This morning, the political hype in Germany, via ARD (public TV, Channel One) is the 'Welfare State Paper'.
Basically, the SPD Party (now down to around 14-to-15 percent in polling) has reached a level where they need to get the center-of-the-left voting crowd to come back, so this 'paper' is the magnet that they are going to use. It came out over the weekend.
Somewhere in the mix is the move to put current minimum wage ( 9.19 Euro per hour) up to 12 Euro per hour. Of all of the ideas, this one might be the one more achievable....but this would likely end up as a 1.50 Euro rise, with a 3-year delay before another 1.00 Euro rise was allowed.
Added onto this is an incentive to companies to open up mobile work (meaning taking your work home for some hours of the week).
Dismantling the Hartz IV program, and bringing in a Burger-Geld program? More costs, but the public would agree that the current welfare program is a failure.
The general motto of this new SPD 'program'? The government should be seen as a partner, not a controller.
Journalist response? If you go and read across the dozen-odd journals, sites, and news networks in Germany.....it's fairly mixed. At the top of the negative list.....how these costly pieces will be covered is missing entirely (taxes would have to go up somewhere or massive cuts upon other programs). The idea that the CDU-CSU folks would agree to these ideas as part of the coalition? Most political folks are say an absolute 'no'.
On the amusing side of this....these ideas probably should have been brought up back a decade ago, and the party missed their big opportunity and chances by waiting til they were this 'weak'. The money for the bulk of these ideas simply isn't there, and the only way to achieve any success is to bring the German Bundeswehr (the Army) in, and carve off one-third of their budget.
On the motto business....to be seen as either a controller or partner? Most would suggest that the government should be a quiet observer and only get involved when safety or national interests were involved. To the idea of forcing companies to develop mobile work.....it's hard to imagine how you'd drag some company to the idea. If they want to do it....fine, otherwise, this is not really something that the government should force upon companies.
So out of this thirty-odd-page document....it's probably decent reading, but I doubt if the SPD can achieve more than two or three of their ideas. The general SPD voter? Most will stand there and just shake their head.
Monday, February 11, 2019
Yellow Vest and Antifa Story
On Saturday here in Wiesbaden (Wiesbadenaktuell reports most of the happening).....we had the 'Yellow Vest' crowd show up (100 in number approximately). The Yellow Vest idea is a French creation, and to be honest, there haven't been that many demonstrations with them in Germany.
So the group met up at the train station in Wiesbaden around 1 PM, and were to do a 'march' down toward the city center (about a 1-mile hike). Somewhere in this hike of one-mile....a counter-protest started up with the Antifa people (50).
Things become a bit interesting at this point. There's a clear and understood rule.....if you want to have an organized protest in Wiesbaden (or any city), then you register it with the police and indicate where you intend to walk from. Normally, all protests in Wiesbaden....no matter what group is doing it.....starts at the train station and walk the one-mile to the open courtyard by the town-hall. In this case, the Yellow Vest group declined to register with the police. The Antifa people? They declined to register with the police.
Cops did their best to keep the two groups separate.
So, the Wiesbadenaktuell notes this circumstance.....it just didn't appear that members of either group, were from the actual city of Wiesbaden. To be honest here, we just don't have many protests, and the ones that usually get noted are revolving around unions on strike.
But lets get to the key bits of this Yellow Vest demonstration. Their protest? Social injustice material....everyone needs pay increases, pensions are geared too low, rising taxation, diesel car bans, rent out of control, incompetent politicians, better social benefits, etc. Somewhere in the mix, they uttered "Germans first" (the German version of Make America Great Again). Then they got around to redistribution of wealth.
So I previewed this 'slant', and it just seems odd.....about half of the Yellow Vest 'chatter' are absolute things that Antifa would support.
What are the odds that an unannounced Yellow Vest group would show up in Wiesbaden, and a unannounced Antifa group would also show up....same time?
Were the two groups really just one group? I hate to suggest that this whole protest thing seemed 'fake', but the minute that the journalist noted that none of the Yellow Vest folks seemed to be from the city, I wondered the same thing about the Antifa crowd.
The curious thing is that the journalist with Wiesbadenaktuell sat and worried toward the end of their writing about this all bringing up radicalization among Wiesbaden folks.
In general, if you stood in a group of a hundred working-class Germans.....they would all whine about taxation, pensions being screwed-up, social benefits being unfair, the diesel ban, crazy rent issues, and stupid politics. It's just that they never seem to get pepped up before elections. The last two national elections in Germany haven't really had any major issues to drive intense interest in the outcome. Low-key....would be a great word to describe those two elections.
The odds that the Yellow Vest and Antifa groups were all fake, and led by one central planning group? I would suggest better than 50-percent chance. And if this were going on in forty urbanized areas across Germany? Yeah, it might be a problem.
So the group met up at the train station in Wiesbaden around 1 PM, and were to do a 'march' down toward the city center (about a 1-mile hike). Somewhere in this hike of one-mile....a counter-protest started up with the Antifa people (50).
Things become a bit interesting at this point. There's a clear and understood rule.....if you want to have an organized protest in Wiesbaden (or any city), then you register it with the police and indicate where you intend to walk from. Normally, all protests in Wiesbaden....no matter what group is doing it.....starts at the train station and walk the one-mile to the open courtyard by the town-hall. In this case, the Yellow Vest group declined to register with the police. The Antifa people? They declined to register with the police.
Cops did their best to keep the two groups separate.
So, the Wiesbadenaktuell notes this circumstance.....it just didn't appear that members of either group, were from the actual city of Wiesbaden. To be honest here, we just don't have many protests, and the ones that usually get noted are revolving around unions on strike.
But lets get to the key bits of this Yellow Vest demonstration. Their protest? Social injustice material....everyone needs pay increases, pensions are geared too low, rising taxation, diesel car bans, rent out of control, incompetent politicians, better social benefits, etc. Somewhere in the mix, they uttered "Germans first" (the German version of Make America Great Again). Then they got around to redistribution of wealth.
So I previewed this 'slant', and it just seems odd.....about half of the Yellow Vest 'chatter' are absolute things that Antifa would support.
What are the odds that an unannounced Yellow Vest group would show up in Wiesbaden, and a unannounced Antifa group would also show up....same time?
Were the two groups really just one group? I hate to suggest that this whole protest thing seemed 'fake', but the minute that the journalist noted that none of the Yellow Vest folks seemed to be from the city, I wondered the same thing about the Antifa crowd.
The curious thing is that the journalist with Wiesbadenaktuell sat and worried toward the end of their writing about this all bringing up radicalization among Wiesbaden folks.
In general, if you stood in a group of a hundred working-class Germans.....they would all whine about taxation, pensions being screwed-up, social benefits being unfair, the diesel ban, crazy rent issues, and stupid politics. It's just that they never seem to get pepped up before elections. The last two national elections in Germany haven't really had any major issues to drive intense interest in the outcome. Low-key....would be a great word to describe those two elections.
The odds that the Yellow Vest and Antifa groups were all fake, and led by one central planning group? I would suggest better than 50-percent chance. And if this were going on in forty urbanized areas across Germany? Yeah, it might be a problem.
On the Topic of Grund Verrohung
It's not a simple translatable German word (Grund Verrohung). My definition for the word is 'brutal threat nearby'.
It comes up today via a Focus article which discusses this noted change in German Job-Centers (run in each community by the government). There are 1,373 Job-Centers across Germany today, and last year....because of continuing threats made by out-of-work Germans and the massive control that the Job-Centers have over your welfare benefits....threats are now a daily event.
So the federal government kinda admitted that 457 of the Job-Centers now have on-site security....meaning a a couple of guys in uniform (basically a government office with a 'bouncer'), who takes charge if some German guy or gal gets demanding or physical.
I suspect thirty years ago.....this would have never been a problem, but things have changed over the past decade or two. The welfare money is marginally enough, and people are at a breaking point with the bureaucratic ways of the Job-Center 'empire'. None of these Job-Center folks entered the profession with the idea of brutal threats being made against them, and I suspect that there are a growing number looking at some other profession.
The curious thing is that prior to the 1930s, you could find various occasions where brutal threats existed, and it was part of the German landscape. After WW II, this behavior modified itself, and you could have easily gone through the 1960s, the 1980s.....never seeing any suggestive threat. Today, it's returned.
It comes up today via a Focus article which discusses this noted change in German Job-Centers (run in each community by the government). There are 1,373 Job-Centers across Germany today, and last year....because of continuing threats made by out-of-work Germans and the massive control that the Job-Centers have over your welfare benefits....threats are now a daily event.
So the federal government kinda admitted that 457 of the Job-Centers now have on-site security....meaning a a couple of guys in uniform (basically a government office with a 'bouncer'), who takes charge if some German guy or gal gets demanding or physical.
I suspect thirty years ago.....this would have never been a problem, but things have changed over the past decade or two. The welfare money is marginally enough, and people are at a breaking point with the bureaucratic ways of the Job-Center 'empire'. None of these Job-Center folks entered the profession with the idea of brutal threats being made against them, and I suspect that there are a growing number looking at some other profession.
The curious thing is that prior to the 1930s, you could find various occasions where brutal threats existed, and it was part of the German landscape. After WW II, this behavior modified itself, and you could have easily gone through the 1960s, the 1980s.....never seeing any suggestive threat. Today, it's returned.
Sunday, February 10, 2019
BREXIT: Are a 100,000 German Jobs at Risk?
It's a question that got posed this morning via ARD (German public TV, Channel One).
Economic experts are quietly suggesting to ARD that yes, it's a minimum of 100,000 Germans who might be laid off if a 'hard' BREXIT occurs (in roughly seven weeks).
This study was done by a research foundation, and they suggest most of this is tied to the car industry.
A couple of weeks ago, via a Brit newspaper, they found experts who suggested 750,000 German jobs were at risk.
What's the real number? Unknown. I would suggest this....if this were solely about 100,000 German jobs, then it's a bad deal, but not a massive terrible deal. If this were 750,000 jobs.....it would turn into a massive political deal in a matter of just one to two months.....to focus great negative energy at the May EU election to occur in Germany.
It would be the kind of negative focus that Chancellor Merkel really doesn't need, and really accelerate negative finance trends across Germany. Blame? It'd be mostly dumped on Merkel, the coalition government, and the pro-EU crowd in Germany. This in turn....would affect the fall elections to occur in three German eastern states.
Economic experts are quietly suggesting to ARD that yes, it's a minimum of 100,000 Germans who might be laid off if a 'hard' BREXIT occurs (in roughly seven weeks).
This study was done by a research foundation, and they suggest most of this is tied to the car industry.
A couple of weeks ago, via a Brit newspaper, they found experts who suggested 750,000 German jobs were at risk.
What's the real number? Unknown. I would suggest this....if this were solely about 100,000 German jobs, then it's a bad deal, but not a massive terrible deal. If this were 750,000 jobs.....it would turn into a massive political deal in a matter of just one to two months.....to focus great negative energy at the May EU election to occur in Germany.
It would be the kind of negative focus that Chancellor Merkel really doesn't need, and really accelerate negative finance trends across Germany. Blame? It'd be mostly dumped on Merkel, the coalition government, and the pro-EU crowd in Germany. This in turn....would affect the fall elections to occur in three German eastern states.
Discussion Group Meeting over Asylum/Immigration
There's a political piece today from N-TV (Germany's CNN-like news network), which talks over a page two-type story, which may, or may not.....have a big impact in the next two years.
Starting this evening....the CDU Party (Merkel's team), will be led by the new chief of the party, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK), will led this 'workshop' over the next 48 hours, and the key question is.....how can the CDU develop a refugee policy that the public appreciates, and yet is 'fair'.
Most of the big-name players of the CDU are invited to this discussion group. Merkel and the last Interior Minister....are not invited.
Out of this long chat forum (mostly all private and confidential talks).....I would suggest that most Germans will be skeptical. There will be some outline with twenty odd suggestions, of which you can dismiss half of them from ever reaching any level of implementation.
The driving problem here is that a EU election occurs in May, and three eastern Germany state elections later in the fall. To some degree, AKK needs to show the party is resolving problems and changing the asylum program....even when they are making minimum or marginal impact.
Some of the party elite are suggesting that the government coalition needs to have a asylum minister. It's an amusing suggestion and I would suggest in response that no one within the CDU would desire the job because it'd be a lightning rod for news media attention (all negative) and the opposition parties would be dragging the individual in the dirt on a continual basis.
What they could do? There are four basic ideas which would convince the public that something drastic has occurred, and downsize the voting pattern for the AfD Party:
1. Make it a blunt policy on asylum that anyone can apply (as the Constitution states), but it needs to be at a German embassy in the applicants home-country. And that individual needs to remain there until the application has been approved.
2. Failing the visa application while already in Germany.....should result in an immediate appeal review by a judge, within a ten-day period of failure. Currently, you could be looking at a appeal process taking anywhere from a year to three years. After the final stamp by this appeals judge.....you go to a fenced-in center and prepare to leave the country.
3. If the individual has arrived and appealed for a visa, the paperwork needs to show you have a passport of your home-country, and for the next three years (if approved for a visa).....commit no crimes beyond misdemeanor level. If you sold drugs, assaulted anyone, or were arrested for threats/intimidate situations.....your visa gets revoked and you need to leave fairly quickly.
4. Finally, make the asylum and immigration program a national program and take the running of the asylum programs out of the hands of cities and states.
My guess is that none of the four ideas will be on the list, and the general public mostly grins over the chatter of the CDU Party and it's weekend results.
Starting this evening....the CDU Party (Merkel's team), will be led by the new chief of the party, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK), will led this 'workshop' over the next 48 hours, and the key question is.....how can the CDU develop a refugee policy that the public appreciates, and yet is 'fair'.
Most of the big-name players of the CDU are invited to this discussion group. Merkel and the last Interior Minister....are not invited.
Out of this long chat forum (mostly all private and confidential talks).....I would suggest that most Germans will be skeptical. There will be some outline with twenty odd suggestions, of which you can dismiss half of them from ever reaching any level of implementation.
The driving problem here is that a EU election occurs in May, and three eastern Germany state elections later in the fall. To some degree, AKK needs to show the party is resolving problems and changing the asylum program....even when they are making minimum or marginal impact.
Some of the party elite are suggesting that the government coalition needs to have a asylum minister. It's an amusing suggestion and I would suggest in response that no one within the CDU would desire the job because it'd be a lightning rod for news media attention (all negative) and the opposition parties would be dragging the individual in the dirt on a continual basis.
What they could do? There are four basic ideas which would convince the public that something drastic has occurred, and downsize the voting pattern for the AfD Party:
1. Make it a blunt policy on asylum that anyone can apply (as the Constitution states), but it needs to be at a German embassy in the applicants home-country. And that individual needs to remain there until the application has been approved.
2. Failing the visa application while already in Germany.....should result in an immediate appeal review by a judge, within a ten-day period of failure. Currently, you could be looking at a appeal process taking anywhere from a year to three years. After the final stamp by this appeals judge.....you go to a fenced-in center and prepare to leave the country.
3. If the individual has arrived and appealed for a visa, the paperwork needs to show you have a passport of your home-country, and for the next three years (if approved for a visa).....commit no crimes beyond misdemeanor level. If you sold drugs, assaulted anyone, or were arrested for threats/intimidate situations.....your visa gets revoked and you need to leave fairly quickly.
4. Finally, make the asylum and immigration program a national program and take the running of the asylum programs out of the hands of cities and states.
My guess is that none of the four ideas will be on the list, and the general public mostly grins over the chatter of the CDU Party and it's weekend results.
Radio Chat Program Story
About a year ago in Germany, the President (Frank-Walter Steinmeier, SPD) made a big passionate speech over division of thought and a trend that public opinion was splitting. He basically came out to suggest that the public media system of Germany needed to do a 'better' job. You can look at the suggestion and question the 'better' job. In some ways, he wanted to prevent the split of opinion....perhaps in another way, he wanted people realize that having a second or third view of a matter was 'healthy'. Some have suggested that the 'better' job was more about educating or giving people more information, so that they would come to the wiser view of things.
So this past week, I noticed via HR (my regional Hessen public radio/TV network).....that a new 2019 program is about to start via the radio folks. Their intention is to tour Hessen and have 'chats' with Hessens over various topics.
These chats will be put together for a nightly show (6PM to 8PM).
Is there a division problem?
Part of this is a viewing of the US problem.....where people can't have a civil dialog or open conversation on a wide number of topics anymore.
Another issue is that intellectuals in Germany fear populist 'uprisings' and want to bring people to think like them.
Finally, there's some growing perception in Germany that the government (the political parties) have been going in a particular direction, and the public has split off....suggesting that the parties are out of focus and not working on a priority list that the public believes in.
Will people even listen to this radio telecast? I would have my doubts. There are six HR channels under the state public radio system. HR3 is the more popular of these with hit tunes from today. HR4 is older music (prior to the 1970s), for mostly folks over 60 years old. HR1 is mostly easy-listening music. HR2 is classical music only. HR-Info is news around the clock, from Hessen and Germany. Finally, there is YOU-FM, which is designed for German teens.
I suspect if you asked a hundred Hessen adults.....less than five listen to radio in the evening hours, unless it's on the way home from work, or they need traffic/weather related information.
So this past week, I noticed via HR (my regional Hessen public radio/TV network).....that a new 2019 program is about to start via the radio folks. Their intention is to tour Hessen and have 'chats' with Hessens over various topics.
These chats will be put together for a nightly show (6PM to 8PM).
Is there a division problem?
Part of this is a viewing of the US problem.....where people can't have a civil dialog or open conversation on a wide number of topics anymore.
Another issue is that intellectuals in Germany fear populist 'uprisings' and want to bring people to think like them.
Finally, there's some growing perception in Germany that the government (the political parties) have been going in a particular direction, and the public has split off....suggesting that the parties are out of focus and not working on a priority list that the public believes in.
Will people even listen to this radio telecast? I would have my doubts. There are six HR channels under the state public radio system. HR3 is the more popular of these with hit tunes from today. HR4 is older music (prior to the 1970s), for mostly folks over 60 years old. HR1 is mostly easy-listening music. HR2 is classical music only. HR-Info is news around the clock, from Hessen and Germany. Finally, there is YOU-FM, which is designed for German teens.
I suspect if you asked a hundred Hessen adults.....less than five listen to radio in the evening hours, unless it's on the way home from work, or they need traffic/weather related information.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Thesis Chatter
About two years ago, I essayed a piece or two....chatting over masters/doctoral thesis 'hunters' in Germany, who were going after political folks (mostly CDU politicians, and occasionally an SPD figure).
It's an odd hobby.
Focus (the German news magazine) brings up this topic again.
There is a university investigation going on (via the Free University of Berlin)....over German Minister of Families.....Franzika Griffey (SPD Party). The accusation? Plagiarism.
After VroniPlag (the hunter crowd) made the accusation...Griffey turned to the University to evaluate and hopes that they will agree that if there was plagiarism, it wasn't to the degree of cancelling the degree. Otherwise? She's screwed, and will resign her post....to face a personal crisis with no real resolution.
Why these plagiarism hunters go at this? Two general explanations are given (rarely do any of the journalists pick this up and you have to wonder if they have some fear of the VroniPlag crowd). One comment is that they (the VroniPlag experts) that university professors are doing a lousy job of evaluating thesis products being produced. Prior to the last decade, no one could really evaluate thesis products at 'lightning speeds', but now with software, you could go through several theseis products in a week, and identify various problems.
The second reason suggested is that it's a fail-safe way to go after certain politicians (typically non-Green or non-SPD members).
The odds that universities will be forced to lock away thesises after grading? Eventually, you will go after someone will falls apart when the plagiarism charge occurs, and they commit suicide. At that point, VroniPlag folks will go into a defense posture.....but the public will feel that this was done with some malice or serious negative intent.
The odd thing about this thesis 'game' by actual students is that the majority of them will never go and write some major paper....ever again. I sat and listened to a professor back in the 1980s who talked about the woes of thesis situations, and that most students (he was talking Americans) simply were lousy writers, and not capable of original products or research. He made it clear....students needed help in their writing and figured at least ten-percent were buying papers written elsewhere and simply copying a successful thesis.
It's an odd hobby.
Focus (the German news magazine) brings up this topic again.
There is a university investigation going on (via the Free University of Berlin)....over German Minister of Families.....Franzika Griffey (SPD Party). The accusation? Plagiarism.
After VroniPlag (the hunter crowd) made the accusation...Griffey turned to the University to evaluate and hopes that they will agree that if there was plagiarism, it wasn't to the degree of cancelling the degree. Otherwise? She's screwed, and will resign her post....to face a personal crisis with no real resolution.
Why these plagiarism hunters go at this? Two general explanations are given (rarely do any of the journalists pick this up and you have to wonder if they have some fear of the VroniPlag crowd). One comment is that they (the VroniPlag experts) that university professors are doing a lousy job of evaluating thesis products being produced. Prior to the last decade, no one could really evaluate thesis products at 'lightning speeds', but now with software, you could go through several theseis products in a week, and identify various problems.
The second reason suggested is that it's a fail-safe way to go after certain politicians (typically non-Green or non-SPD members).
The odds that universities will be forced to lock away thesises after grading? Eventually, you will go after someone will falls apart when the plagiarism charge occurs, and they commit suicide. At that point, VroniPlag folks will go into a defense posture.....but the public will feel that this was done with some malice or serious negative intent.
The odd thing about this thesis 'game' by actual students is that the majority of them will never go and write some major paper....ever again. I sat and listened to a professor back in the 1980s who talked about the woes of thesis situations, and that most students (he was talking Americans) simply were lousy writers, and not capable of original products or research. He made it clear....students needed help in their writing and figured at least ten-percent were buying papers written elsewhere and simply copying a successful thesis.
EU Election in the UK?
Officially, by 29 March....the UK is supposed to be out of the EU.
On paper, if the UK does not accomplish BREXIT on 29 March.....they go into an extension, and no one is sure about what happens next.
It came out this week, via page 2-type news, that while the UK hasn't planned a May EU legislative election....if it's still in the EU, they'd have to hold an EU election.
This has led this week in the UK...for a unknown party to register itself (the BREXIT Party of course), and they intend to be prepared to campaign. For the EU, this begs lots of questions. On the German media side....almost no commentary. The effect if this unknown BREXIT Party were to get the bulk of votes from a UK EU election? Unknown.
If you were looking for a massive 'mess' for early summer, this scenario now represents a wild problem with tons of issues attached. It's worth putting it on your calendar and following.
On paper, if the UK does not accomplish BREXIT on 29 March.....they go into an extension, and no one is sure about what happens next.
It came out this week, via page 2-type news, that while the UK hasn't planned a May EU legislative election....if it's still in the EU, they'd have to hold an EU election.
This has led this week in the UK...for a unknown party to register itself (the BREXIT Party of course), and they intend to be prepared to campaign. For the EU, this begs lots of questions. On the German media side....almost no commentary. The effect if this unknown BREXIT Party were to get the bulk of votes from a UK EU election? Unknown.
If you were looking for a massive 'mess' for early summer, this scenario now represents a wild problem with tons of issues attached. It's worth putting it on your calendar and following.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)