Germans do love a good parade
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
Germany’s disgraced president has stepped down following a full military honours ceremony and pocketing an annual pension and perks package worth over $380,000 after less than two years in the job.
Christian Wulff, 52, was forced to resign after state prosecutors demanded his presidential immunity was lifted as part of a corruption investigation, a scandal that has deeply damaged Angela Merkel’s government.
Controversial to the last, there is widespread anger that Mr Wulff was granted a grand tattoo of German military bands on Thursday night to play him out of office to the tune, at his request, of “Somewhere over the Rainbow”.
The torch lit parade by hundreds of Bundeswehr soldiers in front of the grandeur of Berlin’s presidential Bellevue Palace is a further embarrassment for the German Chancellor who attended the ceremony in spite of a boycott by four former presidents and opposition politicians.
“Somebody who failed in office is having a farewell ceremony as if he did great things for Germany,” said Sigmar Gabriel the head of the Social Democrat Party.
Despite resigning amid serious corruption allegations, the former president will be entitled to a personal pension of $264,000 a year, as well as a chauffeured limousine and cash to run a staffed office…
Another corrupt politician kicked out and gets to take a chunk of the national treasury with him for snuggles and giggles. Ridiculous.
Does anyone need to say anything??
we have changed our society into an area that LOVES MONEY, MORE MONEY.. insted of caring for each other, and helping each other…we ask HOW MUCH..
I need to run a German president now… damn!
Sad.
I always wonder how on earth they manage to do that over and over again. If I screw up my job and get fired, I am on the street without money. Politicians, bankers and lots of other hotshots that screw up bigtime usually harming lots of people always run away with large amounts of money. What am I doing wrong?
You aren’t taxing anybody.
Hey Loser–THAT fixated on taxes huh?
Everything is taxes with you. The Taliban Far Right Extreme of the LIEberTARDian Party heh?
Well, here’s your lesson for today: recognize that the power to tax is not the CAUSE of this Presidents Outrageous Retirement Package but rather is a related CONCOMITANT effect.
Use your wisdom for the benefit of manking little one.
((Ha, ha. What a dolt!))
Perhaps you should try fishing in another pond.
-or- you could stop posting so erroneously?
Do you realize the damage you do to millions who read your posts and think that taxing people leads to lack of regulations to properly reward public officials for their malfeasance in office?
That will not stand on my watch!
….giving taxing a whole different meaning……
Ha, ha.
Say Loser–is the implication here that you enjoy fishing – or what?
Perhaps you should try some different bait?
And the secret word is… Concomitant.
Excellent!
To paraphrase Mel Brooks.
Ist gut to be kaiser!
Cursor_
It pays to have friends.
What an amateur!
Leo Apotheker, on the other hand, is a true professional. He was hired Sept. 30, 2010, officially took the helm as CEO on Nov 1, 2010 and was let go by HP’s board on Sept. 22, 2011.
With an eleven month tenure, Leo Apotheker destroyed $30 BILLION in market capitalization and was rewarded with (courtesy Wiki) a severance payment of $7.2 million, shares worth $3.56 million and a performance bonus of $2.4 million.
That’s right, a performance bonus. What could he have done to lose the performance bonus? Burn down the HP campus?
HP was going down hill before and then faster during the tenure of Leo Apotheker. His tenure reminds me of Gil Amelio of Apple in the mid-1990s just before Steve Jobs became CEO. Maybe, Meg Whitman can change things.
Business and Politics–corrupt to the core as exemplified by this paying off even on failure.
When a system is corrupt: when capitalism is interfered with by interlocking self perpetuating power clicks, what is the alternative?
Will libertarians everywhere join me in recognizing and advocating some kind of government imposed Nanny system of regulations to prevent this abuse? Can the micromanagement of failure produce any worse harm than the rewarding of failure?
Can it?
Soon as I get off of work here at Burger King I’m going to get that German President job. I hope they still have an opening.
Ridiculous.
It should be noted that the office of President in Germany is pretty pointless anyway and the Prime Minister has the real power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Germany
The resignation has to do with when Wulf was premier of Lower Saxony. It’s like Spiro Agnew resigning the Vice-Presidency for activities when he was the governor of Maryland..
Here in Switzerland if the president steps down, he gets money only if he was there for at least 4 years and then only get 120k per year if he doesn’t get more money elsewhere. If he does then he gets nothing.
This has NOTHING to do with ‘government’. The powerful and connected always get away with it special privledges. Wall Street or Government. Little George Bushy Jr. got to stay away from fighting in Vietnam because daddy got him to “play” pretend war safely at home in Texas where the Vietcong wouldn’t be shooting at him, but he could pretend to play a soldier and dress up like one latter in life. The Wall Street corporations and CEOs who nearly brought down our entire system walked away with billions of tax payer money. It’s not what you know, but who you know.
Germans do NOT love a parade as stated in the article…why don’t you mention that during the “ceremony” there we were a big number of protesters blowing in thir vuvuzelas stating ther dissent? It would be nice to stop reinforcing those 2oth century clichés about Germany…
Silly Germans and their tiny golden parachutes. Here in America, if you crash an entire country’s economy, you get millions….possibly billions.