Tino Chrupalla, June 21, 2021, AfD in Russia

AfD Kompakt, June 21, 2021 

The Russian government’s invitation shows that our efforts for a new start of German-Russian relations have fallen on fruitful ground. I am happy to again take up the numerous lines of conversation which arose during my first visit and Frau Weidel’s visit to the Russian capital. It is a particular honor that the visit occurs in the time of the (very important for the Russian side) 80^th anniversary of Germany’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union of June 22, 1941. That testifies to the trust that meanwhile has developed in relation with our Russian interlocutors [Gesprächspartnern].

 

[trans: tem]

 

Rainer Kraft, June 10, 2021, Sustainability, Climate, Equality

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/233, pp. 29939-29940.

Right honorable Herr President. Esteemed colleagues.

Before we cast a glance at the sustainability, a brief word on the FDP’s motion in connection with climate neutral flying: Your motion is from 2019, and it is not well altered, it needs be said. At a time when Lufthansa has already cut 24,000 positions and considers cutting an additional 10,000 positions, you present a motion in which the German Bundestag shall determine the fulminating growth of the aviation branch by the CO₂ emissions proceeding therefrom. 

Ja, dear FDP, in which bunker have you spent the last 15 months that it has escaped you that the aviation branch is stuck in the greatest crisis since there was an aviation? While the people are alarmed about their jobs, you want us to occupy ourselves with CO₂ output measured by completely obsolete prognoses. For this tactlessness, you should be just a little bit ashamed.

Dear FDP, you should also work a bit on your priorities. Since the duty of the flight pilots is not to reduce the CO₂ emissions of aircraft, but to bring the aircraft with all its crew and passengers safely to the place of destination.

Quite briefly on the recent motions of the Greens: Dear Greens, gender speech is Idioten speech

            Dietmar Bartsch (Linke): Idiotinnen!

and thereby all is said on that.

Yet now all for sustainability. The re-working of the German sustainability strategy tinkers with the symptoms without addressing the central problem. This central problem is the Federal government’s false emphasis regarding the original sustainability goals of Agenda 2030. Although the principal concern of Agenda 2030 is the struggle against worldwide poverty, this Federal government unilaterally further posits the goals of climate protection and the reduction of a supposed inequality.

…For the increase of so-called renewable energy, you make allowance for the logging of forests and the industrialization of acreage. Yet you thereby contradict sustainability goal 15: Sustainability of the eco-system in the country as well as a sustainable forestry management. The logging of a forest so as to install a wind energy plant is no sustainable forestry management.

You also contradict sustainability goal 2: The struggle against worldwide hunger in which you sacrifice agricultural acreage for wind energy plants and solar farms. Your entire, ostensibly sustainable energy policy is the greatest enemy of sustainability goal 7: You are not concerned for a reliable, clean energy of good value, but for a future in which electricity becomes a luxury good, and which is only unreliably at disposal and only at horrendous prices. And as a result of the shutdown of nuclear power plants, this energy also becomes still dirtier.

The contradictions continue. And it becomes ever more abstruse as your policy counteracts the sustainability goals. You say you strive for a lowering of primary energy requirements. Yet at the same time you want to establish a completely electricity-based Power-to-X economy; for which, on account of the massive energy transformation losses thereby incurred, you however first of all need to generate the necessary energy from the beginning. That is to say: Your primary energy requirement initially goes up drastically. It shoots you through the roof. A more contradictory policy is seldom seen, and it is due to be simply voted out in the fall.

You conduct your fight against the alleged inequality with ever the same socialist sledgehammer methods. He who is successful or diligent, efficient or productive, he receives taxes and duties and is overcome by bureaucracy until all is subordinated to the SPD’s acknowledged sense of justice: Less for all, or make all equal – equally poor.

Among other purposes, your measures have little to do with the improvement of living standards. Quite the opposite: You burden those of low income by means of your energy, tax and finance policy. You thereby make it more difficult for the people to be able to lead an independent, self-determined life of dignity on their own power and without dependence on the state transfer of benefits.

Yet quite obviously is it your intention to take away just as much as possible from the people by means of high taxes and duties so as then with little scraps to again purchase from them good will, good conduct and votes.

Lastly, something on your facile and absurd sustainability strategy indicators; for example, the detection [Erfassung] of criminal acts, which should decline. Na, ja, it would be desirable if the number of criminal acts in the country would decline, not their detection, or – better yet – if the clarification rate in Germany would increase. Yes, that would be a step towards a state of law. Yet the mere detection is not that; since the mere detection is only an act of bureaucratic administration. Or do we want a situation as in Mexico, for example? There, criminal acts are diligently detected, yet only approximately 2% are clarified. Thus in Mexico rules a de facto lawlessness. Yet is nice that you there have detected all.

It remains to retain as a conclusion that the over-worked German sustainability strategy indicates no coherence with the policy presently practiced in Germany. Your policy leads to poverty, to de-industrialization, to massive consumption of acreage, to energy scarcity and to environmental destruction. Whatever good is stuck into Agenda 2030 will be ruined by your policy, and there besides remains in the end only your eco-socialist uniformity porridge.

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, June 10, 2021, Pensions

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/233, pp. 30042-30043.

Right honorable Frau President. Esteemed colleagues. Esteemed citizens.

The Federal Fiscal Court has now written in the register to the Federal government that it needs to improve the taxation of pensions. Only so can a double taxation be avoided in the future. The decision of May 19 of this year comes late but is not surprising. Already 17 years ago, in January 2004, the Pension Insurance had expressly warned: The personal tax exemption cannot be evaluated as a tax-exempt pension benefit. – That is also still to be read after 17 years in the 30 page opinion on the old-age income law of the Association of German Pension Insurance Underwriters. Despite clear references to the constitutional problems, the old-age income law was then rammed through. That is not only bad form but is also on the border of legality.

In the year 2019 alone have 140,000 protests on pension taxation been entered at the Finance offices. This protest avalanche was however for the Federal government no cause for activity. Here also the disengagement and inactivity of the Federal government has deposited itself over the country like mildew.

Our delegation’s motion of May 31, 2019, for the abolition of pension double taxation laid the finger in the wound. That was nevertheless for this Federal government no reason for action. Rather it was rejected without reflection in committee in April of this year. The coalition wanted to await the Federal Fiscal Court’s decision. Waiting is apparently the central formula of this Federal government.

The Federal Fiscal Court has now in its equality calculations also incorporated one, if occasion arises, for paying widows’ pensions. Only on that account does the Federal Fiscal Court come to the conclusion that the double taxation is not now already present. Whether and how a possible widows pension will be incorporated into equality calculations appears to us at least worthy of discussion. Not every pensioner has a marriage partner.

In any case, there now needs quickly be a new statutory regulation which is then comprehensible and resilient. Otherwise the pensioner will continue uninsured, and there will be additional untold thousands of protest procedures and complaints. The pensioners’ trust should not be further exhausted.

We have the formula of inactive waiting not only in regards the pension double taxation. We also have it in regards a problem which unfortunately is much greater than the two-time taxation of pensions. We have in the coming years a demographic problem in regards the statutory pension. The government indeed has so far in some way scraped by; but when the cohort from the birth-rich 60s goes into retirement, then it will be really tight in regards the pensions. All that is not surprising; since for decades is known the population development. We here straightaway lack the children as new contributors to the Pension Insurance.

Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): Children pay no pension contribution! Children should go to school! Since when do children pay contributions?

The present concept of the Federal government’s council foresees a lengthening of the working lifetime. The prescription of the council is the pension at 68. The pension at 68 tells many of those who do manual labor to work until the doctor comes, or is a pension with deductions.

I ask myself what the Pension Commission, convened in 2018 specifically for the further development of the pension system, has actually done in three long years.The long-term development of the relations of pensions claims and contribution income has been known for decades. What now threatens is a disaster with notification. To be arguing here with the increasing life expectancy is insincere. The central point nevertheless is whether someone can still work and how many years he has already worked. It is nevertheless plain: Who begins early to work should also be able to go early into retirement. It is simply insincere to speak of shocking finance problems so as to palm off onto the citizens a working lifetime of 50 years.

We of the AfD want freedom of pension entry and no fixed age of pension entry. Certainly he who has performed 45 years of contributory time should go into retirement without deductions, when and where he wants.

The hallmark of 16 years of Merkel government for the statutory pension: A gigantic demographic problem without the beginning of a solution. For that, the non-insurance benefits in 16 Merkel years have drastically increased by means of election gifts. The uncovered deficit regarding non-insurance benefits is at 35 billion euros, year for year. We thus have in regards the statutory pension a greater reform backlog at the cost of future generations.

If we look at the total balance of the Merkel government for old-age provision, then it becomes still worse. The Riester pension is at hand, to be pulped. The company pensions and life insurances struggle with the long-term zero interest. And the pensioners receive for their savings at the savings accounts not only no interest but also must come up with negative interest.

Our country is strong and sustains much. But a 16 year reform backlog in the statutory pension and 16 years of false switchings in the economic, social and European policy weigh heavily. In September we must reset the switches and in common set about the reforms in all areas – for a Germany with a future.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Roland Hartwig, June 10, 2021, Constitution Defense

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/233, p. 29977.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The AfD also sees considerable need for reform of the Constitution Defense.

            Stephan Thomae (FDP): I can imagine!

Behind this still quite friendly sounding name is hidden nothing other than a domestic secret service which has been committed to spy upon and publicly stigmatize political movements with secret service means like the listening in on telephones and the interception of e-mails. It is thus the more important that such a service be closely and exclusively bound by statute and law.

We see a need for action on two levels. For starters, the legal scope for this service needs to be improved. My delegation has here put forward two draft laws [Drucksache 19/ 30406, 304012] from which I want to call to attention just two aims in view.

First. Those affected shall receive an essentially improved right of information so as to ascertain which  information concerning them was gathered by the secret service.

Second. Criminal offenses committed in service by so-called undercover investigators shall in the future always, apart from quite narrowly limited exceptions, be reported to the state’s attorney office and by this also be prosecuted. Presently, the authorities’ administration can look away when it attributes no considerable significance to the criminal offense, and that is even for crimes subject to a minimum sentence of one year’s incarceration. That is unworthy of a state of law.

However a more fundamental need for reform exists at a second, political level. The Constitution Defense is no neutral institution like the Federal Audit Authority, but is subsumed by the Interior Ministry and thus by party politicians. This is a fundamental weaving flaw which needs to be disentangled; since it is to be feared that not each of the increasingly leftist-oriented politicians can withstand the attempt to commit this secret service as a political weapon in an indeed permanently summoned up struggle against the right. And of that there is a thorough-going example.

With permission of the President, I want to here cite the former leader of the Federal Office for the Defense of the Constitution, Herr Maaßen,

            André Hahn (Linke): Oh Gott!

            Beatrix von Storch (AfD): Maaßen, nicht Gott!

who in December 2020 in the “Preußischen Allgemeinen Zeitung” said – quote – :

I nevertheless need accordingly state that massive personal pressure was exerted on me to finally observe the AfD. That was an improper, an unaccustomed pressure [ein ungebührlicher, ein ungewöhnlicher Druck] from which I gained the impression that here I should be instrumentalized for partisan political purposes. I even in part felt myself compelled.

            Frank Sitta (FDP): There is an authority to direct.

Here at the latest need really all alarm bells ring out for you, ladies and gentlemen, even so as for the people out there in the country.

            Konstantin von Notz (Greens): The “Preußischen Allgemeinen Zeitung”                                wants that!

Against this background is it to be wondered that the Constitution Defense increasingly attacks political positions which were represented 20 years ago by the CDU/CSU when they were still conservative?

            Frank Sitta (FDP): When was that then?

The impression increasingly enforces itself that today’s Constitution Defense wants to defend the government and its, in many fields, utterly failed policy against criticism and opposition. Constitution Defense is however not government defense; since otherwise it would be nothing more than the continuation of politics by secret service means and thereby in the end itself be a danger for our democracy. It therefore needs be comprehensively on the testing stand.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]