Rex Kickass

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 28, 2005 -> 12:22 PM) They're paying right? yes.

I asked your picture of Noam, but he was no help either.

Im being asked to stay at a hotel near my job so I can come in on time tomorrow.

I lived out of a backpack for four months on 25 dollars a day. I'm anything but high maintenance.

Newspaper journalism has changed because people's reading habits have. More later when I'm not at work

At this point the idea is purely theoretical... but a good possibility.

Long time readers of this board may know that I used to live in Michigan. Gave up radio, traveled Europe. Got back into radio - in a small town, was real unhappy with my life... but happy with my job. Unfortunately, life trumps job in the game of "winodj action card battle." So I'm living in NJ, with a job that I don't much care for, but I'm making a LOT more money. However, I also have a lot more expenses. New car, and much higher rent. My roommate situation has disintegrated and I need to find a new place to live quickly. I found out I may have an opportunity back in Michigan, the same station I worked at when I started on soxtalk. The money is 40 to 50% less than I'm making now, but its in my passion. Right now, neither option seems entirely economically feasible. So what should I do or where should I go?

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Feb 27, 2005 -> 07:13 PM) Since when is it the RESPONSIBILITY for the government to provide for our retirement? People act like it's a God-given right to have money come in when they get old. It's NOT. The same thing goes for medical insurance. It's not a RIGHT. Don't get me wrong, I think there should be safety nets. The problem is that people are dependant on it, and that's where I have the issue. You have to want to do better. Most people don't when the safety net is there and handouts start flowing in. Where's the incentive? Is the "American Dream" to have government handle everything? That's where I have the disconnect. I don't view SSI as anything but a safety net, and people shouldn't view it as anything but. There are a number of pretax ways to save for retirement right now. What is one more option going to do? Especially if it reduces your safety net benefit by two-thirds?

If I had my druthers, I'd fix that too. But privatization and putting what was created as an "insurance policy" at any risk is not an option in my book.

Nice solid piece of writing. There's something about your second graph though. Can't quite put my finger on it. How do you think you did?

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Feb 27, 2005 -> 04:28 PM) winodj, you keep talking about what the program will cost. Oh, but wait, isn't that money already there? NO! It's because it's been robbed, by Dems and Reps alike, for decades. I have already determined that the money I put in for Social Security I will NEVER see, unless I'm 85, disabled, or dead, which ever comes first. I simply view this as another 6.25% of taxes I have to pay, because it sure as hell is not going to be there when I retire (unless I retire when I'm 85, and s***, the way it's going that's how old I'll have to be). So you keep pulling the stuff that says that social security is way ok, anad totally fine and will never ever go away for us twenty something or early 30 something people. Do you really believe that? Yes I do. The numbers I pull are the CBO's and the Social Security Trustees'. Social Security will never go "bankrupt." It just can't. The only way this program disappears is if Congress funds it. Talk of money "not being there" is foolish. Social Security would then be the only program in government that stops running when it runs out of money. And the money that Social Security does have in its surplus is in government bonds. So if an average citizens' investment in government bonds are real, so would Social Security's investment. Do there need to be fixes for the super long term viability. Yes, but its more like a band-aid than a transplant. A modest increase in the payroll tax cap, raising the retirement age to 70, something along those lines. But to propose a scheme that would shift a projected deficit over from 50 years away to less than ten years away, makes no sense at all.

AP Wire Story on myway.com headline today: "Kyle Busch is Youngest Ever On Pole." That just sounds disturbing.

Unless the program is killed, Social Security WILL be there when they retire. Or when you retire. If the program runs a deficit, it wouldn't go bankrupt and just shut down. Think about that in the terms of all government stuff. When they go over original budget, does that arm of the government just shut down until the next budget year? Of course not. The government would run further in deficit. The Bush administration argues that there will be, over time, a 10 trillion dollar shortfall. However, if you look at the Bush administration numbers, you would see that the time frame is infinite. If you take a long term 75 year view, the total cost would be somewhere between 2 and 3 trillion dollars. That's if we do nothing and productivity stays flat each year between now and then. SSI Privatization, would cost - by most estimates 2 to 3 trillion dollars in the first ten to twenty years of the program. More later as guaranteed benefits would be drawn from as little as 35% of the pool that it currently draws from under the most discussed plan. So your option for saving social security is to run the deficit up front and address none of the "deficit issues" that the government foresees in the near future. Of course, you could just raise the cap on earnings taxed for SSI from 90 some thousand a year to about 200 thousand a year. This hike would be nominal for most people affected and would affect less than 2% of the population. Yet it would eliminate deficit spending for SSI for another 50 to 60 years, keeping the surplus intact until 2080.

Ever feel like you should tell the whole world how you feel about a situation even though you know that your smartest move is to stay clammed up?

Things the right neglects to mention. The money to be removed from Social Security Trust to pay for the private accounts is currently what is funding retiree's Social Security benefits. By moving this money into "private savings accounts," it puts Social Security in deficit sooner than later. Conservative estimates place the costs of privatization at about 2 trillion dollars. Given that we are currently running deficits forecast between 300 and 700 billion dollars without the added cost of privatization of social security, this added expense would further enlarge our deficit. To compensate the sudden additional cost of Social Security privatization, your benefits will be linked to prices rather than wages. What that means is that your benefits will increase at a much slower rate then in the past. Someone born in 1977 would see benefits that could realistically be 20 to 30% lower than they would should benefits stay indexed to wages. But I guess the problem is that people behind Social Security privatization don't understand the reason for it. It never was an "investment" plan for people. It is instead an "insurance" plan for people. Social Security is not about getting rich, its about making sure that you don't go homeless should the savings that citizens should be responsibly accruing suddenly disappear through a bad financial situation, or downturn. Its about making sure that people can afford to put food on the table. If the people on the right honestly cared about helping people get a leg up, they might actually look for a way to help keep the cost of prescription medicine lower. They might encourage people to save rather than spend immediately. They might try to look at making people's lives better now. Instead, they would like to solve the "crisis" of Social Security by hastening its bankruptcy rather than taking the small steps necessary to eliminate the future deficit for another 75-100 years. They'll do it by misquoting and twisting the words of its founder, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Just ask Brit Hume. Oh and by the way, I used to hold shares in a very conservative mutual fund, American Funds "Investment Company of America." It is an incredibly broad based fund covering bonds, stocks, etc. Since 1998, the Mutual Fund has not grown at all. It's still around 31 dollars a share. Where it was 7 years ago. Suddenly 3% looks pretty good to me.

Roadkill candy is axed. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor.../roadkill_candy

Sorry, but you are wrong. Air America is growing at a very fast clip. And doing quite well, I might add.

See "*sweeping, generalizing liberal slam on republicans*" quote in the post.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/a...e_studio_closes

Some people will win. I'll get bored and watch something else. Chris Rock will not be funny.

I remember my first byline story. Nerve racking. 10 inches on girls tennis I think. But I'm sure you'll do fine. But just don't describe the game as "very very very very very exciting."

Anytime any President visits, there are stories about disgruntled locals complaining. I remember hearing all about how the President tied up traffic on WLS when Clinton used to visit Chicago. Hell, even heard about it when he visited Michigan City in 1996.

Links to real personal ads go here. This one is awesome. Click here for the picture. Hehehehe. "Assperation."

Well, thanks to TSA guidelines, the bank should receive compensation for the loss of data tapes in two to three years. And *sweeping, generalizing, liberal slam on republicans coming* thanks to "tort reform" those who lost data probably won't have an avenue to get their situation resolved.

Newsweek has got some stuff on this too this week. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6999272/site/newsweek/