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German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

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Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#71

Post by corty »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #70
corty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.nzz.ch/international/das-herz-des-deutschen-jour...

I must in turn question your literacy: Have you ever opened a newspaper? They all have their obvious bias. Seen TV? obvious bias. Famously the ZDF was founded after Adenauer had enough of the ARDs leftist bias. Nothing of that is new, and you have to be purposefully ignorant or illiterate to not see it. Of course it has become a fashion to only decry a bias in media of the opposing creed, calling the agreeing media fair and unbiased. But I would think that people can see through that...

As to the legal situation around Baerbocks book: Even if it were legal, it still is a political screwup of the highest magnitude. Why? Because now she is in one tradition with the likes of Guttenberg, Schavan, Giffey and others.

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#72

Post by corty »

PennRobotics wrote: post #59
edhelas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power plants ?

No. For whatever reason, basically all political parties in Germany are anti-nuclear, and the country is phasing out their last working reactors next year.

Not quite. AfD is pro-nuclear, CDU/CSU is opportunistically pro/con, FDP the same (i guess). Only the left is firmly opposed. The thing is that the anti-nuclear public sentiment is strong enough that any pro-nuclear movement or politics is doomed to fail. Any pro-nuclear move is political suicide.

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#73

Post by corty »

flohofwoe wrote: post #54
artemonster wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vote for a party that makes medical universities a priority! There are laughably many german students studying medicine in other EU states and coming back, because current central system is overwhelmed by applicants and there are so little seats.

The main problem is that all the doctors sit in big cities (you can't walk 50 meters in the middle of Berlin without stumbling over a doctor's office), but far too few in urban areas.

Rural infrastructure is nonexistent. Where you can reach any settled area by public transport in Switzerland, in Germany public transport exists only in the cities and their surroundings. Maybe a few tourist spots. So to be reachable by patients, all specialized doctors almost have to be city-dwelling. General physicians not so much, but then there is the question: high-earning in a city with proper infrastructure, or low-earning in the sticks with the last remaining old people.

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#74

Post by majewsky »

hackeraccount wrote: post #68
corty wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.”

We had a famous case of this in the German federal election of 2005. The conservatives (CDU/CSU) wanted to increase sales tax by 1%, the social democrats (SPD) were opposed to increasing it at all. They ended up forming a coalition that raised the sales tax by 3%.

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#75

Post by majewsky »

anfelor wrote: post #48
neppo wrote: post #31

The forecast over time shows the green candidate to rise sharply to be favorite and then decline over the last 2 months - what happened?

The CDU had a rough period where they were accused of mismanaging several important parts of the covid strategy (including giving contracts for pursuing masks to their cronies) and they couldn't figure out who should become their candidate (they don't have primary elections and Laschet who was prefered by the establishment was vastly less popular overall than Söder. Laschet is now their candidate). So the Greens had…

> Laschet who was prefered by the establishment was vastly less popular overall than Söder. Laschet is now their candidate

I too was quite baffled when they went with Laschet. I've since heard the theory that the CDU leadership was worried that Söder would transform the Union party into an ego show like Christian Kurz did with the Austrian conservatives, or like Christian Lindner did with the German liberals. If they genuinely believe that threat to be worth taking serious, I can see why they would prefer Laschet. A one-man party is fine as long as the leader is going strong, but falls apart quickly when they disappear.

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#76

Post by corty »

avh02 wrote: post #16
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…

as big as a fiasco as BER was/is - it turns out it's (attempted) infrastructure expansion. That and stuff like U5 extension, etc (is it a tourist line? sure, but it's work being done). Trialing/using Electric buses is another one (though they have suffered in both heat and cold). I'll grant you digitization being crap - don't understand why copper is still king here. Politics I don't pretend to understand or care abo…

BER isn't really an expansion, it is replacing the two other airports in Berlin that were more central and had to close down (because they were old and too central to not be a major noise problem), Tegel (TXL) and Tempelhof (THF) and parts of the old function of Schoenefeld (SXF, formerly a regular airport, now just a government airfield, but right next to/part of BER).

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#77

Post by flohofwoe »

corty wrote: post #73
flohofwoe wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem is that all the doctors sit in big cities (you can't walk 50 meters in the middle of Berlin without stumbling over a doctor's office), but far too few in urban areas.

Rural infrastructure is nonexistent. Where you can reach any settled area by public transport in Switzerland, in Germany public transport exists only in the cities and their surroundings. Maybe a few tourist spots. So to be reachable by patients, all specialized doctors almost have to be city-dwelling. General physicians not so much, but then there is the question: high-earning in a city with proper infrastructure, o…

Huh? I travel every few weeks from Berlin into my tiny little home village in the Ore Mountains by train, and what's not reachable by train has bus connections. The urban infrastructure is (mostly) fine. I guess doctors can simply make more money in cities with a bigger selection of rich privately insured patients to milk :)

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#78

Post by TMWNN »

dragonwriter wrote: post #17
adrianN wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Germans would not consider CDU/CSU to be "left". I think they understand themselves as a center-right conservative party.

Western European center-right is often described as left in the USA.

... Which is nonsense.

Those (both American leftists, and Europeans who listen to them) who say that "Democrats in the US would be right wing in Europe/Canada" have to (for example) then agree that all major political parties in Canada and every European country outside the UK and Ireland are right of US Democrats, because there is no significant opposition to voter ID laws anywhere. Macron's Les Republicains got elected because voters liked his vow to get tough on unions and union pensions, and privatize more infrastructure, neither of which appears in Biden's campaign platform.

Speaking of which, several European countries have privatized post offices; not just telecom companies that were parts of PTTs, but entire postal services. It is the rare European country that hasn't sold off at least part of their postal services. The EU explicitly requires postal monopolies to end in member states; whether government-owned or not, EU postal services do not have the USPS's monopoly on first-class mail. Yet no major party in the US seriously talks about privatizing the USPS.^1 Does this mean that American politics is "far to the left" of that of Germany and the UK, both of which have completely sold off their postal services to private investors?

^1 And no, it's not because of the Constitution. Article I Section 8 only gives Congress the authority "To establish Post Offices", as opposed to requiring a government-run one. Certainly nothing in the Constitution mandates the USPS's first-class mail monopoly.

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#79

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

PennRobotics wrote: post #63
exporectomy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fil…

Limiting fireworks: check

Football: partially checked

surveillance of perceived 'fringes': checked

speed limit: in discussion for autobahn, rolled out in more and more parts of cities, so partially checked

wtf is/was cyber valley? silicon saxony?

Re: German Federal Election Forecast 2021 – INWT

#80

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

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…

6. Vee arr värry scroogy, therefore can't afford the platform ticket to enter the free revolution train ;->
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