Northeast Assembly Thread

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Aye

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I guess we need to elect a speaker first.

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While I am honored that The Economist and Jake have nominate me for Speaker, I must respectfully decline. I have only been in the Assembly for two months and am still getting the hang of things. Wormy has more experience and I have no doubts he will be a great Speaker.

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x Wormyguy

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I would like to propose an amendment. My concern is that in the Senate, it is quite hard to keep track of what would count as consecutive votes. Unlike our Assembly, which deals with a bill at a time, the Senate works on multiple pieces of legislation at once. Some get passed quicker than others. Enforcing it would be a mess. Rather, by keeping the quite strict standard of four missed non-consecutive votes, I believe we will achieve the same results. Also notice that I have not messed around with provision 3. It will be much easier to keep track of what are consecutive signing/vetoing of bills in our assembly thread.

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Aye

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I would like to propose an amendment. First of all I think we need to add an exemption to the flat tax to help the poorest amongst us. I would prefer a progressive tax, with few brackets, but this is still better than the bill as currently written. I would also like to disagree with Jake's point that extra brackets are what make tax filing a chore. The brackets are a minor inconvenience, but it is the scores of different deductions out there that really gets people frustrated since you have to figure out your eligibility for each deduction. That is what makes tax filing confusing and time consuming for most people. Although there are a bunch of these deduction at the federal level, I don't think they exist at our regional level. If they do, I would be in support of a real tax simplification bill where all such deductions are repealed.

Furthermore, there is no need to ban sales and property taxes. Property taxes are what really concern me, since they are a local matter and the main source of revenue for our municipalities. Will the region now be supplying all of our municipalities with tax revenue?

I also struck out provision 7 as my edit of provision 1 would violate it. I don't think it is fair for someone who earns $20k a year, and somehow puts a roof over his head and food on his plate, to pay the same tax rate as someone who makes $100k. Yes, confiscatory tax rates should be avoided and are nothing but rank class warfare. But at the other end, you have to be practical and realize not everyone can pay the same amount of taxes as everybody else. I do believe my exemption for the first $15k of income is a common sense measure to help the poor, and is most certainly not class warfare.

I should also add that income tax revenue tends to be quite volatile, as opposed to sales tax revenue. I don't think it would be a good idea to get rid of the sales tax entirely.

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Could you clarify something for me, Jake? When you say no other taxes will be established other than the income tax, do you mean by the region or are you going to force the municipalities to do the same? Where do you suppose municipalities will get their money? How will the schools be paid for?

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Could you clarify something for me, Jake? When you say no other taxes will be established other than the income tax, do you mean by the region or are you going to force the municipalities to do the same? Where do you suppose municipalities will get their money? How will the schools be paid for?

Just for the region, the municipalities will conduct their own ways of taxation.

As for schools, I personally support school choice but I would never propose or support legislation to defund public schools.

All right, that is good to hear. I still think we shouldn't get rid of sales taxes, so I will be voting for my amendment.

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Aye on the amendment.

Nay on the original bill.

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Do we not have protection against cruel and unusual punishments in our constitution? If not then disregard my striking out provisions 3 and 4. Or else those provisions are unnecessary.
 Regardless of what is in the constitution, we should change “criminal” to “suspect” for this bill.

Edit: Wormy is right, all the provisions from 3 to 9 I would think are already in the constitution. And if not, we should pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing those rights, not a repealable act of the Assmebly. And I see you already changed the wording for "Criminal" so you can disregard that.

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Nay

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While I agree with the basic idea of cutting legislative salaries, the administrative costs of redesigning tax returns and creating a new tax deduction would dwarf the savings from cutting said salaries.  I think it would be best just to simply cut legislative salaries.

I agree with our late speaker here.

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Friends,

Our speaker has left Atlasia. In his absence, we must call upon Governor Ghost_white to hold an election for a new speaker. I'd like to ask anyone who is interested in becoming speaker to say so.

I would like to express my interest in filling the vacated position.

I will support you as long as you know what the hell you are doing.

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Aye

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I will vote Nay on this bill.

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Jake seems pretty enthusiastic so I'll support him for speaker. Anyone else interested? We can have a vote in that case.

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Aye

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I second Jake. Though we should ask him whether he actually wants to be Lt. Governor.

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Yeah, we would have to take screen shots of all elections from now on. That would be ridiculous. After the votes are certified, that's it. Those results are what count, even if someone deletes their post afterwards.

The only reason this is even an issue is due to some highly unethical behavior. In my view this shouldn't be a recurring issue, and if it is, then this game is in trouble.

Edit: Can we pass provision 5 as a separate amendment please? That one is definitely needed.

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Aye on just provision 5.

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Anyone open to the idea of allowing former Representatives on the commission. Vice President Dallasfan has indicated a desire to be considered.

Yes, that sounds like an excellent idea.