99-percent peaceful. Some blockages limited police and ambulance movement (very minor). No one argues....as long as you declare a demo, telling the police where it will be held, allow access of emergency vehicles....it's your German 'right'.
The Agricultural Minister (Green Party guy, Özdemir)....did give a speech of some limited support.
Whole discussion? Mostly over the loss of a diesel subsidy because of 2021 supplemental budget (thrown out about four weeks ago by the Constitutional Court....saying you can't use X-funds for a non-X situation. Funds bucket being used? About 60-billion Euro.
Gov't has gone back and cranked up a minor diesel subsidy....nowhere near the original fund.
If you asked me about external political use (say the AfD Party)? Well....I'd say it's probably a 75-percent chance that some elements of AfD are connected to the farmer movement. I'd say the coalition gov't is aware of that already.
So here's the thing....you can go back over 50 years and see continually....gov't after gov't (right or left, it doesn't matter)....they've all had weak support of the farming community and a band-aid approach to this diesel tax problem.
I looked it up for 2020....around 27-percent of all German cars were diesel-burners. But then you throw in the bus community, the agricultural community, the forestry community, the construction community and even freight-train community. Anyone thinking diesel will go away? I doubt it.
The subsidy continuingly coming up? Yeah, and Germans point out literally hundreds of free-gift subsidies now existing (going way past fuel). Some express the idea....if you are going to 'burn' one group....maybe it's time to burn literally all of the various groups getting a subsidy.
Influencing elections? Yeah, it probably will affect future elections.
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It's almost certain that the AfD are agitating, even though they were a part of the special committee that UNANIMOUSLY erased the subsidy. Even their own actual policies are to abolish all subsidies, so to pretend they're on the side of the farmers is pretty rich. But I guess that's modern politics. Just lie enough and enough idiots with votes will believe you.
A simple fix to this.....up the gas/diesel tax another 5 cents, and then provide the full subsidy back to the farmers....compliments of the general public.
They already do this with the carbon tax gimmick for airline tickets...in using the tax for non-carbon gimmicks. It's like the stupid dog-tax...that just feeds into a local city fund for miscellaneous things (having nothing to do with dogs or crap).
I will say this...general public support of the farmers is way more than one might expect. If the Scholz government wanted to drop themselves another notch or two....just do nothing for next two months, and allow this to grow.
On AfD involvement....I'm not sure they are pulling the strings, or if this is Putin's KGB pulling the strings. Odd how this all relates back to the energy policy.
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