-- FEWER POOR PEOPLE - Adriana Rozwadowska in Gazeta Wyborcza: "A decade ago, Poles constituted a quarter of the 10% poorest residents of the European Union. Today, only one-tenth. Poles are improving, while Britons and Italians are worsening. Can their political choices be explained by this?"
http://wyborcza.pl/7,155287,23652599,duzy-spadek-ubostwa-w-polsce-i-tapniecie-w-wielkiej-brytanii.html

-- OUR CAMPAIGN WILL BE VERY SHARP, BUT NOT BELOW THE BELT - says Jan Śpiewak in an interview with Piotr Halicki from Onet: "The problem for urban movements today is that they have to enter into the big politics that exists in Warsaw. And there's no point in being offended that political parties are doing everything to not give up influence and power. We have to fight them. We will do it and we will win. Our campaign will be sharp, sometimes even very sharp, but it won't go below the belt, which, I feel, PiS and PO are doing more and more often."

-- TIME TO AIR OUT THE CIVIC PLATFORM AND NOT BE FOOLED BY PiS - says Jan Śpiewak: "Civic Platform has been governing Warsaw for a very long time, and it's high time to air out this stuffy room that the city hall has become. On the other hand, Warsaw won't be fooled by what Patryk Jaki is proposing. Warsaw will not accept what is happening in the country, i.e., the partisan appropriation of the state, the grab for positions and State Treasury companies, but also the contempt that is spreading everywhere. The goal of politics has become to put down the opponent, to drag them through the mud, not to work for the people.">

-- ŚPIEWAK ON THE DESTRUCTION OF HISTORIC CITY PARTS FOR NYCZ TOWER BY CIVIC PLATFORM AND PiS: "Actually, I started to consider running for Mayor of Warsaw when the vote on the construction of Nycz Tower took place, when PiS and Civic Platform voted unilaterally for the destruction of a historic part of the city, which neither Hitler nor Stalin managed to demolish. All this so that Cardinal Nycz and a few developers could earn hundreds of millions of zlotys. The demolition of the 19th-century parish church of St. Barbara, the Stations of the Cross, the Hoffmanowa school complex, and the destruction of the last green corner in this area – I consider this to be something unbelievable. And everyone from PiS and everyone from Civic Platform are voting for it hand in hand.">

-- CIVIC PLATFORM IS PiS IN BETTER SUITS - ŚPIEWAK CONTINUES:"Law and Justice and Civic Platform are only interested in power and money. Some are in better suits and consider themselves more civilized because they break the rules without boasting about it. The others are a more shoddy version of the former. Before the aforementioned vote on Nycz Tower, we showed that the residents of this area do not want such a solution; the faithful of this parish are against it; we submitted comments, made requests to the conservator of monuments, informed the Central Anticorruption Bureau, but no one wanted to listen to us, and both parties voted 'yes'. That's when I decided that if we don't run in the elections, the residents will have no one to vote for.">

-- ŚPIEWAK ON THE COMMUNALIZATION OF SPEC: "We also want to reduce electricity, gas, and heating bills. The 'French' price increases for heating, which are a result of the scandalous privatization of SPEC, must be reversed. We will renegotiate the privatization agreement with the French, and if this does not yield results, we will propose a referendum on the communalization of SPEC."
https://wiadomosci.onet.pl/tylko-w-onecie/jan-spiewak-wystartuje-w-wyborach-na-prezydenta-warszawy/zgzbhkf

-- NO TRACE LEFT OF PiS's STUMBLE - MARCIN FIJOŁEK: "[...] the spring stumble of Law and Justice in the polls is no longer evident, and the United Right politicians will start the holiday season with a significant lead over the rest of the field. What's more, some polls indicate record support for the 'good change' camp, with support for PiS – among decided voters, which is how election results are reported – reaching almost 50 percent."
https://wpolityce.pl/polityka/403171-fijolek-w-sieci-pis-wyraznie-przelamalo-trend-w-sondazach

-- PROFESSOR EWA ŁĘTOWSKA ON THE PRESIDENT HAVING THE FINAL SAY AND THE DIFFERENT STRATEGIES OF NSA AND SUPREME COURT JUDGES in an interview conducted by Łukasz Pawłowski and Natalia Woszczyk in Kultura Liberalna: "It is normal in law that there is always a war of arguments at the beginning. There are foolish interpretations, and there are wise interpretations. The interpretation proposed by PiS is not entirely foolish. It 'only' fails to take into account the argument from Article 180, paragraph 1 of the Constitution, i.e., the principle of irremovability of judges. That is why I believe my interpretation is more perfect. But the one for whom the legislator has provided the final word is right. And the final word has been provided for the president, who terminates mandates. In such a situation, as a lawyer, I must say with a heavy heart: too bad. The judges of the Supreme Court said the same – they disagree with this law, but they will submit to it because it has concrete legal effects. Please also note the difference in strategies between the judges of the Supreme Court and the NSA, which is often overlooked. Those from the NSA did not attempt what was done in the Supreme Court. Perhaps they have less faith in arguments of intertemporal law, or perhaps closer daily contact with the executive branch has stripped them of their illusions about the fairness of the actions and arguments of the executive power.">

-- ŁĘTOWSKA ON WHAT GERSDORF SHOULD DO: "She should state that she considers this law unconstitutional, but in a situation where the president sends her and the judges a properly drafted decision stating that, by force of the current law, the term of office of the First President and other judges expires, she should acknowledge the fact. Better without declarations.">

-- I CANNOT QUESTION THE PRESIDENT'S COMPETENCE TO DECLARE A JUDGE'S RETIREMENT - ŁĘTOWSKA FURTHER IN KL: "I cannot rationally explain this interpretive muddle. However, I cannot question the president's competence to declare a judge's retirement. Consequently, it is the president's interpretation, his vision of this problem – even if we dislike it diabolically – that must actually prevail. It is exactly the same as in the instance control of common court judgments. Let's assume that a legally binding and final judgment of the second instance seems simply stupid and erroneous to us. So what? The lawyer would have to say: 'We lost, too bad.' But the party to the dispute, by submitting to the judgment, does not have to recognize its validity. If I understand correctly, this is precisely what the Supreme Court judges are doing.">

-- ŁĘTOWSKA ON WHAT SHE WOULD DO IN GERSDORF'S PLACE, ASKED BY KL: "I would go to work until I received an act from the president issued lege artis, which would indicate that I am no longer an active judge.">

-- THIS IS GRIST TO THE MILL OF EUROPEAN INSTITUTIONS, REGARDING ENSURING THAT SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH OUR JUDICIARY - ŁĘTOWSKA TELLS KULTURA LIBERALNA: "All this mess that is happening now – that it's unclear who is the president – is just grist to the mill for European institutions in terms of ensuring that something is wrong with our judiciary and that politicians want to stifle it. From this point of view, the worse it gets, the better. It sounds awful, but that's how it is. The lawyers from the Presidential Chancellery are contributing significantly to this.">

-- ŁĘTOWSKA ON CIVIC PLATFORM'S 'ACT OF RENEWAL' IDEA, ASKED BY PAWŁOWSKI AND WOSZCZYK: "As far as possible from that! They would be just as – hmm… – reckless as those who dragged us into this misfortune.">

-- TOMASZ SIEMONIAK ON NO ONE BEING INTERESTED IN THE PROGRAM - tells Karolina Wigura and Łukasz Pawłowski in KL: "It's changing from anger at Civic Platform for losing elections and letting PiS into power, through an approach saying we need to invent something like 500 plus, to – and this has dominated for several months – a desire to remove PiS from power and only then arrange various other things, such as taxes or indeed 500 plus. This is the result of growing outrage among at least some of our voters, an anti-PiS factor. You can formulate a hundred incantations and say that the program is most important. But honestly, no one has asked me for a long time what we will do, for example, with the education reform, whether we will reverse it or not. People have stopped asking about it. They are only interested in how to ensure that Poland returns to a normal path. With all the troubles and problems that existed before 2015, but were solved through normal politics, not growing authoritarianism.">

-- PROGRAMMATIC ISSUES ARE MOVING TO THE BACKGROUND - SIEMONIAK CONTINUES: Today, two issues dominate public imagination: the judiciary and Europe, meaning what will happen to our membership in the European Union. PiS is destroying it, creating a threat not only that we will receive smaller subsidies, but that we won't even be in the first speed of Europe. Whether we like it or not, for voters in Nowy Sącz, Żywiec, and other places I've been to recently, the common denominator of all the bad things happening in Poland is PiS. In such a situation, programmatic issues recede into the background.">

-- WIGURA TELLS SIEMONIAK HOW YOUNG PEOPLE PERCEIVE LABOR RIGHTS: "Many of them equate adherence to the Constitution with adherence to labor rights. If you ask an average young person today what they think about what is happening with the Supreme Court and the Constitution, they will very often reply: 'What do I care, when I've been working on civil law contracts for ten years?' These are accusations that do not concern PiS itself, but the Polish state as such, and effectively every successive government that has not been sensitive enough to the fact that people have their rights in this area.">

-- PAWŁOWSKI TO SIEMONIAK ABOUT CIVIC PLATFORM'S CONSERVATISM: "How is it that Civic Platform can be so radical in its opposition to PiS, and yet so cautious in presenting positive programmatic proposals?"
https://kulturaliberalna.pl/2018/07/10/siemoniak-wywiad-akt-odnowy-rzeczpospolitej-program-po/

-- SUPREME COURT IN A STATE OF INVALIDITY - title in Gazeta Wyborcza.

-- SUPREME COURT IN A STATE OF VEGETATION - front page of Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.

-- EWA SIEDLECKA ON THE ACTION OF MASS SUBMISSIONS TO THE SUPREME COURT: "It is worth undertaking a campaign of mass submissions to the Supreme Court also because the appeal of unsuccessful candidates to the NSA may concern not only the fact that they did not win the competition. In their appeal, judges can question the validity of the National Council of the Judiciary's decisions as a body appointed in violation of the constitution and the law. And they can request that the NSA refer a legal question to the Court of Justice of the European Union, asking whether the judicial appointment system, carried out solely with the participation of individuals appointed by politicians and the president – and thus the executive power – does not violate Article 19 of the Treaty on European Union, which guarantees the right to an effective judicial remedy? In this situation, everything will depend on the courage and sense of responsibility for the state and the judiciary of the judges of the Supreme Administrative Court."
https://siedlecka.blog.polityka.pl/2018/07/09/obywatele-i-sedziowie-powszechni-walcza-o-sn/

-- FATHER RYDZYK TESTS KACZYŃSKI - Agata Kondzińska and Michał Wilgocki in Gazeta Wyborcza: "In addition to confronting the opposition before next year's European elections, the United Right will also face an internal battle between PiS and Father Tadeusz Rydzyk's circle. Toruń is already sending signals to Warsaw that it may field its own list.">

-- A PiS POLITICIAN IN A GW ARTICLE: "We are aware of the rumors that Toruń could field its own list, but it's solely an attempt to exert pressure," says a politician from the circle of the PiS chairman. "I can bet that there will be no separate list. And certainly not under the new electoral law."
http://wyborcza.pl/7,75398,23654703,wielki-plan-czy-wielki-blef-tak-ojciec-rydzyk-testuje-prezesa.html

-- ECOLOGISTS BET ON CASTLES - Gazeta Polska Codziennie on the front page: "Natura 2000 areas are blocking the Vistula Spit canal, the navigability of rivers, and even the rescue of commercial forests in the Białowieża Forest from the bark beetle invasion. However, if one has money and the support of pseudo-ecologists, they can build a castle almost 50 meters high in these protected areas, dig a moat around it, build an embankment, and cut down 2 hectares of forest. Then, the so-called nature conservation activists... will back off."
https://gpcodziennie.pl/93584-pseudoekolodzypostawilinazamki.html

-- Two years ago, Michał Kornatowski passed away.

-- BIRTHDAYS: Michał Wilgocki, Killion Munyama, Ludwik Kotecki, Lucjan Karasiewicz.