LastPommerFan

I find the bold exceptionally hard to believe.

The phrase "goodbye Wang" very rarely indicates good things.

Bettman works for the owners. The owners, almost to a man/woman, have extensive negotiating experience. They hired a person who will defer to them. Fehr, while employed by the players, does not defer to them in negotiations because players have never had to negotiate anything outside of a nightclub. They did not hire Don Fehr because that had a strong desire to play this season. They hired him because they got taken behind the woodshed 7 years ago, and it hurt their ego.

When the NHLPA Hired the Fehr brothers, I think the owners immediately realized that they had to bust the union if they wanted to make a deal.

Honest no strings attached question: Why?

Oh my goodness, I missed the introduction of some outstanding topics. It is not possible that this band of terrorists is so strong and superior in strategy that we need to continue to spend 50% more on our military than all non-NATO military budgets combined. I agree that across the board sequestration would have negative impacts because it would cut the good and necessary along with the bad and pork filled, but that is not what you seem to be arguing. There is no way a 10% cut in military spending over the next decade (we'd still be outspending all of the non-NATO military budgets combined) will put us in line for imminent doom at the hands of a disparate loosely organized group of terrorists. It is not possible. I'm not proposing this as a direct increase in disposable income. I'm proposing this as a change in the dynamics of American Employment. My goal is to increase the number of high quality high paying (I will write HQHP) jobs in the United states. When a business needs to build a new manufacturing plant to meet some new demand, there are several factors we consider: Development costs (construction and real estate), taxes, quality of labor, regulations, local infrastructure, etc. Far and away the single most important factor for the vast majority of manufacturers is labor cost. This will be the largest drive of operational profit margin, and that is the goal when building a new plant, meet the demand with the best operational profit margin. Many states do an exceptional job of reducing development costs, I would also propose reducing corporate taxes (but that's another debate) and seriously reviewing each of the 84,000 pages of regulations in the Federal Register (again, another debate). But ultimately, the deciding factor is going to be labor costs. A huge chunk of labor costs (up to 25% for some manufacturing jobs) is health care. As health care costs have skyrocketed in the past decade and a half, those 8-10% increases have driven up the cost of american labor, without an increase in american wages. Moving healthcare off the P-L statement of the business and onto the employees eliminates this dynamic. Employers now would have control over their labor costs, rather than being at the mercy of the health care market. Labor cost stability is VERY important to manufacturing employers. We are far more skeptical when considering China today because of the great instability in their wage rates. Making this change would change the economics of every manufacturers strategic decision making. It would drive more firms to take advantage of our country's a great resources (quality of labor, stability, local infrastructure, etc.) by reducing the impact of the biggest negative, labor cost instability. An important note: for the sake of this argument, I don't really care if the new system is state run (ala Medicare) or some sort of state funded voucher system (as Rep. Ryan has proposed for Medicare/Medicaid). My goal is to make hiring and building capacity in the United States more economically attractive to firms, without stifling trade or markets through protectionist measures or claw-back taxes. Also, I recognize that it is critical to minimize the impact on an individuals take-home pay in order to reduce, as much as is possible, the impact to the consumer economy. The beauty of this plan is that it specifically addresses increasing HQHP jobs. The jobs that currently come with healthcare benefits. R&D jobs would also be affected. Doing research in Shanghai or Mumbai (as GE Global research currently does) becomes significantly less necessary if the cost of doing that research in the US drops. Obviously, Labor Cost is a massive part of the R&D costs for any business as well, although people don't usually think of it that way. HQHP jobs have a couple of added effects as well. HQHP jobs have a multiplier effect. The help drive more jobs in the community. HQHP jobs have a greater than 1:1 effect on unemployment in another way as well, they offer some families the opportunity to decide whether they want one parent to stay home with children, thus reducing the total labor pool. The goal is not to add more Walmart Greeters to american payrolls (They serve an awesome purpose, but you're not going to raise a family on the salary) it's to add more HQHP jobs that allow a pathway to the REAL middle class. The idea of what the middle class is has been lowered in recent decades as cheap credit and consumer goods have allowed millions more to have the appearance of a middle class. HQHP jobs raise up not only the people employed in them, but the opportunities for all the people in their community. Edited to add last paragraph.

The results so far of the first 2 questions show the unworldly skew in the perception of how this election is going between Democrats and Republicans. If the results of the third question pan out, the president will win reelection. Nothing short of a moderate to strong break for Romney among independents will allow Romney to win Ohio. Without Ohio, he can't be president.

I can make my point without even debating that. HC costs are skyrocketing now, and it is hurting the economics of american employment. It hurts american employment because every 8% annual increase in HC costs is translating into an increase in employment cost because we get our healthcare from our employers. This is (a) unlike most of the economies we are competing with and (b) effectively an increased tax on manufacturing and other high paying high quality employment because they not only need to pay for their own healthcare, but they need to subsidize the healthcare of others either through their share of FICA or increased healthcare costs to reimburse unpaid emergency room care. My proposal is a national health care system financed entirely through an increase in the employee side of the uncapped portion of the FICA tax. Thus the entire burden for healthcare would be lifted from high paying high quality employers books. Basically what I am calling for is a tripling of the employee side medicare tax and a lowing of the medicare eligibility age to 0. To throw a bone to the economy (tax increase hurt) all employees currently receiving medical benefits from their employers should, by law, receive a one time increase in pay equal to the value of their medical benefits. It's zero sum for employers in the short term, but provides significantly increased cost stability. It puts them back in control.

Interesting factoid regarding outsourcing: 700,000 americans are currently employed by Japanese Firms in the US. Basically, jobs Japan outsourced to us. I found this article from April that basically sums up what I'm seeing in the american manufacturing sector: http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-newman/2012/04/19/4-lessons-from-the-us-manufacturing-revival 1. Our struggles have made us more efficient. 2. Our demise is greatly exaggerated. 3. Off-shoring is awesome when it's German, Japanese and even (!!) Chinese (!!) companies are moving factories to the US. American manufacturing is ridiculously close to becoming a Goliath growth engine again. A significant cost relief, like the single payer healthcare I've proposed in previous posts, would send us skyward at an awesome rate. Interestingly, Anti-dumping tarriffs, like the Tire one the president touts, seem to be doing more than just protecting american manufacturers: http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/24/smallbusiness/china-us-manufacturing/index.htm

There would be a conventional onslaught that would have lowered regard for civilian casualties and would not end until all remnants of the current power structure, including the supreme leader were captured or killed. Effectively, anyone involved in the current decision making apparatus would cease to exist. But no, not an instant glassification of the Iranian mountains would not occur. Although nuclear sites may incur initial nuclear attacks. The shelf life of Sarin is several months. Certainly not short enough to preclude a clandestine operation to release it in a high population center and kill hundreds of thousands of people. In contrast, nuclear weapons, while more destructive, tend to be far less fatal (in number of casualties) than well placed chemical weapons. Again, my point is not that either scenario is desirable, it is that neither is remotely likely to occur.

Chemical and Biological weapons would be just as deadly (hundreds of thousands of casualties) and easier to import(can't be detected by a simple Geiger scanner, located at most ports of entry from the peace bridge to Long Beach Harbor). They've had that ability for decades, what's stopped them from using those?

The point is that an Iran that used it's nukes would cease to exist. Now, would they use them on Israel first, or us? I don't believe they would use them at all, The Pakistani Intelligence Services are just as aligned with Jihadist Terrorists as the Iranian government, and they are far more technologically advanced. I don't see them as a threat either, as far as a preemptive nuclear attack. In both of these cases, we're not even talking about Mutually assured destruction. We're talking about significant harm to us and complete obliteration to them. It's a ridiculously strong deterrent.

I'm confident that this debate was much like the second (as opposed to the first) both candidates will look good to their existing supporters and the people in the middle will be roughly split. I think half of america would agree with the bold, and half would disagree.

Wow, I can't believe Gov Romney let President Obama off the hook so easily on the Libya question. He basically dodged the issue for him. Nothing on security requests, nothing on the 'protest'. nothing on campaigning the next day. wow.

http://www.cracked.com/article_20067_5-b.s.-political-arguments-you-hear-every-election-season.html fun

I'll add my objection to the name calling. My original point was NOT meant to be that the allegations were a completely false conspiracy. It was that you were so 100% sure. While you phrased it with less belittling vocabulary, you maintained its veracity. I was attempting to say that those allegations were likely hijacked by the bush campaign and became something that they were not. Kerry's release for allowed for all military and medical records to be reviewed. There were some missing, that happens a lot in the military, but O'Niell in the sun-times article, goes on to suggest that a US Senator went in to the archives and redacted parts of his military record, while running against the sitting commander and chief. O'neill is heading sharply in the direction of desperate conspiracy theorist. I put the swift boating in the same category as Bush's air guard record. Probably some truth to it, but it got hijacked by an agenda and became something significantly different than it truly was. It's tougher to argue everyone is equal when only about 5% of the population could vote.

Agreed, Edwards was a disaster i think he's gotten some of what he deserves, the real victim in that whole sham was Elizabeth Edwards, may she rest in peace. Kerry did eventually release his war record, in 2005, and if he had just done it before the damn election, it may have made enough of a difference to swing ohio. sources: http://www.nysun.com...-to-navy/15790/ http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/07/kerry_allows_navy_release_of_military_medical_records/

I will freely admit that I was glad i found out about Edwards. I'm a little surprised that you seem so sure of Kerry's war record.

It worked when she helped take out Cain for Romney.

No way, they will be way too concerned with making sure our grandmothers can't get their heart medicine! they won't have time for his ailments.

It can be cured, and thanks to Obamacare, he won't be denied coverage due to his preexisting condition. Nor his preexisting policy stances.

I agree that this solution is excellent, but the democrats are not holding it up; The have proposed significant investment in the conversion technology, only to be stymied by the GOP. It is important to keep in mind that reducing diesel consumption will have no effect on gasoline prices. You can't convert diesel fuel into gasoline in the refining process, they are separate products.

I think the President summed up the transportation cost issue well in the last debate. Basically he said we can't do anything about the price of gasoline. So as it gets more expensive, we need more efficient utilization. That's why the dems are pushing improved fuel consumption standards for the US automotive fleet. If gas costs 50% more and your efficiency doubles, you pay 25% less in total gasoline costs. It's not a question of technology, that already exists, it was simply a matter off incentivizing the market to building the more efficient cars. I don't fully buy the peak oil theory, only because i think there will be more of a plateau. If we use less (as we did in 2008, the first year in history Americans drove less) gas will consume less of our personal incomes.

This is the key. most arguments against peak oil factor in sulfur rich oil, such as that from the oil sands. This is the petroleum equivalent of moving the goal posts. Oil Sand takes completely different (and far more polluting) processes to refine. It's not the same resource.

Texas will get their turn soon enough :w00t: