The Follow-up

Smudged election poster

Ministerpräsident (governor) Mappus got the nuke issue right in his face. Last Sunday, Fukushima in distant Japan decided the state elections in Baden-Württemberg with the Greens more than doubling their votes.

Distribution of seats in the state assembly. In percentage: Christian Democrats 39.0%,
Greens 24.2%, Social Democrats 23.1%, and Liberals 5.3%

Look at the new distribution of seats in Baden-Württemberg's state assembly. Not only did many base voters switch to green, but people who had never cast their votes in the past put their ballot paper into the box. The turnout of voters in 2011 was 66.2% compared to 53.4% in 2006. Note that the Liberals, with 5.3%, had nearly missed their entry into the legislature, a fate that happened to the right and left-wing parties, for they missed the minimum quorum of 5% of the votes necessary to be presented in the state assembly.

The intention of the Social Democrats had been to form a coalition with the Greens to oust the present black-yellow government. However, the Greens having more than doubled their seats and gained one more than the Reds, will form a green-red government with their leader becoming the new Ministerpräsident.

Suddenly the existing schedule for phasing out nuclear power in Germany in the coming years without jeopardizing our electrical supply is questioned. Even the past pro-nuke Liberals now try to jump on the "Abandon Nuclear" bandwagon. And there are those for whom Angst transforms into a panic when they demand: Stop all nuclear power stations now!

Will they still be satisfied when Germany has to import "nuclear" electricity from France with prices per kilowatt-hour going up? As long as the Japanese do not come to grips with their reactor disaster, the issue of nuclear power in Germany will overshadow all other problems.

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Abwählen = recall?

If I understood correctly: it is possible to recall senators in Wisconsin before the end of their term by public vote. When you look at an election poster for next Sunday's state elections in Baden-Württemberg, you read the words: Jetzt abwählen (recall now), and you wonder. 

You can vote alright, but how to recall the Christian Democrats (Conservatives or black) + the Free Democrats (Liberals or yellow)?

What actually is meant is do not vote in Sunday's election for nuclear power. The issue is represented by the present coalition government of black and yellow here in the Ländle, but since Fukushima loaded with German Angst. 

While it is impossible to recall deputies in Germany, it is possible to refrain from voting for them in the upcoming election.

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Color Coding

During my recent visit to Madison, when talking with the protesting people around the Capitol, some wanted to know about coalitions between various political parties in the Old World and how they could work. Even the motherland of the one-party majority rule, the UK, is now governed by a coalition of Conservatives and Liberals in Parliament, with the Labor Party in opposition.

The situation is even more colorful in Germany since we have a whole "spectrum" of parties. The Christian Democrats (CDU with the usual 30 to 40% of the votes in elections) are our conservatives. However, people have recently become uneasy about the adjective Christian as some great leaders are divorced, and one has fathered an illegitimate child. 

The other Volkspartei, our GOP*, are the Social Democrats (SPD with 25 to 35% of the votes). They traditionally are the party of the working class. Recently, however, they renewed their pact with the industry that had worked so well under the Schröder administration. The SPD eventually understood that elections are won only when the party appeals to the middle class and follows the rule: thou shalt not kill the cow (industry) that gives the milk (jobs). Such an attitude, however, never pleased the traditional left-wingers. 

*Not ideologically but just what it literally means: the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands is our Great Old Party, founded in the 19th century and still exists. Due to Germany's industrialization in the 2nd Reich, the number of SPD voters increased steadily. Bismarck tried to take the wind out of their sails by creating old age and health insurance for the working class. When contrary to his plans, the rollback did not work, Bismarck had the Reichstag (parliament) pass the Socialist Act outlawing the Social Democrats. Later the SPD was admitted again because Emperor Wilhelm II needed the Socialists' votes to pass the war budget in 1914. Following the lost war, the Social Democrats were the party whole-heartily supporting the Weimar Republic. It was the only political formation that voted in parliament against Hitler's Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act) that eventually assured absolute power to the Nazi regime. Also, today the Social Democrats present one of the backbones of German democracy.

When the German Democratic Republic (DDR) was integrated into West Germany's Federal Republic in 1990, nostalgic Marxists in the East founded the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). The PDS, suffering great labor pains, eventually amalgamated with the extreme left of the Social Democrats in the West to form the Left Party (Die Linke, 5% of the votes in the West to 20% of votes in the Eastern parts of Germany).

Coming back to the party spectrum: the Christian Democrats traditionally are attributed the black color since they originate in the Zentrum, the Catholic Party in the Weimar Republic. You guessed it: the Social Democrats wear red. There is no red redder than red the post-communist PDS is presented by magenta in pie charts. 

Green for the Green Party (10 to 20% of the votes) is obvious, and the Liberals (5 to 10%) are painted yellow. New parties have to take what is left over in the spectrum. The recently formed Pirate Party that demanded free internet access for everybody in their program chose orange.

Now let us form coalitions. The hard part is to find a compromised common governmental platform allowing the survival of a whole legislature with a usual small majority in a coalition government against solid opposition. The easy part is the colors. In the past, traffic light (Ampel) coalitions of Red, Yellow, and Green were quite popular. When in some of our State governments (Länder), the Social Democrats are replaced by the Christian Democrats, a Jamaica coalition may be formed, being my favorite only as far as the combination of colors is concerned: Green, Yellow, and Black.

More common than three-party coalitions, two parties form a government like Black-Yellow as our present Federal Government in Berlin. The other proofed working combination is Red-Green. There have been successful cases of Red-Black coalitions too. These are called grand coalitions because of their large and comfortable majority in parliament seats for the two parties concerned. In such a combination, the Social Democrat Party generally is the junior partner and usually suffers a setback in the next election. On the other hand, an experiment of a Black-Green coalition in the State of Hamburg ended in an electoral disaster for the Christian Democrats.

If you have been wondering about some recent erratic reactions and decisions of our Federal government*,  you should know that there are upcoming elections in three of our Federal States. Since their outcome is vital for the majority in our Senate (Bundesrat), the government avoids any unpopular decisions that could cause voters not to choose Black-Yellow.

*The hectic dealing with the minister of defense Guttenberg's copy-and-paste thesis, the sudden about-face in support of nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster, and the negative vote in the UN security council about the Libyan no-fly zone

Today is Election Day in the State of Thuringia. Will, there be a new edition of a grand coalition, or will we see the formation of a Red-Magenta government?

Next weekend Germany is looking forward to a Super Sunday. I shall vote in the election for the State Parliament of Baden-Württemberg. At the same time, people elect their State parliament in the Land of Hessen. For the latter, it is practically sure that Hessen will be governed by a Red-Green coalition.

However, for my Ländle, the election result is a thriller: will the incumbent Black-Yellow government survive, or will a Green-Red coalition take over. You read correctly: Green-Red means that a green Ministerpräsident (Governor) would form a coalition State government for the first time in German history. Stay tuned for a possible political earthquake in Germany's South-West. 

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Nuclear Power And No End?

In writing this, I do not mean electrical power from nuclear fission that will surely come to an end. Given the present catastrophe in Japan, I mean the renewed discussion in Germany on nuclear power. The apocalyptic scenario we watch with great sympathy for the Japanese people, in fact, furnishes no new arguments in the debate about the safety of nuclear power reactors.

The explosion (©AP)

Let me say this clearly: Present power reactors are safe as long as a team of incompetent technicians does not mess around with the cooling system (Three Mile Island), an overambitious engineer does not play with the control rods (Tchernobyl), or a magnitude 8.9 earthquake followed by a tsunami wave of 10 meters height does not hit a nuclear power plant. 

While the last scenario can be excluded in Germany, nobody is safe against human foolishness. This and the unresolved nuclear waste storage are the main reasons Germany has an established timetable for phasing out its nuclear power reactors. Let us face it: Presently, there is no alternative to "cheap" energy, as nuclear fusion is still only in the stars (in both senses).

The industry is propagating a new generation of power reactors that will be more compact and work at higher temperatures, hence being more efficient than those we presently operate. Do not believe the people telling you this new line of power reactors is safer than the old one. 

Due to the higher energy density and the higher neutron flux density inside the nuclear core, the materials used for the reactor vessels will rapidly become brittle and fail much earlier than in present-day reactors. Mother Nature presents us with marvelous elements that we melt into alloys, showing properties our ancestors only dreamt of. We have, however, approached the technological limit of stability of metal alloys as far as the combined influence of neutron bombardment and temperature is concerned.

So please, we want no new nuclear fission reactors and let the old existing ones eventually come to their well-deserved rest. 

What makes me nervous is that most people today are unaware that energy is too cheap. They moan if prices for petrol, gas, and electricity steadily increase. However, the increasing stress on their purses and wallets will hopefully trigger their consciousness of an economical use of our limited resources.

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Fabulous Fred

With Wisconsin's 14 Democrat Senators having fled their State, Republican Governor Scott Walker's contested budget repair bill cannot be passed. The Republicans have a majority in Wisconsin's upper house alright, but the quorum is needed to pass a bill touching on financial matters. With the Democrat Senators absent, the upper chamber falls short of the number required by just one vote.

Among those 14 expatriated Democrats, Fred Risser is an outstanding person. Senator Risser has served Wisconsin for 55 years in the legislature and is the longest-serving state legislator in American political history. When in 2009, the Freiburg-Madison Gesellschaft had organized a trip to Madison, Senator Risser - then 81 years old - showed us his workplace place in the Capitol and explained the working of the two-chamber legislature on the State and Federal level. Nobody could foresee that this personality now "hides" in Illinois out of the range of Wisconsin troopers who received an order to "escort" at least one Democrat Senator back into Wisconsin's Senate Chamber.

State Senator Fred Risser, primary democratic rock, addresses us, visitors, at Madison's Capitol in 2009,
ending a tour of the building arranged by the Mayor's wife, Dianne, right to him.

This picture from a local newspaper shows Risser at the end of February 2011, together with State Senator Robert Rauch changing hotels in Illinois (frequently) to avoid harassment by Tea Party activists. Fred wears a red cap, but my American friends keep telling me this has no political significance.

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