1st Clark of the 45th Cosa

[C. Carlüs Xheraltescù]

Esteemed Members of the Cosa,

I hereby invite you all to issue any statements, questions, comments or queries, to discuss and deliberate the 1st Clark of the 45th Cosa.

The Clark reads as follows:

• 45RZ1 - The 45th Cosa Budget Act
  
• 45RZ2 - The Poet Laureate Act
  
• 45RZ3 - The Burger with No Cheese Act
  
• 45RZ4 - The Joseph Act
  
• 45RZ5 - The Common Sense Act
  
• 45RZ6 - El Praxel dal Serviçù dal Glheþinaziun (The Talossan Translator's Corps Act)
  
• 45RZ7 - The Almost Real Amendment
  

I will allow free debate of any of these bills, and I will moderate accordingly if a debate gets out of hand; if an MC wishes for me to move the debate on to another bill, I would invite them to send me a private message (or public if they would prefer) and I will politely ask that MCs move on to another order of business.

Happy civilised debating, and please keep in mind the rules of this chamber!

EDIT: I've linked each bill to the relevant thread for ease of access.

*returns to the Speaker's chair*

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Estimat Segnhor Túischac'h,

I rise in opposition to 45RZ7, The Almost Real Amendment. This bill proposes a single reform to the Cosa that will at once impose an immediate resolution to two significant questions: whether we should impose threshold for small parties to be represented in the Cosa, and whether (and how quickly) we should move to a so-called "real Cosa." In doing so, it will also effectively preclude discussion of another significant question regarding the structure of Talossa that was nearly the subject of an Organic Law amendment during the last term: whether the cap on the number of seats held by a single Member of the Cosa should be reduced in order to prevent so much as 15% of the Cosa's voting power being held by a single individual.

These are significant questions indeed, and it is too soon to resolve them. The next election is probably at least five, more likely six months away. Where, I ask you, is the urgency that compels us to take up this bill on the very first Clark of the term, after less than two weeks of discussion?

[D. N. Vercáriâ]

Esteemed Colleagues,

you may possibly wonder why I am supporting 45RZ7.

In fact I am for a much smaller "real" Cosâ with approximately 15 to 20 seats, where every MC has only one seat and one vote. This is issue is not resolved by the so-called "Almost Real Amendment".

Yes, I was disappointed to see this proposal flare up before a discussion between parties had begun. I found it premature to push it through now, now, now.

So, why am I voting for it, with gnashing teeth, so to speak? Because small progress is better than no progress at all. At least one issue will be solved by adopting this proposal: The door to simply "buying" a seat in the Cosâ will be closed by making the number of seats smaller than the number of voting voters.

Yet another reason: Sometimes "careful debate" is only another word for "doing nothing at all". This is something that I will not support, in case of the issue of getting rid of the 200-seat-D&D-Cosâ.

And after all, as this will require an amendment of the OrgLaw, the voter will have a final say, which is a good thing.

Nonetheless this is not the time sit back and contemplate this tiny little step towards a minimal improvement of the Cosâ situation. This term of the Cosâ, the 45th term, has just begun. Still there is time to step forward with a better idea, which could challenge this overly cautious attempt of moving on.

Still I believe that a smaller "Really Real Cosâ" would be a much better solution. But any solution is better than the 200-Seat-Cosâ, which is a remnant of times when Talossa was a micronation of very few citizens, who lived out their phantasy of being much bigger. Now that we are, let's get real!

Thank you.

[Lüc da Schir]

Esteemed Members of the Cosâ, Estimat Túischac'h,
my feelings about 45RZ7 are very discordant.

Feeling one, the most conservative, says "Why should we move to a 60-seats Cosâ if it wouldn't even change it to a Real Cosâ? Talossa worked pretty well with the 200-seats Cosâ, and a smaller-but-yet-not-Real one would only decrease the power of the smaller parties, as e.g. the RUMP would have exactly the 50% of seats (30/60) despite not actually having the 50% of votes".

Belief two, the centrist, says "The 60-seats Cosâ is a step towards a Real Cosâ! It would make both conservatives and democrats agree as there would still be a D&D Cosâ, but the assembly will be smaller and yet closer to a Real Cosâ."

Feeling three says "This 60-seats Cosâ is a temporary compromise. I'd really like to see a Real Cosâ of 21-25 seats as the number of MCs is growing and I think Talossa is more than ready to get rid of this infamous "Dandipratic" Cosâ".

So far, I am pretty biased towards belief two. I'll cast a PËR, probably.

[Dr. Txec dal Nordselvă]

Estimat Segnhor Túischac'h.

I also rise in opposition to 45RZ7. I am not opposed to the concept of a smaller Cosa, I am opposed at this being so incredibly rushed. There are five more clarks in this term and this is a very significant issue that I do not believe can be solved with the stroke of a pen. There is the issue of small parties losing representation; the issue of the cap on seats; and there is the fact, the absolute fact as I see it, that our nation has worked just fine with a 200 seat Cosa for many years. Why must we "fix" something that really is not broken? It is a uniquely Talossan idea of having such a large parliament. I ask the Chamber for more debate and discussion before rushing into an amendment that will take another amendment to fix if we got it wrong.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

May 2, 2013 4:24:35 GMT -6 D. N. Vercáriâ said:

Sometimes "careful debate" is only another word for "doing nothing at all".

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Hear hear. The Peculiar Bear speaks the truth.

[D. N. Vercáriâ]

Ladies and Gentlemen, esteemed S:reu Tuischac'h,

there is yet another thing that I like to address. So bear with me...

Every so often I hear my conservative colleagues quote their mantra: If it ain't broken, don't fix it. A noble conservative principle, one might think.

But it already takes a lot of kludges and band aid to keep the ramshackle 200-Seat-Cosâ-model in one.

The main flaw still is and will be the fair distribution of a fictitious multitude of seats amongst a too small number of MCs. In the purest form of the concept, a popular "one-man-party" could win an absolute majority of seats and therefor rule our country almost singlehandedly, as long as the popularity lasts.

Now I would expect to hear my conservative colleagues mutter "what's wrong with one-man-parties" and "let the people have it their way", but apparently in this case even they are understanding that something's wrong with the concept of too many seats for one person.

And so they are taking out some reliable tools of decision-making, like - for instance - dice and other reliable devices for the generation of random numbers, and they decide that there must be a 30-seat-limit per MC. Why 30? To quote Chico Marx: Why a duck, why not a chicken? Because. With a lot of duct tape and warm words no-one will see that the thing is broken.

If there's one good thing about the proposed 60-seats-solution, that I didn't notice before: It will show us some of the cracks in the outworn 200-seat concept.

Thank you for your patience.

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Estimat Segnhor Túischac'h es membreux fuliensen,

May 2, 2013 6:28:34 GMT -6 Lüc da Schir said:

Belief two, the centrist, says "The 60-seats Cosâ is a step towards a Real Cosâ! It would make both conservatives and democrats agree as there would still be a D&D Cosâ, but the assembly will be smaller and yet closer to a Real Cosâ."

Does it make the left and right agree? The whole point of allowing multiple seats per MC is to allow more proportionate representation with a smaller number of MCs. Yet some appear to oppose multiple seats per MC in principle. This bill has the effect of making representation significantly less proportionate while still retaining the fundamental principle that is objectionable to some. Let's decide to be hot or cold, not lukewarm. A position exactly between two others is not always a practical compromise, as King Solomon once demonstrated with a disputed infant. One might as well declare that, if unable to decide whether to reside in Vuode or Cézembre, a good compromise is to build one's house in the middle of the Atlantic: it doesn't make for a solid foundation.

May 2, 2013 20:04:09 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

Hear hear. The Peculiar Bear speaks the truth.

It is not true in this case. As I point out above, this reform accomplishes nothing really useful. But it makes it impractical to take up, during this Cosa, other reforms that actually are needed. One of which you proposed during the last Cosa (and had been proposed by the RUMP in a different form years before), and we nearly reached agreement on it: limiting the percentage of seats that can be held by one MC. This bill does nothing to address that issue, but makes it impractical to deal with separately. Why? Because it's difficult to draft any other OrgLaw amendment touching on the Cosa without knowing whether this one will be ratified by the electorate.

May 3, 2013 1:56:12 GMT -6 D. N. Vercáriâ said:

The main flaw still is and will be the fair distribution of a fictitious multitude of seats amongst a too small number of MCs. In the purest form of the concept, a popular "one-man-party" could win an absolute majority of seats and therefor rule our country almost singlehandedly, as long as the popularity lasts.

I hope I might beg the indulgence of the pale ursine member to explain why he believes Cosa seats to be fictitious. If we were to say that the Cosa consists of 200 "votes" instead of "seats," would that make it no longer "fake" or "D&D"? If not, why not?

The "purest form" described above does not exist in Talossa and is not a concern. The seat cap per member is a practical and realistic way of preventing "dictators" and "dummies" in our system. The cap should be lowered in my opinion, but this bill does nothing to improve on the situation and probably precludes its amelioration, as discussed above.

As for dice, those are a last-resort tie-breaking mechanism. Such a mechanism is needed in any system. Every system needs a process for allocating partial seats, but that need is much greater the fewer seats there are to be distributed. But similar to the seat cap, this bill does nothing to address distribution of partial seats (though the need will be greater with 60 seats rather than 200).

May 3, 2013 1:56:12 GMT -6 D. N. Vercáriâ said:

If there's one good thing about the proposed 60-seats-solution, that I didn't notice before: It will show us some of the cracks in the outworn 200-seat concept.

I first learned of Talossa shortly before the OrgLaw was adopted, and at that time thought the 20-seat Cosa was an improvement. I lost track of Talossa for 2 or 3 years in the early 2000s, and came back to see EM200. When I first gained citizenship, I thought that surely we would return to a "real Cosa" before too long. But the more I have thought about it, the more I have come to realize the merit in the 200-seat Cosa. It is a far more practical, forward-thinking concept than anyone gives it credit for.

From my perspective, the great objective in structuring the Cosa is to represent the people. Our 200-seat Cosa can precisely represent the proportional strength of the parties to the nearest half-percent. A 60-seat Cosa would have more than three times the disproportionality, on the way to much greater disproportionality in a so-called "real" Cosa (only five percent granularity in a 20-seat Cosa, for example.

In this light, this bill takes the barely-visible hairline cracks in the 200-seat concept and turns them into significant gaps, revealing the yawning chasms that existed in the old "real" Cosa.

[D. N. Vercáriâ]

Esteemed S:reu Tuischac'h, in reply to the esteemed Sir Cresti:

200 seats or 200 votes, it is the same currency that we are talking about. Outside of this Chamber, a debate on electing Senators or not flared up; and within this debate, it was mentioned that Senators, directly elected by the people of the provinces, do have one seat and one vote, each. Isn't it funny, that the few members of our Upper House of Parliament each have less votes than the average MC?

Anyway, the alleged fine granularity of the calculation of seat / vote numbers may help to make percents-of-votes-to-seats-in-the-Cosâ calculations easy even for people whose mathematical abilities were acquired at bear school; beyond this that's a red herring, so to speak, and believe me, I can smell a herring whenever I see it.

Because this granularity is taken away once Members of the Cosâ are given a varying multitude of votes - then the picture is getting blurred instead of granular. So if we are wanting to stick to EM200, let's make a deal - let's say that every MC will get exactly the same amount of votes / seats / whatever. No MCs that are two seats worth arguing with MCs worth a 30 seat overload of opinion.

Aside of this, there's another point for having a smaller Cosâ. It is giving the voters a chance to say that they don't want some parties to sit in their house of representation. It is for making simple, bold statements: Ideas or principles or ideologies that have enough support to overcome a certain threshold are in, others are requested to drum up more support before they make it into the Cosâ next time. If this would lock out minorities, there could be special minority rules that are granting minorities a seat in a howsoever "real" Cosâ.

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

Estimat Segnhor Túischac'h,

My esteemed colleague claims that the granularity of representation in the Cosa is destroyed by the potential inequality of votes of its members. I ask how this is so. If a party wins 40% of the vote, it should receive as close to 40% of the seats as possible. The fact that an MC can hold more than one seat does nothing to increase or decrease the percentage of seats held by any party, and therefore does nothing to affect the accuracy of the seat distribution in terms of reflecting the election results.

Given that, what exactly is the problem with MCs holding unequal numbers of seats (or, we might say, having unequal voting weights)? Keep in mind that we must not confuse the votes of citizens with the votes of legislatures. Citizens have equal votes because they are equal in rights and inherent worth. Legislators have votes only in a representative capacity, and I see no reason why they must be equal to each other.

Then there is the question of voters having "a chance to say that they don't want some parties to sit in their house of representation". How can this be? Every voter has the opportunity to be represented by the party of his or her own choice. But they have no right to insist that another voter not be represented by the party of the other voter's choice.

[C. Carlüs Xheraltescù]

Esteemed Members,

I would just like to ask a question to the Honourable Member, S:reu Tresplet who stated this as a reason for voting for 45RZ6:

On 45RZ6, I vote PER. While I don't really see how much of a difference this Act is going to make--as the current law stands right now, I could make my own Translator Corps as a private group, and the Büreu would be required to "work in concert" with my extra-governmental group--I vote PER simply due to Sir Iustì's co-sponsorship.

My question is, if you think it's such a bad idea why did you vote for it? That you named only one of the linguists as a reason for supporting the bill when you do not think it is a good idea puzzled me, and I would be grateful if you could clarify your position for me I would be very grateful.

Thank you, esteemed Members of the Cosa.

[Munditenens Tresplet]

Estimat S:reu Tuischac'h:

I'd first like to thank you for inviting me to clarify my comments made regarding my vote on 45RZ6. It is nice to finally stop beating the same subject (45RZ7) for a change. ;D

May 7, 2013 16:33:31 GMT -6 C. Carlüs Xheraltescù said:

I would just like to ask a question to the Honourable Member, S:reu Tresplet who stated this as a reason for voting for 45RZ6:

On 45RZ6, I vote PER. While I don't really see how much of a difference this Act is going to make--as the current law stands right now, I could make my own Translator Corps as a private group, and the Büreu would be required to "work in concert" with my extra-governmental group--I vote PER simply due to Sir Iustì's co-sponsorship.

My question is, if you think it's such a bad idea why did you vote for it? That you named only one of the linguists as a reason for supporting the bill when you do not think it is a good idea puzzled me, and I would be grateful if you could clarify your position for me I would be very grateful.

S:reu Tuischac'h, I never meant my original comments to suggest that my opinion of 45RZ6 is that it is a "bad idea". I do apologize if that is how my original comment came off as, and as asked, I will clarify:

I overwhelmingly support the idea of having some sort of group that will go through and translate all of the laws and historical documents that exist within the Kingdom, and I applaud anyone who would take on that enormous effort. Having said that, my comments only questioned why this group had to necessarily be a branch of Government.

Sir Iustì's cosponsorship had more to do with his position as head of the Büreu del Glheþ (or, he was in the 44th Cosa--I'm unsure as to whether or not he still is) rather than just the fact he is well versed in the tongue. Seeing as how this Act directly amends his Büreu and his responsibilities as Ladintsch Naziunal, I figured I would trust his judgement as to whether or not the benefits of creating a Translator Corps outweight the cons of it being another branch of Government.

I hope that clarifies my position on the Act, and if anyone has any other questions, I would be more than happy to clarify further.

I thank the Estimat S:reu Tuischac'h for allowing me to address the body, and I yield back the balance of my time. (I know we don't do that, I've just always wanted to say it. )

[C. Carlüs Xheraltescù]

Esteemed Members,

I wish to thank the Honourable MC, S:reu Tresplet for his swift response. I am satisfied by his response, and confess that I mainly wanted to start a precedent for legislators being able to further justify their positions when invited to do so. However, I was curious by the Honourable Member's justification; it seems I find myself in agreement with parts of his reasoning.

If any other Member of the Cosa wishes to comment on this bill, now would be a great time to comment because it would save us going back to it later, in the middle of discussing another bill.

Thank you, esteemed Members.

[Dr. Txec dal Nordselvă]

Estimat Túischac'h,

I would like to point out that your link to 45RZ3 may be unintentionally misleading. The text of the bill in the Clark is significantly different that the first post in the thread. For the record, here is the actual text of the bill:

45RZ3 – The Burger with No Cheese Act
WHEREAS money and accurate records of financial transactions are very
important to any organization, government, or nation
WHEREAS we have lost or misplaced funds and documents, and it is next to
impossible to hold someone accountable
WHEREAS the current appointment of Burgermeister allows it to be a 'political'
position versus an 'accounting' position,
THEREFORE we, the Ziu, hereby amend Section 2.2 of 35RZ24 “The Royal
Household Cleaning Act” to read:
2.2 The Burgermeister of Inland Revenue shall be appointed by the
Seneschal and shall only be removed by the King with a 2/3 vote of the
Ziu.
Noi urent q'estadra sa:
M.T. Patritz da Biondeu (MC-RUMP)
Davíu Lundescu (MC-CSPP)
Flip Molinar (MC-CSPP)
Lüc da Schir (MC-MRPT)
Istefan Perþonest (MC-IND)
Txec Róibeard Nordselva (MC-RUMP)
Iustì Canun (SRT-MA)
Mick Preston (SRT-MM)

[C. Carlüs Xheraltescù]

Esteemed Members,

Firstly I would like to point out that the text should have been edited in that thread first before being clarked, as happens with every other bill; however, that problem appears to have been fixed now. I apologise, I assumed normal protocol had been taken with the bill.

Secondly, I would like to invite the chief sponsor of the bill, the Right Honourable S:reu da Biondeu to answer the following question: how does limiting the power of dismissal of a public servant to an unaccountable, unelected position make the position of Burgermeister any more accountable?