The Speaker's Word: 71st Congress, Vol. 2 - This Week in Congress
George Armstrong Custer
The Speaker's Wor
😛71st Congress, Vol. 2 - This Week in Congress
Welcome to THE SPEAKER'S WOR
😨the official journal of the eUSA Congress.
Dateline: Saturday, November 2 (Day 2174)
Location: 71st US Congress
Editor: George Armstrong "F-Bomb" Custer
Music: ELO: Out of the Blue (full album, 1977)
The Word of the Day:
: 1: This Week's Congressional Activity
: 2: Immigration Stats of Recent Months
Editor's Note: Still no word on the log in info to the real Speaker's Word; I'll continue to publish it in my own paper. So, yeah, Subs are personally appreciated.
As promised, at least one Word per week. I'd like to do more, but RL has me short on game time and I'm doing well to keep up with my duties as a Congressman much less try to publish this paper more than once this week.
This Week's Congressional Activity
These things are all in the Public Congressional Proceedings section of the eUS Forum. I hope that by bringing a summary of these activities to this newspaper is of help and value to you, the US citizen and voter.
First order of business is always the initial sign in. 37 Congressmen signed in; Quorum was set at 19. Quorum is half the number who do the weekly sign in, plus one, which becomes the minimum number of votes needed to pass a Vote during the following week.
[Discussion] Automatically ABSTAIN count - removing Quorum was an idea that came and went pretty quickly, the prevailing position being that the basic form and intent of Quorum is sound and shouldn't be fu*ked with.
Second regular order of business is always the election of the Speaker of the House. The Speaker is like the traffic cop-- makes sure forum topics are in the correct section (Private or Public), then monitors for behavior. Posters who disrespect each other may be warned to chill out, or have their posts removed and they get blocked for a week. Here's the Nominations and Vote threads.
Speaker appoints their own DepSpeaker(s) (covers the same duties when the Speaker is busy) and Whip (tasked with game mailing all Congressmen to keep them up on what to read and where to Vote).
The Librarian is also appointed by the Speaker, but the job is often a "legacy" position held for several months by someone who volunteers for the tedious duty.
The IES Immigration) Director is elected by Congress, without a term limit. IES Directors usually serve until they burnout or Congress decides they want to replace them. (thanks, John Largo, for the correction!)
Your 71st Congressional leadership team:
Speaker: Evry
Deputy Speaker: Kortanul
Deputy Speaker: AlexJ1890
Congressional Whip: NewAzazel
Librarians: rainy sunday
IES Director: Malarkey83
Then there was the matter of a prominent player wanting to return to US citizenship after some time abroad, but didn't want to do the IES application and wait a day for approval.
First there was a thread calling for the Censure of the approving Congressman, in which we were reminded that Censure is automatic and what's needed is a Discussion and Vote on whether or not to revoke that Censure.
After much discussion, it was disclosed that IES boss Malarkey83 had approved of the approval, making that whole Discussion moot.
But in the course of that discussion it was suggested that there might be developed a "pre-approval white list," later termed a "Rainbow list," where Congressmen might go to find a list of expatriates who are pre-cleared for return. That topic ran a long course through Discussion and Vote, culminating in not meeting quorum (see above for that definition), and being locked.
The next day another Discussion thread was opened, citing that the lack of quorum was probably more about bad timing than lack of interest. This new Discussion thread was monitored by Speaker Evry, declaring that we should continue to discuss the matter but not try taking it to a vote till a week has passed, assuring both interest and awareness of that Vote thread.
This whole set of threads can be found here, here, here, and here.. and... here.
I hope our readers actually read the whole lot of related threads before Commenting here, and understand that this is being handled by Congress-- that's our job, and we're doing it. Input by the citizenry is always a good thing; pointless sh*tstorms are not. This is about procedure, developing rules and/or guidelines to follow consistently, not about any one case in point... so don't beat that dead horse into the ground, okay?
An-n-n-n-nd... back to a topic related to the election of a Speaker, we have the [Discussion] Modification of The Code of the eUS Section 2.21 thread.. basically wanting to nail down some seemingly ambiguous phrasing in that Code Section relating to the qualifications for nomination and serving as Speaker of the House.
It's a nitty detail, and discussion is ongoing.. may or may not be taken to a Vote, and it's pretty dry reading unless you're a freak for "legalese."
Speaker of the House gets to add/remove people from a list of Congressional Advisers, and Evry asked for some input on the possibility of culling the list a bit-- there are nearly as many Advisers (who are involved in all Discussions) as there are actual voting Congressmen.
There's a certain number of Advisers who are automatic-- all Top Five Party Presidents, The President, and a bunch of others.. those automatically considered as Advisers number around 19, the rest being comprised of former Dept heads and prominent high-influence players with a sh*t ton of experience, whose advice is well considered.
This thread is actually interesting, because there's not many of these Advisers we'd want to exclude from our think tank process, yet the "too many cooks" principle does apply and someone's got to go.
So.... what's left? OH! The Budget! That's the main task assigned to Congress each month.
Each month the SecTreasury and Econ Advisory Board present to Congress a Budget they've developed and feel is not too hot, not too cold, but just right. New Congressmen usually ask questions to better understand the Budget and the various line-holders, and why each one is allotted the amounts listed. Old Congressmen might see that something needs to be added, or the numbers adjusted. Congress is loathe to simply "rubber stamp" a Budget without at least understanding it-- this is our job, and Discussion is us doing our job.
This month it was suggested we include, since it is a regular monthly bill we have to pay, our membership dues for the CoT alliance. We can go 'round and 'round about whether or not other alliance members are paying their share, and base our own desire to pay up or not on how other members are doing.. Or not. We could just decide that that debate is best left to CoT leadership in their own forums and courts, but here in Congress we pay our bills. So "CoT Monthly taxes" is now a Budget Line, properly Discussed (some aspects of CoT Taxes were Discussed in Congress-Private for security reasons) and now a part of the final version of the Budget that's presently up for a Vote.
Immigration Stats of Recent Months
Interesting entry in the The Legislative Branch » IES section: IES Statistics Update by IES Director Malarkey83.
While I won't repeat or copy/paste the information here-- if you survived the above segment your eyes are probably
In short, though, Director Malarkey83 outlines the number of citizenship approvals each month from June through October. They're broken down by Illegal (mostly AFA Congressmen), ATO (brought in to counter those Illegals, to help beat the AFA PTOs), and Legal (processed according to IES guidelines).
While we've always known that Ajay/RGR has been bringing in people to help him in his endless quest to screw America, it's interesting to now see the numbers.. indisputable facts.
Editor's Note: Of all people, Ajay/RGR brings it to my attention that this is not in a Public section of the forum. I apologize, and will see if I can get clearance to post some of the important parts.
George Armstrong Custer
on behalf of Speaker of the House Evry and Deputy Speakers Kortanul and AlexJ1890
Please promote this edition of The Speaker's Word by using this Shout... a lot.
The Speaker's Word
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/2336351/1/20
71st Congress; Volume 2
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Comments
I hope that by bringing a summary of these activities to this newspaper is of help and value to you, the US citizen and voter.
Thank you for keeping congress accountable
INSURGIO~
Why would you not just use the org?
try reading it 😛
who reads 'official' articles?
people who don't want to ask stupid questions that are answered in the article? 😛
Good Article...except one error
"IES (Immigration Dept) falls under Congressional purveyance, its Director appointed by the President."
The IES director is elected by congress, without a term limit. IES Directors usually serve until they burnout or congress decides they want to replace them. Maybe you were thinking of the Department of Homeland Security, which is appointed by the President and works closely with IES.
indeed-- thank you, John Largo, I'll do the edit now.
~INSURGIO~~
What is the point of publishing a link to the IES statistics when only 40 people can see it?
sorry, thought it was in a Public section.
I'll see if I can get clearance to paste some of the good parts here.
of all people.. thanks for bringing that to my attention, Ajay/RGR.
After seeing known turncoat Benedict Pfeiffer get approved and the criminal get away with it, I am VERY concerned about all eLaws and eRegulations being followed.
Eh the problem with eRep is there are only so many things you can do.
I think it is pretty impressive what I have done given the circumstances.
If this were a RL battle then some cunning strategy could mean victory, but it's not, it's eRep, so meh.
Lmao, like you had any real interests in the IES procedures.
you're simply attempting to understand why you're getting beat so badly.
protip: it's your personality.
which is, specifically, why this information remains classified.
there ya go, America-- Ajay/RGR is the root cause of your government's inability to be perfectly transparent in the basically simple matter of Immigration statistics, because his twisted genius will find a way to use that information to develop yet another way to fu*k America.
....don't compare my genius with ajay
75/710
voted for Custer
Vote, nice article.
Excellent work, Custer...\0/
Great work Custer, as always!
Voted!
"After much discussion, it was disclosed that IES boss Malarkey83 had approved of the approval, making that whole Discussion moot........This is about procedure, developing rules and/or guidelines to follow consistently, not about any one case in point..."
__________________
Have you concluded that the proceedure was not followed? Isn't that the point which is not moot?
It strains credibility that Proteus was aware IES had approved his actions. He says they didn't. Everyone was pretty much in agreement. Perhaps he should not be sanctioned because of the specific circumstances and that is indeed Congress' decision. But on the point you raise namely consistently following pre-established proceedure, the conclusion seems inescapable: that standard was not met.
All ends well however. Regards
oliver: "strains credibility" or "strains credulity"?
As the IES Director WA unavailable for immediate come on the situation, we were operating on what we did have. Once Malarkey told us that it was in fact approved by him for acceptance, then the question of legality was answered.
Okay so you want to see how credulous I am... not that much. There is a proceedure to be followed by congressmen. In this particular instance it wasn't followed. The applicant may have been approved after the fact, and that makes a lot of sense: no harm was done. What is apparent from the congress posts and review of the relevant list is that the applicant was not on the approved list, that the congressman knew it or was willfully blind to it, that the congressman had not sought any other approval and granted citizenship because he judged it was a reasonable thing to do. If by "legality" you mean that the error led to no harm or that it was cured post facto, we are agreed. However, the Speaker had raised a specific issue: "developing rules and/or guidelines to follow consistently, not about any one case in point..." It wouldn't kill anyone to admit that proceedures are not consistently followed when it comes to our friends - a pretty common phenomenon.
Paul contacted Malarkey via text your and received approval prior to accepting. So procedure was followed but the rest of Congress didn't have the whole picture.
I can't find it in me to disrespect and insult Paul Proteus by believing he received approval before the fact. If he had received approval, he is not the kind of person who would mock other players by keeping it a secret and watching from the sidelines as the debate went on for pages, right to a vote on censure. He is not the kind of player who would mislead in his own posts, the ones where he admitted his error and said nothing about receiving approval. Or am I mistaken, as often I am?
No use trying to establish proceedures if players are going to buy this kind of buloney: there will always be an explanation, and it will always be accepted, no matter its merit. I prefer Paul's initial honesty: I didn't follow the proceedure 'cause its a game and it was the right thing to do.
Paul admitted that Malarkey's response wasn't completely clear, but his interpretation was that it was approved, and he went with it to avoid waiting with someone he knows personally.
please click through for my Comment:
http://eusaforums.com/forum/index.php/topic,28868.msg492807.html#msg492807
I concede the point that when you are dealing with a friend, when there is no urgency and when the friend refuses to fill out the prescribed form because he is special, it is perfectly appropriate to ignore all the usual proceedures, call another friend who gives you a vague answer, and then do what you wanted to do all along for your first friend. If that is the standard, it has indeed been met.
The speaker was, I thought, considering something different: rules and proceedures to be followed consistently. Followed consistently so that the sanction of automatic censure made sense. Followed consistently so that congress would not be faced with a member and players forgetting to mention something as unimportant as "I sought and obtained authorization". Followed consistently so that a player didn't repeatedly say "I didn't follow the rules", and then change that to "oh yeah, forgot to tell you, I followed the rules". Followed consistently so that players wouldn't be asked to believe wholesale nonsense. Bright line rules are useful.
Having accepted your point, however, I withdraw gracefully and send -
kind regards.
you're good, olivermellors. you're absolutely right to call Bullsh*t when you see it-- when people stop doing that, the whole system breaks down.
Thank you!!!
Great job.
Excellent work, thank you for keeping us updated.
35 comments and over 200 votes. I demand a recount.