he can appoint a Vice President and present him to the Congress for a simple majority vote. That is stated in the relatively recent 25th Amendment (February 1967).  In today's dangerous political times, it would almost behoove him to have a person in mind already to present, as a successful impeachment would leave his adversaries with a full head of steam and ammo to go after him next.  At that point, the only way that Speaker Ryan would become next in line would be if Pence actually chose him to become the next Vice President and he passed the Congressional hearing and vote.  While it is great to see that so many people are paying attention to the Congressional acts that were put in place in case of an emergency, the Presidential Succession Act is just that, a backup plan.  That only arises in a case like the popular TV Series "Designated Survivor", where the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, while one of the last people on the Act, was one of the only surviving people on that Act after an act of terrorism caused an explosion in the Legislature during the inauguration.  

A nation without it's Head of State would suffer a moral blow, and would be weakened against it's enemies, both foreign and domestic.  Even though a void in the executive branch wouldn't shut down our government, we'd still be in a state of chaos and anarchy during the absence.  The founding fathers knew that, and that's why they built things into the Original Articles of the Constitution that would prevent us from being more than a couple of days without an executive.  Our legislators also figured that out and that's why they built even more safeguards into law to make sure that we always had a sitting President, no matter what.  If we need to move forward with an impeachment hearing, that's what is going to be done, but remember as you do that you will be removing the man from the office, and the next time you'll be able to attempt to remove the Republican Party from office will be in 2020, no matter how many impeachments you attempt.

The Affordable Care Act. Repeal and Replace

Later this month marks the 7th anniversary of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare, and from years prior to it's passage even on to today it is mired in massive controversy and legal battles.  The fate and future of the Affordable Care Act was one of the leading talking points of the 2016 Presidential Election Cycle, and has even been featured in a senatorial debate after the election was over.  The biggest topic on the legislative table right now is repealing the law, and the possibility of a replacement plan, but almost everything that has been spoken from either side of the argument has been peppered with such a level of extremism that no compromises can really be made.  Let's take a few paragraphs and look at the act, some of the problems that it presented, and what I consider to be a feasible, reasonable replacement plan.  

Healthcare has been a major talking point in this country since long before 2008 and the election cycle that preceded it.  I remember being in high school, and even middle school, and hearing the comments from my union member father about the health insurance negotiations every time the contract came to it's end.  Back then, it was still considered "insurance".  What we have now can't really be considered insurance anymore.  It's more of a subsidy for medical visits.  The change in definitions is something that I'm actually OK with, but I'll go over that later.  I also remember first going into the adult job market at 18.  Every time I would apply for a job, and would tell my parents, one of the first things I would get asked would be how the health insurance was.  Boy, do I wish I could go back to those rates.  Up until 2007, healthcare was almost tied with wages as the biggest bait to draw employees from rival companies and recruit fresh faced new employees from their part time high school or college jobs, and sometimes insurance even trumped wages as the biggest draw.  The Affordable Care Act (you may notice that I deliberately refrain from using the common "Obamacare") changed all that.  I remember the first time I heard it explained bluntly by a co-worker named Bryan after the implementation of the ACA.  During a discussion on why he hated his job, and my urging him to stick with it until he got something else in order to make sure he and his soon-to-be wife stay insured, he looked up and said "The pay here sucks donkey ----, and I don't care about the insurance.  I mean, because of Obamacare, you can go to Taco Bell and get insurance now."  That last sentence has stuck with me since the first time I heard it uttered.  Insurance was no longer a driving factor in the job market, and that fundamentally changed the way that we worked in this country.  It used to be that if you couldn't get a job, there was unemployment or welfare to protect you in the short term, or pull a McJob to get you by, but you had to deal with the implications of not having health insurance or paying the hugely bloated prices of buying it outright, since you're not longer on a big group rate.  Once the ACA was implemented, there really wasn't any sort of urgency to go out and get that job, or stay at the one you were at prior.

Since we've established how the ACA fundamentally changed the dynamic of finding a good job in our country, let's have a look at what it actually is.  I first encountered some of the basic outlines of the Affordable Care Act in 2007 when I lived in Massachusetts.  At it's core, it's a healthcare outline that was originally theorized by former Governor Mitt Romney.  One of the key proponents of the act was that all citizens of the Commonwealth were required to carry some sort of health insurance.  I was never a legal resident of the state, so I never dealt with it directly, but I believe that catastrophic plans were acceptable at the time.  It was a concept that actually seemed to work quite well in the Commonwealth.  I often noticed that there weren't really a lot of people not working anywhere I went, and in two years, I was only out of a job for two weeks.  While they were severely low paying jobs, the majority of my two years as an out of state student were spent juggling school and two jobs, so there was no shortage of employment there.  The idea of the healthcare and the exchange as it was, in spite of the fact that I really didn't understand it at the time, was that a small amount of your private insurance went into a state exchange, along with a state tax penalty if you didn't have any coverage, and it helped to subsidize plans for people who's jobs didn't provide coverage to purchase and come into compliance with the law.  This was the basic outline of the ACA that went across our country in 2010, but with a lot of other changes and implications.

The ACA was written initially in 2007 by a series of big insurance companies and modeled after this Massachusetts law.  After some revisions, and some debate, the product that most closely resembled what we have now was introduced for vote in 2009, with the stipulation that we would have to pass the bill if we want to read what's in it.  I'll briefly go over the biggest parts of the act that affected the biggest number of people, and explain that what we got was a one size fits all subsidization plan that required all citizens, regardless of sex, race, creed, or health situation, to carry plans that included a far reaching number of covered procedures and items that most of them wouldn't need.  All people need to have coverage for birth control, abortion, sex change, catastrophic accident or healthcare, and a host of other things.  The Affordable Care Act also carried a stipulation, as mentioned, that all citizens carry it, or some other type of healthcare.  The premiums from the subscribers on the government healthcare website, along with a percentage of the premiums from people who carried private insurance, went into a fund together, available to cover premiums and deductibles for people who were on a financial hardship.  Should a younger, healthier person decide to decline a coverage based on saving money and paying off other bills, he would face a penalty against his federal income tax intended to help subsidize a plan so he wouldn't have to go the next year without coverage.  As I mentioned before, there were also stipulations that made it illegal to deny a person coverage based on that person having cancer or something big like that, and there was a premium cap on that kind of coverage, so it would also be illegal to gouge that person for already having a big major health incident prior to purchase.  

Now, I'm mostly against a one size fits all health care plan for everyone in the US, no matter where the people live or the financial situation, the very last part of the act is something that I really want to address before going into a repeal/replace proposition.  Pre-existing condition coverage essentially changed what health insurance was in the US, moving it from insurance to a subsidy.  As insurance, Humana could deny you a new policy if you, or someone in your family got cancer and you had to switch jobs.  After all, it's insurance against the worst happening.  You don't go out and buy full coverage car insurance after you wrap your brand new truck around a tree.  Jake from State Farm would laugh you out of his office if you tried to do that.  Under the ACA, healthcare moves from being insurance to being a subsidy, and it's something that I'm actually completely OK with.  Under the old plan, if your wife got breast cancer, you were stuck.  You wouldn't be moving jobs ever again, lest you find a way to crowd fund the treatment.  While all of your co-workers were usually very supportive of you, and your boss usually was as well, many of the higher ups in companies big and small knew instinctively, at that point, they owned you.  Under the old plan, there was usually government run help for your medical bills at the state level, but everyone knew that you'd never get insurance again if you got fed up enough with the situation that you had to leave your job.  The pre-existing condition mandate that came with the Affordable Care Act did fix a lot of that, and opened the free market back up to people.  It gave negotiation chips back to workers who would have otherwise been victimized by the situations, and it also made sure that if a cancer family wanted to move to be closer to a more specialized cancer hospital, or be closer to a member's extended family, that they would be able to seek out jobs that had good healthcare and be eligible for that healthcare.  I like the free market, and I like people being able to move on with their lives if they find impasses with their current situations that can't be overcome, so I am in big support of this mandate, and anything we do going forward needs to have this in mind.  

Our congress has made it no secret that they already seem to have a repeal and a replacement for the Affordable Care Act in mind.  While that was the big promise that a majority of Republicans and centrists ran on in our current sitting congress, I don't see it as a feasible option.  Our Federal Government has been quite disastrous in anything involving healthcare, especially in the VA.  The best thing that can be done at this point will a clean repeal of the law followed by a minimal stipulation.  If Congress were to pass a law that would make complete denial of coverage based on a pre-existing condition discrimination.  After that, invoke the 10th amendment.  Release all healthcare responsibilities to the states.  The states are in a much better position to listen to the citizens and find out what will work best for them, especially given the size of our country.  It's not feasible at all for a person from Spokane WA to go to DC and talk to his congressman, or address the remainder of congress based on what is going on with his health and the laws, but that same guy could make a day trip to Olympia with many fewer obstacles.  It's the same all the way across the board as well.  Under this new system, states will have many different social structures for their healthcare systems, and that's OK. Many states, like Wisconsin, Texas, Montana, and Arizona, after seeing massive premium increases under the ACA, will revert back to a free market capitalist healthcare system, with some government regulation to make sure that people who have a pre-existing condition can still get healthcare.  Other states, like Illinois and many of the New England states will continue on the path of the Affordable Care Act.  This will mostly take place in states with very low unemployment and underemployment rates, and high workforce participation.  I even predict that states like California, Colorado, and Vermont will implement a single payer system.  This will take some working, increase some taxes, and these states will have to exempt themselves from our President's idea of being able to purchase insurance across state lines.  After all the states settle on what will work best for the majority of their citizens, the people of the country will vote with their feet and go to live and pay taxes in the places that offer the insurance plan that best meets the needs of their families and themselves.  As I mentioned before, plummeting airfares and high speed internet has made it so that long distances are a lower bar for families and friendships to stay in contact, even with a whole country between them.  And just like before, some people are going to stay in their states no matter what is decided, and continue to grumble about the way that healthcare is run there.   

Calexit - The other side of the coin

So one of the biggest things to come out of the last few months since the 2016 Presidential Election of November 8th is that California started proceedings to make a secession from the United States, presumed to be intent on forming their own country.  There have been a lot of talking points that have been circulating this issue on both sides of the Aisle, but I think there are a lot of debate points that are being missed, whether deliberately, or inadvertently, on what will happen to the People's Republic of New California, should they get to their goal of leaving.  

I'm pretty sure it's pretty obvious to everyone in the world as to why this is happening.  The liberal/social justice bastion of Los Angeles is pretty mad that the person who was unelectable, simply because he had an R next to his name, is now the President of the United States.  All of this anger coming in spite of the fact that Mr. Trump is far from a Republican in his personal life, his personal politics, and pretty much everything other than fiscal responsibility.  And yet, the organization "Yes, California", stands up and yells that our President's ideals fall far away from their own.  I do have another article working at this time about the personal politics of our current President, and how the shift in ideals makes him still considerable as a Conservative, even though he is far from the Tea Party, so we'll stay on the topic at hand for now.  But YC swears up and down that the United States has elected someone that doesn't align with them and that means that it's time to pack up and leave.  

This isn't the first time that a state has considered packing it's bags over a presidential administration.  California tossed the idea around during the last Bush, even though it never really got any traction.  I mostly consider that to be in part because social media was still in it's infancy at the time.  Texas also brought up the idea on numerous occasions during the Obama years, and beyond while the media swore up and down that Hillary was going to be our current sitting Queen, but their idea was dismissed as radical right-wing extremism by most major news media outlets, and the majority of social media outlets called an excessive temper tantrum.  That's obviously not the case with Yes, California, which is being praised as highly heroic, and it stands, this time around to reason that it will have some traction.  Preliminary pollsters believe that the petition already has more than enough signatures to add the preliminary step to the ballot.  That preliminary step, of course, is to have a referendum on the ballot in an upcoming election to change the wording in the state's constitution so the state is no longer constitutionally required to be a part of the Union.  

In spite of waves of federal aid going to certain cities, along with disaster relief flowing in after a years long drought broke suddenly, causing sinkholes and mudslides, California, as it stands right now, brags the 6th largest economy in the world, standalone.  There are factors that affect that, but I'll cover them later on in the article.  However, that being said, one can see that the fledgling nation would stand a fighting chance on the world stage as it stands right now.  There are about 10 countries in the world similar in land area, and plenty that are smaller, and California is similar in population to Canada....yes, all of it.  So, it's not unreasonable to consider it standing by itself.  But it takes more than a population and land to make a country.  Just ask East Germany.  

The biggest reason for California's urge to exit our country is because it feels that it can no longer have an ideological alignment with the rest of the country that dared to freely elect Donald Trump in place of an open socialist, or a woman who was bullied by her constituents into embracing open socialism in order to get the votes (I'll cover this in a different article).  Therefore, it stands to reason, that a Californian government would adopt a very minimum of a mild democratically socialist platform, but more likely it would be a full on Marxist society of full on equality for all.  That sounds like a pretty sweet deal, especially with all that money coming from that massive economy, but let's stand back and look at the reality of what it would mean for a newly independent California.  

One of the biggest ideas that is perpetuated by Hollywood, Los Angeles, and by extension, the rest of California is that they know how to do a society better than the rest of us backwards idiots in flyover states.  So it stands to speculative reasoning that they will not experiment with a options for a socioeconomic structure and move right into their agenda driven platform.  They know best, and they are going to do it right.  Now, if I was President or a Congressman when all of this took place, the first thing that I would push would be that for a year or maybe two into the California Exit, there would be no immigration restrictions out of California.  I'd feel duty bound to protect my citizens from abduction by a foreign government.  Just the same, in order for California to stand by the agenda that they fought so hard to put in place in this country, they would be honor bound to have free immigration and open borders, letting all of the citizens of the US who don't align with the US into their borders completely restriction free.  I did some number crunching earlier, and found that in this past presidential election, about 4 and a half million people didn't feel like the left wing ideology represented them.  If you extrapolate these numbers to represent the total population that is eligible to vote, just by straight percentages, that gets you closer to 8 million people, and I'm not factoring anything for voter fraud or non citizen votes.  When you further calculate for these people's family members who might be underage, or a woman on a California Dairy farm who's husband might have a felony hanging over his head, we're probably talking, on a conservative side, about 10 million people, approximately, and all of them would be absolutely welcome back in the United States, and we'd be ready to find jobs and lives for them.   I'm sure the flyover states would welcome more people who can grow crops in the middle of a drought and be successful with it.  In exchange, a lot of young college students and recent college grads who have hearts in their eyes while they go to work at their entry level, or retail jobs will go running to the promised Golden State ready to make a difference in the world.  That's good, because they will need those hard workers to make a GDP, because a redistribution society is going to attract a lot of people who refuse to get a job in lieu of a government handout that many of them have based their lives around.  After hearing the left handed promises of this past election cycle, I feel like a California government would be honor bound to ensure that it's new constituents feel as comfortable as possible in their new society.  While these few items are going to have a major impact on the sixth largest economy in the world, there are a series of even bigger factors that are going to turn into major hurdles to overcome.  

One of the biggest factors that drives California's massive economy is the amount of things that get exported out of the state to other states in our union tax-free.  Wine, software, year-round crops, dairy, Hollywood movies are all big ticket items that California touts itself on exporting, for free, across our union.  We can't exactly enforce a tariff on them at this point, they are a part of us.  But what will happen when they are not.  Upon CalExit, all exported goods become foreign, and subject to any import fee or border fee that our government decides to impose on them, and trust me; in the name of putting US citizens back to work, our government has decided to get very, very tough on taxing things coming into this country.  Especially if it's something that a US worker could have made.  You Californians didn't think we'd be letting your stuff come into this country for free, did you?  Between tariffs and patriotism, I predict that it would quickly become very hard to sell something marked "Made in California" in the US, especially for the first few crucial, formative years.  As software becomes harder and harder to sell, more and more people with a need and a dream will start forming startups in US basements and taking the place of the Silicon Valley tech giants; those of whom didn't migrate during the free pass.  I can definitely see the entertainment industry making a massive migration to tax friendly US states, possibly even distributing itself throughout the country.  After all, it's easier to take advantage of doe-eyed Midwest actors if you don't have to import them from another country.  

The rapidly exporting industry from California in an attempt to find a consuming audience that doesn't have to pay a border tax to utilize it's product is only going to compounded by the massive amounts of natural resources that California the Nation would have to import in order to keep itself running.  Once the farms of Northern California are back to running, they are going to need a lot of fresh water that the small nation doesn't really produce.  There are desalination efforts, but they require a massive amount of energy to operate, especially on the scale that would be required.  Wind turbines will require steel that the nation doesn't have, along with coal from the eastern seaboard.  Yes, there is plenty of oil, but it doesn't come out of the ground ready to use.  They'll either have to create an auto industry, or import enough vehicles to support the infrastructure.  Meanwhile, the US, Canada, and Mexico have, or can find a way to manufacture just about anything that California had to offer back as a trading chip.  That leaves California to either fend for itself of try and strike a deal with Asia, or even pay the transport fees and tariffs to get things from Europe.  And on top of this all is defense.  While California State boasts some of the biggest, and often times most advanced military bases of all branches, California Nation, I feel based on ideology, would have a very very challenging time staffing and arming them, especially in a fledgling state.  Keep in mind, all of the armaments, and even all of the people on the bases are considered to be US Property, and would not go with the secession. 

In the end, all I can offer is advice.  If the people of California want to take their 55 Electoral Votes, 55 Congressmen, and the majority of our most liberal citizens, and go to do their own thing, then it's up to the people of that state to decide, and the elected officials to do what's best for their constituents.  If the people decide in a free and fair election, and the proper paperwork is filed, the Tenth Amendment, even in light of the Interstate Commerce Act, will hold reign and the Federal Government won't be able to stop it.  Nothing that I've laid out in this argument is an impossible hurdle to jump, just a series of very difficult ones that can be overcome by wise leadership and good trade deals.  It's more likely that a California Nation will crash and burn, but there's a chance we're watching the next great world power rise.  

Some thoughts on Free Community College in a Trump world

So there are a number of hot button topics that have been flowing all over the internet since 2015, and many of them are starting to come into fruition now.  Free this, free that, business market, jobs, trade deals, healthcare.  With social media being our top form of news, whether real, propaganda, or satire; it's impossible to avoid any of it, even if you're not on Facebook or Twitter.  There's always that one friend who will whip out his phone and show off that article that was meant to trigger an emotional rage from someone on one side or the other.  And the headline is always an emotional trigger meant to make one man feel triumph, and another feel hatred and rage.  Working on that, I did read an article that I ran across that is sure to divide people again.  I looked at it, and I can see merit and failure with it.  

Detroit has decided to offer it's community colleges tuition free.  Pretty sweet deal, right? Well, let's look at a couple things that go along with this.  Most conservatives are going to bring up the suffocating debt that Detroit still owes the Federal Government, along with several private banks.  Meanwhile the progressive movement will laud the city council of Detroit as heroes because they're giving away the promised free education.  But let's take a look from the center to see what the reality is.

Now, it's impossible to ignore the fact that companies are running over each other to start investing in the US.  Much of this can be attributed to our sitting president, even though the extremist media outlets are going out of their way to find reasons that it wasn't on him.  Realistically, there has been a promise of deregulation of labor, and a business friendly tax environment, and everyone knows it.  That includes democratic city council members, mayors, and pretty much every politician in this country.  In real life, tax and regulation cutbacks mean that it's easier to employ here, and that's gonna create tax revenue.  With that in mind, municipalities are gonna want that tax revenue, especially cities that are buried in debt.  

With all this in mind, one has to look at the final piece of the puzzle, incentivization.  Detroit knows that when the jobs come back, investors are going to be searching for markets full of trained workers.  With free community college, and a spattering of enough low level jobs to start drawing people in, Detroit seems like a paradise to be for workers who have been out of a job for years.  Our sitting Commander in Chief has promised to invest money in rebuilding Detroit by name, it's no wonder that Detroit is rushing to find workers.  In this writer's personal opinion, the free community college is a gimmick.  Yes, it's going to put the city further in debt, but I can see the city's council looking at it long term.  A working class family, who's been strapped by being out of good work for years, who's heard the Donald say for two years that he wants to invest money into Detroit.  Now the parents of that family hear that they can start sending their kids to get some basic classes that transfer to a 4 year college, for free, and save a couple years of tuition, they're going to see a move closer to the Detroit area as a viable move.  I see a lot of cities in the next four years doing things like that.  If the city can sustain it, it's a great idea.  We live in a digital age where every phone has a video camera, and airfare has never been lower.  People can move and not fear losing touch with family and friends.  So any perk that a city can hang on living there, it will exploit at any turn in an upcoming economic upturn.  

The conclusion.  I can see where the City of Detroit is going with their plan, but I ultimately think it will backfire.  The problem with having something for free is that it never attracts the people who want to put the work in.  The community colleges will be flooded out, an won't be able to take on the people who want to use them as a cost effective stepping stone into a a higher college experience, or even a trade school.  

A final note would be a suggestion.  If I was a City Planner, I'd move away from the free, and move in the direction of getting the community colleges and the potential employers together and working out a tuition break or scholarship for working at the manufacturing plant.  Don't offer anything for free, but definitely try to get people to come work for you.

My Stance on Marijuana Decriminalization

The hot topic right now as far as domestic policy in our country is the legality of marijuana.  As with most topics on the political spectrum, I've given the topic a lot of thought, and I have formed a stance on whether or not it should be an illegal substance.

Before I go into my stance, though, I did a little light research as to why it is illegal in the first place.  I had to look some things over because I haven't been a long term advocate to either side of the argument at any point of my life prior to the last few months.  Skimming over a couple of websites, and my memories of books like "The Autobiography of Malcolm X", among other sources, there were a few legislative reasons I came up with that will support the views of political advocates on both sides of the aisle.  Now, the majority of things I saw circled around poison control and controlling medicinal substances, similar to laws surrounding other hard prescription narcotics.  I even found literature claiming criminalization for medicinal uses being a phenomenal legislative typo.  Essentially, though, it boiled down to possession without a prescription, which is still the law in most places.  Looking over some state and federal laws surrounding use of marijuana, most things I saw used the word possession.  That tells me that in most places, you can be walking around, eyes glowing red, with Cheech Marin on your left singing up in smoke, and Tommy Chong on your right playing guitar for him, and as long as you have no marijuana or paraphernelia on your person, there is nothing the authorities can do to you.  But if you have a little grain of hemp on your clothing, you're going to jail. What I draw from this is that Brian Griffin may be right.  This could possibly be nothing more than a lobby by lumber companies to keep hemp from being used for paper.  Admittedly, though, most everything I'm finding surrounding this is propaganda and speculation.  I didn't really find anything concrete surrounding the reasons for it's outlaw. 

Now, after some careful thought and consideration to both sides of the argument, I drew one solution that would benefit all.  I say let's de-criminalize, BUT, let's do it the right way.

Now, if we make weed legal, the first thing we need to do is find an effective test to fairly find out if people driving or operating machinery are under the influence.  Some research on this will need to be performed since habitual marijuana users can keep residual traces in their bloodstreams for up to 3 months.  If you are at work or driving under the influence, just like alcohol, you get fines and jail time.  The advocates will try to tell you that marijuana doesn't alter your perception, but as a former user, I can tell you firsthand, that if you get stoned enough, your perception of time becomes completely altered, and therefore, your reaction times are also altered. 

The other thing we need to do is to let the FDA and ATF take over the production and distribution, and tax it, just like we do with alcohol and cigarettes.  The private sector can grow weed, just like private distillers can distill and brew alcoholic beverages.  But the distribution of marijuana needs to be regulated and taxed exactly the same as well.  If you get caught growing weed in your basement and selling it without the taxes, you go to jail, just like the moonshiners. 

Marijuana decriminalization will raise a big fad for about 10 years.  Everyone who has been bragging about weed to be an outlaw or a gangster will want to run out and smoke as much as they can because it's legal, and we will generate a very large amount of tax revenue over it.  And not everyone is going to smoke it.  People like me will continue to prefer booze.  Once the thrill has worn off, I think marijuana use will fade into the background. 

So, in closing, I think the idea has potential. I don't think we, as Americans, are quite ready for it yet.  But after we cross the last couple hurdles, the benefits will help everyone, stoner and non stoner alike.

The Enterprise Versus The Millenium Falcon

Most of the people who know me, and probably everyone who has read my blog beginning to end already knows...I have been a big fan of King of the Nerds since it started.  However, a couple weeks ago, it came to debate week.  While I appreciate the nerd culture, this episode really struck me in the face over the selection of people that they featured.  Overall, this season featured a stunning lack of scholastic nerds, and as a former speech team geek, I was less than impressed by the debates surrounding the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises.  Only the women on each team really offered up intelligent arguments, while the remaining four people seemed to be reduced to petty convention squabbles.  While I was more impressed with their arguments, I was more surprised to see what they left out.

Now, I do understand that the shame may not fall on either young lady.  Television producers most likely had to cut out big parts of the arguments to keep the show running in it's designated 60 minute time slot.  The debate topic was that Star Trek's Enterprise would win in a dogfight against Star Wars's Millenium Falcon.  This is clearly an apples to oranges argument on one speaking point that I missed hearing in the debates: size.

The Millenium Falcon is a modified YT-13 freight ship.  It's speed capabilities were enhanced to make it a more effective smuggling vessel, but that doesn't change the fact that it is essentially a space semi with a small crew of four and most of it's space utilized for freight.  The Enterprise-D (the incarnation that Kayla used for her debate) is more like a spaceborne aircraft carrier.  With it's crew of 1012, it's size is comparable to the Empire's Star Destroyer Class ships, which were so large that the Falcon was able to hide from sensors by "landing" (magnetic interlock) on the back of the bridge of the Star Destroyer.  On that major note, the Enterprise wins the battle on sheer surface area alone.  There is simply a large amount more sheet metal that the Falcon has to destroy just to DISABLE the Enterprise, not to mention total ship destruction.  Kayla did bring up the crew size for fatigue, but not for surface area to house this many people, and I feel that it is the biggest advantage.

The smaller advantage that the Enterprise holds is smaller ships.  Now, I've never been a big Next Generation fan, but I do know Vogager.  The USS Voyager carried three shuttlecraft, plus another ship they built to be a small fighter in the unfamiliar section of space that it was stranded in; and the Voyager Crew was 16% of the crew of the Enterprise-D.  That leads me to believe that the Voyager was smaller, and I assume that the larger Enterprise carried many many more shuttles.  Now, even though the ships bear the name "shuttle", do not be fooled.  Starfleet shuttlecraft carry warp capability, forward and rear phaser arrays, and a small compliment of Photon Torpedoes, and would probably be a similar size to the Falcon (large enough to carry a handy landing party).  Between the size difference, and the shuttlecraft to surround the Falcon, Han and his hairy sidekick would be easily overwhelmed and brought in to negotiate an unconditional surrender very quickly. 

I'm sure Han and Chewie had some other tricks up their sleeves, and would be able to duck and weave better, but these are the big advantages that are out there. 

The Mega Man X Argument

Some time ago, I had a longing to have a debate with someone over this topic.  However, I am the only human I know geeky enough to know the topic at hand, and the only person I know with enough memory of the topic to accurately discuss it without extensive research.  So I am posting it here in the hopes that my explanation reaches out to my friends and they can compose an intelligent argument surrounding the philosophy behind the fictitious situation, as well as getting fellow gamers involved who would like to jump in after finding the title in a web search, intimately knowing the topic at hand.  I'd really like to get some good discussions going off of this, because as technology hurtles forward, some of the younger of my readers may have to encounter this in their lifetimes. To start with, I am going to present the situation.  Rather than copy and paste directly from Capcom's official sources, I am going to paraphrase and present a certain way, to show how the particular situation differs from other strains of AI in popular culture.  Let's begin

In the year 200X (Capcom never used a specific year in any of their official canon), Engineer Thomas Light created the first form of Artificial Intelligence; implanting the operating system in an anthromorphic robot dubbed "Proto Man".  Proto Man had the ability to make decisions on his own, within a very strict set of parameters.  His purpose was to serve as a sort of foreman over other, simpler, robots; able to go into work areas that were much too dangerous for humans and operate somewhat autonomously without being completely dependent on human interaction.  Proto Man was stolen by Light's rival, Albert Wily, and reprogrammed for combat.  Light then created a second artificially intelligent robot to defend against Proto Man and other robots that were reverse engineered from his design, and 10 wildly popular side scrolling video games were the result, the Mega Man Series. 

As these events wore on, within the fictitious universe surrounding Mega Man, Dr Light continued his research on Artificial Intelligence.  In the year 20XX (online literature unlicensed by Capcom suggests between 2020 and 2030), he succeeded in creating an operating system that could make decisions, learn, and adapt completely free from any parameters.  True artificial intelligence.  This creation, named "X", was free to choose his own path in life, and was not bound by the traditional three rules of robotics (1. A robot must never harm a human being, or through inaction, cause a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey orders given to it by any human being, except where this conflicts with the first law. 3. A robot must protect it's own existence, so long as the protection does not conflict with the first or second laws.  Credit - science fiction author Isaac Asimov).  Dr. Light theorized that should X decide that he wished to break the first law, no force on earth could stop him, and decided that he needed to be tested for a minimum of 30 years.  Nearing the end of his life, Light knew he wouldn't make it that long, and sealed X in a capsule that tested his systems for the allotted time.  While it's never been confirmed what the tests were, many forums, discussions, and online literature sources suggest it was both testing of the integrity of X's hardware, firmware, and software against long term degradation (mimicking a lifespan), as well as presenting the software with a series of simulations regarding right and wrong, in essence, teaching him the difference and "raising" him as if a child.

In the year 21XX (over 100 years after the sealing of the capsule according to the Mega Man X instruction manual), archeologist Dr. Cain stumbles across the remains of Light's lab and the still running capsule.  With all indicators showing green, Cain decides to open the capsule and let X walk the world.  Immediately seeing the potential to humanity, Cain decides to try and reverse engineer Light's design and create more copies of X, dubbed "reploids" (replicated androids).  Following wild success, Reploids begin rolling off of the assembly line at an alarming rate, and joining society.  They could work completely independently of human contact in areas that were much too dangerous for human bodies to go, and be fitted with equipment to customize themselves for the life path they chose.  All was well, until reploids began going "maverick" and rising up against humanity.

Now, This is where the philisophical aspect of the story begins and the arguments should be made.  In official game canon directly submitted from Capcom to the fans, maverick tendencies were considered to be an irregularity, a flaw in programming, and sometimes as far as being called a computer virus.   It's blame comes from a variety of sources from someone writing a malware program to imperfect design and coding stemming from Dr. Cain being an archeologist instead of an engineer.  This personally bothered me.  To me, it seems that if you create a race, and give it the ability to think and make decisions apart from you, you do need to accept that the members will not always make decisions you agree with.  This "Maverick" label, such as it is, can't really be seen as a programming error in my eyes.  Consider it from a religious angle for a second.  From a creationist standpoint, are we as humans any different??  We were created by a deity, in his own image, able to choose a life for ourselves in an attempt to live happily. We were given 10 commands from our maker to live by, but we have our own choosing as to whether or not to follow them, and how we follow them.  Are we mentally ill when we break a commandment, or are we simply exercising the free will that we were offered by our creator??

On another thinking note, consider the spread of the condition.  They call it a virus, labelling it as such based on how it spread from one reploid to the next.  It's said that it spread like wildfire, which is probably where it got it's nomenclature as a virus.  Maybe it was a piece of malicious software, set to extinguish humanity.  But, in reality, think about any other political or social uprising.  If there are millions, if not billions of reploids in the world, and they all have the capability of free will, it's likely that few will be natural born leaders, and the majority will be followers, exactly like humanity.  Finding a common ground among reploids would not be very difficult.  All are artificial life forms.  And exactly as has happened in the past among our race, an intelligent reploid with an agenda can speak, nay RALLY, towards a group of the "oppressed" and lead a rebellion against the humans, or anyone else who believes differently than the mob.  And at that point, what you conflate with mental illness turns into an upheaval the same as any other.

So, now that I have presented the arguments and talking points, what are your thoughts on the matter??  Once you've read, share this and discuss it with your friends.  Leave comments on my blog and on my Facebook page.  Consider post apocalyptic stories like the Matrix, that have backstories similar to this.  This shares so much common ground with so many of the biggest and bloodiest wars in our history, and I feel the more it is discussed, the more both sides can understand each other in any major conflict. I'd love to hear as much feedback as I can get.  Is being a maverick a disease, or is it a race practicing free will, as we have done for millenia??