Balta1701

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 03:33 PM) Tied at 3 after Wilkins double and Alexei triple. Anyone see Lexi's swing here? He's had one of our worst springs, would be nice if he was getting the timing down right about now.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 03:10 PM) De Aza backs it up with a 2B of his own. 2-0 Sox. Alejandro has been hammering the ball lately after a slow spring start.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 03:00 PM) There were other changes to the fund over the years that it wasn't truly meant to cover. It was supposed to be a fund people paid into, and then collected out of in the future, designed as the ultimate final safety net. The issue is it also became something of an "insurance program" over the years, for example, you dying before you were able to collect, and it paying out to your children until they're 18...even if it overdraws how much you ever contributed. That's a form of life insurance...and it wasn't intended to cover things to that extent, such as it is. Nothing you say here is a bad thing. We call it "Social Security" and that is the appropriate name...it provides...Social Security. It provides a specific set of societal safety nets, including things like disability payments or helping spouses in the event of the death of a main wage-earner. The life insurance payouts are at best limited in most cases, although I'm sure there are some cases in the event of disability I haven't studied.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 02:34 PM) That does bring up another issue - I do believe the benefits should only increase at the rate of inflation. If you were to make that happen...there would be no need for any other change to Social Security's funding. Ever. If you made that change now, the Trust Fund would decline a little for the next decade and that would be it, it would be solvent forever. And at that point, the trust fund ought to actually shrink quite a bit because there'd be no need to have such a large stockpile of bonds sitting in the hands of OASDI.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 09:08 AM) I think they'll give Aceves the "Addison Reed" treatment...he'll have to open the season strong to earn the spot. Aceves gets named the closer. Shows what I know.

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 02:15 PM) He could be, but he won't be. I think people forget how dominant KG was in his prime. And he has a very consistent jumper out to 18-20 feet. Where was KG when he was the same age though? His first year in the league, the year you'd compare to Davis currently, KG put up 10.4 ppg and 6.3 rpg. I can't imagine he came into the league as an 18 year old with a very developed post game or that very consistent jumper you cite.

QUOTE (Tex @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 02:07 PM) And they were concerned about a minor child having sex with an adult. Or, they're concerned about the fact that it happened on a bus and they're using the ages as a convenient excuse for extra punishment.

QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 09:44 AM) Too bad my house is underwater. That sounds like a good deal. 1,000 customers....that sounds like a profitable business. For more than a moment I thought you meant your house was flooded.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 01:43 PM) If you bothered to read my post, you'd see I was actually calling for the opposite - keeping tax rates low for lower incomes, raising them for upper incomes, and lowering them for business on the hiring side. Also, the entire idea of Social Security is a trust fund for the American people. You WANT a surplus in there, enough so to cover forseeable contingencies. Really though, this is actually currently the case. The problem is that we're projecting so far out, 25+ years, that near-impossible economic trends wind up mattering. The Trust Fund as it currently sits, by covering through about 2040 (I'd expect its position to improve slightly with economic recovery), basically does exactly what you ask it to do, covers the foreseeable problem of the baby boom retirement. Increasing the trust fund size now would actually be a hamper on the rest of the economy, and I think it's the wrong way to respond to the next foreseeable contingency. The next foreseeable contingency is not caused by demographics, its caused by a quirk of the program; that the benefits rise at a rate faster than inflation. Thus, if you take the projection far enough out, Social Security benefits as a share of the economy wind up growing with time. If inflation + Productivity growth winds up winning, you have no problem...and that basically happens if you have the same productivity growth as the U.S. has seen for the last 50 years. If you project lower productivity growth, then you have a problem, but the right answer is to slightly slow the growth rate of the program there, IMO.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 01:37 PM) Real simple fix for Soc Sec: disallow any further borrowing from Soc Sec for any reason, keep the current lowered payroll tax rate, lower it to that rate for businesses too, and remove the cap. I've seen this type of scenario laid out with all the math - it gets rid of virtually any risk of future shortfalls. And makes the tax less regressive. I actually really dislike the "disallow further borrowing from Social Security", because what that effectively does is it puts the government into a position where one portion of it is running a permanent surplus. I get the motivation, because every time there's a Social Security surplus the immediate response has been to use it to slash upper-tier tax rates, but that strikes me as treating a symptom rather than curing the problem. The problem is that anything and everything is an excuse to slash top tier tax rates.

Several of those teams from the bottom 20 will wind up competing, because that's how baseball works.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 01:01 PM) I said nothing of equivalency in terms of failing to compromise. On the contrary, the parties are alike specifically for what they ignore, or only do very little to address. PPACA doesn't do much to curb Medicare spending, as I understood it. No one wants to touch Soc Sec, and in fact they keep borrowing from it. And the military budget is still way to large, not because I think the generals are lying, but because they are forced to budget for a force capable of acting in ways I don't believe they should be acting. The PPACA included $500 billion in Medicare cuts over the first 10 year period. That money was then used to finance the coverage expansion in Medicaid and the transition to the exchanges. While this isn't enough to bring Medicare into long-term fiscal balance...it actually would bring the overall budget into long-term fiscal balance if the tax cuts were removed, which was not the case beforehand. More can be done on this long-term, but the PPACA literally bought 10 years or more before things really got out of hand, and may well have done even better than that, possibly as shown by the fact that Medicare Spending Growth has plummeted in the past 3 years and is currently at a 2.5% annual growth rate, which would actually be long-term sustainable. Not all of the credit for that can go to the PPACA since it hasn't been fully implemented yet, but Medicare is actually moving in the right direction. Secondly, the Social Security issue still remains incredibly small, 20 years out, easy to fix, and really, the only reason to attempt to "Fix" social security right now is to do what happened last time...use the larger surpluses to finance larger general fund tax cuts.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 10:26 AM) I also love that your source (a blog) uses the Kagan confirmation as proof of hyperpartisanship (i.e., those damn conservatives are ruining everything) in the Court. Again, as if this is something new. Go look at the wiki page for the Supreme Court and check out the confirmation voting for each current justice. Thomas and Alito had more difficult times getting confirmed than either of the two new "liberal" judges. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court...e_United_States I'm sure this would have nothing to do with that. (Same article I just cited).

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 10:17 AM) I'll add too that in the vast majority of cases (like 75-80%) the court doesn't have that 5-4 split. They're normally unanimous decisions. I think people assume that more coverage=happening all the time. Link

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 09:58 AM) I can't say with certainty when it was a 5-4 split court like this, but yes, you could very easily predict opinions based on some kind of political leanings, normally geographic in nature to start. As I said before, during FDR's terms he wanted to amend the Constitution because the Court kept rejecting a lot of his policies and he knew they'd continue to do that. I don't see why this is so surprising. The President nominates a justice. What President is going to nominate someone with different political beliefs? Apparently a lot of them, since you yourself just said that a lot of votes were predicted "Geographically".

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 09:46 AM) Balta - I really urge you to go read some history books about the Court. You've made this point repeatedly that the Court is somehow just NOW becoming a political unit. That's just not true. It's been political basically since the beginning. But was it a political unit specifically aligned with the parties, to the point where you could predict every key vote based on which President appointed a justice?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 09:40 AM) You should tag that as NSFW, I started to tear up. Sorry, I typically save that tag for things that are, you know, profane.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 09:27 AM) Too bad we can't market Thornton as a closer unless his FB is back in the mid 90's again. Matt Thornton's average fastball velocity last year was 95.8 mph and that was the 2nd highest of his career next to 2010. Matt Thornton did not struggle in 2011 because of velocity.

A worthy read. "A Teen’s Brave Response to “I’m Christian, Unless You’re Gay”"

I'll bet Congress will let them close that post office within about 10 years.

QUOTE (2nd_city_saint787 @ Apr 3, 2012 -> 11:56 PM) I drafted Bailey in all 4 of my yahoo teams smh...who do you all think takes the closer job? Yahoo and a few other sites I went to see, to think its gonna be Melancon but Jon Heyman thinks it'll be Aceves. I think they'll give Aceves the "Addison Reed" treatment...he'll have to open the season strong to earn the spot.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Apr 4, 2012 -> 09:02 AM) Jayson Werth will be 38 when his deal expires, you have to put that one right up there with one of the potentially worst. Carl Crawford gets paid $21 million when he's 35.

QUOTE (He_Gawn @ Apr 3, 2012 -> 09:53 PM) I think with the serious influx of athleticism, the defense will be a major, major upgrade. The offense was already probably the best in the country, definitely top 3. As the as the team chemistry continues to be this good, they should find themselves in it to the end. Crean has done a hell of a job. No one expected this, especially this year. Indiana's offense had the "Orlando Magic" flaw to it...they could beat anyone when the 3 ball was dropping, but if they had an off night and a team played hard on defense, they could fall to teams they shouldn't lose to, even at home.