So, I'll try to make this simple and blunt.
Three (so far) CDU/CSU Party members (names you probably never heard of)....are businessmen at heart. They went out in the middle of the mask demand period (summer of 2020)....when the govenrnment mandated that you had to wear masks.
Most German journalists don't remember the period, but you had an enormous shortfall of masks around. I was ahead of the ballgame by a month...figuring it would come and actually had a box of paper-masks procured for what was then a normal price. If I had waited two months, the box would have been two to three times the cost factor (going up to around 50 to 60 Euro, for what was normally 19 Euro).
Across Germany, for roughly two months....masks simply weren't available at the amount required.
My wife's boss spent his own profits to buy cloth masks for the employees and hand them out. These weren't cheap....amounting to 9 to 10 Euro each....but they were re-usable (that was the selling point).
Literally hundreds of German entrepreneurs had contacts in China, Vietnam, Turkey, etc.....going to them, and setting up 'deals'. So trucks started to arrive.
The government? Well....they set up bulk purchase schemes, without a lot of thought. As the trucks arrived....there's literally thousands of pallets, and no place to store the masks, or any plan to distribute them. The payment back to the entrepreneurs? Slow, to say the least.
These three CDU-CSU guys got into the middle of this, and had mask deliveries done.
So right now, in the heat of two state elections (Pfalz and Baden-Wurttemberg)....they (the opposition parties and news media) have put this dynamic out there.
'Evil' capitalists is uttered.
The three? They will quietly exit the campaign, and the whole thing has made a mess for the leadership of the CDU/CSU folks to clean up.
Observations? I have six:
1. Why the public TV folks are making such a big deal about this? One of the twenty-odd platforms that the CDU-CSU folks are talking about is the forced reorganization and downsizing of the public TV 'empire'. They have a reason to hurt the CDU-CSU folks as much as possible.
2. For the SPD and Green parties....in both the Pfalz and Baden-Wurttemberg election....they figure this scandal will harm the CDU enough to capture five extra points from these state elections.
3. What no one really points out....literally hundreds of these entrepreneurs went out and schemed on getting the masks because the German government itself was SO INCOMPETENT on procurement. They did all of this crap to mandate the masks, with a urgent 'you-must-wear' date....but knew nothing about how to deliver such masks cheaply to the public.
4. For the massive amount of 'dumping' going on.....no one has said a word about the other 99.9-percent of entrepreneurs who did the exact same thing....profiting off the procurement of the stupid masks.
5. For CDU-CSU folks who are engaged in land purchases in the inner-cities....working up property speculation deals in Frankfurt, Stuttgart or Bremen? Isn't that the same ethical dilemma....profiting in some way? But if they were dealing in antique used cars, holding wine until the pricing doubles, or speculating upon new medical technology....would that fit into this speculation business as well?
6. Finally, I look over at Green Party or environmentalists....their efforts have set up the electrical rates in Germany to be the highest of any European county....shouldn't this be a scandal as well? These current efforts to get deep into the farming or meat/pork business....increasing the cost factor in a dramatic way....isn't that a scandal as well?
It's just comical how no masks really existed for the dramatic mandate that occurred, and how entrepreneurs came into the picture....getting the masks manufactured, and then shipped into Germany to meet the demand. The German government wasn't capable of doing this....only the entrepreneurs had this knowledge and capability. The three? Just three of several thousand who did what had to be done because of governmental incompetency.
No comments:
Post a Comment