The Imperial Dominion of the South's Legislature

[Zanas]

Thanks for stepping in and giving us this info Talleyrand. I'd like to hear what our other Legislators have to say on the matter before moving forward to voting or amending the budget. BaconKing ? Dereich ? Jerryarkansas ?

[Zanas]

Ok, so I think we can assume BaconKing has disappeared in his attempt to break the world record of apnea free-diving in a locked up Austin Mini under the Arctic Ocean, so I guess we'll be moving on now. We'll let the income individual tax the way it is for now, but I think I'll be introducing something to reform it a bit cause it seems outdated. We'll reduce the corporate tax to 4%.

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Modifications are bolded.

Now we only have a narrower positive balance, and I'll be attempting to draft something of a $1 billion measure in favor of the employment of disabled people. But for now, I will be giving everyone 30 hours to correct me if I'm wrong on my calculus and discuss this further if needed, and we will be then proceeding on to a vote.

[Zanas]

As we've been discussing this, I figured I might just as well introduce this here and now, and let you a bit more time to discuss it or amend it. I hope my fellow Legislators will not take this move as an excess of power on behalf of the Speakership, as it is only my splitting up of what we discussed on the budget in two separate bills that we could therefore vote on simultaneously if possible.

To explain things a bit, there are roughly 9 million disabled workers in Atlasia, and that makes roughly 2 to 2.3 million of them in the IDS, as I gathered we make up to a quarter of the total Atlasian population. This bill would cost $4,000 in two years for each worker hired, i.e. $2,000 a budgetary year. Therefore, even if each and every disabled worker in the region were to change employer and be hired the same year, this would cost $4.6 billion in our budget. I think we can well assume that this incentive will therefore not exceed $1 billion, which would still require one out of each five disabled workers to be newly hired in the Region each year.

Anyway, I'll leave it to all of you to discuss and amend if needed.

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[Zanas]

     As I posted elsewhere in this thread, personal income tax revenue is $56.27 billion and corporate income tax revenue is $12.98 billion.

Thanks, I hadn't noted that down. I made the necessary adjustment directly into my original posts, and we'll still have a couple $billion to spend if needed.

I'll wait on the other Legislators to declare, and then tomorrow I'll be launching the votes.

[Zanas]

Well that's great news ! We now have a potential majority to pass the budget and the disabled employment incentive ! I'll still be letting a little more time for jerry and BaconKing to express their feelings and opinions on this, then we'll vote.

[Zanas]

So we'll bring these to a vote. Here are the two final bills, the budget per se, and the disability employment incentive initiative.

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Please vote Yes, No, or Abstain on the following :

The IDS Budget 2013 :
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Abstain

The IDS Disability Employment Tax Credit Act
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Abstain

You have 48 hours.

[Zanas]

The IDS Budget 2013 :
[X] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Abstain

The IDS Disability Employment Tax Credit Act
[X] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Abstain

[Zanas]

With a majority of four in favor, none against and no abstention, the IDS Budget of 2013 has passed.

With a majority of three in favor, none against and one abstention, the IDS Disability Employment Act has passed.

Awaiting signature or veto by the Emperor now.

[Zanas]

Well I welcome either of you to introduce this piece of legislation in the dedicated thread.

Now back to present business : we have the following bills that we should discuss, in this order of business. However, the five first need to be sponsored by a current Legislator to be brought to the floor of the House for discussion, since their original authors are no longer Legislators themselves.

Legislative docket :
-Parks We Can Be Proud Of Act : needs sponsoring
-Clean Power Act : needs sponsoring
-Congressional Elections Act : needs sponsoring
-Annexation of the states of Coahuila and Tamaulipas : needs sponsoring
-Abolition of Income Tax Act: Vetoed  : needs sponsoring
-BACON KING'S EMERGENCY FIXER-UPPER AMENDMENT!
-Clean Government Act
-The Official Snack of the IDS Act

Another thing : it seems that BaconKing's emergency fixer-upper amendment is actually a constitutional amendment, and I am not sure if you should be discussing it here or directly voting on it in the Voting Booth for all IDS citizens. Could the Emperor, or BaconKing if he even is still alive, clarify this point before we get to it ?

So anyway, here is the first bill we have :

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I have annexed the explanations given by SJoyceFla while introducing the bill. Anyone to sponsor it ? I have to gather more info on this before I can say if I am ready to or not.

[Zanas]

Well, while I welcome Velasco as a new Legislator in these walls, I hereby open discussion on the Parks We Can Be Proud Of Act. I won't repost it, it's just seven posts above this one.

Go on, discuss !

(On an unrelated note, what is the outcome if a vote on a bill is tied and everyone voted ? Is there some kind of tie-breaking reservation ?)

[Zanas]

All right, I guess we'll just have to say nobody sponsored the Parks We Can Be Proud Of Act anymore, and adjourn it.

So I'm bringing the three other bills that need sponsoring to the floor now. Read them well and if there is a similar situation than with the Parks one, let nobody sponsor them and move on.

-Clean Power Act : needs sponsoring

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-Congressional Elections Act : needs sponsoring

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-Annexation of the states of Coahuila and Tamaulipas : needs sponsoring

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[Zanas]

Alright, so to begin with, the so-called Clean Power Act doesn't promote clean power at all, because nuclear power is only clean if you look at it with an extremely short-sighted view. What do you do with nuclear waste ? And I mean : 10% of nuclear waste is the actual product of nuclear "combustion" production (yeah, it's rather fission than combustion), but 90% of the waste is all the extra waste coming from the human activity necessary around it, like clothings, protections, and so on.

All this waste, well, we don't really know what to do with it right now. Either we export it to low-wage countries (shame on us for that, right ?), or we're planning on burying it very deep under our ground and keeping track of it. But who can affirm that we are really going to keep good track of it for centuries, even millennia ? And do you, as a Legislator, want to be responsible for a nuclear disaster in 900 years when someone drills right into a nuclear disposal site ? And even if we do keep good track of it for centuries, how are we sure this nuclear waste doesn't leak out and spread and render the whole region uninhabitable ? We have good containment ? Yeah, right... Are you gonna bet on that and bury it right under your home that you're gonna bequeath your children ? Your grand-grand children ?

Unless someone amends it to contain a financing for a fitting containment to ship any nuclear waste right into the Sun (I still think it's the utter best option, if viable), I'll be Ixnay on this one.

[Zanas]

Yeah and those investments are only what is needed to build the plant in the first place. Nobody ever takes into account the cost of dismantling the plant when decommissionned a few decades later. It generally amounts to roughly the same as the building cost. One EPR reactor is being built in Finland and has been delayed several times and the budget soared. Same with the EPR in French Normandy. Nuclear energy is not safe, is not clean, and is not cheap.

I'll only support research and development funding on nuclear energy, because there could be breakthroughs that could make it just these three things : mainly achieving controlled fusion. But I'll not be supporting building even the first new nuclear plant around my neighbours and children here in the IDS.

I'll let each one of you either craft something amended or state their intent, and then we'll proceed on to a vote soon.

[Zanas]

Hey, sorry y'all for the continuing silence. Velasco said it : IRL matters. New job, with a co-worker in the office, so virtually no time then to come here, new appartment, with thus far no internet connection (I finally won the fight against my iphone to have it give me a personal hotspot though ! ). Now it should be better.

SO. Last time we were moving towards building 11 nuclear reactors. I think we cannot be voting on this without a cost estimation of building AND decommissioning all of them. PLUS, if there are 11 plants with one reactor each, we'll need 11 sites that accept to welcome a nuclear power plant, with its risks albeit its jobs also. Fukushima has been around, and we the opponents of this project will make sure it is again. The "nimb" effect should play.

We still don't seriously know what to do with the waste, and it should also be included in the cost, as well as the cost of uranium purchasing. PLUS, we'll need to buy this to Russia, Niger, or other such wonderfully democratic and trustworthy wountries... Energetic independence indeed...

This whole thing is insane. What we need is diversifying our energetic offer, not play all cards of the same deck.

Granted, though, I won't accept as Speaker that Velasco's amendment is included in the discussion, because it is too far away from the original object of the discussion. I'll greatly encourage him to craft this as a whole new bill though, if he hasn't done it since.

SO, now, what we need is a serious cost estimate. I still really don't know who we should be asking for this kind of thing in this game. Is it the GM ? But I can tell we don't have one for the moment... Or can it be the Governor/Emperor when it's regional matters ? Can the Emperor craft a cost estimate, or any Legislator ? I'll try to craft one for tomorrow, since this discussion has long been overdue. I'll really try.

Again, thanks for your patience, and let's try keeping on moving.

Also, I don't recall anyone proposing to sponsor the Congressional elections act or the Annexation of Coahuila and Tamaulipas act : can I infer from that that we tabled them ? Then we can keep on scrolling down the docket. I'll let you tomorrow to sponsor one or the other, then I'll introduce the following bills, and hopefully we can get to vote on the Nuke bill.

[Zanas]

Yeah sorry 'bout all that, I'm having terrible connection and RL troubles, so I really not have much time to come here. I don't see why you shouldn't freely start to discuss the other bills I had introduced though, even if we're a bit stuck on the nuclear thing. I had introduced them precisely in order to be able to lead several bill discussions at once.

I've made an estimate of the cost of building one nuclear plant of approximately 1000 MW : it amounts to $ 1.3 bn, if nothing goes wrong during building. The cost of decommissioning and demolishing it is more discussed, but amounts to a spectrum between half and the whole of the building cost. So one plant would amount to 2 or 2.5 bn dollars. So 11 would be 22 to 28 bn dollars.

BUT, we have to take into account the cost of the waste management. And this is the most difficult part : between those wastes, some have hugely long half-lives, and we'll have to manage their isolation for centuries. We just can't bury them underground for good and say it's over : we have to make sure, every year, every decade, every century, every millenium even, that our wastes aren't spilling and destroying the environment. This cost is pretty impossible to calculate. But when you see what's happened to the aeras around Chernobyl or Fukushima, or even if you have in mind the concerns at Hanford Site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site#Environmental_concerns), you want to handle these wastes with care.

So I'll say roughly it's another $ 1 bn for each plant we have to fund for nuclear waste handling. So now we're up to $ 40 bn for the whole project. Seems like it's starting to be a lot of money for an awful lot of risks we're bringing upon our population, whereas we could use this much money to begin the necessary energetic transition we'll eventually have to make.

I'd still want a GM estimate of the thing, just to show you my calculations are not partisan. In the mean time, let's start discussing annexation, even if the elections are in a few days. Dereich sponsored it, so I'll let him explain what good the IDS has to hope for with the bill.

And again, sorry for the inconvenience.

[Zanas]

I second the fixer amendment by BaconKing, and I think we should ask the Emperor to open up a booth on it some time.

I still am not in favor of the abolition of the income tax, as Dereich saif I think the budget we voted earlier in January makes sense. If it comes to a vote, though, I don't think it can achieve an overriding majority. (how much is this by the way ? 4 out of 5 I guess ?)

I am also not in favor of annexing two Mexican states along the border, because, let's face it, Mexico won't let us ! So it means WAR ! And we already have too many of our men and women abroad fighting wars to start one on our lands or the neighbouring ones. We could, on the other hand, start discussions with our Mexican counterparts on how to fix the real issues in those states and along the border, and maybe we, as a Legislature, could transform the bill in an official demand to the Emperor to meet with the Governors of Coahuila and Tamaulipas to discuss these matters. What do you think ?

As for the GM estimate for our nuclear plants project, do I have to go and ask the GM myself, or is it the Emperor's prerogative ?

[Zanas]

I just figured we don't... Griffin's application has been slaughtered in the nest, and I don't even know if someone has applied since.

[Zanas]

Yeah I'm not a whole fan of annexions at large, whether it's towards the North of the South. If Canada ends up being incorporated in Atlasia though, we'll have to fight to achieve a comparable importance for the South in the final output. But I don't think we should annex Mexico or even parts of it, rather incorporate "Southernish" states in the IDS (Oklahoma, Kentucky, Virginias...).

But I can agree that if we keep this threat up our sleeve for the time being, we could use it to strengthen our position in the negotiations to reorganize Atlasia if Canada is annexed. So can we all agree to keep the bill in the docket for now and only bring it up again if such an event takes place ? Because if I bring it to a vote now, it will be barred and won't be available then.

[Zanas]

Ok so we're moving closer to the conclusion here. I still have to state that I am massively worried by that quantity of new nuclear sites around my family, friends and co-regionals, but it is not my power as Speaker to get in the way of the will of the Legislature, only in my power as Legislator to express my discontent and opposition.

There has been an opening on discussing income tax as an alternative to building so much Fukushimas on our soil. I would be interested in opening this door a bit, for the sake of it.

I know I have been one of the fiercest opponents of the abolition of income tax in our region, and I still am, but I had realized when we were having this debate, luckily vetoed by PiT, that our regional income tax was only an addition to a much larger federal income tax. As an immigrant of a centralized foreign country, I am not always very familiar with federal and regional repartition.

So I think we could maybe be discussing what the Federalists of the South would deem acceptable in income tax reduction to avoid building nuclear plants at home ? Velasco, are you with me on this ?

[Zanas]

Since we had come to a deadlock on the nuclear power bill, I think maybe new blood can come in the House from the ongoing election, and maybe settle things a bit in one way or the other.

Also, if I am reelected as Legislator, I intend to try my hardest to stay Speaker and make a good job out of it, better than what can be said from what I did the last three weeks. If I am confirmed as Speaker, I'll make the following pledge : I'll have a mandatory confidence vote organized every two weeks while I'm in this office. This will just be a quick 24 or 48 hour vote in the House to see if you are satisfied. If not, I'll humbly step down from Speakership and be a classic Legislator again, or head out to other business if I find I cannot fulfil my commitment satisfactorily.

We'll resume legislative work as soon as the 3 new Legislators have sworn in, and I promise we'll have a vote on at least one bill before Friday night !

[Zanas]

Alright, we have a new Legislature, a fresh start, and we have the perfect thing for it : an uncontested piece of legislation that we can pass. We really didn't have much debate on this cause we're basically all in favor. If our only new Legislator, Hashemite, wants to go through the last pages of the thread to have an idea, he can.

I'll launch the vote right now, but to my knowledge Dereich and Hash haven't sworn in yet, so they'll have to do so before voting on this. Voting will end on Tuesday, March 26th, 24:00.

As it is a regional constitutional amendment, it needs the green light from the Legislature to be brought in front of the IDS citizens in a specific booth. So that will be two votes for the price of one, hurray !

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Article I, Section 10 is hereby amended to read:

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Article I, Section 12 is hereby amended to read:

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Article II is hereby amended to read:

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Article VII, Clause 3 is hereby amended to read:

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Article VII, Clause 4 is hereby amended to read:

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[/quote]

Please vote :
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Carrots

[Zanas]

That is, of course, if no one had the intention to run for Speaker... If someone does, I'll probably have to withdraw or at least postpone the message above.

[Zanas]

Yes on the amendment.

EMPEROR : We finally pass something again, I hope you are proud ! And now it's your turn to bring this to a proper voting booth.

[Zanas]

The Legislative docket now : (texts can be seen here)

-Clean Power Act : latest version :

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-Abolition of Income Tax Act Veto Overrule Vote : needs sponsoring

-Clean Government Act

-The Official Snack of the IDS Act

-The Creating Job Opportunities Act of 2013

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-Annexation of the states of Coahuila and Tamaulipas : kept in the back of the queue for potential federal leverage

--------------------

Can we agree that no one will sponsor the overruling vote on the veto on abolition of the income tax ? So we can drop it from the docket.

Next in line would be the so-called Clean Power Act. It has met a quite divisive Legislature, and I feel a bit uncomfortable bringing to a vote now that the composition of the Legislature has changed, because it could appear as a manoeuver when it is not. Could we still be making compromises, limit nuclear power to what is existing now, even develop R&D on it if needed, and rather concentrate our endeavor on really renewable energy and energy economies ? I recommend to Hash the reading of pages 152 and 153 of the present thread to see what has already been discussed.

[Zanas]

Is our vote on the fixer-upper amendment valid ?

Is the subsequent referendum currently opened in the Voting Booth valid ?

Who is presently Legislator ? Can we really proceed with anything if we have a Legislator who is one but not one ?

Who are we ? Where are we going ?

I feel the only solution is to cancel the whole thing and have it again. I also feel we need to maintain in effect the effects the election had until the moment this trial was introduced, ie : our vote on BaconKing's amendment, and the referendum on it.

For now, I don't think we should be voting on anything, but we can debate.