More Government In Action

Here’s how this one works.

Tax

Step 1: The German government invents a new tax back in 2011 (before Fukushima even) making German energy utilities pay the government for using the nuclear fuel rods they already use.

Step 2: The utilities raise the price of energy they produce directly after that so the German consumer covers this arbitrary government interference.

Step 3: The German supreme court now rules that this tax is unconstitutional (you can’t just make up taxes that don’t have a constitutional basis, not even in Germany) and that the German government must now pay back the six billion euros (with interest) it took from these utilities.

Step 4 (still to come): The utilities will not compensate the German consumer nor reduce the price increases it passed on to them for having had to pay for this illegal German government tax.

Step 5 (still to come): The German government has already spent the six billion euros, of course, so it will need to round up that money from somewhere else.

Step 6 (just a question): Who do you think the German government is going to get this money from?

The system is rund (round), as the German say. And it works perfectly, as usual.

Der Gesetzgeber, so die Begründung, kann nicht irgendwelche Steuern erfinden, sondern nur solche einführen, die im Grundgesetz vorgesehen sind.

Who’s Your Daddy?

The German birth rate is suddenly spiking or something. I knew you could do it, guys.

Pregnant

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.”

There Has To Be A Connection Here Somewhere

What? Something happened in London, too? Imagine that.

Rock

I mean, after concrete terror threats forced German police to temporarily shut down the Rock am Ring music festival in Nuerburg and an Afghan man who killed a boy at a German refugee center near Regensburg was also shot and killed and German police arrested a 17-year-old asylum seeker suspected of planning a suicide attack in Berlin and… There were a few more there but I lose track of them these days. In the good old days, when these things only took place once a week or so, they were a whole lot easier to classify and arrange in order.

Something tells me that these terrible events must all be tied together somehow. I can feel it. There has to be a common thread connecting them but I just can’t figure out what it is. I bet you Sherlock Holmes could, though. If such a person existed, I mean.

PS: In an unrelated story, the rate of deportations is stagnating in Germany.

Paris?

Germany can’t even reach the climate targets it has set for itself (see objective media coverage below).

Earth

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.”

Condescension 2.0

None of this started with Donald Trump, you know. Just in case you were wondering.

Germany

Meet the new German problem. Same as the old German problem.

Why, then, do confident Germans increasingly dislike the United States?

It is complicated.

Since 1989, Germany has worked hard on its post-unification image as a largely pacifistic country. It is eager to teach other nations how to conduct themselves peacefully and to pursue shared global goals such as reducing global warming or opening national borders to the world’s refugees.

Implicit in Germany’s utopian message is that postmodern Germans know best what not to do — given their terrible 20th-century past, with the aggressions of imperial Germany and later the savagery and Holocaust perpetuated by Hitler’s Third Reich.

Yet being guilt-ridden does not equate to being humble (never a German strong suit)…

German Intelligence Intelligent Enough

Or at least that’s what one intelligent German intelligence official said today. “We have a proven track record.”

Spies

“And we can monitor our own elections and watch out on our own for any disinformation spread by Russia, thank you. Without any American help, I mean. That’s because we’re offended. And we want you Americans to know that we’re offended. And you Russians, too. And the rest of the world, for that matter. That’s just how intelligent we are. So write disinformation down in a safe place somewhere and stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

Earlier this month, Adm. Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, said the U.S. watched Russia hack into France’s computer networks during the country’s election. U.S. officials warned their French counterparts of the hacking before it became public.

It’s Election Season In Germany

As was noted yesterday. So now the political parties here are openly competing with one another to see who can bash Donald Trump the best. That article below was originally entitled: “SPD overtakes Chancellor Merkel with its Criticism of Donald Trump.”

SPD

It’s kind of like the arms race. Only instead of mutually assured destruction it’s mutually assured dumb down time, with active participation by ARD and co. I mean, instead of maybe addressing the actual issue of, for example, just why it is that European countries that pledged back in 2014 (or was it a few years before that?) to invest 2 percent of their GDP in NATO defense spending are still not doing so, just attack the guy who refuses to ignore it.

Anyway, the SPD, all set to lose the coming national election resoundingly, can easily afford to take Angela Merkel’s recent campaign sloganeering about Trump America’s unreliability a notch higher and come out actively calling for open opposition against him, whatever that may mean (with the SPD one never really knows what that or anything else they say might mean). Knock yourselves out, comrades.

Angela Merkels Äußerungen zur deutsch-amerikanischen Zusammenarbeit unter Donald Trump haben für Furore gesorgt. Die SPD setzt nun noch einen drauf. Kanzlerkandidat Martin Schulz fordert, sich der Politik des US-Präsidenten entgegenzustellen.

German Of The Day: Schaumschläger

That means “foam basher.” And that means somebody who makes a lot of noise but doesn’t deliver, a hot-air artist. Hmm. There sure is a whole lot of foam in that beer mug she’s holding down there, don’t you think?

Foam

“The times when we could fully rely on others are to some extent over — I experienced that in the last few days,” Merkel told her supporters, according to Bloomberg. “We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands.”

That’s the moment when she took that foamy beer mug into her own hands, I guess. Or maybe somebody had just handed it to her after it had finally reached the end of this pipeline.

Breath deeply, everyone. It’s election season in Germany. And if you can’t pick up a few votes by bashing Donald Trump over here then you can’t poor foam out of a boot.

Die Kanzlerin brachte den Frust des G7-Gipfels vom Wochenende mit, die Parteivorsitzende das Wissen darum, dass Kritik an den USA und vor allem an Trump bei Wählerinnen und Wählern in Deutschland bestens ankommt. Der Hauptgegner im Wahlkampf, die Sozialdemokraten, spielen diese Karte schon länger. Und beide haben Europa wieder entdeckt.

The Lying Press?

No. But the biased press? In Germany, when it comes to Donald Trump?

Trump

I’d have to say yes to that one. After taking a look at this recent study done at Harvard, that is – Harvard, that infamous hotbed for right-wing extremism.

When it comes to reporting about Donald Trump’s fitness for office by Germany’s ARD (Channel One),  for example, 98 percent of this reporting is negative. Now that’s what I’d call objective journalism, folks. 98 percent of people in the real world can’t agree on anything, as we all well know, but things are different here in Germany (and in North Korea, too). The ARD, by the way, is one of the state-run “public” television channels that anyone who lives here is forced to subsidize, whether he or she watches it or not – whether you even own a television or not. Do any of you out there remember Der Schwarze Kanal? I didn’t think so.

98 percent? That only shows us that there is something 100 percent wrong with the ARD.

Only 3 percent of Trump’s U.S. coverage explicitly explored the issue of Trump’s fitness for office. European journalists were less restrained with the exception of BBC journalists, who are governed by impartiality rules that prohibit such reporting.[21] Journalists at ARD, Germany’s main public broadcasting outlet, are not governed by the same rules, and Trump’s suitability for the presidency was ARD’s leading topic in January, accounting for a full fifth (20 percent) of its Trump coverage. ARD stayed on the issue in its February coverage, when it consumed 18 percent of its Trump coverage. In March and April, Trump’s fitness for office got less attention from ARD, but it nonetheless accounted for about 10 percent of ARD’s coverage. Even that reduced amount exceeded the level of any of our seven U.S. outlets in any month. And ARD’s journalists were unequivocal in their judgment—98 percent of their evaluations of Trump’s fitness for office were negative, only 2 percent were positive.

German Of The Day: Schlecht

That means bad. Or böse. That means worse. You know, like in “bad, very bad.”

Trump

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.”