Cabinet Officers and Structure Bill

[Peter]

Taking a page from Peter Bell's book, if we do turn this into a constitutional amendment, it might be better to scrap the constitutional definitions of the departments and just have the constitution say "Congress may define executive departments and positions therein through appropriate legislation", given that the members of the Executive Branch other than the President and Vice President are not really fundamental to the governmental structure of the country (as evidenced by our desire to now give those departments an overhaul).

I suppose you would also have redefine where the line of succession is defined as well, if you did that, though.

This is the structure I have constructed in my Constitutional draft. Really this should ideally wait for a new Constitution and then its much easier to implement.

[Peter]

The Constituion provides that it is the Presidents poragative.  He simply needs the approval of the Senate when it is going to cost a long-term comitment to funding.

The Constitution provides that the President shall appoint the Principal Officers of the Executive departments with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Executive departments however still need to be established by Law, since the executive can only act where legislation has authorised it to (this was brought about by the Founders fear of executive tyranny).

You can see the law that established the department of homeland security here

[Peter]

Thats not true King, in fact I wired the bill so that it wouldn't breach the present line of succession; I'm absolutely flabbergasted that the AG hasn't stepped in to give his opinion on constitutionality as it generally is the place of the AG to do such things.

[Peter]

I urge my senators to vote against this bill.  In my capacity as GM, I can assure you that grouping the Depts of State and Defense together will have a negative effect on our diplomacy around the world.

Jake,

I think the point is not that we get too heavily tied to a reality driven government here. There is absolutely little to no point in having two Cabinet departments that deal with largely international issues when in fact international issues have little to no part to play in Atlasian life since we have no genuine "other" governments to deal with.

We do however have many internal issues. Certainly a EHW secretary would often have to work with the Regional governors on a wide variety of issues: Certainly I intend to have some fun inundating this Secretary if he comes into existence on the joke that is the federal funding formula for education. Economic Affairs is needed largely for the budget, but also for other issues such as dealing with the issues generated by the Clean Energy Act with respect to the Regions. He'll also get to deal with Al the next time he strikes.

The AG and Forum Affairs need to continue exist for rather obvious reasons.

I appreciate that a GM must largely look to the international scene for creating scenarios, but a lot of people, myself included, have expressed doubts about continuing to allow all manner of artificial scenarios to be cooked up when we have more than enough that we can create on our own.

[Peter]

I appreciate that a GM must largely look to the international scene for creating scenarios, but a lot of people, myself included, have expressed doubts about continuing to allow all manner of artificial scenarios to be cooked up when we have more than enough that we can create on our own.

Also, I don't understand your last comment in bold. Explain

Well we will always be able to create enough gameplay on our own through the simply progression of the game.

The Fritz v. Ernest crisis was a prime example of this with its own consequences that forced reactions from various levels of government.

The Constitutional Convention is certainly enough of a self-made scenario to keep enough of us going. I imagine there will be more conflicts between federal and regional at some point. Then there's the spin-offs from things like the Clean Energy Act, which we've yet to see where Regions attempt to implement those federal polices. Those present real challenges as opposed to artificial ones.

Not to mention that we are meant to be based around elections and not a massive government, which is what we are soon becoming. The Senate these days is more of a stupifying bureaucracy and this administration in a governing role (as opposed to the facilitating role of SoFA and AG) with one exception has to date been impotent.

Rather than complaining about the fact that Defense and State might merge, I'm honestly surprised that the Rt Hon Jack Straw wasn't complaining about the fact that our State department is permenantly headless.

[Peter]

And which one of us is the Rt Hon Jack Straw?

Apparently Jake. My reference was to this story, posted in the Midgard Chronicle:

British Foreign Secretary wary of US Government Reorganization

London-British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw spoke out today about the proposed reorganization of Atlasian Cabinet. A bill introduced by Senator Al, calls for the grouping of the various departments into five new departments.  The most contreversial idea put out so far is the grouping of the Department of State and Department of Defense into one Department of State and Defense. Straw said this proposal, "would send the wrong message to the rest of the world by combining the job of a diplomat and the job of a soldier into one." So far the bill has met only tepid approval from the Senate, and voting is ungoing.