Votes, Career Choices, and the Mistaken DIO

Day 908, 21:02 • Published in USA Austria • by Alex Lorre

So the main reason I decided to go ahead and do this article now was that I realized my shouted reply to some shouts I saw earlier needs to be retracted and since I already used up all my shouts I figured I would do it via news article that few people will see but oh well.


Death of a true god


So this morning (well 3 pm but still) I saw some shouts along the lines of "R.I.P. DIO". Thinking this some dioist affair I replied "Good riddance DIO" seeing as how I'm not a big fan of the whole dioist bananza. Unfortunately for me I later realized what the shouts were really about.

*REAL LIFE ALERT*

In an alternate universe that in some obscure way caused this universe to exist there was a god of metal named Ronnie James Dio who died today. This god was one worthy of worship in my opinion and truly he will be missed terribly. So for those who saw my rather insensitive shout and thought "Well I never...!" please accept my apologies. For all the dioist fags however, my distaste for you still stands.


My (forty millionth) departure from the communes


For those who didn't notice (most everyone I assume) I yet again have left the communes to seek employment in the despised capitalist private sector. Once I take my two-clicking leave at the end of my congressional term I plan on moving around the world here and there so I figured I should go ahead and severe my communal relationship though it does pain me to do so. In my self induced exile I will be seeking to finally attain a Q5 house and reach Field Marshal which, while doable within the commune, would take a while longer to achieve than I am currently prepared for. I of course do wish everyone all the best of luck and will keep pushing for and wishing you luck in continued growth. I will do my best to keep in touch and will gladly fight side by side with my comrades in the Bear Cavalry on as many missions as possible. Until then I'm just working around here in the US until my time in Congress is up, and I will continue to be of the utmost activity in representing those I committed to representing until I am relieved by the next mandate.


Voting Record


My weekly voting record update is due I believe so here it is.

Day 900

Trade Embargo - : once again no link and Richardson posted a thread stating that he did it merely to test to see if proposals were working, since they've been having some bugs with it lately.
Alliance + : Greece is a bro and hasn't participated in any colonial imperialism.

Day 901

Alliance - : Bros don't let bros rape small children. You really let me down Japan.
Donate + : CBO stuff

Day 902

Donate + : CBO
Alliance + : Croatia is another bro and despite some imperialist aggression against poor Austria a little while back I think they are mostly just doing what EDEN tells them to. Don't wanna go too hard on the bro.

Day 903

Alliance + : Indian is an awesome country that (for now) seems completely against imperialism and I'm more than happy to help them keep their country safe.
Peace Treaty ? : Somehow I failed to see this proposal so I didn't vote but the US did not agree to the negotiations (though I was not privy to what said negotiations entailed) so everyone voted no.

Day 904

New Citizen Message - : Harrison Richardson said that the admin actually proposed this for him since he's been having all sorts of problems making proposals (still aren't at war with Serbia) and apparently they formatted it wrong which, if you read it, you can tell that it's missing links. This ended up passing because not enough senators knew about it (the debate took me a little bit to find even) and our lackluster whipping didn't get done in time. Since our President is having some major bugs we are not sure when a new one will be able to be proposed. Everyone is urged to send tickets to admin telling them to fix our presidents proposals.
Donate + : CBO
Issue Money + : CBO

Day 905

Tax Change Weapon - : Lulz
Minimum Wage - : Lulz
Donate + : CBO
Donate + : Norway is another close ally and a country that I would personally call a bro. I used to be the Greek ambassador to Norway plus I just love Nordic countries 😃

Day 906

Donate + : CBO
Alliance + : While I personally dislike Sweden for their arrogant and aggressive past (being responsible for the breakup of ATLANTIS when refusing to not invade allied Germany) I looked past that and voted yes due to their lack of recent imperialism and status as an important ally. They are also kindly helping out Denmark against PTOs and British invasion by holding some of their worthless regions. They were requested by native Danes to actually annex Denmark but the Serb PTOers managed to hold off their advances and then our Red Army (had a different name that I've forgotten at the time) got involved with RWars. Kinda a fail on their part. No offense guys. Anyway them being friendly to Denmark is my main reason for voting yes.

Day 907

Donate + : CBO

Day 908

President Impeachment + : As far as I can tell this was a drunken lulz proposal from AidenAstrup who resigned after this. I only voted for it because I don't like Harrison Richardson and it doesn't matter anyway. Had this actually been in jeopardy of passing (ptoers or what have you) I would have voted no. But since it will fail grandly I went ahead and voted my opinion.
Issue Money + : Another of Astrup's lulz proposals that I voted yes to because while this wasn't sanctioned it's only a 50 gold print of USD so even if it passes it won't be a horrible thing and saves us 50 gold on a proposal next time we do this. So my reasoning is we might as well do it now and save 50 gold in the future than vote in down and have 24 hours wasted on a vote.


This week I've also included all my votes in forum proposals since they are arguably more important than my votes in game.

For those that don't know there are more laws that the eUS follows than those proposable in the game. Mainly protocol and constitutional stuff that is technically roleplay but nonetheless quite serious and official. Those laws are voted on in the eUS congressional forums by senators after the process to actually get voted on is completed which I won't go into explaining unless someone asks.

Donation Negation Act + : This act basically removes any and all extra work surrounding CBO donations and stuff. We just do it and it's done now. No extra hoopla of approving and what have you. I voted yes because I don't like extra hoopla. It took two proposals to actually pass because it failed to meet quorum (minimum recorded votes) the first time but it was important enough to try again and luckily it passed this time. The failure of something so widely supported to reach quorum sparked much sad talk of activity levels. But I won't go into that further.

Creating a "Model" Congress + : This act passed, creating a sort of ... here just read the deion :

"Create a "Model" congress to assist the real congress, help retention, find new and capable people, and get more points of view on a topic.

Leadership
Speaker - Elected by the "Model" congressmen.
Deputy Speaker - Chosen by the "Model" Congress Speaker
Whip - "Model" congress whip
Advisor(s) - Chosen by the Senate Speaker to oversee the "Model" congress.
Election Committee - A committee with 5-6 people to review and choose people for the "Model" congress.

Members
Anyone can apply but applications will be reviewed by the Election Committee. People who ran for congress but were not elected will take priority. There will be 20 member(s) to begin with. Application will be taken from the 23rd to two days before the end of the month. New term starts at first of every month.

Processes

* Subforum to start debates about certain topics. Debates from senate can also be carried over for more thoughts/point of view.
* Proposals can be started and voted on. If a proposal receives more than 2/3 of the votes, it will officially be considered as a debate topic in the Senate. However, it does not require 2/3 of the votes for a senator to propose it to the senate.
* "Model" congressmen can be impeached and removed from office with 2/3 votes
* Laws for "Model" congress can be changed with 2/3 votes and will come into effect from the next term.


Benefits

* Retention? It would help to keep players involved in game
* This would give us new ideas
* More points of view regarding issues
* Find new and capable people
etc etc .."


I voted yes because we need retention and while this may not end up going anywhere it was at least worth a try and I figure it can always be scrapped later without causing any harm. I wasn't really horribly in favor of this for any other reason than there was no real reason to be against this. If that makes sense.

Diamond Income Tax Reform to 50% - : This was, in my opinion, the effort of a bunch of callous elitist senators to throw their power around and screw over less educated players by trying to corral them into more "efficient" industries against their will. Not only did I see this as overstepping congressional boundaries (if they want to be capitalists) but most of the comments in favor of this were horribly insensitive and completely uncaring about the population at large and got me into a bit of an argument with one senior senator who openly called the SFP "retarded" for running a diamond company simply because it was "inefficient". Needless to say there was some raging done and some comparisons to slavery made. Argument was halted due to opponents lack of comprehension of what I was even saying. Anyway... here is the actual proposal details in case I was too vague :

"Introduction and Reasoning:

• Domestic workers in an industry without a high-resource region are inherently less productive than they would in other industries.
• Despite all conventional business reasoning, numerous diamond companies are operated within the United States after many months (http://www.erepublik.com/en/rankings/com...1/24/6/2).
• Higher income taxes in specific discourage citizens from working there and direct them elsewhere if properly notified."

&quot😉etails: Upon ratification, an in-game tax change to 50% in the diamond industry will be proposed and passed. The sponsor of the bill and any additional willing Senators will notify all those involved in the diamond industry of the tax change and the monetary effects thus caused, such as loss of income for workers and loss of their work-force for employers."

It should be noted the proposal to message those affected was only offered after much rowdy complaining from not only lefties like me but free marketers as well. Unlikely allies but allies nonetheless. Oh and here's a juicy bonus 😉 :

Alex Lorre Wrote : "If you guys want to vote in a communist/socialist economic system with government controlled everything then hey be my guest. No seriously this would only make me one of the three happiest senators. But until then this is not the governments job. I have seen far too many insensitive comments coming from people who are supposed to represent the people saying how the people can go suck a nut because we want to take their money for not knowing better than to work in a diamonds company. If they are getting paid and someone is still keeping jobs available for them then how is that something they should get punished for? Not to mention my party will be enraged by this infringement upon our ability to be self sustaining. This entire proposal is stepping way outside the bounds of what this government is entitled to do and shows a grave amount of contempt for the people we are all supposed to be representing. I will stand vehemently against this proposal and I urge all senators with a mind for their constituents and the concept of limited powers to do the same. Perhaps that will only end up being the three Senators from the SFP but I hope and believe there are many more who will disagree with this proposal and its reasoning."

A Trusted Physician Wrote : "you are running a company that is ineffeicent. congrats your retarded.

sorry if you feel different, but you are retarded and so is anyone else that wants domestic diamond comps.

there are plenty of reasons to be against this. protecting idiots is not one of them"

Removal of Committee System + : Just as it sounds this was a proposal to remove the system of committees that we had in place for a while in congress to divide up work. The problem is their is seldom any work. And what work is being done is usually split up among committees with each one having roughly 1 or 2 things on their agenda. This means lots of forums and subforums to navigate just to actually find something productive to discuss. If we had an active congress with lots of work to be done committees make perfect sense. The truth is we don't have a very active congress and we have minimal proposals being discussed. The vote passed so goodbye committees.

Forum Reshuffle and Public Access + : This was a proposal to deal with how to organize the forum for simplicity and increased public access as well as to deal with reorganizing after removing committees. I voted yes not only because it was almost a necessity to clean up the forums from the removal of committees but also because it greatly increases public access which has always been a key issue for the SFP. Here are the details:

"The current system

----Congress

FYEO
Caucus
Proposals board
Votes board
Committees
Committee subforums
Even more subforums
IES
Juniour Congress
CBO*
Library*


The * are publically visible, as is everything posted in the congress top forum.

Here is what I want.

----Congress*
Congress public*
Sub boards (Budget & Finance*, Domestic/internal😉
Congress hidden
Foreign affairs/Military sub board
Congress only
IES hidden
CBO*
Library*


For clarification;

Congress public is a board which all forum members can view, and congress + model congress can post in. The aim of this is to both move debate into the open, and to integrate the recently passed model congress proposal in an elegant manner. The attached sub boards are there due to popular demand; people wish for things to be organised. Being the forward thinker I am, I'll relent and integrate as they are here. You'll notice FA/mil sub board in Congress hidden (Congress hidden is for congress' and whatever executive members only.) is dealing with the only issues on which congress ever gets consulted. With the recent posts by the JCS on battles around the world, this might actually get some use. I have moved what was previously FYEO into a sub board in congress hidden; a suggestion made to me that makes some sense, although I would debate the usefulness of the board itself, people want it.

Previous information in the current committee boards should be archived like normal congressional discussion, and their use discontinued, in favour of the new boards.

Topics, as long as the original poster decides there is no sensitive content should be posted in the open boards. If a topic is posted in the hidden boards, that the SoH/dSoH deems fit for public consumption, they can, and should move it. The opposite is also true, naturally."

Budget for May '10 - July '10 + : I'm not really in a position to know a whole lot about budgetary needs but I did pay attention to the relevant discussions surrounding it and once everyone else was in agreement I figured that was the time for me to join them. Here are the details for those concerne😛

&quot😉efense:
Line 1. Marines: 495 Gold
Line 2. Airborne: 495 Gold
Line 3. AGW: 330 gold
Line 4. AGE: 330 Gold
Line 5. Mobile Infantry: 480 Gold
Line 6. National Guar😛 150 Gold
Line 7. Training Corps: 160 Gold
Line 8. Office of Militia Support: 70 Gold
Line 9: Special Forces: 170 Gold

State:
Line 10. Executive Fund (MPPs, Battle Costs, etc.): 600 Gold
Line 11. Technology: 20 gold

Treasury:
Line 12. Monetary Supply: 250 Gold
Line 13. V2 Fun😛 30 Gold

Media:
Line 14. Propaganda: 5 Gold

Interior:
Line 15. Interior Department: 120 Gold
Line 16. Arm America: 25 Gold
Line 17. Job Hub: 20 Gold

Line 18. Strategic Reserves: 225 Gold (use must be approved by SCI)

Line 19. Karnataka Rent: 225 Gold



Total regular: 4200 Gold"


So I hope that wasn't too terribly long for anyone who cares to read it. As always you can find my full voting record in my office on the SFP forums. If you have any comments or questions feel free to comment below or message me and I will try to respond as promptly as possible. If I don't reply to a comment it's a good idea to message me as I don't usually check old articles after a few days and for some reason I never got into the habit of subscribing to comments. And with that (possibly my biggest article) I'm out. Peace yo.

~Alex Lorre
SFP Congressdude of Jiangxi