Headlines
Federal Government Plans to Establish a Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office
In future, this body is to form the directive apex of the public prosecution service in place of the Minister of Justice.
A three-member Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office is envisaged. Its members must have at least ten years’ experience as criminal judges or public prosecutors and are to be selected by a commission composed predominantly of representatives of the judiciary and the legal professions.
The requirement that members have at least ten years’ professional experience as a criminal judge or public prosecutor does not nominally, but effectively, exclude other professional groups such as attorneys or university professors.
Supporters speak of preventing political influence on criminal investigations and prosecutions.
Critics warn that dispensing with a ministerial power of instruction removes the clear political accountability of that very minister, so that no one remains who can be held responsible should the authorities develop a life of their own decoupled from the will of the people – in other words, that an arbitrary state within the state could emerge.
Viennese Grocer Sends Babler an Invoice for Technical Upgrade Due to New VAT Rules
Since 1 July, Austria has applied a reduction in value-added tax on selected staple foods from ten to 4.9 percent. While the federal government sees the measure as a contribution to easing the burden on the population, it has met with criticism from parts of the retail trade.
The Viennese grocer Franz Kohout, operator of the delicatessen „Zum Greisslaa“ in Oberlaa, criticises above all the additional bureaucratic and financial effort. The changeover required modifications to point-of-sale software and inventory-management systems, giving rise to additional costs and working time. He also objects that different tax rates apply to some products, which needlessly complicates processing.
In protest, Kohout sent Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler an invoice for a total of 372 euros. It covers the cost of a software update as well as eight hours of working time incurred through implementing the new rule. He does not wish to pass the extra costs on to his customers and instead demands that the Vice-Chancellor cover them. Whether Babler will respond to the demand remains open for now.
Austria Outclassed by a Technically Superior Spanish Side
Austria have been eliminated in the round of 32 at the football World Cup. The national team lost 0:3 to Spain. The goals were scored by Mikel Oyarzabal (36th, 89th) and Pedro Porro (66th). This brings to an end the World Cup journey of the team coached by Ralf Rangnick.
Letters to the Editor
The VAT Cut as an Expensive Red Bureaucratic Project
The Austrian government presents a package of savings and burdens as a „temporarily over-counter-financed“ relief package and is surprised that the applause fails to materialise. The audacity of this attempted deception, advanced with the full force of the politico-media complex, takes the breath away even of long-time observers.
The self-praise for the VAT cut on staple foods catches on with the simple-minded; for everyone else it quickly turns out that consumers are 99 % luxury consumers, because they want to buy, for instance, pastry with a suspiciously luxurious high fat content, such as a croissant.
Babler presumably felt he needed a relief narrative with which he could present himself as a social saviour of humanity.
Finance Minister Marterbauer will have replied: Fine, why not. But it must be „properly“ counter-financed. Only in this way can we guarantee that all the golden parachutes we have promised will actually open, for the good and the glorification of left-wing statism. And it must become more complicated. Only thus can we hire more sandal-wearing fruit-juice drinkers who, for the promise of being protected from the social cold of the socialistically plundered free market, let themselves be persuaded without reservation that the socialists are political geniuses beyond any doubt. The good System-Auntie ÖVP is, out of reasons of state and party, ready for anything anyway, and not itself averse to the idea of fully opening golden parachutes.
And „the people out there“ may feel loved and seen, knowing that we are thinking of them with a cheap-dry-bread-rolls law.
Babler will no doubt have rejoiced, grinned and nodded like a little king over the approval and the backing worthy of a stab in the back.
In a Summer Interview, Stocker Declares the Abdication of the ÖVP as a Party of State
The Chancellor confesses that the VAT cut was not the greatest stroke of genius, but that it had to be implemented at the express wish of the SPÖ. Moreover, much more is planned.
The harping on the „fine print“ of budget policy for the coming years is, between the lines, declared a de facto optimism-damaging, state-hostile act. The fine print as a reminder: abolition of contribution benefits for low earners and the elderly; savings on child benefit and educational leave, a parcel levy of three euros on online orders and a new plastic tax, to name just a few of the burdening measures.
What is the point of this?
A policy that relies on Orwellian distortion of perception and hopes that a performance society competing at world level will let itself be made to wear any fool’s cap whatsoever.
People see through the game. Here one no longer acts according to considerations of sustainability and justice; here the law of the party jungle and of the more politically unscrupulous prevails.
Yes, if as a politician one wanted to lead genuine system-lackeys up the garden path for the sake of saving money, one might under certain circumstances no longer find one’s own way back out again. Only statesmen of stature are capable of taking this risk.
In countries where they are lacking, a humanitarian failure is looming whose victims are regularly the weakest in society. Capital and talent are already in headlong flight from the Alpine republic, which is drifting ever more into reaction and communism.
The day is approaching when this government will have to deploy its rhetorical art to dampen the expectations of its own following, rather than to lead the rest of the population astray. The approach of this day causes panic and cold sweats. The eyes blink, the brow glistens.
Every man for himself! Not for nothing are essential parts of the Blacks currently trying, with the greenhorn Kurz, to get the turquoise lifeboat afloat again in the nick of time.
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