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Put me on the list for New England.
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Sep 3, 2016 14:27
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Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:That was my thinking, too. I've updated the OP to reflect a direct PM link to the various delegates, for when you guys need to do shady smoke-filled rooms deals. I'd rather serve as an alternate; I know NE and could effectively roleplay its interests a bit more than the Tri-State area. ...can alternates kibbitz and make suggestions to whoever's running their delegation, come to think of it?
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Sep 3, 2016 16:58
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Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:
I am suddenly struck by the thought that Philadelphia being represented by the NE bloc is perhaps a little unusual, given that the rest of its state is within Libertopia and from a geographical standpoint it's got the NYC bloc in its way (E: and might be culturally closer to Tidewater). I mean, if we still want to do it that way it's cool (if Hawaii can hook up with NE so can Philly), but I wanted to double-check on the apportionment. ...also if no one has claimed them within 24 hours I'll swap out my NE Alternate status to be the Libertopian rep. If I pay closer attention to the needs of New England than of the states I'm supposedly representing, well, it's not like that's a thing that's ever happened at a Constitutional Convention before, right? Muah hah hah...
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Sep 3, 2016 20:16
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*sips malt liquor beverage* nyone trying to do more damage to the crumbling industrial infrastructure that is my remit is going to have a bad day, just FYI
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Sep 4, 2016 04:45
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Loel posted:Stay with me a moment, but - You mean melt down all the guns I could get behind that especially as they're so often used to kill poor Libertopian citizens Dramatically limited police powers bash the fash Libertopian Lives Matter
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Sep 4, 2016 04:53
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Loel posted:Wow way to ruin a perfect world with your liberalism (OOC: you've seen the states I represent, right? Indiana can be as bass-ackwards as it wants it's not overcoming Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Detroit I'm just saying)
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Sep 4, 2016 04:56
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Libertopia would also like to decree that, in regards to this country's most divisive issue, we stand with the esteemed representative from the Midlands in declaring that St. Louis BBQ is the superior BBQ. As we have no regional BBQ to speak of - though we do have the superior sandwich in the Cheesesteak, but none of that Whiz bullshit that's strictly a Philly thing, good luck with that poo poo RagnarokAngel, at least you've got chowdah and lobster to fall back on - we are forced to consider the issue strictly on matters of taste and St. Louis does a damned fine job.RandomPauI posted:OOC: I'm taking advantage of the lack of a formal history or explanation behind the convention to retcon why my regions taking the positions its taking. OOC: I think the intention is "some wingnut governors made this happen, run with it but try to stick with your actual constituents' values," so I'm choosing to view my delegation as largely composed of BLM and OWS activists with the occasional stray millionaire industrialist thrown in and poor Indiana's delegation wondering why they're stuck with these lefty wingnuts so I'll have to throw them the occasional conservative sop to keep them from revolting. DivineCoffeeBinge fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Sep 4, 2016 |
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Sep 4, 2016 05:08
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RandomPauI posted:OOC: Well, there are a lot of policies I would like to get done but I know they'd be unrealistic even with the alt history I had in mind. Nat disasters + riots = WE WANT CHANGE which leads to the rise of a few populists. OOC Talk: Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:The time is now, present day. A mixture of right-wing conservative states in conjunction with deep-pocketed interests like the Kochs have joined with a few vindictive liberal states and gotten the necessary 38 states needed to call for a Constitutional Convention. The game is set in modern day, but for the sake of discussion, ignore that it is an election year (though certainly if you'd like to re-legislate how elections will be run, by all means do so!) I'm a little leery of claiming too much in the way of Alternate History Proposals without guidance from the OP, honestly. That's not me trying to be a killjoy; if some of us have a vision of some sort of natural disasters (not picking on you RandomPaul, that's just the scenario you mentioned is all) leading to a shift in voting priorities while others of us don't, it's going to leave us without a whole lot in the way of common ground to negotiate and/or bargain. We'd all be reading from different scripts, you know? If we have to have a divergent history to explain why we're having this convention - and I suspect we probably do - then I suggest we have as minimal a divergence as possible. My proposal is: The 2008 Presidential Election proved even more divisive than expected, and a surge in Get Out The Vote efforts in key swing states by the Romney campaign led to a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College, sending the election to Congress, who - more in the interests of presenting a stable continuity of government in an attempt to calm a near-riotous population infuriated by this perceived failure of democracy than for partisan reasons, and led largely by a coalition of Congressmen that had either lost their bids for re-election or had retired - returned President Barack Obama for a second term. The Republican-controlled Congress proved even more hostile to the President's agenda than before, however, as newly-elected conservative Congressmen pulled even further right in backlash, leading the President to attempt to go around Congress with the use of Executive Orders. This federal overreach, combined with the sour taste left in many voters' mouths after 2008, led to a coalition of governors calling for a Constitutional Convention to be called. This gets us mostly the present-day scenario except turned up to eleven, which I think is as good a reason for a convention as any, without diverging too far from the current-day political trends and ideals that are supposed to be informing our deliberations and votes. Thoughts?
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Sep 4, 2016 05:43
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More OOC Talk: Having said that, I fully expect all of us are going to have to make some adjustments to fit our own values; Indiana can be part of Libertopia all they want but Mike Pence ain't gonna love my platform, you know? I mean, it's still gotta be fun.  IC Talk: Loel posted:Mmk, let's kick something off with something light: ratifying some old treaties we have lying around. Pretty sure treaty ratification is still going to be the Legislature's job once we decide what the Legislature will actually look like. We're drawing up a Constitution, not actually governing. Some points for my fellow delegates to consider:
Therefore I suggest that, before we begin arguing specifics and issues, we should take advantage of the time allotted to us to introduce ourselves and establish our goals to spell out, in the broadest of all possible terms, what issues we want to see addressed before this convention (OOC: that is, to do the "so a week to decide the 10 things to be debated (send a list of your area's top five issues, then I'll create the docket)" bit suggested in the OP). I further suggest that we do so publicly, and I will be doing so herein, though of course this suggestion bears only moral rather than legal weight. To wit, the broad issues with which the people of Libertopia are most concerned and wish to see debated and acted upon at this convention are as follows:
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Sep 4, 2016 06:41
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Loel posted:Its a constitutional convention, we can sign things if we want to Fair cop, and I'd forgotten about that bit! Still, the Speaker (OP) has said they'd like to put individual issues on the docket, ten in total; I'd say "treaties and international obligations" just became one of the five issues of importance you want to bring up to the convention, hmm?
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Sep 4, 2016 07:05
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I would like to formally register my disapproval of ratifying treaties - an act which by all rights should be the purview of the Legislature anyways - while still in the phase of the Convention dedicated to introducing ourselves and settling an agenda. We all knew, when applying to be Convention delegates, that the Speaker would be setting the agenda and the act of many of my fellow delegates to wantonly disregard that agenda in favor of willy-nilly addendums to existing international obligations before we have even broached the topic of how the new Constitution shall handle treaties and international affairs in the first drat place seems to me the act of a band of oligarchs rather than the principled statesmen that we are supposed to at least pretend to be.
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Sep 5, 2016 23:09
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Chwoka posted:Hey, while we're at it, can we have something other than First-Past-The-Post? Already been brought up to the Speaker; I'm sure it'll end up on the docket in short order.
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Sep 6, 2016 19:02
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Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:You guys are making me want to have a legislative thread after the CC wraps up... I wish you would so that some of my fellow representatives would remember that we're not a loving Legislature and we have an agenda to follow stick to the loving agenda  (when did I become the principled obstructionist my god what is even happening)
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Sep 8, 2016 03:32
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Loel posted:Full constitutional powers and you want to limit yourself to an agenda? OOC: Uh, yes, because that was the scenario outlined in the OP which, presumably, we all read and agreed to when we signed up. If I sign up to a basketball league I don't show up arguing that I should be allowed to wear shoulder pads and tackle my opponents. EDIT: I should note, it's perfectly in-character for constitutional convention delegates to start overreaching, I'm not arguing that. I'm just saying that, y'know, Doc Zeigler set out some rules, y'know?
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Sep 8, 2016 04:57
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Trevor Hale posted:As you have not chosen an image yet, I am reading all of your posts as weary William Petersen in Manhunter. After a quick trip to YouTube, I find myself surprisingly okay with this.
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Sep 8, 2016 06:10
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Loel posted:Yup! Tis why Im holding to Article 1 and not going ahead to gun rights Which didn't stop you from deciding "Hey we should be ratifying some treaties" and angling for an infrastructure stimulus - a thing that by all rights should be in the hands of the legislature - in a segment of the convention supposedly devoted to saying hello to each other and deciding on our priorities. I realize that everything is supposedly bigger in Texas but we still have a Speaker at this convention whose job it is to maintain order and decorum, and the fact that you've decided to abrogate that responsibility to yourself smacks of something very ugly. For crying out loud, we're still supposed to be working on the Preamble. While I applaud the Texan delegate's zeal and engagement with the process, the Libertopian delegation would like to remind him that this isn't his show to run and perhaps he should take a deep, Texas-sized breath and calm down. Let's allow our esteemed Speaker to set the agenda, since that's their drat job and we all agreed to let them do it. OOC: in other words, let's avoid this: RandomPauI posted:But this makes it less a PBP and more an exercise in Loel and Cat_herder telling me what they want and I ditch sticking to character in favor of working on the best amendment I could realistically hope for, mostly informed by whatever info I glean from wikipedia. Back to IC: Having said that, we would like to once more remind our fellow delegates that there will, presumably, be a Legislature once this process is all said and done, and that many of our agenda items can and should be left to them - to the duly elected representatives of the American people. There is a reason that our Constitution tends to be light on specifics. As an example, I would draw the convention's attention to the notion of criminal justice. This is an area of American law in sore need of reform, in the Libertopian delegation's opinion. However, we shall not be addressing that topic here directly. If the drafters of our original Constitution had enshrined the methodology of criminal justice at the time into the Constitution, then in 1805 when the Massachusetts State Prison was opened, they could not have done away with the punishments of whipping, branding, or use of the pillory - all things that had been legal and commonplace but which were disposed of at that time - without requiring a Constitutional amendment, and what are the odds, do you think, that such an amendment would have met with success? Vast swaths of our legal system are informed by but independent of the Constitution, and that is critically important, as altering the Constitution via amendment or convention should be rare. It took more than two centuries for this convention to be called; let us strive to ensure that we have created a document with enough flexibility and adaptability that another need not be called for a similar length of time. I realize that it is tempting to abrogate further power to this convention, to say "oh but we can pass laws and directives and ratify treaties and then specifically note those as being not part of the Constitution itself," and we may be tempted to abuse that power. But I would speak to the principles of each of us to note that such power can and must be responsibly left in the hands of the Legislature that will come after us. If you want to pass these laws, if you want to ratify these treaties, then when the convention has ended, go run for Congress and do it there. It is given unto us to craft a document of principle, one that must endure long after the petty vagaries of the present day have passed. Look not only to the issues of today when considering your actions, but to the issues of tomorrow, and next week, and next month, and next year, and the next decade. None of us can know what those issues will be, so let us strive to build a Constitution that can aid and inform those that come after us rather than cuff their hands.
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Sep 8, 2016 07:29
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 07:18 |
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A few thoughts from Libertopia with regards to the proposed changes to Article One: * Rather than changing the term of a House member to four years, we would suggest a switch to every three years. Doing so would still achieve the goals of increasing a Congressman's term - thus giving them a chance to actually govern without constantly having to fundraise for their next election right from the get-go - and keep Congress more fluid so as to encourage it to remain a body more directly representative of the ever-shifting political mood of the country, but it would also allow for a regular rotation of so-called "off-year" elections. These off-year elections often have important state and local races taking place, and yet all too often those smaller races go completely ignored by the voting public because there is no national focus to attract them to the polls. If a third of the House was up for re-election every year, much in the way that a third of the Senate is up for re-election every two years, the follow-on effect in getting more voters into the polling place should allow for a greater degree of voter engagement with their local politics as well. * While we approve of using the least-populous state as a baseline for apportionment of Congressional representation, some specifics might not be such a bad idea. If a state has only 150% of the population of the least-populous state, do they get one representative, or two? Or one and a half, one supposes? Shall the Census remain the baseline methodology of determining a state's population? Have we even discussed whether we are going to keep the Census? Shall U.S. territories that do not achieve statehood have voting representation? What about non-voting representation? We suggest that any non-state populations - and we should include this language even if we intend to make all of our present territories into states, as there should be a provision in place in case we somehow acquire more territories in the future - should have a voting representative in the House but none in the Senate; this feels like a decent compromise. * Does the honorable Mister Biden even wish to be permanent President of the Senate? The poor guy just lost his son and is presently devoting much of his attention to the present Administration's anti-cancer initiatives. We all love Diamond Joe, but the man's earned a break.
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Sep 12, 2016 06:33
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