StrangeSox

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Oct 26, 2011 -> 09:56 AM) Yes. It is terrible. I was on automatic withdrawal and it took them until after my payment was due to update (fortunately, I did my homework ahead of time - the DOE said that all payments will be retroactivley applied to the date it should have been pulled). Most concerning to me, however, is that they haven't pulled your payment history from the old site. I assume that this will happen eventually, but it's disconcerting that those records could have been lost (note, that I am hopeful that those records will eventually make their way over to the new site). Poor job by Direct Loans. thanks for the heads up on that, I'll have to make sure my autopay is still set up correctly.

Perry is making Bush look like an eloquent intellectual.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 09:46 PM) Back pedal my ass. He's the one saying this crap. He did it again today - him and the class warfare. It's his entire campaign. But you're coming in with really dumb slogans while at the same time decrying the use of really dumb slogans so....

just give them more tax cuts, eventually they'll create jobs because they won't know what else to do with their money!

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 03:05 PM) [/b] I dunno that this is true. The bank doesn't typically loan out money when it knows it'll lose money. If they loaned you 300k knowing the house would be worth 280k the next day, they've just lost 20k or more. If anything they might have been dumb to not realize what they were doing would create a huge gigantic problem. But I don't think they did this intentionally. The loan originators were making a quick profit by reselling the mortgage or chopping it up themselves. They weren't in it for a 30 year long haul.

By the way, can we please end this nonsense that the only way to simplify the tax code is a flat tax? It's not like marginal rates are particularly hard or complicated; a progressive tax bracket isn't what gives us thousands and thousands of pages of code. It keeps getting repeated by the various R's offering their plans and repeated in articles uncritically.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 03:45 PM) SS2K5 has been pretty consistent in saying that in this economy, tax cuts are a mistake, as are tax increases, until the economy begins to recover a bit. Yup, and harsh austerity, too.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 02:21 PM) Sonofa...we've created a Keynesian! I was thinking the same thing, and wrt to ss2k5's post as well.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 02:25 PM) He is shooting about 14%. the Adam Dunn line?

It was in the repub thread.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 01:55 PM) Even with Rahm's promise to hire 200 more officers, the attrition rate FAR exceeds that. And now we're talking about officers with 20 years of experience (and pay scale) vs new hires, which is still a cost savings. IIRC that's turning out to mostly be eliminating desk jobs and moving those officers back on to the streets.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 01:55 PM) Actually, we ARE cutting police and firefighters, RIGHT now. Of course, you don't even know it, do you? Vaguely, sure. It gets mentioned on NPR from time to time. As I said, though, I don't live in Chicago or Cook county so I don't actually follow it. When bmags pointed out that cutting $625M means cutting police teachers, etc. you asked "but why does it have to be that?" If you have to do across-the-board cuts, it has to be. You've argued that, politically, there's really no other choice. So, to balance the budget with cuts, you necessarily have to cut teachers, police etc. It's not a talking point but a simple illustration of the problems, both for real people and politically, of just cutting your way to balance.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 01:55 PM) It is just like the person who spends s***loads of money on sale items they don't need and talks about how much they saved! Marketing/advertising is the spawn of the devil.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 01:53 PM) They CAN be a dumb idea, yes. But when something has grown out of control, it's nearly impossible to do targeted cuts without costing yourself your elected position. ...so we're back to cutting teachers, police and firefighters.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 01:32 PM) Why does the 625 million represent only the most important stuff? At one point you flipped out on me for saying that untargeted budget cuts are a dumb idea, but this is exactly why.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 01:48 PM) Dumb, and it shows you're as clueless as most here. I will readily admit to being happily ignorant wrt to Cook County and Chicago politics, budgets and corruption. Still, "everyone knows a guy..." isn't exactly a rigorous method of coming up with "hundreds of millions in fraud"

I learned a new word yesterday, and think it's appropriate here: anecdata.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 01:01 PM) Not sure how the bolded makes any sense. The interest is a tax deduction, not a credit, so it reduces your tax liability by that amount against the % you are already paying. So for example, if you are paying roughly 20% on your income tax, then you save 20% of your total interest payments. It is 20% of 5%, or of 4%, or whatever. There is no level of interest that allows the tax deduction to make it a "wash". My dad gets really frustrated at people that chase tax deductions thinking that they're credits.

QUOTE (bmags @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 01:34 PM) Again, how prevalent do you actually think that is, compared to a 625 million dollar deficit. If that 625 million could be corrected by that stuff, it would be an easy fix. This is a pretty fair budget consisting of a LOT of cuts EVERYWHERE. I suggest you look at it. I'm guessing there's similar misconceptions as we see with the federal budget and people thinking foreign aid is 10-15% or some ridiculously high number.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 12:38 PM) Yeah, no. JA definitely gets credit for that non-signing.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 01:30 PM) So, in essence, the government itself is *helping* create this "class war", is it not? Absolutely.

Apparently Cain was a bit of an activist against restaurant smoking bans--maybe it has something to do with that? No matter the reason, though, it's completely bizarre.

Some of "the people" cannot, some of "the people" can, but it will impact their lives, some of "the people" can without any impact whatsoever on their life.

EPA to regulate fracking http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0...525792F00542001

Costofwar.com pant the only cost estimate out there, btw. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010...f-the-wars.html