The German birth rate is suddenly spiking or something. I knew you could do it, guys.
German officials say growing numbers of pregnant immigrant women are paying German men to pose as fathers so that they can qualify for residency.
German broadcaster RBB found up to 700 cases in Berlin alone. “There are many unreported cases,” said Ole Schröder, a top interior ministry official.
Some pregnant immigrant women are reported to have paid fake fathers and solicitors as much as €5,000 (£4,356; $5,628) to get paternity registered. Once that is done, the baby automatically becomes a German citizen and the mother has the right to stay.
“Wir haben teilweise Personen, die über zehn Vaterschaften annerkannt haben.”
Germany can’t even reach the climate targets it has set for itself (see objective media coverage below).
A thirty-three page report has just confirmed what most German global climate saviors already knew: There is no way in hell that the more than ambitious climate target set by the federal government some ten years back will ever be reached. Emissions were to drop 40 percent the year 2020. They haven’t quite dropped 28 percent yet. The main problem – now get this – being German cars. Like, duh. Ever hear of Volkswagen & Co.?
Ein wesentliches Problem: Der Verkehrsbereich hat seine Emissionen kaum reduziert. So notwendig ein allgemeines Umsteuern beim Autoverkehr ist, so unpopulär sind die Maßnahmen im Einzelnen.
“We in Germany, in Europe and the world will band together to take more decisive action than ever to confront and successfully surmount major challenges to humanity such as climate change.”
That means bad. Or böse. That means worse. You know, like in “bad, very bad.”
President Donald Trump has reportedly reignited tensions with his EU counterparts after calling the Germans “very bad” for their trade surplus with the U.S. The president vowed to block German car exports to the U.S. during a meeting with top EU leaders on Thursday, according to German news magazine Der Spiegel.
I don’t know, folks. Whether this is true or not, I have a very böse feeling about all of this. Not.
“The Germans are bad, very bad. Look at the millions of cars they’re selling in the U.S. We will stop that.”
And still aren’t spending (1.3 percent the last time I checked), Angela Merkel explained to Donald Trump.
It’s also about “what a country makes available to NATO and what capabilities we have,” whatever that means. The Oktoberfest and world class table tennis talent or what?
Citing this week’s attack in the English city of Manchester, Trump told fellow alliance leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel that NATO should focus its efforts on combating terrorism. Yet of the 28 member nations, 23 “are still not paying what they should be paying and what they’re supposed to be paying for their defense,” he said.
“Wir freuen uns auch, dass in Zukunft nicht nur gefragt wird, wie viel wird für Verteidigung ausgegeben, sondern auch, was stellt man als Land der Nato zur Verfügung, welche Fähigkeiten haben wir und welche Beiträge leisten wir. Ich glaube hier kann sich Deutschland sehen lassen, und das werde ich auch hier deutlich machen.”
Nope. Sadly, chancellor Angela Merkel has just announced that Germany will not be able to reach its goal of having at least 20 e-cars on German roads by the year 2020.
This extremely ambitious goal, mocked from the start by gas-guzzling German automobile experts everywhere (some 97 percent of the German population), has now been scrapped for a more realistic goal of a nice round non-dirty dozen.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germany will likely miss the government’s target of bringing one million electric cars onto the roads by the end of the decade. The sale of electric vehicles (EVs) has remained sluggish in Germany despite discounts introduced last year and granted to buyers of green cars. In 2016, there were less than 80,000 electric cars on German roads. Experts say German consumers remain reluctant to buy EVs because of relatively high prices, limited driving range and restrictions due to the low number of charging stations.
That’s why big solar companies like Germany’s Solarworld are going broke right now. That’s so they can regroup or something for when the future finally does come around, I guess.
Or maybe it’s some international anti-renewable energy conspiracy. That’s always good to get folks hot and bothered. The endless subsidies were sabotaged or something, see? Or maybe, just maybe, solar power is a losing business proposition proposed down our throats from those enlightened ones above (pun intended). Hard to say for sure.
Ask the “Sun King” over at Solarworld (it’s good to be the Sun King): “Due to the ongoing price erosion and the development of the business, the company no longer has a positive going concern prognosis, is therefore over-indebted and thus obliged to file for insolvency proceedings.”
That means maximum tax rate. In Germany that’s 42 percent at the moment – and climbing.
But the cool thing about the maximum tax rate in Germany is that you don’t have to be a maximum earner to have to pay it. More and more regular folks are permitted to pay this killer rate – some 3.7 million Germans at the moment – and climbing. In 2004 it was 1.2 million taxpayers. Now that’s what I call Fortschritt (progress).
Unter Berücksichtigung der Zusammenveranlagung von Eheleuten betrifft dies damit 3,73 Millionen einkommensteuerpflichtige Personen. Damit unterliegen 6,4 Prozent aller Steuerpflichtigen dem Spitzensteuersatz von 42 Prozent, wie es in einer Antwort des Bundesregierung auf eine Anfrage der Linken im Bundestag heißt. 2004 fielen noch gut 1,2 Millionen Steuerpflichtige in diese Kategorie.
But who cares, right? There’ still Luft nach oben (room for improvement). Germans are only number two when it comes to paying the highest electricity bills in Europe (only the Danes pay more).
Germans already footing the second-highest electricity bills in Europe may face even higher costs from the country’s decision to exit nuclear power early next decade. While there’s no risk of blackouts, costs could rise if transmission gaps emerge, according to Germany’s Bnetza regulator. Europe’s biggest power market is closing its last atomic plants in 2022 and is counting on a mix of mothballed lignite plants, wind and solar power expansion and grid stability measures to keep outages down…
Consumers this year may pay about 24 billion euros ($26.4 billion) in compulsory clean-energy-support fees, levies that are added directly to power bills.
“The lights will stay on. Yet there are two risks in bridging power gaps, namely redispatch and intervention in the market to drive generation up or down that may be cost factors.”
What’s worse? Governments that openly deal in stolen information (Germany buying CDs from informants with lists of Germans having Swiss bank accounts) or Governments that spy on governments who do so?
Ha. Ha. Ha.
German investigators suspect that a mole spied for Swiss intelligence from inside a government office which was trying to catch German tax dodgers… Switzerland objects to the practice of buying data stolen from Swiss banks.
That means export or trade surplus. In this case the German trade surplus, of course.
Also see: Böse Buben. That means bad boys.
Christine Lagarde (IMF) and Donald Trump may not have much in common at first glance but one thing they seem to agree upon is Germany’s trade surplus. That is, Germany exports more to, say, the USA than it imports from that country (same procedure with practically every other country Germany deals with, too). And it’s been like forever already.
So Germany, just in case you didn’t know it, you’re being a very bad boy.
