Discussion about the New Constitution

[Togas]

Please use this thread to discuss the New Constitution.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Most excellent. There are some issues I would rather be dealt with differently, by they are insignificant compared to the impressive array of issues that are well addressed in the NewCon.

1)Exploration, City Site, and City naming should be under one office in my opinion. Rather than give the SMC power over war, exploration, and shipping I would prefer it be given wartime powers. The only way I could concieve of doing this is that the President assigns military units to a Minister (kinda historical) so that he could assign a warrior or horseman or galley to the Expansion person for exploration purposes. I do feel there should be an Expansion/Exploration person as the SMC tends to me a war minded individual and they tend to be more interested in building troops and attacking the enemy that exploring and founding cities for the Empire. Hence the dilema we are currently in where we are at a disadvantage for being first to contact the Lost Civs. I feel the position needs to be separate as it contains aspects of Domestic (founding cities and finding city sites), Foreign (seeking new civs), and Military (exploration). By no means does it necessarily have to be on equal footing with those other offices, I just feel putting it under one of them may prove to lean it towards one aspect or the other.

2) Currently the NewCon would require a vote of the Senate to determine the outcome of a GL. I would think it would be beneficial for a standing task for a GL to exist before any turnchat/turnthread commences otherwise they would play several turns with the GL standing there doing nothing and preventing us from generating a new one while they waited for the end of the turnplay (new word got tired of typing chat and thread) to get the Senate's wishes for the GL.

Anyway, that could be addressed by a Senate Bill. I also feel we should have some prerequisites for a Senate Bill to be proposed or we may see 10 to 12 a day as there is nor requirement for prior discussion.

[UnOrthOdOx]

What a beast.

I will get around to reading it thuroughly in a while.

Initial concerns.

The whole Senate section, more or less. (the only one I have read through thuroughly at the moment)

The Senate has allot of power, that is great, really.

However, this leaves the whole nature of how the Senate wants to procede, keep track of things, and operate totally in the dark. How are we to keep track of these laws? Initially, I suspect, there will need to be a flurry of laws just to get the Senate soemwhat functional.

And I am uncomfortable with the money being dealt to the Senate. Any act of the senate would require, by this constitution, a three-day poll. With the current schedule of turnchats twice a week, that is not enough time to debate and poll on any kind of spendature proposal, so they will all default to the President. Would it not be better to have a minister in charge? Of course, you will respond "the Senate can pass a law to appoint someone in charge of any part of the Senate's power" Yes, tis true, but again, this is going to be a slow process, taking time to debate, vote, and institute such a position, whereas first we would need to debate, vote, and pass an accepted format for the storage, retention, and distribution of these laws.

This section also seems to cantradict itself, making claims that 'any citizen not a judge minister, blah blah, is a member of the senate.' However, then it stated that those same ministers and judges are allowed to vote in the Senate's affairs, thus giving them the dual power. "any citizen can vote in any poll..."

Well, I have work to do now...I will get back to more later.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
Any act of the senate would require, by this constitution, a three-day poll. With the current schedule of turnchats twice a week, that is not enough time to debate and poll on any kind of spendature proposal, so they will all default to the President.

Debate? Who said anything about debate, it isn't in the NewCon. Immediately after the end of a turnplay I suspect there will be 17 Senators posting 17 Senate Bills to approve the allocation of funds for 1 temple here, a worker there, and an upgrade over behind that mountain somewhere. If 5 pass then we have 5 approved expenditures for 1 budget and I seriously doubt we will have the fundage to support them all.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Point conceded.

[Hot Mustard]

Excellent work - much thanks go to Togas, adaMada, Apocalypse, & NotYouEither. There is nothing in this document that I can really complain about, but there are some absences...

The word 'science' appears only twice in this document - astounding considering the importance of technology in this game. Similarily, there are zero (!) occurances of any form of 'explore'.

At minimum, I would suggest a couple of mandatory deputies:

A Science deputy under the Domestic Minister, responsible for advancing and advocating technology with any means possible.

An Exploration or Naval Commander under the SMC, responsible for all exploring new territory, boats, and settler and escorts.

Finally, I think there has been too much silliness happening with city names to not have explicit guidelines for their creation in here somewhere. Personally, I'd like to suggest that anyone who wants to name a city must write a role-played introduction to the city and it's creation, providing a background to the city name, and declaring themselves a citizen of said city.

[zeit]

We should have a budget supervising minister, who could look at the broader picture and allocate the funds better. Maybe the senate should vote on a budget offered by the minister, or something like that, but we definitely need someone to make order in the mess of all upgrade/rushes/deals.

[joncnunn]

Overall it looks excelent

On the overspending of the Senate:

1. The President does have the power to veto the spending bills that didn't get 2/3rds support.

2. Even if too many spending bills get 2/3rds support, then I think the clause about impossible orders would take affect while processing them.

[joncnunn]

Since the President appears to be given free control of the sliders anyway, he's in a good position to supervise the budget himself under the new constitution.

[civman2000]

I think too many officials are appointed, and only judges and the VP must be approved. How about adding this:
"Any Senator may demand a vote for the confirmation of any appointed official that has not been confirmed during his or her term of office. 50% of the citizns must confirm the appointment, or the official loses his or her position. No official may be called for confirmation more than once a term. If an official has already been confirmed, the only way to remove that official is Impeachment, as described in Article V".

[adaMada]

Ok . I'm here to respond to any concerns that I can now, and I'll try to keep an eye on this thread throughout the night .

On Senate Organization...
We tried to make the document as flexible as possible. Yes, there will be organizational issues for the first few days, but that's expected. One of the first laws should be a senate organizational law (perhaps temporarially assigning the duty of keeping track of official Senate Laws to the Directory Manager for the first term, until a more concrete law can be passed?) Either way, I think it's best that it is left out of the Constitution -- the goal is to have as few amendments as possible.

On Senate Money...

10 The Senate has the power to determine how money is spent. The Senate is not required to use this power. Should the Senate fail to act on any spending matter, or should a spending matter be vetoed, the President may decide.

The key thing about this is the Presidental power to decide. The senate probably won't decide budgeting matters on a day to day basis -- but if they feel that the President is abusing their power, they can always choose to excersize it. Of course, with this wording, the Senate can decide to do everything itself, should it so desire -- but that wouldn't be my intention (though I can't speak for the other members of the Convention).

-- adaMada

[Togas]

joncnunn, you're my hero.

I've been geting work done in the office today. On occasional breaks I'll cringe, then glance back at this page to see what new complaints have been added. Good to get a little support.

I want to stress that this document is SMALL compared to what we could have done. It's compact. Every effort has been made to create on a Constitutional Level only major rules and safeguards. We only spelled out in detail what was crutial, although we did leave in the details of previous amendments, like the cumbersome Impeachment amendment.

There will be things missing that you'd like to have seen in here, but this document is long enough, and probably longer than any of you expected it to be. If you can think of something that is necessary, something that will cause a government collapse if it is not included, please tell us so. If you have a suggestion for a law change or new laws to be added, you can post so, but your best course of action is to prepare a discussion thread and later propose a SENATE BILL upon the enactment of this Constitution.

A couple of things in the law that I'd like to point out:

Art II, Sec. 10 "The Senate has the power to determine how money is spent. The Senate is not required to use this power. Should the Senate fail to act on any spending matter, or should a spending matter be vetoed, the President may decide. "

This little piece of legislation is a result of a lot of time and debate. We wanted the people to be able to have some control over money in very important matters, but not in all matters, as it would slow the game down tremendously. So the Senate is given a power that, hopefully, will only be used when necessary. The President is the fall-back authority on all spending matters. Plus, the Executives can veto a bad spending bills, AND (as joncnunn put it) the instructions need not be followed if they are "clearly erroneous, or made impossible and/or harmful by changed circumstances."

Art I, Sec 4 (e) -- The Domestic Minister may rush any project, but only with the approval of the Senate or President.

This means that the DM (or deputy he puts in charge of this city/region) rush builds, but rushes must be approved via poll or President. Senators can't rush projects by passing spending bills.

Art II, Sec 11 -- The Senate may make its own laws regarding Senate procedure.

This was written with the hope that the people would propose and create a process for which they want to manage Bills and Senate motions, which can be as complex or simple as you want, and without the trouble of trying to amend the Con if you wanted to fix it.

--Togas

[UnOrthOdOx]

I don't like the President being in control of that, personally. He is there to play the game, not make game changing decisions.

And you really think it would only take a few days to set up something for the Senate?

For the record, you are not really eliminating the amendments. All you are doing is transferring those changes into these 'laws' of the Senate. The whole change process is still going to take place, but it will be in the book of laws (or whatever) instead of the Constitution. So the Senate is going to need to come up with what amounts to a seperate constitution for its own inner workings more or less.

The recent issue reguarding pre-poll opinion polls that resurfaced is a perfect example of what could happen. We had a relatively new person make an opinion poll, not knowing of the old official poll that showed a desire not to have those. The same thing will happen with these laws, they will need to be formulated into a book of laws to be changed, amended, whatnot, basically amounting to a seperate constitution.

Put yourself now in the shoes of a new person. I come in, I now need to read the Constitution to get a basic idea of what goes on, and who does what then I must also read the Book of Laws to see how I can impact the game, from here I will need to read the FAQ (once we make one) to associated myself with where to go to find information and such. I don't know about you, but to me that is too much work. The biggest reason new members are not as active is it is REALLY hard to figure out what the hell is going on here. Once they do, they become active. I think that this whole Senate system being seperate from the NewCon (as GF is calling it) makes that just a little more difficult to figure out.

Yes, this makes the NewCon extremely adaptable, but it only does so by transferring the need for changes to the Senate's Book of Laws (someone got a better name?)

[Reddawg]

I feel responsible for the elimination of the position of Minister of the Economy. I don't know what else to say, except that I'm sad to see it go. I had thought by creating budgets a more effective and efficient use of our funds would be possible. With the current situation, the Senate will not be making an actual budget, and the President won't have time. Spending will go back to how it was before, which is just approving everything that is asked for. I guess my time in the government ends with Term 5.

~MoE Reddawg

p.s. the constitution is good.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Not neccessarily Reddawg, it is perfectly reasonable the Senate creates a law designating that a new position be created which would essentially be the MoE...