The money sentence: “If there’s one thing about which most Germans seem to agree, it’s how much those in charge truly suck.” That feeling is not confined to Germans. From Rachel Marsden at swentr.site:
Massive protests have broken out as Berlin continues to pile cash on Ukraine instead of supporting its own workers
Michael Theurer (FDP), (L) State Secretary of the Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs and Transport, talks to protesting farmers at the Opera House in Stuttgart, southern Germany on January 6, 2024 © THOMAS KIENZLE / AFP
Farmers and their tractors started gathering on Monday here in Berlin as well as in cities across all of Germany’s federal states, including Hamburg, Cologne, and Bremen. The culmination, a massive planned protest, is set for Monday, January 15.
The aim? To get Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government to backtrack on its decision to eliminate tax breaks on the diesel fuel used for farming – a sector already struggling with high energy costs as a result of the government’s de facto policy to screw itself and its own citizens over “for Ukraine” by cutting off cheap fuel from Russia because Brussels ordered it to. And then deciding that it’s cool because gas isn’t “green” enough anyway. Who knew that the German economy couldn’t just run on wind and sun? Not this government, apparently.
Feeling the heat, Team Scholz has already said that it’ll now just slow roll the cuts to subsidies. Apparently he’s never tried removing a band-aid really slowly. The farmers responded with some slow rolling of their own – right down the Autobahn and up to the Brandenburg Gate. The other issue is a road tax exemption for agricultural vehicles that the government decided to reimpose. Well, at least the farmers are getting their money’s worth this week by taking their tractors out for a spin along roads they probably never would have bothered with, just to join up with the protests.
