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I'm thinking about writing an article for my Congress run. Not now though. Please troll below.


Hi Canada!

I’m running for Congress again, assuming Christopher True replaces that Hun with me in time, so I’ve decided to write up some ideas I have going into the election. If you’ve been paying any attention to what I’ve done in Congress in the past this should come as no surprise to you. It’s a wall o’ text with what I hope are some good ideas, some good but unlikely to happen, a fair smattering of bad ones that I can’t recognise for the life of me, all bound together with a good helping of hot air.

(I decided to leave that first part at the top up. I wrote it yesterday when I wanted to hold a spot for my article and needed a link for my presentation. I think it lends a nice bit of juxtaposition and makes those first comments make more sense. Did you guys really think I’d leave it at three small sentences? No, you knew better than that.)



I’d like to think that people take the time to read presentations and vote for the candidate with the best platform but I know that doesn’t happen. I mean it might still happen every so often or among a small group of voters but we’re long past the days where candidates thought they actually had to show some initiative and come up with a plan of what they’re going to do in Congress other than the obvious or things they can’t actually do. It is what it is, though, so this isn’t really about trying to convince voters to vote for me (although if I convinced you, hey, that’s great!) but more to give everyone advance warning about what I’ll unleash on them if I get elected.

I’ve been out of Congress for two months now and lately I’ve got a few ideas I’m going to bring forward, mostly related to finances. First off, I like Addy’s idea of creating a consistent budget over a long period of time. I think that rather than come up with a new budget every month that we should create a Budget Act and decide on how we’re going to split up every 99,999 CAD donation. I think nearly everyone wants to keep these up as often as possible, hopefully daily, so rather than saying on Day X we have to give money to the Construction Program and on Day Y and Z it’s for the MUs, we just say x amount of every 99,999 CAD goes to the Construction Program and y to the MUs. Then we tell Congress to keep the proposals flowing and only need to keep the MU rosters up to date, say once a month like now. If the economic situation changes then we can amend the Budget Act accordingly or fiddle with taxes to keep things going. I think we should also consider merging the Comptroller with the Minister of Finance on a permanent basis and have that person elected by Congress. I’ve never quite understood why we’d want to allow the President to replace the MoF every month, even though thankfully many never do. Etemenanki and Addy Lawrence have done fantastic work over the past, what, 2 years they’ve been passing the job back.



Next, since Construction Program Director Gary Hubert wants to alter the program slightly anyways, I’ll offer my suggestion: we stop giving people gold for companies they could have bought and could resell later. I’d also scrap the 5 gold giving to those who upgrade their free food company. It’s not an economically wise move (the 20 gold could buy you 2 Q1 companies instead offering twice as much food for the same price) and shouldn’t be rewarded. Since the previous Congress was happy to help players out when it comes to upgrading their town centers, maybe they’ll be more receptive now to the idea of getting companies to loan out.



I’d also like to expand the Construction Program. Over the past few days several MUs have noticed a drop in their funding. This should not be unexpecte😛 there are only so many ways you can slice a 99,999 CAD pie. As more soldiers grab forks we’re all going to be getting fewer crumbs (although a rethink of who’s eligible for funding , such as gold players or those with many companies, as well as how we count activity and members, such as by requests for funding, might ease some of the pain for a bit). I think we’ve been focussing too long on using government funds for one time use food and weapons. We all know that saying about fish. Well, in eRep it’s give a man a fishery and he’ll eat for a lifetime. Whether it’s a free give away like the Construction Program or a loan program, maybe even gold loans for food companies (even if it’s a better idea to just buy frm companies), we’ve got our options. But we should really be trying to get our soldiers set up with their own companies so that they aren’t always asking for money for food and weapons.



I’d also like to see us develop a plan well ahead of the next 50% off upgrade offer. We’ve got quite a lot of gold in the bank. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be using it next time and no reason why we can’t let our MUs know in advance how we’ll be deciding how we’ll spend it. With a plan we could have the gold flowing and the companies upgrade on day one of the next offer.



If that’s not enough for you, I’ve got one last idea up my sleeve for how we can increase our daily spending past 99,999 CAD a day, and possibly even more reliably. But I’ve got to keep some secret, right? What kind of a politician would I be if I was perfectly honest and up front about everything?



Moving beyond economics, if I have enough space, I’ll try to stay brief and just say that I’ve got a few ideas when it comes to the recent laws regarding MUs. I like the gist of the new Joint Task Force Act, or whatever it’s called, but I think there’s room for improvement there and that we should see if can’t just come up with one overarching law for Canada’s MUs.



I’d like to create a Foreign Relations Act which would outline how Canada can enter and exit alliances (CP proposal, 2/3 Congress, 50% forum poll I’m thinking but I’m willing to compromise as long as the population as a whole gets a say in the matter) and would include an official enemies and an official friends list that way the President knows which embargos and alliances need to be proposed without having to a discussion every time.



Oh, I forgot to mention it in my hefty economic section above but I’d also like to see the import tax on food raw material brought down to 1%. Embargos should take care of any enemies trying to sell in Canada but honestly, even with a few foreign sellers, I don’t think that anyone’s worst fears have been realised with a 1% weapons raw material tax. In fact, sometimes we still see a nearly empty marketplace which I find very disconcerting.



Finally I want to address something that I’ve found even more disconcerting: we’re leaving ourselves open to a PTO. It might take a while but we’re leaving the door open every time any party has any Congress seats left unfilled the day before the elections. We dropped the ball this month which I found really surprising considering the scare we had last month and the effort we put in fighting the PTO attempt. But PTOers don’t need control of a party to run in the election if we don’t block those spots. I hope not too many are elected tomorrow and that we take treat this as a wake-up call. We need to take PTOs more seriously and get a plan in place well in advance of both Congressional and Party elections.



Well there you go, about 1,400 words (and a bunch of pictures I found over 5 minutes with Google for crisfire) on why you should vote for me (or not) or at least take a peek into Congress this month, assuming I get elected. Please feel free to contact me if you want to hear more (yeah, right) or if you have any questions, suggestions, criticisms, ideas, whatever.

Thanks for skimming through!

Chochi