Your can hardly get any customers to visit your restaurant now?

I know! We’ll increase the sales tax so nobody comes to your restaurant at all anymore.

No need to thank us. We’re from the government and we’re here to help.

German budget woes trigger disaster warnings for restaurants – Owners who oppose return to higher pre-pandemic VAT rate are dismissed as scaremongers by economists.

Kemal Üres, owner of a tapas bar in Hamburg, has spent the past year telling his social media followers that thousands of businesses like his will be destroyed by a planned tax increase.

The man who calls himself the “Gastroflüsterer”, or restaurant whisperer, is campaigning to make the pandemic-era cut in value added tax on restaurant meals permanent. Otherwise, the German government’s decision to raise VAT from the 7 per cent rate in place since 2020 back up to 19 per cent in January would lead to higher prices, job cuts and as many as 30,000 bankruptcies, he said.

What kind of man?

A Germ-man? A French-man?

Nope. A Tajik-man from Tajikistan near Afghanistan.

German police holding man in connection with a threat to Cologne Cathedral – German authorities say they have detained a man in connection with a reported threat to Cologne Cathedral over the holiday weekend.

Tajikistan is 98% Muslim, by the way, so this couldn’t have been religiously motivated.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Anschlag

German of the day: Anschlag. That means attack.

It’s the Islamist way to say Merry Christmas!

Security hiked at Cologne Cathedral for Christmas amid attack threat – German police said on Saturday they were heightening security at Cologne Cathedral following indications of an attack planned for New Year’s Eve and in the wake of government warnings in recent weeks about the rising threat of Islamist violence.

The police said in a statement they would use tracker dogs to check the cathedral after evening mass and then close it off. On Sunday, Christmas Eve, they would carry out a security check on all visitors, and recommended they get to services early.

German of the day: “Wer nicht hören will, muss fühlen”

That means those who refuse to listen shall feel the consequences.

The established, traditional political parties in Germany are still refusing to listen to the electorate. Their voters have had it. With the migrant madness, for one thing. And with crazy Green utopia (highest energy prices in Europe and climbing), for another. And if these parties won’t listen, then voters have no other choice but to vote for a party that will.

Alice Weidel’s hard-right politics is winning over Germans.

Our Berlin bureau chief sits down with the increasingly popular co-leader of the Alternative for Germany, the furthest-right of the country’s seven main political parties.

Corruption?

In Germany? At the highest levels of government?

Yawn. Been there, done that. On a near daily basis even. Just look at the Banana Republic of Amerika if you need a role model.

German banker’s diaries add to Olaf Scholz’s political woes – Chancellor is facing questions over his term as Hamburg mayor, when city wrote off bank’s tax bill.

“It is pretty clear that a wealthy banker successfully influenced public decision making in his favour,” said Gerhard Schick, a former Green MP and head of Finanzwende, a financial reform lobby group, adding that policymakers later also tried to derail inquiries into the matter.

“What is at stake here is a very fundamental principle: the rule of law in a democratic society.” Scholz’s vast memory gaps were “implausible”, he added.

The Berlin Airlift

Only this time the planes would be leaving Berlin. And headed toward Rwanda.

Or was it Wakanda? Anyway, good luck with that. You’re going to need it.

CDU seeks to win back German voters with its own Rwanda asylum plan – Official says party favours sending refugees to third countries such as Rwanda for application processing.

“If we did this and kept it up consequently for four, six, eight weeks, we would see the numbers [claiming asylum] reduce dramatically.”

“Unscrupulous smugglers who brutally put people’s lives at risk?”

Do you mean the politicians like you who smuggled this migrant madness into Europe in the first place?

Germany extends checks at Polish, Czech, Swiss borders until mid-March – Measures seek to combat smuggling and limit irregular migration.

“Our fight against the unscrupulous business of smugglers, who brutally put people’s lives at risk, is successful,” Faeser said. Since mid-October, the Federal Police have arrested around 340 smugglers as part of internal border controls, she added. According to her, the number of unauthorized entries nationwide has fallen by more than 60 percent since the temporary border controls were introduced in October, from over 20,000 in October to about 7,300 in November.

We did it!

My back is starting to hurt from all the patting I’ve been giving it.

We’ll just get around that old debt brake six months from now by declaring another “unforseen emergency” for more debt our high court can’t stop us from making. We’ve even announced what that unforeseen emergency will most likely be: Ukraine.

Germany clinches last-minute 2024 budget deal, keeps debt brake – Germany’s government clinched a last-minute deal on its 2024 budget on Wednesday that will see Berlin return to its self-imposed limits on new debt despite warnings this could hamper growth in Europe’s top economy and its green transition.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition was faced with either suspending what is known as the debt brake or finding some 17 billion euros ($18.3 billion) in savings and tax hikes after a Nov. 15 constitutional court ruling threw its plans into disarray…

Others said the deal simply delayed a necessary decision on how to fund investments in an economy that has already suffered years of chronic underinvestment. Last month’s court ruling has made clear the government will not be able to resort as easily to off-budget funds going forwards.

German of the day: Aufstand

That means insurrection.

The Germans just had to have one of their own, of course. And I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but their insurrection was even more ridiculous than ours was. 27 old farts were going to “overthrow the German government.” Silly old farts too, They didn’t even know that Germany doesn’t have a government. Or that when it does it just overthrows itself.

Germany charges 27 suspects over Reichsbürger coup plot – German prosecutors have charged 27 suspects after carrying out raids against the far-right Reichsbürger movement last year.

For the first time after a series of raids last year, federal prosecutors in Germany on Tuesday brought charges linked to an alleged coup plot hatched by members of the far-right “Reichsbürger” movement… Also charged was the entrepreneur and aristocrat Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, who is alleged to have been the ringleader.

It’s about time somebody started asking these questions

Although, it may already be too late, Germany.

Germany’s CDU questions Islam’s place in society – Muslims, migration, and nuclear energy all get fresh focus in a new CDU manifesto. The draft has already drawn widespread criticism.

The new color scheme a few months back was only a cosmetic step. Now, Germany’s center-right Christian Democrats are going under the hood. For the first time since 2007, the party that ruled Germany for most of the republic’s young history has revamped its party program.

Its leaders hope this is their ticket to returning to power, which they lost in 2021. In establishing what the CDU now stands for, the draft reflects ideological differences at the very top. Chairman Friedrich Merz needed three attempts to become party leader, rebuffed by a skeptical Angela Merkel when she was still chancellor and a powerful force in the party. With her gone and Merz in charge since early last year, he is seeking a different path…

Gone are the days of recognizing that “Islam now belongs to Germany, too” as the CDU’s Christian Wulff said when he served as Germany’s president during an early Merkel government. The new draft manifesto adds a key caveat: Muslims belong to Germany so long as they “share our values.”