Join the new world

I'm ligtreb and I'm excited to be running for Congress in Colorado. I thought you might want to get to know me better and read my platform.

About Me

I've been a part of eRepublik for over two months now and have enjoyed it tremendously. I've worked and trained every day, fought in all the war games and been active on the forums. If elected, this would be my first time in Congress and I would do my best to serve Colorado and eUSA to the best of my ability. I have received the USWP's official endorsement to run. UPDATE: I'm also a new member of the Department of Education and look forward to helping new people learn about the game, stick around and help our country.

I want to hear from you!

What do you want to see from Congress? What do you want to see from me? I'm very open to your ideas. Feel free to tell me your thoughts either in the comments or in a message.

Commitment

This country has had a troubling outbreak of congressmen resigning before their terms are complete, and one of them was from Colorado in Josh Frost, the person I'm trying to replace. If elected, I promise to serve my full term and not move out of the country or resign for any reason.

Transparency

UPDATE: I have written an article on how I would've voted on the recent bills in congress.

There needs to be more transparency in our government, and if elected, I'm not going to be one of those congressmen you never hear from again. I plan to publish a newspaper article explaining my votes regularly. I will make sure to keep the Google Doc on the forum updated, and I also support the Public Information Act.

Budget & Taxes

I applaud the efforts of all those who worked on eUSA's first budget and hope we continue to make budgets in the future. It's important to know where our money is going and important to fund the military and infrastructure.

I know there's a popular sentiment here to lower taxes. But I don't see how we can do that without hurting our country and our budget. Yes, lowering taxes is a popular cause, but I'm going to do what I think is right, even if it's not popular. We don't fund a lot of unnecessary programs and pork like is done in real life. The overwhelming majority of our spending goes to the military, and most of the rest goes to Infrastructure (for all the complaints about Meals on Wheels, it's a very small percentage of our budget). I'm open to lowering taxes, but I need to see data that supports doing so first.

I love the progress that the Meals on Wheels program has made in keeping new players and will support it in Congress if elected. If it can help us retain new players, it will definitely be worth more than the investment by helping us keep more players, grow our power in numbers and help this country become a stronger world power.

War games

The war games with Mexico over the last couple of weeks have been excellent for us, and I will continue to support them. So long as they continue to be well-planned and agreed upon in advance, these war games should continue, as they help boost the wellness, experience and productivity of Americans.

Foreign Policy

The issue of PTOs (Political Takeovers) has been debated recently and I've had a change of heart here. In the past, I opposed them, and while I still don't like them, they've become a reality. If the PEACE countries and others use PTOs, we need to at least stop them if not performing our own. I agree with Publius and Scrabman's idea for The Moveable Voting Group to help combat a PEACE PTO.

We also need strong allies, so I would support our efforts to find more and recommend trying to strengthen ATLANTIS to help us before ever leaving and forming a new alliance.

No lulz proposals, but more lulz

Every term, it seems like several congressmen make proposals just for lulz and experience points. These proposals are often ridiculous in nature and have no chance of passing, like raising the New Citizen Fee and minimum wage to unworkable levels and the famous impeachment proposals just for fun. I don't like these and if elected, will not propose any. They're just a waste of time.

Still, eRepublik is a game, and it's important to have a good time here. I enjoy the Department of Fun and encourage everyone to subscribe to their newspaper, the National Fun Report.

Note: I consider this platform a work-in-progress and will more than likely make updates to it when news breaks or I've developed my ideas further.

Thanks for reading, and if you're in Colorado, please vote for me on April 25th.

-- ligtreb