Solomon, I read in your words that the whole intention for AA to join the merger was to get rid of "people like Pat" or myself, and let me quote some interesting remarks you did, deliberately out of context, where they reveal pretty much what you're aiming at:
"AA [...] They knew all about us.". At the light of the recent discussions, I would say that there was quite a lot they didn't know about the CDS, or they wouldn't have approved the merger. At least Ashcroft and Carolyn were always consistent in what they thought about the CDS.
"they knew all about the rascals and garbage on the forums". We call that "freedom of expression", Solomon. You call it "garbage".
"they [...] thought they could do something to change that and bring something more productive to CDS". Which I read: "nonono you guys at the CDS have been doing everything wrong in your 6-old-profitable-community, let's change all that". Hmm. But it seems clear that many AA citizens actually agree with you. Apparently the common notion is that the CDS is rotten to the core, does not work, and is a failure in all aspects, and the AA is seen as the "saviour" which would "redeem" the nasty, naughty CDSers and "save" them. Well, I couldn't disagree more with you on this, Solomon. Bad or good, the CDS has endured almost 6 years of profitability, with a representative democracy (not a tyranny), and shows relatively good numbers, even if growth is small. So people are nasty on the forums? That's tough, but that's freedom of expression. The RA is "not productive"? That's tough too: that's why we have an Executive to "be productive". There is a failure to understand the roles of the many institutions of the CDS Government and I admit it might be hard to separate them. The RA is not an executive branch. It doesn't organise events. It doesn't even tell what events are supposed to be organise, nor makes any suggestions. Years ago we have found that the RA is not the best place to deal with the community management of the CDS. It's too slow for that. The RA are no "leaders", they are legislators, which is a quite different story! They pass legislation to allow the Executive to do its work smoothly (and of course it also validates if the Executive is doing a good job or not). There is a whole world of difference between the two approaches. The RA is not supposed to "lead"!
Community management, by contrast, requires swift action, quick decisions, and dealing with a lot of details to get things properly organised. It cannot be left to a body that only meets for 2 hours every 15 days! That's why we gave up pretending that this system worked and abandoned it — long, long ago.
But you can argue that the very notion of an Executive is "relatively recent" and that the CDS did, indeed, work a while under a crippled system. Very true — as said before, the CDS was never afraid of assuming its mistakes and work towards a solution to fix the problems. We did, indeed, before 2007, assign too many tasks to the RA which it couldn't fulfil; mostly the issue was that some legislation was passed, but nobody actually implemented it (or verified if it was correctly implemented or not). So, yes, that was wrong, and we abolished the model as soon as it was found it didn't work — but this means that the "mistakes" have to be publicly discussed, not hidden away from the public. It's harsh to see them publicly exposed, I know, specially when they're exposed in a very emotional way.
But, again, that's one of the pillars of democracy: the ability to fully disagree, in public, with what the government does. We never mandated "politically correct speech" anywhere. Of course some people would prefer more civility; there were even some bills passed in the past to ethically bind RA members to a civil conduct in the sessions. But there is a limit to how far we can go to impose "civility" by stifling "freedom of expression". We can only educate citizens giving an example of civility in speech and actions, we cannot force anyone to conform to a specific standard of behaviour. Groupthink is forbidden in the CDS, in case you failed to notice it 
"this has all been more personal for you and maybe others than it has been about doing the best thing for all". It's personal in the sense that yes, many of us feel engaged to the CDS. What is the best thing for all? I'm afraid your comment does not address it at all. In the CDS, we believe that the "best thing for all" is what a majority decides to be the "best" thing. And we also believe that what a majority decides one day might be different the next. The "best" is thus to simply allow the citizens to decide what they wish. Self-deluded dreams of grandeur, of self-righteousness, of holier-than-though attitudes of "we know what's best" are good for rhetorics, but, ultimately, in the CDS we put it to the vote. The majority decides.
"what have you done to explore ways to turn the "problem" ( you seem to believe exists) of AA into an asset?" With due respect, Solomon, I think that you might have failed to read what Pat has extensively written in the past year about the subject. To be honest and true, Pat is by far not the only one, and perhaps not even the most vocal one. A lot has been constantly suggested to "turn" the AA into an asset (using your words; I personally dislike the idea of thinking of vibrant community of very engaged and participative citizens as merely an "asset"). Most of those suggestions were indeed implemented — changing the voting system (no more factions), allocating budgets to regional committees instead of planning it centrally at the Executive. Other things the CDS avoided to implement to allow AA citizens to feel more comfortable: open-to-all informal meetings (e.g. Town Hall meetings); avoiding to touch the issue of group citizenship; avoid to re-plan any of the AA sims (and stop discussing that in public!) to make them profitable; staying away from the issue of collecting tier under an unified model. So, yes, these are indeed "ways" to deal with the problem. When it was publicly said that all of the above was not enough, the question, echoed by many, was: "what should we do more?"
At this point, there was silence. Instead, the discussion turned to personal attacks.
"have you looked into it's ability to fund raise to maybe offset the costs you say are sooo astronomical? show us your studies into this." Just read the analysis, Solomon. See how even with studies opinion diverges on the interpretation. Note that the RA can only issue legislation to support the Executive in its actions, but it doesn't "lead" those actions. At most it extracts reports from the Executive — for public perusal — and suggests ways of implementing ideas; but it's up to the Executive to do all, well, executive tasks. This is not just pushing the blame elsewhere, it's just pointing out how the system works! And note that I'm not blaming the Executive, past or current; I sincerely believe that they have done everything they could do (or they would have done more!). Under Jamie's administration, for instance, the majority of the legislation passed by the RA was directly proposed by the Executive — a break from tradition which however the RA accepted well (the current constitution allows any citizen to propose new legislation!), since almost all legislation was to help the transition period to go smoother. So, yes, we have the past records to show exactly what you're asking.
"point out your old-paradigm style of leadership that just cuts away things it can't understand, that don't "look" right on paper and the bottom line, and how short sighted and narrow minded and obsolete that has been found to be, but i frankly don't think you're even that much of a leader" So what exactly do you mean with this sentence, Solomon? What are your implications?
When someone asks in public, repeatedly, both on the forums and in-world, "what can we do?" we get always this kind of mix of rhetorics and personal attacks. We don't get solutions. We can deal with rhetorics; as said, we are all for freedom of expression. But let's hear about solutions, which is the only thing that the RA can actually implement. If you care to name a few concrete solutions — not abstract, vague concepts — we'd all be quite happy to implement them. For months we have been asking for them!
And please remember that Pat is no "leader", he's just an elected representative.
And if there is something that we truly have not implemented as a "solution" is exactly what Kas is proposing now. Everything else that was publicly discussed (and I refer to the short list I've written above) was, indeed, implemented, even if some of those things ran contrary to the CDS's views (a typical example: giving a non-elected official full power to decide over the layout of a sim or sims). These were concrete solutions suggested publicly as a way to help the transition. They were voted and passed.
"why you, and a few others think its perfectly ok to work against and demolish what our communities have collectively spent years working on" How exactly you come to this conclusion totally baffles me! Unless you're referring to something which is hardly obvious.
Pat's support (or my own support) of Kas' proposal is exactly the consequence of looking at what each community, in isolation, have managed to accomplish over the past years. We strongly feel that each community is quite successful under its own model. What we are not convinced is that there is a single governance model that can fit both communities. The changes claimed by many AA citizens would force the CDS to drop representative democracy, limit (to a degree) freedom of expression, and abandon financial prudence. The CDS is not prepared to accept such a radical change of our principles. In contrast, the changes claimed by many CDS citizens would force the AA to drop meritocracy/adhocracy under a benevolent (but autocratic) administration, vent all frustrations in public, and adopt financial prudence (which means that sims would have to be planned for profitability first). This is untolerable to many AA citizens, and they're not prepared to accept that.
I see those positions to be too extreme to be reconciled under a model of "one government, two communities". We adopted, over the past years, all concrete suggestions that were made. Some more radical suggestions weren't made yet, but those are in the minds of many who just use abstract argumentation but don't really wish to be seen as the ones pushing the more radical way. For instance, the suggestion to disband the RA was not made — yet. Nevertheless, the RA is viewed by many as the "source of all evil" and that getting rid of it would be the best course. Some suggestions were openly made to neglect the work of the New Guild, for instance (who, in a sense, is on strike, or as close as to be on strike as possible — refusing to meet under the current political turbulence. I cannot blame them). Some nasty comments were made that the current Executive is not the "best" choice for the citizens, but no concrete explanation (besides some personal attacks) about why it's not the best suggestion weren't publicly discussed, or what an alternative to an Executive would be. At least the SC seemed to be left in peace But overall the discussion centres around the governmental institutions of the CDS, and how they are "hindering progress" (for a given value of "progress"). It's clear to me that the unvoiced opinion is that getting rid of the institutions of the CDS is the only way to please AA citizens and relieve them of the nightmares of "living under the merger".
Well, the CDS is not prepared to abolish its own institutions. The alternative is to focus on co-operation as opposed to, well, "annexation". And that's pretty much what Kas is suggesting. I couldn't agree more with her.
As for the rude implication that I have "lied to everyone" please read this thread carefully: http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php? ... ery#p13318 You can see that not only Arria (or rather, Virtus — the group owning the parcels in the Monastery sim) paid for the four months of tier, but that this land was bought from the CDS. See also NL 8-4; the Monastery sim used that existing legislation to be put in place, with a slight difference: the sim was not bought first by a private group and parcels sold by the group to cover the costs, but the other way round: the CDS bought the sim and the group paid the CDS for it. That's what I meant about "having paid for it" 
You can twist my words in any way you like, but in my mind, it's not relevant if LL or the CDS was paid for the sim. I just apologise if I didn't go into excruciatingly fine detail in explaining money transfers
Oh, and by the way, ostracism is forbidden in the CDS. Many have often disagreed with this rule, as ostracism suits so well to deal with "unpleasant" people. I can imagine that it's terrible for you to live under an organisation that has freedom of expression and allows people — any people! — to get elected. But that's the way the CDS works: people get voted out of office when the citizens don't believe they're serving their best interests; they're not kicked out of the community, just voted out. There is a whole world of a difference which you seem to fail to grasp. The CDS never claimed to be a "happy family where everybody goes along with each other" (and dissenters are kicked out). Instead, we live together in spite of disagreeing with each other — publicly so. And we allow the citizens to vote on which members should represent them on government.
"pat, your cheap, fear-mongering, xenophobic bullshit is just the reason i'm entering the RA race. i firmly believe people like you, with your methods, are toxic to democracy and a major part of what drives most people away from participating in government. CDS and AA deserve better." And it's exactly because the CDS allows you to publicly criticise Pat and myself using all kinds of arguments (emotional, abstract, vague or otherwise), publicly defend ostracism instead of freedom of expression and demand people to leave (which is specifically forbidden by the Constitution under Article VI - Citizenship, Section 3 — "no citizen shall be deprived of citizenship [...] without trial in accordance with law"), and still be fully allowed to run for elections like any other citizen — nay, even get elected! — that we truly believe that a representative democracy with freedom of expression is a rather good method of self-government. It's ironic that you trust this model as strongly as we all do, but implicitly give the idea you don't
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) to be open to further communities. If the collaboration between communities is much looser than the current "merger" model, we might start approaching other similarly-minded communities (Jon's Cedar Island comes to mind, for instance) and bring them under a simple agreement of mutual collaboration and co-operation, without losing any autonomy whatsoever.
