Pandemic Council Act: Pandemic Council now (neue-deutschland.de)

January 16, 2021 by drbyos

When the corona crisis began, there was a great willingness to trust the measures of the Prime Minister’s Conference. »In March 2020 it was time to act. We also supported that, «says the member of the Bundestag and legal advisor for Friedrich Straetmann’s left-wing parliamentary group. “But that was not a license for the government for the entire duration of the pandemic.” Instead of a license, the left-wing faction wants to anchor a pandemic council in the Infection Protection Act.

The federal government continues to come under pressure month after month in the pandemic. Decisions and statements that were initially valid were soon revised. At first, masks were deemed unnecessary and ineffective. After a few days of public discussion, everyday masks are suddenly the method of choice. With the increasing availability of medical masks, these are becoming an everyday item. A path that the FFP2 masks are now also taking. The decisions of the rulers are accompanied by criticism and opposing views and are increasingly dividing a part of society.

“It is not enough just to criticize this issue, we also have to make it clear: How could it work,” says Bundestag Vice President Petra Pau, who helped several members of the left-wing parliamentary group draft the law. “We notice almost every day that the Infection Protection Act was not designed for this crisis. Hence our bill. “

In a pandemic council, the left faction is primarily concerned with bringing more information to the Bundestag. So far, Parliament has only been informed orally by the Federal Government. “We can only assess a measure if we have this information,” Straetmanns justified the demand for written information, which should also contain the decision-making bases such as medical data, according to which the rulers have so far made decisions.

Straetmanns does not want to delay the work of the ministries and the regulations. “But where it makes sense, the Bundestag should be able to adopt the measures and bring them into law. I think of things like the vaccination sequence and the restrictions imposed. “

The criticism of the federal government is clearly noticeable these days. The number of deaths this week again reached highs since the beginning of the pandemic. The Robert Koch Institute reported 1,244 deaths on Thursday and 1,113 deaths on Friday. The recently decided measures are ready for action just a few days later. The vaccinations are slow to start.

“In the meantime, however, there is no longer any reason to override democratic practices or even the Basic Law and to act with bodies that are in no way legitimized,” says Petra Pau. Above all, Pau wants to involve citizens in the pandemic council for far-reaching measures and resolutions. The regulations for Christmas would have been an issue for the pandemic council, as was the current vaccination sequence. “After the bumpy start of the vaccinations, I think that acceptance of the procedure is more likely to be achieved through a law than through the different procedures in the individual federal states,” says Pau.

Friedrich Straetmanns also sees a number of issues for the pandemic council: »The health system must be put to the test, especially now when the deficiencies are becoming clear. Which areas have to be returned to the municipalities? What happens to the profits that exist in the crisis? “

The left-wing parliamentary group is now hoping for support and a broad debate that will take place beyond the parliamentary group boundaries of the Bundestag. Above all, laws should arise where the ordinances have so far been ineffective. »The question of working from home is also a question of occupational safety. All of this has profound effects and should be discussed in a pandemic council made up of citizens and scientists in order to ultimately be poured into legal form, «demands Pau. “Otherwise it will fall out of focus again at the end of the pandemic.”

Corona pandemic: Thuringia postpones state elections

January 15, 2021 by drbyos

Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow in Heilbad Heiligenstadt in September 2020
Image: dpa

The decision was made out of concern for the well-being of the citizens, according to the Left Party. If the date had not been postponed, there should have been party congresses in February.

IIn Thuringia, the left, the SPD and the Greens as well as the CDU agreed on Thursday evening to postpone the election to the state parliament. Instead of April 25th as planned, the Thuringians will now elect a new state parliament on September 26th, at the same time as the general election.

Stefan Locke

Correspondent for Saxony and Thuringia based in Dresden.

The decision was made both to protect the health of the citizens and to safeguard the democratic rights of the parties, said the chairwoman of the Left, Susanne Hennig-Wellsow, after the more than four hours of consultation. Otherwise, the state parliament would have been dissolved by mid-February and the new election would have to be prepared with hundreds of district party conferences, candidates and lists. All those involved considered this to be incompatible with the current pandemic-related contact restrictions. With 310 new corona infections per 100,000 inhabitants within seven days, Thuringia currently has the highest value nationwide.

The election date had been the main issue. While the left and the SPD preferred an early date, the CDU and the Greens set a joint date with the federal election, from which they hope to gain a tailwind. Hennig-Wellsow said that by September they hope to have “reached a certain level of vaccination” in order to enable a smooth election process. At the same time, the red-red-green minority coalition agreed with the CDU on the continuation of the cooperation called stability mechanism, which is primarily about not overriding each other with the help of the AfD.

Berlin: Organize more diversity (neue-deutschland.de)

January 14, 2021 by drbyos

The Left Party should have been colorful for a long time. But how?

Foto: picture alliance / dpa

It’s a question of credibility. As a party, the left naturally also primarily represents the interests of the precarious, marginalized and socially excluded in its program. In doing so, the party naturally positions itself as a representative of the interests of migrants. In daily political business, in parliaments and boards of directors, there are of course some prominent politicians with migration experience, but overall there are far too few, especially in comparison to the social reality in a multicultural metropolis such as Berlin, in the far above one million people has an immigration history.

Nobody in a party like the Berlin Left has any doubts that this has to be changed. The question that is controversial is: how do we change this? Such decisions not only have to be decided by the parties, but of course, too, if we take an obvious example, this newspaper and its departments. It is a truism that a diverse editorial team should have a better journalistic output because they include more perspectives in their work. However, diversity cannot be created overnight. It’s a long process. So it took about five years until, to stay with the example, the nd department of the capital region was finally staffed on a gender-equal basis.

It will take a similarly long time before the number of migrants at the level of functionaries of the Left Party will have increased significantly. The instruments with which such a goal can be achieved should result in an exciting, but also controversial, debate. Because in the end it is also about established structures having to give up power.

Milieu protection: conversion in turbo mode (neue-deutschland.de)

January 14, 2021 by drbyos

In a high-rise building in Lichtenberg, some windows are illuminated.

Foto: picture alliance/dpa

The conversion of rental apartments into condominiums runs in turbo mode. In the first half of 2020, the owners submitted applications for almost 5,300 apartments in the 61 milieu protection areas that existed at the time – almost as many as in the whole of 2019. This emerges from the monitoring report of the urban development administration. Around 12,700 apartments were converted across Berlin in 2019. “In milieu protection areas, almost half of the apartments are converted, even though only a quarter of the existing property is there,” said Michail Nelken, housing policy spokesman for the left-wing parliamentary group at the Pankow tenants’ forum on Tuesday evening. “Nightmare Conversion – The End of Tenant City?” Was the title under which the online event was held.

Often houses are divided up for stocks, an immediate sale is not intended. Especially since in milieu protection areas the division into property is only approved with the obligation to sell only to the tenants within seven years. There is protection against dismissal for personal use for another five years. A “very perfidious loophole” is what Caren Lay, rent politician for the left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag, calls the seven-year rule. Your SPD colleague Klaus Mindrup speaks of a “gray hardware store that is not used for renting, but for unleasing”.

»With the current purchase prices, an affordable apartment is definitely going to be lost. Because once it has been sold, it can no longer be rented out at a reasonable price, ”says Christoph Trautvetter, who studies the housing market for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, which is part of the Left Party. The sales prices in Wilhelminian style districts are meanwhile around 5000 euros per square meter. Significantly more returns than can be achieved by renting. For example, the investment funds Berlin High End from Denmark and Phoenix Spree Germany from the British Channel Island of Jersey are busy participating in the split business. Both have now divided around three quarters of their total of almost 5,000 apartments in Berlin. You bought the houses around 2007, “when they were available at junk prices of around 1,000 euros per square meter,” reports Trautvetter. Now the remaining quarter of the apartments will be divided. With an empty, divided apartment, twice the square meter price can be achieved than with a rental house that is offered as a whole.

For many months the black-red coalition has been arguing about an amendment to the building code. The bill contains a new form of restricting the sale of condominiums. A maximum of one third of the apartments per house should therefore be allowed to be sold in communities where a tight housing market has been officially identified. “According to the current state of the debate, it would mean that the situation for milieu protection areas would be worse,” says Reiner Wild, managing director of the Berlin tenants’ association. The seven-year rule would no longer apply. The implementation of the proposed new regime raises many questions.

“The Union tries with all its might to prevent any legal improvement in the situation of tenants,” complains Caren Lay. “A large part of the discussion has to do with our desolate pension system,” explains Wild. Many people invested their money in apartments. “Every penny that is not paid is treated as a personal attack on retirement benefits. That is extremely stressful. «The financial market is the actual basis of the rent madness.

Half of them cannot work at home (neue-deutschland.de)

January 11, 2021 by drbyos

You cannot operate the supermarket checkout from home. — You cannot use the supermarket checkout from home.

Photo: dpa / Frank Molter

Now that further contact restrictions to combat Covid-19 have come into force, social life has largely come to a standstill. But one area is almost entirely excluded from the measures: the world of work. The employers are “urgently requested to create generous home office opportunities,” it said in the decision of the federal and state governments last week. And on Monday, Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil left it with appeals. “Arbitrarily refusing home office would now be irresponsible,” said the SPD politician in the NDR, but at the same time he emphasized that the point was “that our economy is kept going wherever possible.”

In large parts of the economy, going to the home office is not even possible because half of the population does not do any office work that could be done from home if necessary. According to the response of the federal government to a small inquiry from the left-wing parliamentary group, which is available “nd.derTag”, 53.7 percent of employees did not have any office work in 2018. While nine out of ten employees at banks and insurance companies work at their desks, it is only one in five employees in construction (22.6 percent) and in agriculture and forestry (19.8 percent), for example. In the manufacturing sector, too, less than half (42.3 percent) have an office job.

Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow therefore brought a tough lockdown – also for the economy – into play last week. “The mistake we made all over Germany was that we didn’t use December to actually send the general economy into a break,” the left-wing politician told the MDR. “Everything that is not essential to life or that cannot be systemically turned off should have been stopped for four weeks.”

The employers do not want to know anything about it. “That’s absurd. You can’t close all businesses, ”said employer president Rainer Dulger in an interview with the“ Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung ”, when asked about the idea of closing all businesses for two weeks. The people would have to continue to be cared for and the country kept going.

Instead, the head of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA) passes the buck to the employees when it comes to infection: »Today I see at least one trend among my employees who work in the office that they like to come back to work after a long period at home the company comes to see colleagues again – only from a distance, but at least «, continues Dulger.

Jutta Krellmann makes such sentences angry. »Occupational safety is an employer’s duty, whether in the company or in the home office. Employer President Dulger no longer has all the cups in his cupboard when he shifts the responsibility onto the employees, “says the spokeswoman for the left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag for co-determination and work to” nd “. The majority of employees cannot work from home at all. She also has a right to safe working conditions in the corona crisis. »We need protective measures at every workplace in order to break possible chains of infection there too. Companies that negligently endanger the health of their employees must be systematically shut down, ”explains Krellmann.

Verdi boss Frank Werneke also wants to make employers more responsible. Instead of just appealing to the companies, the federal government could “impose a clear regulation on the employers’ side with a more binding formulation that is in the interests of the employees,” said the unionist at the end of last week in favor of the magazine “Stern” Employers from enabling their employees to work from home in the coronavirus pandemic. But Werneke also warned of problems with home office: “Many people who work on the move have to improvise a lot, maybe they don’t even have enough space for a desk. Sometimes that works more badly than right. “

Left-wing politician Krellmann sees it this way: “Those who work in the home office are safe from Corona, but if in doubt they break their backs.” Musculoskeletal disorders, i.e. often suffering caused by sitting for too long, are already causing them 23.4 percent had by far the most sick days. This problem can be exacerbated if workers do not have proper office furniture at home. “Instead of working at the kitchen table, we also need proper workplaces at home,” says Krellmann. “Employers must provide the appropriate equipment.”

Guidelines and building bridges (neue-deutschland.de)

January 11, 2021 by drbyos

After eight years and Corona addition, they will soon be saying goodbye to the Left Party leadership: Bernd Riexinger and Katja Kipping.

Photo: dpa / Annette Riedl

If leftists should be superstitious and show something, then they now have something to think about. Because the political start of the year, intended as a lively start into the new year – especially when a lot of elections are pending – it rumbled. At least at the beginning. The live stream was half an hour late due to technical problems, then there was no sound, and finally the voice of the federal managing director rattled tinny from the loudspeaker. Everything is a little more difficult under the conditions of a pandemic and lockdown. Actually a representative event on a big stage in front of a large audience after the Luxemburg Liebnecht award, the Left Party’s start to the year took place this time in a few screen windows. If you will, that – including the bumpy start – is an indication of the topic of this time and certainly also of the upcoming election campaigns: How does society deal with the challenges and unreasonable demands of the corona crisis? The two chairmen Katja Kipping and Bernd Riexinger as well as federal managing director Jörg Schindler and treasurer Harald Wolf have written a paper on this: »Change course now. For a socio-ecological way out of the crisis «. You call it economic policy guidelines. But what the left formulates there affects many areas of society in its effects; Last but not least, it is a signal in the direction of election campaigns, which are imminent in large numbers in municipalities, states and at the federal level.

The social protective screen that was set up in Corona times is far from sufficient, said Riexinger. Restrictions mainly affect the private sector; the protection against infection in the workplace is neglected. “The market doesn’t regulate anything, we have to regulate the market,” he explained, referring to immediate measures such as raising the minimum wage to twelve euros and gradually increasing it. On the other hand, it is about combining the answers to the pandemic with the socio-ecological restructuring: emission-free economy, traffic turnaround, good wages, expansion of public services, sustainable infrastructure and much more.

How is all of this supposed to be paid for? It is about property levy and property tax for the rich and super-rich, about the extension of national debt. Riexinger brought up a nationwide investment company with which privatized hospitals could be brought back into public ownership.

And then there is the tiresome debt brake. Gustav Horn does not like this either, because it prevents important investments. The fact that Horn spoke on the left is a kind of bridge. For a long time he was head of the Institute for Macroeconomics and Business Cycle Research of the union-affiliated Hans Böckler Foundation. Now, in retirement, he is a member of the SPD executive committee and stressed several times that his party was not comfortable in the grand coalition. Much of what he said about the social division in society and about environmental sustainability should meet with support from the left. More clearly than other SPD representatives, he advocates a government that does something for such a change “and does not put it on the market.”

Katja Kipping had previously sounded very similar: “With anything that smells of greed, greed and even more market, we cannot get out of the crisis.” In the election year 2021, a window of power politics must be opened to the left of the Union, said Kipping and left it Greens know that a socio-ecological turnaround is only possible with a strong left. “Everyone who plays on black can actually throw their green election program in the bin now.”

What she understands by a strong left at the federal level, Kipping summarized in the formula: two-digit and before the AfD. “We want to have a say in the decision-making process.” This can be seen as a work assignment for the successors, because Kipping and Riexinger are about to step down after more than eight years in office. By far the most promising applicants for the party chairmanship are the state politicians Susanne Hennig-Wellsow from Thuringia and Janine Wissler from Hesse. However, they did not play a public role at the start of the year that they want to significantly shape.

JuLi Ben Brechtken: Why I was banned from Twitter. And those on the left cheer too soon

January 5, 2021 by drbyos

opinion JuLi Ben Brechtken

Why I was banned from Twitter. And those on the left cheer too soon

Stand: 05.01.2021 | Reading time: 3 minutes

Locked for child’s play: Benedikt Brechtken

Quelle: REUTERS / Brendan McDermid; Benedikt Brechtken

Benedikt Brechtken is the young liberal with the widest reach on Twitter. Again and again he was blackened by network investigators. On Monday he received a message that his account would be permanently blocked. Because of a “child’s play”.

Mor more than ten million times my tweets were read in the past month alone. I’m the young liberal in Germany with the greatest reach on Twitter. On Monday I received a friendly message from Twitter that my account was blocked. Forever. Twitter’s blocking practice is a threat to freedom of expression, as my example can easily see.

Now you have to know that Twitter does not block permanently immediately, but is always blocked for 24 hours up to seven days beforehand. Since my tweets are reported dozen of times a week by network informers, it is almost inevitable that Twitter will at some point prematurely block due to trivialities.

For example, I was banned from “Markus Söder can do me”. Or for an ironic “Kubicki recently even wrote for the Axis of the Good, stone him!” In a contact guilt debate. Pointing a water pistol at my own head in response to calls for a nationwide rental cap was too much of a good thing on Twitter. The other lockdowns came because of similar absurdities.

It doesn’t work without a lawyer

In keeping with this, the first left are of course also cheering that I was banned. But for people who understand as much about freedom of expression as they do about all other freedoms, this is really just boring in all its reflexivity.

But they were happy too soon. Shortly after I legally challenged the suspension, my account was restored. Warnings seem to take effect in less than an hour.

But that also means: Twitter is very aware that they regularly block prophylactically and, above all, illegally. It’s just a shame that you have to be able to afford a lawyer to protect your own freedom of expression from arbitrariness.

Asylum procedures in anchor centers take a particularly long time (neue-deutschland.de)

December 27, 2020 by drbyos

Anchor Center Regensburg

Photo: dpa / Lino Mirgeler

Berlin. Asylum procedures in so-called anchor centers take longer than average, according to a report. Between January and November 2020, there was an average of 8.5 months between the application and the decision of the authority in an anchor center, as the Funke newspapers reported on Friday from a response by the Federal Ministry of the Interior to a request from the left-wing parliamentary group. The average of all asylum procedures during this period was 8.3 months, as the request from Left MP Ulla Jelpke further revealed.

The anchor centers, the introduction of which was decided in the coalition agreement, unite several authorities relevant for asylum procedures in one place and are intended to accelerate the procedures. Jelpke sees this goal as not being achieved. The above-average length of the proceedings in the anchor centers was a “disastrous result” for Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU), Jelpke told the Funke newspapers. Allegedly, asylum procedures in the centers should be much faster, she said. “But the opposite is true, as we now see.”

The left-wing politician criticized the fact that asylum seekers were “crammed into a very small space, they should be cut off from independent advisory structures and the supporting civil society”. Not only in view of the need for the most decentralized accommodation possible in times of the corona pandemic, this model is “completely wrong”.

“I came with many dreams”
Waiting and fear in the refugee camp on Lesbos

Overall, according to the government response, the average length of asylum procedures increased this year. In 2019 it was still 6.1 months, as the Funke newspapers reported. The Ministry of the Interior justifies this in its answer to the left-wing inquiry primarily with the corona pandemic.

On the one hand, the delivery of negative notices has meanwhile been almost completely stopped because the applicants’ ability to take action was limited during the pandemic. On the other hand, many old cases were closed in 2020, which drive the cut in the length of the procedure up, according to the report in the government response. AFP / nd

SPD and Left: When regular voters alienate – politics

December 26, 2020 by drbyos

The SPD and the Left are losing their traditional clientele: the unemployed and precariously employed are turning to the AfD or other parties. Left parties could take up social inequality, low pensions or high rents as their own issues.

Thomas Balbierer and Anika Blatz

At the end of November, Lilli Samhuber is standing in a small gardener’s tent on the edge of Munich’s Viktualienmarkt. Advent wreaths made of fir branches lie around them on the ground, their sweetish-tart scent rises into the nose despite the protective mask. Samhuber is a friendly, harsh voice who can laugh out loud and swear. If you talk to her about politics, however, the swearing outweighs it: the rents are far too high, the pensions far too low. Globalization only benefits the “super rich”. And anyway: “What do we actually need so many MPs for?” Samhuber says she feels “ripped off” that the Bundestag is getting bigger and more expensive, while she “sweated blood and water” in the spring when her nursery in Lower Bavaria had to stay for weeks because of the corona pandemic. “We have been struggling to survive for years,” she says. “I have a cold anger at politics.”

Broadcasters fail in urgent proceedings before the BVerfG

December 23, 2020 by drbyos

DThe Federal Constitutional Court has rejected an urgent application by the public broadcasters against the failure to increase the broadcasting fee. The judges have expressly left the question open as to whether the broadcasting fee will possibly be increased later and whether the broadcasters will have to be compensated for lost income. However, the broadcasters have not shown that an increase would be so urgent that the Federal Constitutional Court would have to intervene in the urgent procedure.

Such urgency could in principle exist if the broadcasters would otherwise lack the necessary money in the near future to adequately fulfill their program mandate. However, the broadcasters have not shown that such a breakdown in the program is to be expected immediately, provided that the broadcast fee does not increase immediately from the current EUR 17.50 to EUR 18.36 on January 1, 2021. In this respect, it can be assumed that the broadcasters will be able to cover the shortfall from their own resources at least until a final decision by the Federal Constitutional Court and maintain their programs.

Haseloff agreed

The dispute over the premium increase was preceded by a lengthy and detailed determination procedure. First of all, the broadcasters report their financial requirements on the basis of the program mandate formulated by politicians. The commission to determine the financial requirements (KEF) then meets, subjects the information provided by the broadcasters to a critical review and then makes its own recommendation – in this case, to increase the contribution by 86 cents.

In a next step, the Prime Ministers of the federal states are negotiating a reform of the State Broadcasting Treaty including an adjustment of the contribution amount. The Saxon-Anhalt Prime Minister Rainer Haseloff (CDU) had agreed to a contribution increase of 86 cents in this group months ago, but pointed out at the time that he could not guarantee that the CDU parliamentary group in the state parliament would also give its place to the regulation would.

CDU in Saxony-Anhalt withstood the pressure

It was up to them, because in order to become effective, the interstate broadcasting agreement including the premium increase must be accepted by all 16 state parliaments in a final step. It didn’t look like that in Saxony-Anhalt for a long time, because the government made up of the SPD, CDU and the Greens had agreed in the coalition agreement on the goal of “stable contributions”, and the opposition from the Left Party and AfD also rejected an increase in contributions.

The Left Party, however, deviated from its position during the hot phase of the political debate and thus drove a wedge between the governing parties, as the Greens and the SPD also agreed to the increase and the “contribution stability” agreed in 2016 in the sense of inflation-adjusted stability since the last contribution increase in the year 2009 wanted to (re) interpret. As a result, the CDU members found themselves exposed to the charge of entering into a “pact” with the AfD if they did not agree to the contribution increase.

When it became clear that the majority of the CDU MPs would stick to their negative stance despite this political pressure, Prime Minister Haseloff removed the vote on the State Treaty from the plenary agenda in order to prevent a joint majority between CDU and AfD MPs. The result was, of course, the same: Since the state parliament had not even voted, the approval of a federal state was missing.

The sunset clause remains

From the point of view of the broadcasters, this was also problematic because it was agreed in the interstate broadcasting agreement that the entire agreement would no longer apply unless all 16 federal states agree by the end of the year. A second application before the Federal Constitutional Court was therefore aimed at at least suspending this clause of the contract. But the constitutional judges see no reason for this either: the states’ concerns are unfounded, because if they win in the main proceedings next year, an increase in contributions could be achieved despite this clause.