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[mainiac]

The latter would indeed be bad, but the former is fairly understandable, considering the levels of mistrust reached during the negotiations.

Yes it's very understandable.  Just realize that Germans politcs is completely disconnected from what Greece actually does.  Then understanding what Germany believes is a cinch.  They started with a belief, ignored all facts that contradicted it and ended up with the same belief.

[GreatJustice]

Clearly, the Eurozone should dump as much money as possible into Greece so they can emulate the incredibly successful results of Abenomics in Japan.

[evilcherry]

Clearly, the Eurozone should dump as much money as possible into Greece so they can emulate the incredibly successful results of Abenomics in Japan.

Unfortunately the Germans abhor inflation, and unless all the QE made to sustain inflation goes into greece... which might not be possible.

[Reelya]

"De-politicizing administration" is not about reducing democratic oversight, it's about things like cronyism, where every civil institution is run by some party loyalist or other, and when another party comes in, they seek to force out the old guys and put their own party loyalists in their place, without any regards to actual ability or performance. It's an incredibly inefficient process and would usually end up meaning being corrupt, playing both sides, and back-scratching is how you outlast the purges. And cronyists tend to promote other cronyists as their right hand men, meaning entire upper echelons of some departments become corrupt, unqualfied in what they're supposed to be doing, and the competent hard-working types are suppressed and cannot get promoted.

As just one example from America look at Bush's appointment of Michael Brown to run FEMA. The guy had no background in emergency management, it was a purely political appointment without any democratic oversight - he original got the deputy job because he was friends with Joe M. Allbaugh, whom Bush had appointed as FEMA director. Joe M. Allbaugh had been Bush's campaign manager - and also has no background in emergency management. So, you have an incompetent brought in to run something (really a corrupt process of appointing your friends to run things), and he hires all his incompetent pals to flesh out the rest of upper management. More people definitely died in Hurricane Katrina, due to Bush's political FEMA appointees. Incompetents running upper management cost more money and kill people.

Sure there are things to be concerned about, but basic transparency of government hiring is not one of them.

[evilcherry]

Well a easier way to root that out is to formally adopt a multi-party system.

At worst it will be Belgium, when the state is functioning without a head.

[Reelya]

Belgium's system is maintained mainly by using proportional representation rather than majority representation. Having two main parties is a feature of all majority representation voting systems, not a formally-adopted policy. "two parties" is not enshrined into law in America, it's just a byproduct of the electoral system.

But even with more parties in parliament, that doesn't mean you don't get cronyism. It just turns into a system where the ruling coalition trade favors between themselves. This is exactly the same thing that happens within a ruling party - you get factions who trade favors and influence within that party. Same deal just different labels.

The only way to avoid politicization of department heads is to have complete transparency of the process instead of a vote of parliament. Top jobs should be open to public scrutiny: the public should know who the different candidates were, what their qualifications were, and what criteria were used to select the candidate. So you'd have a selection panel which represents interests from across the board, but they'd have transparent criteria for hiring.

Think about it, if you're putting someone in charge of billions of dollars in budget, you damn well want to have a comprehensive selection panel with detailed criteria and background checks. Making that data public is the least of the costs, since you need to have that data anyway to make a good decision. But in America at least, the process involves no such data, it's just some dude in a backroom offered the top job to his pal.

[Mechatronic]

Just throw all of the candidates into a bear pit. You either get a really kick ass candidate or a bear. This would both depoliticise appointments and improve relations with Russia.

[ChairmanPoo]

Just throw all of the candidates into a bear pit. You either get a really kick ass candidate or a bear. This would both depoliticise appointments and improve relations with Russia.

...

[mainiac]

So we finally discover where German policy reconverges with reality and the noble intentions of the Euro project.  A greek exit with the support and assistance of the EU is probably preferable to continuing with the status quo outlined in this weeks' agreement, although it is in no way shape or form the best outcome for anyone.  Where was this guy five years ago when he could have saved some 250 billion euros in taxpayer money?

[alway]

Where was this guy five years ago when he could have saved some 250 billion euros in taxpayer money?

Helping bankers that made bad bets by redistributing their debt to German taxpayers, mostly.

[BlindKitty]

Belgium's system is maintained mainly by using proportional representation rather than majority representation. Having two main parties is a feature of all majority representation voting systems, not a formally-adopted policy. "two parties" is not enshrined into law in America, it's just a byproduct of the electoral system.

But even with more parties in parliament, that doesn't mean you don't get cronyism. It just turns into a system where the ruling coalition trade favors between themselves. This is exactly the same thing that happens within a ruling party - you get factions who trade favors and influence within that party. Same deal just different labels.

The only way to avoid politicization of department heads is to have complete transparency of the process instead of a vote of parliament. Top jobs should be open to public scrutiny: the public should know who the different candidates were, what their qualifications were, and what criteria were used to select the candidate. So you'd have a selection panel which represents interests from across the board, but they'd have transparent criteria for hiring.

Think about it, if you're putting someone in charge of billions of dollars in budget, you damn well want to have a comprehensive selection panel with detailed criteria and background checks. Making that data public is the least of the costs, since you need to have that data anyway to make a good decision. But in America at least, the process involves no such data, it's just some dude in a backroom offered the top job to his pal.

Even complete and utter transparency can only improve the situation so much. And by 'so much' I mean 'a little bit'. That's because nobody cares; if people cared, there would already be enough outcry when clearly incompetent people are put in charge of stuff.

I have the smaller example, and actually placed in Europe - my country, i.e. Poland. We have tons upon tons of problems with cronyism (strange word, BTW) and the biggest one is the fact that most people don't care, or worse, they are trying to befriend somebody working in some kind of public office to get a post themselves. There are so many posts, that it is effectively impossible to monitor most of them for any one person, and even for smaller groups. And even worse, it is next to impossible to draw public awareness to the fact that we are managed by fools so incompetent that Pointy Haired Boss seems like a genius of management in comparison. Every few months there is an article about somebody's brother-in-law being put in charge of something important, there is an outcry, brother-in-law gets sacked, and than after two months he gets new position in different office, and his old position is taken by a cousin, or something.

The true solution would be probably to sharply reduce the number of such posts _and_ vastly reduce the earnings on most of them, to reduce the incentives to put friends and family on them. Other way would be to implement a proposal I've seen once: if you are getting money from the government (being employed by some public office or something), you are not allowed to vote in the election, because right now the amount of people getting paid by the government is enough to get, like, a quarter of the parliament seats in Poland by themselves.

[Guardian G.I.]

Meanwhile, in Donetsk...

[Loud Whispers]

Meanwhile, in Donetsk...

Always a good way to start a post

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Meanwhile, in Donetsk...

[Guardian G.I.]

Meanwhile, in Donetsk...

Artillerymen on both sides of the frontline are very big crack shots who like to put the blame for their poor accuracy on the enemy. Donetsk? Terrorists are shelling themselves. Mariupol? Ukrs are shelling themselves.

Ukrainian forces apparently try to destroy a trolleybus depot, hit residential area instead.
Ukrainian artillery spices up the jubilee party of a Donetsk resident with free "fireworks". The celebrants are completely unfazed.

Artillery madskillz of the Novorossiyan forces, demonstrated in Ukrainian-controlled Avdeevka. Ukrainian media claimed several civilians were killed in that shelling.
Another artillery strike on Avdeevka. It's unclear whether these buildings and the buildings from the previous link are the same.