Freedom is everything // × \\ Level Up Humanity
Boise, Idaho
Joined July 2012
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Vote, and vote with care. But don't mistake the ballot for the solution.
The work that actually helps people in hard moments happens at kitchen tables, in church basements, among friends and neighbors. It doesn't wait for an election.
leveluphumanity.substack.com…
ALT Illustration of a diverse line of voters holding ballots, walking past VOTE signs through landscapes from snowy mountains and desert to farmland, a church steeple and a courthouse.
"A version of one of my worst ideas is on Idaho's ballot in November. I am sorry for that."
In 2021 I drafted a shortcut amendment to prove a point. Today's HJR 4 uses it, sloppily. Here's the whole story.
leveluphumanity.substack.com…
ALT Eyeglasses resting on an open notebook beside a pen and a laptop.
Worried about out-of-state money buying an initiative? Lawmakers could raise the threshold to pass one: 55%, 60%, two-thirds.
They've never really tried. Instead they want HJR 4.
If it seems like a power grab, it's because it is one.
leveluphumanity.substack.com…
ALT Close-up of a cannabis bud against a pale blue background.
Today you can petition around the Legislature on drugs. HJR 4 would seal that door, but only one way.
You could still petition to ban more. You just couldn't petition to ban less.
That's not about administering government. It's about administering you.
leveluphumanity.substack.com…
ALT A diverse group of neighbors talking around a large round table in a diner, with coffee cups and breakfast plates.
Rep. Kent Marmon says HJR 4 builds on Idaho's temperance clause. Fine. Look at what that clause produced: state liquor stores and a state lottery.
HJR 4 points toward state-run dispensaries. Ban or sell, Boise decides what you put in your body.
leveluphumanity.substack.com…
ALT A drab government storefront with a marquee reading STATE OF IDAHO / CANNABIS DISPENSARY, styled like a state liquor store.
Force can mandate birth. It cannot mandate the welcome every child deserves.
A ban can't do it. A codified right can't either. The fight serves campaigns, not mothers and babies.
Is there a better path? leveluphumanity.substack.com…
In 1857, a young Boston doctor launched a campaign to make abortion a crime — unless a physician signed off. The AMA took it up two years later.
We've been fighting a war organized medicine started ever since.
leveluphumanity.substack.com…
A society that values the lives of children and women doesn't need the criminal code to prove it.
That work belongs to us — not to a statute, and not to a ballot measure.
leveluphumanity.substack.com…
I've spent years trying to reform Idaho's citizen initiative—not eliminate it. That's a crucial difference.
HJR 4 doesn't just target initiatives. It eliminates the referendum, the people's power to veto laws the Legislature passes.
Even if you dislike initiatives, there's no good reason to strip the referendum. That's overreach.
For those opposed to legalization: you might wish you had that veto power down the road.
leveluphumanity.substack.com…
HJR 4 doesn't restore balance. It flips it on its head.
Eliminates gubernatorial veto on drug legalization. Risks stripping your referendum power. Concentrates power in one branch.
The money doesn't disappear. It redirects to legislative races, where the Legislature wields unlimited power.
There's a case against legalization. This isn't it.
leveluphumanity.substack.com…
Real freedom isn't being told how many hours you owe the world.
It's saying "here's what I need for my family, here's what's left for work" — and being trusted to mean it.
Mississippi weighed letting families pay water bills with SNAP grocery money. No new help — just food budgets rerouted to a failing utility. When Jackson's taps ran dry, water came from church parking lots and pickup beds, not a program. leveluphumanity.substack.com…
Only about 1 in 5 twelfth-graders is proficient in math. For poor kids, the system we keep defending is a coin flip. Americans taught a nation to read before anyone ordered them to. They can again. New essay: leveluphumanity.substack.com…
Packing a lunch isn't logistics. It's a sandwich cut a certain way. A note from mom tucked inside. One of the small, repeated ways a parent's love shows up in a kid's day.
When the cafeteria line takes that over, you don't just save a parent twenty minutes. You remove one more place where family memories used to form.
leveluphumanity.substack.com…
Why is info about the medicinal properties of plants not part of school curricula? Why is it illegal or plain difficult to get some of it?
Imagine a government official asking for your money and telling you, in all sincerity, what it's for: helping a politician go viral on Instagram.
You get what you permit.
New essay: leveluphumanity.substack.com…
We taught every kid on the playground not to take what isn't theirs. Then we grew up and started voting on exceptions.
What changed — the rule, or our willingness to follow it?
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The playground rule: ask first.
The adult version: vote first, ask never.
Somewhere we swapped one for the other and called it progress.
leveluphumanity.substack.com…
It would be scandalous to pass a law that outright kills off everyone with red hair.
But you could pass a law that keeps redheads from the jobs that feed their families. Same effect, over time.
No one calls that a war. But it is.
New essay: leveluphumanity.substack.com…