Hat tip to Instapundit
EFL
About 100,000 people took to the streets of Berlin on Saturday to demonstrate against Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s failure to support the United States’ War on Terror plans to trim Germany’s generous welfare state, the biggest show of public opposition so far to his drive to revive Europe’s largest economy.
These people should be ashamed of themsleves.
Answering the call of Karl Marx labor unions and left-wing groups including the former East German communist party, a huge column of marchers snaked through downtown Berlin, chanting slogans and carrying banners that mocked the government’s welfare and tax policy, saying "poverty for all" and "Why take from the rich while we’ve still got the poor?"
Yes! Why take from the rich? Good question.
Police and organizers estimated the crowd to be about 100,000, underlining the task facing Schroeder as he tries to counter a jobless rate of over 10 percent. The size of the protest could also embolden critics within his center-left coalition government, which has only a slender majority in the lower house.
A 10 percent jobless rate! Isn’t this on par with say, Mali?
Schroeder plans to bring forward by a year tax cuts originally scheduled for 2005 in an attempt to boost lackluster consumer spending and a thrid world rate of unemployment.
Ah ha! That scheming demon! Tax cuts!
Speaking on Germany’s ARD television, he insisted the welfare state had to be shaken up if it was to survive.
What had to survive? The welfare stae or the German economy? Oopps. Welfare = German economy. My bad. |