EmperorNero
Golden Member
The title says it all. what current aspects in society would you like to see changed? Be serious...nothing like "I wanna do away with income taxes" because that's not going to happen.
Also, this post was formerly titled "Help me creat a legislative bill." Do to the lack of replies, I'm forced to make this thread more generic so it would seem like it applies to everyone. The original content of the post is below if you care to read it:
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I'm in Junior State of America (JSA) - a high school students political/debate club. On our second convention in February, we're going to Washington D.C. and the convention is called Mock Congress therefore we participate in creating and debating over bills and we have to try to keep it as real as possible.
A bill can affect the national level (e.g. changing freeway speed limit to 85mph) or a local level (e.g. setting a limit on the number of boats on Lake Erie) or it can be a Constitutional Ammendment (this is extremely hard to ratify). Both of the examples I just gave were actual bills people have created..the speed limit was shot down (of course) and the boat limit was ratified. The bill should be as realistic as possible - passing a bill requiring all U.S. citizens to sign up for Anandtech forums is out of the question or passing a bill that disallows anyone under 21 to buy cigarettes cannot be used because that's a law we already have.
This is how it works: we are to have a partner - the author of the bill and cosponsor..the author is the one that has to do the majority of the work and will become a Senator. The cosponsor will be the Representative. All of the senators go in one room and debate about the bill formally and decide to pass it or not, just like how they do it in Congress. And likewise for the Rep, but they will be seperated from the Senate. Afterwards, the Senators and Reps all meet in one room so they can further debate on it. If a bill is passed in both houses, the bill will be presented here: where both the senators and reps meet. Then the bill is debated once more. If the bill is passed, it will now become a law (a mock law..not a real law).
So I asked this hot (but airheaded...see anecdote below) cheerleader if she wants to cosponsor a bill with me - she agreed. We're thinking about a bill to legalize Napster or do something more broad such as legalizing music sharing.
[*]Help me come up with a bill that you think an average high school comp geek and cheerleader know enough about to argue about it intelligently. So far, our best (and only) idea is on either legalizing or banning all music trading. All I need now are just suggestions.
[*]Please give me any links that can be helpful about the procedures of passing a bill.
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Skip this part if you don't feel like reading this long post...but the important stuff above is very important (a bit redundancy there...oops)
**Anecdote - the cheerleader was debating about legalizing Napster. Someone argued that d/ling music for free is illegal and it's stealing music from the artist/producer/record company/etc. Her "rebuttal" is that using Napster isn't totally free because you're paying to use the internet. Of course, people laughed at her.
And I'm not saying I was great either when I was debating. I totally messed up my argument because I was nervous and I accidently implied something that wasn't true. And I'm still very embarrassed about it (it was really awful..I'm not exaggerating a bit) so I would rather not tell what happened. I just hope my speech class next semester will improve my oratory skills before the D.C. trip.
Anyway, please give me suggestions on what bills I should try to pass.
Also, this post was formerly titled "Help me creat a legislative bill." Do to the lack of replies, I'm forced to make this thread more generic so it would seem like it applies to everyone. The original content of the post is below if you care to read it:
---------------------
I'm in Junior State of America (JSA) - a high school students political/debate club. On our second convention in February, we're going to Washington D.C. and the convention is called Mock Congress therefore we participate in creating and debating over bills and we have to try to keep it as real as possible.
A bill can affect the national level (e.g. changing freeway speed limit to 85mph) or a local level (e.g. setting a limit on the number of boats on Lake Erie) or it can be a Constitutional Ammendment (this is extremely hard to ratify). Both of the examples I just gave were actual bills people have created..the speed limit was shot down (of course) and the boat limit was ratified. The bill should be as realistic as possible - passing a bill requiring all U.S. citizens to sign up for Anandtech forums is out of the question or passing a bill that disallows anyone under 21 to buy cigarettes cannot be used because that's a law we already have.
This is how it works: we are to have a partner - the author of the bill and cosponsor..the author is the one that has to do the majority of the work and will become a Senator. The cosponsor will be the Representative. All of the senators go in one room and debate about the bill formally and decide to pass it or not, just like how they do it in Congress. And likewise for the Rep, but they will be seperated from the Senate. Afterwards, the Senators and Reps all meet in one room so they can further debate on it. If a bill is passed in both houses, the bill will be presented here: where both the senators and reps meet. Then the bill is debated once more. If the bill is passed, it will now become a law (a mock law..not a real law).
So I asked this hot (but airheaded...see anecdote below) cheerleader if she wants to cosponsor a bill with me - she agreed. We're thinking about a bill to legalize Napster or do something more broad such as legalizing music sharing.
[*]Help me come up with a bill that you think an average high school comp geek and cheerleader know enough about to argue about it intelligently. So far, our best (and only) idea is on either legalizing or banning all music trading. All I need now are just suggestions.
[*]Please give me any links that can be helpful about the procedures of passing a bill.
----------------------
Skip this part if you don't feel like reading this long post...but the important stuff above is very important (a bit redundancy there...oops)
**Anecdote - the cheerleader was debating about legalizing Napster. Someone argued that d/ling music for free is illegal and it's stealing music from the artist/producer/record company/etc. Her "rebuttal" is that using Napster isn't totally free because you're paying to use the internet. Of course, people laughed at her.
And I'm not saying I was great either when I was debating. I totally messed up my argument because I was nervous and I accidently implied something that wasn't true. And I'm still very embarrassed about it (it was really awful..I'm not exaggerating a bit) so I would rather not tell what happened. I just hope my speech class next semester will improve my oratory skills before the D.C. trip.
Anyway, please give me suggestions on what bills I should try to pass.
