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German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

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Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#61

Post by corty »

tormeh wrote: post #57
inglor_cz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the beginning, there were irregularities in her CV. Now she has a recently unearthed history of plagiarism in her book and the party tried its best to avoid confession of any wrongdoing. Also, there was a gender-related shitshow in Green primaries in Saarland. Basically the country leadership of the Green party hates the idea that a female #1 was voted out of the Saarland list three times in a row, thus giving an…

>At the beginning, there were irregularities in her CV. Now she has a recently unearthed history of plagiarism in her book and the party tried its best to avoid confession of any wrongdoing. The CV irregularities seem to be rather minor (probably deliberate) miss-translations from English to German, if I understood it all correctly. Definitely not good, but hardly worthy of a proper scandal. The plagiarism stuff is a…

Given current EU and German legislation protects products of the press down to "smallest snippets" (generally thought to be less than 7 words), courts will quite certainly find it illegal, at least when pertaining to copying from newspapers. Immoral depends on your point of view, I do find the respective laws immoral, so any action to break them is no moral concern of mine.

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#62

Post by bakuninsbart »

corty wrote: post #60
akie wrote: post #44

Having Armin Laschet as the new Kanzler would be an unmitigated disaster. He's about as clever as George W., and as helpless and uninformed as Jeb. Thank god he's not actively malicious. An empty vessel of a politician. Let's hope a coalition with the Greens will force him towards reasonable policies nevertheless.

I think Baerbock looks quite on paar with Laschet, problem-wise: Where Laschet had his invented grades because he misplaced some tests during his time as a professor, Baerbock plagiarized in her book. Both have had "problems" in their CV. Both are the second-rate candiates of their party, chosen for pleasing everyone, not for being outstanding or competent in any way. Baerbock was chosen over Habeck because she is a…

She did not plagiarize in her book. The guy who "broke the story" has a blog with the last 8 stories about how the Greens would destory Germany. He is properly obsessed. Here's a law expert of our public broadcaster explaining how much there is to the story: Nothing. [0]

This is a predictable campaign to prevent a centre-left coalition.

[0] https://twitter.com/fewizi/status/1409869123111342092

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#63

Post by PennRobotics »

exporectomy wrote: post #29
adrianN wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There would be nothing inherently wrong with making building wind turbines harder if you actually presented an alternative means of reaching carbon neutrality fast.

Not sure you understand my point. Imagine, for example, the industry was poorly regulated and filled with cowboys. Lots of workers were getting killed in accidents and the government made stricter safety regulations to protect them but it also increased the difficulty of building wind turbines. Is that really a bad thing? Should they sacrifice human life to get maximum speed towards carbon neutrality?

I live in a German community considering building wind turbines in our nearby forest. The installations in our region usually use Siemens Gamesa turbines and are part of a coalition between industry and academia, and it ain't their first rodeo. The industry is neither dangerous nor amateur, but it IS plagued by a ton of special interest resistance and disinformation.

Two details, lawsuits and safety:

The lawsuits filed for every single turbine project are a major pain. The anti-windmill crowd is a perfect example of German efficiency. They inject their opinions and objections from every reach of the country into every local community's discussion. Most of it is pseudoscience, like noise effects. I can hear the Autobahn from nearly every part of my town and its surrounding nature trails. Getting the legal roadblocks to green energy out of the way would be a victory for the climate. (From what I've witnessed, Germans are fairly resistant to change and very eager to protest: Stuttgart 21, Cyber Valley, Tesla, Berlin Airport, Querdenker, Fridays for Future)

If the German government wanted more regulation in the name of safety, there are easier pickings than the [likely completely unionized] wind turbine industry: ban traditional Maibaum raising, implement an Autobahn speed limit, limit fireworks during New Years Eve, change public policy and security stance toward football (soccer) matches, more aggressively surveil fringe movements.

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#64

Post by corty »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #62
corty wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Baerbock looks quite on paar with Laschet, problem-wise: Where Laschet had his invented grades because he misplaced some tests during his time as a professor, Baerbock plagiarized in her book. Both have had "problems" in their CV. Both are the second-rate candiates of their party, chosen for pleasing everyone, not for being outstanding or competent in any way. Baerbock was chosen over Habeck because she is a…

She did not plagiarize in her book. The guy who "broke the story" has a blog with the last 8 stories about how the Greens would destory Germany. He is properly obsessed. Here's a law expert of our public broadcaster explaining how much there is to the story: Nothing. [0] This is a predictable campaign to prevent a centre-left coalition. [0] https://twitter.com/fewizi/status/1409869123111342092

Even if that were correct (which I would doubt, German public broadcasters are very much pro-Green), it would in consequence mean that there is no copyright on any of Wikipedia or any non-opinion factual press piece. Which is obviously ridiculous as the replies also point out.

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#65

Post by Sebb767 »

detaro wrote: post #45
Sebb767 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the point the grandparent made - as long as we don't know the actual circumstances, we can only imagine scenarios (that can go either way) and these do not matter.

so the point is that a short throwaway comment in an online forum didn't contain the full context for people who know nothing about the situation? And instead of asking for context we rather go "oh but there are theoretical situations where your statement is bad!"?

exporectomy asked for the context in his first comment [0]. adrianN (the OP) replied by saying that he thinks there is no scenario where this might be a good thing, so exporectomy provided one. This shows that simply filling in an imaginary scenario is not sufficient, as you can spin the story either way - making imaginary scenarios useless, as you correctly pointed out.

So the overall this subthread is asking for context and then clarifying why it's needed.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27709355

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#66

Post by corty »

_Microft wrote: post #26
artemonster wrote: post #7

I have immigrated into this country 12 years ago and became citizen 3 years ago and still, to this day, some facets of german culture fascinate me. Most of germans have seriously high threshold for „pain, which reflects in almost every everyday life situation: 1. customer service is abysmal and they are ok with it. 2. bureucratic machine is horrible and they are ok with it. 3. politics stagnating last decades and the…

Regarding point 1, we Germans absolutely do NOT like someone getting in the way if we could do it ourselves faster and better, so please let us put our grocery into bags ourselves. The second worst thing is imo waiters hovering your table instead of doing their job and letting you enjoy your meal in peace. (Thinking of it, you might have the problem that you are not beckoning the waiter over if you need them? If you…

Very much agree on Germans wanting to be left alone: I'm always annoyed at waiters abroad, because they keep asking and bugging me if I want anything else, if everything is OK, if the food was adequate. If I need anything I'll becon, if something is not right I'll tell you, leave me be!

I can fully understand that foreigners expecting the above level of buzzing around from a waiter are disappointed in Germany. Expectations here are completely different.

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#67

Post by corty »

fabian2k wrote: post #6
pudo wrote: post #3

I'm curious how well this will fare in a German context, as opposed to the US, where 538 now seems a solid part of the campaign season. Some differences come to mind: voter participation in DE is higher and campaign cost is much lower, meaning it is perhaps a bit less about activating your supporters and more about actually getting people to change their preferences. Volatility seems really high, too - see the recent…

German elections are much less tactical and significantly more boring than US elections. The US system creates much bigger swings based on small differences and creates much more of a narrative around campaign strategies. In Germany you pretty much just look at one poll for all parties and the popularity of the potential chancellors, but that's it.

The election is also far less influential, because there will always be a coalition in power, where sometimes single-seat differences (often resulting from weird specialties of the election system like Ueberhangmandate and Ausgleichsmandate) decide on the (non-)viability of some option.

And all the election programme of a party is very much up for discussion in coalition talks: A famous example of a coalition compromise: 2005 SPD promised "leave VAT at 16%", CDU promised "VAT raise to 18%". Their compromise? raise VAT to 19%.

The election is the boring part, the talks right after the election decide what will happen.

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#68

Post by hackeraccount »

corty wrote: post #67
fabian2k wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German elections are much less tactical and significantly more boring than US elections. The US system creates much bigger swings based on small differences and creates much more of a narrative around campaign strategies. In Germany you pretty much just look at one poll for all parties and the popularity of the potential chancellors, but that's it.

The election is also far less influential, because there will always be a coalition in power, where sometimes single-seat differences (often resulting from weird specialties of the election system like Ueberhangmandate and Ausgleichsmandate) decide on the (non-)viability of some option. And all the election programme of a party is very much up for discussion in coalition talks: A famous example of a coalition comprom…

My favorite example of that is from 1909; Churchill describing the number of battleships to be built.

“The Admiralty had demanded six ships; the economists offered four; and we finally compromised on eight.”

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#69

Post by inglor_cz »

tormeh wrote: post #57
inglor_cz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the beginning, there were irregularities in her CV. Now she has a recently unearthed history of plagiarism in her book and the party tried its best to avoid confession of any wrongdoing. Also, there was a gender-related shitshow in Green primaries in Saarland. Basically the country leadership of the Green party hates the idea that a female #1 was voted out of the Saarland list three times in a row, thus giving an…

>At the beginning, there were irregularities in her CV. Now she has a recently unearthed history of plagiarism in her book and the party tried its best to avoid confession of any wrongdoing. The CV irregularities seem to be rather minor (probably deliberate) miss-translations from English to German, if I understood it all correctly. Definitely not good, but hardly worthy of a proper scandal. The plagiarism stuff is a…

"Definitely not good, but hardly worthy of a proper scandal."

I do not judge her hard for that, but I am definitely interested in her reaction.

The position of a German federal chancellor is a "high friction" one. Whoever gets elected will be drawn into power games with Putin, Biden and Xi. This requires certain toughness and willingness to fight back smartly. I am not sure yet whether Baerbock has it; her experience with high-level political positions is very limited.

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#70

Post by bakuninsbart »

corty wrote: post #64
bakuninsbart wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She did not plagiarize in her book. The guy who "broke the story" has a blog with the last 8 stories about how the Greens would destory Germany. He is properly obsessed. Here's a law expert of our public broadcaster explaining how much there is to the story: Nothing. [0] This is a predictable campaign to prevent a centre-left coalition. [0] https://twitter.com/fewizi/status/1409869123111342092

Even if that were correct (which I would doubt, German public broadcasters are very much pro-Green), it would in consequence mean that there is no copyright on any of Wikipedia or any non-opinion factual press piece. Which is obviously ridiculous as the replies also point out.

There are indeed a few non-lawyers grasping at straws in the replies to the twitter thread. It is not like Mr. Zimmermann is alone in his assessment. Other renowned experts like Professor for law Andreas Fischer-Lescano are of the same opinion. [1]

But if you think the public broadcasters are biased towards the Green party, I must really question your political literacy. How would you even come to that conclusion?

[1] https://www.waz.de/politik/annalena-baerbock-plagiatsjaeger-...

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