Political shenanigans

Day 1,353, 07:03 • Published in Canada United Kingdom • by Leo Balzac

Fellow citizens,

Most of you will not be aware, but I and another congress member have received a temporary 72 hour ban from congress for proposing an in game measure. I have read all kinds of arguments as to why this ban should be upheld, most of them ending with something like, “at the end of the day, the speaker gets to interpret the rules of order.” Fine. This is how it is written in our congressional rules of order, and therefore I accept my ban and will move on.

Before I move on, however, I must express my displeasure with the Speaker's decision in this matter. The heart of the issue here is a vote to make income taxes equal across all industries. While last term, the income tax on Raw material workers was raised to 6%, finished products remained at 3%. The discussion in congress was to level out the rates of income taxation across all four sectors of employment. This is where things got sticky.

A discussion was started in Open Doors Congress for all to see, it lasted more than 24 hours (again, which is the right of the speaker to extend debate time if he/she so chooses). Finally, Treian called for a vote. This motion to vote was never seconded, and if you read the rules of order, a motion for a vote must be seconded before it can actually be put to a vote. This, again, is merely a small technicality and I’m sure the Speaker had no intention of breaking the rules when he then started a vote on the forums.

Upon seeing the forum vote, I thought there must have been some mistake, as generally a motion involving an in-game vote would be voted on, in-game. Seeing as how the motion had been put to a vote in the forums, I took that as express permission to start a vote in-game, thinking the Speaker had made a simple mistake. Apparently this was not the case.

In defense of his actions the speaker says this:

“I knew there were people that didn't support changing the income tax levels but for whatever reason didn't post in the debate thread. You can see evidence of that in the voting thread where a majority of the votes are no.

The second factor was that I knew if we went to an in game vote immediately it would pass because a majority of congress people don't bother with the forums. They'd see a flood of proposals and just assume that they should vote yes on them. Once again this is exactly what happened.

The problem here isn't that these changes to Income Tax were proposed without authorization. The problem is that ANY proposals were started. It's a very slippery slope and it needs to be nipped in the bud.”

You see, it turns out that it isn’t so much a rules of order issue here. It’s the fact that the Speaker decided he didn’t think Congress was capable of making a proper decision if the vote was posted in-game, and therefore, decided to have a pre-vote vote on the forums. I used to wonder why it took congress so long to get anything done, well folks, I wonder no longer.

As I said in the beginning, according to the Congressional Rules of Order, the Speaker has final say when it comes to interpreting the rules. The Speaker feels that I broke the rules and has temp banned me from congress. Once again I do not take issue with this. My real issue is that there is room for the Speaker to interpret the rules in a way that makes it possible for the Speaker to influence the outcome of any vote. This I do not agree with and I will work to limit the ability of the Speaker to interpret rules of order on a broad level. The fact that I must now write up more legislation, to make the rules of order more cumbersome is something that I do not look forward to, but I simply can’t sit back and let someone with a personal agenda become Speaker, then try and influence the outcome of vote.


TL😉R

I accept my punishment
The Speaker is being a bit of a douche
I will try to limit the ability of future Speakers to be douchey.