Filitsa wrote:Anteroom negotiations are indeed a significant part of the legislative process in the U.S., but for this to work in CY requires a tremendous amount of good will on the parts of GC and TC legislators. The predisposition of distrust between the two communities (of which this forum is a microcosm), begs the question of good will. Does the good will exist, and is it pervasive enough to make the system work?
Well, Filitsia, nothing else has worked thus far since 1960, so why not try something new that seems to work in other Federal system countries. What do we have to lose.? Lets give Democracy and Human Rights also a chance to see what it can do. If it doesn't work, we lost nothing. I know you personally is not against Democracy and Human Rights.!
Filitsa wrote:My understanding of cloture is different than yours. I understand it as the act of closing debate to call for a vote.
That is correct. It is a way to do away with Filibusters in the Congress. But since it actually means to bring a debate or something to an end, I used it loosely to bring an end to Presidents veto in the same way. I have made many improvises for this plan, some from the US and some from myself. Sailors are very good at improvising things to get the job done. Hey, what choice does one have in the middle of the ocean if they did not improvise to get them to their destination.
Filitsa wrote:Nevertheless, my understanding of the above - correct me if I'm wrong - is that the V.P. is prohibited from voting to override a veto, so practically speaking, 5 TC-affirmative votes plus 1 GC-affirmative vote will override the veto in the Upper Chamber, that is, of course, if the Lower Chamber also garnered enough votes to override it. I'm not convinced that this will work.
Actually, I had in mind only the upper house seats to be used for the veto override with a majority of 6-4, since the upper house is 50-50 from each state. This makes the TCs and the GCs equal in numbers whereas the lower house will be very lopsided in the GCs favour, just because they would have more seats than the Tcs, since the lower house seats will be based on the size of the population only.
The VP cannot vote for the override veto, because that would give the VP more power than the President. We don't want a bill that would pass the lower house which will have a majority GCs, and then have 5-5 in the upper house and the VP a GC, ALL GC bill would go through every time since the TC President won't be able to veto the bill. You want to have at least one TC senator to vote for the bill with the other 5 GCs to pass the bill, otherwise, all the bills can be railroaded through the lower and the upper house by the GCs only. We need checks and balances, and the way I proposed it, is to give both the VP and the President the ability to kill the bill and then rely on the override vote by a majority of 6 to pass the bill.
Filitsa wrote:Practicially speaking, what incentive does a GC have to cross "party lines" and vote with the TC's? Really, the effect is no different than allowing the V.P. to vote.
Actually, the question should be, why would a TC cross over to vote with the GCs, since the GCs already control the lower house. The answer would be that, the bill will benefit more people than not, which would be the case for most bills that would go through to become law. Even though the new BBF will start as the lower and the upper house being based on ethnic lines, I'm in the hope, that withing 20+ years, the country would eventually stars forming political parties based on political ideology, in which case, it would not matter who votes for the bill regarding their ethnicity. It will be more important what is their political ideology.
Filitsa wrote:You lost me at territorial size, Kikapu. Why is this relevant? Isn't representation to the Lower Chamber based on population?
Representatives to the lower house will be based on the population from each state. The reasons as to why I think the territorial size matter immensely in order for this plan to work is, that the smaller the north states territory is, the more GCs land would remain in the south state along with it's owners. The smaller the north territory is, the more TC concentration the north would have, which will be very important for the TCs in the north to be able to elect the 5 seats in the upper house to give them the 50% power, all Democratically elected, since any GCs living in the north will also be able to vote for a senator of their choice, regardless of their ethnicity. But, if there are only few thousand GCs living in the north amongst 130,000-150,000 TCs, the TCs will be able to keep all the 5 senate seats for themselves. The lower house is a lost house for the TCs, but the upper is where "political equality" of each state will come to play. Of course, the GCs will have the same numbers in the upper house and much more in the lower house, but since all bills need to pass in both the houses, the TCs can have an effective say so in the upper house only.
If the north territory is not reduces significantly, then you might have 100,000+ GCs living in the north with the TCs. With so many GCs in the north because their land would be in the north state from today's refugees, the GCs would be able to perhaps field a GC to be in the upper house from the north, which would then give the majority of the lower and upper house to the GCs. This is what Viewpoint is refusing to accept, to give most of the GCs land back to make sure most of the GCs end up in the south state, which is what I believe is where they want to be. The TCs cannot keep most of the GCs land and keep the GCs out of the north or prevent them from voting in the north which would violate their Democratic and Human Rights, specially since we are now in the EU where the EU Principles would apply. The Annan Plan would have helped the TCs to overcome all these problems to achieve Democratic and Human Rights violations of the GCs, but no longer since it was voted down in 2004, R.I.P.!
