Last night, off Channel One in Germany (ARD, public TV)....they ran the Maischberger public forum show. Chief topic? Green Party agenda, with their Chancellor candidate (Baerbock).
There's been a fair amount of chatter/criticism today of Baerbock and a couple of things that came up on the show. Chief problem? I'd say the sudden mention in the past week of Christmas 2020 'bonus' income....which she confessed to in the past week.
Amount that was confessed? Well....if you add it all up....around 25,000 Euro (about $30k dollars).
A big deal? I sat and kinda laughed. If you went to any of the hundred-odd players in the US and made them do a confession on true income.....their confessions would add up to $250,000 a year minimum, and in some cases....over $10-million.
On the confession stage, this is a half-star issue (out of five stars), in my humble opinion.
Did she fail to pay taxes on the 25k Euro? No....instead, she just avoided reporting through the Bundestag 'income' statement. That's the sad thing. Then you analyzed the amount....out of 25k Euro, taxes probably ate up 9,000 of that. What'd she buy herself out of the money? Unknown, but probably a new vacuum cleaner, a 10k Euro landscape job, and a new wardrobe for running for Chancellor.
But still this got tossed around in a vicious way for at least fifteen minutes.
The amusing part? From the party itself....she got a 1,500 Euro Covid-19 bonus for what you'd deem over-time work for an entire year. Again, I just sat and laughed.
Here's the thing, Baerbock kinda looked like a 12-year old kid who got caught stealing cookies from Grandma's cookie stash. She couldn't handle the criticism well, and the episode was crushing public enthusiasm of her. I'd have no doubt that the Green Party will suffer a loss of one or two points on the polling over the next two weeks.
The rest of the public chat forum? Various slams against Green agenda items, and it probably reset the public trends a bit in the end.
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