The Imperial Dominion of the South's Legislature

[Donerail]

Besides, I don't think I ever spoke with SJoyce about his replacement.

^I remember this. I was talking to Dereich on IRC: he had mentioned that he wanted to get involved in Atlasia, and I told him that I had just vacated my seat, and that I could PM PiT to let him know Dereich was interested in the job, but when I had pulled up Atlasia Jerry had already been appointed. I wasn't involved.

[Donerail]

DOCKET A:
-BACON KING'S EMERGENCY FIXER-UPPER AMENDMENT!
-Clean Government Act
-Parks Bill
-Clean Power Act
-Congressional Elections Act
-Annexation of the states of Coahila and Tamaulipas

-Abolition of Income Tax Act: Vetoed

[Donerail]

DOCKET A:
-BACON KING'S EMERGENCY FIXER-UPPER AMENDMENT!

I was sure we had voted on that one.

Also, is there a docket B ?

It's Docket A because it was my proposal; nobody opposed it, so it just became the Docket. We ne'er voted on the Amendment, in here or as a region wide vote.

[Donerail]

Our income tax system is clearly hugely outdated and underdimensioned. However, making it harsher would perhaps not be very well understood by our citizens in a period of economical crisis. On the other hand, decreasing it again would be foolish in my opinion : it would be no different from abolishing it completely. No one can seriously affirm that our income tax is too high.

To the contrary, for many of our citizens our income tax is far too high. Ergo, what Griffin said.

[Donerail]

Y'all could table this... I never got around to refining it and making it nice legislation and suitable and such.

[Donerail]

I would suggest keeping the annexation stuff on the back burner as a negotiating chip with the Canada stuff (ideally we'd expand north, but if the other regions are greedy and refuse to grant us anything even though they're gobbling up Canada)...

[Donerail]

     I think SJoyce's suggestion was that we could incorporate some culturally Southern states on our periphery in exchange for other regions incorporating parts of Canada. It makes sense in terms of maintaining geographical balance, since our region is the only one that is completely divorced from the Canadian border.

     With that said, incorporating parts of Canada is change for the sake of change in the purest sense. Other than giving Canadian posters the satisfaction of registering where they live in real life, there is really no substantial effect to it. If we're going to do that, we might as well incorporate the rest of the world into Atlasia as well.

Yes, that's what I meant (PiT put it in much better words). And yeah, it is, but it's what the Administration wants, and if the other regions decide to do it we may as well make the best of it.

[Donerail]

I'd suggest this amendment:

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It doubles the number of reactors and changes it so that we cover 50% of startup costs (the feds would also cover 20%); it also changes the locations to places where there are currently plans for the construction of new reactors.

[Donerail]

Oh I would reject SJoyce's amendment. Security and waste processing questions again.

Security? Our reactors are surrounded by electronically-monitored fences that are patrolled by armed guards. The reactor containment buildings are designed to be impervious to impact by aircraft. The by-products are not enriched enough to create any kind of nuclear weapon. As for waste processing, we've already gone over that.

[Donerail]

Oh I would reject SJoyce's amendment. Security and waste processing questions again.

Security? Our reactors are surrounded by electronically-monitored fences that are patrolled by armed guards. The reactor containment buildings are designed to be impervious to impact by aircraft. The by-products are not enriched enough to create any kind of nuclear weapon. As for waste processing, we've already gone over that.

Electronically-monitored fences and armed guards are not immune to natural catastrophes or human mistakes. Did you read our objections about the storage due to the extremely long life of the uranium or plutonium isotopes?

Neither is anything else - it remains that nuclear power is by far one of our safest options.

As for storage, utilizing a fast breeder reactor or as much reprocessing as we can should alleviate much of those concerns - for the rest, having them packed in casks and placed in a repository far below the surface made of ducrete, synroc, or saltstone should alleviate those concerns. We presently have the technology to entomb the waste up to five kilometers belowground, where it would not be disturbed by human activity and would not pose a threat to the biosphere. We could even bury it beneath the ocean floor, where it would not be disturbed by geological activity (how okay that would be with the London Convention, however, is unclear).

[Donerail]

I fully endorse this development.

[Donerail]

Ok, ok. Now that April Fools is done its time to get back to business. I know this is hoping against hope, but would any of our Labor or Mustafinite legislators be willing to vote for Sjoyce's proposed amendment?

My point with the amendment is keeping the same amount of costs to us while doubling the number of reactors and reducing our expenditures on each individual reactor - it would also have us cover specifically reactors that have already been proposed so we're not breaking new ground and doing new surveys and finding new sites and such.

[Donerail]

I'm thinking of opening an office to have the Legislative docket always available. Yeah I'll do that. Or even better, I'll open a new Legislation introduction thread, with a more understandable and findable name than the one we have now, and on the front page there will always be the legislative docket kept updated by whoever is Speaker at the time. Yeah that seems great. Don't you think ?

Don't worry man, I got it. We have an Imperial Almanac stickied at the top of the page - I'll just add the docket and links to the other threads in there.

[Donerail]

May I also simply inquire as to what this so-named militia is that you have?

Think a National Guard-type force (for more information reference the Southeast Militia Initiative and IDS Militia Structure Act).

[Donerail]

No objections to 1 or 5, though the date could be pushed back a bit.
I'd change the wording on 2 to ensure that that includes nuclear power and power derived from fossil fuel power plants equipped with some kind of carbon capture/storage technology (yay, this again).
I'd favor scrapping most of those separate groups in 4 to just include representatives of the regional government, power corporations, and local citizens (with local citizens making up by far the largest portion).
Annual (6) doesn't seem necessary - maybe make it every 5 years or something?
#7 should probably be changed to something like "All new regional government buildings shall be LEED certified and whenever feasible be zero net energy"
On 8: I don't know if that's exactly the wording I'd use or how much leeway we have there to dictate that to the school districts, but I'd assume that's covered under 5 to mandate that they have recycling containers.

[Donerail]

If we include nuclear energy or what the candidate in campaign proposes, it would be spoiling the intention and the meaning of the bill.

How so?

Unless, of course, your intent behind this bill is to try to directly counter the last one.

[Donerail]

If we include nuclear energy or what the candidate in campaign proposes, it would be spoiling the intention and the meaning of the bill.

How so?

Unless, of course, your intent behind this bill is to try to directly counter the last one.

No. The intention of this law is not to offset the effects of another law, and certainly it won't avoid the construction of the plants. There is no relation between the nuclear bill and the one called Clean Government Act of 2013. The intention is that the governmental buildings use clean energies. I think it's easy to understand

Yes, but I don't see how that makes any of my other suggestions invalid, or what sense it makes to build plants and then try to pass legislation that prevents us from using the energy from those plants to power government buildings.

[Donerail]

Yes, but I don't see how that makes any of my other suggestions invalid, or what sense it makes to build plants and then try to pass legislation that prevents us from using the energy from those plants to power government buildings.

Oh, sorry, when I said "what the candidate in campaign proposes" I meant your proposal of including nuclear fission power and "fossil fuel plants equipped with some kind of carbon capture/storage". Energy produced by such means is not clean. Nuclear waste and carbon emissions need to be stored and conveniently isolated. Also, carbon storage is not fully developed and the costs of such technology are excessive. Money that could be used in clean energies, on the other hand.

Ah, okay. We'll need to disagree on nuclear energy for now (everything that can be said on that has been), but the reason I'd include carbon storage despite it not being fully developed or feasible yet is because it is technically possible, and in this field I'd rather not be put in the role of predicting what's feasible or in use in several years.

As for your other proposals, I prefer including representants from environmental groups and unions, because power corporations are represented as well. I believe in check and balance or, in other words, it's necessary a counterweight. If you think that annual reviews are excessive, maybe biannual then, but not five years between them. It's important to introduce the concept of recycling from the school and I don't see that as an outrage against the autonomy of the school districts.

It would seem the power corporations are a necessary component simply because they are the ones providing this power. However, I would support it being almost-entirely composed of representatives of local communities and scientific experts on the topics. I could do biannual. As for recycling, it'd seem to be covered insofar as this bill would provide for recycling containers in government buildings (I'm assuming that includes schools); perhaps add in something saying you have to mention recycling on Earth Day or something?

[Donerail]

Do you have something against environmental groups or unions?

I don't, I just fail to see why they should dictate our energy policy. They can still be included under the local citizens category, but I don't see why we should expand our energy policy beyond the people who pay for it, the people who know how it works, and the people who it'll affect.

I support the inclusion of representants from the local communities and scientists, of course. Didn't you understand the part that refers to teaching how to recycle or to making pupils participate in the recycling as part of the education? I don't know what to think about the motivation of some of your objections. Some points of this bill don't look so controversial to me.

Well of course, as the sinister head of the nuclear lobby here my motives must be questioned. Seriously though, gonna need more details than 'make them participate in recycling'. Is this a standalone unit, or is it part of the science or social studies curriculum? Is it going to be taught as part of the general ecology unit, or on Earth Day, or something else? Which pupils, elementary, middle, high? At what schools, public, private, charter, home? What does it mean, make them participate in recycling their litter? Are they going to bring in trash from home to school to recycle? Is recycling a homework assignment? Are they just recycling in-class stuff? What are they recycling? It's simply too vague.

[Donerail]

I like cornbread.

[Donerail]

I like cornbread.

You neither work nor legislate in the Legislature right now, so you wouldn't mind.

But what about the children?

And to address the versatility point, cornbread is very versatile as well. If we just say cornbread, that also opens the door to corn pone or maybe even hushpuppies being served as well. And those are delicious.

[Donerail]

I fully support this idea.

[Donerail]

I'd like to pass this and move on to HSR, if we could (only because the ME is debating HSR right now too, so if we're going to try for an interconnected network it should be now).

[Donerail]

I'd like to pass this and move on to HSR, if we could (only because the ME is debating HSR right now too, so if we're going to try for an interconnected network it should be now).

How can we debate HSR if there is no bill introduced on the matter and there are other bills still pending in the queue?

As a general topic before we try some big undertaking (like the Constitution thing). I'm fine with getting the other things out of the way first.

[Donerail]

Y'all ready to move on this? I support it. Only thing I'd change is:

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Because the Almanac is pinned at the top of the board and will be easier to find (and it's shorter, so an individual post would be easy to find as well).