Balta1701

Anyone think that we could get someone to take a trade flier on Kevan Smith? Give us back a reliever candidate or something like that?

lambs to slaughter.

QUOTE (hi8is @ Dec 1, 2017 -> 05:26 PM) I would allow people to rip off my toenails if I could see this presentation. "3 pictures of Eloy, 2 of Moncada, and 2 of Kopech. Silence then walking away".

I am a fan of the fact that this basically forces them to not rush collins.

Just leave the politics out and type.

Everybody dance now.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 1, 2017 -> 02:06 PM) Lawmaker behind secret $84K sexual harassment settlement unmasked Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) used taxpayer funds to end a dispute with his communications director in 2014. Well then.

QUOTE (KagakuOtoko @ Dec 1, 2017 -> 01:52 PM) Yep Franken should have been ousted to make a point but alas, Democrats just want to protect their boy. Like I said in the other thread...I'm iffy here. If I spent 6 months finding people who were willing to lie about a Congressperson, and I got them to come forwards in sequence, do we just send away the congressperson with no time to evaluate their claims? This is still America and there ought to be some level of due process available. I'm not sure how to make that work, but that's one of those things we do believe in as a country, a chance to have your case heard. A working ethics committee would be the right place to do that, but I'm not sure it works well enough or fast enough for that to actually count. These people don't seem like they're lying and I have no reason to believe that in this case, but that's also the system we built in the Bill of Rights and I believe in the principles of that system too.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 1, 2017 -> 03:06 PM) Most of the difference there has to do with the VAT not including some significant items, not the least of which are financial services and multiple residences and travel. Most of it is also based on % but they do not discuss the ramifications on the gross revenue. The wealthy do spend a more than the non-wealthy but not as a % of the income. This is why an income tax is still needed but shouldn't necessarily be the primary tax. I agree the necessary items should be exempt, especially food. I think it would still be a more simple tax code and more fair than the current system. However, A tax or money person, I am not. I think there's general agreement that a more simplified tax code would be more fair no matter how we did it, but I would also note that, just as in the exercise we went through, simplified does not always mean more fair or better.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 1, 2017 -> 11:20 AM) It is. Has Schumer even said anything? I'd be "okay" with saying that they will follow the recommendations of the ethics investigation. Not since saying that there should be an ethics investigation, he was a "no comment" on allegation 5 or 6 or whatever it was that came through yesterday. He also hasn't said what he'd support as penalties after investigation.

"Transition team" is still far different from campaign coordination, at least in my eyes. That is still far more scary.

Outside of Tenn but another school relevant to me, apparently we're about to see the first time a championship winning coach has hopped schools without retiring or having an NFL stop in-between since the 1960s.

QUOTE (KagakuOtoko @ Dec 1, 2017 -> 10:48 AM) Alright so Jr. or Kushner go down... nothing really happens as Trump can claim he had a lapse in judgement? They won't even claim a "lapse in judgment", they'll say the charges are bogus and maybe even attempt the pardon fight.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Dec 1, 2017 -> 10:42 AM) Fake news. Sources close to Trump say this charge against Flynn is no big deal. Everyone lies in DC. He's right, this charge isn't a big deal. That's the point of a plea deal.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 1, 2017 -> 10:06 AM) it blows my mind that a 3 star general would destroy his career and reputation for Trump (i know he was involved in some shady stuff prior to trump, but he went next level once he jumped on the MAGA train) That stopped blowing my mind a while ago. Look at literally everyone who has served in his administration other than Bannon. Every one of them is walking out with a ruined reputation. Bannon didn't because his reputation amongst white supremacists is all that matters to him and he embraces that. Generals, business leaders, people with long and distinguished careers, saying "I'll make this last step if I make a deal with the devil" or "I'll make this deal and get my tax cut and then I'll be done".

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Dec 1, 2017 -> 08:47 AM) If anybody truly cared about tax reform, they would just blow up the entire tax code booklet and make it about 10 pages long. There is no reason for it to be so complicated and it only benefits people who have the knowledge or resources to take advantage of it. I understand that the sentiment is aimed at "all the loopholes people have thrown in", but I think this kind of statement is somewhat backwards and counterproductive. Yes there are too many loopholes, but seriously, we're talking about something that manages a $20 trillion economy. This should not be short or simple. You can, if done intelligently, make it "straightforwards and workable", but 10 pages - that's actually harmful. Do we want to use the tax code to encourage anything at all? To give people some benefit to say, have retirement savings? I think there's plenty of logic in that. Do you think you could define a 401K plan in 10 pages in a legal sense? I certainly don't. One of their gambits this time is switching to a different definition of inflation so that as time goes on everyone will start slowly seeing taxes be a larger share of their income. Do you think you can define inflation in the entire economy in 10 pages? You can make a case for "reform". This has a little sprinkling of that in it, but the parts it reforms are entirely "make sure it hurts Democratic states and voters as much as possible" and the rest is a corporate tax cut and estate tax cut paid for by a broad based tax hike starting in about 7-8 years.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 1, 2017 -> 09:36 AM) Flynn to plead GUILTY to the charge, so it seems pretty obvious this is a minor charge as part of a bigger plea deal. So...a "Former national security advisor" being charged would seem to be pretty high on the list of guys to put in jail if a prosecutor thought they had evidence of impropriety. You only offer them a plea deal for someone who is substantially more important.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 07:18 PM) Can someone explain to me why, if the GOP thinks dropping the corporate rate to 20% is just going to be great for everyone, why are they delaying that drop for a year? Because the budget reconciliation rules say they can increase the deficit over 10 years by $1.5 trillion, because they passed budgetary rules this year saying they could increase the deficit by an arbitrary $1.5 trillion over 10 years with tax cuts. If the scores that come back are over $1.5 trillion, they have to shrink the size somewhere.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 07:03 PM) right but it's taxed much differently than income, isn't it? After this passes it will be not taxed at all. As of right now it is an extremely weak income tax levied only on the highest of earners.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 07:02 PM) This doesn't seem to be the way government works anymore. It's get things passed while you have the majority. On both sides. There's an old story from 2009 when the Democrats held literally hundreds of hearings on the Affordable Care Act. I believe it was Tom Coburn, though I could be wrong. He's a Republican. He strongly believes that poor people do not deserve health care, as strongly as anyone else. But the Democrats held hearings. Senator Coburn offered a number of Amendments that the committee wound up adopting, including things that won votes from Democrats. There was zero chance he was was ever going to vote for a bill that provided poor people with health care, but he and his staff asked questions of experts brought in to testify, helped build the legislation, made the bill better, and saved the taxpayers money in the process. That's why you hold a year of hearings before fundamentally altering the economy. That's how my party ran their biggest legislative agenda. They worked hard and fairly.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 06:59 PM) This is a discussion I had the other day and I want to hear the boards opinion. From a purely philosophical point of view, why should estates be taxed. Is there a good reason other than to limit the money that an heir gets? An heir is basically earning untaxed income from who they are born from without it. I see no reason why that should not be taxable income.

Apropos of nothing, I happened upon this while searching for something else today. Who wants to hear Jesse Ventura stating that he will no longer stand for the National Anthem due to what he considered inappropriate treatment by the TSA?

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 06:35 PM) They keep point to the Reagan era, there were hundreds of hearings on that and it still threw us deep into a recession. Huh? There were hundreds of hearings on inflation and the Federal Reserve rate increases?

You just aren't normal enough so we need to beat you.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 11:59 AM) Lol figured someone would say that. That was more of a "teaser" or "teaser trailer" than an actual full trailer correct? Seems like trailers are usually around 4-5 minutes long. Generally "Teasers" are supposed to be shorter, but I've never seen a 5 minute trailer. I've seen people combine 2-3 trailers into a single one - that happened for Star Wars last year and I shared it here, but that wasn't an official thing, the trailers were each about 2 minutes.