Alice Weidel, August 16, 2023, Olaf Scholz

AfD Kompakt, August 16, 2023. 

In Germany, failure of the state has a name: Olaf Scholz! The result of the latest survey of the German people’s trust in the state is a ringing slap in the face for Chancellor Scholz and the Ampel government. These office-holding failures of the state ultimately bear the responsibility for that ever more people are losing their trust in our state. All state services and institutions in comparison to last year were evaluated as worse and on the whole miserable. That can and may not so continue! We of the AfD are doing all to reverse these fatal mis-developments. We are putting an end to open borders, escalating criminality, a desolate transport infrastructure and the destruction of Germany as a business venue. 

 

[trans: tem]

Rainer Kraft, July 6, 2023, Emissions Decree

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/115, p. 14242. 

Esteemed President. Valued colleagues.

 The 31^st decree presented for the enforcement of the Federal emissions protection law is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Duty-bound, the protection of labor and environment is addressed, and you promise the new, the healed world. Yet, thought through to the end, your assessment means the zero harm strategy, that the safest workplace is no workplace, and that the most environmentally friendly production is to be a production outside of Germany. 

Chemistry, ladies and gentlemen, chemistry is life; life which you gladly wish to comprehensively control and regulate. Your planned economy shall thereby be in reality implemented by legions of self-named consultants, institutes and agents. You create entirely new job descriptions without any productive activity – to the harm of the entire nation and its citizens who everyday stand at the value-creation front.    

I know, you can only with difficulty imagine; solvents in industry are indispensable. They make possible the manufacture of chemicals, undertake cleaning chores, support the production fabrication, and assist in the optimization of the surface area; in regards corrosion protection, phosphating, chromating, anodization, etching, painting, and in regards to thousands of additional uses which you want to restrict and make more expensive. 

You assert that an intensification of the emissions protection would have no effect on the consumer prices. That – and it needs be said quite clearly – is a lie, and a bad one at that. For of course added certifications cost money. Of course additional expertise costs money. Of course additional bureaucratic positions in Brussels cost money. And of course the unnecessary re-equipment of industrial installations costs money. 

It is the taxpayers’ money which you here, with your dream of an eco-socialist Utopia, throw out the window by the handful. Many, many small and mid-sized businesses require in one form or another simple solvents. What else remains for these businesses as a result of your price hustling than to shift the costs onto their customers? 

As if that were not enough, the product quality will also suffer. The quality of paints and colors will diminish. Metals will rust sooner; woods will more quickly rot. Your reducing plan is the way back to the Dark Ages. That has something to do neither with sustainability nor with environmental protection. It will simply cost money and workplaces. 

We of the AfD say no; no to your irrational fear of everything which human ingenuity and the urge to create has brought forward; no to your agenda hostile to economy and freedom, and no to measures which serve environmental protection only on paper. The Federal emissions protection decree should serve the German people and not put together an additional stimulus program for India or China. We, the AfD, want to export goods, not workplaces. We reject the decree.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

  

 

 

Klaus Stöber, July 6, 2023, Business Tax Reform

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/115, pp. 14107-14108. 

Right honorable Frau President. Valued colleagues. Dear guests in the gallery. 

I first want to express my gratitude to the CDU/CSU, that they have brought this theme into plenary session. Yet the fact is that we on the Finance Committee have concerned ourselves far too little with the theme of taxes. 

Some have thereby appeared to forget that without tax revenues simply nothing here could get underway: Frau Baerbock could not give away millions in foreign countries; for the EU, we would fail to be the most important payer of contributions; and even the grandiose subventions and ostensible grants, which you here in connection with the heating law wanted to distribute, would simply be impossible. Yet the heating law has,  ja, just now been taken down from the daily order by the Federal Constitutional Court. I think that was a good decision. 

The question is naturally: Do the citizens perceive the present tax system as just, and does the high tax burden restrict the competitiveness of our country? I find interesting in this connection a look at the tax rates in international comparison: Bulgaria, 10 percent; Hungary, nine percent; Lithuania, 15 percent; Roumania, 16 percent; Czechia and Poland, 19 percent; and Greece, 22 percent. 

When one looks in comparison at who are the principal receiver countries within the EU, one sees: They are precisely the same countries which are on this list. It is thus interesting that the countries which exact the least taxes from their citizens are those receiving the most money from the EU. That means we are in principle financing the tax programs of the European countries. And that, I think, is not the purpose [Sinn] of the EU. 

It is thus not to be wondered that Germany as principal payer with around 22 billion euros net has comparatively the highest tax burden. And here also, in answer to the big question, is referral to the minimum tax of 15 percent not helpful; for if you have comprehended the tax rates which I have just read out, you may see: Most already lie well nigh at or above the limit of 15 percent. Which corresponds exactly to this corporation tax which we have in Germany. 

Only, what you always ignore: In Germany – which is unique in Europe – besides the corporation tax, we even pay an excise tax [Gewerbsteuer], and the excise tax of course clearly drives the total tax rate of businesses to the heights. We are then overall at around 30 percent, and that is the highest value in Europe. It especially most harshly affects the Mittelstand economy. 

While France last year clearly reduced its business tax rate, we here in Germany are far distant from that. The excise tax is a foreign body in international tax comparison. If we want to reconstruct the competitiveness, we need to reform or even abolish this. I know, the excise tax is the principal source of budget income for many local governments. On that account, we of course need to find adequate instruments; for example, a higher participation of the local governments in the income tax and in the sales tax [Umsatzsteuer]. That would essentially help in local governments; for we have just seen in regards Corona that even the business tax has a high variability, and therefore the local governments have naturally met with greater difficulties.   

Now of course Schlaumeier could say: Each businessman can himself freely choose whether he founds a GmbH [limited liability company] or a sole proprietorship. Right, yes. Yet a sole proprietorship of 63,000 euros income is already at the top tax rate of 42 percent, and that again in the European mean is the top value. 

We thus require no continual poking around in whichever existing system; we require a unified business tax [Unternehmenssteuer], independent of legal form, which relieves especially small- and mid-sized businesses. We require a distinct increase in the basic allowance, a distinct extension of the rates table in which the top tax rate is very much later implemented, and we require, before all things, a simplification in tax law and the abolition of many special cases. Here, I gladly invite you to get underway in common with us a real business tax reform. 

Many thanks.

            Kay Gottschalk (AfD): A very good speech! 

 

[trans: tem]

Peter Boehringer, August 1, 2023, Constitution Defense

AfD Kompakt, August 1, 2023. 

It is not yet four weeks that we of the AfD national committee needed to warn the President of the BfV [Federal Office for the Defense of the Constitution] of fully unfair election recommendations, neither appropriate nor permitted to his office. At the beginning of July, he already publicly insinuated, “Not alone to the Constitution Defense” does it “belong to reduce the polling results of the AfD”; and “I believe this is a circumstance [of the AfD] which German voters should also have in the back of the mind.” 

And the present, renewed, over-reaching, false statements, in no way substantiated by Haldenwang during the current nominations convention for the European election, are by us in no case acceptable. Haldenwang, with his babble of “extreme right conspiracy theories”, wants to have direct influence, quasi “live”, in an important intra-party process, and again express a warning to citizens against an AfD election. That is plainly not permitted according to Art 21(1) GG [Basic Law], Art 11 EMRK [European Convention on Human Rights] and §16(1) BverfSchG [Federal Constitution Defense Law]. 

That the German government attempts to manipulate, well beforehand, elections in Europe by means of its government defense authorities, is obviously unworthy of a democratic state of law. Haldenwang attempts to one-sidedly influence the sovereigns’ voting behavior. That a Geheimdienst [intelligence service] of this type meddles in the democratic determination process, would seem to be unique among democracies – and is of course illegal. Already in 1977, the Federal Constitutional Court quite unmistakably forbade precisely such conduct (BVerfG, Urt. V. 2.3.1977, Az 2 BvE 1/76). And also the founding legislation, BVerfSchG §16(1), quite clearly ordered: “The BfV is not to be an institution of political formation”. Neither the giving of election recommendations nor commentaries on current democratic processes is a duty of the Geheimdienstes. 

The accusations again raised by Haldenwang concerning so-called “extremist right conspiracy theories”  were already a part of the charges against the AfD of the Constitution Defense report of 2022. The President of the BfV was expressly questioned on this in the Interior Committee of the German Bundestag. And to repeated questions there, Haldenwang could neither explain what his legal definition of a “conspiracy narrative” generally is, nor which such narratives are then generally incompatible with the Constitution. Just as little could he explain which of these narratives are judicable or pose a danger to the FDGO [free, democratic basic order]; no more, permitted expressions of opinion… The long since confirmed suspicion that the BfV is operating primarily a partisan political defamation campaign opposed to the AfD has thereby become a certainty. Its President is not in a position to substantiate, genuinely fact-oriented, objectively comprehensible, his serious accusations. On account of the evidently purely political motivations of the Constitution Defense’s entire work against the AfD, “inter alia Faeser”, in our opinion all categorization and observation measures of the AfD are to be halted. 

 

[trans: tem]

Barbara Lenk, July 6, 2023, Artificial Intelligence

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/115, p. 14257. 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen. Valued colleagues. 

We today discuss a motion of the Linke delegation for the debate on the EU legislation for generative artificial intelligence. As usual, the Linke’s petitioners hunt after the phantom of an alleged discrimination by means of algorithms. As usual, they see the cure for saving the situation in an unbounded regulation of AI which is adapted to nip in the bud every creative impulse in regards start-ups as well as small and Mittlestand businesses. Their motion is thereby not approvable; since it prevents a future-oriented alignment of Germany’s policy with the goal of a digital sovereignty. 

As examples of generative AI, you name ChatGPT, Dall-E and Midjourney. These generators for pictures and text of U.S. American businesses determine the perception of larger AI models for the end user. 

Right honorable ladies and gentlemen, we should not forget: There are also generative AI made in Germany; for instance, the open source software Stable Diffusion or the chatbot Luminous of Aleph Alpha. 

The demands in the motion put forward by the Linke delegation hide the danger of throttling the creative dynamic of the German AI landscape in research and business. It is senseless to categorize generative AI per se as high-risk and thereby force it under the yoke of examinations and obligations. An AI is a neutral tool. Its potential for use or harm evolves as a result of the intentions of its users. A drone-borne camera can, for example, take spectacular photos of climbers on a cliff. Yet such a camera can also pursue a citizen in a city and brand his behavior as “socially undesirable”. 

In brief: The motion put forward by the Linke delegation we can only reject. The actual risk which threatens Germany in the matter of AI is the growing economic divide between Germany and the U.S.A. or China. So that the digital divide does not deepen into an AI canyon, Germany needs to finally invest in AI suitable data centers. This should also be intelligible to the Herr Federal Finance Minister! The door of digital sovereignty in regards AI is still open. The Linke’s motion however leads into an impassable labyrinth without return. This way we do not follow. 

Many thanks for the attention. Shortly before the close, I wish all colleagues a nice time off. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Ulrike Schielke-Zeising, July 17, 2023, Old Age Pensions and Poverty

AfD Kompakt, July 17, 2023. 

An increase of 15 percent in one, single year: Such figures do not fall from heaven, they are the result of a total failure of pensions policy. All the talk of a “rich” Germany alters nothing of the facts: Now already every third pensioner receives a pension below the basic security (2021: 853 euros); a large portion of the old age pensioners are scarcely above that. 

So far today, more than a quarter of all pensioners are considered “officially” as poor – that in the future will be the rule rather than the exception. It is becoming more difficult: Germany is the laggard in Europe as is it pertains to real property and asset formation. That means: For whom the statutory pension no more suffices, he falls unchecked into poverty. Precisely that is happening now. Exploding living standard costs, rising rents, all the – avoidable – consequences of wrong political decisions, impact unchecked on the seniors’ living situation. 

Of a 3,000 euro inflation premium, as the ministers and state secretaries receive, the pensioners can only dream. And, thus far, they are still poor, even with a pension increase (most recently, 4.39 percent or 5.86 percent in respectively western or eastern Germany). Since this, as is known, is accounted for in the basic security. In other words: He who has, to him will be given; who cannot defend himself, goes away empty. That is the outcome of the “progressive coalition” in Germany. 

How it may otherwise, we have already indicated in our key points paper on old age security, and presently with our motion (Drs. 20/7461). 

 

[trans: tem]