News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
Illinois has been quietly kicking some ass over here while nobody is watching. First (only?) cannabis legalization by a state legislature. No more cash bail. Book bans are illegal.
We just need to take over Wisconsin like it's Poland in the late 30s.
Wait.
Yes but have they gone 5 minutes without jailing a Governor?
You say that like it's a bad thing. We punish our corrupt politicians here.
Most other states either reward them, or quietly move on to the next one.
And we're equal opportunity about it, too.
Legislature passed is not a positive nor what I’d call “kicking ass”. That just says that they didn’t have enough public support for it to pass it like every other state has with a direct vote.
It's important because the legislation included prioritizing minority ownership of dispensaries, and set up a system to "clear the cannabis-related records of nonviolent offenders through an efficient combination of automatic expungement, gubernatorial pardon and individual court action" and "20% of the revenue generated by legalization will go toward funding for mental health and substance abuse services in Illinois. An additional 10% will go to pay down the state's backlog of unpaid bills; which directly benefits hospitals, health care and social service providers in every community across the state," among other things.
That's a whole lot better than a referendum that says "It's legal now."
Edit: And I'm pretty sure that the reason it has to go to a ballot referendum is because the legislature won't do anything about it. Illinois didn't need a referendum.
Do you think that the other half the country with legal cannabis just had a referendum pass and went “welp that’s it”?
The legislature still needed to pass laws regulating the dispensary market. The legalization itself just had more public support to put it on a public ballot.
A public referendum is always more democratic and representative of the people than a legislature passing a law l.
Because surely a state legislature that gets their asses handed to them by a referendum is going to craft legislation in good faith, that will be fair and positive and ethical, and not put any roadblocks up.
Fuck, Ohio just constitutionalized abortion rights, and the American Fascist legislature is still saying they’re just going to ignore that.
Nah, Illinois did it right.
I mean, every other state that has legalized it has done it through referendum by the people. Surely you could look at all the history and examples of this in the US.
I seriously doubt that. Pretty much every state is polling showing strong support for pot being legal. Do you think blue Illinois, with both blue executive and legislative branches, wasn't just going to do it beacuse thats a goal of the dems?
Besides, even if the people didn't like it, they can also petition the criminalize again too and then that goes to a referendum.
Deteriorating public transit system. Endless road construction. Skyrocketing taxes. Growing homeless population. Increasing opioid deaths.
Illinois is doing quite meh...
I'm assuming you're talking about Chicago, since pretty much nowhere else even has a proper public transit system - which is something any non-urban area in the country suffers from. Between CTA trains and CTA buses, you can get pretty much anywhere in Chicago pretty much any time of the day or night. Metra regional rail is not bad for being able to get in and out of the city from all the collar counties, and some beyond.
Yeah, that's a thing that happens in a place that has hot summers and cold winters. Roadways don't last forever. Would you prefer they be left unrepaired?
Source? Everything I see shows that tax rates in Illinois, while they have risen over the years (decades), there's no way they could be described as "skyrocketing." Besides that, only state income tax and state sales tax are at the state level. Other sales taxes are done by municipalites, property tax assessments are done by the county, and a good portion of property taxes pay for your local school district. Can't really blame the state for those.
There are about 14,000 homeless people in Illinois. That's 0.11% of the population of the state.
That one is actually true! Opioid deaths in Illinois have increased 2,736% since 2013. However, "Illinois ranked 24th in the country for overall drug overdose fatality rate in 2019." So right in the middle. Opioids specifically, and drug overdose generally, is a national problem, not one that is somehow specific to Illinois.
Cost of living in Illinois is relatively low though. If you're outside the cities even within 30 minutes to am hope from the city is not terrible. I don't have an opinion on living in Chicago since I'm not there but things are getting better. Also road construction is a good thing, it means they aren't just letting it deteriorate. Per CDC data opioid death rates in Illinois are consistent with the rest of the United States.