Senate Protest and Analysis Thread

[Frodo]

Regarding the nuclear power expansion bill currently on the floor of the Senate -if there is going to be an amendment regarding the disposal of nuclear waste, shouldn't there also be one regarding the reprocessing of that same waste? 

[Vepres]

Privacy Protection Bill

1. It shall henceforth be a punishable crime in Atlasia to publicly post the contents of private discussions, whether by internet messaging, personal message or other forms of personal communication, without the consent of all parties involved in said correspondence.
2. This crime shall be tried as though it were a crime under the Consolidated Criminal Justice Act.
3. Sentencing of the crime shall be by the presiding Justice; He may sentence the guilty party for up to, but not exceeding, a 1 month ban from holding any office under the Republic of Atlasia.

Excellent bill senator!

Although I think in this case it was a simple lapse in judgment on PiT's part, this bill should prevent things like this in the future.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Privacy Protection Bill

1. It shall henceforth be a punishable crime in Atlasia to publicly post the contents of private discussions, whether by internet messaging, personal message or other forms of personal communication, without the consent of all parties involved in said correspondence.
2. This crime shall be tried as though it were a crime under the Consolidated Criminal Justice Act.
3. Sentencing of the crime shall be by the presiding Justice; He may sentence the guilty party for up to, but not exceeding, a 1 month ban from holding any office under the Republic of Atlasia.

Excellent bill senator!

Although I think in this case it was a simple lapse in judgment on PiT's part, this bill should prevent things like this in the future.

     I agree that a bill to prevent this from happening again is a good thing. We really should not be in the business of using confidential conversations to incriminate each other. What's worse is that this is by no means the first time that this has happened.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Resolution Compelling the President to Appoint a New GM

Whereas, the position of Game Moderator is necessary for the full function of the Senate; and,

Whereas, President bgwah's current GM, Ebowed, has proven sporadic and ineffective in his position; and,

Whereas, the Senate, by statute and subsequent motion, has dismissed GM Ebowed from his office; therefore let it be

RESOLVED, that the Senate hereby calls upon the President to exercise all due haste in nominating for Atlasia a new GM to be confirmed or denied by the Senate.

Good to see you are still pressing this, PS. It will be tough to break bgwah though.

[Purple State]

Resolution Compelling the President to Appoint a New GM

Whereas, the position of Game Moderator is necessary for the full function of the Senate; and,

Whereas, President bgwah's current GM, Ebowed, has proven sporadic and ineffective in his position; and,

Whereas, the Senate, by statute and subsequent motion, has dismissed GM Ebowed from his office; therefore let it be

RESOLVED, that the Senate hereby calls upon the President to exercise all due haste in nominating for Atlasia a new GM to be confirmed or denied by the Senate.

Good to see you are still pressing this, PS. It will be tough to break bgwah though.

Thank goodness for upcoming elections and term limits, but I hope I don't need to wait that long to see a new GM.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

A question for Purple State

I don't see how the Economic Zones are a liberal idea especially in the European form as you said? Could you clarify, how this contitutes that type of thing?

[Purple State]

A question for Purple State

I don't see how the Economic Zones are a liberal idea especially in the European form as you said? Could you clarify, how this contitutes that type of thing?

It is may use the best friends of conservatives (tax cuts), but it is messing with the market to preference and advantage disadvantaged regions. It builds equality of opportunity, but it is nothing near to a free market. So I support it, but I'm surprised the more conservative voters do.

[Associate Justice PiT]

A question for Purple State

I don't see how the Economic Zones are a liberal idea especially in the European form as you said? Could you clarify, how this contitutes that type of thing?

It is may use the best friends of conservatives (tax cuts), but it is messing with the market to preference and advantage disadvantaged regions. It builds equality of opportunity, but it is nothing near to a free market. So I support it, but I'm surprised the more conservative voters do.

     Emptying the coffers of the thief, my dear colleague.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

A question for Purple State

I don't see how the Economic Zones are a liberal idea especially in the European form as you said? Could you clarify, how this contitutes that type of thing?

It is may use the best friends of conservatives (tax cuts), but it is messing with the market to preference and advantage disadvantaged regions. It builds equality of opportunity, but it is nothing near to a free market. So I support it, but I'm surprised the more conservative voters do.

Well the idea was heavilly supported by the late great Jack Kemp. I think it is a wonderfull idea to help economically depressed areas of country by encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation in those areas. The only alternative is essentially create a culture of generational welfare in these areas. Most Conservatives prefer welfare to be a termporary safety net not a livelihood. Thats why conservatives support such a thing. Its not just a problem in the inner cities but in Appalachia and other rural areas as well.

[MasterJedi]

What day does the next Senate start on?

[Јas]

What day does the next Senate start on?

Noon, 3 July.

[MasterJedi]

What day does the next Senate start on?

Noon, 3 July.

Thank you. Now I know when to stop introducing new bills.

[Purple State]

Party Name Change Bill

1. If the membership of a major political party, by vote of a quorum of all members of that party, decides that it wishes to change the name of that party, an officer of that party shall, within 14 days, notify the Secretary of Forum Affairs of this fact.

2. Once notified, the Secretary of Forum Affairs shall change the official party membership of all members registered within that party to the new name approved by the party membership.

Okay, I guess. Is this just making it easier for a party to change it's name, rather than making all the members reregister?

[Associate Justice PiT]

Party Name Change Bill

1. If the membership of a major political party, by vote of a quorum of all members of that party, decides that it wishes to change the name of that party, an officer of that party shall, within 14 days, notify the Secretary of Forum Affairs of this fact.

2. Once notified, the Secretary of Forum Affairs shall change the official party membership of all members registered within that party to the new name approved by the party membership.

Okay, I guess. Is this just making it easier for a party to change it's name, rather than making all the members reregister?

     Correct. Bayh & I have been talking about the possibility of changing the RPP's name, but we realized that with nearly 30 members making everyone re-register is prohibitively difficult. There should be an easy way for large parties to change their name if their members want to do so.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Party Name Change Bill

1. If the membership of a major political party, by vote of a quorum of all members of that party, decides that it wishes to change the name of that party, an officer of that party shall, within 14 days, notify the Secretary of Forum Affairs of this fact.

2. Once notified, the Secretary of Forum Affairs shall change the official party membership of all members registered within that party to the new name approved by the party membership.

Okay, I guess. Is this just making it easier for a party to change it's name, rather than making all the members reregister?

     Correct. Bayh & I have been talking about the possibility of changing the RPP's name, but we realized that with nearly 30 members making everyone re-register is prohibitively difficult. There should be an easy way for large parties to change their name if their members want to do so.

Not bad. Bgwah has occasionally mentioned the possibility of doing that as well. Quite a good bill that could benefit everyone.

[MasterJedi]

As everyone now should know the next Senate session starts at Noon on July 3rd. Because of that nothing new will be introduced since there just won't be enough time so lets get the work done on the rest of the stuff on the floor before then.

[HappyWarrior]

MJ what is it with you and all these new FTAs?  Its like you're trying to annoy me

[MasterJedi]

MJ what is it with you and all these new FTAs?  Its like you're trying to annoy me

Haha, well I got all of the FTAs passed. And it's not to annoy you, it's supposed to get some kind of an agenda through Lief if possible.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     You could let them hit the floor whenever they do & then just filibuster them until afleitch returns.

[MasterJedi]

     You could let them hit the floor whenever they do & then just filibuster them until afleitch returns.

Not in my "we must be active" Senate!

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

On behalf of the President:

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Co-Sponsor: MaxQue

Time to surprise the hell out of everyone, but I would vote for this provided four things are changed or added.


1. The Buy Atlasion Provisions are removed. We don't need Smoot-Hawley 2.0 thank you. As soon as this hits the floor I will offer an amendment to do just that.

2. The Auto Recovery section is modified so as to work more within the Private Sector and not be a Gov't takeover.

3. More Federal Loans to help people buy homes, cars, start business, and get an education. Primarily the first three. Finally in terms of businesses, loans to help the existing and new start ups make payroll, and thus avoid layoffs.

4. The Corporate Tax rate should be reduced to 25% which would match our exorbinant rate with foriegn rates on Business. Make competations easier, and reduce outsourcing. I will however not be so demanding on this one to the point that is absence from the bill will not prevent me from voting for it.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Sorry, I'll vote against the bill should any effort to remove the 'Buy Atlasian' provision be removed. We need something to stimulate the manufacturing sector which has been on the decline for decades, and outsourcing most, if not all, of our materials isn't an Atlasian stimulus, it's a Chinese stimulus. As for 3 and 4, I'm sure we can work together on something there.

However, I do think that temporary nationalization of the Atlasian auto companies is the best course of action, for a variety of reasons.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Sorry, I'll vote against the bill should any effort to remove the 'Buy Atlasian' provision be removed. We need something to stimulate the manufacturing sector which has been on the decline for decades, and outsourcing most, if not all, of our materials isn't an Atlasian stimulus, it's a Chinese stimulus. As for 3 and 4, I'm sure we can work together on something there.

However, I do think that temporary nationalization of the Atlasian auto companies is the best course of action, for a variety of reasons.

There you go again Senator ignoring the negative consequences of your own actions. Those provisions risk a trade war at a time when our exports are falling and contributing to the growing unemployement, it would be the height of irresponsibility to pursue such a course. The Global economy is slumping and so there needs to be stimulus worldwide. The idea that you can isolate our economy would lead to a permenent Depression. Indeed the Smoot Hawley passed in 1930 jacked up tariff rates, a trade war ensued after which our exports plunged and Depression grew deeper. You want to help Manufacturing then invest in Technology, make our tax rates competative with foriegn manufacturers, and stop letting Unions drive them into the ground.

[MaxQue]

I don't know if Marokai and Lief are open to that, but I am open to put Canada and European Union in the ''Buy Atlasian'' clause.

[Marokai Backbeat]

There you go again Senator ignoring the negative consequences of your own actions. Those provisions risk a trade war at a time when our exports are falling and contributing to the growing unemployement, it would be the height of irresponsibility to pursue such a course. The Global economy is slumping and so there needs to be stimulus worldwide. The idea that you can isolate our economy would lead to a permenent Depression. Indeed the Smoot Hawley passed in 1930 jacked up tariff rates, a trade war ensued after which our exports plunged and Depression grew deeper. You want to help Manufacturing then invest in Technology, make our tax rates competative with foriegn manufacturers, and stop letting Unions drive them into the ground.

Okay, well, let's start off with something simple: You haven't a clue what you're talking about. For the sake of economic debate, I'll be referring to Atlasia as the US, using real-life statistics.

The global economy is indeed slumping and other countries have alot of work to do when it comes to stimulating our own economies. But the idea that I'm "ignoring the consequences of my own actions" is ludicrous. The U.S. (aka Atlasia) should not be stimulating the world on our own, other countries should stimulate their economies on their own. We can maintain trade, and make things easier for people to get into the market, but we need to be realistic about the real effect certain policies have on the economy, and, for one, "Buy Atlasian" ain't got nuthin' on Smoot-Hawley.

Smoot-Hawley jacked up tariffs to record levels (more than quadrupling them) on over 20,000 types of imported products and effectively choked off trade to Europe and other areas of the world very quickly. This provision does nothing of the sort and pretending it does is the height of ignorance. This clause of the bill simply mandates that a great deal of the manufacturing material involved in projects funded by the stimulus package will be created/manufactured from Atlasian businesses and workers, it doesn't stop other projects from being funded by foreign sources, it doesn't block foreign sources from doing trade with us in any other way, and it still allows a full 33% of stimulus project materials to be obtained from other countries.

Protectionism is never a great policy when it's the only solution, and raising tariffs is seldom a bright idea when it comes to fixing the economy or raising revenue, but this is neither serious protectionism nor tariff raising, nor any other sort of trade restriction. I'm baffled that you would even pretend that they're on the same level.

Manufacturing employment has been dropping for years now and during that time, our exports slow and our reliance on Chinese imports skyrockets. There's an interesting article from 2002 that talks about the history of our trade and manufacturing relations with China since the end of the 80s, "Between 1989 and 2001, though U.S. exports to China more than tripled, imports from China increased eightfold, causing a whopping twelvefold surge in the U.S-China trade deficit."

You might be thinking "Well, a drop in employment is understandable as long as output continues to increase." Not so in most cases. Manufacturing output as either stalled, or, as government statistics have shown of industrial output overall, has consistently, with blips throughout the rapid economic expansion after the fall of the Soviet Union, fallen lower and lower, and the overall peaks of industrial output have been less strong with each peaking. (These are less broad and somewhat unrelated, but California and Nebraska manufacturing employment numbers are somewhat startling.)

My point is this, our reliance on Chinese imports is hurting our industry and our ability to manufacture and to export. Free trade generally does increase jobs in certain sectors, but this is often at the expense of our manufacturing output, and we can't keep ignoring our ability to manufacture in favor of pencil pushing and service management jobs. The "Buy Atlasian" Provision makes it so we mandate a small portion of our overall manufacturing work be produced and done in Atlasia by Atlasians, and gives our manufacturing sector a much needed boost. Protectionism, in small doses as to not choke off trade or offend other nations, is not always a bad thing. Nations need an element of self-sufficiency.

And this ties into the argument for temporary nationalization of the 3 Auto-Makers. The success of the "Big 3" is not only an economic concern, but a concern of national security. These auto-makers often provide quick support for the military when materials and army trucks, jeeps, and even tanks and artillery are needed. These security demands increase our industrial production and manufacturing employment (which is, consequently, another contributor to the unusual freeze of manufacturing employment throughout the 90's, because of every other decade experiencing falls since WWII) and made sure that we could always rely on ourselves rather than other nations in fighting our wars.

There are, of course, obvious concerns economically as well. We could lose millions of jobs in the auto-making industry alone if we do nothing, not to mention the additional millions of jobs that are indirectly dependent on that sector.

Moving on to your other (asinine) points, taxes are often overblown, and there's only so long we can whine about them. The taxpayer is now dealing with one of the lowest tax burdens in decades and other tax hikes, such as FDR's during the Great Depression, Reagan's during the period of economic expansion under his two terms, and Clinton's in the first year of his term (which were surprisingly broad, by the way) all had no noticeable negative effects on the economy. Especially Clinton's, which Republicans said would kill jobs, did nothing to stop the 23 million jobs created under Clinton's tenure.

Business taxes can be lowered, sure, we do have one of the highest (and some things put it at the highest) business tax rate in the world, but we should caution ourselves from just taking a hatchet to the business tax rate. Something like that is neither responsible, more effective than modest cuts, nor just economically sound at all. Permanent tax cuts are often bad, bad economic stimulus, and slashing the business tax rate has almost no sensible economic efficiency on the dollar in comparison to other measures we could be taking. These tax cuts are modest and A) More psychological than seriously impacting, which does matter. And B) Designed to focus on very small businesses where tax cuts have a more sensitive effect.

Your union bashing is similarly dumb. Sticking to the topic of manufacturing work in auto-plants, non-unionized foreign auto-plants are very competitive with US-unionized plants in terms of pay. There is no union-bashing to be done here, just business mismanagement. If you take a closer look at the numbers provided as comparisons, the major difference between the two are legacy costs which, dumbed down for you if you're too lazy to check the link, are things like pensions, healthcare benefits for retired workers, etc.

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This is, further, an argument that government management can bring forward the necessary changes that throwing money at the auto-makers, as we've done for many years now, could be the best bet we have towards properly restructuring their businesses and bringing forward a new American/Atlasian auto industry which is essential in more than a few ways. Simply, this has nothing to do with unions, just bad business decisions from the past and incompetent management. Stop with the knee-jerk union-bashing.

Of course, you and your RPP friend in the office of Game Moderator can continue to try and undermine anything the Senate does because he, through a partisan prism, doesn't like it. But let's stop acting like I'm ignoring the consequences of my actions and that I don't know what the hell I'm doing, hm?