Nathanland

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Okay, I'm bored, so:

What do you imagine it might be like?

Unlike Simfan, I don't have a grand plan that I can lay out right now because I'm not terribly ambitious in my offline life. As some of you may know, I'm a member of my town's government, on the 'leftist'/'conservative' side of things (these are pretty much the same in Amherst local politics, because it's as opposed to yuppie developer types), and have some vague aspirations for regional/state office, but nothing more than that.

That being the case, what would happen if I were put into a position of power? For the sake of argument, let's say a President with a sufficiently strong mandate and sufficiently strong Congressional majorities to lean into fairly authoritarian territory, but not some tyrant running roughshod. Also for the sake of argument assume I do actually want to do something with the office once I had it (which would probably be the case. I'm not fond of high responsibility/authority but I try not to be one to shirk it).

One thing: I may try to move to a parliamentary system of some description. I'd also spend a lot of time on rural public transport and may blatantly favor rural areas and poor inner cities over richer urban areas and suburbs.

Day 1 of the Nathan Administration:


Celebratory fair in rural Western Massachusetts (it makes sense in context)


Fireworks in Springfield, Massachusetts, headquarters of the Nathan campaign and ancestral home of the new President's family

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I have had very mixed experiences with rural public transportation.

So do I.

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That's amazing. There are some heritage railroads in Vermont that are a little like that. I'd definitely look to aspects of the Japanese system, inasmuch as it's widely used and reaches most areas of the country.

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I don't think I've really been called that before, particularly not on Atlas Forum, but I guess since you've become a regular poster I've been too busy reacting to various people's bullcrap to really get involved in many substantive discussions. Perhaps I should make a new post in the 'Summary of your political beliefs' thread. The one that's in there now is fairly old and might be outdated in terms of my current positions.

I can say with some confidence that as opposed to Simfanland you'd probably be more likely to want to live in Nathanland but not do the bulk of your business there than vice-versa. I'm considerably further left economically than socially and I'd likely feel the need to dick around with the market economy quite a bit in the name of ensuring various measures of quality-of-life, although I'd farm out specific policies within general guidelines (like 'progressive taxes, heavily subsidize mass transportation and things that contribute to non-suburban community cohesion, try to balance environmental regulation and encouraging American manufacturing as much as you can and treat conflicts between them on a case-by-case basis, try not to stifle retail') to people like the Council of Economic Advisors and various Congressional allies (my power base might well be more geographical than ideological and I'd probably end up dealing the most with other New Englanders, be they Democrats or legitimately moderate Republicans).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's sometimes difficult to entirely separate quality-of-life concerns and economic concerns. Especially if you're like the USA and try to ruthlessly hunt down your citizens who choose to work abroad. And several very important taxes tend to be based on your nationality. Like estate taxes.

Oh, I'm certainly aware of this, believe me.

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Perhaps Europe might be a better example, as the continent west of Russia is of vaguely comparable size. Then again it's far more densely populated.

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I'm aware of this also. Unfortunately Nathanland may have to have (or highly encourage states to have) some fairly, uh, stern building and development guidelines to discourage this. Or just really really push a cultural narrative based on some sort of left-wing ruralism through pervasive state-run media, but I don't really want Nathanland to be a total leftist mirror image of Simfanland.

Ah, a sign of a true lefty hick

And proud of it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What would ag policy look like in Nathanland?

Fairly heavily subsidized, but not in the same way that it is now. Think agricultural trustbusting plus significant tax credits for small farmers. Labeling of GM foods but not banning. Subsidize research in new types of organic agriculture; see, if possible without preconceptions, how large a scale it's feasible to do that on. Depending on how extensive the trustbusting got possibly some kind of land reform, but I wouldn't necessarily want to pursue that for its own sake at least at first, because land reform is one of those things that has a tendency to go either extremely well or ridiculously poorly.

I'm fairly flexible about a lot of this if there are reasons why any of this might be a very bad idea. I know a lot about agriculture on a small-to-medium scale but not necessarily as an area of policy for a vast country. Not flexible about the trustbusting or labeling, though.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Some changes to the Constitution:

28th Amendment--Continuity of the Legislative Branch: Allows Congress to pass laws for emergency replenishment of its membership should more than one-quarter of either House or both resign, be expelled, or be killed. Empowers either House to take on the work of the other should more than three-quarters of the other resign, be expelled, or be killed, and empowers any survivors to continue the work of the Congress should more than three-quarters of both Houses resign, be expelled, or be killed.

29th Amendment--Congressional Elections: Establishes runoff voting for all Congressional elections; allows states to choose between jungle primaries and AV general elections after normal primaries, which also must use AV. Explicitly allows Congress to regulate spending on political campaigns for Federal offices.

30th Amendment--Presidential Eligibility and Elections: Extends eligibility to the office of President or Vice-President to naturalized US citizens after twenty years of citizenship in the United States, or thirty of residence with at least fifteen of citizenship. Unambiguously defines 'natural-born citizen' as anybody a US citizen at birth. Establishes a national AV system with a postal voting option and a paper trail for Presidential elections. Allows a President to run for more than two non-consecutive terms.

31st Amendment--Linguistic Decentralization: Explicitly leaves to states the power to establish their own languages for use in state governance and mandates translation of Congressional Record into all languages spoken at home by at least 2% of the population as of the most recent census (implicitly making such count a constitutional function of the census in addition to determining apportionment and taxation), as well as all languages deemed official by at least one state. Specifically bans Congress from acting as a language authority in any way beyond appointing the translators.

32nd Amendment--Extension of 8th Amendment: Expressly prohibits capital punishment of civilians.


This is enough for my first term. More to come. The Senate won't know what hit it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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I would probably do everything in my power to kill that though. I've already seen one country start sliding after restricting corporate donations.

It says 'allows', not 'requires'. You'd be perfectly free to oppose regulation or propose deregulation as a right-leaning Nathanlandian Congressman or Senator.

I thought 'national AV system' pretty strongly implied it, but I'd like to just formally state that yes, upon ratification of the 30th Amendment the Electoral College would cease to exist. Presidential vote counting would be handled by a nonpartisan federal agency.

Fun fact: Currently, the terms of the 31st Amendment would mandate translation of the Congressional Record into Spanish, Chinese, French, and Hawaiian.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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I would probably do everything in my power to kill that though. I've already seen one country start sliding after restricting corporate donations.

It says 'allows', not 'requires'. You'd be perfectly free to oppose regulation or propose deregulation as a right-leaning Nathanlandian Congressman or Senator.

I thought 'national AV system' pretty strongly implied it, but I'd like to just formally state that yes, upon ratification of the 30th Amendment the Electoral College would cease to exist. Presidential vote counting would be handled by a nonpartisan federal agency.

Fun fact: Currently, the terms of the 31st Amendment would mandate translation of the Congressional Record into Spanish, Chinese, French, and Hawaiian.

Well, we already knows allows basically means it will happen. Proposals to restrict campaign funding are uh, quite popular.

2% of Americans speak Chinese?

2% of any state is what he said.

I actually meant 2% of the whole country, but come to think of it let's change that to 2% of any state. That puts us in the clear with Chinese. Also Tagalog, Japanese, Ilokano, Navajo, and I think maybe Inuit and Italian.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The Alaskan language that would qualify is Yup'ik.

Thank you. Yes, Nathanland would have House and Senate Yup'ik-English/English-Yup'ik Translators.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Why do I get this feeling that as soon as you decided to step out of public life, I would be waiting in the rafters to push through a "reverse course"?

Oh, I'm sure you would be. If I was really concerned about that I might start going in a dictadura perfecta direction.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What would be the point of labeling GM foods as GM foods?

People who for whatever reason don't want to eat GM foods would be able to not eat them. And banning them is frankly absurd (I say this even as something of an agricultural reactionary).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What would be the point of labeling GM foods as GM foods?

Surely someone such as yourself would be in favour of greater choice for consumers?

First let me wipe off some of the condescension you left on the screen.  Now to answer your question. 

Indeed, but I'd be against mandating it.  Surely someone such as yourself could figure out why.

I'm as a rule comfortable with mandating descriptions of more or less precisely what's in food, insofar as people have to eat the stuff. It's not even that I myself would make an active effort to avoid food that I'd force to carry the GM level so much as there's a certain class of agrarian semi-hippies in some of the rural parts of this country that I'd display blatant cultural favoritism towards.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I would submit that there is a non-rational but nevertheless subjectively significant qualitative difference between planting conditions and artificially altered genetic makeup--there are among other things actually religious reasons why one might not want to eat, for instance, oranges with DNA spliced from Pacific salmon (although I don't understand the rationale behind some of these reasons particularly well). I don't see this as 'pacifying halfwits', and if you do then you ought to get on your high horse and ride out of Nathanland before you're declared a disturber of the peace, or at least find something more consequential to complain about.

We could have a workaround by just dicking around with kosher certification or something (as I understand it Orthodox Judaism is one of the religions having a rather abstruse argument over this), but I'm more concerned with the Establishment Clause than I am with some Midwestern libertarian thinking of the people in my cultural background as halfwits.

New decree: Pending a general shift of attention, resources, and power away from the armed forces, every branch of the military will have its official anthem replaced with 'It's a Good Day to Die' from the film Starship Troopers 3.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Sorry, I've obviously hurt your feelings and I didn't mean to.  I thought you were wanting to people to give their two cents.

Your two cents are genuinely appreciated and my feelings aren't actually hurt, I'm just in a really bad mood and didn't appreciate the characterization of such people as the friend of my mother's who used to take me sledding when I was little as halfwits ('flakes', actually, would have been entirely accepted, for future reference). Thank you for your opinion.

The decree regarding the military has nothing to do with your Air Force background and isn't meant as some kind of veiled insult; it's something I've wanted to do ever since I heard the song a few days ago.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I find it rather uh, amusing and uh...well...I would say quaint if it didn't have any condescending connotation, but uh well, that so much of the policies are focused on agriculture. Any inspiration from the Nokyo?

A bit, actually, yeah! Them and the way certain agricultural cooperatives such as Ocean Spray are run. 'Quaint' is another word I'm willing to accept.

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I'm not afraid so much as I just have some distaste that obtains to my probably quite odd combination of family background and religious and cultural beliefs. In any objective sense there really isn't any problem, at least once we get the trustbusting and possible land reform underway.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Trustbusting as I'm conceiving it here refers more to banning predatory practices against small farmers, such as attempting to restrict heirloom planting and dancing in and out the sort of patents that you can get on seeds, than anything else. I promise not to act like SCAP.