DG4 Discussion - Const: Article G

[donsig]

Originally posted by zorven
Ok, I think the intent shown by some of you is this:

"All offices so designated by the legislature shall be elected by the full citizenry for a term fixed by law."

And now that I read that, I wonder why even have it in the Constitution. Everything of substance is being left to the CoL and that makes this statement pointless.

That is not my intent zorven. My intent is that if someone is to be allowed to post game play instructions then that person should be elected to a fixed term. Any officer who is not allowed to post game play instructions (as far as I'm concerned) does not have to be elected.

Now, we are still stuck with the deputy problem. Say we have no deputy domestic leader. Someone appoints one. The domestic leader leaves and the appointed deputy takes over. In my book that deputy was never elected. I want to avoid that sort of thing. So if I suggest:

All officers empowered to post game play instructions will be filled via elections to serve fixed terms.

It seems I'm opening the door for appointments because technically deputies can't post game play instructions. Or can they? We're back to the old problem of when can a deputy step up to the plate...

My solution to the problem is to allow candidates to pick a deputy and even a third stringer before the election and elect the whole slate. (Disclaimer: the use of the word *slate* in no way endorses the idea of political parties.) I hesitate to bring this whole thing up for fear of being accused of causing delays due to sidetracks but how this article is worded will determine whether appointments will be allowed. I also hesitate (for the same reasons) to point out that some of us think that there should be only one national office held per person while others think it is ok for someone to simultaneously hold leader/deputy positions and/or multiple deputy positions. We should be mindful of these debates and craft this article accordingly.

 

[zorven]

@donsig: As I said in the Article G thread: what if we never empower justices or deputies? Then they would not be covered by this article. I am tempted to say we should just either list the positions covered by Articles G & H or specifically say that the positions covered by these articles will be defined by the legislature. Then we can stop debating about semantics.

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by zorven
@donsig: As I said in the Article G thread: what if we never empower justices or deputies? Then they would not be covered by this article. I am tempted to say we should just either list the positions covered by Articles G & H or specifically say that the positions covered by these articles will be defined by the legislature. Then we can stop debating about semantics.

Sorry in advance for the sarcasm but it is tired and this whole process is irritating.

But why don't we get off the pot and make a fundamental decision or three? Why don't we decide if there will be any times when a justice can post a game play instruction? Why don't we decide the role of deputies? Why don't we decide if we ever ant to use appointments to fill vacancies? Without answers to these questions we can only write useless constitutional articles as you seem to realize.

 

[Donovan Zoi]

I could be way off, but I think that many folks here do not want to go into too much detail because they want to save their efforts for the CoL. They are hoping to draft as loose an Article as possible, so that we are free to write the laws as we wish.

I must admit, I haven't caught up in this thread yet. So I will go through it tomorrow and see if we can start making progress.

 

[ravensfire]

Woah - hold on folks. Too much vitriol suddenly appearing, and really for nothing.

From reading through this, everyone is saying the same thing, just in a different way.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the intent of what people are wanting, is that we wish to restrict anyone in an office to which we elect a person to a fixed term.

Okay, excluding all discussion about deputies and mid-term appointments, how should this read? I'm saying exclude them, because I hope to cover them in the CoL. At that point, we can explicity restrict deputies/mid-term appointments/etc to anything we want.

But, for this discussion, let's ignore that complication, and get the basic situation nailed down.

-- Ravensfire

 

[zorven]

I think the problem is writing the text in such a way that it does not explicitly or implicitly include or exclude deputies / mid-term appointments / etc.

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by ravensfire
Woah - hold on folks. Too much vitriol suddenly appearing, and really for nothing.

From reading through this, everyone is saying the same thing, just in a different way.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the intent of what people are wanting, is that we wish to restrict anyone in an office to which we elect a person to a fixed term.

Okay, excluding all discussion about deputies and mid-term appointments, how should this read? I'm saying exclude them, because I hope to cover them in the CoL. At that point, we can explicity restrict deputies/mid-term appointments/etc to anything we want.

But, for this discussion, let's ignore that complication, and get the basic situation nailed down.

-- Ravensfire

OK, I will try to correct you. The gist of my point is that I do not want any mid-term appointments! I do not want any beginning or end term appointments either! What I want is for anyone (ANYONE) who is going to be empowered to post game play instructions to be elected (read: not appointed). This includes deputies and justices for I think they should be empowered (under certain circumstances) to post game play instructions.

I understand that some things should be left to the CoL. But some decisions must be made if we are to write a constitution that has any meaning. I understand we only want general things in the constitution but to do so we have to at least come to agreement or make some decisions on some general things. The first general decision to make is should we allow appointments to offices that could potentially post game play instructions.

We cannot put everything off to the CoL. That document is supposed to define the general principle we elucidate in our constitution. Let's make some general principles so we can write our constitution. please.

 

[ravensfire]

donsig,

I understand where you are coming from. However, you are misinterpreting some of the things I'm saying.

First, I'm trying really hard not to get into how deputies or vacant offices are handled. There are enough things going on right now.

Second, and this is my fault, you are getting the wrong impression when I'm saying "appointed". Think of it as a short way of saying "a person who takes over the responsibilities and duties of an office for any reason, by any designated means." My intention was to use a non-specific term because I don't want to talk about filling vacant offices right now. It's a process that we have to deal with, yes. If that's a topic that we must deal with now, then we need to stop all discussion on this one and bounce over to that. And when we're done, we should still have generic terms in the Constitution because the process of filling a vacant office belongs in the CoL only, not in the Con.

I understand your point about allowing elected officials being the only ones posting instructions. Do you understand the point I'm trying to make?

-- Ravensfire

 

[Cyc]

I'm wondering if you people realize just how insane this is. Yesterday we were real close to polling the ideas at hand. I made the mistake of telling you people that this was not rocket science, so you immediately set out to make it rocket science. donsig even broke out his donsigism toolkit to discombobulate the discussion. now you've taken the discussion on the mound and moved it out into left field. donsig and zorven and maybe others have proposed good alternatives to the original yesterday. Poll them and be done with it. skip this crap about posting legal instructions donsig, unless you think we have time to define Legal Instructions and then move onto several other lengthy discussions before we come back here and figure out a one sentance Article.

This is almost too absurd to comment on. But I thought I would try to reel you people back in before you went off the deep end.

No, wait, maybe before we should poll this we should talk about the World Series, or the weather, or some other important thing before we figure out how to write a one sentance Article.

Poll this sucker now.

 

[GenMarshall]

Remember the K.I.S.S. Rule.

Keep it simple silly .

 

[FortyJ]

I've forgotten what this article is about.

 

[Cyc]

It's about rocket science, 40J. You see, according to some theories, not the least of of which is....

 

[ravensfire]

Originally posted by Cyc
It's about rocket science, 40J. You see, according to some theories, not the least of of which is.... :roll eyes:

Thanks for the laugh, and the reminder guys.

Okay, reset. List of current proposals:

• Status Quo "All offices will be filled via election with terms lasting one calendar month. "
• Removal of article, each branch specifies procedures
• Leaders shall be elected by the full citizenry for a term fixed by law.
• All offices will be filled via elections to serve fixed terms.
• All offices so designated by the legislature shall be elected by the full citizenry for a term fixed by law.
• All officers empowered to post game play instructions will be filled via elections to serve fixed terms.

Shall we just poll them all, then put the top three in a run-off?

-- Ravensfire

 

[FortyJ]

I think all constitutional articles should be ratified by a majority vote, so if none of these options receives more than 50% of the vote, I'd prefer to see a run-off between the top 2.

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by Cyc
...skip this crap about posting legal instructions donsig, unless you think we have time to define Legal Instructions and then move onto several other lengthy discussions before we come back here and figure out a one sentance Article.

I have not been talking about legal instructions Cyc. We will of course be tackling that subject when we work on the CoL. I have only been talking about the posting of game play instructions as a way to distinguish which *offices* I think should be elected. Any office whose holder is not entitled to post game play instructions does not have to be elected. There are ramifications concerning deputies and judiciary members if we use this criteria. These ramifications should be addressed here as they are general in nature. We need to decide on these general issues, write the article based on those general decisions and then move on to the CoL.

What we should not do is dance around these questions or ignore them, write a meaningless article then write the CoL, then re-write the article to match the CoL.

Three questions to answer:

1) Will we allow appointments?
2) Will we allow justices to step in and post game play instructions (under circumstances to be defined later in the CoL)?
3) Will we allow deputies to post game play instructions (under circumstances to be defined later in the CoL)?

Am I really asking too much to get answers to these questions now? Are we planning to address these quesitons in writing the CoL or are we just going to leave them unanswered?

 

[Cyc]

Yes, donsig. You are asking too much. Those questions have nothing to do with an Article in the Constitution about our Leaders being elected to a fix Term. Even if you feel they are closely related, the truth of the matter is the are subsequent issues that belong in the CoL. They are tidbits of information that belong in some Law book.

Of course we're planning on addressing these issuesin the writing of the CoL. Relax, go have a beer. It's OK...

 

[ravensfire]

Beer?

Did someone say beer? Beer is good. Is there anything it can't do?

donsig, Cyc is right. Your questions are valid, but not for this discussion. They need to be asked for the CoL. I have the utmost faith that you will bring them up and we'll have a nice discussion about them.

-- Ravensfire

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by Cyc
Yes, donsig. You are asking too much. Those questions have nothing to do with an Article in the Constitution about our Leaders being elected to a fix Term. Even if you feel they are closely related, the truth of the matter is the are subsequent issues that belong in the CoL. They are tidbits of information that belong in some Law book.

Of course we're planning on addressing these issuesin the writing of the CoL. Relax, go have a beer. It's OK...

What you seem not to realize Cyc is that these questions should be answered sooner or later. If you all refuse to address them now they will be asked again when we work on the CoL. By answering them now we will save a whole heck of alot of time when working on the CoL. By laying out the general idea in this article we will be able to zero in on the specifics when writing the CoL. By leaving the questions unanswered we're just postponing the debate till later. Heck, we could even ignore these questions when writing the CoL but then they'll just crop up during the game and cause problems. Then we will have failed here because the whole point of this seemingly futile effort is to get rules in place so we can play a demogame without fighting over the rules!

I will post discussion threads on these questions in the hope that we can work our way towards an actual decision on these questions. Such decisions will be beneficial in writing both these articles and the CoL.

 

[Cyc]

donsig, please wait until we are ready to discuss the CoL. We are trying to go about this in a uniform manner to reduce clutter and confusion. I realize these two things can be a strong point in your debate style, but please...stick with the game plan here. We need to work as a team.

 

[donsig]

Originally posted by Cyc
donsig, please wait until we are ready to discuss the CoL. We are trying to go about this in a uniform manner to reduce clutter and confusion. I realize these two things can be a strong point in your debate style, but please...stick with the game plan here. We need to work as a team.

Cyc, the game plan is to write the constitution to lay out some general principles that we'd like to adhere to, then write the CoL to give those principles some meat. We cannot write up general principles if we do not decide what they are. You are the one who is not following the game plan. You want to rush through a meaningless constitution then write the CoL, deciding the specifics and guiding principles at that time.

It is not inappropriate to decide NOW whether we want elected or appointed leaders.