🇩🇪 German elections (federal & EU level)

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

It's sad how the seemingly most successful SPD Candidate and likely their next chancellor will have been the one who helped big banks steal billions of tax payer dollars and they will do it with full support of the SPD left-wing.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Who are you referring to there?

https://www.archyde.com/olaf-scholz-in-the-hamburg-committee-of-inquiry-into-the-cum-ex-scandal-the-man-without-memories/
Or a summary from another forum

There's a tax on dividends payed out from holding company stock. Some institutions like banks are exempt from this tax. The practice is everyone pays it anyway, but those exempt can then ask for the money back.

By cleverly trading stocks at the right times it was possible to exploit the state's system of accounting and ask for money "back" that was never paid in the first place or get the once paid tax paid back multiple times. This trick was common and used to illegally extract 10 billion € from the German state. A similar trick (cum-cum) was used for another 20 billion.

For a long time people claimed this to be a legal loophole, but as I understand it, the courts ruled differently. This was not a bug in the law, but in enforcement.

Now Scholz is our current minister of finance, but this is interestingly not part of the story.

It was an earlier time (2016), where the cum-ex scandal broke and Scholz was the mayor of the city of Hamburg. During this time the financial administration of Hamburg was about to ask for some of the money back that was scammed from them. But they failed to do so. Scholz claims he had not been involved in this decision at all, it was the bureaucrats show.

Warburg, one particular bank, was a problem. They met with Scholz in person and gave him a letter asking for intervention. The letter claiming the matter to be of legal uncertainty, they were doing nothing illegal and also their bank would have to close down, if they had to pay the money (back).

Scholz did not comment officially, but did not ignore it either. Instead he redirect the letter to Tschentscher, the city's "finance senator" at the time (and mayor today). Tschentscher is a member of the SPD party, like Scholz.

From there it went to the finance bureau, where it was found with some passages underlined in green. Passages making arguments for the bank. So the claim is that city politics under Scholz did get involved helping the tax-scammer and that he may have been personally helping as well.

In 2020(?) Warburg had to pay the money back anyway. They did not collapse or close down.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

This latest poll would give Red/Red/Green a clear majority (btw: is there a nickname for such a thing?). I realize that by all accounts Scholz will not want to do that and is more likely to go for a traffic light coalition, but presumably if the math is actually there for red-red-green - it puts even more pressure on the FDP to join a traffic light.

I know its not going to happen, but what would the role of Linke be if there was a RRD coalition? Since they will likely only get 6% or so of the vote they would likely only get a couple of cabinet portfolios and presumably they could minor portfolios where they could be kept out of trouble...(maybe give them agriculture and services for people with disabilities or something like that)

The nickname for Red-Red-Green is R2G.

They'd probably demand some higher taxes for the rich and tougher social reforms, but SPD and Greens would pressure them to keep out of foreign and defense policy. Possible Cabinet posts might be Labor and Social Affairs (although SPD would likely to keep those posts in all likelihood) and... Well besides, there isn't really a Department tailored for Linke. Maybe Economic Development, which is essentially the most useless portfolio?

I do think linke would totally collapse of they actually went into Goverment. A large part of their base is made up of people who actively reject liberal democracy and an even larger part is made up of people who don't understand political compromise or are just looking for an ant-system party.

After being forced to face the actual busniess of governance the party will tear itself apart.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

When did Die linke manage to shed the baggage of being the legacy party of the SED?

It feels strange for them to be in a coalition and I wondered how much of a resistance there would be?

They haven't shed it. Both the SDP and Green know they'd loose a bunch of moderate voters governing with them.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

When did Die linke manage to shed the baggage of being the legacy party of the SED?

It feels strange for them to be in a coalition and I wondered how much of a resistance there would be?

They haven't shed it. Both the SDP and Green know they'd loose a bunch of moderate voters governing with them.

But if, "SED heritage" would not be the reason. The number of people that care about that is shrinking, at least for biological reason. The Linke has now members from the west than from the east now. And the Easterners are mostly the more moderate forces in the party. Even as the Union parties try to revive the "red socks" campaign in a desperate move, now, "SED legacy" is not the angle they are using.

Well more the fact that party has numerous unreformed radicals, ranging from those who defend the Red Army Faction to the mere ordinary tankie to functionaries who were involved in the Stasi at a high-level. Furthmore the parties policies are incoherent, calling for Germany to evacuvate those in afghanistan and then voting against a resoultion to do exactly that.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Yeah, you're a "liberal hack" alright

Go on then, *how* many RAF stans are actually in Die Linke? Let's have a number.

An actual member of the RAF is a parliamentary assistant to Die Linke member of the Bundestag.

https://www.dialoginternational.com/dialog_international/2016/07/stasi-informant-and-left-party-politician-diether-dehm-explains-anti-semitism.html

Diether Dehm is one of the more vocal leaders of the Querfront (cross-over front)  - the union between far-left activists and right-wing extremists - who rail against the United States and Israel, while agitating for close ties with Vladimir Putin.

Dehm recently hired the former-Red Army Faction (RAF)  terrorist Christian Klar as an assistant. Klar was recently released (!) from prison where he was serving a life sentence for the murders of Juergen Ponto, Hans Martin Schleyer, Siegfried Burback and others during RAF operations in the 1970s.

The social milieu of the Die Linke is such that it's members feel comfortable making jokes about killing the 1% of merely putting them into gulags. Imagine if another party made similar statments about hippies or another group, especialy one that had a history of particpiating in such state sanctioned oppresion.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Got given the
Greens
FDP
Linke
SPD
CDU

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

It would be better to call parties by their proper name...

What are you referring to?

The post above mine, where the poster is showing a habit, he or she seems all the time, that shows him or her living more than 30 years in the past.

Now that someone has compared the LINKE to the SED, it is time for everyone's standard reminder that the CDU existed in the DDR, supported the SED government and was part of the non-democratic parliament, only became democratic in 1990, and was absorbed into the CDU of Germany - with all its former socialist personell and all it's party infrastructure.

Linkie get's sh**t because it has elected stasi members and has numerous members who countinue to defend the human rights record of GDR, the rest of the parties don't.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Wow, what a hack.

You're the one blind to the kind of anti-democratic authoritaranism your party is itching to jump into bed with.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Wow, what a hack.

You're the one blind to the kind of anti-democratic authoritaranism your party is itching to jump into bed with.

Yeahsayyeah is a Green, but ok.

A large part of the Greens wanna overlook Linkies flaws and jump into bed with them to form a red-red-green goverment. Thank god the party has a prgamtic moderate wing that will stop such insanity. Kretschmann and özdemir's are what's keeping the party sane.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

It would be better to call parties by their proper name...

What are you referring to?

The post above mine, where the poster is showing a habit, he or she seems all the time, that shows him or her living more than 30 years in the past.

Now that someone has compared the LINKE to the SED, it is time for everyone's standard reminder that the CDU existed in the DDR, supported the SED government and was part of the non-democratic parliament, only became democratic in 1990, and was absorbed into the CDU of Germany - with all its former socialist personell and all it's party infrastructure.

Linkie get's sh**t because it has elected stasi members and has numerous members who countinue to defend the human rights record of GDR, the rest of the parties don't.

Every party has had their Stasi-informants, and the CDU also has nominated people very recently who had vigorously defended DDR-socialism when they lived there. People who try to pin the legacy of the DDR solely on the LINKE just because it is the legal successor of the SED generally don't argue in good faith, have no real understanding of the historical life situations in Eastern Germans, or both. And I say that as a non-LINKE-voter.

They don't nominate people who were proud of working for the stasi in high level roles unlike Linkie nor do they nominate people still defend DDR socialism.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

It would be better to call parties by their proper name...

What are you referring to?

The post above mine, where the poster is showing a habit, he or she seems all the time, that shows him or her living more than 30 years in the past.

Now that someone has compared the LINKE to the SED, it is time for everyone's standard reminder that the CDU existed in the DDR, supported the SED government and was part of the non-democratic parliament, only became democratic in 1990, and was absorbed into the CDU of Germany - with all its former socialist personell and all it's party infrastructure.

Linkie get's sh**t because it has elected stasi members and has numerous members who countinue to defend the human rights record of GDR, the rest of the parties don't.

Every party has had their Stasi-informants, and the CDU also has nominated people very recently who had vigorously defended DDR-socialism when they lived there. People who try to pin the legacy of the DDR solely on the LINKE just because it is the legal successor of the SED generally don't argue in good faith, have no real understanding of the historical life situations in Eastern Germans, or both. And I say that as a non-LINKE-voter.

They don't nominate people who were proud of working for the stasi in high level roles unlike Linkie nor do they nominate people still defend DDR socialism.

No one of serious importance in the LINKE is pro-DDR--small groups maybe do so, but the party has officially denounced the DDR a long time ago. Much of the newer leadership in the party and the parliamentary caucus has had nothing to do with the DDR. The LINKE's leadership becomes increasingly younger, is more from the west. It is silly to accuse those people of supporting the DDR.

Those people are sympathetic to the kind of authoritarian leftism and joined the party because of it. I earlier pointed to the example of Diether Dehm hiring an unrepentant RAF terrorist who was personally responsible for the murder of multiple innocent civilians as his parliamentary assistant as one example of the ugy core inside the party that rejects liberal democracy. Linkie trying to claim it's different is no more convicng that the various far-right neo nazi parties pretending that they've changed from the old days and their new leadership is moderate.

While not every member of the party rejects liberal democracy, the social mileiau is sufficent that these people are an accepted and respected part of the party. Witness them cracking a joke about how they're going to kill 1% of german population or just mereley put them in gulags.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

BTW, coal isn't ramped up in Germany, instead it's renewables and yes, pitifully, partly also natural gas.

All the german progress in renewables reducing carbon emissions has been completely wiped out by the knee-jerk removal of nuclear power without any real plan or thought due to a momentary public panic and a decade long smear campaign that was stoked by a certain party.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

BTW, coal isn't ramped up in Germany, instead it's renewables and yes, pitifully, partly also natural gas.

All the german progress in renewables reducing carbon emissions has been completely wiped out by the knee-jerk removal of nuclear power without any real plan or thought due to a momentary public panic and a decade long smear campaign that was stoked by a certain party.

Except no nuclear plant has been built since the 80's (and all East German ones closed in 1990 due to poor Soviet conception), so most of them would have been closed anyways due to their age.

The company who built them all (Siemens) is also out of the industry and their deals with Russia for it, which is, in my opinion, the main problem of nuclear (having to rely on an hostile dictatorship for uranium).

They would have shut down on a much slower time-scale with a proper plan for having them all replaced with renewable power so there would have been no need to expand coal or natrual gas and even then only for the reason that a certain party had made it's raison d'etre to elimiate it.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Feels slightly easy to claim that the German electrical grid's high carbon output is entirely down to the nuclear question when you also have CDU types like Günthar Schartz on RWE's payroll, and all sorts of interesting going ons with regards to promoting Coal power in, but of course, Laschet's own NRW.

That and obviously the neglect of the rail infrastructure, and the German economy's dependence on dirty industries like the Car producers or the contained port in Hamburg which certain parties have been rather happy to indulge.

Blaming Germany's lack of progress on climate protection on one or two parties that have never even been in a position to set it feels pretty dishonest if you ask me.

The green party was the biggest pusher in the anti-nuclear movement that was responsible for the elimination of nuclear power. The removal of nuclear power was the biggest disruption to the German power grid in recent history responsible for causing increased use of coal.

It's like saying that you can't blame ukip and Nigel farage for Brexit becuase they were never the Goverment. It completely ignored political realities

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

I do find it curious how there's no minority party for the Roma or Sorbs organized despite it theroticaly being possible.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Although even then, the nature of their ideological outlook stops them from being completely signed up to what an atlas poster would call "socially liberal". Their climate change policy essentially consists of magical thinking (let's just do cap and trade and the market will fix everything!). And their position on sending home low qualified refugees once "safe" to do so would create outrage if it was, say, the Danish Social Democrats coming up with the same plan.

Cap and trade and letting the market solve climate change is common sense. The solution to climate change is reducing carbon emissions by creating a cap on carbon dioxide emissions. The issue is that to ensure our current standard of living we need to burn some carbon dioxide at least temporarliy.

By allowing the market to allocare permissison to burn carbon we will be able to reduce carbon dioxide in the most efficent manner possible with the least impact to our living standards. They are also the only pro-nuclear party in germany after teh CDU's heal faced turn following fukishima. They are the best party for the enviorment if that is what matters to you.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Although even then, the nature of their ideological outlook stops them from being completely signed up to what an atlas poster would call "socially liberal". Their climate change policy essentially consists of magical thinking (let's just do cap and trade and the market will fix everything!). And their position on sending home low qualified refugees once "safe" to do so would create outrage if it was, say, the Danish Social Democrats coming up with the same plan.

Cap and trade and letting the market solve climate change is common sense. The solution to climate change is reducing carbon emissions by creating a cap on carbon dioxide emissions. The issue is that to ensure our current standard of living we need to burn some carbon dioxide at least temporarliy.

By allowing the market to allocare permissison to burn carbon we will be able to reduce carbon dioxide in the most efficent manner possible with the least impact to our living standards. They are also the only pro-nuclear party in germany after teh CDU's heal faced turn following fukishima. They are the best party for the enviorment if that is what matters to you.

There already is an EU wide cap and trade scheme, and guess what, it has been a complete failure. Shockingly. Even if you did redesign it to work better it would still be completely insufficient. Climate change is something that is going to require proactive state action in building up renewables; subsidizing green technologies and green infrastructure (insulating houses, electric car charging points, investing in the railways* etc); as well as phasing out petrol cars or internal flights. All viable options that have been introduced elsewhere.

The FDPs policy that the market can do everything by itself is quite simply wishful thinking on the part of a party that is so unwilling to accept that it’s ideology’s failure that they can’t come up with a serious way to address the issue

*especially with regards to, say, moving freight transport from road to rail - something that the market is fundamentally not going to be unless the state drives thr process. Also something the CDU has been so allergic to doing that they let the Swiss spend bilions on a 60km long tunnel the alps and didn't even hold up to their much cheaper side of the bargain in upgrading the Rhine-side mainline. Stuff like this is why they aren't credible either

That's simply because the CAP the EU placed on carbon dioxide emissions were way too high, if they reduced the cap the market would be able to handle all those things.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

How would Green voters and members react if the Green Party ignored the SPD clearly winning the National popular vote and clearly having by far the most popular leader, and instead made a shady deal with the CDU and FDP. That led to a rightwing government led by Laschet?

The popular vote means literally nothing in a proportional system where you have 5 parties being represented.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Postal voting increasingly becomes a strategical challenge for pollsters, and right now there is a pending lawsuit on whether pollsters are allowed to ask the respondents whether they have already voted by mail and if yes, for whom. Opponents of this method argue that this violates one of the constitutional election principles, secrecy.

Do you mean the Forsa-lawsuit? As far as I know, Forsa has won that one.

It happens undercover though, since the party leadership gets access to the data - I had also received leaked exit poll data of the 2018 elections in Hesse and Bavaria, which was somewhat accurate.

Even low-ranking party base members might know what the exit polls look like before they are published if they are members of the right group chat...

Will us Atlas user be included in that exclusive club ?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Postal voting increasingly becomes a strategical challenge for pollsters, and right now there is a pending lawsuit on whether pollsters are allowed to ask the respondents whether they have already voted by mail and if yes, for whom. Opponents of this method argue that this violates one of the constitutional election principles, secrecy.

Do you mean the Forsa-lawsuit? As far as I know, Forsa has won that one.

It happens undercover though, since the party leadership gets access to the data - I had also received leaked exit poll data of the 2018 elections in Hesse and Bavaria, which was somewhat accurate.

Even low-ranking party base members might know what the exit polls look like before they are published if they are members of the right group chat...

Will us Atlas user be included in that exclusive club ?

Haha, sharing these exit polls is highly illegal. It's one thing to post them in the group chat, It's another thing to publish them on the internet...

there goes my plan to make bank based on insider trading.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Hubert Aiwanger, Bavaria's Deputy Minister-President and leader of the Free Voters, has shared confidential exit polls on Twitter, and now he might get into big trouble for that.

https://twitter.com/CDeutschlaender/status/1442134519352602625
Major CDU overperformance if accurate.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Hubert Aiwanger, Bavaria's Deputy Minister-President and leader of the Free Voters, has shared confidential exit polls on Twitter, and now he might get into big trouble for that.

Major CDU overperformance if accurate.

This isn't necessarily in the order of highest to lowest though - can observe that Die Linke clearly has a single digit vote share but is grouped between FDP and AfD who both have double digit vote shares.

They did a very poor job of censoring the text you can read the numbers for the CDU and SPD if you zoom in.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

I can't read the CDU/CSU's number? Are they really higher than the SPD numbers?

CDU at 25% SPD at 26%

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

ARD Exit:

25% Union, 200 seats
25% SPD, 197 seats
15% Grune 119
11% AFD 87
11% FDP 87
5% Linke 39


Hope y'all enjoy a long night.

Afd Down and Linke possibly kicked out great result