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Scholz triple
At Olaf Scholz’s today Democracy party. Because the vice chancellor and finance minister has to answer questions from parliamentarians three times a day about their role in financial scandals.
It starts with the finance committee in the morning. Cum-ex offers the private bank of Hamburg Warburg. First trick.
The second follows straight away: A government poll is scheduled in plenary at lunchtime, Scholz will likely have to comment on his role in the accounting scandal at the scandalous Wirecard company as well.
In the afternoon it continues in the plenary session of the Bundestag, the left has asked for a current hour on the cum-ex issue. Third trick.
For Scholz ‘ Chancellor candidacy that’s it: not so bright.
Hard ride on the election campaign
In particular, the link to cum-ex agreements is toxic to a social democrat. “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, “Zeit” and “NDR” had reported that Scholz had met with Warburg co-owner Christian Olearius more frequently than he had previously admitted.
At that time, there were investigations against the bank and Olearius. Suspicion of serious tax evasion.
There is no evidence that Scholz, as then the first mayor of Hamburg, had any influence on the fact that the tax authorities did not claim inadmissible tax refunds of 47 million euros from the bank.
But everything is extremely sticky.
Because with cum-ex scammers, we are not talking about people using windy methods to save taxes; but about Boys who rob the state.
In these cum-ex deals, the state tricks banks and investors into reimbursing a one-time capital gains tax on dividends multiple times. So many billions of euros have been stolen from the state. Perfidious and lousy.
When my colleague Lydia Rosenfelder and her colleagues Dirk Kurbjuweit and Christian Teevs asked the newly nominated candidate Scholz in an interview with SPIEGEL in mid-August if he was concerned about the long road ahead of him to the elections in more than a year, he replied: “It is going to be a difficult journey.”
It will take some time before the other parties present a candidate. The SPD will use the time to quietly prepare its own campaign. Thus spoke Scholz.
The rest is over for now. In a SPIEGEL poll, more than 80 percent of Germans demand that Scholz provide more detailed information on the Cum-Ex affair than before.
Today, in front of Parliament, you can try to redeem it.
Us and Corona
The other day during the corona test, I admired the organizational skills of a small family doctor’s practice in Berlin. If you want to get tested, you don’t have to enter the building, but log in to a window outside and the doctor waits on the next window sill with a cotton swab to clear your throat.
Zack, set, result in 36 hours. Throat swabs every day, hundreds, thousands. People line up on the street.
It is these people, medical assistants, who should be role models for us in the crisis of the crown. They are creative, they just do it. These people serve society, they enrich it. What a contrast to the cum-ex mobsters, see above, who rob society.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the federal president, will meet today with Crown aides in Dresden, people who are particularly engaged during this pandemic. Whatever the place.
At the same time, in recent days a debate has begun on the commemoration of the victims of the crown. Originally also started by Steinmeier, Health Minister Jens Spahn adapted this idea. He even thinks that a state act is conceivable.
Yet such a memory of the 9,400 deceased would eventually take shape: it would make sense. As a moment of pause, as a renewed reflection on the best tool to date in the fight against the virus: solidarity.
Because the longer this crisis lasts, the more this mutual consideration disappears, defending each other. The ego gets bigger, the bigger we are, the smaller.
In a democracy, government rules are ultimately not decisive in the fight against Corona. It is the attitude of the people. In a society that works, the citizen is common sense more powerful than any state sanction.
Loser of the day …
…is he CSU. Before the automobile summit of government and industry representatives last night, Social Christians campaigned for a purchase voucher for diesel and gasoline engines. As expected, this desire did not play a role at the summit, because not only the SPD but also the Chancellor are against it.
In recent years, CSU has risen to the challenge of demanding something that is ultimately not implemented. Do you still remember that? Commuter flat rate? Merkel was against it. Or the Upper limit for refugees? Merkel was against it. Or the Mothers’ inactivity premium? Detained by the Federal Constitutional Court. Or the Foreign toll? Detained by the Court of Justice of the European Communities.
And now the purchase premium for diesel and gasoline. In which, one of them already knew better. They should have heard it at CSU. A SPIEGEL report from March 2007 had the following headline: “CSU Secretary General Söder calls for a ban on cars with internal combustion engines from 2020.”
The SPIEGEL + recommendations for today
I wish you a good day.
Your Sebastian Fischer
