The Nationalisation of a Peculiar Wittenberg Act

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

See, Eddie, I told you.

So let's try it again. This is not a hypothetical. This is myself, the Acting Seneschál of the Kingdom of Talossa, asking the King: are you willing to voluntarily give up control of Wittenberg moderation to a public officer or body, acting under law and legally accountable?

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

Feb 25, 2019 14:21:31 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

See, Eddie, I told you.

So let's try it again. This is not a hypothetical. This is myself, the Acting Seneschál of the Kingdom of Talossa, asking the King: are you willing to voluntarily give up control of Wittenberg moderation to a public officer or body, acting under law and legally accountable?

The King is a master of jumping into Talossa only when his red lines are crossed; and walking away and ignoring anything which it is inconvenient to him to asnwer.

In future, it would behoove all MZs who want to pass a law to get the King's opinion on it first to make sure they're not wasting their time teeing up a veto.

[Eðo Grischun]

Okay. So we are walking towards a stalemate after all it seems. I'm going to continue acting with a certain benefit of doubt for now though.

I don't think some kind of separate negotiation process needs to occur. IMO, the Hoppering of this proposal is good enough to serve as a negotiation ground and if the King would like to negotiate terms then he is very welcome to include himself in the discussion. The absolute ideal scenario is that the King fully engages with the Hopper process on this issue, gives us his input and ideas on how it could work and then this kind of proposal (whether resembling the current form or scrapped and rewritten entirely or something in between) is Clarked next term with the King's co-sponsorship!

At this time, King John, would you be willing to indicate if such a proposal could have your support in some form and that you would be willing to work with legislators on ironing out the Organic kinks and, together, coming up with a workable proposal? In other words, do you agree, in principle, with handing over administrative control to a body or bodies not connected to the Royal House and, if so, would you want to help draft the required Bill?
I'm not trying to trip you up or back you into a corner, so I ask this without prejudice and without demanding you tie yourself to it - just, in principle.

The starting points for "negotiations" (if we must call it that, although I prefer Hoppering), is as the bill currently stands. That is:

-- The Crown shall have ownership of the infrastructure (but not full control),
-- The control, administration and moderation of each sub-board (but not ownership) is handed to the powers of that sub-board (as per list below)
-- The UC shall be the court of arbitration and appeals
-- No person can be banned from the entirety of Wittenberg unless a national-level offence has occurred and the court so ordered such a ban

Full list of proposed admins:
The executive powers of the provinces to take control of provincial boards,
The Ministry of Interior and SoS to take control of the Immigration boards,
The Speakers of the Houses to take control of the Ziu boards,
The Court to take control of the Courtroom boards,
The special interest groups to take control of their own special interest boards (web builders, national language groups, etc),
The Crown keeping control over the main Wittenberg sub-board, the chat room, the Royal Society and the College of Arms boards.


In short: John keeps ownership of Wittenberg, but agrees not to be it's overall super-admin. I don't even think this should raise questions of Organicity.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

I suppose I have to re-iterate that the idea of a "negotiation" presupposes having something to negotiate. John says "no" to handing over control of Wittenberg, there's not a lot we can do. We could pass the law over his veto, and... then what? If he doesn't want to respect the law we can't force him. He's the King, and a majority of Talossans think we should have a King.

So it's an interesting plan, but honestly I see more hope in setting Telecomuna up and just bypassing old Witt altogether.

[Eðo Grischun]

Feb 25, 2019 21:52:03 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

I suppose I have to re-iterate that the idea of a "negotiation" presupposes having something to negotiate. John says "no" to handing over control of Wittenberg, there's not a lot we can do. We could pass the law over his veto, and... then what? If he doesn't want to respect the law we can't force him. He's the King, and a majority of Talossans think we should have a King.

He is the King, yes, and yes, I think we should have a King. I've said this before (I think to you, actually) - I'm a monarchist, but I'm not a Wooley-ite. I don't see this as a monarchy issue; I see it as a John Wooley, the person, issue. Witt belongs to John Wooley, the person. I don't think a single private person should own and/or control the country's infrastructure. It's madness. As a monarchist, I want John Wooley, the person, to transfer ownership to the office of the Crown (probably seems like a small distinction, but it's a distinction that matters). Then, and in my opinion, as any rational monarchist should, I want the King to not have administrative control over Kingdom infrastructure that he owns. It's the way modern constitutional monarchies operate.

So it's an interesting plan, but honestly I see more hope in setting Telecomuna up and just bypassing old Witt altogether.

It may well come to that.

Eðo Grischun said:

I'm a monarchist, but I'm not a Wooley-ite.

In all honesty, following all the events over the past several years, this might be the proverbial camel's straw for me here. Being a monarchist doesn't always equal supporting a particular monarch. The king is not acting like the type of Monarch I wish to support.

[King John]

I'm certainly willing to consider whether and how such a plan might work, and (if I'm persuaded it's for the good of Talossa) to help implement it. There are problems, though, practical and Constitutional, that should be discussed.

For instance, do we want to establish a precedent that a particular piece of valuable property, belonging to one citizen, may be "nationalised" by action of the Ziu? Would such action violate the Covenant requiring that all citizens enjoy "equal protection of the laws"? Or the Covenant forbidding Bills of Attainder? Such a law would (probably) be found un-Constitutional in the United States, and Talossa's Covenants use the same language on these points as the American Constitution.

Another consideration is this. Given that we need a Witt Admin who can act quickly in emergencies, which scheme protects best against partisan use of the Witt Admin powers (or the *appearance* of partisan use)? A non-partisan magistrate who needn't face re-election and thus needn't try to assuage popular opinion; or a politically appointed/elected magistrate?

My opinions on these things aren't sharply formed. But we've barely discussed them.

— John R

[Viteu Marcianüs]

I think the real issue is whether the citizen who owns the current Witt would ageee to give the property to the State for archival purposes. The State could very well start its own proboards tomorrow, and that would moot many of the issues. However, whether the citizen wishes to relinquish the current (prospective former) Witt is really the question. That said, the private citizen can also acknowledge that when they administer Witt, specifically those parts that functions as organs of the State, they do so under color of law and cannot suspend Organic and Statutory rights at their discretion, no matter how much they may think such action is warranted.

I want to note that I have never argued that Wittiquette is improper as it relates to non-State-specific fora. My argument had consistently been that the fora related to goverment function, such as Immigration, the Ziu, the Hopper, and the Judiciary, are outside of a private administrator's discretion.

Of course the foregoing is problamatic inasmuch as it relates to provincial boards. Enforcing Wittiquette in a general provincial thread would have the impact of precluding a provinicial lawmaker from accessing the provincial fora for governance.

Likewise, enforcing Wittiquette against an MZ or Government official for conduct in the private fora would preclude them from accessing the Government boards. Of course simply removing the offending posts in the non-goverment fora is an option. I point out that in the US, if a congressperson is jailed, assuming they don't resign, they must be let out of jail to engage in congressional debate and voting. So how do we remedy the effects of limiting State action?

We already have an answer in the works. Telecommuna! I have to disagree with AD's position shift here. Having a fora administered by the State for only State function makes logical sense. Private fora can have its private rules. If you don't like them, create another forum. It would also, I submit, help reinvest people in Talossa by removing the often contentious political debates. I would suggest that the SOS could publish the Clark in a thread each month on the private Witt with links to telecommuna so the people can remain informed and engage if they so choose.

Ultimately, we need to all realize something-this debate is not one of future property. There is no law that says the State must use *this* Witt. I could create a new one right now and the State could choose to use that. What we're talking about is whether the citizen who currently owns *this* Witt would allow an easy transition or would prefer the State set up a new forum for State use.

[Viteu Marcianüs]

To put another way - we don't actually need to nationalize this Witt to achieve the desired results.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

Feb 28, 2019 13:26:12 GMT -6 King John said:

Given that we need a Witt Admin who can act quickly in emergencies, which scheme protects best against partisan use of the Witt Admin powers (or the *appearance* of partisan use)?

Sir, I find it very hard to believe that you do not know that you are seen as extremely partisan, favouring conservative opinion in general and the RUMP party in particular. I can't believe you don't understand that - for example - your willingness to kickban V for bad language and your complete nonchalance as to AD's defamatory smears of corruption look very partisan.

I hope you won't waste everyone's time explaining to us why this is not so - just accept the fact that this is seen to be so. Do not delude yourself that anyone from the centre or left of Talossan politics trusts your non-partisanness (especially given your latest veto of OrgLaw reform).

On the other hand, there is an established form of non-partisan, non-political magistrate which could provide a "Witt Sheriff" - the Talossan Civil Service. It doesn't surprise me at all, parenthetically, that the RUMP/Davinescù want to abolish this and return to nakedly political appointments; they're in favour of eveyrthing being nakedly partisan, up to and including the Monarchy, as long as it's partisan in their favour. I'm more upset that the new AMP party agrees.

[Eðo Grischun]

Moving this forward for consideration.

[Ian Plätschisch]

I’m of the kind that it would be better to have two different forums, each with a clear administration, than one forum with weird and overlapping administrations.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

I am of the opinion that the incoming Government should ask the King straight-up as to whether he is willing to voluntarily hand over Wittenberg administration to such authorities as to be appointed by law. He's hemming and hawing about whether to pass a law doing so would be "Organic". He's carefully avoiding the question of whether he is prepared to surrender control voluntarily, and under what circumstances.

[Ian Plätschisch]

Apr 3, 2019 15:07:16 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

I am of the opinion that the incoming Government should ask the King straight-up as to whether he is willing to voluntarily hand over Wittenberg administration to such authorities as to be appointed by law. He's hemming and hawing about whether to pass a law doing so would be "Organic". He's carefully avoiding the question of whether he is prepared to surrender control voluntarily, and under what circumstances.

Yeah, it wouldn't be inOrganic if he agreed to "donate" it.

[Sevastáin Pinátsch]

Feb 25, 2019 21:52:03 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

So it's an interesting plan, but honestly I see more hope in setting Telecomuna up and just bypassing old Witt altogether.

Telecomuna:

telecomuna.talossan.ca/

Wittenberg structure, no Telecomuna:

talossa.talossan.ca/

Let's get start putting national data into open source platforms that we own and control.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Apr 6, 2019 6:41:23 GMT -6 Sevastáin Pinátsch said:

Feb 25, 2019 21:52:03 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

So it's an interesting plan, but honestly I see more hope in setting Telecomuna up and just bypassing old Witt altogether.

Telecomuna:

telecomuna.talossan.ca/

Wittenberg structure, no Telecomuna:

talossa.talossan.ca/

Let's get start putting national data into open source platforms that we own and control.

Isn't this hosted and owned on your private website? Before we get started on anything like that (and again, I don't think Telecomuna is a good idea at this point) maybe a brief formal agreement where you turn over ownership of talossan.ca to the government would be in order? Otherwise we're just moving from one private forum to another rather than to one that the state owns and controls.