The Next EU Law

Late last week, the EU came out with a new law. In roughly four years, if you build and sell a new car in Europe, it must have a sensor and speed limiting device, to note a speed lessening zone ahead.

The sensor would see or sense the 50 kph sign, then drop the speed to that. Companies shocked?  They have been mostly quiet.  I doubt if anyone in Germany  knew this was coming.

Cost? One can speculate this mandated feature to add 1000 Euro per car.  If the sensor were broke, or intentionally disconnected?  I'll bet a police citation gets issued.

More overreacting by the EU?  No doubt.

A Bahn Story

Over the past decade, if you've ridden German railways....being over the age of fifty, you might go and compare conditions.  The new trains have AC, but the AC on a really hot day (say 90-degrees F) marginally functions.  The seats are more comfortable than those from the 1970s/1980s, but often have gum or cuts in them.  The platforms rarely if ever match up, with you stepping on the modern trains sometimes a foot below the platform, or even a foot above the platform. 

So then we come to timeliness.  Most folks who travel around Europe, and then compare against the German dedication of timeliness, will admit that German make a heck of a lot of effort to run on time. It would be a joke to try and even compare the Italian standard of railway timineleness to the German standard.

But in the past decade, a lot of people began to shift away from driving to work or university, and instead....take the railway system (the Bahn).  So you can start to see already by 2009, there were problems in 'connecting'. 

'Connecting' meant that you arrived at the Wiesbaden station by bus at 7:05 AM, and the S-Bahn train is scheduled to leave at 7:09 AM (just enough time to walk into the station and arrive at the platform).  The 7:09 AM Bahn would leave about two mornings per week at 7:14 instead.  Between Wiesbaden and Frankfurt, at least two stops would be delayed three minutes each (for differing reasons).  So the train arrived in Frankfurt around 11 minutes late, and your connect tram (to reach your job site on the north or east side of town) failed.  You flip your smart-phone on, and do the calculations....to find that the next tram is 8 minutes away.  So you arrive at work 19 minutes late, and the boss asking 'why'.  In fact, the boss got used to 'why' and you grow frustrated with this game.

Across Germany, it's been this way for at least two decades.  What the Bahn folks will admit is that the number of passengers has grown, and the capability of the network to provide that timely schedule is now tested on a day-by-day basis.  Toss in bad weather, summer vacation periods for the Bahn employees, and you have a frustrated mess on your hands.

Two years ago, the Bahn decided that they'd invest money and make a 'guarantee' about not being ten minutes.  At the time, I just laughed because you were inviting tons of problems and pressures upon the Bahn employees, and guaranteeing a stiff rise in ticket prices.

If you fail to reach your destination within ten minutes of the projected period.....if you submit the paperwork, you get your money back.

Well, after 18 months of this guarantee.....the Bahn folks admit that 1.5 million applications have been sent in for money-back.  The money paid so far?  It's near 3.5 million Euro. In fact, if you read through their material....the more that people realize the guarantee exists, and how easy it is to apply, the amount of usage is increasing.  A software App is now out there....zero cost....for you to put in the info, and provide evidence of your late arrival.  Somewhere, two to four weeks later, you are supposed to be given your money back.

The local RMV (our Rhein region Bahn organization) has come out in the past couple of days and admitted another additional trend.....fraudulent money-back applications.  In one case that they admit....ONE single guy had fired off forty applications in one single day for late trains.  Oddly, that one got noticed, and there's probably some serious legal woes for that guy.

RMV now even admits that a minimum of five-percent of the guarantee pay-backs are of a suspicious nature....meaning man-hours spent in investigating the claim and the facts.  All of this means....more people involved in the system, and trying to prove or disprove the application.

A mess?  Yes.  But they had to do something to convince people that they were working hard to correct the timeliness issue. 

What'll happen?  At some point when they reach a massive rate of pay-backs....this whole game will collapse, and the promise will disappear.  Lets face facts....the present system was designed and built to handle x-amount of the population, and it's probably stretched now to double that.  Even adding the double-decker passenger cars, and running extra long trains.....has yet to solve the problem. 

A Mattress Story

My wife is the 'queen' of returning items.  If she's bought something at the store or via some catalog, and comes to find out the item is screwed-up, not the quality expected, or just isn't what she felt was a good deal, then she'll return it.  This German character in her.....goes often to extremes.  In an average year, I'll bet that she returns at least 20 items.  This will range from jeans ordered via on-line which weren't precisely the stated size, to a custon of beer which was two days beyond it's expiration date that she happened to note while in the store parking lot. 

It's often shocked me to the extent that German shops and stores go with her (and her associates) in trying to keep harmony with customers and project fine quality sales.

So it came up today via EU judges, that a new opening has been drilled down into the stores, and opens up a Pandora's Box.

Based on the EU judges, if you go out and buy a mattress now....taking it home, and removing the plastic, and the little sticker that says an original product.....you (the customer) still have the right to say 'no'.....it just isn't soft or what I expected, and you can send the mattress (minus the plastic and originality sticker)....back to the store.  You get your money back. 

You have to remember...that mattress was packed in the plastic to demonstrate to you...public protection and hygiene standards.  Companies will tell you....they can't market or sell that product now, with the plastic removed and the sticker gone.

Well....the EU court doesn't care.  It was your right as a consumer to say 'no', and return it.

What'll happen now?  If you sit and think about it, some PhD guy for these mattress companies, will go and figure up the statistical average (maybe one mattress out of forty) which will be sent back.  He'll do the numbers, and figure this is the loss for the company (say 100 of these returns a year, with each mattress around an average of 600 Euro).  So the company boss will do the right and smart move of injecting 40 Euro extra onto the cost of each single mattress.  So for a four-star mattress which should have been 750 Euro....it'll now turn into 790 Euro, based on the 'EU-fee' that this problem has presented. 

Right or wrong?  No, it doesn't matter.  It's just another regulation that consumers think will be to their advantage, and secretly, the mattress sales guy will laugh because he's not inflating the mattress prices enough to recover his potential losses.  Quietly, without saying much of anything.....the EU inflated mattress sales around the market.   

The used mattresses sent back?  My humble belief is that some guy will offer to back a truck up to the depot every other month, and pick up the new-but-used mattresses for 100 Euro each, and drive off to Poland to sell them at some open market ('practically new')....probably for around 200 Euro, telling folks these were 699 Euro at some German store just a month ago. 

A Moral Story

At some point in the mid-1990s, a teacher and parent group got into a constructive phase in Frankfurt over Anne Frank (the Jewish teen from WW II, killed by the Nazis).  They wanted to build a 'center' which focused on life of Anne Frank, and have it as a teaching device for youth.  Donations rolled in, public attention was focused upon this, and around 1997....the center became a reality.

If you go from 1997 on....there's been revisions to the center.  Around five years ago, the center started to turn into a 'lab'.  Why the use of this term?  Some terms thrown around include racism, and the use of the Anne Frank Center to teach moral lessons.  Some of this effort today would be described as countering populist views, mediating through social commentary or social media, and teaching the general public (not just teens) on civil courage.

The term 'civil courage' gets thrown around a good bit in Germany now, but it generally means that you need to stand up and defend the little guy....usually meaning the migrant, the asylum-seeker, or the oppressed.

So I bring all of this up, because around a month ago....the Center put out a public statement which compared in some simplistic fashion, the woes of Jews fleeing Nazi threats during WW II, to the ISIS terrorists/thugs in Syria/Iraq.  The statements generally aimed at the German authorities decision not let ISIS members back into Germany (if they were citizens here).  The authorities did say individuals who are juveniles.....would be considered and likely let back in, but dual-nationality folks?  No. 

After these Frank Center tweets went out (five condemning the German authorities decision)....it kinda lit a fire going back against the Anne  Frank Center.  It's safe to say condemnation occurred, and the Center reflected upon what they'd said, and tried to soften the commentary.

There is this odd path that various foundations and centers went through in the 1960s, 1970s and so on.....where the first group with the creation...woke up one day and found themselves surrounded with people who had taken the focus of the original idea and carried it off to some political agenda which wasn't really what the original group had conceived.  In this case, I think the 1990s crew with the Frank Center in Frankfurt would shake their heads because they had a particular vision where the message would be taken, and that path is long gone today.

The future of the Frank Center in Frankfurt?  It might continue to survive as a 'lab'.  But some loss of respect has occurred, and some folks will counter their civil courage lessons....asking what exactly is the landscape for this to exist. 

The Candidate Story

Germans will generally 'know' regional politicians, or at least they will hint that.  If you bring up mayor so-and-so, a local 50-year-old resident will tell you three or four lines about the guy and how he rose to be mayor.

Over the past couple of decades, with politics in full swing....there is a trend where political figures appear, and folks will say that something to the effect that the guy just 'appeared out of thin air'.  Local newspapers will often walk into a situation where they have review some guy and tell his story.

So this came up in the German news today....a candidate for the SPD Party, for the EU election in May.  This guy (Vaut is the last name) seems to have gotten himself on the list as a potential representative for the Brandenburg region.    He gave some introduction phase of himself, and talked over his lifestyle in Brandenburg and at some point, even introduced his girlfriend.

Things were fine with this story, and his speeches.  Then, someone started to really ask more questions.  So it came out....the girlfriend is just a 'friend'....not a real girlfriend (per say).  Now, I can't really suggest any reason why you'd go and hustle up some female friend to just pretend to be your 'girlfriend', unless you just wanted the image thing to be better. These days, if you were gay....no one would really care one way or another.  Maybe in this particular region, being 'family-connected' matters to the typical SPD-voter. 

But the fake story doesn't end there.  Eventually, it was determined that he's never lived in Brandenburg in his life....that he's been a Berliner for his entire life (the mileage between the two cities is 70 kilometers).

His campaign?  Mostly stopped.  It appears that he'll still be on the ballot, and he says he'll resign if elected.  He seems to have been fairly nice about the situation, after the whole story came out in the public. 

More people like this in existence?  Well, you just don't know. 

The Juvenile Story

There's a brief piece that came up in German news today over an odd topic.

German law grants the right to the government to 'monitor' people that they consider a potential threat.  So there's a list of radicalized folks, who are actively 'monitored'.  By radicalized, I would mean that they are fairly religious in their convictions....have uttered comments that might be perceived as threats against public safety.  In general, the public in Germany doesn't have a problem with that law, or the active nature of the police to conduct such things.

But it's come up now....someone in the government has come to recognize that juveniles are being noted as radicalized.  By the term juvenile, with the German standard...it means anyone under the age of 20 years old.  This same law granting the police the right to monitor.....says that monitoring juveniles is not permitted. 

So there's this discussion underway, with some folks wanting to extend the monitoring business to juveniles within Germany. In return, some folks are totally against this type of change in the law. 

Thirty years ago, people would have laughed that you needed to go and monitor juveniles for threatening behavior in Germany.  The times have changed though.

Where this might lead onto?  Well, once you open this Pandora's Box, then the question will soon arise if you can monitor juveniles for far-left or far-right threats from juveniles.   Could you have 3,000 kids....ranging from age ten to age twenty in some form of monitoring?  Are you doubling up on monitoring personnel? 

Could you reach a point where some 13-year-old kid has made several threats, and you show up to apprehend him and take him into some juvenile court? 

It's an odd evolution of law and public safety going on, and it just begs questions over where things will be in a decade. 

EU Chatter

What this EU deal today with Article 11/13 is about?

It passed today via the EU, and is a 'directive'....which is slightly less than a law.  The soon-to-be 27 members would have to each write corresponding laws to agree with the wording.  The pace of this?  Unknown.

Directives open to interpretation?  Yes, and that makes this somewhat 'weak'.

So the chief feature here is that video-content (via mostly YouTube) can be banned.  For example, if you had seven songs by the Beatles on a YouTube server, the owner of the songs could testy, and you could be in for some legal trouble.

If you taped your dog barking at people?  No.....no trouble.

If you took some 6-minute scene of Star Trek and put it up.....it could be taken down, and you could be fined. 

The fact that it was stored in the US, means no ban.....but someone could force YouTube through enough pain....that they'd just cut off access in Germany to the YouTube site.

The second part of this passage is the ownership of new.  If you went and copied some feature from a German newspaper.....word for word, then they'd expect you to pay for the commentary.  An example, if you used it for Facebook to say something negative or criticizing some political figure....the news owner could demand it to be taken down.

Creating a hassle?  Yes.  Some folks believe that in two to three years....with individual countries writing their legal version on this, that news commentary (either through social media or blogs) would just plain stop entirely. 

This all done to halt the power of the internet, and ensure the survival of the EU?  A number of people believe this.  Let's be honest, once the UK is out, and shown that they can survive without the EU, it's 'curtains' for the EU and their threats.  Maybe it'll take two to five years for the UK to emerge out of this tunnel (the first hundred days will be a mess, I agree), but surviving without the EU stamp of approval will turn out to be very possible in the end. 

The EU does have the perception if you can halt news coverage via social media, and stamp out commentary.....the populist challenge will die off.  Maybe five years ago, it might have been possible to say that.  But the more I look at Trump's use of Twitter, and public outrage throughout Europe, it's a whole new ballgame. 

Five Uncomfortable BREXIT Questions

1.  Does the EU care what happens in the remaining 27 member states after a hard BREXIT?

The uncomfortable answer is no.  The EU's priority, is the EU itself.....not the member states.  Each likely is preparing a list of preparations to take....from job losses, to individual actions to work up trade talks without the EU meddling in the affair.  The EU's chief priority was to ensure that the UK got a screwed-up deal or a no-deal in the end....to ensure countries like Greece or Poland didn't get stupid and exit on their own.

2. Will BREXIT trigger another election this year?

Six months ago, most in the UK were saying it was highly unlikely of a Brit national election this year. Now if you ask.....around three-quarters of the population are suggesting that maybe a clean slate now needs to occur, with PM May gone.  If you ask those about who ought to replace May, you get a list of dozen Tory and Labour figures....with no one really thrilled over options. 

3. Does Tommy Robinson figure into the election if it does happen?

Well....the long and short answer here is yes.  It is entirely possible that TR might organize a Macron-like party out of thin air, and that his brand....his hardships....his talks over the lack of rights....might inflame enough of the public to take 30-percent of the national vote (my guess at the size of the public discontent that would be drawn to him). 

4.  After the hard BREXIT....how does the US figure into the mix?

There would have to be an election, with PM May out....to bring in someone who wants a massive trade deal with the US.  Those who suggest that it'd take two years (as in the TTIP talks between the US and EU that failed).....assume that EU-like burocrats would make this a lengthy process.  It's entirely possible that Trump might step into the situation with just a trade-team of seven individuals, and work to conclude a trade situation in thirty days.  Could the US make up for the Europe trade losses?  That's not an answerable question.  That the US might have an incredibly easy work-visa where a US company is in massive need of particular individuals with a trade-craft or degree, and the UK market might find 25,000 individuals suddenly approached by HR-hunters and brought in for US jobs for three to five years?  That's entirely possible. 

5.  Does any part of the BREXIT affect NATO?

Officially, no.  If Trump is re-elected in 2020, and the German direction on less-than-2-percent 'rule' continues....it's entirely possible that the US might take US installations/troops, and relocate them out of the Germany, to the UK.  The opposition parties in Germany wouldn't be hostile or negative about such a move.  There are certain German communities that would be hurt to some degree (economically), but its not the end of the world. 

The Non-German Imams

This came up today in the German public news.

The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung folks sat down and looked over the entire nation, and all the mosques in the sixteen German states.  Presently....90-percent of the Imams leading the mosques are non-Germans.  Probably not a shock, but some might have thought it was nearer to 75-percent. 

The bulk of representation?  Turkey, Albania, the northern coastal countries in Africa, Egypt, and Iran.  Just from the Turkish Islam Federation.....they carry almost half of the Imams in Germany.

The ability to influence, even in a political way or persuasion....their membership?  Well, this is one of the things that the German leadership has viewed and wants corrected.  The intention is that a program via the national public university system, would carry German Islamic members to a Imam status.  How many years for this to effectively work?  You could probably be talking about twenty to thirty years before they've produced enough people to reset the statistic to just German citizens.

Soccer, Security, and Cost

There's a fairly serious lawsuit underway in Germany, which could have an impact upon soccer match entry prices.

For those who've never been to a Bundesliga (German major league soccer) game, there are certain clubs and fans, who have a physical problem with particular clubs.  Soccer hooligans are somewhere in the mix, and because of this.....a police response beyond 'normal' has to occur.

If you went to a normal major league soccer game, you can anticipate at least forty cops around the stadium in the hour prior, the entire game itself, and for at least an hour after the game.  For a high tension and hooligan-rich game?  You could be talking about two-hundred to three-hundred cops called for at least six hours of duty. 

Naturally, you'd be asking the question....who pays for the man-hours of the cops?

Well....through all these years, it's been paid for by the city governments.

At some point in the past decade, someone started to ask the question.....why not make the stadium (via tickets) pay for the extra security.

ARD (public TV, Channel One) picked up the story this morning and laid out the basic facts.

A good example of the cost factor....for the 2016/2017 season, if you count both the major league and second league....the police provided 1.4 million man-hours of work to ensure the safety of fans.  This goes upward to 100-million Euro in value.  So ARD puts out this one interesting fact.....in most EU countries....the stadiums (via tickets) pay for the extra cost of security.  German does it via city government.

Bremen decided five years ago to start a fee for any event (not just soccer), and that if you triggered an event for 5,000 or more people.....you needed to pay a fee.  They aren't talking about a 1-Euro for 1-Euro of cost fee.....in fact, it was much less.  They just wanted a return on their cost to some degree.

This eventual fee came to hit major league soccer in Germany, and amounted to 425,000 Euro (for one single year).  The major league soccer headquarters questioned why they (and not the club itself) had to pay this.  So it's been in court for roughly three years.

This week, probably Friday, the German national court will decide upon the ending to this.  It could go three ways....(1) the city is illegally collecting a fee, (2) the national soccer folks have to cover this cost, or (3) the local club itself has to cover it. 

Here is one odd factor in this.  The national league is composed of sixteen clubs.  You can have on a single Saturday.....eight games in play, and out of this three of the games require only moderate police security (meaning maybe forty cops just walking around).  Two of the games might require 300 police....some in riot-gear....to protect people.  To say that the national league itself ought to pay is silly, and it ought to be drawn up each match, and a fee attached to the tickets.

But the question comes up.....how much would this fee be?  A normal regular ticket (to a Mainz game) will be around 12-Euro.  Better seats?  Near 25-Euro.  My humble guess on a normal-day security fee attachment would be around four-Euro per ticket.  This puts the basic entry situation at $20 (US).  Toss in beer, brats....you'd be spending near 40-Euro for the day.  But if this were a game with high threat potential?  Well, you could be talking about a twelve-Euro fee per ticket.

The question will arise for the 2nd league and the cheaper games/tickets.  You could have a case where you are paying almost the same price for security, as the basic entry ticket itself.  Just to suggest that scenario, you'd drive a German soccer fan nuts. 

So, is it really dangerous at games?  The basic answer.....no.  There are particular clubs which have a major hooligan private club on the side, and they do engineer fights as part of the side-entertainment (I hate to suggest that term, but it's the simple truth).  Some stadiums go way beyond the norm to ensure visiting fans only enter through a particular entrance, and sit only in one section of the stadium.....just to avoid trouble. 

If you are on Friday night and your German associate is all hyped up about some court activity for the day....at least you know the basic story.

Frankfurt 'Junkie' Mile

If you step out of the Frankfurt bahnhof (the train-station), and face east....you can draw this square that goes for about a mile in front of you, and a mile to the left.  This 'quarter' of the city has become over the past thirty years....'junkie' mile.

It's an interesting story because I can remember walking out of the main station, and facing this district that was mostly just a bar and red-light zone in the late 1970s.  You might have found forty-odd transients around the station itself....mostly homeless, but beyond that.....no significant drug sales.

What happened?  Most people will say that as the wall came down, and more human traffic started to cross through Frankfurt, it shifted into a high-volume drug sales area.  Cocaine, crack, and various drugs started to arrive in the 1990s. 

Over the past twenty years?  Heroin is now a pretty common drug in the 'druggie' mile.  Just walking through at around 9 AM, you can count at least three hundred folks either laying there on the street, or in some daze stumbling around.  If you walked the entire five block by five block area?  It's probably upwards to a thousand people who are in some pause, waiting for cash flow and a chance for their next fix.

The curious thing....if you go to Hamburg, Koln, Berlin, Munich, or any of the major cities in Germany....it's mostly the same story.

Berlin now has Gorlitzer Park, which is treated as an open drug-sales area, and the cops mostly just skip patrolling it.  Locals sit and shake their head, because it ought to be a public park where kids could roam and regular people use as just a normal park.

Politicians?  They saddle-up the cops with a once-or-twice a month patrol.....arresting a dozen here or two-dozen there, but most are out on the street within twenty-four hours.  Cops mostly laugh over the situation because prosecutors and judges really aren't into resolving or correcting things.

Where this goes?  The general public is looking skeptically at politicians these days and asking about city behavior, and what it'll take to resolve this.  Other than just grabbing people off the street, and 'quartering' them in some forced-rehab center way out in the middle of nowhere....that's about the only correction left to take. 

Asylum Story

About every month now in Germany, you have some story to pop up over the government agency....BamF (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees).  It's generally a story which drives Germans frustrated with migration and immigration to just shake their head, and ask more questions.

So the head of BamF (Hans-Eckhard Sommer)....was interviewed.

He has two key frustrations.

First, there are too many unsupportable asylum applications.  For 2018, there were 162,000 people who tried to migrate into Germany.  Just because you fill out an application....DOESN'T mean you pass through or get the visa.  For last year, only around 35-percent of the 162,000 passed.  The rest?  They were given failed-paperwork, which most likely tried to appeal before deportation fell into play.  The appeal process, if you pay attention to the stories told on it....means you are buying at least twelve months, and possibly even on up to three years.  Some cases do reach a positive review on appeal, with the failed visa situation thrown out.....but if you look at the reporting, this tends to be one case out of every ten.

How Sommer explains the whole failure rate?  Well....too many people coming in and having no apparent reason for asylum.

For decades after WW II, there was a process and expected trail of paperwork/approval.....to get into Germany.  For a brief period from 2013 to 2016, the German system dumped that process.  Over the past two years, they've gone back to the expected trail.

If you claim asylum, you need reasons (being gay in a Muslim country, being a Christian in a Muslim country, your nation in a civil war, etc).  Trying to claim a visa for job purposes?  That's economic migration, and totally different from asylum.  In this case, if you had some minor level of German language ability, and a skill craft/degree....then the Germans would push the application higher on the approval process.  If you speak no German, have no true reason for asylum, and no skill or craft to claim.....disapproval on the application is more than likely.

Then Sommer gets to his second frustration...the trend of pro-refugee groups getting into the middle of deportations, and preventing the deportation of individuals.

He even reaches the level of suggesting some type of criminal punishment against these Germans who are hindering the process.  There's a bill in the Bundestag being reviewed where it'd be a criminal action if you were a German who tried to warn individuals of a failed visa application and affected the deportation.

The problem is that a growing number of Germans have a negative view about what's been done over the past five years, and believe some type of 'correction' has to be made to the system.

The deportation business?  The problem here is when you have a serious assault, rape, or murder, and there's a immigrant or asylum seeker in the mix.....it's an extremely high chance that they've failed the visa application, and on some deportation list.  Germans see this trend and question political figures over the reason for this. For the CDU and SPD....it's brought losses in polling numbers, and creates a wave that favors the AfD.  The two political parties are in a lose-lose situation.  They could correct the deportation issues, but irk the pro-asylum voters who support either the CDU or SPD parties.  Or they could weaken the deportation process, which triggers voters into flipping over to the AfD Party.

For either of these two issues to be resolved?  I wouldn't expect it.  It's now become too big of a political topic.

The Chaotic 11-Years Ahead

Let's go to a German utopia view in life....the climate is under threat and a terrible 'woe' will fall upon the lan, unless you do something drastic to curb greenhouse gas emissions.  You, the regular German, without a lot of science in school, and maybe only a 'token' of science in college....have gone to the idea of just trusting politicians who know what they are talking about.

Somewhere in the mix....you (the regular consumer and non-scientist) wake up and are told that between 1990 and 2017....greenhouse gas emissions in Germany increased.

By defined goals (given to you by scientists and politicians), there's a goal of cutting all of this by 98 million tons....by 2030.  That's a 40-percent cut.  You get this warm feeling that by doing all of this, you will be saving Germany, and the Earth.  You go and sip some fine brewed beer and have a good feeling in your heart.

Things should be fine now.

But then it starts to occur you (via hints from the government folks), you need to suffer in order to cut the 40-percent.  You have to suffer as a consumer, as a traveler, a worker, and so on.  You (the state bureaucrat) have to suffer via budget planning because you can't get the same amount of money as you did in the past decade.

The cost of this program over 11 years?  It's around 250 billion Euro (more or less). To be honest, you can figure it'll escalate year by year.....so it might get up to 400 billion Euro. 

They have to build more onto the rail transport network, and convince people to actually use it.....whether they like the idea or not.

They have to urge people to use bicycles more....whether they like the idea or not.

They have to expand out the network of charging stations....in towns, cities, and along the massive autobahn structure of the country.

They have hike the gas/diesel taxes to an extent to pay for much of this, and force people to go with that climate goal measures.

They have to put special fees into new car sales....to help motivate you to avoid gas/diesel cars.

Who is going to pay 60,000 Euro for e-cars?  Will the typical working-class German be able to afford them?  No.  In fact, if you go into a town of 10,000 German residents....with the current cost level of e-cars....at best, maybe 10-percent might be able to really afford these cars.  Twenty years into the future?  No one can show any statistical evidence that e-car trend will get any better.  Could you get a regular new VW e-car down to 18,000 Euro?  Even if you did....would these people buy it?

This 250 billion Euro amount being discussed for the government to carry it the plan.....does the money exist today?  No.  Not unless you hike taxes in a major way, and cut budgets on other programs.

Could the plan and path lead some Germans to exit the country?  No one brings this issue up, but you have to wonder, for those being heavily taxed to score big on tax revenue....why would you stay or allow your money to be used to this extent?

If at any point of this pathway to the greenhouse gas emissions utopia.....people figure out it was fraudulent in nature and they suffered for no reason?  It's best not to suggest that scenario, because it'd be the end of political stability for the current parties in power.

A chaotic 11-year path ahead?  Oh yes, so hang on.

Flash Mob Story

'Flash mobs' haven't been a thing in Germany, at least until this week.

Earlier in the week, police in Berlin had to react to a hooligan situation driven by two YouTubers (each have a network behind them), who met up and had a brawl (I essayed this yesterday).

Well....last night (Saturday evening around 6 PM), in Frankfurt, we had the second 'Flash mob'.  The number?  Around 600 teenagers.  They gathered up at Zeil region (the major shipping district in central Frankfurt).  This turned into a fairly chaotic event.

Apparently a number of cops had to be drawn to the area to settle down the potential threat. At some point, the police figured out the organizer of the mob, and gave him an order to disperse. Some action then occurred, with a teenage kid hitting some cop in the face.  Cops then grabbed the kid, and he was arrested (charges will range from violence upon a cop to resisting arrest).

There's some discussion now with the authorities....if legal means should be put upon the organizer of the Flash-mob, and force him to pay for the expense of the cops having to show up.  Amount?  That's unknown at this point.  But you can figure.....if forty cops had to show up for two hours each, then you'd be talking of a minimum of 5,000 Euro.  German law?  It basically says as long as you register your demonstration, and provide a map of the anticipated walk or the square area where speeches will be given.....you can conduct it without any fines.  If you violate that understanding?  A judge can evaluate the situation and assign a fine (based on measures required by the cops to ensure 'peace').

The Nitrate Story

As a kid growing up on a farm, I had an understanding of farming, growth patterns, and production levels.  It's a complicated 'business'. 

Yesterday, I noticed a news piece from N-TV (German commercial news), and it revolves around farming and production.

To run a productive farm, you have to rely upon fertilization.  You can attempt to run a bio-operation, and avoid fertilization....but it means that you lessen your profitability down the line, accept some poor years in the pattern, and hope that the pro-bio mentality with consumers continues down this path.  If consumers ever reach a point where they think the pricing of bio-products are outrageous and lessen their purchases?  Well....you're screwed as a farmer.

Presently, there is a negativity attached to fertilization in Germany.  The nigrate is getting into local groundwater, along with the river system.  Regulations are already in place by Germany itself, but there's more EU regulations being discussed.....to reduce the 'bad' nitrates.

The potential for a downward turn on farm economics?  It grows each month as these regulations are discussed and implemented. 

Presently, the EU court system is making the threat of 860k Euro fine (PER DAY) on Germany because of the nitrate numbers seen in the water system.

The German effort to reshape the argument or find alternates?  So far, it hasn't worked.

What's likely to occur?  Well, if the EU forced the issue of nitrates and eliminating a massive amount of use....throughout all of the EU, then you'd reach (fairly quickly, probably within five years) where you had a shortage of farm products coming out of EU countries.

Yes, you'd have to go outside of the EU and import products in (like tomatoes, wheat, cucumbers, watermelons, corn, etc).

The nations profiting off of this?  All non-EU members.  You'd probably notice that those farm product countries (say Turkey, Russia, or Ukraine)....won't have any nitrate issues or nitrate regulations. 

In an amusing way, you'd marginalize the vast amount of farmland in Germany, where it'd be standing there and unable to be used for production of products because of the nitrate regulations and the inability to find some solution. 

How much would grocery shopping increase?  Unknown, but you'd have to assume prices would double within a decade, if you had to buy most of your agricultural products outside of the EU. 

Over-use of nitrate?  The production cycle over the decades, has burned out the majority of potential farm potential.  You can bring the PhD guy in.....measure up the soil potential, and most will all say in agreement that nitrate is a must-do situation, if you want a viable farm system.  Otherwise, you need to go beyond the EU borders, and prepare to buy products to import into the EU. 

Germans and Perception

The research group Sinus in Germany went out and asked Germans about their happiness. I know....it's an odd topic, but the results are a bit surprising.

So Sinus says....the majority of Germans (2 out of 3) are happy.  Maybe they aren't five-star happy, but they are happy enough.  They aren't suffering....the economy is doing OK....etc.  So there's only a third of the nation who aren't happy.

But then Sinus asked a second question.  Do you think other Germans are happy?  This was the shocker.  The majority of Germans (just over half) said that their friends, neighbors, relatives, associates....are unhappy. 

What's this about?  Perception.

Germans whine a good bit.  Everyone knows this, and it's perfectly OK to whine.  The issue is that people whine on a daily basis now.  They whine about the trains running late, the cost of living, the poor quality of public TV, taxes, pensions, welfare, terrorism, migrants, politics, social media, lack of privacy, too much social media, BREXIT, Trump, diesel cars, escalating electrical costs, vacations that went wrong, Chinese tourists, too much snow, too little snow, bridges that ought to be replaced, potholes, bad behavior kids, etc.

The public forum shows highlight the continual 'thread' of German society now.  There are brief moments of relief in mid-summer....mostly because the public forum crowd have gone on some month-long holiday in France or Greece.  And around mid-December, there might be a three-week period where whine-chatter dissolves away and folks try to be cheerful during the Christmas holidays.

The perception here?  Oddly, the survey does prove that on a personal level....with Germans looking only at themselves, they reach a happiness state of mind.  It's only when they think of others.....they perceive them being unhappy.

The blunt truth is that Germans need some relief.

Terror Arrest in Germany

In local Wiesbaden news tonight (Wiesbadenaktuell is the source), cops have been active in the city of Wiesbaden, Mainz, Offenbach, and Frankfurt today.....around 200 of them.

What the authorities say is that they've arrested eleven  Salafistan folks, who were planning a fairly big terror event in the near future (they'd already rented the van).

Two of the associates were from Wiesbaden (31 year old brothers).

The target?  Unknown.  That's yet to be made known to the public.

Other seized items?  20,000 Euro in cash, some drugs, knives, and computer storage devices.  Guns?  No....at least it's never put into any single detail.  Maybe the cash was for the purchase of such weapons (via the Darknet)?  Maybe, but this is a detail left out of the whole story.  Lot of missing details to this.

"Control"

In the 1980s, if you were a German, there was this concept which existed where the Police could stop you on the street, ask for your national ID card, and you had to present it.

The odds of an event like this?  Maybe over a forty-year period, you might have walked into a circumstance where the cops actually put 'control' upon you. 

Today?  It's possible that you live a fairly low-key lifestyle, avoid the typical places where it occurs, and you might still go a forty-year period without 'control'.  On the other hand, if you go out in the evening hours....hang around the downtown urbanized areas.....or simply walking through a district known for drugs, the odds are that you might have a 'control' event two or three times a year.

A profile event?  Well, you could suggest that.  But here's the thing, the cops can ask for an ID, do a complete search of your person (including the car), and conduct a drug-test if you driving a car.  If ever in some area and you notice the cops approaching you, with a request for 'control', don't take it serious.  Present your ID, and simply pause for a minute while they check you out. 

Utrecht Terror Case Winding Up

If you watch both Dutch and German news today, the Utrecht terror episode (earlier this week) is mostly in a wrap-up stage.  Three dead, five wounded, the gunman captured, no further arrests involved.

The prosecution folks?  They say multiple murder charges are lined.  The intent of the Turk?  Still unclear.

Yes, they did find a letter in the car, which the Turk did write.  Yes, it does suggest some Jihadist intent. 

But after some review and talks with the guy, the Dutch cops are arriving at this odd suggestion: the guy has psychological issues combined with a 'overdose' (my term) of radicalized religion.

They are careful about how they say it, but it would appear that he'll go to a mental eval situation, and I have my doubts that they will ever get to a full-up murder court case. 

Just crazy?  Yeah.  When he resettled in the Netherlands from Turkey a decade ago?  He was probably having mental issues then, and no one really recognized it. 

A Brawl Story

Germans (at least intellectuals) get all hyped up over the internet, and the conflicts that it draws.  So there's this story from today.....outlined in RBB (the Berlin public TV network news). 

What the Berlin cops say, is that two YouTube enthusiasts....each having a channel, got into this insult tirade.  One from Berlin, and the other from Stuttgart.  The Stuttgart YouTube fellow got his associates hyped up and they apparently traveled to Berlin.  This is made possible by this great enhancement to the railway between Stuttgart and Berlin.  You can now make the trip in roughly 5.5 hours with the rate special of 19.90 Euro (one-way). 

This Stuttgart youth group met up and got in a brawl with the Berlin youth group, at Berlin Alexanderplatz.  All total?  400 'kids'.

Around a hundred cops were called from across the city to stop the fight.  At least fifty folks were fairly beaten. 

At some point, the cops resorted to tear-gas.

At least 13 of the group will face charges, and there's some review to come over the two YouTubers.  You would think, that YouTube would get all huffed up and remove access for both of them, but that has yet to happen.

More to come?  Well, that's the thing about this phenomenon.  It's recorded, and used for exciting their fans.  So you might see more insult situations, with various battles being fought by groups using the railway system to get from point A to point B.  Someone will probably invent the term 'hooligan-tourism' to describe it. 

School 'Gift' Story

If you are a German, and on the level of poverty.....you are hooked up to Hartz IV (the German program to provide a 'safety net' for the general public).

So there's this curious piece of the Hartz IV deal.  If you are a kid in school....once a year, the German government provides you (the welfare kid) 100 euro to pay for school supplies.

About twenty years ago, with my son in the German school system, I came to look at the August routine.  My wife would spend a week shopping at five or six different grocery stores and have a box of twenty-five items at the end.  School supplies.

It wasn't cheap to run through this routine.  At this point, prior to the arrival of the Euro....with the Deutsche Mark in the mix.....this was near 180 Marks (figure around $90 in 1999 cost).  It was a fair sum of money.

This week, the Germans agreed it was finally time to raise this allotment.  It went from 100 Euro as the school-year 'gift'.....to 150 Euro (roughly $180 in US currency).

Yes, it is a big chunk of money.  But that's the thing about the past decade.  Escalation of expenses has generally gone up.  Whatever you could buy for 10 Euro in 2010, is probably near 12 to 13 Euro today.

An Entire New Suburb For Wiesbaden

This morning, there's chatter over a city project to build an entire suburb out of thin air.....having housing and business interests.  Size?  Well....the city management folks hint that it's in the range of 10,000 people living there.

Location?  If you drive south out of the city, on 455, you will pass entry/exit to the autobahn A66, and head up the hill (going toward Mainz-Kastel and the turn-off to the Army post runway area.  Immediately across from Clay Kaserne (the Army post), on the other side of 455....will be this giant new suburb out of thin air. 

There's a small area of houses on the plot right now (Fort Buehler).

The curious thing is that about 1 km away, to the west, is the plot of land used for at least three decades....which was the garbage 'dump' for the city.  Toss in the fact that the new suburb is on the approach to the runway.  If you had to go and pick an area which just has negative long-term issues attached to it.....'Ostfeld' isn't going to be a premier project. 

Does the city need housing for another 10,000?  Well, that is part of the story.  If you go and look at demographics for the city since WW II, it's been on a upward trend.  Around 1900, it had a population of 86,000.  When the war ended in 1945, they were at the 172,000 range.  In 1980, they were at 274,000.  They believe the current population is at 280,000. 

Part of this trend is the fact that a fair number of people work in Frankfurt, but prefer not to live in Frankfurt.....so some portion of the 280,000 are Frankfurt workers. 

As for when this suburb will appear?  Oh, with planning, complaints, delays.....you can figure that completion of the area and the 10,000 living there....won't occur for at least a decade. 

Effects of BREXIT

It's a three-liner story, but it's something that you have to ponder about.

There's a business survey group....Bertelsman Stiftung, which went out and looked at BREXIT numbers.

If there were an no-deal BREXIT (entirely possible now), then the Germans stand to lose on a yearly basis....roughly 10-billion Euro.  So over the next four years....that's a 40-billion revenue sum that is missing. 

The French?  Eight-billion Euro for a loss (yearly).

The Italians?  Four-billion Euro for a loss.

The UK, against all EU partners?  57-billion for a loss (yearly).

Could any of these make it up?  No. So here's the suggestive outcome (if you haven't figured it out already).  Once we hit BREXIT and no deal happens, there's a recession about to bloom over the remainder of 2019, and probably into most of 2020.  Yes, a serious slow-down.

The UK might be able to swing some points with the US (maybe the US-Canada-Mexico trade treaty), and get ease of access.  It might take six month, but their loss might be slowed a significant amount, and less of a problem.  The remainder of the EU?  Less so.  If the UK doesn't get a doorway to the US?  Their exit will be a bigger problem, and politically....I could see both political parties collapsing by 2020, with serious public frustration.

Bertelsman Stiftung's survey?  I have no reason to believe it's a false or fake survey.  This should have been laid out a year ago. 

E-Mobile Story

Back in 2014, the German Post (the national post office organization) made the decision to slip over and get into e-mobiles.  So they hired up this company to build this vehicle and produce around 200 of them a year.  About 18 months into this idea, they enlarged production and were aiming at making 2,000 a year.  Within six months, they put the next goal up....they'd get around to 10,000 vehicles a year. 

How many post office vans/trucks exist in Germany?  Officially on the books, around 70,000 (more or less).  So you can figure, even if they did get to the 10,000 per year level, this would still take six to seven years.

Well....ARD (public TV in Germany, Channel One) came up this morning and noted this new development. 

Apparently, the program was very successful, and the Swiss postal folks also bought into the same brand/model.  Last year, they had two fires (burning up the mail-contents of both trucks).  They made the decision in the past week or so....to withdraw all 460 of their delivered e-mobiles from service. 

It might be worth mentioning here.....that the German Post folk had two e-mobile fires in the past year as well.  So a survey/review is underway.  No one is saying production will halt, but there is some concern going on. 

Simple a design flaw?  Unknown.  It might just be a bad battery or two that was produced with reduced standards.  It might be human error in the use/operation. 

TV Tax Chatter

For at least a year, there's been talk of a TV tax increase coming around.  The public TV crowd (ARD/ZDF) have talked about the necessity.  Right now, it's set at 17.50 Euro per month, per household.  This covers all TVs, all media devices, and radios for the house.

The chief issue is that the general public is fairly hostile to another movement upwards, and it has to go before the general board, then be voted upon by all sixteen German states (they all have to agree, 51-percent per state, in each state assembly).

Well.....someone out of the Bavarian group has suggested that they need to get the 'pain' off the states, and the best way to do this.....is to vote for a permanent 'index'.  They'd set the rate in 2021 to 18 Euro, and invent a index out of thin air.....to avoid letting the public set anger upon the political parties.

Wimping out?  Yes, in an amusing way.

I suspect if you left this to the general public.....they'd all voice a cut to the public TV system is the necessity here, and trim the TV tax down to 10 Euro or less per month. 

The odds that this would be dragged into a national court, if they invent this index method?  Oh, it's probably a 99-percent chance. 

In fact, I would suggest this....if this is such a great idea....why bother involving the Bundestag in taxation issues....just attach an index to the system and raise taxes automatically when the need arises.

Utrecht Update

Using ARD (German public TV, Channel One) as a reference:

1.  Based on a 'note' found in the escape car, the cops still talk of a possible terror motive (Jihadist).

2  The two other guys detained on Monday and thought to be part of this episode....have been released

3. Cops still can't say there is any connection between this first woman shot, and the Turkish shooter.  The speculation by a Turkish newspaper that this was a honor-killing?  Still not established as factual.

4.  It is factual that the shooter (originally from Turkey, 7 years ago) that he was arrested and convicted for attempted murder.  More recently, he'd been detained for rape charges.  If you look at Dutch news, there are questions by the public on why he was still in the country after the conviction for attempted murder.

5.  An organization claiming jihadist or terror credit?  Oddly....none.  My humble view: Either this was an honor-killing, or the guy was doped-up to the max and just started on some killing spree. 

Urban Growth in Germany Story

I sat and looked over the basic story laid out by the Institute of German Business (IW), and their recent study of city growth.

There is a change occurring to the landscape of cities, which people have openly talked about over the past decade.  'White flight', which is an American term to suggest people getting negative about big-city life, and moving miles beyond the city.....to urbanized regions within driving range of their jobs, or their lifestyle.....is now taking place in Germany.

In their study....roughly 600,000 non-Germans (to include not just immigrants, migrants, etc....but also EU residents as well) move into Germany each year.

Out of this number, the IW folks can show that one out of every two....are settling in large cities.  They can show of the 71 cities they studied.....63 of them grew in 2017.  For example, IW can show Berlin grew roughly 1.4 percent a year, from 2011 on.

In some ways, it's not a negative thing because Germany has this shortage of skilled workers and university background people.

But the study comes to this conclusion.....families in general, are leaving the urban cities, and exiting to regions around there.

I can look presently at the Frankfurt environment and while there is still growth going on in the city itself.....you can draw a 30-kilometer circle, and show a number of people/families who've packed up and moved to more quiet and comfortable surroundings.  A great example is Idstein and Eppstein....both well outside of Frankfurt, but both enjoying spurts of growth.  The whole end 'zone' of Idstein has grown in a major way over the past decade.

The Drone and Satellite Story

I'll reference the basis of this story back to ARD (German public TV, Channel One).

So this is a story which starts in Yemen.  A US drone attack occurred.  Some Yemen folks contracted German authorities, and eventually....a court case was drawn up on German soil.  The court question was....does German allow or support US drone missions in Yemen?

The suggestion is that some satellite connection occurs from a US receiver point, and retransmits it onto the next satellite (from within Germany) which would provide the signal to the drone over Yemen.

The judge (OVG) in Münster?  They say that the German government must 'test' the US system  for  admissibility under international law.

Where this leads onto?  Some individual, likely from the Foreign Ministry, will call upon the US military liaison office, and ask for a meeting, and then explain they need to 'test' and understand the relationship of this drone to the satellite business.  It's hard to say how the liaison officer may handle this.  My humble guess is that it'll be forwarded to the four-star general in Stuttgart, and he'll bundle this up to forward onto the Pentagon.

They might agree to just a tour of a satellite 'farm', which I seriously doubt that it'll solve the judge's call for a 'test'. 

The fact that some form of satellite receiver understanding has been in place since the 1960 between the Germans and the US....probably doesn't matter. 

Creating an opportunity for the SPD Party to hinder the US?  I could see some point where President Trump looks at the 'test' business, and just finally says that there's some long-term problem in staying in Germany, and uses this as the basis for packing up and leaving.

The use of the court case to trigger the Americans into leaving?  Almost comical, but this is not the Germany of the 1960s/1970s, and the US might easily find a more cooperative partner in the European region, without the worry of international court cases. 

The one comical side of this story.....the US could shut down all satellite traffic coming in, and instead....hire some 18-year-old German geeky kid to put up a receiver dish on some German mountain top, and add a second dish to rely the signal to a satellite over the Med.  No one in the German government could ever figure out where the signal came down, or who shot the 2nd signal back up.  But lets be careful not to hint to the judge that his 'test' idea has severe limitations. 

The Missing 45-Billion Euro on 29 March

Well, yes, there is this mystery that occurs with BREXIT on 29 March, with no deal.  There was this 'hole' which existed with the EU, and the British....to be friendly upon this 'divorce', had agreed to pay 45-billion Euro.  The EU needed that cash to avoid financial issues in their budget. 

If the money isn't there?

Oddly, this topic has rarely come up with German journalists.  I know....they've spent at least a hundred hours since 1 January....talking in public forums, and via the two public TV networks (ARD and ZDF)....covering everything except the missing money topic (if this were to occur).

So if you read through the various news outlets, the EU will have to find some way of getting this 45-billion, and it'll likely be split up among 28 remaining nations.  Naturally, the German contribution on this would likely go to the ten to twelve billion Euro range. 

Will this be a crisis issue in Germany?  No.  But I suspect that it'll make the Merkel coalition group (CDU-CSU-SPD) gather and get rather heated about the cuts required to find this missing money to hand the EU folks.

Would it be worth the hassle to give a prime 5-star BREXIT deal to the UK, to avoid the ten billion Euro in crisis money?  That's a funny question to ask.  If this were Helmet Kohl instead of Merkel, I would suggest that he'd tell the EU to shut up....write up a decent 3-star BREXIT deal, and avoid a no-treaty deal at all cost. 

Migration and Funding Story

Two of the top stories in Germany today, revolves around the Finance Ministry in Berlin.  Both reported by N-TV (commercial news media network).

So, the German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz says that less funding for migrants and immigrants will be the norm in the future.  This of course, got states and cities hyped up.

Scholz made a blunt statement at both cities and states in response...they have to get smarter about how they handle the funding that does exist.

Currently, there is a 670 Euro 'flat-rate' for those entering the asylum process, with accomodations being covered.

The new idea by the Finance Ministry?  Just a one-time lump sum per incoming migrant/refugee, for a five-year period.  The first year, it'd be 16k Euro, but it'd decrease each year after that.

What this means in the long-run?  The current national budget for migrants and asylum-seekers would go from 4.7 billion Euro a year....to just over 1 billion Euro a year.

Adding to the mix, you have to remember that the peak period was 2016, and in the past year....they are just under 186k migrants seeking asylum or immigration.

In the minds of the Finance Ministry.....less people means less funding.

In the minds of the states and cities....less funding means less integration and more chances for migration 'failure'.

The second story?  The same ministry is now suggesting a fair-sized upswing for social spending over the next five years.  19 billion extra Euro would be found and used for social programs.  No one says if this is for the social pension upgrade, or if it's for repairing the welfare program, or for improving the school building structure. 

From my personal perception over the past five years with migration, asylum, and integration in Germany....there's been a number of 'mistakes' made by city, state, and federal levels, and basically, it runs into the billions on funding thrown at things with minimum or marginal impact.  There was never a clear path, or formulated spending plan that minimized 'losses'.  You can blame Merkel and the federal ministries for lack of oversight or just gleeful speeches, but even at the state and city levels....funding was thrown around without much long-term planning.  So this clean-up by the Finance Ministry is probably a necessity. 

Putting the 'onus' back on migrants to learn German and test-out at the A2 level (basic German language capability) before they ever apply for immigration visas?  If you required that one step, you could probably save 10k Euro easily, and have the guy working at some occupation within six months of arrival.   

Tent Cities in Germany?

This came up as a one-liner news item out of Berlin-City over the past couple of days.  There's a city 'Senator' (not a national figure or a Bundestag representative, but just a city council sort of guy), who came up with this new 'idea'....to build or allow tent cities to exist for the homeless folks of Berlin.

Back in 1978, I could have walked around the entire city of Frankfurt, and I doubt if there were more than a hundred homeless folks in the entire city.  Today?  If you draw a one-mile circle with the train-station as the central point, I would estimate that near one-thousand homeless people exist in the city.  Hamburg?  A minimum of one-thousand, and probably going on up to two-thousand easily.  Berlin?  From my last walk around the city, I'd take a guess than it's definitely more than two-thousand homeless folks living there. 

What you tend to notice is that various charities and city-support groups (throughout Germany) have tried to put up one-room 'apartments' and entice the homeless folks to leave the streets, regain some stability, and 'recover'.  The homeless folks who refuse the offer? 

This usually goes to three central themes: (1) every single one of these apartment dwelling deals involves a list of rules (no pets, no drugs, etc) and the bulk of these people can't agree with the rules. (2) Most all of these programs involve rehab, and the bulk of these people simply don't want rehab.  (3) A fair number of these people are mentally unbalanced, and probably need to be in an institution rather than a open-lifestyle apartment building.

So how would the tent-city work?  The Senator in this case left out that part of the discussion.  My guess is that the city would try to find some warehouse....putting a central toilet and shower facility into one end, and letting guys have a 10x10 ft square to put their tent/establishment up.  Sanitation? Well....you'd have to hire a crew to come in and do a major job each day.....to prevent this from becoming a health hazard.  Druggies in the mix?  Yes, and that would beg questions by the cops.

The odds of this politically taking off and occurring?  I would question the potential for the public to buy into this idea.  No one would want their city park, or some area along the riverbank....to become some homeless tent city.

So it's a chatter-topic with no viability?  It'll get discussed and pro-homeless groups will advocate it as an answer to the overall problem.  But it just takes one problem....resolves it, and creates a brand new problem to ponder upon. 

Utrecht Update

The authorities still say the motive for the attack on the Dutch tram yesterday is unclear (still), while they have captured the guy about six to eight hours after the shooting.  Three dead, and around 9 wounded.  They will admit the guy is a Turk.

However, a Turkish news group, Anadolu....asked some relatives of this guy, and the comment from them was that a particular woman was targeted....who was of a Turkish 'clan', for having an affair.  After this guy had shot the woman and as Dutch people rushed forward on the tram to save her.....he then targeted them.  Reliability of the story?  Unknown.

Family or 'honor' killings?  If you quietly go around Germany, it's a general fact that it occurs.  The Gatestone Institute did a report in 2017 on the topic.  Official government statistics don't exist....you simply hear stories about the women involved.

Honor killings tend to fall into five categories: gay lifestyle, refusing to participate in a family-arranged marriage, divorcing the husband, caught in an affair, or being raped.

Around three years ago in Germany, a young lady was executed, and the eventual court case involved both the mother and father as participants.  They were both convicted and sent off to prison.

So, no terror angle?  At present, this is likely to be the final result.

Update: Mid-day, 19th:  The regional police (via Dutch news) are still trying to revive this terror suggestion, with a note found in the car.  They are saying there is no relationship itself, between the Turk guy accused and the Turkish woman (first shot on the tram).  What they are avoiding in this public statement is that the guy may simply have been part of some extended family or simply contracted to go and kill the woman because of a violation of 'family-honor'. 

Three Odd Factors about the Christchurch Shooter

1.  The guy (28) was an obsessive gamer....to the point as a kid in the house, he peed in his pants because he simply couldn't get up and leave the game to use the restroom.

2.  He was unable to connect with any women (throughout high school in Australia) and over the past decade.  No one says anti-social, but he simply couldn't show a relationship.

3.  All of his travels (probably twenty countries, to include North Korea as well) were financed by a sum of money left to him around nine years ago by his father's will, and to which he invested the money into Bitcoin....returning a high rate on the investment. 

I expect any day now that someone will comment on him having antidepressants prescribed to him over the past five to ten years. 

Diesel Update

There's an interesting story over at N-TV (commercial German news) today, which talks to the diesel car crisis, and this 'box' that you can possibly install.....to make the exhaust issue 'clean'.

ADAC (the German Automobile Association) went and test the devices being discussed.  So the result?

Well....the older diesel cars that had the hardware added....absolutely did produce significantly less  nitrogen oxides.

However, as the temperature went down (fall and winter)....the system was less capable in bringing the nitrogen oxides to a lesser 'state'.

In simple terms....in winter months, the retrofit did virtually no good.  It was a good idea for six months out of the year.

Where this leads people?  I suspect, if you questioned VW and the car companies....they would all admit five to ten years ago, they tested this idea, and found the same results. 

The odds of the retrofit idea ever selling in public now?  I would suggest we are back down to zero-chance. 

27 March: How I Think BREXIT Will Go

Six months ago, I would have figured some type of trade deal would have been worked out and some exit treaty would occur.  Well....it's a fair shocker at this point, and you have to gaze at 29 March (Exit Day) and start to ponder the obvious path:

1.  I don't see how an extension will occur (the EU says they can only have an extension, if they agree to a 2nd referendum). 

2. The political folks thinking there is still some deal left that can be made?  No, there isn't.

3.  PM May? Basically, she's finished.  She's near exhaustion, and there's not much left in her magic-bag.  I think she's bound to resign by 2nd week of April.

4.  The need for a new election?  No....the Tories now realize just how much anger exists in the country, with the Tommy Robinson sideshow brewing.  There can't be an election in 2019.

5.  The only other country hurt seriously with BREXIT (besides the UK)?  Germany.  I think Merkel will need to disconnect.....retire by June.....and let someone find a trade deal with the UK (stepping around the EU), to get things to a 'norm'.

6.  Maybe I'm wrong on this, but I suspect around 50,000 Brits will begin to pack up by early summer, and find some European country to resettle into.  Call it asylum or whatever.

7.  Finally, the drama over BREXIT will last for about six months, and then things will begin to fall into place.  Various countries (outside of the EU mechanism) will have trade deals done, and life will go on.  The only true discovery made by people is that the EU never was capable of handling this type of situation. 

'Reader' Story

I essayed a piece yesterday talking about the German nightly news guy (Jan Hofer) who got ill during the 15-minute nightly newscast. 

Well, lot of hype and chatter yesterday in Germany over that odd situation.  Then it came up over what they pay for the nightly-reader of the news.

It's not a yearly, monthly, or nightly pay-situation.  The reader of the news comes in about 30 to 60 minutes prior to the 8 PM 'show', gets the script from the editors at ARD, and is there strictly to read the news to the public.  Pay?  It's roughly 260 Euro per 'show'. 

So if Jan showed up at the 8 PM show, then read again at the 9:45 PM show, and then later at the 11:45 PM show?  He'd clear 780 Euro for the day (roughly). 

The fact that he's not there in the news booth for six hours and part of the editing team?  Well, that's not the way that German news staffs work.  The editors are the ones putting the whole thing together.  It's a reflection of their views, not his. 

A reader?  Yes.  You can't even refer to Jan, or any of the other reader-people on the newscast as a journalist....they simply serve to read the news because they have a clean accent and can readily pronounce tough words. 

Manifesto People

Once I read the New Zealand attack business, and the term 'manifesto' popped up, I just shook my head.  Typically, manifesto-people are on the fringe of society, and on some great adventure to change history, culture, or to bring on massive revolution.

A manifesto can be just forty pages in-depth.  It can be a hundred.  In the case of Anders Behring Breivik (the 2011 Norway 'nut'), his manifesto went on for 1,500 pages.  In the case of Adolph HItler, his manifesto (volume 1/2) went on for 720 pages (Mein Kampf).  The Communist Manifesto by Marx actually went to only 70 pages.

Most manifesto narratives lay out a problem (plural perhaps), and the author is attempting suggest his resolution or 'fix' to correct the situation.

In the case of Ted Kaczynski, his piece was called an essay, but went on for 35,000 words.  For the most part, you'd consider it a manifesto.  The key feature of Ted's essay.....in the end, to achieve the end of the technology revolution.....you needed to kill a number of people, and bombing was a key part of the 'resolution'.

This 28-year-old gentleman in Christchurch?  If you go and read a brief couple of pages of his manifesto....it's the same basic story as  Breivik in Norway.  He wants to upset various people....trigger a revolution, and cause a massive shift.  In his mind, his action will cause not just dozens, but hundreds if not thousands of people to parish....to bring about the society he envisions.  In the 2011 episode with Breivik.....he actually went out and killed young teenagers on a island, to trigger a change in government....not now, but thirty years into the future.  Those teens were all kids of prominent political figures, and were all figured to be prominent politicians in the future.

Insane?  This Christchurch guy is alive, and figures a court case will give him a chance to present his manifesto in its entirety.  If I were the authorities in New Zealand, I'd conduct a review of his mental state, proclaim insane, and clear the deck for no trial/court case.  Yes, just bring him into the room with the judge, and note that there's no need to really mess with the guy.....send him to a maximum security situation and give him little to access to the public.  I wouldn't even give him access to television or newspapers.

The key thing here....the more attention you pile upon him, or the anger you demonstrate.....the more that you helped him achieve his goal.  In his mind, he thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Another Deportation Story

This afternoon....Focus (the German news magazine) brought up this incident from this morning.  I've often essayed that the deportation process is a chaotic program in Germany, and requires a lot of personal attention by the immigration folks, and the police.  So this is an example of what occurred today.

Somewhere around 6 AM this morning.....two immigration officials and two German police arrived at a local immigrant center in Bad Honnef-Aegidienberg.  This is a small town, about 20 minutes driving....SE of Bonn.  There might be 10,000 residents in the local town/region.

So the deportee for the day is a Senegalese guy.  As far as you can tell by the authorities story....he'd failed the visa process (unknown reasons), and the appeals came with no change.  So he'd been told probably in the past month, that he'd be taken back to Senegal.

At some point in this meeting....the Senegalese pulls a knife on the immigration guys.  One of the German cops quickly reacted, and shot the Senegalese guy in the arm.  Situation defused.  Ambulance took the guy to a local hospital, and they treated him.....then released him. 

Status of the Senegalese guy?  After treatment, he was taken onto the airport and put on the plane back to Senegal. 

What a lot of migrants and immigrants come to realize after a while, is that the German open-door doesn't really exist.  It's a fantasy that simply continues to be told.  Upon arrival, you have to fill out paperwork.  It'll be evaluated, and there's key things which you need to show or demonstrate....to get the visa.  Having some job background, skilcraft, university degree usually helps.  If you were persecuted, that would help.  If you were from a country under civil war, that would help.  But beyond that, if you can't show any 'points'....your visa will be stamped 'no'.  The Germans actively telling people this in Africa, the Middle East or Asia?  No. 

So for Germans who get hyped up over deportations.....this type of event just demonstrates the potential threats that exist. 

News Story

Most Germans will watch the Channel One (ARD, public TV) news show at 8 PM.....the Tagesschau, for their daily dose of national news.  It's a rotational team (out of Hamburg) that does the 15-minute newscast.

Last night started like the normal 15-minute episode.  The moderator was Jan Hofer. In an average month (30 nights), Jan probably does the show around four occasions.  I should note....Jan is 69 years old.

Somewhere about three minutes into the live news program, you could tell that he was stumbling along.  Midway (say around the 7 minute point).....it was obvious that he was having a fair amount of trouble.  He wasn't focused.  He was starting a sentence, getting three words into it.....then restarting the sentence. 

Around the 12th minute, it simply intensified.  My interpretation was that he was either having a stroke, or that he was affected by drug-usage. 

After they wrapped up the weather segment, there's usually (in 100-percent of cases) a brief 10-segment back to the moderator who says what the 9:45 PM news will cover in-depth.  Well, as they cut to Jan, he's leaning heavily on the desk and obviously in bad shape....silence.  The camera is on him for about seven seconds, then they cut away. 

There must have been thousands of calls or social media messages to ARD in the next half-an-hour, probably suggesting an ambulance call for the guy.  ARD had taken him to the hospital, and his situation was discussed by 9:45 PM's news.

Jan had been out for a week or two with some viral infection, and they'd given the 69-year-old guy a fair amount of hyped-up drugs.  Basically, he was reacting the way that you'd expect, and he probably should have been on another full week of bed-rest. 

Oddly.....today, this is probably one of the top five stories of the day across Germany, and how Jan is. 

Government by Proxy and the Herd Theory

Government by proxy generally means that you've had an election, and voted for a particular candidate/party, where they said they'd go and do A, B, and C.  Then you go off and do your regular business....waking up a year, or five years later....to realize that this 'winner' or the 'winner-party' went and did D, E and F as well. These were things, which you felt were a bit beyond the scope of the guy or party.  In fact, you may be so disenchanted by the action.....that you feel 'screwed'.

This general idea of government by proxy really started to take shape in the US, and Europe in the 1980s.  Someone would lay out such-and-such agenda, which you'd buy into.  Then you'd come to realize other pieces, more taxes, or additional regulations added....that wasn't mentioned before.  Now you'd like to have a chat, but it's a bit too late to get your 'player' interested in chatting.

As for the herd theory, this is usually where you'd convinced a bunch of folks to settle for A, B, and C.....with them moving in this direction that you choose.  The herd rarely stops or reverses, in this case. 

In some ways, the general disgruntled feeling in the UK, and seen in a number of European countries....is going anti-proxy.  The Yellow-Vest movement in France....mostly centers on actions that Macron took, which was beyond his advertised points in the election.  If he'd mentioned these points then.....the high vote tally would have been dramatically less.  You see disgruntled voters in Germany, who are hyped up about the welfare mess that exists, pension woes, and the migration path.  Working-class Germans would readily admit.....Merkel is not the Chancellor to correct things but they can't really find anyone else better.  Same story in Spain....same story in Italy, etc.

If I were to project this out, I see the next decade in Europe as being a difficult period, with a number of political parties exercised out of existence in ten years time.  The BREXIT matter?  If the UK does the no-treaty exit, and somehow comes out with a better fortune in ten years.....it'll be a shocker to the EU bureaucrats. 

Court Case in Wiesbaden Continues

There is a great piece today written by Goran Schattauer for Focus magazine.....over the murder trial in Wiesbaden with the dead teenage Mainz girl, and the accused....an Iraqi asylum guy.

Schattauer has been there for the opening day, and today.  He lays out a couple of key observations over this accused guy.

Originally, the young guy grew up in Kurdistan.  There's not a lot of details about how this family of eleven got over into Iraq.  But the guy basically finished up five total years of schooling.....with two of these being repeat years.  Educationally, he was behind and this great 'adventure' into Germany was probably (as Schattauer lays out the tale) a bit more than he could handle.

The German language and integration classes?  Way too much for him, and he started to skip them.

The guy spent most days....getting up at noon, wandering around the city while sipping vodka, smoking hash and using heroin.  At various times, he was caught with knives, and getting in violent crimes.  His friends?  Not a single German.

As Schattauer weaves the story.....this is a guy who simply 'took', and never 'gave' in return.  He was unprepared for Germany, and integration.  For him to have 'made it'.....someone would have had to stand there and lead him through each step....the German system would have had to find at least five years to educate him to some higher level....and German 'associates' would have had to be there to support him.

The problem I see....there are probably thousands of immigrant guys in Germany like this......with the vast majority who've yet to murder or harm anyone, but they are hanging on for the 'ride of their lives', and need some kind of mentoring to make this whole thing work.

Measles Story

It's an interesting development in Hildesheim (about 30 minutes south of Hanover, in the north of Germany).  They had a measles outbreak in the local school. 

Local authorities reviewed everything, and then said.....there's 107 kids, teachers, and employees of the school who can't show a vaccination.  So rather than risk any more issues....they are forbidden from school until the 22nd of March (roughly 10 days from now).

NDR (regional public TV from the region) carried the bulk of the story.

Missed work?  Well....they've told teachers to hand out homework assignments and some kind of exams will be given for the missed period. 

But this is a continuing trend now, with kids and adults having gotten around the measles vaccination business.  No one gives the national statistics on this, but I would take a guess that at least 10-percent of German kids now exist without the vaccination.  My general prediction is that as each 'season' comes into effect.....more of these forbidden entry episodes will occur, and most of the non-vaccinated kids will get two to three weeks of non-school each year. 

Murder Story

A murder court episode opens in Wiesbaden today....it's over the 14-year old Mainz girl....killed by a local asylum guy (from Iraq).  It has charged up some folks in Mainz, and at least has public curiosity over the details of the murder, and the path that this migrant led up unto this event.

One of the more curious things pointed out by the cops (now) is the path of criminal behavior.  HR (our public TV network in the region) pointed out some of these issues.

About 18 months into his entry into Germany, four months after failing the visa application and on a appeal process.....this guy comes up with his first criminal situation.  He's part of a group that 'mobs' some woman, and there is an ensuing fight.  An investigation starts up....then gets dropped by the police (no reason given).

Around eight months pass, another fight episode, and in this case....the victim doesn't want to go into court.  So that case gets dropped.

A month passes and the guy 'bumps' into a female cop in Wiesbaden.  In this case, he beats the cop to some minor degree and spits on the cop.  Normally, that type of behavior would get you a number of weeks in some jail.  He spends that night in jail.....but the investigation goes into a lingering mode.

A month or two passes, and now a new and more serious crime....rape of a migrant 11-year old girl.  This doesn't go anywhere much on the investigation.  No one talks much over the accusation or if there was lack of evidence. 

Around two months pass from that episode, and the guy ends up murdering the 14-year old Mainz girl. 

At some point early on....there should have been some fatherly-type figure to step in and insist upon correcting his behavior.  The cops could have early on.....set the pace by putting him into some jail for a month, or putting on some plane back to his homeland..  Various things that should have occurred, just never did occur. 

The max on the murder charge?  If convicted?  Twenty years.  Some people have suggested that they might get the conviction, and then work some deal to deport him to a prison in Iraq.  I doubt that the German legal system would allow that to occur.

Public Housing Topic

Last night (Monday), ARD (public TV, Channel One) ran Hart Aber Fair (their public forum show).  The topic?  The housing situation.  I've essayed a fair number of observations over this unique German problem.

The basis of this....almost every major urbanized city in Germany is 'short' on affordable housing (1-bedroom, 2-bedroom, 3-bedroom, etc).  Part of this issue revolves around a mass sell-off by cities of city-owned pubic housing in the 1980s and 1990s, which the city management system took the profits and drove into parks, road maintenance, and people-projects.  The company that bought the apartment buildings?  They renovated and raised rents.....so affordability kinda dried up.  Another element is land speculation, where lots of open lots exist but the pricing is so far up, that affordable apartment planning is a joke. 

So last night, the moderator of the forum had political guests, and agenda people.

The high point of the whole discussion?  A leftist agenda person, who made the comment that it was time to seize public housing back away from the companies who've profited.....lower that rent, and refuse to pay the former owners more than 1-Euro.  Lots of applause, but reality soon arrives.

Once you enter into this type of seizure (under German law, it's legal).....you have to compensate the former owners.  The court system would force this rather quickly.  How much would we be talking about?  Just in Berlin alone, it's probably in the 20-billion Euro range, for the amount of property they often speculate upon seizing.  Across all of German?  I would wager that the price tag would go beyond 200-billion Euro.  City or state governments capable of paying that?  No.  Even at the national level....they'd be unable to compensate the owners. 

But the commentator who made this suggestion got a fair amount of applause. 

One of the great examples of public housing in Europe that 'worked'....comes out of Vienna in the 1950s and 1960s.  They built numerous buildings across the city.  Renovation-wise, with exteriors....they've done virtually nothing.  Along every other decade, they might have improved windows, or bathrooms....but they left the bulk of the buildings in a simple appearance.  Rent is developed upon the lines of what you make, and a percentage of that given back to the government.  None of their properties went off to private companies.  People can whine about the lack of improvement, or 1950s 'look' but they can easily afford the rent. 

There might have been some Germans hyped up from last night, but frankly, it's become an unsolvable mess.

Social Media Chatter

There's this little technology story today in the ARD (public TV, Channel One) news, which I thought was a curious piece.

So a study was done by the Fraunhofer folks.

Presently, 90-percent of Germans will admit to using some form of the internet.  But when you get around to social media use....state by state (there are sixteen German states)....things go in various directions.

In the Brandenburg region....only around 38-percent of folks admit to using social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc).

States on the increase?  Only the Saarland, Pfalz, and Hamburg.  With the Pfalz near 60 percent of the population. 

So the question that one might ask....are Germans not attached to social media?  The short answer?  With youth groups, you might find them hyped up to use Twitter or WhatsApp.....with Facebook lacking that much interest.  In fact, with Germans over the age of forty.....Facebook just isn't that big of a deal.  Curiously, WhatsApp is a item which most all Germans have adapted to in the past three years.

Some in the tech world suggest that if people just had more training or introduction.....they'd use these more.  I kinda doubt it.

I've sat on German buses in the morning and noted kids making photos of their homework, via WhatsApp...to send to another kid on another bus.....who missed the assignment from last night, and that kid wraps up his work from the photo.  I've stood in grocery stores where women took pictures of products via WhatsApp....to quiz their husband, and then buy it with the acknowledgement of the husband one minute later.

Facebook?  I just don't see it ever dominating German consumers, or school kids here. 

Another Failed Asylum Knifing

Via regional news out of central Germany (Faz.net), there's a migrant-girlfriend murder situation now developing again.

What the news media says is that last week....a 22-year old German gal, was attacked and killed by knife in her parent's home, in the city of Worms.  Murderer?  A 22-year old Tunisian guy who was the boyfriend for a unknown period of time, and who'd failed the visa application process.

Another mental case episode?  Well....cops are recommending the guy be reviewed.  I would suggest that from the past five years and at least ten murders/assaults related to boyfriend/girlfriend situations with asylum folks.....the majority had the cops recommending a mental eval on the accused.  Part of this might be behavior demonstrated while in custody....it might relate to opinions of people who know the guy.....or it might be that the victim had commented prior to their death about the guy being 'funny'. 

From Saturday, a memorial was held at a local church.  At some point in the service.....some guy (unknown nationality) yelled 'Allahu Akbar' and that triggered bit of a ruckus in the church. No attack....just people a bit disturbed and concerned over their safety. 

Its safe to say that locals are a bit angered over the murder.  The mayor is trying to restore public order and get people off the negative side of this attack.

What the public will likely center upon.....the guy had failed the visa request, and probably should have been picked up that hour of notification, and held until he could board a plane.  A fair number of Germans have been hyped on this idea, and it appears to be gaining steam.

The Expropriation 'Chatter'

For a number of months, I've essayed about housing shortages in Germany.....mostly all in highly urbanized cities (Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, and so on).  It's at a point where the political parties have promised some remedy, but mostly fallen into a pit of issues that can't be resolved. 

One curious thing which the major cities have admitted, and it begs questions.....after WW II.....going up to the 1970s, cities across Germany built 'social housing' (apartment buildings without a lot of glitter) which were rented out at sums of money which the city felt 'fair'. 

An odd thing started in the 1990s, which no one much talks about.  A lot of these apartment buildings (remember, they were built and financed by the city management themselves)....weren't lined up for renovation as the 1990s arrived, and the cities really didn't have the money to bring them up to the next level that people expected.  Cities made this odd decision.....they sold the apartment buildings...to a commercial company called 'Deutsche Wohnen Gruppe'.  This company did the logical step.....they went into renovation projects, but they raised the rent.  As a commercial company, they had to not only be responsible for the property, but they had to make some kind of profit..

So you'd have a 500 DM (still in the 1990s, remember) apartment, which underwent renovation, and then the landlord company said with the new 'look'.....800 DM was now the new rent. So across Germany, apartments started to escalate.  Where people couldn't afford their old apartment, they went looking for another place, and they crowded up the scene for 'affordable' housing. 

In recent months, there's been this chat in Berlin (not the Bundestag, but the city folks)....about expropriation (meaning the city would take your property).  The discussion at the city level is that it's time to go and seize the old properties and revert this mess back to them

The discussion here is that as a company in a city (like Berlin).....once you go over ownership of 3,000 apartments)....that would be the point where the city would seize your assets (over the amount) and run them as a non-profit situation.....meaning just basic rent. 

You can imagine an 2-bedroom apartment going for 1,200 Euro currently ($1,400) on the monthly rate, and the city would just say 800 Euro (cutting a quarter of the rent) and in their mind, the crisis would 'end'.

Issues?  Well...Focus went and talked about this effort.  The experts say, just in Berlin alone....they'd need 25-to-40 billion Euro.  Here's the curious thing....the city presently is around 60-billion Euro in debt.  What bank would cover this?  None.  How much property tax would you have to create to make this interesting for the banks to cover the loan?  Don't even bother talking over that topic....it'll freak people out.

If you did start to expropriate the property....would anyone go and build regular apartment housing?  I suspect that idea would rapidly come to a closure, and people would only build for high-end condo sales.

It's curious.....all this chatter in the past six months.....Burgergeld, pension woes, reform of welfare payments, and expropriate of public property......all requiring adding up to hundreds of billions over a decade, and really no way to grab that money....leaving people to stand there talking about some fantasy repairs, but grumbling because nothing ever gets fixed.