The Imperial Dominion of the South's Legislature

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

I'm trying to think of something else to put my name on. Any ideas?

Well, if you resigned from the Senate to work in the legislature you'd have a lot better chance of getting Duke Expressway's, Duke Memorials, etc.  You could also call yourself Darth Duke. 

I think it's more fun to funnel federal money to the South using my Senate seat!

Maybe I'll run for a Legislature seat when I retire from the Senate.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

So I'm most def not eligible? That's too bad. I already had my office set up.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Someone needs to brief me on what is going on. Do legislators get secretaries like we did in the Senate?

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

I'm just going to add my thoughts whenever I can find the bill because it seems like a mess otherwise. We need to reformat how we debate these bills so they are easier to follow and improve efficiency. But that is for a later date.

Where is the original bill? Education reform is probably my lease knowledgable area, but I can give my thoughts when I find the bill.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Seems a bit, um, confusing to calculate. How about we just raise the pay per grade? I tend to think that each higher grade requires more expertise, and with more expertise comes a higher salary demand. Many of my upper level teachers in high school had PhDs.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Terrible idea. I have never been in favor of year long schools. Granted, I think I once heard those students do better, but often times people's schedules cannot work to where their kids are out of school for so long during winter months and not during summer. Plus, summer is when memories are made. I don't want to be responsible for ruining those kids memories. Plus, our southern girls demand a summer time of fun on the beach. I am a man of The People.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Sure, I am all for funding the arts. I think they are a vital part to a proper education.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Works for me. How is our budget looking? If we even have one...

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I don't know anything about busing or public school problems like that, but I tend to favor choice, so that's fine.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Magnet schools tend to be full of strange people with no social skills, but if it means keeping them out of our private schools, I am all for it. Are magnet schools mostly government funded? I knew a girl from one once. What a creep she was.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

What does this mean? Supported as in financially? Don't most schools tutor students who are falling behind, or am I simply out of touch?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Agreed. I hate large classes, and the larger the class, the higher chance a student falls through the cracks.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

tl;dr

But seriously, should this be a separate bill? Do we want to include a teacher training problem inside a bill that generally deals with education? Or is this an omnibus type thing and I just don't understand?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

This should be mandatory, yes. There may be a risk they would leave after obtaining their degree, but we can include a clause in their contract that bounds them to teach up to 5 years or if they take federal school funds to pay for their education.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Again, too out of touch to know how big of a problem this may be. We never had an issue at my school.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

See above. I think most schools have a staff that keeps them in order, but what do I know?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Are textbooks really the problem? And is such an initiative worth spending money on for at best a marginal improvement? Private companies make solid textbooks. I don't see the need for the government to set up a committee for it.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I had to take 3 years in college and 4 years in high school, but that is really uncommon. I favor learning foreign languages even though I am awful at it, but I think making it mandatory for everyone is a bit much. I think you'd see a lot of people fail to graduate because of it. I think 2 years is fair but I wouldn't go any further than that.

At any rate, those are my thoughts on the bill as it stands, although, as I said, I am not very well versed on the education system. I have never attended a private high school or middle school so your milage may very with me here.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Let's just worry about this bill for now and possible changing the way the legislature works eventually. I don't want to take away from the business at hand.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

A minimum salary of $57,000 for ALL teachers? Is that a feasible amount to pay? I don't know many kids starting in other professions making that much, like in banking (not big banks). If we can afford that, then fine, but that seems like a lot for a starting salary.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

It's true the younger the better for languages. Maybe we start kids earlier? I'm in the camp that it's beneficial to study another language even if you're horrible at it, like me. It helps in a lot of other subjects to know a language like French or Latin or Spanish and the like.

Then again, I am not knowledgable at all with education so I feel I'd contribute more to it by not contributing than contributing.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

I promise I'll contribute more once this education discussion is finished. I just have nothing of substance to contribute

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

The f**k? Renaming the months?

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

The f**k? Renaming the months?

One month=1 Southern Year. 1 year has 4 months. The months shall be called Cotton, Magnolia, Yellowhammer, and Sugar.

We can't do that. You see, I am still slightly angry about the last regime unwinding the changes I made to the south when I was in office - most notably when they renamed the south aka the dirty south to the imperial dominion. It changed us from a band of renegades just trying to change Atlasia into a pseudo world of warcraft type group that probably sits in the basement of our parents houses, picking at our noses while playing online games like world of warcraft.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

     Dirty South is still a perfectly valid option by my reading. The Restore the Revolution Act was never repealed & the amendment creating the current IDS name did not claim any bearing on the old Dirty South name.

That makes me feel a bit better. That said, we still refer to ourselves as the IDS, which is okay if that's what The People want, but I am still holding true to my past. I will call us the Dirty South again if it isn't breaking any laws.

Oh, and I still oppose changing the names of the months

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Does the cost of this bill matter at the state level? Like, all of these things are great, but are they practical?

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

We have a surplus and no income taxes?

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

That would make sense. I don't know how corporations do it where they pay for an employee to get an MBA, but I think there would need to be some limit on the amount of money the degree would cost.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

I have returned from my hiatus. I hope nothing important happened while I was away.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Aye

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

I don't want citizens in those states to be able to influence our elections. Our elected officials are here to serve southerners, not those in other regions, and we will run the risk of electing someone with those regions in mind instead of ourselves. Plus, I've always believed in this regions autonomy, our independence and our unique way of approaching atlasia. No offense to those other regions, but I don't want them voting in our elections. Why not just abolish regions if we are going to begin to do this?

And what about fairness? How it is okay for these citizens to vote in our elections if they feel southern but someone else in another state who feels southern wants to vote, they can't. Why not just let everyone who feels southern vote in our elections? What about southerners who moved north? I have plenty of Friend's from charleston who now live in NY, DC, and Boston. Should they be able to vote even if they are no longer citizens?

In short, I can't support this.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

See, we'll have every Tom, Dick and Harry wanting to vote in our elections. I love tmth but he is in no way a good southern boy who enjoys playing golf, wearing colorful clothes and eating collards and fried chicken on Sunday afternoons, but if we pass this bill, he'll have his filthy Midwestern hands all over our ballot boxes electing politicians with Indiana accents! This bill is anti southern and I will not leave this state house till its defeated!

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

You can't miss happy hour, Duke.

I keep a bottle of bourbon in my office.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Friends, this is just a prime example of carpet baggers from Indiana coming into our beautiful southern land trying to influence us. While tmth makes an effort to highlight his "knowledge," and I put parenthesis around that word for a reason, he fails to state that chicken and dumplings (spelled dumplin's by any good southerner) are only eaten on SATURDAY afternoons when you visit your grandmother. He also fails to highlight that these dumplins are made with biscuit batter and not "frozen dumplins" most indianians buy while wearing Hoosier shirts and wearing those silly stripped pants.

I will continue to crusade for the rights of true southerners . This bill is an abomination to all the beautiful southern girls, guys and puppy dogs who populate our gorgeous land. I was elected to defend this region, and with God, Jesus, and BushOK as my witness, I take this fight to the streets if my current sit in at the state house fails. And trust me, you don't want to meet me on the cold, hard streets.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Representative Duke claims to be a champion of southern people. To that I have this to say:

Below is a map of the south.

The dark red are southern states that can participate in southern elections. The light red are southern states that may not. In Duke's fight for southern rights, he prevents a full 31% of the south from participating in southern elections. Now I will admit that carpet baggers are a valid concern but one that can be fixed by changing a bit of the language in the bill.

Then write a bill that would allow those states to join our region. I am not arguing that the people in Virginia, West Virginia and the like are NOT southern. I am arguing merely that allowing people in those states to vote not only in their own regional elections but in the DS elections as well is ridiculous, and probably not constitutional. It would also open the door for anyone in other states not in that map who have southern roots to claim to be part of us.

In the past, I have supported regional realignment to bring in southern states that are in regions like the MIDEAST and MIDWEST, like Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. I support them joining this glorious place. I do not support allowing them to have a say in what we do or who we elected until they become part of our region. No state citizens should have the right to have essentially 2 votes. We aren't disenfranchising anyone. Any claim that anyone who opposes this bill is supporting voter disenfranchisement is a joke and just puffery to support this bill, because it does not have any legal or logical reasoning behind it whatsoever.

The People's Paper will have an article on this later.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

What about Maryland and DC? (Maybe not Delaware, cause that'd just be an invitation to NE carpetbaggers).

This bill is clearly out of hand. Maryland has southern aspects to it. What Rep JBrase also fails to recognize is this is ATLASIA, and in ATLASIA, those states are not in the south. I don't care what Americans thing. Beyond the walls of these threads, we are all Atlasians. And the states in the south in Atlasia are all southern. The rest are mid eastern/midwestern, even if we argue otherwise through our American lenses.

I would also like to know how this bill is even constitutional since it gives people two votes, which is only a right given to people in those states listed. Even if this chamber ignores my warnings and my protests out on the front steps of the statehouse and passes this bill, I will take it to court, pay off any judges I can, and have it defeated!

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

How about Kansas? While we're at it, the Dakota's and Mormon triangle!

As you can see friends, even carpetbaggers like Tmth know the truth behind this bill: a ploy to allow the entire country to vote in our sacred elections. If we let the mormons into the fray, we may as well disband and go join whichever region we wish. I guess that means I will join the "independent" region.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

I am offended Indiana is not included in this. We in Southern Indiana consider ourselves part of the South.

Though in all seriousness, is this Consitutional?

Some of us in Northern Indiana have extensive southern heritage. My own family(the non-native parts) emigrated from Germany and lived in North Carolina. I even had relatives fight for the Confederates. The only constuitional way would be a redisctricting which many oppose.

Thank you. Because of logical, sound individuals like you, this bill will go where it belongs: in the trash can with all my liquor bottles.