“S/he who goes into the conclave as a possible Pope, comes back out as a cardinal.” Old Vatican rule of thumb.
(VAIR alss meg lichh err POPST inss con CLAVA gate, come t alss car din AL vee der rrrrauss.)
“S/he who goes into the conclave as a possible Pope, comes back out as a cardinal.” Old Vatican rule of thumb.
(VAIR alss meg lichh err POPST inss con CLAVA gate, come t alss car din AL vee der rrrrauss.)
“Ripoffery,” word used in an exciting Swiss voters’ referendum to limit bonuses, and not just in banks! In Switzerland. The election is Sunday, 3 Mar 2013. Proponents of the referendum want performance-based salaries and for executives’ compensation to have to be approved by shareholders, the actual owners of the companies concerned. Pro-referendum posters say things like “Compensation excesses harm pension funds + Swiss old-age and survivors insurance + the people’s economy.”
(Ob TSOCK err eye.)
“Blocking minority.” If, for example, Bersani’s (center-left) coalition gains control of Italy’s House but Berlusconi’s (center-right-f’tang-f’tang-biscuit-barrel) coalition wins enough votes in the Senate, Italy will be ungovernable because Bunga-Bunga will have the ability to block legislation. Hopefully, Bersani and Monti, perhaps even with television comedian Grillo’s help, will gain enough seats to call for another election, which will be blessed with better turnout. Spiegel-Online ventured to note that the new parliament might consider passing some electoral reforms before the new election, to stabilize the Italian government and make Italian politicians seem more reliable to voters.
(SHPERRRM ee nore ee tate.)
“Rat catchery,” how departing Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti referred this week to billionaire media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi’s ridiculous campaign promise to pay voters’ real estate taxes out of his own pocket, hot air intended to encourage poorly-informed people to hitch their wagons not to a 21st-century democratic system but to a strong-seeming man no matter what ethics he displays.
(ROTTEN feng err EYE.)
“World citizens, fury citizens or passive citizens“? 30 Jan is the anniversary of Hitler’s lawful accession to power via structural weaknesses in Germany’s first democratic government, known as the Weimar Republic. Discussion and analysis of whether Germany’s current democracy is structurally strong enough to resist international and national erosion factors included the commentary that a democracy requires sufficient numbers of democratic citizens who participate in it. Former Volkswagen C.E.O. Carl Hahn also said that citizens who travel and see non-democracies for themselves will prefer democratic governments to the alternatives, and that the best stability for a democracy depends on how well it educates and communicates values to the next generation.
(VELT burgher, VOOT burgher ode er poss EVE burgher?)
“Future Party,” the German translation of former journalist Yair Lapid’s “There is a Future” centrist political party Yesh Atid that did well in Israel’s recent election because of voters’ concerns about economic issues.
(TSOO koonfts part eye.)
“Loaned votes.” In parliamentary elections, where voters get a primary vote and a secondary vote, voters have more ways to demonstrate dissatisfaction. They can “loan” a vote to their habitual large party’s current or proposed smaller coalition partner party, for example, to maintain the status quo—by keeping the current coalition government in power—while ensuring there are at least some statistical consequences after bad policy. By strengthening minor parties, a loaned vote can have the additional advantage of preventing the two largest parties from forming a ruling coalition (a so-called “grosse Koalition“) during which parliamentary opposition is notoriously insufficient.
(LYE shtimmin.)
“Large donations,” in this case business donations to political parties exceeding 50,000 euros. Private donations to Germany’s political parties are low by U.S. standards and have been decreasing since 2002, though they still spike in election years. Of the reported large donations of this type from 2002 until 2012, 45.2% went to Angela Merkel’s CDU, 21.4% interestingly went to the CDU’s Bavarian sister party the CSU (a state party that manages to hold power at the national level), 17.0% to the FDP and 10.8% to the SPD. The Greens and Leftists are calling for reforms mandating that private political donations go to individuals and not parties, and capping them at 100,000 euros.
(GROSS shpen den.)
Tacking, in sailing. Nautical metaphor used by the SPD candidate running against Angela Merkel in the upcoming German parliamentary election—his background is in ocean-oriented northern Germany. When pressured about unlikely coalition partners such as the libertarianesque FDP or Merkel’s CDU/CSU, Peer Steinbrück insisted he “would not tack” and said the SPD would only form a coalition with the Greens.
(Love EAR en.)
“Cloned identity.” After receiving a surprisingly low percentage of the vote in October 2012′s direct election—the first direct election, in which all party members were eligible to vote, of chancelor-level candidates in a German political party—Green chair Claudia Roth was reconfirmed as party leader at the Green political convention on 17 Nov 2012. In her speech before the convention vote she said, “You must decide whether I’m the right one, as I am, with corners and edges. Because I don’t want to change that. And I don’t like cloned identity.” An agreeable surprise to hear words like that from a politician under duress.
The Greens want to improve their social issues platform. Spiegel-Online listed some of the other decisions reached and ongoing discussions at their recent convention (status as of 18 Nov 2012, when the convention wasn’t yet over): 100% renewable energy by 2030, no armed drones in the military, stronger rights for asylum seekers, labeling for vegetarian food, torture to be criminalized per se in the penal code (?), a motion approved against discrimination of Sinti and Roma; discussion about religious circumcision, debate of European policy.
(Geh CLONE teh eeee DENT ee TATE.)
“Book of petitions.” On 11 Nov 2012 German Pirate Party members voted online through a catalog of over 1400 proposals that had been submitted as prospective party platform planks. The topics ran the gamut, not unexpectedly. Spiegel-Online wrote that the party is hoping to “distill” a program from this process, and that the worst that could happen would be if the top ~50 suggestions were for minor issues rather than major GPP points such as electronic privacy and copyright. It is hoped this will also take care of “white areas of the map” for which the GPP has not had enough of a position before now, e.g. “employment, social and economic policy, electricity prices and building new housing.”
“The black zero,” meaning a balanced budget. The federal government is saying it’s possible Germany may manage to have a budget with no deficit spending as early as 2014, although this may not be as true after the upcoming German election.
(SHVORTS eh NOOL.)
“The Strepp Affair,” “The Case of Horst Seehofer.” The Bavarian state branch of Angela Merkel’s CDU party insists on remaining separate from the general CDU and calls itself the CSU. Horst Seehofer is in charge. The CSU has been posturing in national politics for an upcoming state election. Last Sunday, CSU spokesperson Hans Michael Strepp called the public broadcasting ZDF television station and said he’d heard they were going to broadcast a news report about the rival Bavarian SPD’s recent festive nomination of their top candidate, Christian Ude. Strepp told ZDF that neither the public broadcasting ARD nor the public broadcasting news and documentaries channel Phoenix was planning to report on the Bavarian SPD’s state convention and far be it from Strepp to want to tell them their business but he wanted to give them food for thought that there could be discussions afterward if ZDF went it alone. ZDF interpreted this as exerting influence and broadcast the report anyway. Then they broadcast a report about Strepp’s phone call.
At first, the CSU said nothing bad had happened. At noon on Thurs. 25 Oct 2012, Horst Seehofer announced that Spokesperson Strepp had resigned because Strepp had said he hadn’t exerted any influence on ZDF and the ZDF disagreed with that statement and Seehofer could not clarify this situation. The CSU’s position is now that Strepp acted entirely alone. In a lively parliamentary discussion after Seehofer’s announcement of Strepp’s resignation, Bavarian M.P.’s cast a lot of aspersions. CSU General Secretary Alexander Dobrindt has now been dragged into it because he obfuscated rather than clarified and because people find it credible that he might have given Strepp the incredible order to make the call. The Bavarian SPD demanded that Seehofer and Dobrindt resign their seats on ZDF management boards (!).
German Green party member Jürgen Trittin has demanded that all politicians holding government office resign from public broadcasting channels’ supervisory boards. Trittin said the Greens have been demanding this for years, and that a gray zone forms where government and media entangle. Trittin also said this is what you get when people have been in power longer than Fidel Castro.
(COW zah SHTREP, COW zah Horst ZAY hoaf er.)
The “burghers camp,” the “middle class position,” was being invoked in Stuttgart’s recent politics much as the “center” is in the USA. After Stuttgart’s mayoral election on 21 Oct 2012, the Green candidate had 52.9% of the vote and the “nonparty” (CDU, Merkel-supported) candidate 45.3%. The Green party is now in charge of Stuttgart for the first time, with an absolute majority (!), after 40 years of CDU mayors in various coalitions. Part of the voters’ general anger was in response to last year’s “Stuttgart 21” controversy in which the CDU insisted on going through with expansion of the main train station at the cost of parts of its historic building, trees in the castle park, public access to the castle park for ten years of construction, public land sold for development and cost overruns exceeding the originally promised price of EUR 200 million to the current estimate of EUR 4 billion and possibly even EUR 18 billion because a 2003 report found the area too unstable for an underground train station. I also wonder about the archeological losses incurred by digging next to a castle site that’s over a thousand years old.
New Oberbürgermeister Fritz Kuhn (Green Party) said, “This assumption that the burghers camp is the CDU and FDP is ~[as dead wrong as it's possible to be wrong in a very wrong way]. We too are in the burghers camp, but with a progressed understanding of the middle classes. And today’s success is actually the success of a long-term strategy that’s been ongoing for years.”
Update on 12 Dec 2012: Stuttgart 21 is now estimated to cost 6.8 billion euros (but only if it finishes in 2021 as planned, &c.). The head of Deutsche Bahn, the German Rail operator, has now alleged that canceling the project will cost 2 billion euros. But, says Spiegel-Online, he has also said for some time that Stuttgart 21 would only be worth carrying out if its costs did not exceed 4.7 billion euros.
(Doss BERR gur lichh eh LOG er.)
“Voting law.” The Bundestag is debating an overhaul of Germany’s electoral system. On 17 Oct 2012, Spiegel reported one issue was that the reforms currently under discussion might increase the size of the Bundestag to 700 M.P.’s (Spiegel-Online, “Bigger Than North Korea,” saying Germany would have the world’s second-largest parliament after China). Electoral reforms were necessitated by the Federal Constitutional Court’s decision in July 2012 that parts of the current law were unconstitutional, particularly with regard to Überhangmandate (which will be balanced out by proportional extra seats for the other parties). If a final agreement is reached rapidly, the new law could be in effect by Christmas 2012.
Update on 21 Feb 2013: The Bundestag reached an agreement on the new election rules. Überhangmandat seats will be canceled out by Ausgleichsmandat, compensation mandate, seats.
(VALL wrecked.)
“Overhang mandates,” overhang seats. Unusual parliamentary seats resulting from Germany’s two-vote election system. With their first vote, burghers choose a candidate. With their second vote, a political party. If a party has more direct candidates elected in a district than the seats they would have won by percentage, the party can still retain the directly elected excess candidates as Überhangmandate.
According to ZDF heute journal reporting on 25 July 2012, after Angela Merkel’s government’s recent electoral reforms there were an unprecedented 24 overhang seats in the subsequent election, a new record, and all belonged to Angela Merkel’s ruling party CDU/CSU. The Federal Constitutional Court has now declared the recent reforms imperfect and in need of revision, during which there will presumably be substantially more debate and resistance from the opposition, who now say these reforms were in fact rather inconsistent and hastily pushed through the legislative process.
In future, the Constitutional Court said, a maximum of only 15 overhang seats will be permissible.
Update on 21 Feb 2013: The Bundestag reached an agreement on the new election rules. Überhangmandat seats will be canceled out by Ausgleichsmandat, compensation mandate, seats.
(OO ber hong mon DOT eh.)
The new “Market Transparency Office,” under the auspices of the German Federal Cartell Authority. The MTO is intended to gather and evaluate data from electricity companies and especially gas stations to ensure there is no price fixing. These data will not be shared with the public. It is not clear whether this new office will be functional or grandstanding.
(MARKED trons par ENTS shtell ah.)
“Fury citizen,” a voter filled with frustration and anger at the bad decisions made over his or her head by elected and selected officials. This neologism was voted 2010’s German Word of the Year by the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache e.V.
(VOOT burgher.)
“After the election is before the election.” Pun on a famous soccer quote from Sepp Herberger, the German Yogi Berra.
(NOCK der vall isst fore der vall.)
“Close to the folks.” Down-to-earth, has the common touch, popular, man of the people.
(FOKES nah.)
“To bathe in the quantity.” To surge into the crowd shaking hands, if you’re a politician, or surf the fans, if you’re a rock star.
(In der MENG ah BOD en.)
Populist bluster, noisiness, roar, hullabaloo.
(POP oo LIST ish ess geh TUHZ ah.)
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