Join the new world

D'awwwwww~!

I spent most of today just reviewing the Congressional subboards and trying to get a handle on everything I'd missed over the last term. There was a lot more drama on the private boards that I ever would've anticipated, but considering this recent election went smoothly, I think Congress/FEC ironed out the majority of the problems they were having. For the last term, I think I managed to convey to my readers the main, important stuff without getting sucked into the drama. Also, had to mass-mail Congress about something today, but I'll elaborate on that in my Voting Record if anyone cares.

Other than that, things are proceeding almost exactly like they did last term, with Speaker of the House nominations/votes, Senator Mentor stuff, etc. Voting on Speaker of the House started early this term, today even, because we've got three qualified candidates and may have to vote again after eliminating one of them, if it's close. It's SGGHays, rainysunday, and Haliman. I nominated rainysunday but now that I know that Deputy Speaker of the House and Congressional Whip can also be from outside of Congress, I'm thinking it might be better to have her in a support position, since she won't be around much in the first week of her duties. So I ultimately went with SGGHays, who implied that he'd like to have rainysunday on his team in some capacity; you can take a look at the public Congressional boards if you'd like to see how it's going.



Discussions have opened on various topics, let me see if I can run them all down for you...

Senator Syrup posted a couple of proposals he'd been saving up, one of which was about making a New Citizen Message and adding a mascot picture to it. I used the opportunity to discuss other things in the New Citizen Message that I'd been thinking about, but thought that as long as the President keeps up with a new one every term, there really isn't any reason for Congress to draft one. I rather much like the one we have almost completely as-is.

Anyway, Syrup's other topic was about creating a moderated newbie help chatroom on IRC, which then branched into a discussion about the in-game chatrooms vs. IRC. I contributed a suggestion to name it #eUSAHelp as it's short and easy to remember, but I honestly think we should focus on the channels already in the New Citizen Message that already have purposes and people idling in it, namely #tc and #usa-chat. A couple of old-timer Senators got into a cock fight over who's more awesome while somehow staying within the bounds of the discussion, but I ignored it. Any actual, important changes will be brought up in a formal proposal and I can vote on it then.



I opened a couple of discussions as well, one of which was about asking about how the budget gets reviewed and who gets what, when. I learned that the Office of Militia Support funds only two militias currently, SEAL Team 6 and S.E.E.S.'s party milita, the SS and that the Executive Fund is used for all sorts of executive functions, including MPPs, Declarations of War, and the cost of opening new battles. Department of the Interior funding goes primarily to the program Meals on Wheels and the military higher-ups divide up their decided percentage of government income amongst the various branches of the military.

Doesn't look like Congress is directly involved at all and that all of this runs through one of the positions Congress is in charge of appointing, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office. Congress sure seems to be good at delegating responsibility and then complaining about having nothing to do. Something Congress can do, as Publius was quick to remind us, is adjust percentages, for example increasing or decreasing the percentage of our income that goes towards the military. Didn't see them do it last term, though, and I don't expect them to do it this term, either.

The other topic of discussion I started had to do with new citizen retention. I asked a few questions last term, in between spurts of having no Internet, about newbie retention and they didn't get answered, so I took it upon myself to research what I could and posted everything I found along with whatever questions I had left. CRoy was kind enough to inform me that Justin McCravok was the go-to guy for the Department of Interior, which handles the majority of our new citizen needs, and I asked Justin to come to the thread to answer my questions. It was most enlightening. Ultimately, I hope the discussion will lead to a consolidation of Interior organization funds and resources; there's a ton of money just sitting around in government organizations not getting used and I'd like to see it get used to help newbies before more gets sent that way, if possible.



I then noticed a similar discussion being started by Senator Jasper Signa, though his idea also included an audit committee review of federal organizations. It was the same basic idea as my two topics, however, which was to take stock of our governmental resources and use them better.

All in all it was a busy Day 2. Apologies for not having a great variety of pictures, I'm kind of tired after all the "congressing" I did today, heh. In fact, everything took so long to do that I'm now technically publishing this very, very early on Day 3, but who's counting, right?





Day 1:

1. Donation
A. Money matters.
B. Voted Yes.

2. Alliance
A. ePoland always provides some sort of war for the eCountry and can do a lot of damage on its own; a long-time ally of this eCountry. And our President presented it, so you know it's all right.
B. Voted Yes.

Day 2:

1. Trading Embargo
A. Turkey's a long-time enemy of our ally Greece; I was going to ask President Lantrip about why this was deemed a fiscally worthy cause, but eh, I forgot. Not a huge deal, though, as I don't think anyone here's a fan of eTurkey anyhow.
B. Voted Yes.

2. Declaration of War
A. I wasn't worried about this Declaration of War because as early as election night Colin told us privately via IRC that something might be coming through and for us to hold our votes on it initially. That was followed up by a mass-mail by the Whip today and a forum topic by Colin asking us to hold our votes, eventually switching to asking us to vote no. I'm not sure what's going on, but judging by Colin's shout, it was some sort of a trick played on eIndonesia. Hopefully he'll soon enlighten us on the full story of this monkey business. I would've voted no anyway, unless it was proven that the legitimate government of eThailand wanted us to war with them for some reason. Thailand's traditionally neutral and I wouldn't want us to pull an Indo and invade.
B. Voted No.

3. Buy Constructions: Hospital
A. I voted no because the war's not going to happen. I had thought it possible that the other hospitals were just to make eIndonesia think that we were serious about going to war with them against eThailand, basing this on Colin's latest shout "Vote no on the DoW please! Thank You Indonesia! Glad to see you're up for it..." but it looks like I thought wrong. Yeah, I know it was lazy of me to vote with the majority at the time (5 Yes, 12 No) without making sure, but hey, I thought I knew what was going on without asking, heh. After I asked, because CRoy was bugging out about it (as he very well should've, but I was too lazy to do so), both Colin Lantrip and Alexander Hamilton (President and Vice President) told me that we should be voting yes on it and all other Qinghai hospitals since it's used for Resistance Wars in the region. Was that really so hard that they couldn't say it the last time we talked about Qinghai hospitals? But I know they're busy, so I don't really blame them, but a bit more explaining on election night could've saved me from being so misguided today. Well anyway, at that point, I knew a mass-message to all of Congress was necessary so I dropped what I was doing, posted on the forums, and mailed Congress about it, using a mailing list Congressional Whip rainysunday gave to me. I'm looking at it now, 36 to 12, which means there wasn't a single No vote after the mass-mailing, so it worked out all right in the end. It's nice to see Congress working well, even if it does sometimes take them a while.
B. Voted No.





If you're like me and you're tired of trying to figure out how to use Hospitals after yet another change and just want someone to tell you, along with a basic rundown of fighting in general, read this educational article.

The newest White House Press Release has some Congressional content so I feel like I should at least briefly plug it here.

Meanwhile, our new Chief of Staff would like to invite you to ask questions of your government here.

So Very Sleepy, eAmerica,
~Katherine "Astra" Gallagher