Sunday, September 13, 2020

Volker Münz, September 9, 2020, Cum/Ex Tax Deal


German Bundestag, September 9, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/172, pp. 21547-21548

Frau President. Herr Minister Scholz. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

The so-called Cum/Ex business is a matter involving the greatest tax fraud in the history of the Federal Republic. For years, investors and banks have defrauded the state by means of the capital gains tax on stock dividends. The Federal government has much too late acknowledged this fraud and much too late acted. It emanates from a mixture of incompetence and lobby influence.

In 2012, the legal regulation was at last changed. Yet this was not sufficient. As before, there persists an urgent need to act so as to prevent further tax fraud, as reputable tax experts, tax judges and the Federal Audit Authority are reminding; keyword, “Cum/Cum” or “Cum/Fake”.

The scale of this tax fraud is immense. Estimates speak of at least 32 billion euros since 2001. That this tax fraud has still not been effectively impeded is a failure of this Federal government and of Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, ladies and gentlemen.

That alone is bad enough. Now it has been made known that Olaf Scholz during his time as Hamburg’s First Bürgermeister played a disreputable role in the elaboration of the Cum/Ex scandal. Moreover, he has deceived the Finance Committee, ladies and gentlemen. The Warburg private bank of Hamburg was involved in the Cum/Ex wheeling and dealing. This bank was exempted from paying back illegally written off capital gains tax credits totaling 47 million euros by the Hamburg Finance Administration – then under First Bürgermeister Olaf Scholz and Finance Senator Tschentscher who today is Bürgermeister. This ought not to have happened, ladies and gentlemen.

Herr Scholz may not wish to remember the many meetings in the years 2016 and 2017 with the head of the Warburg bank, against whom an investigative procedure was being conducted on account of tax fraud. When he was questioned on this in the Bundestag Finance Committee, he conceded only one unimportant meeting. He was reticent concerning further contacts. Meanwhile, it has been made known that three meetings and a telephone call occurred. Unfortunately, Herr Federal Minister Scholz can no longer recall the contents of the conversations. That is unbelievable, ladies and gentlemen.  

As was acknowledged, three days after the telephone call between Herr Scholz and the head of the bank, the Hamburg Finance Administration renounced the demand for the 47 million euros. That is no accident, ladies and gentlemen. The clarification which you are currently pushing does not convince me. Ja, perhaps in your eyes 47 million euros is just peanuts, considering the hundreds of billions which you have loaded onto the citizens in the coming Federal budget. Those are details, already forgotten. The Warburg donation of over 45,000 euros to the Hamburg SPD must in this relation be mentioned. Herr Minister, what you present here goes too far and it does not fly.

Herr Minister, how do you wish to explain that to millions of honorable taxpayers? People must have the impression that here there are two standards of measurement. For the large amounts, the state apparently is not so precise. How indeed do you wish to explain that to the many citizens who have been hit or are threatened with unemployment, not least on account of the Federal government’s false policy on Corona matters, where many businesses and self-employed stand before ruin?

All of that undermines trust in our state organizations, in the state of law and in democracy – and yet not least, in the Federal Minister.

Against the background of your actions, Herr Minister Scholz, in the Cum/Ex scandal and yet also in the face of your department’s failure of financial supervision in the Wirecard affair, I demand of you: Resign!

            Dagmar Ziegler (SPD): You better sit down.



[trans: tem]







Saturday, September 12, 2020

Roland Hartwig, September 9, 2020, China


German Bundestag, September 9, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/172, pp. 21584-21585.

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The re-ascent of China is distinguishable from the end of the 1970s. It is a historical normality and actually should surprise no one. The bases for it are at hand. With hard work and intelligent economic reforms, the Chinese have made their country one of the leading nations. With us during this time, there has been the march of the 68ers through the institutions – with the result that ever more resources, detached from the facts, have been squandered on ideological projects.

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): It gets ever worse!

While the Chinese meantime build worldwide 5G networks, we oblige our Mittelstand to write job descriptions for diverse genders and shut down modern, high-efficiency power plants. That is the decadence of the 68ers which lies like a blight upon our country and which is now increasingly being confronted by reality.

Two suggestions as to how we should deal with the re-ascent of China:

First. Let us resist those who wish to force us into a new Cold War. 50 years of good relations bind us to today’s China. Unlike many European states and the U.S.A. since the fall of the Berlin Wall, China has conducted no wars.

            Michael Brand (CDU/CSU-Fulda): And they have a leader!

Much more, by means of a constructive economic policy, it has contributed to the improvement of the lives of most Chinese and yet also to that of people in Europe and other parts of the world. Prior to Corona, each year more than 100 million Chinese tourists have come to Europe and returned to China. They would not have done that if life there was as bad as is always presented by you.

            Marianne Schieder (SPD): Dear Heaven! Herr, wirf Hirn vom Himmel!

Also, in regards Russia, we should stand up to the powers which continually steer towards a confrontation. There exists the real danger of a hardening of the artificial split in the European continent whereby the western portion is reconstructed as an American bridgehead and the eastern is drawn into the Chinese sphere of influence as a junior partner.

Vice-president Thomas Oppermann: Herr Hartwig, do you allow an interim question from the FDP?

No. We must again revive the idea of a European community of sovereign states with the inclusion of Russia.

Second. Let us be upright. The Uigurs are a group of people who make up less than 1 percent of the Chinese population and whose Islamic lifestyle stands in stark contrast to the further progress of the Chinese modernization.

            Steffi Lemke (Greens): So they can be stuck in the camps, or what?

Since the 90s, this has lead to increasing tensions with the Han Chinese. The Chinese are now forcing the integration of the Uigurs into the Chinese modernity, whereby they compel them to learn the Chinese language and go through training which makes possible employment in a modern industrial society.

Criticism of this would plainly be more credible if the majority of this parliament did not each year prolong the military mission by which the Afghans, in direct vicinity of the Uigurs, shall be integrated into the western modernity. You thereby assert the same arguments as the Chinese Communist Party. You tell the people and the soldiers that it is about training and development, schools for girls and digging wells, as well as the fight against terrorism. Thousands of western soldiers, among them soldiers of the Bundeswehr, have already lost their lives in Afghanistan. The number of dead Afghans has long since exceeded one hundred thousand.

            Stefan Müller (CDU/CSU): Has the Chinese embassy written your speech?

The Americans alone have expended almost a trillion dollars there.

You wrinkle your nose at the Chinese social model. Yet your dealings with other social models, ladies and gentlemen, are not only bloodier and more expensive, they are also less successful.

            Andrej Hunko (Linke): What was that then?


[trans: tem]


Friday, September 11, 2020

Georg Pazderski, September 3, 2020, Citizen Safety in Berlin


Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus, September 3, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 18/62, pp. 7404-7406 

Herr President. Honored members. Dear Berliners. 

Do you actually know that since the red-red-green Senate entered office in 2016 that every fifth Berliner has been the victim of a criminal act? This shocking number is produced from an inquiry by the INSA opinion research institute in July of this year. Every fifth, that is around three-quarters of a million Berliners. Each individual now bears a trauma – robbed, wounded, raped, stolen from. The red-red-green coddling policy is responsible for that.   
 
The INSA data clearly shows that under red-red-green the security situation has clearly deteriorated, whether we are dealing with bodily injury, sexual assault, drugs, theft, vandalism, armed threats or politically based violence. Nowhere are more than 10 percent of those asked of the view that under red-red-green security has changed for the better. 

            Frank-Christian Hansel (AfD): Hear, hear! 

In all areas, half of those asked are at the moment even of the opinion that the situation has clearly deteriorated. Let us look at the Berlin coddling justice: Fewer that half of all Berliners believe that the courts and the judiciary well or very well safeguard security in the city. The citizens of Berlin still have real trust only in our police who, despite contrary circumstances, every day attempt to make the best of the wayward situation in our capital city. For that, I wish to quite heartily thank our police officers. 

Instead of proceeding effectively with strictness and zero tolerance against criminals, the police must continue to make do against the everyday brutality with too few personnel, obsolescent equipment and decaying stations and without any political backing. Criminals from every country laugh at the so-called anti-discrimination law. It places our police under a general suspicion and forces them to treat suspects with velvet gloves, or better yet simply no longer pursue them. A contrary, multi-cultural ideology makes the Senate the darling of the criminals, stigmatizes the police as perpetrators and victimizes the normal citizens. Many of them, especially young women, no longer go out at night and meanwhile even in the daytime avoid certain streets and parts of the city. 

While a couple of years ago we were still speaking of specific, so-called criminal hot-spots, in the meantime large parts of Berlin have become places of fear. The INSA numbers also support that. 16 percent of Berliners who were victims of a crime declare that they no longer report crimes. In the past four years, there were approximately 120,000 crimes not reported. An additional 19 percent declare that they report only most crimes; of which, an additional 145,000. In sum, it means that each year countless crimes occur which emerge in no statistic. And the Senate? It defends itself with hand and foot against the Dunkelfeld study, for years demanded by the AfD delegation, which would show the costs of crime in Berlin. 

Yet that is naturally no surprise; thus, what can continue to remain in obscurity, what simply is not allowed to be, and in no case should be admitted to the light of day – for example, those posing a potential Islamist threat. Almost four years after the terror attack in the Breitscheid Platz, they can, unhindered as always, do just as they please, just what they want. Twelve people died that time, almost 100 people were wounded, a portion seriously and continue to suffer the consequences.
What has changed since then? Nothing. The only realistic measure in this case would be deportation. Yet for red-red-green that is and remains taboo. And for that the citizens of Berlin pay the price. You…finance the livings of radical migrants who are often found hiding out in the city’s asylum centers…That is by far not all. Large parts of the city are dominated by around 10,000 members of the mostly Arabic clans. Our children and grandchildren meanwhile can buy drugs almost everywhere in Berlin as openly as bonbons or bread rolls. The result: Almost 15 percent of all drug deaths in Germany occur in our city, although only about 4.4 percent of the total population live in Berlin. 

And then there is the politically motivated, extremist criminals, primarily the leftist extremists, tolerated for decades, of the so-called house occupation scene. In certain circles of our city, it has long been considered correct to be on good terms with them. That however alters nothing of the fact that these people are dangerous, violent perpetrators and lawbreakers who do not shrink from murder and deadly assault. For once ask the targeted neighbors who each day must live with property damage, threats and encroachments, or the owners of countless autos burnt in Berlin. We know whereof we speak. At the same time comes the order from on high: Our police are not allowed to intervene. Inconceivable! And when an operation is once again permitted, the officers are struck with a brutal violence lacking nothing of that of Islamist terrorists. 

Left-green politicians have long since forgotten the Berlin police officer assigned to the syndicate disturbance and who still struggles for his eyesight. We here wish him a good recovery. – It is telling, I really must say, that you also do not applaud. Unbelievable, unbelievable! – Instead, these politicians even rejoice and esteem the development of lawless areas in the Rigaer- and Liebigstrasse as part of the reconstruction of a once functioning city into an apparently diverse, open-air laboratory experiment. A laboratory experiment long since out of control and which can only be stopped with the most radical measures – a viewpoint besides shared by every normal citizen around. 

            Frank-Christian Hansel (AfD): Even the Greens! 

Even Herrmann, the Green district mayor of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, this week demanded more police for her district because the district is increasingly neglected and now, in addition to problems with drugs, come trash heaps in the streets and parks. For that, she holds responsible her red-red-green comrades on the government bench. Only, this news does not matter to the chief ideologues of the Senate administration. It simply does not fit into a left-green-socialist worldview. 

Only in this city will harsh measures be called for should there be critics of the proper policy. Tens of thousands of peaceful Corona demonstrators were purposely criminalized and stigmatized because, many hundreds of meters away, crazies waved imperial and Turkish flags on the steps of the Reichstag and recited nonsense. 

            Sven Heinemann (SPD): The AfD was also there! 

            Hakan Taş (Linke): Where was the AfD? 

That is in no way to express approval, yet this group was clearly not a danger to Berliners and certainly not to our democracy. 

    President Ralf Wieland: Herr Pazderski, may I ask you whether an interim question 
   of the member - ?
No, I want to bring this to an end. 

Our democracy would be in a bad way if it could be endangered by a few hundred loonies, quite probably prevailed upon by undercover men. There are complications which are now being politically used as a diversion from the incompetence of an overwhelmed Interior Minister. Yet that will not succeed. It was he who wished to forbid, on untenable grounds, a demonstration by cross-section of the people. 

            Anne Helm (Linke): The fascists have understood that! They tried that! 

It was he, along with the radical spirits, who first called up the plan. And it was he, in common with his police leadership, appointed and over-burdened by the red-red-green Senate, who was not capable of developing a usable operations concept for this past weekend. And all of that was at the cost of the mass of peaceful demonstrators who now, quite precisely and maliciously, will be placed in a false light. And all of that on the backs of the Berlin police who must suffer for this devastating failure. 

Herr Geisel, you are the symbol of the failures of the red-red-green Senate all along the line. Now you attempt, still the coward, to slink away from political responsibility. Take your hat and leave at last the political stage of this city. We have no need of an old cadre of the SED. 

            Sven Heinemann (SPD): Shamelessness! Go to the devil! 

            President Ralf Wieland: Herr colleague, I draw your attention, 
           that your speaking time is at an end.   

 You are incapable and cause by your every official act additional damage. You are responsible for the fact that red-red-green in regards the defense of the safety of the citizen has miserably failed. 

            (Cries from the SPD): For which part of your delegation have you now spoken? 

The truth hurts, I know!


[trans: tem]




Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Sylvia Limmer, September 8, 2020, EU Climate Goal

AfD Kompakt, September 8, 2020.

Even the previous goal of a 40 percent reduction of greenhouse emissions by 2030 was an assault on economic and ecological reason. It was based on the limitation of climate warming to 1.5º C, announced at the Paris climate conference. With a Stone Age ecology drawn up according to the civil-religious Greta Diktat, 55 percent is to be demanded, on the same basis and without new facts. Or that 65 percent emissions reduction by 2030 being pushed by the EU’s standing committee on the environment. Like Germany since 2015, the climate rescue over-bidding competition is without borders.

No consideration will taken of the losses. Entire branches of industry are threatened with collapse. Fundamental principles of the market economy, which have made this continent great, will be trampled underfoot and sacrificed on the altar of an ostensible eco-planned economy. That the Christian Democrats meanwhile take up this green agenda impressively demonstrates what they stand for: For a trendy [zeitgeistaffinen] opportunism and nothing else. We emphatically reject this view.  


[trans: tem]