The CARE Act

Cretox

Cretox

Somehow, Palpatine has returned
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Cretox State
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Cretox#0125
The Ceremonial Awards for Regional Excellence (CARE) Act.

An amendment to the Legal Code, with the following effects:
  1. Create a "Hero of the North" award to recognize exceptional service to the region.
  2. Grant the Delegate the ability to issue medals, subject to Regional Assembly confirmation.
  3. Mandate that an up-to-date registry of awards and medals issued be kept.
This is based on an old bill by Dreadton, and was drafted/posted with his permission. Main question: are "medals" as a term redundant?


A Section 9.5 of the Legal Code titled "Regional Awards" shall be created, as follows:
Section 9.5: Regional Awards
23. The Hero of the North award is an award for exceptionally meritorious contributions to The North Pacific and its interests.
24. The Hero of the North award may be issued to any current or former resident of The North Pacific by a two-thirds majority vote of the Regional Assembly, or by a simple majority vote of the Regional Assembly following nomination by the Delegate.
25. Medals are minor awards for specific contributions to The North Pacific and its interests.
25. The Delegate may create medals as desired.
26. Medals may be issued by a simple majority vote of the Regional Assembly following nomination by the Delegate.
27. Awards may only be revoked by a two-thirds majority vote of the Regional Assembly.
28. Award recipients may not possess multiple copies of the same award concurrently.
29. There shall be an appropriate public place that displays all current and former award holders along with the dates they received and/or lost their awards.
30. Current holders of the Hero of the North award are the only persons permitted to use the title "Hero of the North".
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I once proposed something of a similar sort which I labeled as honorary citizenship rather than medals. That had to be at least more than a year ago. I feel now that I am concerned that something like this will lead to a high school popular contest culture. Rewarding someone formally is undoubtedly a statement whether one desires it to be or not. Someone might say "Wondo, it's all about the empirical good that an individual has done for our region, and that's it." To that I would say that I hear you, but it isn't always that simple. Eventually there becomes a sort of understanding about what kind of person is commendable by reward and who is not which then causes people to consciously or subconsciously act in that mold in order to be praised by the institutions of the region. There becomes an in and an out. There perhaps even becomes a weakening of variety when it comes how people approach serving the region. I am not necessarily against, but I am moderately concerned about the effects of reward.
 
I like this bill, especially with multiple ways for it to awarded.
 
I support this bill. I believe it is time to introduce a way that recognises the long lasting contributions that some members of our community have made to make our region a better place to be.
 
Cretox State:
The Ceremonial Awards for Regional Service (CARS) Act.

An amendment to the Legal Code, with the following effects:
  1. Create a "Hero of the North" award to recognize exceptional service to the region.
  2. Grant the Delegate the ability to issue medals, subject to Regional Assembly confirmation.
  3. Mandate that an up-to-date registry of awards and medals issued be kept.
This is based on an old bill by Dreadton, and was drafted/posted with his permission. Main question: are "medals" as a term redundant?


A Section 9.5 of the Legal Code titled "Regional Awards" shall be created, as follows:
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I support this bill.
 
Wonderess:
I once proposed something of a similar sort which I labeled as honorary citizenship rather than medals. That had to be at least more than a year ago. I feel now that I am concerned that something like this will lead to a high school popular contest culture. Rewarding someone formally is undoubtedly a statement whether one desires it to be or not. Someone might say "Wondo, it's all about the empirical good that an individual has done for our region, and that's it." To that I would say that I hear you, but it isn't always that simple. Eventually there becomes a sort of understanding about what kind of person is commendable by reward and who is not which then causes people to consciously or subconsciously act in that mold in order to be praised by the institutions of the region. There becomes an in and an out. There perhaps even becomes a weakening of variety when it comes how people approach serving the region. I am not necessarily against, but I am moderately concerned about the effects of reward.
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I can see where you're coming from. However, I believe that the lack of explicit requirements for qualifying for an award and the barrier to obtaining it will preclude this sort of popularity contest from taking shape. I drew inspiration for this bill from Europe's own regional service award system and a conversation with their delegate. Europe actually suffers from the opposite problem to what you describe: their system is sorely underutilized due to a lack of visibility and offsite forum activity. TNP's strengths in those areas, and our considerably larger community, should prevent that other potential issue from arising.
 
I really don't see a need for this. If a TNPer merits an award, we should be writing a commendation/condemnation for them instead.
 
I don't know if I support this concept but I do know that I don't like the name of the the award.
 
Praetor:
I really don't see a need for this. If a TNPer merits an award, we should be writing a commendation/condemnation for them instead.
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One doesn't preclude the other. A TNPer could've contributed substantially to the region, but a c/c may be unfeasible for one reason or another. Awards could be our way of commemorating regional service without recognition being dependent on the whims of the WA.

Gorundu:
I don't know if I support this concept but I do know that I don't like the name of the the award.
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Do you have an alternative in mind? I'm mostly calling it "Hero of the North" because that's what it was called in Dreadton's original proposal.
 
Praetor:
Go make that unfeasible C/C become a feasible C/C.
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Do you feel the same way about the NPA hall of honor? I would think that we should be able to recognize service specific to TNP (which may have little or no inter-regional impact) without relying on the whims of the SC.
 
Cretox State:
Do you feel the same way about the NPA hall of honor? I would think that we should be able to recognize service specific to TNP (which may have little or no inter-regional impact) without relying on the whims of the SC.
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Yes. Impacts on TNP have an impact on NS by extension, it's reliant upon authors to make that connection. The SC doesn't have "whims", it's not too difficult to predict how resolutions will end up.
 
Commending people is all well and good, but why shouldn’t we recognize service to TNP in TNP?
 
Cretox State:
Do you feel the same way about the NPA hall of honor? I would think that we should be able to recognize service specific to TNP (which may have little or no inter-regional impact) without relying on the whims of the SC.
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This idea is something that is different to the NPA hall of honour and I don't see why you are comparing the two. The hall of honour was to reflect on the work people have done for the NPA and also comes with certain benefits. For example, it exempts members from discharge and gives them lifelong access to the NPA forum and discord channel whereas this bill doesn't actually offer any benefits to the recipient at all apart from the title. So I don't see why you would bring up the hall of honour when it has nothing to do with this current proposal.

In terms of the current proposal, it does have its merits because of the service that can be recognised that isn't necessarily inter-regional and would not be part of an SC recommendation but I am still not sold on it. I'm unsure what this would actually add and why anyone would be particularly bothered about receiving such an award. A lot of the work people put in that does not have an inter-regional impact is done because it is stuff that they were elected/appointed to do so they would see it as either duty to the region and would do it whether there is an award for it or not, so I don't see why we need such an award.
 
Praetor:
Yes. Impacts on TNP have an impact on NS by extension, it's reliant upon authors to make that connection. The SC doesn't have "whims", it's not too difficult to predict how resolutions will end up.
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Recognition through the SC is heavily dependent on other regions' views, by definition. I agree that these awards are no substitute for a SC resolution, but we should have a way of recognizing internal contributions without relying on the SC. Hell, nothing's preventing someone from being commended and having an award simultaneously. This bill would also give the delegate the explicit authority to create minor awards to recognize more specific contributions to the region (defending against an attempted coup, for example).

Owenstacey:
This idea is something that is different to the NPA hall of honour and I don't see why you are comparing the two. The hall of honour was to reflect on the work people have done for the NPA and also comes with certain benefits. For example, it exempts members from discharge and gives them lifelong access to the NPA forum and discord channel whereas this bill doesn't actually offer any benefits to the recipient at all apart from the title. So I don't see why you would bring up the hall of honour when it has nothing to do with this current proposal.
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I brought it up because, despite their very real differences, both the hall of honour and this bill exist to recognize service to the region. The hall of honour is the closest system TNP currently has to this bill.

Owenstacey:
In terms of the current proposal, it does have its merits because of the service that can be recognised that isn't necessarily inter-regional and would not be part of an SC recommendation but I am still not sold on it. I'm unsure what this would actually add and why anyone would be particularly bothered about receiving such an award. A lot of the work people put in that does not have an inter-regional impact is done because it is stuff that they were elected/appointed to do so they would see it as either duty to the region and would do it whether there is an award for it or not, so I don't see why we need such an award.
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I doubt that the RA would start handing out awards for mundane work in an elected/appointed position. I see your point about inter-regional impact, but having an award doesn't detract from a future commendation, and political issues can easily get in the way of SC recognition. I see this as a nice little way of internally recognizing longtime contributors to TNP while giving the delegate a way to recognize specific contributions.
 
Apparently we needed to spice up a rather uncontroversial idea that basically falls into the camp of “do we feel like doing this?” or “nah don’t feel like doing this” and somehow make it seem like Cretox is bypassing better avenues or unfairly comparing his thing to a similar thing? Come on. It’s obvious why the comparison to the NPA thing was made: he wants to create an award thing, that’s a TNP-exclusive award thing. A security council commendation is an international thing, whatever dinky award we have for our people can exist in concert with one or not. It’s silly to be raising these particular objections. Why would international recognition of a member of our community be in conflict with some small TNP award? If you don’t feel like having these awards, fine, but this is not a mutually exclusive alternative to a SC commendation, and it’s not completely different and unrelated to the NPA Hall of Honor thing.

Can we find a more interesting idea to spice up? This one isn’t really doing it for me. It’s a fine idea, if we feel like giving it a try then we’ll do it, and we can tweak the specifics if we don’t like how it plays out. And I don’t like the name either, it has nothing to do with automobiles.
 
While I remain against due to reasons mentioned above, I do feel the need to point out that this is probably the most basic and simple implementation of awarding medals. We're TNP, surely we can spice it up much as Ghost has mentioned? Europeia has ovations with mini-festivals for those receiving them. TWP has their awards in the like of mini-commendations.

I still see this as being redundant, however, if we're going to do this, let's at least do this right though.
 
@Praetor you actually misunderstood my post, I was criticizing you trying to make this boring basic bill a spicy topic :P

I don’t think you’re wrong though, I think we could have a little more fanfare with how these are awarded, but I see that as an implementation issue - the executive will have the responsibility of making these awards a worthwhile experience, and I’m not sure how you can legislate that. Do you have any ideas, because I think it’s a bit awkward to be too specific in how we want to request these things be executed. Using the examples you provided, would it be enough to add language mandating a specific style for how they read? Or require a day of celebration when they are awarded? I think I may be opposed in principle to mandating how they’re awarded in there, but I think it’s true that how it’s executed will have the biggest effect on whether these are something special and substantial or kind of lame.

I appreciate the title change. I still don’t care for it (hehe) but it makes more sense. Out of curiosity how would you name it if the acronym were HERO?
 
Pallaith:
@Praetor you actually misunderstood my post, I was criticizing you trying to make this boring basic bill a spicy topic :P

I don’t think you’re wrong though, I think we could have a little more fanfare with how these are awarded, but I see that as an implementation issue - the executive will have the responsibility of making these awards a worthwhile experience, and I’m not sure how you can legislate that. Do you have any ideas, because I think it’s a bit awkward to be too specific in how we want to request these things be executed. Using the examples you provided, would it be enough to add language mandating a specific style for how they read? Or require a day of celebration when they are awarded? I think I may be opposed in principle to mandating how they’re awarded in there, but I think it’s true that how it’s executed will have the biggest effect on whether these are something special and substantial or kind of lame.

I appreciate the title change. I still don’t care for it (hehe) but it makes more sense. Out of curiosity how would you name it if the acronym were HERO?
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Ah well if boring is what you want, there's nothing stopping the Delegate from going out and awarding medals right now. :P

In terms of implementation for the two above examples from other regions (not that I am advocating for either of those ideas), I would broadly suggest something along the lines of the following:
1) The Executive Government will host a celebration for recipients of the Hero of the North/awards.
2) A proposal for a Hero of the North nominee in the Regional Assembly will contain a rationale as to why the nominee is of merit.

Obviously, should either of those be accepted, the language should be finetuned.

That being said, if we're going the mini-SC route, I'm not sure why we'd want to go that way when we have the SC. :P
 
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