Confirmation Hearing: tmthforu94 for SoIA (confirmed)

[Senator Napoleon]

There were new revelations, namely, his idea to make a story about something that he has shown himself to be ignorant on. Ironically, I said just that in my previous post.

If the position is so unloved that a liberal president has to ask a conservative to be in charge of internal affairs, and that a Senate has to confirm because "no one else will do it" then I say abolish the damn thing. The position clearly isn't working as intended.

[Marokai]

Don't worry; we're certainly not at odds when it comes to abolishing the position.

[shua]

This is frustrating.

I don't know why a regional election issue would be relevant one way or another to the SoIA position.  If there's a story from the SoIA on this, okay, but I don't see the need for it. What we really need is a more vibrant free press to discuss these things that you don't need a GM type to find out about.

If there's any concerns about what kind of stories the nominee would publish, is the GMs role relevant here?  Honestly I'm quite confused about whether I have a role to approve stories by the cabinet secretaries before they are posted. 

I think Tmth would do a good job here, if he still wants it. Unfortunately, there's no consensus about what SoIAs duties are in the first place, and wasn't addressed in the questioning before the vote started, so it's not surprising people don't see eye to eye.

[Senator Kalwejt]

Meh (read: aye)

[asexual trans victimologist]

I want to vote for the nominee but he's not comporting himself very well.

Pointedly abstain.

Everywhere else on this forum, I really want to like you, but you are standing out in the Senate as much as beige wallpaper.

Yes, well, I'm a full-time university student, I just finished finals, I'm not sleeping well, and I have a mousy personality in pretty much any context that can't be spun as academic, which is unlikely to change even if I start introducing legislation, which I intend to as soon as we get underway with our newly-elected members in January. Sorry.

I'm abstaining because this hearing has been completely ridiculous and childish. The nominee hasn't behaved notably worse than my colleagues and I certainly don't dislike him, so I won't vote no; the goings-on have failed to convince me that there is any reason for him to be SoIA, so I won't vote yes. I agree that we should abolish this position if it's such a damn hardship.

[Jayhawker]

Nathan, you didn't say one word about any of this during the hearing. I would have been happy to have adressed your concerns.

I wouldn't just write about the pending court case as SoIA, but I can assure you I would have an unbiased opinion. I don't particularly stand one way or another on the constitutionality of it - I just stated my disappointment that someone who campaigned so hard won't be on the ballot.


Why don't you all just change your vote to Nay? Because having NO SoIA is a heckuva lot better than having Tmth as SoIA.

[asexual trans victimologist]

My concerns are with the way we, as a government, were behaving during the hearing. It didn't strike me as the sort of thing that could have been changed by the most junior Senator in the body asking for a halt to these asinine feuds that have been going for a lot longer than I have. It was also not a substantive concern that could be questioned about, since it had precisely to do with how the hearing was itself being done.

I agree with you substantively on the ballot access issue in question and I have no actual active objection to you becoming Secretary of Internal Affairs, which is why, as I said, I did not vote no. I hold nothing against you or anybody else involved in this outside the situation itself and my putting my dismay at this process on the record was not meant to imply otherwise.

I have however introduced legislation to abolish the office, which both Napoleon and Marokai have expressed a desire to do.

[Senator Napoleon]

What pending court case?

[Jayhawker]

The potential of a courtcase between Simfan and the Northeast.

Would it really be harmful, though, Nathan, in the meantime to actually give someone a chance at SoIA who wants to see it succeed? You could have said that was your original reason for voting abstain, instead of saying it was only because I wasn't comporting myself well.

[asexual trans victimologist]

I'm sorry for how I phrased that. I should have made it clearer that I didn't think anybody was comporting themselves well. I was annoyed at you just because you were the nominee in question and the one being voted on, so sorry about that.

I think my annoyance at how this has gone is well and truly on the record by now so I will change my vote to Aye.

[ZuWo]

I don't know if it is legal for someone who is neither the appointee nor a Senator to write anything in this thread, but here's what I have to say anyway:

Give Tmth a chance, and judge him by the way he works. It's great to have someone who actually wants to do this job and is motivated to write stories that are linked to current regional and Atlasian-wide controversies.
Do not vote against Tmth for personal reasons (Senator Kalwejt who voted "aye" despite not being on good terms with the appointee shows that it is very well possible to distinguish between personal feuds and governmental matters) or because you want to abolish this position; you can still abolish this position at a later point in time. But as long as this position still exists you should do everything you can to find someone for the job.

[bgwah]

With Nathan's vote change, the nominee has 6 ayes and 1 nays, and has thus been confirmed.

[Jayhawker]

Thank you to the 6 Senators who were willing to give me a chance, rather than let this position sit vacant for weeks. And to the 3 who didn't vote, ill just pretend you felt the same way.

Finals end Wednesday for me, and that's when I hope to get down to business. I also hope you'll be able to excuse my absence Christmas weekend - no one would probably be around to read it anyways.

[Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Would have voted Aye, for the record.


I do have a legitimate excuse though. I got a new computer finally and it is even slower on the internet then my old one (which I am using at present). I have been spending most of my time since Thursday trying to get the new one to operate faster and not just sit there. I got it to load a grand total of two pages on the Atlas forum yesterday morning before jamming and requiring a complete shutdown.

It's the Connection Stupids! And because it doesn't have the cookies downloaded it will be worse before it starts to get better and then only marginally so.