The Omnibus Legislative Corrections Act

Democratic Donkeys:
PaulWallLibertarian42:
Edit: see I saw a misspelling and went in and corrected it, didnt have to propose legislation to change it before I actually changed it.
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You missed some stuff. :P

If we are to vote for legislation on this matter I suggest we call it the PaulWall act of 2014 in commemoration of his remarkable grammar and spelling. Plus it was his idea first! :D
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I propose he be noted as a original benefactor of the bill. I do not believe it should take his namesake however.
 
First off, Grosse's time and effort into this bill was a copy/paste job from an outdated and outmoded legal system that has since been repealed entirely and replaced with what we have, for exactly the reasons why this bill should fail: it was too complex and byzantine. If anyone thinks the laws we have now are complicated, I invite them to peruse the legal code from which this was lifted: http://forum.thenorthpacific.org/topic/633858/

Grosse is ever the reactionary, trying to take us back to the good old days when everything worked precisely as it should, because all the laws were written by him. If only we could get back to that time, and stop changing things, everything would be perfect and the legislature could take the rest of their lives off.

But that's not how it works. Times change, the community changes, and the laws must change with them. It makes no sense to involve officials from three branches of government to be responsible for policing a simple grammar issue. Nor do we ever require an official to do something "immediately" anymore - that's an unreasonable requirement. Also, clause 6.1? 6.2? Even the numbering system in this bill is outdated. I think it's a bit ironic that if this bill was constitutional and it happened to pass, its provisions would need to be promptly invoked to correct all the minor numbering and punctuation errors it contains.

Also, I did not object to this bill going to vote because of the post count or the amount of time it's been open. I objected because I don't want it to ever go to vote, and I hope that if it ever does, it fails. It's more likely to fail if it can be delayed to the point that another more elegant solution can take effect. That's a perfectly valid legislative tactic.
 
I'm not assuming that change=improvement. If you don't believe me, check my voting record, and count the nay votes. This bill would be an example of a bad change.
 
Also, I did not object to this bill going to vote because of the post count or the amount of time it's been open. I objected because I don't want it to ever go to vote, and I hope that if it ever does, it fails. It's more likely to fail if it can be delayed to the point that another more elegant solution can take effect. That's a perfectly valid legislative tactic.
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Finally, some truth. You don't want this bill to pass so you will do whatever is in your power to make sure it doesn't make it to vote.

Not very democratic. Why not lean on your ability to persuade others versus filibustering this. Thank you for you honesty though, it's refreshing.
 
Punk, it's politics: there are multiple bills going down the pipe to solve the same issue. The first one to reach the finish line dooms the others. I'll note that there is a counter-provision to overrule objections to it going to vote - if there's enough support for this bill, my efforts to delay it will be unsuccessful. Welcome back to TNP; this is a political game. This tactic doesn't remove it from the democratic arena, it just changes the rules a bit. The success of this bill still depends on the will of the RA. I've just asked supporters of this bill to demonstrate that there's enough support for this bill to justify a vote on it.
 
I also object to the Speakers decision to move this bill to a vote.

I'm with COE here. This is the least desirable solution to this problem and the fact that it would have to be invoked in order to fix the issues in this very bill is somewhat amusing. Given we have several other things going through right now on this issue, it seems prudent to delay this in order to not end up with several votes on the same damned thing at the same time because I forsee messes there. And, even besides that, I simply don't want this considered in a vote until the RA has had the time to come up with better ideas.

This is a power that RA members are free to use as they see fit. You can even override it if you can find the support. Politics are kinda the point of this game.
 
Crushing Our Enemies:
I'm not assuming that change=improvement. If you don't believe me, check my voting record, and count the nay votes. This bill would be an example of a bad change.
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Ah, the youth of today. Ever failing to recognise humour.
 
Mr Speaker, this bill is a work of genius, and I support it going to vote immediately. Huzzah. Whoops. where's me washboard? eh? Where's me washboard?
 
Just because you dislike this bill doesn't mean it is something that the entirety of the RA should not vote.
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On principle, I am in favor of legislative efficiency - bills with grammatical or spelling errors, with awkward phrasings or words accidentally, with highly problematic side effects or unintended consequences should, in my opinion, be revised before going to vote unless there are compelling arguments of necessity to the contrary.

I would note that I'm not the only one who thinks this - I can pull up any number of posts (and nefarious IRC commentaries) from people laughing about having to amend a bill that was just passed. Sure, the RA could vote on every piece of legislation as soon as it's thought up and put in writing, but that's a horribly inefficient use of its time and its time-limited voting slots. In my opinion, it makes more sense to vote on good bills that have actually been vetted and that deserve serious consideration by the RA, rather than constantly relying on its good sense to fail them.

I don't have time for conspiracy theories. But i do see you and CoE objecting to a vote on this piece of legislation where I have not seen such objections recently on other bills. Let's take CoE's bill which has a paltry 25 posts in it where this one has 36. Heck CoE is looking to shorten debate in that bill and was D-Nied. Yet here he's looking to extend debate. Dubious? Heck yeah. The reason people think there are conspiracies out there is due to inconsistencies with some in applying certain levels of disdain.
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Not all bills are created equal - a bill which makes a small corrective change requires far less time for consideration than one which makes a standard legal amendment, which itself requires far less time than one which makes a broad and sweeping legal amendment. Grosse's bill, which amends the constitution and the legal code, inserts a giant chunk of language cribbed wholesale from another legal document, and explicitly replicates a procedure previously found unconstitutional, is far along the latter side of that spectrum and desperately in need of careful consideration and amendment. COE's bill, which declares the legal weight of numbers to be equivalent to the unstated legal weight of other formatting choices like bolding, underlines, and heretofore unused text coloring, and is in line with the informally stated opinion of the Chief Justice[note]He describes numbering as "purely technical", "largely immaterial to the functioning of the law", "simple formatting", "no bearing on the application or interpretation of the law", and "tantamount to a spelling error".[/note], is far more toward the former end of the spectrum. It is up to the Speaker's Office and the RA to determine how much debate any given proposal needs, but in my opinion it is sufficiently small - and well written initially - that it does not suffer from a shorter discussion period. You are free to disagree, of course.

In any event, formal debate concluded AND the Speaker pushed this vote back. There has been sufficient time for debate. More than sufficient.
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With formal debate concluded, this bill cannot be amended which removes any purpose from debate. Any improvements that could be suggested - and I would be happy to offer some to Grosse that would, in my opinion, fix the constitutional authorization problem - can't be included.

If not, continue to be prepared to face conspiracy theories.
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Crushing Our Enemies:
Flem, I can never tell which side you're making fun of anymore :P
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I am non-discriminatory. I mock everyone without favour or partiality.

I recognise that it is politics, but I am not a fan of filibustering, delaying tactics or talking bills out. if we assume that this bill is as good as it is going to get, let's just vote.
 
What we have here is a situation where the timing of bills is crucial to whether or not they will pass. What's happening here is simply using legislative procedures to require the RA to choose which bill should go to vote first.
 
That's easy. this bill was moved to vote first. Let's vote on this one first. Seems fair to anyone without a vested interest.
 
This is legislation - everyone has a vested interest. That's why the assembly should choose which one goes first. And if we're gonna quibble about dates, mine was proposed first, and that fact is just as meaningless as which one was moved first.
 
Zyvetskistaahn:
Grosseschnauzer:
And I also have object to the Speaker's rationale to delay the vote on this proposal because there is absolutely no overlap to the proposal currently at vote in the RA to add a Regional Assembly procedure, and my proposal; which amends the Constitution and adds a coordinated change to the Legal Code, both could co-exist without any contradiction. IThe Speaker's rationale such as it wasn't is simply a false premise on which to claim a need to delay the vote.
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I am afraid I shall have to ask for a minor clarification, am I to take this along with the other two objections and withdraw the scheduled vote, or is this simply to be taken as suggesting I am a constituent part of a terrible and shadowy conspiracy to bar the bill, as the rest of the statement seems to imply?

I would note that, if the bill's sponsor and other members are dissatisfied with the scheduling of the vote, they are welcome to make use of the 1/10ths provision in the RA Rules and, if the bill's sponsor truly believes that my scheduling of the vote was part of some plot against him, that he has a recall provision he may wish to make use of.
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Mr. Speaker my objection is to your clearly erroneous rationale for delaying a vote, period.

To try to interpret it as to an objection in any other way speaks more to my concern to my belief that there are ulterior motives afoot that speaks poorly of a supposedly nonpartisan officeholder in exercising the powers of that office.

I find it highly amusing that the three key figures in this fiasco of inappropriate manipulation of R.A. procedures have managed to all but comfirm by their explicit and implicit meaning of their words everything I said earlier.

I think the R.A. is perfectly capable on voting on my proposal and PaulWall's proposal at the same time, and voting to pass both, one or the other, or neither if they chose, without this blatant effort to manpulate the process.

As a several times past Speaker of the Regional Assembly, I know it is possible fo allow dissimilar, over even similar proposals on the same topic at the same time. In fact, I put three different constitutional revision to a vote of the R.A. at the same time, and the R.A., passed one proposal and rejected the other two. Unless the Speaker is suggesting that the current membership of the R.A, is less intelligent and less capable of making such a decision that it was at that time, the rationale offered by the Speaker to delay the vote on this proposal makes no sense whatsoever.

Given that the constitutional amendment and the coordinated change to the legal code are all part and parcel of the same proposal with a single objective, I seriously doubt this proposal is unconstitutional. Of course, the alternative is to add all of it (with a slight change in format) to the Constitution which would totally preclude any claim of unconstitutionality even from SillyString.

I would also point out by the way that the R.A. already uses variations of a unanmious consent/objection procedure in making decisions, so to claim that the Court struck down the concept of using the lack of objection for taking any action in the R.A. would mean that the current procedures to object to a vote, or to the Speaker's decision to delay or schedule a vote are also unconstitutional, and those are not even in the Constitution or the Legal Code,
 
Abbey Anumia:
I also object to the Speakers decision to move this bill to a vote.
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As there are three objections to the scheduled vote, the scheduled vote is withdrawn.

flemingovia:
Mr Speaker, this bill is a work of genius, and I support it going to vote immediately. Huzzah. Whoops. where's me washboard? eh? Where's me washboard?
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The motion for an immediate vote is noted, it requires the support of five other members, including the bill's sponsor, in order to be successful.
 
Grosseschnauzer:
so to claim that the Court struck down the concept of using the lack of objection for taking any action in the R.A.
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Can you perhaps point out where anybody has made such an absurd claim? The Court quite sensibly noted that the Constitution empowers the RA to amend the Legal Code by majority vote, and ruled that a lack of objection was insufficient to establish such a majority vote, but it made no mention of other, non-amendatory actions, and neither has anyone else that I can find.

Straw man much?

I'm curious to see what else you'll do to block this legislation.
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SillyString:
Grosseschnauzer:
so to claim that the Court struck down the concept of using the lack of objection for taking any action in the R.A.
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Can you perhaps point out where anybody has made such an absurd claim? The Court quite sensibly noted that the Constitution empowers the RA to amend the Legal Code by majority vote, and ruled that a lack of objection was insufficient to establish such a majority vote, but it made no mention of other, non-amendatory actions, and neither has anyone else that I can find.

Straw man much?

I'm curious to see what else you'll do to block this legislation.
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You did. Re-read what you posted.

As predicted, there has been an effort by the clique to kill this proposal. It needs to be overcome.

I second Flem's motion for an immediate vote.

Oh, Silly String, you said previously:

That is exactly the procedure that the previous Court's ruling struck down - allowing for objections is not sufficient to meet the standards of "majority vote", and the wording of the Constitutional section of this proposal does not actually do anything to override a majority vote being needed in order to pass an amendment.
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Grosse, read the seven words following the portion you italicized. Delaying or expiditing legislation in this way is not required by the constitution to be put to a majority vote - legislation is. So the procedures being invoked are constitutional, and the procedure you are proposing is not.
 
Yeah, still not seeing anywhere I've claimed that majority vote is needed to do anything and everything.[note]It would, as before, be absurd to claim that, as different actions clearly and explicitly require different thresholds. Amendments to the legal code require majority vote, amendments to the constitution require 2/3 majority, amendments to the bill of rights require 3/4 majority, motions to vote require a single person (or two, for non-legislative motions), motions to block a vote require 3 people, and motions to force a vote require a 1/10 minority - just to name a few possible RA actions.[/note] Still gonna go with [citation needed] on that one.
 
Crushing Our Enemies:
Grosse, read the seven words following the portion you italicized. Delaying or expiditing legislation in this way is not required by the constitution to be put to a majority vote - legislation is. So the procedures being invoked are constitutional, and the procedure you are proposing is not.
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Silly String asked me to point to where they made a comment about the court's ruling as to procedure. I simply did what was asked. I'm sorry for you that you disapprove, COE; take up your beef with SillyString.

Now, to make myself clear going forward, COE and SillyString, the two of you can go play ping pong with someone else. I'm not biting.

I believe what I proposed and how I proposed to achieve it, will be perfectly constitutiona;, since the constitutional amendment has attached to it the implementing language. Only a fool or an idiot would suggest that it is not part and parcel of a whole, and if the R.A. approves this proposal it also adopts the legislation by a two-thirds vote, and that would be the best evidence of what the legislative intent was with the adoption of the proposal.

The minor errors clause in the current legal code was flaws, and I objected to it being in that form when it was proposed in the codification because it was too narrow and would lead to problems. Which it did and has.

While what I propose is substantively similar to the process followed under the last legal code, it has been modified to fit the current constititional and legal code requirements.

And be warned if there continue to be roadblocks from the two of you on this vote, I will play the same card with every proposal either of you make from now until the end of time. I can pay that game, too, if you want.

And if need be, I'll reintroduce this proposal as a constitutional amendment with everything added to the constitution. That would settle any doubts about constitutionality. We are going to bring the sillyness the Court started to an end. Since the Court has adopted to block-headed view that a member of the R.A. can't get the Court to enforce its own decision about the legisiative actions of the R.A, that will be one of the next things I'll be going after.
 
Grosseschnauzer:
Silly String asked me to point to where they made a comment about the court's ruling as to procedure. I simply did what was asked.
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I didn't, actually, and I suggest you read my request more carefully. You stated that there had been assertions made that a majority vote is required for any action of the RA, and I asked you to cite these assertions.

The Court's ruling addressed legislative changes, which are not the sum total of all actions the RA can take, and nobody that I can find has asserted that all actions require majority vote.

Can you please provide the requested citation?

I believe what I proposed and how I proposed to achieve it, will be perfectly constitutiona;, since the constitutional amendment has attached to it the implementing language.
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No it doesn't. It authorizes some procedure, but does not authorize an unconstitutional procedure - and without amendments to the section requiring a majority vote, a procedure which bypasses that does not meet that standard.

if the R.A. approves this proposal it also adopts the legislation by a two-thirds vote, and that would be the best evidence of what the legislative intent was with the adoption of the proposal.
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..The RA approved the Minor Edits clause too, and the crime of Sedition, and every other law on the books that has been deemed unconstitutional by the Court. Approval is no measure of constitutionality, and legislative intent doesn't protect something blatantly unconstitutional.

Edit: What you call "ping pong" I call "debate", and I strongly believe it results in better legislation. It is unfortunate that you have a habit of preferring to call names, attack straw men, and outright threaten obstruction rather than engaging your audience and responding to the complaints that are raised, but none of that is going to stop people - myself included - from critiquing what they think needs critiqued. All your hostility does is ensure your bills don't receive the editing or support they need.

I withdraw my objection to this bill - let the Right Honorable Schnauzer definitively determine what the RA thinks of his bill. Zyvet, I leave the interpretion of how to proceed in your capable Speakery hands.
 
Crushing Our Enemies:
This is legislation - everyone has a vested interest.
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For the sake of those looking on in bewilderment, let's take a reality check, shall we? This is a bill about the numbering of clauses in our laws. To have a "vested interest" in this would be sad indeed. the passion of the debate and the language that has been used are totally out of proportion to the importance of the issue.

This leads me to one of two conclusions.

1. there are some people in this region who REALLY need to get out more.

or

2. Objection to this bill has less to do with what has been proposed, and more to do with who is proposing it (as Grosse suggested), and that this has simply become a convenient opportunity for a skirmish between Grosse and his admirers and Abbey, Asta, COE and, as Grosse has said, we may as well get used to this because ANYTHING Grosse says will be jumped on from a great height.


So .. for the bewildered out there can I reassure them that, if this bill passes (or falls) no kittens will be crushed under large concrete blocks. It is actually quite a trivial issue. It is just the usual people doing their usual squabbling on the usual sides.

But I wish they would not do it in the RA.
 
flemingovia:
So... for the bewildered out there can I reassure them that, if this bill passes (or fails) no kittens will be crushed under large concrete blocks. It is actually quite a trivial issue.
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Agreed. And for the record, I am totally against crushing kittens.

I nth the motion for an immediate vote on this proposal, n being a member of the set of positive integers and in this instance one (1) greater than the previous cardinal count of approvals of the motion for an immediate vote on said proposal.

>^,,^<
Alunya
 
flemingovia:
This leads me to one of two conclusions.

1. there are some people in this region who REALLY need to get out more.

or

2. Objection to this bill has less to do with what has been proposed, and more to do with who is proposing it (as Grosse suggested), and that this has simply become a convenient opportunity for a skirmish between Grosse and his admirers and Abbey, Asta, COE and, as Grosse has said, we may as well get used to this because ANYTHING Grosse says will be jumped on from a great height.
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Does it have to be either/or? It seems like a mix to me...
 
It just may be possible that I and others disagree with much of what Grosse proposes because of deep-seated ideological differences, and not because of personal problems.
 
I also motion for an immediate vote, let the whole RA decide for itself if they want this change or not. If its a "bad bill" the ra voting bloc will vote it down
 
In case anyone missed it, SillyString withdrew her objection, so pending a decision by the speaker, this bill might be going to vote without the need for the 1/10 clause to be invoked.
 
Crushing Our Enemies:
In case anyone missed it, SillyString withdrew her objection, so pending a decision by the speaker, this bill might be going to vote without the need for the 1/10 clause to be invoked.
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...and children sat up and did the Macarena everywhere.

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As the objection has already been successful it shall stand, the scheduled vote remains withdrawn.

The motion for an immediate vote currently has the support of five members, including the bills sponsor, should it achieve the support of another member it shall be successful.
 
flemingovia:
So .. for the bewildered out there can I reassure them that, if this bill passes (or falls) no kittens will be crushed under large concrete blocks.
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You must not have read the fine print. :console:

*Each use of this section of the law will be funded by crushing kittens under large concrete blocks in front of an audience for profit.
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Flem, you've contributed 14 posts to the issue yourself, so how's about you stop mocking those who enjoy playing this game and debating legislation?
 
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