The 5th of January Pegida Marches

The German news sources generally all report another high showing of people on the Monday night Pegida marches.  Roughly 17,000 to 18,000 are reported in Dresden, Several hundred showed up to march in Koln, but met up with roughly 7,000 anti-Pegida supporters.  Several cities had anti-Pegida supporters out in force....with the SPD and Linke Party in support.

For Dresden, I noticed that the cops reported that they had roughly a thousand police somewhere in the Dresden area and trying to ensure zero confrontations.  The same can generally be said of other major German cities.  Overtime and lack of coverage for normal police operations?  Yeah, I'd take a guess that these events....whether Pegida or anti-Pegida is now taxing the German police situation.  These events occur only on Mondays, and at night....so you can figure that the cops involved have to put in at least six hours of coverage.  A lot of the cops probably also got called into soccer game coverage from Saturday or Sunday.

All of this brings me to the odd observation....this is the midst of winter.  Normally, protest groups don't center operations or marches in the winter.  If you can get 17,000 people to show up and it's freezing cold.....what does it say when we reach early April?  Larger crowds?  It's very likely.  For the German political players....it's a forecasted issue that they will have to deal with.  When you see a Monday night crowd of forty thousand starting to gather, and five or six cities averaging this....it's a public relations issue.

At some point, you start to ask a stupid question or two.  The unemployment numbers in Germany always look 'great'.  Taxes seem to be working and bringing in more than enough revenue funds.  The per capital wealth appears to be improving.  The government continually tells people that refugees and immigrants coming into Germany are an "asset".  The government even says there is no additional burden on society.  But then you look over at the dire financial side of state and city governments around Germany....all starting to go into some debt issues....talking of infrastructure funding issues (bridges, roads, buildings, etc)....and continually begging for more money to cover the cost of immigration/refugee centers in their midst.  Something isn't right here.