Join the new world

Hi Canada!

Merry Christmas, gentle gentiles! Happy Chanukah, chosen people! And if you’re neither of those, hey, at least the days are getting longer again. That’s something to celebrate! Unless you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case it’s already summer so there’s nothing to complain about. I also wish everyone a fantastic 2012 full of success and, fingers crossed, no economic cataclysm.



I’m running for Congress again, this time in Alberta on the Military Dictatorship Party ticket. I’m not a member of that party, I’m actually an independent (or the last of the DAL, if you want to look at it that way), and so I want to thank the MDP again for given me a place to run.



I’ve seen quite a number of presentations this month which seem to be promising nothing but activity, suggesting that suggesting more would be too presumptive. Well, that’s not my style. I’ve got lots of ideas (most of them cribbed from last month’s platform) and I’d like to share them with you before I enter Congress, should I be elected (I wasn’t last time 😛). Like I said last month “It’s a wall o’ text with what I hope are some good ideas, some good but unlikely to happen, a fair smattering of bad ones that I can’t recognise for the life of me, all bound together with a good helping of hot air.”



I am who I am. I can’t promise anything else but I can promise activity and quite a few Congress posts, too, to put it mildly, and as always I will be analyzing and scrutinizing everything put forward in the hopes of making them, in my opinion, better and of weeding out those ideas which, again in my opinion, I think are bad. Anyways, here’s a list of issues I plan on raising sometime during the next month in Congress, now broken up with random pictures I found on Google! (I’m not going to promise a French version (unless someone wants to translate it for me). I just won’t have the time to butcher it properly XP.)



My ideas are mostly in the economic realm but I will start with something I addressed in my last platform: our Anti-Political Takeover (ATO) plans. I think that our Minister of Domestic Affairs Gherk and his Deputy Prince A. Joseph have done a good job with our ATO plans. Good but not great. There are still a few outstanding issues that we should discuss, like how do we decide who the official candidate is. Why was Chamrajnagar chosen as the official candidate for the UN, say? What would have happened in MOO, or the CPP even, if there had been a PTO candidate who was gaining support? How can we ensure that those selected are chosen in a democratic way, representative of the views of each party’s membership and well in advance of the Party President elections? I’d also like to see blockers in place for Congress way ahead of time too, making it impossible for a PTOer to slip by because he happened to place his candidacy first (we have had PPs who haven’t done their job on the 24th of the month) but that might be asking too much.



My other non-economic ideas include taking a look through our laws, pruning those that we don’t need, fixing those that need work (that new Emperor Act, say, or a new law for Military Units (MUs) that incorporates ideas from the proposed Joint Task Force Act, which was never adopted, or even the Constitution). I see this as a very low priority: our laws are mostly about writing down ideas and principles. We don’t always get it 100% right and often they fall into obsolescence. But every so often someone will be reading through and act on the letter of the law and not the spirit and we try to close those loopholes, sometimes creating other loopholes in the process.



I’d only like to create two other laws at some point, not necessarily this month, one for our budget, as I’ll discuss below, and another on foreign relations: allies, alliances, and embargoes all in one document. If I ever get bored, I’ll start up on this project. Oh, and it’s probably time that we took a look at the new citizen message again and maybe see if we can find a way to help our new players, though I’ve seen too many failed pilot projects to have much hope there.



Like I said, though, my first priority will be economic, specifically what to do with all that gold we have. We’ve seen no less than three discussions started this term suggesting ways to use the gol😛 Nosyt’s plan to use the gold to buy a small group of Canadians companies, PimpDollaz’ idea to expand the Construction Program to refund, in gold, Canadians who build Q5 raw material companies, and finally the idea that we just give it to the MUs to use as they see fit, which was raised in a discussion started by Wilhelm Gunter. I’m not a fan of any of these ideas personally but agree that it is well past time that we decide how to spend the gold. We’ve seen, and I have myself offered, other ideas: we could use the gold to make more gold by buying and selling currencies on the monetary market, where orgs have no limit when it comes to buying gold. We could use it to subsidize the purchase of export licenses, allowing our citizens to sell overseas, relieving pressure on the CAD or we might use money to buy up excessive goods from the market to be sold overseas to build our gold reserves further. I’ve suggested loans, to MUs for company upgrades, sent out well in advance of the next upgrade offer and paid back over several months but ensuring that the gold returns, or to soldiers themselves for increased self-sufficiency. Perhaps we could use it to buy 100 individuals one cattle farm each on the condition that they return 100 CAD a day to the Minister of Finance from that day forward (most of the 100 CAD coming from that cattle farm’s profits). This would pay for itself after 85 days after which we would have an extra 10,000 CAD at our disposal daily outside of the 99,999 CAD daily donation limit from the treasury. Or maybe it’s time that I again propose that we use it to buy loaner companies for new players to use to upgrade their town centers. Anyways, I’d like us to look at our options and make a decision or decisions by the mid-point of our Congressional term at the latest.



Last month, Etemenanki went ahead and stole a piece of my previous presentation: rather than having a donation for the Construction Program every few days he has divided the 99,999 CAD daily transfer limit pie up into pieces, with the MUs receiving the lion’s share and the Construction Program receiving its due. I think that’s a good move but I’d like to steal some other people’s ideas (I’d love to name you but I can’t remember who it was and I’m not going to check the Congress Archives now): I’d like us to set aside some money for mercenaries, say 5,000 CAD a day. We wouldn’t and shouldn’t use this every day but should allow the fund to grow so that we can dip into when we need it. I’m thinking maybe we could leave 10% of the funds in the hands of the Minister of Defense (MoD) while keeping the rest in the Ministry of Finance organization account. The MoD would be able to use this at his discretion but would need to ask Congress for access to larger funds. I know this means that the MUs will be getting 5% less funding each day but I think it’s better to tighten the belt now than wish we had money later, when we need it. Besides, if all goes well, after a while we can say that the fund is high enough and return to giving the funds back to the MUs. In a similar vein, I’d like to see us stockpile weapons, similar to Rylde’s and the MDP’s successful plan used last month.



Oh, one last specific idea regarding the budget: I like Addy’s idea from when he was first elected CP a few months ago where he wanted stable funding for several months. I think we’re there at this point, especially with daily transfers now almost second nature for Congress. Since we’re all pretty much on the same page, I say we scrap monthly budgets and enshrine the idea of daily 99,999 CAD donations with so much going to MUs, so much to the Construction Program, and so much to whatever else if we decide to do more, in a law of its own. Then if a future Congress decides that the formula needs to be changed up, it can simply amend that Act to adjust the slices of the pie. Of course, MU funding would still need to be updated at least once a month, maybe more often if we ever get that auditing system up and running. Anyways, the point would be if we had a permanent budget we would never have that vague risk that the budget might not pass and funding would be cut off (though practically, that would never happen). Maybe tacked onto this Act we could permanently merge the positions of Military Comptroller and the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and have that person elected by Congress for an indefinite term. I’ve never quite understood why we’d want to allow the President to replace the MoF every month, even though thankfully many never do. Etemenanki and Addy Lawrence have done fantastic work over the past, what, 2 years they’ve been passing the job back and forth. Since I couldn't find a pic for this, here's one that Google says is funny, just to break things up some more. Enjoy!



Lastly I’d also like to see the import tax on food raw material brought down to 1%. Embargos should take care of any enemies trying to sell in Canada but honestly, even with a few foreign sellers, I don’t think that anyone’s worst fears have been realised with a 1% weapons raw material tax. In fact, sometimes (as in a month ago when I first wrote this paragraph) we still see a nearly empty marketplace which I find very disconcerting. Of course, like with the last Congress, this isn’t a high priority for me. I’d also personally like to see the income tax lowered to the 1% minimum. Income tax disproportionately takes more money from the income of those who have less companies, although I’m somewhat sympathetic to the idea that we should tax the inactive and give their money to the active. Anyways, that’s something to think about. And why exactly is the minimum wage 1.2 CAD anyways? If it’s going to be so low, why not set it at the lowest and be done with it?



Well, there you have it. Only 500 words more than last month’s presentation. XP If you have any questions, comments, criticisms please feel free to send me a message or just write something below in the comments. I’m willing to listen to all ideas, even if I can’t say I’ll agree or change my mind. So, if you happen to be in Alberta and have a free vote on hand or you feel like moving, I’d really appreciate it if you’d vote for me (and my ideas?).

Thanks for skimming through!

Cheers,

Chochi