Harpers complains about its readers

I am a regular reader of Harpers online, and last week they posted this on their list of links:

Americans simply must have free news free all the time without ever paying anything for it ever; it’s true–ask Harper’s web editor, Paul Ford: “sometimes people say YOU ARE THE STUPIDEST WEBSITE IN STUPIDTOWN BECAUSE I WANT EVERYTHING FREE RIGHT NOW!”

If you follow the link behind Paul Ford, you find the following:

Paul: So, for strangers to harpers.org, if you want to read the current issue of the magazine–the one on newsstands–you have to be a subscriber, which costs $16.97 a year.
Choire: That is outrageous.
Paul: IT IS INSANITY! It is the END OF THE INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT!

But what Harper's does not tell you is how stupid their own policy is. You see, I live in Europe and actually wanted to pay Harpers because I read them so much. So I wrote their subscription service an e-mail asking if I could simply have online access for $16.97 a year with no paper copy being sent; subscriptions to Europe cost around three times as much, and I do not need it in the mail.

The answer from the subscription service was no.

So here you have a journal complaining about how readers don't want to pay, but they do not even allow you to pay for Internet access without a copy in the mail. They therefore do not get any money from me, and I do not get full access. This is how they want it.

Saints went marchin' in

I honestly never thought I would live to see this.



All those years of watching Archie Manning getting sacked back when I was a kid, and now Drew Brees has all day to throw a pass to every other offensive player except the front line. It was a joy to see. And for once in my life, I knew the Saints were going to kick some ass when they went up 13-10. Knowing the Saints couldn't be beaten with just a 3 point lead in the third quarter - what a weird feeling.

I also never would have dreamed a Superbowl victory could matter this much. Had the Saints not stayed in New Orleans after Katrina, the already underused Superdome right in the center of town might not have been restored at all. German media, which televised the game live, did a special 10-minute segment on the team and the city - and did it well.

As I can attest from my recent visit, the Saints' success this year was inspiring to everyone. People who did not care about football and never really watched Saints games were tuning in. Outsiders should not misunderstand their Super Bowl victory as a frivolous sports event that only distracts from the real problems. The Saints inspired New Orleans this year. It's about more than just sports.

The game made one other thing clear -- New Orleans has a greater sense of family and place than the rest of the US. Peyton Manning is part of the only family quarterback dynasty in NFL history, but the Manning family dynasty is not the only one in New Orleans. The Marsalis family is without a doubt the greatest family dynasty in jazz, but it is also not the only other family dynasty from New Orleans. New Orleanians don't do mobility.

I could also add all of the political family dynasties, but then we end up with all of the corruption and nepotism. For better or worse, that's who we are -- people with a sense of place and belonging.

And for one year, we're number one.

Survey finds overwhelming support for current solar policy

When I heard that a recent survey conducted on behalf of the German Solar Industry Association found that an overwhelming majority of Germans oppose the proposed cuts in rates, I was a bit suspicious -- would a survey conducted by proponents of the cuts find the opposite?

Then, I found the actual question opposed to survey participants on the website of the Institute conducting the survey:

In Germany, solar power has been supported for years with rates financed by a surcharge on the retail rates. In other words, all energy consumers pay. Now, these rates are to be reduced by up to 45 percent within a year. The proposal has brought about some debate. One camp says that a clear reduction in rates for solar power is a good idea because it takes a burden off consumers and solar power does not need so much support anymore. Critics counter that such a drastic cut would endanger Germany's technological leadership and threaten jobs; in addition, the cuts are held to be the wrong signal for climate policy. They therefore call for cuts to be made in smaller increments over a longer time frame. What do you believe? Should support for solar power be cut significantly or in small increments over a longer time frame -- or should it be reduced at all?

The results are quite astonishing:

• 30 percent of those surveyed do not want any reduction
  
• 54 percent want incremental reductions over a longer period of time
  
• and 12 percent want the proposed cuts.

In other words, 84 percent of those surveyed are against the proposed cuts, with only 12 percent supporting them (and the rest, I assume, not having any opinion).

The question, of course, is whether the survey question as it was posed skews the results. It does tend to go on a bit about criticism of the proposals, whereas support for the proposed cuts is really given short shrift. I wonder what the results would be if the actual figures for what solar costs had been included in the question. Also, supporters of the cuts could easily have added that the price of standard crystalline panels has dropped by a good 30 percent, but the rates of for rooftop arrays will be cut by less than 30 percent under the proposal. The 45 percent cut only applies to arrays on farmland, which some people don't want.

Nonetheless, I suspect that a lot of Germans are against proposed rate cuts because they would like to have solar on their own roofs -- or already do.

German solar sector takes to the street

On a day when a general strike in part of the public sector (buses and trams did not run today in Freiburg, for instance) made headlines along with the German government's purchase of tax evasion data stolen from Swiss banks, the solar sector nonetheless managed to get into the hourly five-minute news updates on public television with a nationwide protest against the cuts being discussed.

The political picture is unclear. While Berlin's Solarpraxis somewhat optimistically entitled one report "FDP against drastic cuts in support for photovoltaics," the report merely states that some members of the German Libertarian Party think that a 25 percent arrays on farmland might be too much.

There is also talk of the cuts (scheduled for April 1 and July 1 for roof arrays and field arrays, respectively) being postponed slightly, but apparently the CDU -- the FDP's coalition partner -- would want to have considerably steeper cuts if the dates are moved back even one month. Figures of 17 and 18 percent (as opposed to 15 percent) are being tossed around as possible rate reductions for roof arrays if the cuts are moved back.

The only thing that seems certain right now is that no decision will be reached this week as originally expected when the cuts were announced two weeks ago. In fact, rates for solar power were not discussed this week at the Cabinet meeting, so the matter will have to be taken care of on February 9 and February 24.

Although the current governing coalition aims to have three gigawatts of solar per year, which is more than any country has ever installed in any four consecutive quarters (the figures are not yet in for Q4 2009 in Germany), Goldman Sachs has apparently decided that the proposed policy changes in Germany will detrimentally affect the global market. The investment bank downgraded REC, a major silicon manufacturer based in Norway, for instance, but has uprated manufacturers of production equipment -- probably under the assumption that manufacturers will be leaving Germany and needing to set up new production facilities in cheaper countries.

Garnering the rural vote

As I recently wrote, the secret to Republican success in recent decades has been winning elections in sparsely populated areas, which are proportionally overrepresented.

Now, Ken Silverstein reports over at Harper's that Cosmopolitan -- yes, the fashion magazine for women -- was actually at least partly a political journal a century ago, and he provides a link to an article from back then discussing how campaign financing essentially allows the rich to buy political offices. All of that is interesting enough, but what I found remarkable was another passage in that article:

The apportionment of legislators is such that one-eleventh of the population, and they the most ignorant and most venal, elect a majority of the legislature—which means that they elect the two United States senators. Each city and township counts as a political unit; thus, the five cities that together have two-thirds of the population are in an overwhelming minority before twenty almost vacant rural townships—their total population is not thirty-seven thousand—where the ignorance is even illiterate, where the superstition is mediaeval, where tradition and custom have made the vote an article of legitimate merchandising.

A number of things are salient here. First, the author would be lambasted today as an elitist, who shows anti-Democratic disdain for the masses. Nothing particularly unusual about that -- it puts him in the company of our Founding Fathers -- but I find it hard to imagine any mainstream journalists being able to say such a thing openly today. But you could certainly do so in the blogosphere.

Second, it seems that the overrepresentation of rural areas affects all levels of politics, not just Capitol Hill. Yet, I find it hard to believe that the United States is truly that much further to the left than our politicians. It seems clear that the majority of Americans simply do not get what they want from their government more often than majorities in other Western countries, but it also seems clear that Americans are much more conservative in religion and economics (though not culture) than the French or the Germans, to take just two examples.

Obama explains his energy policy to Republicans

The onslaught of YouTube videos here continues, this time with a one-hour Q&A session that Obama gave before a Republican audience.

This C-Span video is interesting for two reasons. First, at around minute 20 he fields a question about energy policy and explains what his goals are. It is not an exhaustive response, and it contains things that I do not agree with, but it does provide a clear overview of some of his crucial stances.

Second, the Republicans in the audience seemed very respectful of Obama, as he does of them. That room is a long way from Tea Parties and "you lie." Let's have another three years of this respectful conduct, folks. As Obama puts it, we need to make decisions based on what is best for the country, not position ourselves to look good after the fact.

An American returns to US to confront US healthcare

A colleague of mine who has spent much of the past 10 years in Germany moved back to the US recently and says he misses German healthcare. Apparently, he cannot pick the doctor he wants; he has to make sure first that the doctor is certified (or whatever) with his insurance company.

I left the US when I was 24, so my contact with healthcare in the US is both scant (those were my healthy years) and a long time ago. Honestly, I have no idea what healthcare in the US is like, aside from recollections about what my father, a pharmacist, said. But I have been hearing in US media that Americans don't want "socialized medicine" of the kind we have over here because they fear not being able to choose doctors. So it surprises me that you already can't choose your doctor in the US.

I am not sure what the situation is in every European country, but certainly you can choose your doctor in France and Germany. I would be surprised if the situation were different in Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, etc., but you have the comments box below if I am wrong.

My understanding is that the US was considering a public option alongside all of the private healthcare, which would have made the US system look a lot like the German system (and a lot unlike the French system). I do not completely agree with my colleague, however, that German healthcare is all that great. Your average German would tell you that we have two types of medicine over here: one for first-class citizens and one for second-class citizens. If you are in the public system, which tries to keep costs down by not paying too much, then the doctors tend to make you wait longer than if you have private healthcare, which tends to pay better, so doctors like it more.

Nonetheless, Americans apparently seem to completely misunderstand both their own healthcare system and what they call "socialized medicine," at least when it comes to the freedom to choose your doctor.