"Swiss voters reject minimum wage, fighter jets | Associated Press May 19, 2014
GENEVA — Worried about upsetting Switzerland’s strong economy or driving its high costs even higher, more than three-quarters of Swiss voters rejected a plan Sunday to create the world’s highest minimum wage and slightly more than half spurned a request to outfit the Swiss Air Force with 22 new fighter jets.
The first not surprising since it is the richest country on earth, but I really like that second vote. A thumbs down on more militari$m!
A tally by Swiss TV showed that with votes counted in all 26 of the Alpine nation’s cantons, the Swiss trade union’s idea of making the minimum wage $24.70 per hour fell by a vote of 76.3 percent opposed and 23.7 percent in favor.
The proposal would have eclipsed the existing highest minimum wages in force elsewhere in Europe. Switzerland has no minimum wage, but the median hourly wage is about $37 an hour.
The military’s controversial request to spend $3.5 billion for Saab’s new Gripen fighter jets was narrowly defeated, with 53.4 percent against it and 46.6 percent who supported the purchase.
Meaning it was likely defeated by a much larger margin.
At a news conference in the Swiss capital Bern, members of the Federal Council of seven ministers, which includes the president, confirmed the vote results. They welcomed the decision on the minimum wage proposal.
Trade unions had proposed it as a way of fighting poverty in a country that, by some measures, features the world’s highest prices and most expensive cities.
But opinion polls had indicated that most voters sided with the council and business leaders, who argued it would cost jobs and erode economic competitiveness, driving Switzerland’s high costs even higher. ‘‘A fixed salary has never been a good way to fight the problem,’’ Economy Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann said in Bern.
‘‘If the initiative had been accepted, it would have led to workplace losses, especially in rural areas where less qualified people have a harder time finding jobs,’’ he said.
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Related: Swiss Pi$$ Off Bankers
You know what type of thing follows that in my jew$paper:
"Hidden art going to Swiss museum" by FRANK JORDANS | Associated Press May 08, 2014
BERLIN — A museum in Switzerland said Wednesday that it has been named the ‘‘unrestricted and unfettered sole heir’’ of a German art collector whose priceless hoard of long-hidden artworks last year set off an uproar over the fate of art looted by the Nazis.
See: 590 works in Germany may be Nazi loot
As an aside, it is interesting to see a banker's paper put together the words Nazi and loot.
The Kunstmuseum Bern said it was ‘‘surprised and delighted’’ at the appointment, of which it was informed by Cornelius Gurlitt’s lawyer.
‘‘At the same time, [we] do not wish to conceal the fact that this magnificent bequest brings with it a considerable burden of responsibility and a wealth of questions of the most difficult and sensitive kind,’’ it said in a statement.
The museum said that the news ‘‘came like a bolt from the blue’’ as it had never previously had any dealings with Gurlitt, who died age 81 at his Munich apartment on Tuesday.
That's odd timing.
German investigators seized more than 1,000 artworks from Gurlitt’s Munich apartment two years ago after chancing upon the trove of paintings, prints, and drawings by masters such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Marc Chagall. Authorities disclosed the find only in November following a report by German magazine Focus.
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Wanting to take his art must have been too much for him. No foul play suspected.
You can call this a foul:
"Swiss court: Nazi salute ‘not always punishable’" Associated Press May 22, 2014
GENEVA — A Nazi salute isn’t illegal racial discrimination provided it is intended as a personal statement, Switzerland’s top court ruled Wednesday.
The Federal Tribunal’s ruling, titled ‘‘Hitler salute in public not always punishable,’’ said the gesture is a crime only if someone is using it to try to spread racist ideology to others, not simply declaring one’s own conviction.
The ruling by the Lausanne-based court overturned a lower court’s conviction last year of a man who was charged with racial discrimination after he took part in an August 2010 demonstration with 150 participants.
The demonstration was held a week after the Swiss National Day on the famous Ruetli Meadow above Lake Lucerne where, according to legend, the modern Swiss Confederation was born in 1291.
The court said the man substituted the Swiss oath with a 20-second Nazi salute. But it said the gesture is only punishable if it’s being used to spread, advertise, or propagate racist ideology with the intention of influencing others.
The gesture is a criminal offense in Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. A Swiss antiracism law in 1995 forbids racist symbols to be displayed to promote racist ideologies.
For more than a decade, the Swiss have grappled with right-wing extremists disrupting Swiss National Day celebrations on Ruetli with Nazi symbols.
The August 2010 incident occurred two months after the Swiss Federal Council of seven ministers, including the president, decided not to ban the Nazi salute and swastika symbol in Switzerland. A federal antiracism commission called that a bad decision that would have ‘‘serious consequences.’’
In another ruling on racial issues, the court said earlier this year that calling someone ‘‘foreign swine’’ or ‘‘filthy asylum seeker’’ may be insulting, but because the expressions are widely used insults in the German language, they don’t constitute racist attacks.
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I guess you gotta take the good with the bad.
