Friday, January 29, 2021

Joachim Kuhs, January 18, 2021, EU Court of Auditors

European Parliament, Brussels, P9 CRE PROV (2021)1-18(1-063-0000).

Frau President, Herr Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, dear President Lehne.

Many thanks for the Court’s two general reports. I must say, they’ve really got it. I suppose Commissioner Hahn must initially have gulped when he saw the promised audit opinion on expenditures. But that is good – only thus does financial control work. It must hurt. As the reporter for the discharge of the 2019 Commission, I am naturally quite especially interested in the reports; indeed, well instructed therein. And I am very grateful for the clear structure. I thus can more easily write my report.

Nevertheless, I do not want here today to speak of your reports. We have already quite often and quite basically and thoroughly done that in the CONT [budgetary control] Committee. I want to refer to a specific problem: I have the impression that the Court of Auditors is certainly respected by us in parliament, yet it does not receive the support needed to fulfill its duties. I fear that too many of us are thereby employed to consider where we may require yet more resources or which program we could yet issue. In my view, it would be much more important to ask of proposals [Überlegungen] how to deal more carefully and frugally with the taxpayers’ money.

Actually, the whole parliament should be a control authority. We however prefer to shift this duty onto the few colleagues who here sit on the CONT Committee – who are all there certainly super engaged, and who will then set it right. Dear colleagues of the entire EP [European Parliament], may I for once place before you this small but effective committee? It is one of the most diligent. Please allow that it can better look after its general control duties.

Dear Commission, give us access to all information relevant to the budget and also in regards to the GD SANTE [director general, health and safety]. And then, honored colleagues, let us also please then strengthen the Court of Auditors with personnel and substantial means – the President has appealed for it – as well as with a general examination right of the EIB [European Investment Bank]. We cannot increase the budget by 85% as well as conclude six new sources of our own revenue, and then hope that the Court of Auditors could manage that with its previous personnel. He only can want that who wants less control. Let us not only respect the good work of the Court, no, let us strengthen it and concern ourselves with that so that it is not a rider without a sword, but a real weapon in the fight for the defense of the EU’s financial interests. I am sure that not only President Lehne will rejoice over that.

 

[trans: tem]

 

Thursday, January 28, 2021

Markus Wagner, January 12, 2021, Corona Decree

Nordrhein-Westfalen Landtag, Plenarprotokoll 17/113, pp. 21-23.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

‘The Policy’s Broken Corona Promises”, “The Government’s Four Lockdown Fallacies”, “The Most Absurd Merkel Paper of All Time” – that is only a small selection of the headlines of past days.

Part of the media now reckons with you and your stiff-necked, allegedly without alternative lockdown policy. Your nonsensical lockdown reasoning says: We must arrive at an incidence value of 50. – Concerning that, you know quite precisely, ladies and gentlemen: That’s not right in winter. Herr Laschet, – he is not here – I demand of you: Stand here at the microphone and explain to me, explain to the people, how you in winter want to arrive at an incidence value of 50. – You can’t.

If that shall remain the basis of your policy, we will drift from one lockdown to the next until the virus is rolled back quite alone by the better weather in the spring. Until then, you crank up the printing press and mortgage the coming generations.

“An end to that!” – not only the Green Oberbürgermeister Boris Palmer and we of the AfD demand that, but also ever more professors and scientists. If the government maintains a goal of incidence in the 50s, this lockdown will last many months. That may be the wrong way; according to Palmer: “Enough now. We must live.”

At the beginning of February, we must again take control.

With this arbitrary incidence of 50, you are causing part-time employment, job loss and a wave of insolvency. That will permanently change the economic structure of the inner cities. Many of the small are not getting by, which means we get still more chain concerns and still more concentration on quasi-monopolies like Amazon & Co.

And: You are cementing the debt situation. – As a party of the social market economy, we cannot tolerate that. We also cannot tolerate that people suffer unnecessarily. And they suffer from an existential fear. They suffer from loneliness. They suffer from depressions. There are other illnesses, cancer or heart disease for example, at which scarcely any of the policy people are looking. Where are the exertions of policy? And there, where those over 80 years in the old-age homes have actually died of Corona, you have failed, ladies and gentlemen.

All of this divides our society. And the division deepens as every couple of weeks you tell us what allegedly is uniquely correct. All who question that, each scientist or doctor, is then allegedly a Covidiot or worse; like a, for example, Nazi. A couple of weeks later, or only days later, is then again the opposite correct, allegedly.

Now, it is something new that I alone may meet my neighbor, yet not together with my wife, whereas my neighbor may meet me and my wife. And if it goes according to the SPD, this regulation shall then control even in dwellings. Yet at Aldi and on the train, might we all of us then again in common meet. You apparently do not quite follow this logic, ladies and gentlemen. I must admit to you: That goes for me too.

The entirety is almost as senseless as the 15 kilometer rule, which you, Herr Laschet, first concluded with the Federal government, then next shoved off onto the localities in NRW, only to then yesterday nevertheless introduce – the 15 kilometer rule.

Herr Laschet, who should still take seriously such a policy? Who should here actually still display trust?

Not only is this rule not medically based – it is on that account constitutionally more than doubtful – no, it will, like so many rules in a trust-destroying, whoa and go proceeding, be driven to the wall. It shall then be for the citizen to endure and perceive where you are lacking in insight.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s not right. That is not the policy of a statesman whom people can trust. That is abysmal.

Yet it happens that in the ranks of the oh-so-wise establishment politics are those, scolded by everyone, who may see: The emperor has no clothes.

And in the school policy. Federal Education Minister Anja Karliczek at the end of September said, “A further general school closing is not under consideration.” Ah, ja.

And the FDP school minister here has already advocated so many opinions on this that one becomes dizzy. The FDP here moreover is a total loss, apart perhaps from Herr Kubicki.

Yet one citation: “I can say to you that with today’s understanding, no more hairdressers would close, no more retail business would close. That will not happen again.”

Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn said that in September.

So much for Jens Spahn’s judgment capacity. What a self-unmasking…

And the next:

“We are ordering a four week therapy…If we now manage well in the communities, then we have a good basis upon which to get through the winter. It is no perpetual cycle, as per the motto: One month lockdown…and then again, and then again and back…”

Bavaria’s Minister-president Markus Söder said that at the proclamation of the lockdown light on October 28.

            Helmut Seifen (AfD): Who is a teller of fairy tales!

It is just simply wrong how Söder’s failures lead to an ever more grotesque self-radicalization of the political showman. And here Kubicki is right when he says: “Gott schützen uns vor Markus Söder”, ladies and gentlemen.

“New horror numbers show the Federal government does not begin to have a grip on Corona.”

Thus claims the “Bild”, after all actually close to you.

Although since November Germany is in lockdown, figured on the present number of residents in this country, more people die of or with Corona than in most of the EU states, and more than in Donald Trump’s U.S.A.

Ladies and gentlemen, so often I would have preferred not to be right. You do not want to hear, you allegedly always know better. For months, my colleague Dr. Vincent and I again and again cite scientists and doctors with good arguments. In that regard, you were defended only by your affiliated political-media complex.

Yet the last days and weeks give hope. Since the reportage begins to turn and becomes more differentiated, and it begins to inquire and ever more medical people have the chance to say that they see quite differently what Drosten, Merkel and you, Herr Laschet, hold to be the last word in wisdom.

For long I have here in house – initially, relatively alone – with my delegation fought for the clear and meaningful focusing on protection of the elderly and the ill, and to which again and again experts – the experts to whom you do not wish to listen, like professors Streeck, Schrappe. Kekulé of the Federal Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians and the many medical central organizations – have given a voice.

We now finally have movement in the media. The unity opinion begins to waver. Moreover, at least the “Welt”, and the “Bild” and yesterday “Hart aber Fair” now comply with what is called a journalistic ethic. For long has the Fourth Estate – in part financed by compulsion – understood itself not as a controller of government but instead as its messenger.

Now however may be read – quite along my course – :

“The epidemic was unleashed by a virus, that is clear. Yet for the high numbers of deaths, exclusive of the elderly and aged, the policy bears the responsibility.”

Ladies and gentlemen, Professor of Medicine Matthias Schrappe, former vice chief of the Federal government’s Experts Council for Health says that.

The government has “against competent counsel decided for itself to only pursue lockdowns and to relinquish targeted protective measures for the elderly.” – Thus, Professor Schrappe. That has “crashingly failed”, the consequences being “catastrophic”, a terrifying result. And he is not alone in that verdict.

The fact is: In December, 86% of all Corona deaths came from care homes. In NRW also, over half of the dead came from care homes. Nevertheless, the homes still – still – have too few resources to consistently test co-workers and visitors.

You base the stringent protective measures on the high number of Corona deaths. Yet there where people actually die of or with Corona, your lockdown measures do not function.

For reasons of time, I unfortunately cannot go into the vaccine chaos. But it is a disgrace for our country. Germany is behind – and in Germany, Nordrhein-Westfalen is also in regards vaccination, again as so often, in the lower ranks – the oh-so-evil Great Britain, U.S.A. and Israel.

The former SPD Oberbürgermeister of Kiel wrote in the “Welt” – I cite:

“The Chancellor and her Minister for Health Jens Spahn from the beginning of the Corona crisis have set for themselves a false, because unattainable, goal: They are fighting the sheer number of infections. For that the basic rights of all citizens will be limited, for that has parliamentary government itself been practically given up, for that will firms be sacrificed which cuts off the development possibilities of children, singles are sentenced to a quasi house arrest, and, far outside, even the toboggan runs will be blocked by the police.”

Ladies and gentlemen, when the police no longer hunt criminals but children on toboggans, when no one no more knows where and with how many of his own family he may now visit, then you are gambling away the trust of ever more people.

For almost a year, the people overwhelmingly conduct themselves in exemplary fashion. Many have worries as to how they shall pay their accounts and rents, worries of how to care for and educate the children, worries concerning their grandparents.

Corona is an imputation. Precisely on that account however may your policy be no further an imputation. Our country can be better. But you must finally worry about that.

I thank you.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Albrecht Glaser, January 14, 2021, Property Tax

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/204, pp. 25748-25749.

Thank you, Herr Vice-president. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

With all respect, dear colleague Müller: I think both realities have their justification. It cannot be said: The one pauses as long as until the other is dealt with.

In the FDP delegation’s submitted draft law – this is in fact an old and long enduring problem – will be demanded the overdue abolition of the property tax. For that, the FDP submits a substantive motion with six additional demands, of which – this I must nevertheless add – nearly all have already been advanced by the AfD in earlier motions.

Christian Dürr (FDP): Such rubbish, Herr Glaser.

The topic of the property tax was volatile since ever and a day because the dialectical materialists wished to thereby put to work their great project of changing society – ever yet and still today. In addition, the lower sentiments of envy and ill will are thereby allowed to be steadily heated. The Federal Constitutional Court in 1995 convincingly established according to tax theory and constitutional law that the then current property tax may no longer be collected. Thus, what to do?

At best, what the professional tax literature has to offer may be cited as follows:

Against the re-introduction of a recurring property tax already speaks the undeniably thereto united inequality of evaluation which alternative designs of a property tax also cannot avoid. Beyond that, the Federal Constitutional Court, according to the concepts of protection of property of Article 14, sets close limits on every property tax. After that remains, so write the authors, for the property tax along with the income tax only a narrow area of use. Who wishes to leave aside business assets in favor of a limited property tax on private assets further narrows this area. The one-sided erosion of the basis of apportionment then occurring would increase the equality deficit and contribute to further chaos in German tax law. There is no convincing basis of justification for the property tax. It here corresponds not only to tax justice but also to economic reason not to re-activate the property tax. As a sign of economic and legal rationality, the property tax should also be repealed in law. – End of citation.

Ladies and gentlemen, the FDP motion rightly points out…that of the 36 OECD countries, in recent times only 4 still collect a property tax.

            Stefan Schmidt (Greens): We after all also collect none!

That is the state of the art, right honorable ladies and gentlemen, and who opposes himself to that has a few problems and will generate many problems.

The AfD already decided this question in its 2016 principle program. Therein is the abolition of the property tax, and we stand by that, because as a tax on Substanz it undermines the fundamental of our order of property in this country – and to that naturally belongs the business world.

Right honorable ladies and gentlemen, for the solidarity surtax, and likewise the property surtax, the AfD has repeatedly presented motions to abolish, they being limitations of the personal use of property. Who wants a world and a country of property owners must remove this brake on the 85 percent of the population who desire their own home. We also earlier, and without success, demanded the dynamization of the tax allowance on savings. At that time, the FDP did not vote for it.  

The topic “ re-establishment of freedom from taxation on declared profits from capital assets income after a holding period” is likewise an AfD position. We are thereby for the rule in effect until 2009 – and thus under the regime of the Grand Coalition; namely, one year, while the FDP, clearly more modest, demands a holding period of five years.

And the requirement of consideration for complete loss in regards commercial paper, such as the worthlessness of options – is urgently necessary for the tax system. In a euro world in which there is no longer any interest from government bonds, and likewise no long-term accumulation of assets is even possible,

            Vice-president Hans-Peter Friedrich: Please come to an end.

asset formation by means of shares and derivatives can indeed also become more difficult, should nothing be done.

It would be nice – last sentence, Herr President – in the further progress of the debate over the whole palette of these topics, to finally grapple for once with a tax systematic and with reasoned asset policy arguments. We of the AfD

            Vice-president Hans-Peter Friedrich: It is done now.

will constructively collaborate on that, so that in the area of fundamental tax policy something may happen which in three years in this Bundestag has not happened.

Hearty thanks.

 

[trans: tem]