Balta1701

Napoli hit ball. Hard.

The 3G can be had free with contract now...any chance that's the idea?

Rudolf L. Mössbauer (1929–2011)

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 02:12 PM) Its hard to call Dunn "poor" in any sense of the word... In this country he's certainly not rich. #Occupywallstreet.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 02:07 PM) No doubt in my mind that Thome will be coaching somewhere within 5 years. This is a guy who didn't want to be traded out of the Midwest to be too far from his family, are we sure he'd want to?

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 02:01 PM) That's not what your original post stated and not what my reply was to. I just assumed that a journalist couldn't know as much as a PhD, especially if it was in multiple fields. Now we know. You do not need to know everything about a subject to be able to ask the right questions, and the person you're interviewing ought to recognize this and help you along (my particular field we're offering courses and special meeting sessions on doing this step correctly). However, if you are assigned a single, very insular subject like a particular baseball team...you darn well better be able to ask good questions.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 01:47 PM) I wish you guys would stop quoting him so the ignore feature would continue to block his posts for me. You're better off not going into these threads.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 01:39 PM) I can't believe Coop being a spy has angered so many people. You're right. I can't believe that would anger anyone. Yet here you are.

Trailer 2 for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Trailer didn't really sell me on the film (same for hte first movie anyway). Has too much of a Matrix-effect going on.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 01:30 PM) My wife and I are in the same boat as you. Iphone 3 and 3gs owners, beyond our contract and ready for new phones. I want to re-up with AT&T just for simplicity sake, but don't want to give up the unlimited data option at what we pay. Although I get some dropped calls now and again, and some areas of the city seem to lose signal for no apparent reason, I gotta believe that that's the case with every carrier. That's the nature of their respective networks. By almost all accounts I've read/heard, Verizon is better on dropped calls than ATT.

QUOTE (sunofgold @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 01:10 PM) I agree with that if this was about Frank Thomas. However, if Thomas signed up with an AL Central rival like the Twins..I would be po'd at White Sox management for not signing him. lol! But trust me Cleve fans wouldn't like it if Thome signed up as White Sox hitting coach. lol! Especially with a team in the same division. Eh, I'm not one of the ones who thinks a hitting coach has some incredible power over his players...so if Frank were to be a hittting coach for another team in this division, the only thing that would bother me is having to see him in their uniform. Cleveland of course has already seen that.

The Grizzly would be in bad shape though if it hasn't been in the normal process of building up body mass for the winter. The Mountain Lion's hiding skills might depend on how it was raised. If this was a captured cat it would go back to previous skills, if it was raised in captivity it might not be able to take care of itself on its own. And this is my chance for another mouth-watering monkey!

QUOTE (sunofgold @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 01:05 PM) STL has the edge in game 1 at home field and Carpenter pitching. No DH. CJ Wilson has been very hittable in the playoffs so far. Both teams though have solid offensive lineups. Carp has been hittable in the playoffs outside of 1 godly game.

QUOTE (sunofgold @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 12:57 PM) Just curious. How would the Cleve fans react to him signing as a coach on the White Sox and not on the Cleves. Thome made up good will with them last season and that could disappear right away. That actually would amuse me. They gave him a statue...lol! Thome would be helping the White Sox batter crush Cleves pitching. lol! Thome goes to the HOF wearing a Cleves cap. But using this logic, Thome probably isn't going to be a hitting coach for the White Sox. You never know but I don't think this is going to happen. Maybe hitting coach for the Cleves. How would I react if Frank signed on as hitting coach for the A's? Well, if they wanted him and he was happy, he could go for that and I wouldn't be all that angry.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 12:13 PM) A few things they could do, that might not entirely fix it but might help, would be to put power more onto the individual shareholders (this is for public companies of course). Such as... --Require all shareholder voting events to be provided online and free to shareholders --Further detail in reporting all salaries and compensation for all execs plus top 1% of compensated employees regardless of position (this is being done to an extent already) --Force approval of all severance packages over a certain amount to go to shareholders for approval first --Force approval for any material increase (say >5%) in compensation of execs and rainmakers that are not direct percentages of newly created revenue streams from shareholders --For any TARP recipients who have not yet paid back in full, salary increases capped at COLA for execs and rainmakers That could be a start. I would not want to put the caps on non-TARP firms, as I feel that sets a dangerous precedent. But if they had to get bailed out, until they pay back with interest, they are at the taxpayers' mercy. I see what you're saying in not wanting to put caps on non-TARP firms...but I think that out of your list...the more likely an option is to be effective, the closer to a cap it becomes. Some version of direct shareholder approval is a decent step, but I for example am not going to get the option to vote against salaries due to my retirement account, since I'm holding funds and not individual stocks, right? That still keeps the system isolated from people outside wall street...the power in that case gets transferred more to big mutual funds and retirement systems, which are already neck deep in this mess.

Yes, I'd say that in the NBA, the contracts that really hurt you are the ones that are at the MLE or in the area above it. Caron Butler getting $10 million, Tyson Chandler getting $12 million, Haywood (He's going to be making $9 million+ in 2015 for crying out loud), Terry for $10 million, Kidd at $8 million. If the Mavericks were playing to a $60 million salary limit, then every one of those contracts would be as much of an albatross as Luol Deng's looked to be or as the ones in Detroit are. The guys can all play, but none of them are worth that price. That's $50 million, basically the entire salary cap, locked up in Caron Butler, Tyson Chandler, Brendan Haywood, Jason Terry, and Jason Kidd. The Mavericks have an owner willing and able to spend well up and beyond the cap to make that work. Put that in Sacramento and that's an 18 win team.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 12:01 PM) Durant re-upped before they acquired Perkins because they had a young core with potential. Perkins is just a veteran role player to get them closer to their goal (albiet a valuable one because he helps protect the rim). Durant Re-upped because the system is structured where that is the right decision for a 3rd year player on his first team...he would have to go through 2 1-year contracts effectively in order to reach free agency and would take less money to do so, while he can instead sign a multi-year, rich deal and then be able to hit the market as an unrestricted FA after that 2nd contract ends. They added Perkins then spent stupid money on him because they're trying to "Win now"...which is what they need to do if they want to keep Durant and Westbrook after that first extension. It's unusual for a guy to go through the machinations like Ben Gordon, fail to sign an extension, and then manage to get all the way to the unrestricted FA market off of their first contract. The system is built against that for the real talent.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 11:50 AM) OK look, there is no doubt that executive salaries at large firms in the US are going up faster than the salaries of the average worker. I don't think anyone would dispute that. But here is what no one is saying - what do you want do about it? And what are the full consequences of those actions? Well...I'd actually say its hard to argue there would be "Seriously negative consequences" to just about anything done in that vein if it was actually successful. I must say...this one is actually a hard one to deal with. You've got this "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" setup on corporate boards and in the government that really has been built up to protect this system...no board will vote down a compensation package because the person they vote against will then act against everyone else's compensation. I'm open to ideas of how to restructure the corporate voting process/corporate board process to deal with this without government fiat...but that's sort of how we got to Sarbanes-Oxley. Otherwise...I'm not sure how you can deal with this issue without mandatory caps.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 11:49 AM) These are terrible examples and don't help your point at all. Lebron left anyways because their second best player was Mo Williams and they didn't have the talent/money to upgrade the team. Boozer is going to kill the Bulls towards the end of that contract and Rose is probably staying anyways because of Noah. The Hawks are mediocre with or without Joe Johnson, and because of that dumb deal they might have to trade Josh Smith. Howard is likely to leave anyways because they paid Lewis about $6 mil a year more than he's worth and traded him for Gilbert Arenas. Spending money isn't directly correlated to winning; spending money intelligently is directly correlated to winning. Throwing massive money at non-elite players is what killed Cleveland and is in the process of killing Orlando. Every one of those cases you're trying to exclude tells the exact same story though...a story of teams overpaying because that's what the NBA requires to keep a star around. Throwing "Massive money" at non-elite players is done by every single team in the league. What we've seen in the last 5 years though is that a few teams can still spend enough to get around that. Dallas, the Lakers, Boston.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 11:47 AM) Right. I won't listen to the CEO's at all from these situations. I'll trust the manipulated data of the left instead. I see...so anecdotes from Republican VotingCEO's who you decide count are the only ones that count. I'm going to go laugh this one off.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 11:40 AM) Not at all. You have clearly kept changing the underlying numbers to make yours finally fit. Hence all of the different charting. I see, so your answer works in all circumstances and doesn't need to be supported or backed up. You just know it's true. It has to be, because you don't like that particular bill. I can't pick and choose the graph which shows that things pretty much track the S&P, but you can pick the version which ignores the S&P runup after 2005 to prove your point, and that's ok, because the bill is bad. If I've changed numbers to "make mine finally fit"...you haven't presented any numbers at all, you just picked a particular version of the ones I presented that happens to work with the story you want to tell in the event that you ignore everything after 2005.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 11:38 AM) And as NSS pointed out, they aren't consistent from chart to chart. So you admit that your entire "It's clearly gone up faster under Sarb-Ox" point is BS?

So the Cubs are going to spend $8 mil a year on their team President and GM (Guessing that Hoyer must need a raise to make a lateral move, so I'd imagine ~$3 mil a year, then 4 years/$20 for Theo)?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 11:23 AM) Again follow your time frame. The salary chart ended at the beginning of 05, at which the SP was about 1200. Quit manipulating the numbers. The 1500 peaks were until during the middle of 2006. That's why I added about 4 other charts. If you actually pay attention, there's a slight bit of out of phase to the 2 peaks...the CEO pay shot back up before the S&P, but then leveled off before the S&P. The only way that your numbers work is if you ignore the fact that the S&P kept going up through the end of 07, when the CEO pay level-off happened in 05-06 (maybe because Sarbanes-Oxley was implemented and working so incredibly well ).

QUOTE (Tex @ Oct 19, 2011 -> 11:12 AM) And tomorrow they do a story on the economy, then issues from the local firefighters contract the next. It just isn't practical. Which is why you have specific reporters assigned to specific beats sometimes. That's why you might have one guy who is a "Science reporter", where he is familiar with some literature and is able to ask the right questions/get the appropriate responses. In this case, you might have specific reporters assigned to say "Cover the sports beat" in a particular city, where that reporter knows both the Manager and the other issues involved. Or if it was a big enough team, you might even have a reporter or two dedicated to covering a specific team for a paper. You might have a reporter for the Sun Times on the White Sox beat, for example. A person like that might well be expected to know the issues regarding the White Sox well enough to ask an informed question or two in reply. Unless Joe Cowley is doing a story on the economy today.