Thanks.
Germany - conservatives win, AfD rising, and a collation still TBD.
The winner of Sundayâs German elections has been known for months, almost since the outgoing government, led by Social Democrats and dominated by Greens, collapsed last November. As expected, Friedrich Merzâs Christian Democrats have finished on top, albeit with a flabbier than foreseen 29 percent of the vote.
Out of power since Merzâs intraparty rival Angela Merkel stepped down in 2021, the center-right party is back. But that prospect is not why 83 percent of votersâthe highest turnout in the history of postâCold War Germanyâthronged the polls on Sunday.
German voters have decided that stopping mass immigration, legal and illegal, is a national emergency. And the party addressing it most directly is the Alternative for Germany. The so-called AfD finished second with 21 percent of the vote, doubling its share of seats.
Now, it would seem, a majority of Germans want him to carry out the AfDâs policiesâbut without the AfD. How?
Germany is getting less efficient. Its railroads, despite the stereotypes, are among the least punctual in Europeâonly 31 percent of its intercity trains arrive on time. It is getting poorer, too: The German economy has shrunk two years in a row. Volkswagen, Bosch, and other industrial giants have laid off tens of thousands of employees. And for years, Germanyâs American ally has been raising the price of its decades-old alliance. First Germany was supposed to trade less with China. Then, once Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Amis demanded a boycott of Russian gas. Now Donald Trump is calling for a doubling of the countryâs defense expenditures.
Some speculation about the coalition.
You need 316 seats to control, and you need 5% to enter government. That last bit puts FDP and BSW out of the picture. Iâll chat a bit about that at the bottom of the post, but letâs focus on the big boys.
If those numbers hold +/- a seat or two, that would give a Union-SPD government 329 seats, a 13 seat majority. Glory to allâthat keeps the Greens out of government, as the CSU in Union will not enter government with them at all.
It would also make AfD the leader of the opposition. Being that they were the #2 recipient of votes but were not considered to be a part of government, they will play that role with vigor.
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US polls
https://harvardharrispoll.com/press-release-february-2025/
NEW Harvard-Harris Poll:
Trump approval: 52% (+9)
Trump disapproval: 43%
58% say he is doing better than Biden
81% support deporting criminal aliens
76% support eliminating fraud, waste
76% support closing the U.S. border
70% support merit-based hiring
61% support reciprocal tariffs
60% think DOGE is helping
Some charts with polling trends here
More from the poll
DEMOCRATIC PARTY APPROVAL HITS A RECORD LOW AT 36%, NOW 15 POINTS LOWER THAN THE GOP
In the last effort by a leftist judge to stop President Trump to reach the Scotus, Roberts left open the temporary restraining order gambit. Now another leftist judge overplayed this gambit and Roberts had to step in.
Edit. More detail on the case
More on CFPB and its shutdown. Part of the issue was how CFPB could pull very large amounts of money for their operations from the Fed without any further congressional approval, making it unaccountable to both Congress and the Executive.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureauâs Trump-appointed leadership plans to fire nearly all its 1,700 employees while âwinding downâ the agency, according to testimony from employees.
In a trove of statements released late Thursday, federal employees said that the mass layoff was discussed in meetings they attended this month with senior CFPB leaders
â-
You had asked about their mixed record, hereâs some coverage of that.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/is-the-cfpb-helping-or-harming-consumers-rohit-chopra-banking-af342247
In recent years the bureau became a political wing of the Biden administration. It used its press arm as a bully pulpit, even naming individuals in press releases regarding public enforcement actions in which they had nothing to do with the accusations being made.
By driving a re-election campaign instead of protecting consumers, the bureauâs headline-driven approach hurt many of the people it was charged with serving. The Biden-Chopra CFPB promoted a red-taped-laced regulatory nanny state that threatened to debank millions of hardworking Americans by pushing them out of the banking system.
Through its government price-setting agenda, the CFPB has made it more expensive for consumers on the margins to access critical financial services such as credit cards, overdraft safety nets and free or low-cost checking accounts. In some cases, the bureauâs actions simply took away these services altogether.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/jonathan-mckernan-cfpb-elizabeth-warren-donald-trump-372886d9
by [Warrenâs] own design Congress canât force the bureau to spend money, including on employee salaries. She also says no other agency will protect consumers, but plenty of other regulators can do the same job better.
Video overview
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Oh, so they are making sure to follow the lawâŚ
More crap fear mongeringâŚ
âFiring half of all Social Security workers will guarantee that seniors will stop seeing their earned benefits arrive on time and in full,âsaid Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, (D-Oregon), in a statement. âA plan like this will result in field office closures that will hit seniors in rural communities the hardest.â
Except itâs only about a 10% reduction, and focused on those employees doing things that are not required by law (in other words, not those who process benefit claims or payments). This âranking member of the Senate finance committeeâ should be immediately removed from this committee for making such inflammatory yet baseless statements to push his personal political agenda at the expense of the nation.
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If I understand correctly, the link is to the Consumer Bankers Association, a retail banking lobby, who sued CFPB to block some new rule that limited overdraft fees. I donât see any problems with that rule as banks make a whole lot of money on overdraft fees, most likely from their poorest customers. The opinion speculates that those customers would be pushed towards payday loans if they arenât allowed to overdraft their bank accounts and that it would cost them even more, but Iâm not so sure. Whereâs the mixed record?
An opinion piece from the same CBA about the same overdraft fee rule.
The third link reads like a corporate hit piece. It mentions some of the actions CFPB was working on, and none of them seem problematic to me â all those businesses did something wrong.
Except if you click on the very link you included in the quote, youâll see that Wyden was not speaking in response to the plan to ax 7,000 jobs, but to âreports that the Acting Commissioner has asked managers at the Social Security Administration to produce a plan that would result in the termination of 50 percent of workers at the agency.â According to the article, " âRumor of a 50% reduction is false,â it [SSA] said, referring to earlier reports saying up to half the staff could be cut."
Maybe you should be immediately removed from the internet for making baseless statements to push your personal political agenda at the expense of the nation.
So a vague unspecified and unsourced âreportâ? Yes, best to run with that than rather than the press release direct from the SSA. A while back Iâm pretty sure you were insisting we needed to summarily ignore such alternative claims and instead blindly trust official statementsâŚ
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He didnât say whether the rumor was true, and my guess is that the release from the SSA occurred later (the article you link does not claim otherwise). Are you saying that a senator should not comment on a plausible rumor? With this administration nobody would be surprised if it was true.
Come on. That isnât commenting on a rumor, thatâs spreading rumors. By someone with a position of credibility, who clearly had no clue what he was spreading besides knowing it would scare people.
And there it is. Whatever trashes this administration is valid and justified, regardless of the truth.
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So I googled to find where it came from, and this seems as credible as anything else:
Wyden was probably commenting on this WaPo report: âThe Social Security Administration is preparing to lay off at least 7,000 people from its workforce of 60,000 â and the final reduction in force number could be as high as 50%, according to two people familiar with the agencyâs plans who are not authorized to speak publiclyâ
Yes, the speculation of two unidentified sources is very credible.
I thought that previously you insisted that such reports were obviously Russian propaganda?
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WaPo reporting makes it more credible, not the sources. Presumably WaPo trusts their sources?
It could be Russian propaganda, but itâs not obvious, because it could also be true. Theyâre gutting all the other departments, why not this one.
Bottom line is there is nothing credible about taking a bunch of "potentially"s, "might"s, and "could"s and criticizing it as âisâ.
Thatâs what we said in previous instances, and you insisted it was still irresponsible to report (ignoring the pesky fact the stuff was actually true anyways).
I dont think itâs Russian propaganda, I think it is Democrat propaganda that is only getting publicity because of it continues the âorange tyrant destroying everythingâ theme.
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Well Bezos has had a change of heart, but iâm not yet willing to give WashPo the benefit of the doubt on any political topic just yet.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/jeff-bezos-washington-post-opinion-free-markets-622a9d41
âIâm writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages,â Mr. Bezos wrote on X.com. âWe are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. Weâll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.â He announced that editor David Shipley had been offered the chance to lead this change, but he declined and will resign.
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DoE good riddance
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