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In 1918, Transylvania became Romania and Dracula became President of eRomania. True story.

Blog Talk Radio Show Note: I will be on Voice of America, 10pm Central/11pm Eastern on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009.



Hello again, everyone! I was going to put this part at the end, but I'd like to have some fun stuff in this article before I get into the super-long Voting Record. So without further ado...

Society Page





Weddings




Fionia and Devan Kronos



A real Congressional wedding will tentatively be held Nov. 21, in the evening on IRC, with the marriage of Senators Devan Kronos and Fionia. Senator Astra Kat G will be their Maid of Honor and, of course, who else but Senator Cerb will be the requisite Best Dog that every eWedding needs.

Official Announcement. Be sure to watch this newspaper for a finalized date and time.





Whispering Elizabeth and Boethiah



It's a nice day for a Green Wedding! Across the seas, in the nation of eSingapore, two prominent members of the Singapore Green Party have announced their upcoming nuptials. SGP President Boethiah and Councillor of Justice Whispering Elizabeth will be wed Nov. 23 at 14:00 eRep time (5pm EST) on Rizon IRC #greenpartySG.

Official Announcement.




Divorce


eItaly leaves PEACE GC; cites multiple reasons for the split.

Following their marriage of a year and three months, eItaly and PEACE GC cited "irrevocable differences" in their announced split today. Italy has been with PEACE since the very beginning and the two have been through a lot together, whether it be repelling foreign invaders or defending mutual friends.

Unfortunately, PEACE just isn't the same PEACE that Italy remembers from the good old days and hasn't been for a long time. It seems PEACE plans on becoming even more deeply entrenched in the warfare that Italy dislikes, even going as far as to be in the process of drafting a new, more aggressive PEACE charter.

How is PEACE handling the split? With sadness but wishing Italy the best, so far. It remains to been seen whether that sadness will turn to anger. PEACE generally doesn't take kindly when someone wants to leave, but out of respect for their long-term commitment to each other, perhaps PEACE will let Italy go without throwing a fit.



Voting Record - Day 17

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: wapu
Description: Do you agree to transfer 6661 HUF from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 49 Yes, 0 No
Details: After kicking out eHungary, we had an excess of HUF in our treasury. There are discussions as to whether use the HUF to buy weapons or put it on the Monetary Market to convert it to gold; either way would be fine by me. Guns for Huns... to shoot them with. Bought by HUF. Hah. Senator wapu has since resigned, following some very vocal differences he had with certain people, mostly non-Senators, and was generally fed up with Congress as I recall. His is the first donation of the term because he's the one who, since the 21st Congress, championed an organized effort to schedule donations. ... In other words, he made the list, so his name was first on the list. 😉

Proposal: Alliance
Proposed by: JoaoSatan
Description: President of Romania proposed a mutual protection pact with USA
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 48 Yes, 0 No
Details: MPP renewal with our MPP buds in eRomania. Anyone else find it a little funny that the President of the land of Transylvania is Satan?

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: Astra Kat G
Description: Do you agree to transfer 55045 USD from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 48 Yes, 0 No
Details: Both as a means to keep the donation-a-day thing we had going in the previous term of Congress, and because I hadn't gotten around to mailing the person next on the list ahead of time, I proposed this donation myself. The reasoning was mostly to provide more USD to the military in case of further foreign aggression. Our position was somewhat tenuous at this time or at least that was the general feeling in the air.

Proposal: Issue Money
Proposed by: Tormod
Description: Do you agree with the proposal to issue 200000 USD for 1000 GOLD?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 45 Yes, 0 No
Details: Dollar, dollar. We needed mad moneyz for the Q6 Mansion and off-the-hook inaugural bash. But seriously, we needed more money to make the wheels of the military spin round and round. We were able to do this because of the large allied presence in eUSA. See, allies came to eUSA to help us push out eHungary in a war with no MPPs, so they needed to buy USD in order to buy weapons, and a lot of that was bought from the Congressional Budget Office, creating a large profit of Gold. A portion of that was then used to issue USD, which we can do at a large profit due to the difference in conversion rate. So theoretically we could make a lot of money this way whenever we want, but we can't do it too often or we'll devalue the currency and, well, screw ourselves. But as long as the demand for USD is high, as it appears to be, we're fine.

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: Samuel Brouillette
Description: Do you agree to transfer 1335 PTE from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 42 Yes, 0 No
Details: Moving foreign currency out of the Treasury to be sold on the MM or used to purchase goods.

Proposal: Alliance
Proposed by: Gaius Julius
Description: President of USA proposed a mutual protection pact with Australia
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 47 Yes, 1 No
Details: I voted Yes this time; I don't know who that 1 No vote is; the public voting record only reveals Yes votes and it's not like everyone recorded their votes there to begin with. Following the successful liberation of Western Australia from Indonesia, this was signed so that we could protect them from Indonesian aggression. Apparently they felt their efforts were better spent on neutral Malaysia.

Proposal: New Citizen Message
Proposed by: Gaius Julius
Description: Do you agree on the text used by the president to welcome new Citizens in your country?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 45 Yes, 0 No
Details: This was meant to correct previous problems with coding, but due to different coding problems, it required replacing itself. Still, I'm pretty sure the URLs at least showed up this time around.

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: ligtreb
Description: Do you agree to transfer 99999 USD from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: No
Result: 37 Yes, 5 No
Details: The first of a couple Donation proposals made in defiance of the plan to cease donations to the CBO until an Admin-enforceable contract could be sorted out. SoH Killing Time has since apologized, saying that he should've made it clearer that he would've only wanted funding to stop for 48 hours and had no intention of cutting off the transfer of funds to the military should they request it. I voted No to support my Speaker of the House and trusted that his superior experience in Congress meant that it'd be best to follow the plan he endorsed... I wrote more in depth about the supposed "shenanigans" in a previous article.

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: Bradley Reala
Description: Do you agree to transfer 99999 USD from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 39 Yes, 4 No
Details: The second of a couple Donation proposals made in defiance of the plan to cease donations to the CBO until an Admin-enforceable contract could be sorted out. We had a contract signed and ready by the end of the day; I held my vote until after this was done and then voted Yes, cos we had a contract, even though there was no official receding of the plan. To be clear, Congress never got a chance to vote on that plan, and given the resistance we found for it, Congress likely wouldn't have done it, but it did accomplish what it set out to do after much delay on this issue by all parties concerned.

Proposal: Alliance
Proposed by: Gaius Julius
Description: President of USA proposed a mutual protection pact with Finland
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 44 Yes, 0 No
Details: Regular MPP renewal.

Proposal: Alliance
Proposed by: Cj Will Win
Description: President of Israel proposed a mutual protection pact with USA
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 47 Yes, 0 No
Details: Regular MPP renewal.

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: Aldric Harper
Description: Do you agree to transfer 99999 USD from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 47 Yes, 0 No
Details: Money matters.

Proposal: Alliance
Proposed by: Gaius Julius
Description: President of USA proposed a mutual protection pact with Spain
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 44 Yes, 0 No
Details: Regular MPP renewal.

Proposal: Alliance
Proposed by: Eleriel
Description: President of Switzerland proposed a mutual protection pact with USA
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 46 Yes, 0 No
Details: Certain members of PEACE GC claimed that eUSA was shamefully PTO'ing eSwitzerland in the previous Congressional elections. I think this makes it pretty clear that eSwitzerland thanks eUSA for the voting efforts done on its behalf. We did, after all, follow official government instructions and coordinated our efforts with the president of the country.

Proposal: Alliance
Proposed by: DaLe
Description: President of Czech Republic proposed a mutual protection pact with USA
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 45 Yes, 0 No
Details: Regular MPP renewal.

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: Rheinlander von Phalz
Description: Do you agree to transfer 99999 USD from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 47 Yes, 0 No
Details: Money matters.

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: sydiot
Description: Do you agree to transfer 1874 HUF from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 48 Yes, 0 No
Details: I think this was HUF that we got following one of the final battles of Alaska (we did have more than one "final" battle, as it turns out... first against the Hungarians, then against Russia).

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: Evan Feinman
Description: Do you agree to transfer 46436 USD from the country accounts to Flying Unicorn Squadron?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 49 Yes, 0 No
Details: The beginning of War Bond repayments! Huzzah! The other approximate half will be transferred from the CBO to FUS directly, once this half has been fully distributed.

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: CrashNBurn
Description: Do you agree to transfer 434 SKK from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 44 Yes, 0 No
Details: Money matters.

Proposal: New Citizen Message
Proposed by: Josh Frost
Description: Do you agree on the text used by the president to welcome new Citizens in your country?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 36 Yes, 3 No
Details: This was meant to correct previous problems with coding, but I'm still not convinced that pre-testing in regular eRep mail is enough to ensure that the actual message works (in a previous message, hidden HTML URLs worked in regular eRep mail but failed to work in the New Citizen Message), so I'd like someone to create a new account and see for themselves. I think the main opposition to this was ill-informed wishing that the links be actual links (we decided to go without code this time), those people blissfully unaware or stubbornly obstinate of all the time we'd just spent trying to get links to work. We tried everything. The last attempt had some sort of weird BBC code popping up and I don't know if that's because someone submitted it for approval with BBC code or not but you know what? Whatever. If some other Congress wants to start this up again for another two months, go right ahead! I wash my hands of it. It's not that hard to copy and paste URLs, people. *UPDATE* In the course of writing this article, I got a message from someone who tested it out and it worked great! Yay! Thanks, 7227! No I'm not deleting the previous wall-of-text rant I have in this space, hah.

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: St Krems
Description: Do you agree to transfer 541 RON from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 41 Yes, 0 No
Details: Money matters.

Proposal: Alliance
Proposed by: Josh Frost
Description: President of USA proposed a mutual protection pact with Greece
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 41 Yes, 0 No
Details: Preemptive MPP extension. I'm not sure, but I think this was the first of a few MPP renewals that were designed to extend already existing ones by an entire month before the MPP cost goes up to 100 G. The Czech Republic might've actually been the first of those, or one even earlier than that, but in any case, that's the rationale behind the decision. If I were running the nation, I would've extended all MPPs by another month, but we only did a few... I'm the kind of person who likes to take advantage of a bargain and pay now rather than pay more later.

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: Fionia
Description: Do you agree to transfer 1233 RUB from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 46 Yes, 0 No
Details: Money matters. I think this was a sum that we got from defeating Russia in Alaska that last time.

Proposal: Alliance
Proposed by: aurelije the family guy
Description: President of Croatia proposed a mutual protection pact with USA
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 46 Yes, 0 No
Details: Regular MPP renewal, possibly with the 100 G price tag? I forget when I first noticed it took 100 G to do an MPP rather than 30 G. Looking at the Military page now, I think the Admins may've screwed us over or they're severely rounding down... none of the alliances are for more than one month, whereas just a week earlier, two or three of them said two months.

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: Devan Kronos
Description: Do you agree to transfer 84012 USD from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 45 Yes, 0 No
Details: Money matters. I decided that it was better to transfer two thousand gold's worth of USD rather than the next highest foreign currency, worth only almost 11 gold. You know, in case we need it for, like, military stuff or something. Natch. Waiting a day on this could be disastrous. Amirite? Heh.

Proposal: Alliance
Proposed by: Josh Frost
Description: President of USA proposed a mutual protection pact with Poland
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 43 Yes, 0 No
Details: Regular MPP renewal. Most acknowledge that even the eUS can't afford the 100 G cost for MPPs and that at some point, someone is going to have to lose out... of course, that's keeping in mind that eUSA has something like 18 of them. Definitely more than most countries.

Proposal: Alliance
Proposed by: SetsunaX
Description: President of Malaysia proposed a mutual protection pact with USA
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 44 Yes, 0 No
Details: Regular MPP renewal. Anyone who thought USA would forget Malaysia, under imminent threat of war, just because of a 100 G price tag doesn't know USA that well. With talk of starting up US/Irish war games (please, Ireland?), though, Malaysia may not be so lucky next month. We were only MPPed with them to begin with cos of the war games they hosted.

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: DanielCD
Description: Do you agree to transfer 643.3 ZAR from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 46 Yes, 0 No
Details: Money matters. Good job including the cents!

Proposal: Donate
Proposed by: Daniel Dodge
Description: Do you agree to transfer 143 CHF from the country accounts to Congressional Budget Office?
Voting Choice: Yes
Result: 45 Yes, 0 No
Details: Here's the contribution to Swiss National Bank I was talking about. To avoid any unnecessary trolling of Congress (ugh, you know who you are...), I proposed that this be donated to the CBO first and then transferred to Swiss National Bank from there. Shouldn't be that hard to do.



Also, I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a fund that's been created to help other nations MPP with USA despite the increased MPP cost. It's called the UASCD. Read more about it here.

Help out smaller nations, America,
~ Katherine "Astra" Gallagher