Balta1701

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 12:45 PM) How about the government create a simple "pre existing medicare plan" for those who have such conditions. It would probably cost a lot less than 1+Trillion dollars to do that and not affect other people who have no such conditions, since they're probably already paying for these peoples care anyway. And give people who make below a certain amount of money per year a complete tax refund on all moneys used to purchase health insurance, or a percentage thereof. So if you make less than 50k a year and have a family of four, but have to buy your own insurance, the government subsidizes it at the end of the year by refunding a % of the money on a sliding scale depending on what you make, etc. Of course people would rather have insurance through their companies, so it would be a benefit to companies to do it, in order to attract better talent/employees. Whatever the case may be -- this doesn't need to be 2000 pages of nonsense. It CAN be done, and done right, and be 20 pages long and understandable to all. I want them to keep their sneaky s*** OUT of this market, and believe me, that 2000+ page bill is FULL of sneaky s***. The answer to that is quite simple; it becomes a giant subsidy to the insurance companies and will wind up costing enormous sums of government money. The insurers have already been doing everything they can to dump their high-cost customers off of their rolls...now you've got the government expressing a willingness to take on basically anyone who isn't a profitable insurance purchaser if they meet the standard by which the insurance company can dump them. Over a ten year period, that's a hell of a lot more costly than the subsidy plan the Dems put together, because you've kept the advantage for people to dump them, but done nothing to require the insurers spend any money to cover them. Furthermore, you've basically come up with a brief outline of the exact subsidy plan the Dems were using to help people buy insurance, but you've stated that somehow it will cost less, without a reason, and you've also neglected to provide any funding mechanism to pay for it. The cost of your plan would be multiple trillions of dollars over 10 years. BTW, it's 2000 pages because each page contains less text than this post.

Whoa, here's another aspect of that decision, and the interpretation is probably right.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 12:34 PM) Because in magical liberal land everyone would have ceased dying had this monstrosity been passed, because everything would have been fixed overnight and working perfectly! I'm glad this is dead. I wonder, tactically, if anyone on the Left has thought about doing the real hard hit here...dropping everything else and proposing a ban on having insurance companies discriminate based on pre-existing conditions. Without the mandate, it's a bomb that would completely destroy the private health care system, and they could do it while looking all bi-partisan and saying "look, see, we pared the bill back to something the Republicans said they could support".

Senator Specter is such a jerk that he made Rep. Bachmann look nice.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 12:01 PM) Directly and literally that job? Maybe not. In terms of actual influence on policy? Yes, and they may find a Bernanke replacement that is in line with Volcker's mindset. Jobs are not the same, policy areas not the same, but very related. Ok, was trying to see what you meant by that. It'd be really nice for everyone except the banks and Wall Street if Volcker suddenly found himself having a lot more influence this year. The markets might take a tumble in the short term, but that's basically a fed-inflated-bubble anyway.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 11:51 AM) The Rise of Volcker has been underway for a while now. You think he'd get the Fed Chair job back?

Another issue to think about on this topic is the 24 hour news networks, and the 2 outcomes that have come with it; specifically the need to fill a whole lot of airtime without necessarily having a lot to fill it with every day, and the rise of an explicitly partisan news network (and kind of sorta a 2nd one at least if you only pay attention to 2 of their prime time shows) which has actual motivation to over-react because there's political benefit to having your supporters over-react (see; the Health Care debate).

Broadways' in the Blue Jays org now.? Hmph.

Finally! A use for the Senate! Want Congressional reform? Nothing will make it happen faster than having the Senate accidentally slow down the free money to Wall Street train. Especially after yesterday.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 10:58 AM) Last decade was warmest on record according to NASA study. Duh. We knew that 5 years ago.

Kinda sad that our health care system will continue killing tens of thousands because the Mass. Dems were lazy.

QUOTE (Springfield SoxFan @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 07:08 PM) I just don't buy that Jones is in the best shape in ten years, back in the 1990's he was one of the best cf's in baseball and he is clearly not at that level. But...he's also never had the reputation as a hard worker, as far as I can tell.

QUOTE (klaus kinski @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 09:32 AM) Says .300 avg gets him 20 HR and 40 doubles- You know the scary thing? If you look at Becksy's numbers after he got over that initial 30 ab's of nothing, he hit .286 with 28 doubles and 14 HR over his last 350 at bats. If you simply project up to 550 at bats, that's 22 HR and 44 2b...if he does absolutely nothing in terms of improvement beyond where he was once he adapted to big league pitching.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 09:03 AM) Yes, they didn't even challenge that part of the law in the lawsuit. Unions and corporations still cannot give directly to specific candidate. But, if I read things correctly, is it to the point of a distinction without a difference? i.e. I can't give my funds directly to a candidate, but I can run ads directly for a candidate with unlimited amounts of money, actually mentioning the candidate, and coordinated with the candidate as well?

QUOTE (Chet Kincaid @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 08:48 AM) I still believe that Kenny Williams has something up his sleeve. Either they've seen Andruw Jones hit and they feel like he's finally figured it out, or KW is going to make a move that will have us all going WTF??? Even if Andruw Jones figures out his 2005 form, we're still left with a seriously unbalanced lineup unless Teahen finds his 2006 form..

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 08:45 AM) They can't donate directly to a specific person's campaign. Is that still true after yesterday?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 06:44 AM) Why the hell would we want to destroy or invade Haiti? What resources are there to secure? Why do so many people lack functional brains? To build a prison to replace Gitmo.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 05:57 AM) But, technically doesnt this say they can't pass legislation? DO we need a constitutional amendment? I think that a corrollary of this ruling is that you can not restrict campaign contributions of any size, and eventually of any type (personal or corporate, the Roberts court just hasn't yet dismantled the personal restrictions), probably for any reason, without a constitutional amendment, because anything like that would be a restriction on free speech. I wonder if this ruling could be interpreted so far as to make the classic quid pro quo perfectly legal.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 22, 2010 -> 12:21 AM) Technically they can't give anything directly to a candidate. In what sense is this meant?

QUOTE (CryptviLL @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 06:02 PM) Noah has really excelled this year. I love watching him along with Rose. Tyrus on the other hand.... Don't worry, there's 0% chance he's with the Bulls next year.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 06:32 PM) exactly, companies don't have to disclose where their money went, they can merely funnel it through places like the chamber of commerce. I beleive some of the disclosure requirements on places like the Chamber still survived, but Thomas argued against it. Could be wrong; only just now reading up on the decision, was working all day for once.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 06:33 PM) This is not about seasonality, regardless of your outlook being good or bad. The adjustments are always there, and if anything, they probably adjusted too much, not too little. This is more purely a lack of momentum in the economy. Companies haven't seen enough fundamental strength to start hiring more, yet. Actually it could easily be related to seasonality, because the seasonality is a complicated average based on economic conditions. The issue is...it's hard to actually gauge the economic conditions in any particular year based on any model, because every year is a unique event, so there's always bound to be a little bit of slop. Take a look at the raw graph: IF nothing else..the corrections are a factor of 2 larger than the actual number you're looking at. Which means if your correction is off by 5%, then you have a major miss. (Edit; frankly though, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is the first blip of another acceleration of job losses. Between another energy price spike, the dying-down of the stimulus, housing resuming its fall towards the bottom, continually increasing health care costs, etc., I can't see any real good reason for job losses to stop other than the remaining stimulus dollars).

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 06:30 PM) That's the way it's been for a long time now. However, instead of backroom doors, it's going to be in the open. Actually, Justice Thomas argued that having it in the open was unconstitutional today, and that it should be done in backroom deals. Quite literally.

Dodgers Re-up with Padilla, 1 year, $5 mil.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 21, 2010 -> 06:25 PM) Free speech my ass, the price of free speech just went up by a few million. It'll only be a few million until it's realized that if you're Exxon or GS, you can outbid the people spending a few million.