Join the new world

When I was elected I promised an unprecedented level of transparency. I stated that I would not only report on my in-game administration votes and my in-forum Open Congress Votes on a weekly basis, but that I would list and from time to time discuss the number of posts that I have made in the Open Congress Forums. As it has been a week since the election results were confirmed, this is that first report.

In-Game Votes

Donate 487 CZK from country accounts to Revenue Canada
Voted Yes. I suspect that this was a bit of a glitch in the way voting is set up. The actual proposal occurred on Election day and was timed so that it extended into the mandate of the new Congress. As a result the motion received 42 votes total despite the fact that there are only 40 members in any given Congress and several (three I think) members of the old Congress had resigned before the motion was proposed.

Increasing the Minimum Wage from $1.50 to $1.60
Voted No. The principal reason was that the proposal was made illegally as defined by the rules of Congress. That is to say that it had not been debated for 24 hours and leave had not been given by the Speaker to propose the change In-Game. In fact at the time that the proposal was made the member making the proposal had not yet been granted their Congressional mask. Even had the proposal been properly I suspect I would have voted against. There was no need to increase the minimum wage. While wages have been and continue to be near the minimum level, the price of Q1 Food, the primary purchase for Skill Level 0 and even Skill Level 1 workers – the ones most likely to be paid Minimum Wage is at an all-time low, today down $0.14 from a month ago at this time.

Donations
There were five motions to donate various currencies to Revenue Canada rather than discuss them in detail – since to be honest the process is rather boring – I’ll simply state that I voted Yes on all of them.

Alliance with Australia
Voted Yes. This was a renewal of our long-standing alliance with Australia and something that is effectively rubber-stamped each time it comes up.

Issuance of $60000 for 300 Gold
Voted Yes. A standard budgetary operation.

In-Forum Votes

January Budget
Voted Yes. Again, this was one of those things that was carried over from the previous Congress but which was still available to vote on when the new Congress was finally masked.

First Round Speaker Vote
Which turned out to be the only round of the Speaker election. Voted for Alias Vision – I seconded his nomination. PimpDollaz was elected with a true majority (otherwise there would have been a second round of voting) and has and will make an excellent Speaker.

First Round Congressional Awards Vote
Which again turned out to be the only round. Voted for eventual winner Addy Lawrence. I may not always agree with his positions, but I do think that he presents his arguments well, which is part of what the Congressional Award was created to honour.

Vote to ratify the Charter of the Francophone Office
The intention of the Francophone Office is to operate as a translation service both for government and members of the private sector. The people working for the Office will be salaried as translation is a time consuming task. Despite some concerns expressed by Greg McNeish concerning the power that Congress has over the Office if something goes wrong I voted yes, with the understanding that the Charter can be modified after the fact to deal with some concerns.

Vote on Compensation for the 8 Iron Companies that were selling on the market at the time of the increase in Income Tax.
Voted Yes even though I was fully aware that the motion will be defeated. I’ll get into my support of this shortly when I discuss my Forum posts.

Forum Posts

In the time since I received Congressional Forum masking on January 27 th I have made 12 posts on the Open Door Congressional forums. This is of course in addition to postings in Closed Door Congress which I cannot discuss here. There are three sets of comments that I really want to comment on.

The first of these relates to the placing of the recently completed Q3 Hospital built by the NB Pride organization. Like a number of other members, including both Congressmen from New Brunswick I expressed support for placing the Hospital despite our Fortress strategy (and for Rylde to say something like that is... well, let’s just say that it’s very much unlike him). There are a considerable number of reasons for supporting this, perhaps the least of which is that with a considerable amount of dedication and one might even say passion they have completed the project. This despite the fact that Rigour6 and the other supporters of NB Pride have been attacked and ridiculed by proponents of the Fortress Strategy. When, – or perhaps I should say If since it hasn’t been proposed by President Jacobi yet – the hospital is placed I believe that it will have a positive effect on player retention if it only serves as a funnel for players entering into the game from the real New Brunswick. If this works – and if someone is interested in tracking this for a month or two, I believe that there are tools available that will help – this could be a model worth pursuing.

The second group of posts I’d like to discuss are related to the Francophone Office. The program was intended to operate with a four month test period to evaluate the effectiveness of the Office. My principal concern at that point was that despite the fact that I think the program will be a beneficial one, a period of four months in this game is an absurdly long period of time. My proposal on this matter was that the initial test phase of the program last for two months with the potential to extend the trial period by a further two months if the results were inconclusive one way or another. My second post on this issue was in response to Greg McNeish’s comment on the need for greater Congressional control over the Office. Greg’s point was that the Act as written didn’t allow sufficient Governmental Control over the Secretary General of the Francophone Office, given that the Office would be in receipt of government funds, vote d by Congress. My response was that Government oversight existed but it was in the form of the Executive branch of Government – represented by the Ministry of Official Languages – rather than in direct control by Congress.

The third group of posts I want to discuss is perhaps the most contentious. It concerns compensation for Iron companies that were effectively destroyed by the increase of income taxes on workers in the Iron industry. There is no doubt that these companies weren’t efficient producers of Iron and that it was probably better for the country if they ceased operations. That said, there was considerable resistance among the owners of the eight companies that still had product on the market. There businesses were effectively destroyed and while most of the owners had other businesses there were repercussions. In several cases the businesses were part of an interlocking ownership structure where the Iron company supplied raw materials to a Weapons company owned by the same group. The intention of the compensation package was to pay a portion of the cost of starting a business – 10 Gold or the equivalent – to each of the eight company owners. There were a variety of questions, one of which was how to stop the company owners from restarting the businesses after compensation. The answer was for the government to buy the companies. The question then became where to put them since no organization can own more than one business in the same sector. Detractors of the plan declared that the cost of starting orgs to house the companies would be too great an extravagance, but as I pointed out – repeatedly – the Government already has a large number of orgs that don’t own Iron companies... or anything for that matter. These would be a perfect place to park the closed down companies, particularly if V2 brings a re-evaluation of the Quebec Iron industry (it really should, but probably won’t).

In the end it appears that any effort to offer compensation to Iron companies is going down to defeat. It is my opinion however that this matter illustrates a flaw in our way of doing Governmental business when it relates to dealing with the industrial sector. We are able to pass laws with regards to income and import tax changes and minimum wages but as often as not we do not consult the people most directly impacted by these changes. For the most part these changes aren’t major and the impact that they have on businesses would be considered to be at worst an inconvenience. Nevertheless the people who are most affected by these changes are the very ones who are not consulted. We have some excellent economic brains in eCanada offering opinions about the effects that our actions in these areas but in many cases these are theoretical models rather than based on actual knowledge. There were Iron company owners in Congress when the tax change to the domestic Iron industry was being discussed and they made cogent arguments – I know because I read the debate at the time – but none of them owned domestic Iron companies. I want to believe that if these company owners had had a hearing of their concerns about the proposed income tax changes rather than having them effectively sprung on them when the matter came up for an In-Game vote they would at least have had some advance knowledge of what was occurring and why. In the real world legislative bodies hold hearings with regard to these matters so that they can be discussed with those people outside of Parliament who are most affected by the changes they propose. What I would like to see Congress do is to hold “hearings” in the Legislative Branch section of the eCanada Forums – that is the portion of the forums dealing with Legislative Branch matters that the public has access to and can post to – and the relevant members of the public notified, probably through eCBC and eSRC. At least that way, people couldn’t say that they didn’t have a voice in the matter.