Atlasia Chronicle - Presidential Debate

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

First off, I would like to thank Clyde for hosting us and thank my distinguished opponents Lumine, DTC and Ninja for attending.

I am running for President because I think that fundamentally this is an elections game with a government simulation to provide purpose to said elections. Our strength, our vitality comes from our ability to attract and maintain an active and engaged populous who will engage in energetic and principled debates on the issues and thus give meaning and purpose to our various elections.

I am running because everything we do and everything we seek to change must be ever mindful of this important principle. Atlasia is a nation of newbies. New people and returning old people as well, come to together and create the interest and vitality that keeps the game afloat. When we lose sight of that, when we take it for granted, we do a disservice to the game.

I am running to create a more Welcoming and Engaged Atlasia and I hope to inspire everyone in this game to ask themselves each day not what the game can give you, but what you can give the game, and just as importantly, how you can involve someone else in the process? No success for one person is a success for the game if it comes from solitary action or worse, from the exclusion of other people and ideas.

I have served in various legislative capacities over the last decade and I had the distinct privilege of serving as President for half of a term over a year ago. I have interacted directly with over two thirds of Atlasia's Presidential administration and I have seen many fail and I have seen some succeed. Our best times and best accomplishments in those times were when we worked as a group, the most painful and most meaningless were when it was one man against the world. We have a number of challenges facing us, our deficit chief among them. But I am confident if we work together and get people engaged and active, there is nothing that we cannot solve and solve in a way that strengthens the game.

We must remember though, as we solve problems, that we need to go back to those important questions above. "What can you do for the game?" "How can you bring others in to contribute?" Because everyone has a role to play in this game and we are at our best when we accomplish stuff in a manner that involves the most people.

As we go forward with this debate and with this campaign, both my running mate, dfw, and myself hope to earn your trust and your vote because if there is but one thing that leads to me think we are on the wrong track right now, it because we have lost sight of what is truly important in this game. Our number one priority is to create a Welcoming and Engaged environment for all, so that all want to continue to participate and others want to join in the fun.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Parliament

I am open the idea if it has substantial support, but as I said in Charleston, I am going to stand up for and fight for checks and balances and a system that preserves and protects natural liberty and the rights of minorities. I don't think a Parliament necessarily has to be hostile to these noble principles, but there are certainly some models that would push us towards a unitary state and I think that would be a mistake of epic proportions. Our Regions make us stronger and that gets me to the second question.

Regions
Our regions provide a launching pad for new members to get experience in the game. Everyone of my opponents has had the luxury of starting this game in an era where there were regional legislatures to run in and serve in. I didn't have that luxury when I joined there was only one region that had a legislature and it was not the South. While we should be conservative when it comes to the number of offices, we should not to go extremes in office reduction lest we shut out and deny newer people the opportunity to get their start in the game, and it bears repeating we are a elections game built on voluntary participation and we are stronger when we have more people participating.

When it comes to summits, I will do you one better. I plan to restore the regular meetings that we held in my short Presidential term last year with the Governors and the Secretary of Internal Affairs present and I will tell you the President and the administration most certainly has a role to play in assisting the regions to understand the laws passed at the federal level, how they interact with the regional level and so forth.

Experience and Regional Interaction
Experience is about more than having just held an office, it is the impact you make while you hold that office. In 2014, we passed a health care law with a regional component but it was over a year before any region took action on it and the administration at the time certainly didn't take action. Last summer we passed a similar law on a bipartisan basis and I assisted first then Secretary of Internal Affairs Fhtagn and subsequently her successor Rfayette to ensure that implementation was accomplished and the regions knew what had to be accomplished on their end. I think this kind of interaction with improvements obviously can serve as a model of how the Federal Gov't interacts with the Regions and helps bring them to table and helps enable them to lead on their areas of responsibility.

Progress on Issues and Administration of Congress
To address a point by one of my distinguished opponents, which disappoints me since I was hoping we could stay positive. It is kind of hard to point to a shared term with a member of the other party as ushering in anything.

In terms of inhibition of policy, Federalist control of the Vice Presidency has oversaw the greatest unleashing of legislating and functionality that Congress has seen since the reset. We have had several congresses leap frogging each other in terms records set for number of passed bills and this one currently is on track to break all records, thanks in no small part to the work of Vice President PiT. It is hard to say that Federalists have obstructed legislating when under Federalist Presidents we have seen, often bipartisan bills, pushing forward on health care, reigning in too big too fail banks, infrastructure, energy, the environment, Immigration Reform, equality and the minimum wage. Some of these were collaborations with the running mates of my distinguished opponents like with Immigration and one of the several energy/infrastructure bills. We also completed and passed the Foreign Relations Review last fall and thanks to the BPC, we finally have a FY2018 Budget. And lastly, in terms of silence, it is hard to say President Fhtagn has just been signing bills when she has actively redrafted legislation to fix glaring mistakes and/or substantially improve the quality of the bill. Care for Veterans being such an example and on a critical issue.

Question Time
To bring this response back full circle, if I elected I plan to restore question time for members of Congress. This is certainly one aspect of a Parliamentary System that we can implement immediately, and we had a couple such sessions back in my partial Presidential term. This will enable a greater interaction with the executive branch in legislating as well as significant strides in accountability and transparency.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

My Biggest Priorities


My first priority is to preserve, protect and defend the Atlasian Republic. That includes not only ensuring we have a military with strong abilities, but also that we have an economy that is able to sustain it and a budgetary situation that also doesn't imperil our country.


When we find ourselves in a situation where we are at cross purposes in terms of geopolitics with the country that has more than any other served to sustain and subsidize our irresponsibility, then it is truly time for us to make the hard choices and tough decisions necessary to bring us to reasonable fiscal situation.

There are those on the left who say that we need cannot cut the deficit because we need fiscal stimulus. Well if the deficit hasn't so far helped in that regard, I fail to see how we can correct an economic problem through fiscal stimulus when said economic problem is generated by an activity metric in the calculation by the game moderation system. It would be impossible to engage in any policy be it either tax cuts or spending with an eye towards stimulus when such may not even make a dent in such numbers. Therefore, I am hesitant to worsen our fiscal solution absent some kind of greater understanding about how the economic, unemployment and the deficit interact with one. If we spend a trillion dollars, only to have the unemployment double because a governor in a region has to be removed from office, there is a slight problem.

Absent that, we should strive to remove unnecessary programs and expense, reform and innovate to achieve our objectives more efficiently (and that certainly applies to the Pentagon) and when reforms and innovation cannot address structural deficiencies in revenues for automatic spending then we must work to put those programs that help the elderly, the veterans and our nations most vulnerable on a solid financial ground with dedicated funding streams.

Infrastructure

I am completely in support of having more infrastructure, but we must be responsible and ensure once again that said programs are funded and only in the specific instance of stimulating the economy should we ever deficit fund infrastructure and then we must be sure of the financial impacts with clear understanding of the system from a game mechanic perspective before we do so.

Affordable College

We are in a situation where we have conditioned people to go and get degrees that lead to no gainful employment and to encumber themselves in the process with an unseemly amount of debt, under the promise that they will reach nirvana, the promised land and 5th Avenue, if they do so.

Education is important and we need advanced skills for the economy of the future, but we need to bring reason back into the education system. We see pushes for free college with no one ever thinking to question why college is facing rising tuition costs and why it is so expensive. We see people falling over themselves in a purist quest to grab the mantle of true progressive hero by ensuring that even Bill Gates and Donald Trump have their kids sent to college with the cost covered by the tax payers. Free College in this fashion, is wealth redistribution from the middle class to the rich.

While we should eliminate the cost barrier to working, poor and middle class entry to college based on merit, education should be based on merit instead of "send everyone to college" While people should be encouraged to pursue their dreams, we must end the biased conditioning to seek sometimes worthless degrees at sky high prices, and stop quietly discouraging many respectable fields that now face chronic shortages of skilled workers and/or the work force for such fields is rapidly aging and shrinking. The average age for a truck driver is now 53 for example.

Education

What I want on education is in general is for the regions to take leadership and use Internal Affairs as a department providing support and assistance in said leadership. We need better and more skilled teachers and thus they need to be paid what they deserve. We need innovation in teaching methods, integration of technology and finally the curriculum must work to build those skills that make students successful and productive members of society. Too often we favor memorization over critical thinking, regurgitated facts instead of analysis and independent thought. The regions can pioneer solutions for this and serve as a model for other regions to experiment with and develop further with the support and assistance of the federal government. Only through such a shift will we finally be able to start gaining ground in K-12 performance instead of the drift we have been seeing in terms of failing schools and/or schools accomplishing success only through diluting the quality of the education and rigor of the curriculum.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Foreign Policy
My foreign policy approach has long been guided by both restraint and avoidance of conflict unless necessary and also a realistic analysis of the world how it is. Sometimes you have no other choice, and sometimes you have to be credible that when you say you will use force. Realism cuts both ways though and generally I have found most utopian ideologies to be foolish and misguided, so too does the same apply to the arena of global affairs. I like to examine a given situation based on how each side benefits and work from that basis to encourage and promote mutual objectives and at the same time hold aggressors accountable. At various points in the Cold War, crop failures and later on oil price collapse helped to reign in and eventually push the Soviet Union towards collapse. Such circumstances provide an opportunity to offer an incentive towards cooperation. At some point foreign policy is motivated by, supported by, or hindered by various economic forces.


Atlasia in international affairs
I think Atlasia needs to provide leadership in key areas and also set up a context or move towards a context were the benefits of cooperation outweigh the costs of rogue action. Some of those key issues I think involve anything related to international drug policy based on our large consumption of illicit drugs, certainly for non-proliferation, disease control and environmental protection as well based on our resources and our impact in these areas presently for better or for ill. As for the latter, trade can be one of the most powerful tools to reward cooperation and discourage rogue action, but for a number of these countries in question, the most important consideration is the price for energy more so than trade and energy diversification will go a long way to reduce the influence of many countries who have a negative impact.


Korea
Since this may or may not come up here, I will touch on this to make sure that it is discussed at least somewhat. The situation that has evolved in North Korea, is both unfortunate and tragic. Sure enough we see China working to expand its sphere of influence, but like I said in my interview the other day, China has long been a country that does stuff for specific tangible reasons and lets face it, China doesn't want Western troops on its border. It goes without saying that any further escalation should be avoided at all costs since the stakes of such an escalation could be devastating globally. Therefore, I think the only possible outcome to this that is acceptable, will require a diplomatic solution.