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My name is SledDog and I am running for Congress from Nova Scotia for the EPIC party. I have been elected to Congress four times in the past and want to be elected again.

I first must apologize for not completing this sooner. I haven’t been feeling well for most of the past week – in fact I’m still not feeling all that great right now but it was a lot worse – so I haven’t been able to accomplish a lot of the things I should have towards making a good run at getting elected. At the same time I do think that there are issues that need to be discussed or at least put on the table.

The first thing I want to talk about is Transparency. In the past Transparency has been used to refer to a member’s voting record as a member of Congress. At first is was just a matter of discussing their votes on the Country Administration page and then their votes in Open Congress. However what I want to discuss right now is actual Governmental Transparency. It has been a while since I’ve followed the Open Congress section of the Forums diligently; I didn’t run for Congress last term because other interests took priority over the game for me, and as a result I was pretty much reduced to two-clicker status. So it came to me as something of a shock to discover how little is now being discussed in Open Congress. While it is true that there are many subjects that rightly belong in Closed Congress because they are truly matters of national security it believe that it is in the best interests of everyone that any material which absolutely doesn’t have to be treated in this manner be open to public examination. To paraphrase Woodrow Wilson I believe in open legislation openly arrived at.

The second issue I want to bring up is Industrial Policy in light of the upcoming transition to V2. There are two new industries being introduced which are not being migrated from a prior industry; Tanks and Artillery. I believe that it is in the best interests of the country to offer an incentive for new entrepreneurs – organizations that have no more than one company – to enter into these areas with a cash incentive. As I envisage such a program the Government would pay the equivalent of 5 Gold in CAD (at current market value) to those organizations that create a Tank or Artillery company and then apply for this government grant. The term for which this would be available would be limited – say one month with the option to extend it to a second month – but would give entrepreneurially minded people an opportunity to be rewarded while helping the national defence industries.

The final point that I would like to bring up is population growth, or more likely – at least in the near future – decline. I firmly believe that a population decline is what we are likely to see in the weeks following the final introduction of V2. Why? Because I believe that there are a number of two-clickers and other casual participants in the game who are not going to be willing to do what is necessary to play in the more complex world of V2. This will include not just gaining job skills in Manufacturing, Construction or Land occupations but have to further refine those skills; defining how their time will be spent, defining how their companies will craft their products, and so on. And that doesn’t even bring into consideration the military aspect of the game which is going to be more complex and PvP based. Population loss due to transition to V2 will have a military effect but there is also going to be a tremendous economic impact as well. What happens to Zombie workers and are they going to be an economic asset as they are now, or (more likely and probably more accurately) a liability? What about people who give V2 a try and quickly decide its not their cup of Red Rose? Most of all, and this is what government is going to have to plan for, how to we bring in new players to a game that at its simplest is more complex than the game that we started in and have stayed active in? I can’t give an answer to this one. All I can say is I have been playing this game for 375 days now (yeah I had my e-Birthday 10 days ago and didn’t even notice), and even though I have issues with the game both before and after the V2 changes were announced (some of my original concerns with the warfare system are never going to be addressed, and I’d still like to see something done to give regions more importance than just as places to move to for a few days to get elected) There isn’t much that will be able to pull me away from this game...and DC Universe Online (one of the things that COULD pull me away) isn’t due out until November. I at least am here for the long haul.