Joachim Steyer, November 10, 2021, Rainwater

Baden-Württemberg Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 17/18, pp. 875-877.

Right honorable Herr President. Right honorable colleagues.

In my speech, I seek your consent for the promotion of rainwater use installations [Regenwassernutzungsanlagen]. I will in the following explain what the problem is and why these installations are in part a solution. Should you have any questions as to my speech, I would be happy to be permitted to answer them.

After three hot, dry summers, we subsequently just had a couple of stormy months with heavy rains and flooding – even here directly in front of the Landtag. If the scientific prognoses prove correct, these weather events could soon be the rule and no longer the exception.

            Andreas Deuschle (CDU) and Thomas Poreski (Greens): And so climate change!

            Bernd Gögel (AfD): That is not disputed!

Bund and State are already working on a water strategy which will deal with the consequences of heavy rains and periods of drought. Before we reach a solution to these problems, we should yet peruse a few essentials.

Water is the basis of life. Not for nothing is the Earth named the blue planet. Water is the most precious thing we have.

…

In regards water, in contrast to the climate, we are not dependent on foreign countries. If Saudi princes think they need to install giant, artificial show gardens in the middle of the desert, then that perhaps is bad for Saudi Arabia’s water supply, but not for us.

Therefore, let us in common make our homeland weather-proof. Support that we here in the southwest bring about a solid promotion of rainwater use installations.

The principle of these installations is as simple as it is effective. Rainwater which hits the roof surface no longer trickles away unused but will be caught, filtered and stored in underground containers, so-called cisterns. These installations thus have alike a double use. By means of added storage capacity, the consequences of storms and heavy rains will clearly be ameliorated. And in drought periods, sufficient water is then still at hand. Thus may the garden be watered, the toilets flushed and even the washing machine operated. The fire department has an additional source of quenching water and, before all, we thereby save no end of costly drinking water.

Yet that is not enough. When more people have rainwater use installations in their homes, then fewer retention basins will be required and then the canalization will be facilitated. Local communities which now already work at their limit of capacity would no longer be forced to build and maintain this infrastructure on the same scale. Thus are rainwater use installations the optimal answer to climate change. They put us in the position to stop the injurious masses of water during flooding and the conversion to costly substitute drinking water during times of drought.

Rainwater use installations are a return investment in the future. If one considers how much savings they make possible – less consumption of drinking water, less required infrastructure, relief of purification installations – then one recognizes: These installations are definitely worth being promoted. The uses for the general public far exceed the investment costs and that is only the financial aspect.

…

However, in regards the implementation, one thing for me is quite especially important. Already, the people no longer find affordable housing in the cities. Let us prevent that we simply attach the rainwater use installations to the anyway already existing wish list for new construction.

You know what I’m talking about. Building insulation, solar cells and roof vegetation. If we now also increase the expense of construction in the country, where will the people live? With this motion, we now have the opportunity to take care that all are able to profit therefrom: The homeowner, the renter, the local communities, the insurers and – with the avoidance of flood damages – the entire country. Here it is a matter of adapting, with a good eye and factual understanding, to the actual situation of the locality, which is possible and, before all, sensible.

…

Basically, we stand before the question, How do we want in the future to shape the roofs? How do we want to use the surface? For rainwater use installations or for solar energy? It is all the same whether photovoltaic or solar thermal: This allows combining all with one another without a problem. The water still flows off the roof surface and will be captured.

Finally, I arrive at the second part of our motion. Because less water will be consumed, some local communities, on the basis of particular relations with the water works associations, have as a result financial disadvantages. In clear text: Local communities which save water pay for that. That is rubbish and urgently needs to be changed. The increased costs need then be necessarily shifted to the citizens, and those who possess no rainwater use installations will then be financially disadvantaged.

Let us in common build infrastructure secured for the crises of the coming decades. For as we know since “William Tell”: The wise man takes precautions.

…

This time, jump over your shadows, show some backbone and vote for the AfD’s motion [Drucksache 17/748], as we also ever again vote for your motions, because it is about the interests of the citizens and not those of the politicians. Here and now you have the opportunity to demonstrate that you are ready to place the welfare of the country and its citizens above party interests.

            Udo Stein (AfD): They would then need to resign!

 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Frank-Christian Hansel, November 18, 2021, Berlin Election and Giffey

Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus, Plenarprotokoll 19/2, pp. 65-66.

Right honorable Frau President. Valued colleagues. Dear Berliners. Right honorable Interior – or should I say election breakdown – Senator.

If you have thought: Na, ja, the elections have been poorly or stupidly run, we now make a kind of apology, it was then thus entirely according to the motto: The Berliners are anyway accustomed to all that is put before them. Who as well take it as it comes, and then nothing more of it. Nein, Herr Geisel, we do not let you so simply get away with the debacle.

It is after all significant that neither the coalition nor the CDU or FDP address these failures. An orderly participation of the citizens in the political cooperation through, in and with elections is a foundation and a high office of our parliamentary democracy. These you have damaged with your bungling and that this will be otherwise addressed by no others in this house today, if we did not do it, shows the lack of respect for the sovereign, the electorate.

We of the AfD delegation say: This belongs here and today on the table. I think we all here have sufficient knowledge of the striking irregularities, breakdowns, failures, neglect and imputations of this election. It is thereby from the first fully irrelevant whether these failures of organization in the particulars pertain to the mandate or not. The State Constitutional Court moreover has to decide on the effects on this parliament, and that I certainly will not and cannot anticipate. Yet it is nevertheless clear: First, this election was unworthy of the capital city of our State, and second, this drama is not allowed to be repeated.

We therefore today bring in a motion [Drucksache 19/0015] which is concerned with the largest, most obvious problem of the election Sunday: The evidently not to be accomplished simultaneity of the Bundestag and Abgeordnetenhaus elections and the joint referendum election in district gatherings at the local level. Everyone knows: The district in which the Bundestag and Abgeordnetenhaus elections are allowed to take part is one other than that which the local elections, thus the elections for the BVV [district order meetings], can take part. Here, at least according to the still applicable law, may it come to no sort of inter-mixing because that can distort and change the election result.

It is quite clear to us, dear friends, that there are political powers here in house who want to change this, who want that here ultimately any and all may vote, that the right to vote is to be unlimited. At the end of the day then, children and those quite recently arrived by us here will be allowed to vote. A scoundrel who thinks it evil [Ein Schelm, wer Böses dabei denkt]. Yet perhaps until this one day arrives, there is the law and that says: Only adults and Germans in the sense of the Basic Law may take part in Abgeordnetenhaus and Bundestag elections. The flip side: Those under eighteen years of age and EU foreigners plainly may not.

The circumstances of the September 26 elections have shown that this strict separation could not be guaranteed. There were known to be cases in which many or even all youths in the election locals, after a display of personal identification, received and returned ballots. According to the district election officials in affected election locals in Neuköln and Pankow, these proceedings cannot be excluded. How many youths have actually voted was, on account of the anonymous ballot, not able to be examined. It is not known, it cannot be quantified. Therefore, these central, public potholes for a falsified election result need to be closed. With our motion we want to basically exclude the present occurences, whereby it is to be ruled that the election days for Bundestag and Abgeordnetenhaus elections on one side, and district order meetings on the other side, may no longer coincide. That is a large point.

Independent of the objective irregularities of these elections, so I think, especially in view of the coming government formation, subsequent comment is not to be suppressed – since it has been hinted of one or another of the colleagues, and I refer to you, Frau Giffey, as future governing Bürgermeister – : You will have an immense portion in the Berliners’ future loss of trust in politics. Otherwise stated: You kindle the political peevishness in this city in that you in this regard are committing voter fraud.

Prior to the election, you glanced to the right and with your talk of a new beginning knowingly mediated the impression of not wanting to further pursue the unrestrained leftist course of the R2G [red-red-green]. With that, you tactically defrauded the SPD voters who actually no longer wanted to vote for the SPD, certainly not for a new edition of the red-green leftist government. You have deceived people who have taken you seriously, Frau Giffey, as a person with the clear announcement that, with you, there will be no expropriations.

I may yet say: With this fault, you and your Senate enter into the 19^th legislative period, and this fault rids you of nothing much – other than your undeserved doctorate title.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Ferdinand Mang, November 11, 2021, Semiconductors

Bavarian Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 18/96, pp. 102-103.

Right honorable President. Right honorable colleague ladies and gentlemen.

With this motion, the Freien Wähler demand measures for the supply of semiconductors to the Bavarian economy. These are chips which meanwhile have been built into every vehicle and most electronic household equipment. Tja, and they are thus goods in short supply since, thanks to neo-liberal economic policy, most producers need to obtain these chips from foreign countries. That is the result of the globalization celebrated by the neo-liberal political caste.

Already at the beginning of the Corona crisis, which Söder ignited with his lockdown policy, we named this problem here in plenary session and in the committees and demanded a re-nationalization of the economy.Yet we not only presented demands, but a whole series of motions and indicated solutions. We thus have presented motions on the theme of the Bavarian semiconductor and microprocessor industry.

In our motion [Drucksache 18/18898], we have enumerated our motions with the print numbers so that your advisers need not long look for them, but can copy them just right; since, with this motion, the Freien Wähler have copied a motion from us. Yet do not in the future be ashamed also to copy our motions one by one. Then it can be clear to you that this motion also makes substantial sense; since you write in your motion that – I cite – “the targeted construction of a semiconductor eco-system” is urgently required. You thus demand with this motion the construction of an eco-system for semiconductors. I know, you in the governing coalition have naturally soaked up a lot of Green ideology. That naturally also affects your cognitive eco-system. According to a definition of the ecological sciences, an eco-system consists of an animate community of organisms of many kinds and the inanimate environment which is designated as a living space or habitat or biotope. You will settle semiconductors in a biotope and there be able to achieve a successful breeding of chips.

Here, the Freien Wähler have obviously tanked up on too much eco. No, semiconductors are not little breeding animals which grow in slimy ponds, but are to be manufactured in the highly complex production chains of the semiconductor industry. Our motions have the goal of re-establishing the design and production of these components so urgently required by our economy in our Bavarian economy; not in an eco-system, as you demand in your motion, but for example, by means of targeted promotion programs, special economic zones, or by securing the manufacture of required raw materials. We have explained this in detail in our motions and supported it by means of studies of leading economic institutes.

But today, I do not want to go to court all too harshly with the Freien Wähler. You attempted, ja, to copy our motions. This attempt is a great commendation of the AfD by the Freien Wähler. So even said Confucius: The copy is the greatest praise.

In the Chinese business culture, copying is held to be an expression of respect and admiration for the original. Thus in the future, do not shrink from copying our motions directly. Or better: Just vote for our motions, and spare the paper and the energy and the using up of the environment and many eco-systems. 

Besides, I am of the opinion that all Corona restrictions need to be repealed.

Many thanks for the attention!

 

[trans: tem]