— Tom Clark 2021/11/19 17:31

This is an interesting trend in the Republican party. Any Republican not willing to de-federalize the weed issue is making a big mistake IMHO. Effectively, the Feds haven't been doing much about this anyway in pro-weed states, so if you can win the weed vote. Do it. Wait for the Whitehouse to be in Republican hands first. Personally, I hate drugs of all types, even prescription drugs (except when they actually solve a problem without making your health worse). I think any non-therapeutic use of drugs is immoral, but I don't think it should be criminal. If your drug life gets to the point where you are an abusive spouse/parent, belligerent, homeless, severely mentally ill, then I think the state should step in and lock you up in hospital pending and following a speedy JURY trial. But that should always be a civil thing separate from any criminal charges. And mental or substance abuse treatment should almost always supersede criminal punishment. Also, I think that the law ought to do something about getting people back into society after treatment and jail, like protecting criminal and treatment records. If you can make HIPAA short-circuit free-speech, you can do the same for criminal and health records and reporting.

With regards to a UBI. I disagree with anybody being on the public dole whatsoever. I'm against the welfare state entirely. I know that's hard, but I'm a hard ass and I think this is the position you have to have if you believe in Natural Law as I do. However, I think any Republican would be wise to support a Qualified UBI. Let's call it a QUBI. The QUBI is offered to anyone on welfare of any kind. It is a dollar value that is the same as their current welfare benefit levels. Include social security, housing, food stamps, cash, and a medical savings account stipend. Then dump all the welfare programs goes into QUBI. You fill out 1 application for public welfare, it is investigated, if you qualify you get the QUBI, you report any changes each month. Certify each month as to your status. Fraud = restoration plus 10 year hold on getting QUBI benefits again. This would greatly reduce the alphabet soup and piecemeal delivery of welfare. This would be a federal program and you are only eligible for it if you don't take state welfare in any form. Now, this would not only improve the situation we have, but this would attract voters who votes are bought through welfare programs.

I don't see anything wrong with having a public option if we are going to have medicare and medicaid anyway. I'd like to see healthcare and insurance be entirely private and that would drive down costs and we could get catastrophic insurance at a reasonable price. I do think there is a case for insurance regulation that all catastrophic healthcare must be covered by a catastrophic policy. Insurance cannot be allowed to be so complicated that the general consumer cannot figure out whether or not he is going to be covered for x situation or y situation. This is not a violation of Natural law since corporations are fictitions of the state, allowing them to be in the free market can and should be conditional. In fact, this is where a lot of libertarians go nutty in my opinion. They think that two people should be able to contract with each other without the state interfering. Well, I agree with that largely, but a corporation is granted privileges way outside of contract law. Such as your inability to lock a corporation up for wrong doing, for the corporation have limited liability, etc. Corporations are dangerous things that can overpower the liberty of the people and a just government should curtail the injustices corporations can impose on the public. This is my question to pure libertarians, on what justification should a corporation have MORE rights than a natural born person?