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Disclaimer: I am embarrassed that Donald Trump represents my country on the global stage.
That having been said, it's a good thing he wasn't elected president, or else we'd be at war with north Korea right now.
Oh, wait. Is that...? Yeah, it's the President of the United States meeting with the Supreme Leader of North Korea for the first time since, well... ever.
Prediction: there will be a McDonald’s in Pyongyang.
majority of those companies that are benefiting most from new tax laws, never had a problem to begin with. As a small business owner, I benefit ZERO from new laws.
from a Chicago tribune article.. Put another way, the new tax law is giving America’s wealthy not one but two big windfalls: They stand to gain the most from the tax cuts for individuals, and they’re the big winners from the tax cuts for corporations.
Do you even Section 199A, bro?
The 20% deduction for business income is a huge deal for small business.
Disclaimer: I am embarrassed that Donald Trump represents my country on the global stage.
That having been said, it's a good thing he wasn't elected president, or else we'd be at war with north Korea right now.
related:
INTERNET DEATH WATCH: DAY 1
Editorial by Kevin Ryan
Today the “Net Neutrality” repeal fully went into effect, and no, the internet did not die. And while I’m not seriously suggesting that there would be any major negative impact on the first day of the repeal, I can confidently predict that there will be no negative impact tomorrow, or next month, or next year, or ever.
That’s because Net Neutrality was never a real issue to begin with.
“Net Neutrality” purportedly protects consumers from internet service providers who would throttle, or charge more for, or treat differently content or platforms that, for example, consumed more bandwidth. Advocates say that, without these rules, ISPs could intentionally block, slow down or charge money for specific websites and online content.
But, when the Obama Administration imposed the new rules on internet providers, it was a solution in search of a problem: ISPs weren’t engaging in the conduct that government created regulations to protect us from.
And even if internet service providers did charge more for, say, Netflix, which consumes 40% of all bandwidth in the country, how is there anything wrong with that? It’d be no different than charging someone who buys 300 items more than someone who buys 3 items. It’d be completely warranted. And forcing companies to charge less than market price is downright socialist, and destroys, not protects, markets.
But net neutrality, a.k.a. the 2015 Open Internet Order, is far more weighty than just a rule forbidding internet fast lanes. The order’s reclassification of the internet as a public telecommunications utility put it under Title II regulation, the exact same order that stifled telecommunication innovation for nearly a hundred years and resulted in monopolies like Bell.
And, no, ISPs are NOT a monopoly. Most areas have numerous options for data/internet, including cellular, satellite, and cable. As cable companies are learning the hard way, “cable cutting” has become more and more common. The American consumer does not need government “protection” from predatory internet providers... the market is working just fine. Companies who overcharge are bleeding customers.
When you tell the private sector how much it has to charge or who it must or must not enter into customer agreements with, it stifles innovation. Only when a buyer and seller are fully free to decide the terms of sale do both parties benefit. It’s a lesson learned through literally decades of socialism vs. capitalism competition. (And for those who haven’t been paying attention, capitalism won.)
Indeed there was been a decrease in domestic broadband capital expenditures among the nation’s 12 largest ISPs following the implementation of net neutrality, and smaller ISPs reported that the Title II regulations were holding them back them from expanding new services. It’s no coincidence that almost immediately following the announcement that the FCC would be repealing net neutrality, investment by ISPs shot up, as did average internet speed nationwide.
Yet many people, even those who favor free markets and are wary of government intervention, have hopped onboard the net neutrality bandwagon. It’s a lesson in political manipulation. As with Obamacare, carbon taxes, and countless other regulations, net neutrality is just another device designed to give politicians more control of the economy. Such power grabs encourage lobbyists to give even more money to the politicians that hold their companies’ fates in their hands. It’s an age-old political trick that has resulted in the establishment of an uber-wealthy governing elite in America. There’s a reason the D.C. suburbs have become the wealthiest in America.
The reality is, it’s things like “net neutrality” that result in the Washington elite consolidating more power over us. Don’t fall for it.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and city council members on Monday said they would consider legislation to repeal a “head tax” on the city’s large businesses, just weeks after the measure’s passage drew public criticism from Amazon, Starbucks and others.
Backed by Durkan and seven of the nine members of the Seattle City Council, the repeal effort is underway despite the tax’s unanimous passage on May 14. The approved version of Seattle’s “head tax” had called for large employers to contribute $275 per employee annually in an effort to raise roughly $50 million per year toward efforts to address Seattle’s growing homelessness crisis through affordable housing and outreach efforts.
a quick google search in relation to german migrants and crime:
According to the country's annual crime report, compiled by the Federal Crime Bureau (BKA), there has been a more than 50% rise in migrant crime in the country compared to the year before.
The German newspaper Die Welt, which received an advance copy of the annual crime report, wrote:
"The number of immigrants suspected of criminal acts in 2016 has risen by 52.7 percent, to the figure of 174,438, compared to the previous year. To ensure a fair comparison with the rest of the population, crimes that only immigrants can commit, such as illegal entry to the country, have been taken out from the statistics. The annual police report (PKS) shows that there were total of 616,230 crime suspects of foreign origin last year. The migrant share [of total crime figures] was disproportionately large, namely 174,438 -- more than a quarter."
These staggering crime statistics are even more alarming if one looks through the narrow definition German government uses to denote a "criminal migrant". As Die Welt explains, these crime figures do not take into account "foreigners who have been living and working in Germany for some time, but only a specific group of protection-seekers [refugees]."
In a sane world, the government would take steps to protect its own citizens from such "protection-seekers". Not in Merkel's Germany.
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Migrants may be responsible for most of a recent rise in violent crime in Germany, research commissioned by the government suggests.
The study used data from Lower Saxony, a state where more than 90% of the rise was attributed to young male migrants.
The researchers say the findings are not surprising because many migrants who arrived in Germany in recent years are single males aged 14-30.
This group is most likely to commit crime, irrespective of nationality.
...
In the Lower Saxony figures, 17% of crimes attributed to migrants were suspected of being committed by North Africans.
This group, which makes up less than 1% of the state's migrant population, has little chance of achieving legal status in Germany.
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Thanks to a leak of the National Crime Statistics (PKS) back in April we already knew what the headline number from the crime statistics would be: reported crime dropped by 10 percent last year. That was the biggest decrease in overall crime in a quarter century, quite a spectacular turnaround after the statistics showed an increase in crime in recent years.
If you take the statistics at face value, for every 100,000 German citizens, less than 7,000 crimes were reported last year. By way of comparison, in 2005 some 7,622 crimes were reported for every 100,000 people in Germany.
...
A major reason for the higher crime rate in 2015 and 2016 was actually intentional government policy. When Angela Merkel opened the country’s borders to refugees in 2015, the hundreds of thousands of people who streamed into the country without official papers were technically committing a crime.
This led to a big bump in overall reported crime in both years, as the PKS statistics included illegal border crossings. When immigration infringements were taken out of the figures for 2016, crime actual dropped.
Because refugee arrivals had already slowed to a trickle by 2017, anything but a drop in overall crime would have been a big surprise.
...
The surge in break-ins that year led police to create a website to inform people on how to better secure their homes, for example by installing shutters and better locking systems.
The Interior Ministry could also report positive news on violent crime, which dropped by 2.4 percent. Nonetheless, that does not reverse a 6.7 percent jump in violent crime recorded in 2016.
...
A survey in March indicated that 44 percent of Germans think that the country is less safe now than it was in years gone by.
The report from the German Federal Criminal Police Office titled "Crime in the context of immigration" specifies the number of cases police dealt with in the first three quarters of 2015.
In the first nine months of 2015, the police registered a total of 214,600 offences or attempted offences committed by immigrants.
Yet the number of cases in the third quarter was already 23 per cent less than in the first quarter, showing fewer crimes were being committed.
Under the term "immigrants", the police officials collected the data of all refugees and asylum seekers, whether they had just applied, were granted permission to stay, were tolerated, or had their application rejected and were on the list to be deported.
While the police did not give any data about the total amount of migrants, the most recent numbers from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees stated that on 30th June there were 1,999,877 newcomers in Germany fitting in the "immigrants" category used by the police.
If the 214,600 crimes are related to these two million immigrants, it shows 10,730 cases per 100,000 migrants. Local media cited by way of comparison that for the entire year of 2015 (the most recent statistics available), the authorities in Germany counted a total of 6,330,649 offences.
This would correspond to 4,747,987 cases over 9 months - and an average of 5,790 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in Germany - making newly arrived immigrants almost twice as likely tocommit a crime.
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Germany university found that a 10.4 percent increase in violent crime was linked to an influx of migrants into the country's southern region.
The increase in crime took place in 2015 and 2016 at the height of the European migration crisis, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel ignored E.U. rules and allowed an open-door policy for migrants entering the state from war-torn Syria.
More than 90 percent of the 10.4 percent increase in reported violent crimes was attributed to young male migrants in Germany's southern state of Lower Saxony, according to a new study from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. A huge wave of migrants flooded into the European Union in 2015 from countries through Greece and Turkey that led to more than one million migrants applying for asylum in Germany.
The study funded by Germany's Ministry of Family Affairs found that many violent crimes reported by police in that time linked to male migrants between 14 and 30 years old, according to Deutsche Welle. Violent crimes were significantly less likely to be committed by male migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria than they were by male migrants from northern Africa, the study said.
...
Germany recorded an almost 10 per cent drop in crime last year to its lowest level since the early 1990s despite perceptions that the arrival of more than a million asylum seekers would lead to a rise in offences.
In fact crimes committed by immigrants from outside the EU fell sharply, the government said, mainly because of a dramatic cut in asylum seekers crossing the border illegally.
The fall came against a backdrop of German angst about Angela Merkel’s refugee policy, which contributed to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party taking 12.6 per cent of the vote in last September’s election.
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But there was one development that had not been expected, and was not tolerable: the large and growing incidence of sexual assaults committed by refugees against local women. These were not of the cultural-misunderstanding-date-rape sort, but were vicious, no-preamble attacks on random girls and women, often committed by gangs or packs of young men. At first, the incidents were downplayed or hushed up—no one wanted to provide the right wing with fodder for nationalist agitation, and the hope was that these were isolated instances caused by a small problem group of outliers. As the incidents increased, and because many of them took place in public or because the public became involved either in stopping the attack or in aiding the victim afterwards, and because the courts began issuing sentences as the cases came to trial, the matter could no longer be swept under the carpet of political correctness. And with the official acknowledgment and public reporting, a weird and puzzling footnote emerged. Most of the assaults were being committed by refugees of one particular nationality: by Afghans.
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here's a nice story about how just 250 migrants really made this lovely town more loverly:
A woman living in a picturesque German ski resort hit by a 'major migrant crime wave' has told how she carries pepper spray for protection because she no longer feels safe.
Barbara Plant said she will not go out alone at night in Garmisch-Partenkirchen amid concerns over 250 migrants being housed in a disused army complex in the town.
Many other women in the Bavarian resort also say they are worried for their safety in what the mayor called 'an explosive situation' after police blamed a record increase in crime on asylum seekers.
...
Meierhofer and other regional officials held a crisis meeting this week where it was announced police would step up street patrols in a bid to reassure residents.
The rising fear of crime stems from young male asylum seekers, the majority of whom are from Africa, living in series of disused US army buildings known as the Abrams Complex on the outskirts of the town.
Many have been in the secure camp for over two months surviving on a £120-a-month handout from the German government while they await notification of their asylum status.
...
Police said much of the crime was restricted to fights inside the complex but violence has also spread to the streets of Garmisch-Partenkirchen with arrests made over the summer for assaults and drunken behaviour.
In the past six weeks police have responded to more incidents in and around the refugee camp than in the last 12 months.
Ethnic rivalries, frustration and boredom among the asylum seekers has been blamed for the spate of violence.
Thomas Holzer, the town's deputy police chief, said: 'There are brawls, fights and property damage. The migrants occupy the best Wi-Fi places, chose who sleeps in what room'
He said troublemakers have been moved out to other refugee camps in southern Germany but many residents in Garmisch-Partenkirchen fear the situation is only going to get worse if more arrive.
The town, less than 80 miles from Munich, close to the base of Mt Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain, is heavily dependent on tourism - with 400,000 holidaymakers arriving to ski and hike.
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A further 300,000 migrants are expected this year with the reduced number due to neighbouring European countries such as Austria and Hungary sealing off their borders for easy passage to Germany.
The country's justice system is already struggling to cope after tens of thousands of court cases involving migrants filing lawsuits to bring their relatives to Germany.
In the first eight months of this year more than 17,000 cases were filed with the majority of those from Syrian refugees.
Thousands more are expected and combined with the deportation orders being challenged by many of the economic migrants justice officials fears they are being overwhelmed.
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The crime rate among migrants in Germany rose by more than 50 per cent last year, according to new figures that have raised concerns the populist far-Right may seize on the issue in the run-up to September’s elections.
The number of suspected crimes by refugees, asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants rose to 174,438 in 2016 — an increase of 52.7 per cent, according to the interior ministry.
“This is not something to gloss over,” Thomas de Maiziere, the interior minister, said as he presented the figures. “Those who commit serious offences here forfeit their right to stay here.”
Crimes by migrants had “increased disproportionately” even when the huge influx into Germany under Angela Merkel’s “open-door” refugee policy was taken into account, he said.
denying migrants are ruining and increasing crime in Germany is like denying the Holocaust.
Connecticut wins the dubious award of most psychopathic state in the US, followed by California in second, and New Jersey third. New York and Wyoming tie for joint fourth place, followed by Maine. The least psychopathic state is West Virginia, followed by Vermont, Tennessee, North Carolina, and New Mexico.
You seem very committed to finding sources that fit your narrative. It's a shame that your sources are all based on outdated data. It is true that last years there was a huge influx of immigrants, and that gave rise to immigrant crime - what did you expect?
You'd be surprised how ruined Germany as. FYI: It isn't. I visit Germany regularly, and most Germans are indeed worried about their culture, but also express that Germany must play their part in a humanitarian crisis. If you'd understand German culture, you'd also understand that their stance on foreigners is far different from a lot of other countries. You'd also be hard pressed to find Germans (besides the far right) to agree with the statement that immigrants have violently changed their culture. If anything, fear mongering over immigrants has changed the culture.
Also take a look at this recent article, which shows that crime by non-German nationals was down by 23%. Also please note that the current interior minister is against immigration, did not take this opportunity to blame the immigrants, but is instead mildly positive. Yet your commander-in-chief claims Germany is on the brink of succumbing under immigrant pressure. His polarizing rhetoric gives a lot of people wrong ideas about what's going on in Europe. Whatever way you look at it 'crime is way up' is a at the very minimum a gross exaggeration, and from most points of view wrong.
To add on a personal note, the Netherlands also took in a large amount of immigrants. Especially considering we have a relatively small population. A lot of people were very worried about our culture too. But a few years down the line, we have actually found out that these asylum seekers are actually doing their best to adapt to our local culture, i.e. learning our language, learning our traditions and trying to add to our society.
Finally, comparing denying this to denying the holocaust is another polarizing fallacy. It's a shame you feel you have to resort to those kinds of arguments.
by very committed, you mean googling "migrant crime in germany" and quoting the first few results on the subject?
You'd also be hard pressed to find Germans (besides the far right) to agree with the statement that immigrants have violently changed their culture.
from your same link:
KBDM 1 month ago
As a German I can truly say that people are more fearful than they were 20 years ago. You can feel the aggression in the atmosphere. Clans from the Middle East have taken over Berlin, Bremen, and large parts of the north-west. Hells Angels, Bandidos and other gangs are stronger than ever. Judges and federal prosecutors don't dare to prosecute crimes because they and their families are being threatened. Don't believe the hype.
bonus content: everything in my area is korean. it didnt happen in two years.
06-11-2018, 10:09 PM
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