{"id":186193,"date":"2014-04-09T20:54:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T01:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/04\/09\/meanwhile-in-annapolis\/"},"modified":"2014-04-09T20:54:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-10T01:54:00","slug":"meanwhile-in-annapolis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/04\/09\/meanwhile-in-annapolis\/","title":{"rendered":"Meanwhile in Annapolis\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Maryland legislative session has ended and they <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/news\/maryland\/politics\/bs-md-sine-die-20140408,0,2073050.story\">passed bills hiking the minimum wate to $10.10 and decriminalizing marijuana<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">By the time confetti fell in Annapolis on Monday night, state lawmakers had loosened marijuana laws, made Maryland the second state in the country to raise its minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and whittled their way through more than 2,600 bills considered during the 434th legislative session.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The two major votes on marijuana decriminalization and increasing the minimum wage closed out the annual 90-day frenzy of lawmaking. Measures to create stricter penalties for drivers who cause fatal accidents while texting and to revamp Maryland&#8217;s stalled medical marijuana program also received final passage.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Martin O&#8217;Malley will sign both bills into law, though he did issue a veto threat over a recreational marijuana legalization proposal.<\/p>\n<p>As a Free Stater, I am happy.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of both the Democratic 2016 primaries, and the Veepstakes to follow, the minimum wage bill is probably a bigger deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Maryland legislative session has ended and they passed bills hiking the minimum wate to $10.10 and decriminalizing marijuana: By the time confetti fell in Annapolis on Monday night, state lawmakers had loosened marijuana laws, made Maryland the second state in the country to raise its minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and whittled their &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1013,1020,1071,978,1086],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drugs","category-legislation","category-maryland","category-politics","category-social-safety-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}