[Magdalen] Bad governments, was Re: America's Drunkest Cities

[Scott Knitter]

While doing my nearly daily viewing of the German news program
Tagesschau, I thought, "This program certainly runs a lot of video of
meetings: the Bundestag (federal parliament), committees, courts in
session, party conventions--and I now know by face and name the
leaders of the various party factions in the Bundestag...surely this
would bore the daylights out of American viewers." But then I thought
this might just be because these institutions are trusted more by
Germans than ours are by us? Their structures are working, at least
for the time being.

I enjoyed watching one of the Bundestagsabgeordneten (basically, MP or
congressional representative) read out to the Bundestag the vulgarly
satirical poem (Schmähgedicht) about Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, by a German comedian. It roasts him thoroughly and in great
detail, about his supposed sexual fascinations, his genitalia, and so
on. Erdogan had demanded the comedian's punishment, and President
Merkel rather weakly defended the poem on the grounds of artistic
freedom but seemed to say she'll see what she can do to stop further
readings of the poem. I loved the MP's simple tactic of reading it
into the record in front of the full Bundestag. There were a few
voices of protest in the background.

Now Erdogan has been bullying the Turkish-nationality (but not
necessarily all Turkish-born) German MPs after the Bundestag voted to
declare the massacre of Armenians post-WW1 as a genocide, saying their
blood is tainted and other garbage like that. And they've been
receiving anonymous death threats. The government is providing them
police protection.

I'm impressed at several instances lately of the Bundestag just doing
the right thing. That's what I'd like to see from our institutions
over here.

On Mon, Jun 13, 2016 at 11:10 AM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not nearly as bad as Wisconsin, Scott. If you look carefully at the stats,
> the Wisconsin economy has gone downhill faster than that of just about any
> state save possibly Kansas, which was already in the toilet. When Gov.
> Doyle left office it was in pretty decent shape, but Walker and his cronies
> have basically ruined it.




-- 
Scott R. Knitter
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA