Balta1701

George Zimmerman's wife has now been arrested and charged with perjury for testifying that the family had little available money when they had received that enormous sum through his website.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 04:27 PM) How do you know it didn't take into account inflation? It doesn't say either way, so I assumed the Dept. of Ag was smart enough to take it into consideration if they were going to report such a big increase in costs. Edit: and didn't I just read that purchasing power and median income levels over the last 20 years haven't kept up with the rate of inflation? So isn't that the double whammy? Because I can check. Here's the 2000 Department of Agriculture report on that issue, giving the number $165,630 in 2000 dollars. When you want to report a "Cost of raising a kid is skyrocketing!" number, you never adjust for inflation because that makes your story weaker. Standard press trick, can give you a free front page article every couple years when the DOA releases that report. However, you are correct that median income has stagnated in this country since the late 1970's/early 1980's, while productivity, GDP, and earnings of the wealthiest americans have skyrocketed (all of which I consider linked). Median income has basically been flat when adjusted for inflation. Note that we're saying median income...the reason to do that number is that the distribution has changed so dramatically at the very top that the mean income gets skewed. I would consider that one of the biggest economic failures of the past 35 years of economic policy.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 04:28 PM) Gotcha, makes sense. If the Cubs are gonna eat that much of Soriano's contract, I would assume they would be looking for a better prospect than Doyle. And if they are, I would wish them the normal amount of bad luck in that effort that I wish them in all things.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 04:07 PM) So you would rather have Soriano than Dunn? I'd rather have Soriano for $1 million a year than Dunn at $14 million a year. At the same price, give me the lefty.

Here's what we do. We get someone to take on the entire remaining fraction of Adam Dunn's contract, and hopefully throw us a minor leaguer or two at the same time. We then get the Cubs to take on all but $2 million of Soriano's remaining salary, in exchange for something of Doyle's value. In that case, I'm game.

QUOTE (2nd_city_saint787 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 02:48 PM) Yes he's 26 but he's only spent 4 years in the minors. Jake Peavy spent 4 years in the minors. Gavin Floyd 6 years John Danks 4 years I said he wasn't ready to make the bigs out of spring training. His past 10 starts he's 6-2 66 IP 37 hits 16 walks 64 Ks with a 2.05 ERA and a .165 BAA I know he won't post those numbers in the bigs but it sure looks like he should be in the convo of making a few starts in the bigs If we need a few starts, sure, give him a shot. If we think he can handle the long relief role better than Stewart, great, let's try it. If we're trying to win the division, are we going to trade away a starter to clear a space for him and be put in a spot where the team sinks or swims based on his performance? Unwise.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 11:35 AM) http://boingboing.net/2011/09/22/cost-of-r...8Boing+Boing%29 Child care costs are out of control. Taxes, especially property taxes, have gotten out of control. I'm sort of in half agreement with Y2HH here. My wife and I are a good case study for why this society is so f***ed up. We both have graduate degrees (she has a masters in literature, i have a juris doctor). That's about 150k in student loan debt. That's about 1200-1300 a month simply in student loans. Add to that a mortgage and a car payment, and even though we're both making good money, raising this new child of ours will be difficult. We don't go on vacation, we don't spend "lavishly." Yes, we have smart phones and cable bills, but frankly that's a drop in the bucket compared to other major costs of life. The fact is the poor don't pay their share (taking more than they give), the rich escape paying their share, so the gov't continues to suck the teet of middle class America, which is why this economy is stagnant and people are as depressed as they are about the future. The numbers in this graph are not adjusted for inflation. Using the handy BLS inflation adjustor, I was able to quickly calculate that $165,000 in 2000 dollars is equivalent in purchasing power to $220,000 in today's dollars. Thus, child care costs are not out of control, they have effectively tracked inflation over the past 12 years, to within a variance of 2%. Furthermore, property taxes have, over the last 50 years, averaged about 3.5% of national income. That number has trended down slightly over time. If you can find a 2009 version it could possibly increase because of plummeting national income due to the recession, but the data does not show that there has been a substantial increase in property tax rates or collections over time, rather the data show the reverse. Some of that decrease may be due to the state of California's insane property tax system coming on line in the 1980s and screwing with the national average.

QUOTE (flavum @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 02:24 PM) Bruney going 3 innings today. I know people hate him, but his ERA is under 2. We don't hate him, we just don't think he's a big league pitcher. His career ERA in AAA is 2.85. Last year, he put up an ERA of 1.31 in 19 games after getting sent down to Charlotte, and an ERA of 6.86 in the big leagues when he was with the Sox.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 02:28 PM) 25 man roster. Which in a year they were projected to lose 100 games, doesn't matter if you think you are getting a starting pitcher. Hell, it wouldn't matter if they thought he could have hung on as the 5th guy out of the bullpen.

I'll bet that involved them eating a little money. Was there a lot of radio based calls for him to be gone?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 11:18 AM) Of course they are more expensive... They are funded and paid for. And the fees associated with the plans are vastly higher.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 11:15 AM) Seems like a bit of an overpay... Ethier just doesn't seem like an $18 million player. $12 million sounds about right. I expected to check the numbers and be able to say Ethier was better...but you know what, you're right. Baseball reference has him being regularly a 2 WAR player. Fangraphs has him being a 2-3 WAR player, worth...$10 mil to up to $15 a year.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 11:12 AM) How is it "chic" or ancedotal for me to say entertainment spending is through choice and not necessity? Also note, that some "entertainment spending" isn't considered entertainment spending. For example, having an iPhone is NOT necessary. A 20$ per month feature phone can make phone calls and text...but the 100$ a month iPhone is more fun...and 80% of that bill SHOULD be in entertainment spending, but it's not because it's a phone bill. It's NOT necessary to have a 200+$ cable bill every month. It's simply not. That's not an anecdote...it's real. People who complain about bills most often have a 200$ cable bill, and that's not even mentioning the movies they go see every weekend, or rent. Also, a good television costs a lot of money...I see a LOT of people with MULTIPLE 50+ inch TV's in the same boat... And every generation feels the need to lecture everyone else about how they're doing it wrong. The reality is, looking back 25+ years, the share of income spent on those purchases hasn't appreciably changed. And similarly, there hasn't been a change in "Other expenditures" either, so however you count it, that lecture can be applied in whatever glory day period you want to highlight. The data doesn't lie. What really has changed, what really has made it harder for people to get by over that time period, is the increase in housing costs (bubble), the increase in healthcare costs, and the increase in the cost of a retirement/insurance plan as pension plans have been replaced by more expensive investment plans.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 10:50 AM) It's obvious it costs more to raise a family than it did back in the day, but much of this is through choice. I remember growing up and my family had no cell phone bills, no cable bill, one television etc...so many of these added expenses are through modern choice versus actual necessity. I know it's chic to say things like this but I haven't seen anything more than anecdotes to back it up and frankly I don't believe it. I just think some forms of entertainment have gotten cheaper and replaced other forms of entertainment. If you look at inflation-adjusted expenditures on entertainment, they were the same in 2009 as they were in 1989. For some reason this data is really hard to find before 1984 but the BLS gave me an easy 1984 comparison here. If you look at the columns that have really changed...we spend somewhat less on food, significantly less on clothing, and generally less on transportation. That is balanced by an increase in spending on housing, and substantial increases in spending on healthcare, insurance, and retirement/pensions (the things that have been stripped out of the government safety net since the 1980s).

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 10:48 AM) What's his average velocity his last three starts, since he returned from the pen? Keep in mind, the Twins are still "only" 8 1/2 games back of the Sox and far from out of it completely. 17 2/3 11 hits 5 ER 6 BB (very low for him) 23 K's 1.96 ERA

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 10:36 AM) I'd love Liriano...especially since he could probably learn some things since he has a very similar repertoire to Sale... This "What's wrong with Liriano" fangraphs piece is worth adding to the list. I'll highlight the buried lede:

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 09:58 AM) I'd have to think Terry Ryan would need to be s***face plastered in order to trade us Liriano... It'd save them a million or two and they'd get something back for him rather than having him become a FA. I get the emotional side, but if the Sox offered him a legit minor league piece, wouldn't he pretty much have to?

I'm sitting here trying to figure out how desperate a fanbase must be if this is the kind of garbage they want to be reading.

In case it was missed, 5/$85 extension for Ethier.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 09:40 AM) Not this year, referring to why they clearly would be in rebuilding mode beginning in 2013, barring some more miracles. If you've got a healthy Chris Sale at the top of the rotation doing this, and John Danks can pitch like a #2 starter, then really, a solid rotation isn't that hard to put together. Filling the #3-#5 spots in a rotation isn't extremely complicated these days, no matter how much we remember the 2004 5th starter mess. We might well have 4-5 different "5th starter" options right now sitting in Charlotte or the bullpen, with a little development work (Doyle, Axelrod, Castro, maybe Stewart, Santiago, hopefully Molina can pull things together in a year or two). If you have Justin Verlander at the top of your rotation, you've found the piece that's hard to find.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 09:41 AM) I just find it crazy that it took this long for them to get free turn by turn. That's a feature I use very often on my phones. It's worth a lot of money to have people paying for that feature though, right?

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 08:06 AM) The Sox should hire somebody with a math degree and knowledge of baseball to study all of this stuff and determine the optimal pricing structure. Something tells me that most teams already have exactly that.

QUOTE (2nd_city_saint787 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 01:13 AM) Why though? Do explain... He was given a chance to make the team with the Twins in Spring training or be lost back to the White Sox, and he couldn't even make the Twins bullpen. He put up an ERA of 16+ in his few A game appearances. I won't be mad if he gets a chance to perform with the Sox this year, and I'll be thrilled if he comes out and has success, but understand, guys like this are a dime a dozen. We have 2 or 3 of them every year, guys who are now old for AAA but put up decent numbers for that league. Occasionally they turn into a useful bullpen piece or even a starter. But in terms of trade value...they're not worth anything until they seriously prove something at the big league level. You can find the equivalent of a Doyle on the waiver wire at least a dozen times during the year. If you want him to have legit trade value, then you need to put him at the big league level and give him 10-20 starts to see if his AAA performance is anything real. Of course, if it isn't, then you're costing yourself a shot at the division.

Keep it up Kid.

QUOTE (kev211 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 12:37 AM) Without turn by turn directions Apple's maps thing probably sucks compared to googles, and that's what they're doing to the people who don't have a 4s. Ridiculous that turn by turn is only on the 4s Presumably you could still get Google Maps using the internet browser.