Talk Elections

I'm just saying...



The federal government hasn't even acknowledged this issue. Sure, there has been gradual discussion of a possible new stimulus, but those discussions started before the latest weakness and have gone not far not fast.

So...Bueller?...Bueller?...

It'd be certainly nice if we had a federal government who seemed to actually care about our economy, but for quite some time, we haven't had that. Hopefully there will be a day in the near future where we have a government that is ready and prepared to address the economic difficulties facing this nation.

The third option is amussing. :P

They don't seem to be especially engaged, no.

If elected to the Senate, I'll consider pushing for a stimulus bill. I wish it to be a fair stimulus bill, taking into account the interests of corporations as well as those of the workers.

The main reason I haven't done anything is because I haven't seen any reasoning for this freefall, can't really do anything to fix the problem if you don't know what it is....

I pitched the idea of an economic downturn to Badger... But in order to work on that and other things, I need the data from the rest of the regional govt's...

As far as I know, the IDS has no "data".  Is there a regional game mod or some such to come up with these figures?

Well, the IDS isn't on the hook. I've gotten what I need from you. I don't exactly know why the other regions seemingly have this problem. I'll wait another day before I just ask Badger to give me the figures, but I'm trying to get the regions involved with this.

I dont care about the economy. As long as my pension checks dont bounce, I'm fine.

I care about the economy, I actually composed a bill and submitted it to the SoIA for review and to help stir discussion about its composition. As the SoIA has said, we have been delayed by "certain" Regional gov'ts. I did consult with tmth during the process of composing my bill, hence why I added education funding and some other items, and PiT was the first to comply with the SoIA request (GO RPPers!!!!! :P ). 

Two weeks ago, Barnes and I were discussing items that could be considered stimulus along with other items that wouldn't in the hope of composing a bill focusing on rural issues or a rural issue atleast. Unfortunately, he has disappeared without a trace.

I will point out that Libertas was banned, Barnes vanished, and BK and Andrew are just coasting by activitywise. Snowguy has put a lot on his plate in terms of other bills as has HappyWarrior. And bgwah must have stumbled into some kind of environmental meeting that he had to bribe his way out by promising to propose several "whacky" bills. :P So I will say that I am sure that they care, but whether they care about the economy, I don't know. ;)



We will probably already be debating one at the start of the new Senate. I plan to see what the SoIA offers once everyone responds then offer a bill containing most if not all of his suggestions in it.

It's good to see President Fritz and SoIA Dr. Cynic fully engaged on the issue and working with the regions.

I would urge PPT NCY to propose legislation and bring it to the floor immediately under the emergency slot based on the current funding requests by regions, plus whatever needs the federal government faces. Though the Northeast and Pacific have not yet responded to the SoIA's request, those can be amended into the bill quickly during debate, but any legislation will take 72 hours to come to a vote, so the clock should start sooner, not later.

If thats the case why don't I just introduce the bill I made to "start the clock". If that is the concern, I could do that right now. Otherwise it will be tomorrow afternoon to add in the current requests. :P

So I guess I still have some good ideas, even in retirement. ;)

It's the job of past presidents to hold your feet to the fire.

As I posted in the thread, you better pray it takes less then 72 hours to complete it and go to a vote.

The nation will pray with me. This economy needs a boost now. If the Senate can't get its act together sooner...

Who was the first Senator to notice and acknowlege SoIA Cynic's request for a publics works bill?

Who was the first to actually write a bill up in response despite it being Thanksgiving weekend?

I take your statements as an insult. ;)

A bill would have been in by tomorrow or Friday at the absolute latest with text and been finished by early next week. Which is actually quite fast compared to recent bills. However you felt the need to offer your idea that clock be started as soon as possible to avoid letting the 72 hours (something which I doubt would have been an issue) get in the way of a final vote, which is fine, but it doesn't give you the right to insult my efforts by saying that you need to hold me accountable. :P

As you should. :P

Actually, I just like letting you all know I'm still alive. This hall of presidents past is quite lonely.

I'm giving them till tomorrow. Or rather tonight.

I advised the last administration in my capacity as SoIA to consider funding a public works and infrastructure program. No action was taken on those suggestions. If this has contributed in any way to the economic climate then some responsibilty should be laid at the feet of the former President ;) :)

To be fair, I was hoping your recommendation would have led a senator (you know, the one's generally responsible for writing legislation) to actually write up legislation. Sometimes I forget why we have a Senate. *looks back at my own poll* oh yeah. :P

Maro and I could only write so much legislation among our other duties (note how many of the laws passed under my watch were actually written by members of my administration).

I was jesting :) But I know what you mean; despite the best efforts to have a co-ordinated government and a GM getting people to respond is a different matter.

I sure wish the federal government didn't care about the economy.

Is that kind of like a "faith based health care plan" (basically you pray to god you don't get sick) only here, hoping a Senator will write legislation? :P

Perhaps PMing some of them would have been more effective, just like getting a real health care plan instead of praying you don't get sick. ;)

Well what the hell kinda game would that be?

"Quick, let's get elected!"

"Ok, we're elected, now let's just sit here for 4 months and pretend the rest of the game is for the nonexistant private sector!"

You can simulate the private sector you know. You have to want to, though. :P

That'll require more knowledge of private enterprise than many of us have. It is first and foremost a government simulation... Besides, who the hell wants to? :P

It depends on how you do it, really.

I've noticed most senators have also given up writing amendments. They are much better at demanding changes and letting others write those up for them.

Well, in some cases thats the most effective way to go about it. For instance, if I had offered the amendments to fix the problems with Marokai's stimulus bill, they wouldn't have passed the way I would have worded them. However, a certain other Senator at the time who loved compromises seemed like the perfect suc... er.... legislator to move it where I wanted it to go. ;) :P


Though I agree there is a lack of desire to even try an amend bills now for a variety of reasons. Snowguy for instance put a lot of work into remaking the TSA repeal bill into something practical and now its all for nothing. Thats a big discouragement for future amendment of bills. There also is the lack of interest and activity by certain Senators, and a feeling of "why bother" among others who are discouraged with the direction of the game. Atleast, with the way the "stimulus bill" has been written this time, there will be a lot of amending or else I get to write it all. >:D

So who is the President now anyway?

A "cat" from MN.

He won? I think I voted for him.

That was a kind of surprise for all of us. We even picked up two regional seats, in NE (Eraserhead, JCP) and in ME (Happywarrior, future UDL). It's a shame you missed that great moment.

how do you have an economy without a private sector? or is Atlasia completely socialist now?

I think he means a "playable" private sector, which of course would be impractical and confusing.

We have a private sector, its activities are generated by the Game Moderator. Now if the the position of Game Moderator is held by a socialist, well then you might have a problem. ;). For right now its held by a forest dwelling creature. ;D

Well I do beleive cats are more mobile and are faster then the rhino.

Plenty of economies have operated with no private sector :) ;)

And did not most of these so-called "economies" also include the mass murder and famine reaching into the tens of millions? ;) Of course with 100% state planning, deciding whether to supply grain to the Ukraine or to export it, becomes a political decision. When you already have so little value for human life, the result is an ocean of blood.

The private sector is naturally occuring and impossible to suppress without the chains of the state. A country that isn't engaged in state planning has a private sector by definition. Countries where the private sector is primitive or inferior is due to problems in that country such as political instability, violence, disease, famine, hyper-inflation etc.

We bitch about companies and corporations all the time, yet they still exist because we want what they sell. Now you can use non-profits and co-ops and such but then without the profit motive there is no drive towards innovation and you are driving model T for 100 years. Thats if your are lucky to get the car invented in the first place. :P

tick..tick..tick..tick..tick...

1. The 'Holodomor' didn't just happen in the Ukraine, it affected Kazakhstan as well, and some areas of Russia, but most anti-Soviets ignore that because it doesn't suit their theory of communism being evil - the whole 'genocide' thing was circulated by William Randolph Hearst, a pro-Nazi (at the time) and anti-Soviet US newspaper mogul. What's more, plenty of central economies have ran without famines.

2. The private sector is unnecessary and will probably be made completely obsolescent at some point in the future. We've been born into a culture which regards capitalism as 'the End of History' and that's the key problem. Most people aren't willing to think beyond that and look at alternatives to what we have now - for millenia prior to now, capitalism would be regarded as an oddity and it will probably be regarded the same way in the future. Or maybe the way we see feudalism now - as a brutal, unfair and flawed system. Whichever way, you have to view politics from across all history, not just the recent past.

3. People wanting to be able to eat, drink and live isn't an argument for capitalism, it's an argument for allowing people to live that way. If the government provided those resources, or if they were simply shared equally in a stateless society, that eliminates your point entirely. As for no innovation because of lack of profit, I cite the creation of the internet and large parts of NASA as proof that governments can innovate with little or no help from the private sector. Sorry to put a dampener on your little theory and all.

We're waiting...

for what? I told you it wouldn't happen in 72 hours.

Here is the biggest hold up, the governors gave reports with the highest concern and lowest priority and how much they needed total they wanted. However its impossible to just copy and paste that into a bill. For instance you have "infrastructure" well that is pretty broad and vague and there are several categories that would count as that and unfortunately I have to make sure that each region is allocated across all the categories 10 billion or 15 billion or however much was requested. And furthermore no other Senator has decided to offer any assistance in this endevour. On top of that, my brother has been hogging the internet today and yesterday and he wants the line back in about an hour.



1. So, it was widespread thoughout the USSR. I never said that it was only located in the Ukraine. Was Stalin not as iron fistedly in power in Kazakhstan?  And I also never said famine hadn't occured before in Russia. The question, if Communism is so wonderfull, why did the worst one occur under their watch, while the farming was being collectivised? Shouldn't conditions have been improving? Why did Russia struggle to maintain production levels in agriculture into the 1980's? 

2. Notice I didn't say "Capitalism". I said "private market". The private market has existed in some form going back to ancient Sumer (SP?). I think if we were to move beyond it, it would have happened by now. Who knows in 5,000 years you might be right. :P  Why don't you go hold your breath till it happens. When your little life is saved with inventions made by big pharma here in the private sector dominated US health care system, maybe then you will see my point. :P The british gov't can bankrupt itself into eternity with gov't run health care system but were it not for the private sector innovations by evil big pharma, they might as well be paying for the use of bleeding and leeches.

3. Oh Winston, you insult me. I never said the gov't didn't innovate, it innovates when the politics wants it to. The internet was invented by gov't but it was basically nothing when it was invented by the gov't. However its use, and development has exploded in the 1980's 1990's and 2000's precisely because the private sector made good use of it. Where would the internet be without the home computer developed by Apple and Microsoft. I don't recall the original 1940's computer being developed without materials and input from private sector companies. And there was significant private sector involvement in the inventions that went into NASA from materials invented by chemical giant DuPont, to developements in electronics by GE And others.

You see you are trying to set me up as anti-gov't strawman. I am not your former friends Libertas and company. I think gov't has a role to play at times. You are the one who thinks the gov't can and must do everything.

Don't put words in my mouth. Don't insult my intelligence. AND DON'T PATRONIZE ME!!!!!

Yank, we are waiting on the Senate to get its act together. That you were right is exactly what is wrong.

You do realize most preliminary research into drugs happens in those public universities Republicans seem to hate so much? Pharma companies just take those inventions/research and create a practical (or whatever sells) product.

I just want to add to this that NCY is clearly doing all he can to get the Senate to do...anything. I'm not quite sure why the other senators ran, but I thought the point of the game was to play. Election to the Senate isn't a Chance card that reads "Go directly to jail."

I'm also happy to see portions of the executive keeping the ball rolling, but I think it's high time for an "all-of-executive" approach. Stuff just doesn't get done unless people with important-sounding titles make some noise.

I think I've been quite an active Senator PS, I've just been doing work on other bills and I still don't understand what exactly we are supposed to do about that economic collapse Badger put out because I don't think it was adequetly explained.  It seemed that it happened because investors got nervous and it is kind of hard to legislate that.

I'm taking aim at the Senate as a whole, but clearly there are some senators that are far worse offenders than you, HW.

1. Several reasons. For a start, Russia was a poor country when the Bolsheviks took over due to the semi-feudal Tsarist system being such a disaster and WWI followed by a bloody civil war didn't exactly help production. The famines happened when Stalin had to collectivize the farms, because the kulaks threatened to starve out the cities due to them hating communism basically. As for why Russian agriculture failed in the long term, there was far too much bureaucracy allowed to grow in the system after Stalin died, which led to stagnant growth under Brezhnev - the USSR after 1953 was basically the worst aspects of both capitalism and socialism.

2. I don't owe U.S. health companies anything - I live in the UK where we have universal health care. And seeing as you decided to launch a ridiculous argument against the NHS, why does the US spend more money on healthcare than any other country when it's supposedly meant to be a private concern? The NHS was a very efficient organization until the Tories started to put the boot into it, and even now, it's still nothing to scoff at.

3. If the government was responsible for computer development, I'm sure they could succeed at it in the same way. As for NASA using private chemicals etc., the chemicals industry in the US is private so I don't really think they could have used government resources in that respect anyway.

I'm not patronizing you or insulting your intelligence. I'm just pointing out a few things I see that I think are skewed with your analysis.

Republicans hate public universities?  When did that happen?

I know here in California, raising tuition rates for universities is the first thing Republicans do. And some have said, including reasonable ones I could see myself voting for, that public universities should charge as much as private universities. All these policies would do is create a privileged class that gets to go to college.

Where did I say I opposed Public Universities? I want to actually improve the process and make it easier for technological developments in Universities to make to the market. Do Public Universities not receive large amounts of private sector money through a variety of channells also?



1. From 1907 to 1914, Russian agricultural production made considerable strides. The tsarist regime was unsustainable without changes, but the Revolution, particulary, the October Revolution was in my opinion a set back for Russia.

2. Maybe its because we do most of the world's medical research for one instead of letting you guys sink or swim on your own. :P

3. It wouldn't take the same path. The Gov't would have no motivation to put a computer in everyone's home. That would have focused on developing it for industrial applications and for the military.


Whats the alternative, raise taxes?

Why not control the ridiculous growth in administrative budgets for one. A lot of Universities are top heavy and very wasteful.

You guys better do something in CA because Boehner won't bail you guys out. And if he does, the strings attached would make bankruptcy look attractive. :P

That sounds more like "Breaking News: Politicians Like Money"

Most of the Republicans I know who don't hold office, and by looking at my avatar I'm sure you can guess that is a lot, are huge fans of public universities because, for most of them, they present the only opportunity available to give themselves or their children a higher education.

@NCYank

1. There is no way Tsarism could have survived. And the October Revolution was a step forward considering economic growth, womens equality etc.
2. Just sayin, your healthcare system isn't that efficient
3. How do you know?

1. I didn't say Tsarism would have survived.
2. Maybe so, but we also have doctors and nurses that actually care about their patients too. :P
3. I have ways of knowing these things. :)


And for the record, I did save Tsarism till 1936 in Vicky Revolution. :P ;)

Option 3, obviously.

Umm, so do our doctors and nurses. Just because we have UHC, doesn't mean people don't care.

And gratz :)

Bringing this thread back on topic...

Seriously, the markets have been in freakout mode for over two weeks and there has been no substantive actions taken by the federal government? It may not seem like much, but from a former GM watching the current one, it looks like Badger is entering the "Why won't they listen to me!!1!" mode.

The time for letting the Senate get its act together on a crisis response package has passed. PPT Yank, SoIA Dr. Cynic and President Fritz should just sit down, hammer out a package and push it through in an expedited process. The governors and senators have given their input and there is more than enough information available to put together a robust package right now that takes all the necessary interests into account.

I took too long thinking about what to do with those requests (about four days), though admittedly I didn't expect it to take a week for the Regional Senators and Regional Governors to come up more detailed requests. I PMed every Regional Senator and heard nothing after three days. I then PMed the Governors and asked them to do some pushing since the Senators didn't do any pull. Finally the ME, MW and IDS did okay but the Pacific took too damn long because bgwah is too busy crying about polar bears and Oakvale is pinned down in his compound. AND WHERE THE  IS THE NE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And for the record I would have had no problem sitting down and writing up a bill with just three people in the room, however, someone wanted the clock started now and thus necessitated piece meal effort. The bill will be on the Presidents desk before Christmas.

Not quite. ;) Delay is the enemy of progress, but stupid blind jumping into the abyss is the enemy of...well, people who don't like jumping into a bottomless abyss, I suppose.

This is not an easy time to be heading the government, domestically or internationally. But that doesn't mean the government can't shoot itself in the foot and make things worse. :P

/Spade-like mysticism.