Spiegel: The End of German Politics As We Know It

The drama that unfolded in Germany as the weekend came to a close was nothing short of a farce. Seehofer, who is the head of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to the Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), set a new standard of childishness for German party leaders. Why would he announce his resignation only to reverse course a short time later the way he did?   [...]

That is now history. Seehofer has allowed the dispute over the rejection of asylum-seekers in Germany to escalate to such a degree that the government now faces a real risk of collapse. It's not even a question of the practical effects that step might have, which would likely be minimal. Seehofer is insisting on imposing permanent controls on three German border crossings. He wants to send a message. But what? [...]

Regardless what happens now, there are no longer any true prospects for Seehofer, the CSU or its power-sharing agreement with the CDU. The CDU has made clear in rare unanimity that it will not allow itself to be blackmailed by its sister party. And it's highly unlikely Seehofer can expect any substantial concessions from the chancellor. Whether he remains in office or leaves it, he has lost any credibility he had. Since Sunday, the head of the CSU party has joined the ranks of the political undead. [...]

The party that has emerged as the primary beneficiary from all this is the Alternative for Germany (AfD). There's no better gift the CDU and CSU could give the right-wing populists than to tear each other apart over refugee policy. The CSU's hope of pushing back competition from the right in Bavarian state elections in September has been shattered. The CSU had hoped to become AfD's gravedigger, but there's no chance of that now. Instead, the CSU has become one of the nascent political party's biggest helpers.

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The Atlantic: Big Business Keeps Winning at the Supreme Court

The stage was set in the first case the justices heard, on whether businesses can require employees to go to arbitration over job complaints. Even though employees often are forced to agree to arbitration clauses—one company sent its employees an email announcing that anyone who did not quit would be “deemed to have accepted”—the Court ruled for the companies. By making it harder for employees to join together in collective or class actions to recover for things like unpaid wages, the ruling was a windfall for business likely worth billions.

The streak continued through the term, on issues ranging from price fixing to overtime for workers. One measure of the term’s business-friendly tilt is the eye-popping success rate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the self-proclaimed “Voice of Business.” The Chamber filed briefs in 10 cases this term and won nine of them. The Chamber’s victories limited protections for whistleblowers, forced changes in the Securities and Exchange Commission, made water pollution suits more difficult to bring, and erected additional obstacles to class action suits against businesses. [...]

Indeed, corporations were among the primary beneficiaries of several of this term’s major First Amendment decisions. Although commentators called the justices’ decision in favor of the religiously-motivated baker who refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple “narrow,” the ruling was nevertheless a big win for corporations. Although the baker was the one with the religious views, the justices allowed his company, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd., to claim the same First Amendment protections. Don’t be surprised when businesses cite this decision in the future when they refuse to provide a wedding venue to same-sex couples or fill contraceptive prescriptions.

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The New York Times: What if Trump’s Nativism Actually Hurts Him Politically?

Contrary to received wisdom, however, the immigration issue did not play to Mr. Trump’s advantage nearly as much as commonly believed. According to our analysis of national survey data from the American National Election Studies (a large, representative sample of the population of the United States), Hillary Clinton did better in the election than she would have if immigration had not been so prominent an issue. In fact, a liberal backlash seems to have contributed to Mrs. Clinton’s victory in the popular vote count. [...]

We found that Mr. Trump did only slightly better than his Republican predecessors among anti-immigrant whites. Among pro-immigration whites, however, Mrs. Clinton far outpaced John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. For example, Mr. Obama received the votes of 50 percent of pro-immigration whites in 2012, whereas Mrs. Clinton won the votes of 72 percent of that group in 2016 — a 22-point difference. [...]

We can’t know whether this asymmetry across elections is a function of Mr. Trump’s nativism, Mrs. Clinton’s inclusive pronouncements about immigration, or both. What we can say is that after Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton repeatedly clashed over the issue during the course of the campaign, Mr. Trump’s electoral gain — relative to the percentages Mr. Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush received on the issue — paled against Mrs. Clinton’s gains over Mr. Kerry and Mr. Obama. [...]

What does our analysis say more generally about the efficacy of politicizing xenophobia and racism in American elections? First, by instigating a liberal counterreaction, it seems possible that highlighting immigration may no longer be an effective political strategy for the Republican Party. This may be the case for two related reasons.  

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Coffee Break: The Art of the Non-Apology

SciShow: Honey: Bacteria's Worst Enemy (May 11, 2016)

VisualPolitik EN: Why do many ARAB COUNTRIES ban AL JAZEERA?

Beyond any doubt, what made Qatar famous can be summarized in just two words: AL JAZEERA. It is the most influential TV network in the Arab World and one of the most important news networks on the entire planet.

Then you might wonder… isn’t Al Jazeera just a state propaganda channel? I mean to what extent should we really trust their information? What’s their ideology? Well, today in VisualPolitik we are going to answer all these questions!

Vox: López Obrador, a Trump-bashing leftist, just won Mexico’s presidency in a landslide

Given his nationalist position, it’s uncertain how he’ll affect the potential renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which President Donald Trump has been critical of recently. That basically means that if Trump ceases NAFTA, López Obrador may not fight to keep the agreement. [...]

Mexican voters clearly want to see López Obrador fix the systemic corruption and violence that plagues the country. But once he’s inaugurated on December 1, the challenge of actually instituting policies to reduce corruption will begin. [...]

“He doesn’t have a very precise plan,” Pablo Piccato, a professor at Columbia University who specializes in Mexican history, told me shortly before the election, “The president might be very honest, and by all indications López Obrador is a very austere and honest guy. But what happens underneath, at the level of the bureaucracy, the municipal governments, the state government — that’s going to be very difficult to control.” [...]

“The biggest problem I see are the expectations he has built,” Carlos Illades, a professor of social sciences at the Autonomous Metropolitan University and a historian of Mexico’s left, told the New York Times. “The problem is going to be what he is not able to do. There are people who are expecting a lot.”

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CityLab: Millennials Are Happiest in Cities

However, according to a new study, Millennials are happiest in cities. That’s a key finding of a recent paper published in the journal Regional Studies. Authors Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn, of Rutgers University, and Rubia Valente, of Baruch College, take a close look at the happiness of recent generations and at the kinds of places where they live or lived. They use detailed data from the General Social Survey (GSS), which has collected information for nearly a century on the happiness, or subjective well-being (“SWB”), of five separate generations: the Lost Generation (born between 1883 and 1924); the Silent Generation (1925–1942); Baby Boomers (1943–1960); Generation X (1961–1981); and Millennials (1992–2004). [...]

When it comes to place, Millennials are different from the generations that came before them. Unlike older Americans, they tend to be happier in larger, more urban environments. As the charts below show, for most of the period since 1970, people have been much happier in smaller, less urban places. But that started to change recently—around the year 2010—as the back-to-the-city movement accelerated. Millennials are the only generation that is happier in places with a population of more than 250,000. [...]

The paper also takes into account an important caveat. It may be that Millennials are happier in cities simply because they are younger—the oldest Millennial in their sample was 34—and younger people enjoy cities and what they have to offer more than older people do. As the authors put it, “Millennials could appear happier in cities simply because they are young and not because they are Millennials.” To get at this, they ran additional regressions, which included only people under 35 across the generations—and the results were similar.

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Social Europe: Power Is Draining Away From Angela Merkel

An unprecedented seven parties entered the Bundestag after the September 2017 election. Alongside Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), her Bavarian allies the CSU, and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the four smaller parties were the leftist Die Linke, the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), the Greens and the right wing AfD. Before the election, the CDU/CSU and the SPD held 80% of the seats in the Bundestag, with the Greens and Die Linke holding the rest. What this means is that the executive was strong and the legislature was weak. The 2017 election changed the German political landscape. [...]

The right wing of the CDU cannot forgive Merkel for moving the once conservative CDU so far in a liberal-social democratic direction. Conservatives have been grumbling for a long time, and are thinking about an end to the Merkel era. Merkel’s CDU has lost more influence in the new government than it has gained. [...]

The CSU is frustrated with Merkel’s course on migration and feeling the pressure from the right wing, namely the AfD. Even outside of Bavaria, many Germans don’t trust Merkel to fix the refugee system. A recent poll showed 53 percent say Merkel hasn’t managed the refugee influx well. Meanwhile, a poll in Stern magazine showed that about two-thirds of Germans agree with the CSU’s position on turning away refugees at the border.

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