First Day in Congress

Day 1,619, 14:09 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by Death and Taxes

Hello. If you don't know me my name is Malbekh, formerly of Libertad-IRE and currently working on secondment as quartermaster for the eIrish Boot Camp.

Running for congress is not a decision to be taken lightly, I have been lucky in that my first run for congress coincided with joining the Irish Freedom Party. The IFP is a well established party that had fallen on barren times, dropping to 6th in size and therefore not having any congress members.

It's been a pleasure to have been involved in the restoration of the party in the last few weeks, resulting in a well-managed campaign under our party president, Bryan O'Shea. The results speak for themselves: http://www.erepublik.com/en/country/politics/Ireland

I would like to take this opportunity to thank those of you who voted for us, and I promise that at the very least, we will listen to what you wish of our country and enact legislation as fairly as we can.

I think it's important that rather than disappearing into Congress and never been seen again, that I make an effort to connect to those of you who have never been to congress before and would like to know more about what the hell is going on.

So to start with, let's see what happened so far today.

First up, every time someone makes a proposal I get a message inviting me to check the proposal and vote on it. At the moment it looks like this:



Choices are, resign (I'll get back to this later), make one of your two proposals per term, or check pending legislation. When you check legislation you get a page you are all familiar with:



So this proposal is from fellow IFP representative, Strong Hammer and by clicking on the Yes or No detail I cast my vote.

So let's look at the legislation today.



BiednyMis wanted to increase food taxes on imports from 40% to 99%. I sent a PM to Biedny and asked him why. His reasoning is that he wants to protect Irish Food producers from competition from abroad, and a higher tax rate would give the government a greater tax take. It's important to remember that Irish producers hire Irish workers and pay them for that service, however, I have decided to vote against this, because of my connection to the Boot Camp and it's important that they have access to cheap food.

Maybe a smaller increase would have been a better idea. BiednyMis is Polish and lives in Ireland, and BiednyMis means 'Poor Bear' in Polish. I like BiednyMis and he's an excellent member of congress.

Next up, we have Viktor Kurgan's attempt to impeach the current CP here:



I like Kurgan, but this is pointless trolling. I'm surprised that 10 people voted in favour of the proposal. Impeaching a president is a serious affair, I know iBhoy has a ...how shall I say it.......colourful past, but I've seen nothing in his term that deserves impeachment for.

I asked Kurgan for a response, none was forthcoming

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SO: Kurgan has responded to inform me that he does this for every CP when he is elected Congressman, he even did it with Bhane. Does that make it OK? Well, not from my point of view, but at least you know what one piece of legislation is going to be....
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Then we have two proposals by Grubb





The first proposal is to NE Norway (because we have a border with them), and the second is a money rights issue linked to a dodgy Swedish gambling den.

Grubb subsequently resigned and left Ireland for Sweden (which explains the NE). When I tracked down Grubb in his brothel outside of Gothenburg he made the following comment:

"Cos i trolled and went back home, ho nomo."

Now this is mildly amusing but raises the following questions:

Who let Grubb into Ireland first, and for what reasons?
Why was he allowed to run for congress and is there no vetting of candidates?
Who voted for him, and why?

Because we are now down one congressman, with many candidates not elected who aren't trolls and would have made a contribution to this term.

The last piece of legislation is here:



Now Strong Hammer is a fellow IFP congressman, but I am voting against this. In practice, what Strong is asking for is a fair minimum wage for everyone, and that is commendable, but unfortunately a large number of factories are work communes. In the commune usually run by military units, a small nominal rate is set but the worker gains weapons in lieu of this, usually at a higher rate than a normal wage. The balance of the weapons are then sold to make up for the raw material costs and also to generate a small profit, if any.

As this proposal would destroy this principal and force workers to leave to work in communes outside of Ireland, I have voted against it.

I hope this helps the casual viewer understand a little bit about how congress works. A common theme to this newspaper will be my aspiration to ensure that future congressmen are in it only for the country and not for themselves.

Thanks

tl;dr?