Y2HH

QUOTE (flippedoutpunk @ Mar 6, 2011 -> 11:34 AM) 69.99 sounds fantastic for unlimited. I pay 105 a month for my god forsaken iphone unlimited plan Sounds like you are overpaying for a phone that holds rollover minutes...how much do you actually talk on the phone that you need unlimited everything? Another scam are these tiered data plans -- MOST people spend 90-95% of their time on WiFi, using no OTA data...yet spend 30$ a month for an unlimited plan they will never use. I dropped my data plan to 2gigs, and I'm further considering dropping to to 200 megs...my average monthly data use is about 150mb, considering I'm almost always on WiFi no matter where I go. I have 2 iPhones and 1 regular phone on my AT&T plan, unlimited mobile to mobile, unlimited txt, 2 gigs of data on each iPhone -- 550 anytime minutes, nights/weekends free, and I have about 2500 rollover minutes as of now. I pay 150$ for all 3.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 11, 2011 -> 07:40 AM) So subsidize that impact on those who need it, not corporate profits. That's part of the problem, it's hard to target exactly how much you'd have to subsidize without subsidizing corporate profits. Reason being, when oil prices spike, delivery costs spike on everything from food to electronics, etc...which poor people, including poor people below the poverty line, buy and/or consume. The higher oil prices lead to higher gas prices, which leads to higher cost everything, which ... lands on them just as hard as it lands on everyone else in terms of how much their groceries cost, etc. Besides, our government doesn't move fast enough to subsidize those people in matters like this...it'd take them months to decide how much to subsidize, and then months to distribute the added benefits, and by then...the crisis is usually over.

Crazy stuff.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 11, 2011 -> 07:21 AM) Except per capita gas consumption does go down quite a bit once you get to the poverty line. Cars are actually much more of a middle class luxury. Especially the urban poor...they don't own cars. The other question I have about this oil amendment and the tax breaks/subsidies to big oil is why did democrats wait until they knew the bill couldn't be passed to propose it? Why didn't they propose this when they held clear super majorities and could have easily passed it? It's not like this is the first time in the last few years oil has been in the headlines, not even accounting for the BP fiasco...so it surprises me they wait until now to make such a proposition when they could have had their way in the house/senate just a year ago. I think gas consumption will go down, across the board when it goes over 4$, just like it did last time.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 09:56 PM) Oil prices are rocketing due to reasonable fears of widespread unrest across the mideast in countries like Saudi Arabia. You're not really making a good case for corporations here, though. Give them tax breaks or they'll f*** you over, hard! Well that's true enough. But that seems to be the way of things these days. Tax them or cut breaks they receive and they merely pass the costs to the consumers. That's become the problem in taking such things away that they've grown used to having, and in part, this is how they retain these freebies, because the government knows they'll make the people pay, an the people, in turn, may blame the government.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 09:31 PM) WTF? Not a chance in Hades. Oil is a multi-trillion dollar revenue industry. The investment levels each year are in the trillions of dollars. Those extra few tens of billions of dollars make for nice dividend payments, but in the long run, they don't impact the companies at all. Point is they wouldn't cut dividends, they'd pass it onto the consumers. To think otherwise is crazy. Keep in mind the rest of the world doesn't have these "tiny subsidies" as you call them and they pay 5$ a liter for gas...while we pay 3.50$ per gallon, which is quite a bit more than a liter. Those subsidies are a big part as to why gasoline is much cheaper here. All I do know is that when Lybia has problems, which supply 2% of the worlds oil, none of which comes here, oil prices rocket, and excuses are made as to why, in a repeating fashion, everytime something happens there, only to come crashing back down months later when everyone realizes it didn't affect anything. I'm betting that cuttingthese subsidies would have a similarly stupid effect here. If not, who cares...it's surprising to me they've never been cut then.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 09:03 PM) He never said that he would take away collective bargaining. As for what most have or have not, that is a red herring. The question is, did he run on this platform. The answer is, no. Its not about taxes or funding, if he just wanted the economic parts most reasonable people would understand. But he wants to strip away their ability to collectively bargain, and I dont agree with that. I have no union, I will never be part of a union, but if people want to start one, I dont think its the govts place to take away that ability. I guess Im not a big govt type of guy like Walker, Im an individual rights person. And I believe that we all individually have the right to get together and agree that we are going to negotiate for the better of the whole. I dont believe the govt has the authority to take that away from individuals. If I had to predict, Id say that Walker and Republican's arent long for Wisconsin and possibly may have shifted Wisconsin back to Obama in 2012. Quite possible, but when it comes to politics, people have short memory spans. IMO, the next presidential election is basically going to be decided by the economic recovery, it's things are going well and unemployment is down, Obama wins regardless of who runs against him, if things somehow reverse and get worse, odds of his reelection will drop. As for the Wisconsin stuff, despite my anti-union stance, I think what's going on is ridiculous, however, that includes the democrats fleeing the state. On both sides of the fence, this is bad politics being carried out by ba politicians.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 08:24 PM) To my knowledge Walker barely spoke about unions, only stating that he would want there to be some health and pension concessions, but he never stated that he would completely take away all bargaining rights. He also received donations from some unions (the unions that donated to him are exempted from these changes.) According to most polls, Walker does not have 50% and there are at least 2 Republican senators who may be recalled. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert...n-union-busting Just so you know the Journal-Sentinel is a Republican leaning publication, as compared to the Madison newspapers. Isn't what he's doing is removing collective bargaining from specific public unions? To my understanding, most public unions don't have collective bargaining rights, unless I'm mistaken and reversing that from private unions. I'm personally not a fan of modern unions, ostly due to their political connections, and the way in which politicians use their pension systems as funding or various projects, and then when they can't repay the money, they raise taxes on everyone to repay pension money that I, for one, will never collect a penny of. Anyway, this isn't a diatribe I really want to get into.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 2, 2011 -> 07:46 AM) During the continuing resolution vote yesterday, the Democrats put up another clearly partisan but admittedly fun amendment that would remove oil production subsidies. The Republicans voted unanimously against it. All but 12 Democrats voted for it. I gotta say, a unanimous vote of one side in favor of oil subidies? That's solid political hardball. First, this is a stupid amendment pitch by the Democrats, and it was a pure political "news" play for some headlines, and they should know better. This is what I call a "waste of the peoples money" amendment, since it 1) had no chance in passing and they know it and 2) would send the world into recession if it passed. Removing those oil subsidies would probably crash our economy, and destroy all the work Obama and Co. have done to get us out of the recession. I bet it would result in instant 8$ per gallon gas and a hysteria over oil prices worldwide, thus crushing the economy under a wave of skyrocketing prices on anything and everything because of outrageous delivery costs, etc. Edit: While I agree these big oil subsidies do need to go away, this needs to be done in a slow phased approach, it cannot be something that goes away all at once, or even quickly.

QUOTE (knightni @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 06:04 PM) Is the Governor of Wisconsin subject to recall? I've heard that there's a grass-roots (read: Democratic) movement a-foot to attempt to do just that to Walker. Isn't Walker doing exactly what he campaigned he would do? Sounds to me that he'd win a recall vote, if it even happens, because the same people that voted for him last time would vote for him again.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 04:09 PM) Actually, some states, including Wisconsin, have Recall provisions for just this purpose. There are currently petitions being filed on a bunch of the GOP state legislators there (and some Dems too), such that they'd have to face an election again this fall. Sounds like a lot of red tape to hold someone accountable...I know these recall provisions exist, but they're almost never used, showing how useful they are. And even when they are used, I'd love to see some data on how often they work on removing the person from office...

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 10:12 AM) Sure, and the not-really-filibusters (virtual filibusters, whatever you want to call them) are something I find really stupid policy, I don't think that rule should exist, and I hope it dies as soon as possible. But, the GOP and the Dems are NOT abusing the system by using it - what they are doing is letting down the American people, and I think the single best way to fix that is for the American people to get more involved, more knowledgeable, and hold their delegates to government more responsible for their actions. I've said repeatedly, there are three big reasons why Congress keeps getting more dysfunctional. One is corporate interests having too much power, another is the current reality that big money wins elections, but the final and by far biggest reason is that the voters are failing miserably at their jobs. Its stunning what a small percentage of people vote, and just as stunning to me what a small percentage of those people actually bother to invest even a little time finding out who they are really voting for. I think another problem, which goes hand in hand with people voting/not voting, is that politicians are held at zero accountability. The worst that happens to them, if/when they break every promise they made while campaigning (and most do), is they don't get re-elected years later. The fact that they keep their benefits even if that happens is another story altogether, so let's not even get into that. But as it stands, they can openly lie about what they're going to do, get elected, do the exact opposite without having to answer for it until the next election cycle... In any other job...consider the job interview your campaign...if you promise you can do X, get hired and cannot do X, they fire you...not two years later...and not with full benefits...but immediately. If you campaign on X, and don't do X when elected, you should be immediately fired and replaced if you cannot show why. I understand that there are political barriers preventing some from doing what they promised to do, however, there ARE ways to track if they've tried or even bothered at all...

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 10:03 AM) They aren't abuses at all. They are legally enacted policy (probably). You are abusing the term abuse here. I know what you are saying, and I agree...I think his contention is that the system itself is messed up, despite the fact that they're doing nothing illegal. All that said, I agree with you (I believe it was you anyway) that said if the tables were turned and it was a different issue, the Democrats would be pulling the same exact sort of thing. We've seen this for how long in American politics now? Filibusters were used over and over and nobody had a problem with them, but then when the tables were turned, you heard about how filibusters were an abuse of the system, etc... This is the problem with a two party system...which was never the intention of our government.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 09:52 AM) Infancy? It's been going on for four decades now. As for reasonable doubt, that's what p-scores and null hypotheses are for. You can probably say it's been studied for 4 centuries now...but just because a small segment of science studies something doesn't mean much progress was made. More progress on this science has been made in the last 5 years than in the prior 35 before it. To me, that's the definition of scientific infancy. As for reasonable doubt, that's what having a brain and using it is for.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 09:01 AM) The thing is, actual models of the climate disagree with this*. They account for the natural cycles and human forcing functions, and they're finding that yeah, we do contribute a lot to the recent rapid warming. You need competing models that account for natural variations and human inputs that shows we're having less of an impact than most models show. *not necessarily that there wouldn't be some small amount of warming now, I don't know. But we've certainly accelerated above any natural cycle fluctuations. The science of climate change is in such an infancy stage, it's going to take many more years of data and analysis to convince me of this beyond a reasonable doubt. Once this movement became an entire political platform and huge money making scheme, it became corrupt IMO, and my cynical side (which is quite a large side of me), kicked in...and that's where we are now.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Mar 9, 2011 -> 08:31 PM) So you're going with your gut. We had a President that went with his gut for 8 years. Didn't turn out well. I'm not going with my "gut" on this, this has nothing to do with a 'gut' feeling, but more like an educated understanding. Earth warms and cools, both with and without us here, as data has shown over and over and over again. We may be helping it along this time -- a little -- but I expect the Earth would be warming right now even if we weren't here to interfere. And seriously, stop blaming Bush already, which is overused and abused to the point of absurdity. I know you hate him, but most of today's problems were created before he was in office, by Clinton, Sr., Reagan, Carter, Nixon, etc. Believe me, all of Americas problems that exist today did not happen in 8 little years. They were created, in unison between both parties, over a span of 40 years now...and Obama isn't making things any better than any of the predecessors so far.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Mar 10, 2011 -> 08:34 AM) Well, at the very least, it appears the legislature specifically and clearly broke a rule about 24 hour notification. So I'm guessing it goes back for another vote if contested in the courts. I think this pissing contest will go for a re-vote after it spends some time in the courts...then it will pass. The fact that the republicans did this, and the fact that the democrats "fled" the state shows how f***ed up our political system is, across the board. This is no way to do business in government...then again, I guess it is...once again business as usual.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Mar 9, 2011 -> 09:05 PM) I need to stop caring about what the portfolio looks like week to week... in 2008 and 2009 I didn't look at it at all. What I do right now is transfer cash from my checking account every month and let it sit and then when I have enough I either buy something else (to diversify) or I add to something that's already in it. I don't have that many stocks, though, I added a couple so I could have some small cap stuff but the rest I think I'm just going to find an ETF for small cap growth stocks, and after that just start putting stuff in a S&P 500 index fund. I do the same, every paycheck a certain % goes into my 401k, and a certain % goes into my brokerage -- the rest goes into the spendings account. I call it that, because it's just a savings/checking account used for bills/household/everyday life...thus a spending account. I then wait as the money I put in + the dividend money builds up and a bargain stock comes along, something very cheap, etc...and I'll buy that. Or, I'll buy an increased position in something I already have if the price is at what I consider to be a "buy price".

QUOTE (lostfan @ Mar 9, 2011 -> 08:47 PM) I want the stock to go up b/c that means more money for me... it also means the % of stock I buy when the dividend payment comes is less. If the stock tanks for a while, the reinvestment buys more % of shares and it's a better value, but it's still not good that the stock tanks. Eh as long as the stock doesn't totally bomb and stay down, you don't lose money. It's not that you would lose money, and it's not that it's even a bad idea to auto reinvest, I just prefer to use dividends as a method of diversification, and to keep income taxes as simple as possible for if/when I sell.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Mar 9, 2011 -> 08:27 PM) and then the corporation that paid taxes on the profits. lol What's easier than re-investing dividends? Just letting it sit and collect, and then buying whole chunks of shares? (Not too thrilled with the idea of paying a transaction fee) What I do is let the dividends collect in a cash account and wait, when I find a bargin stock or an opportunity arises where a good company is hammered for no reason or bad reasons, I'll diversify the collected dividend money into that new company/opportunity. It allows you to take money paid by other companies and diversify it. To me, I already have shares of the companies paying dividends, so I'd rather have something else, possibly at a better price, and even if I do decide to buy more shares of the same company, I get to decide when to do so, usually at a better price. With dividend reinvestment, your stuck buying shares at whatever price the stock happens to be at, which isn't always the best time to buy.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Mar 9, 2011 -> 05:23 PM) How does reinvesting dividends make taxes tricky? Is it the cost basis? Yes, the new shares have a new cost basis because 1) the stock is being bought at a new price, and 2) because the dividend was sent to you and used to purchase new shares but also taxed...so you do not owe taxes on that dividend money if/when you sell the shares...so it makes selling properly complicated. Of course, you can do what 90% of the people that re-invest dividends do and simply pay full taxes twice, once on the dividend itself (which you never actually collected) and again when you sell the shares, bought with money that's already been taxed... Get it?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 9, 2011 -> 04:41 PM) The question in reply is...can you back that up with evidence? Since I'm not a scientist, I doubt it. Call it my cynical nature to believe we do far less damage as humans than we try to claim. Besides, the sensationalism of this era is impossible to not notice on all sides.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 9, 2011 -> 02:43 PM) Yes, it is...because when a change happens, like a sudden shift in climate...if you accept the principles of inductive reasoning/science, you accept that there must be a mechanism by which it happened, and that mechanism can be understood with sufficient data. You're not allowed to just hypothesize that a change is a natural trend that just happens unless you can explain why the trends happen. Give you an example. We have evidence that we've gone through ~7 cycles of glacials/interglacials over the past 800,000 years. The step you guys are getting is accepting that, but not going farther. The next step in the science was to figure out how that happens...changes in the Earth's orbital parameters enhanced by atmospheric (CO2) feedbacks. We can finish the next step, and then make predictions about how things happen when we do large-scale experiments (like increasing atmospheric CO2 massively) on our own. I'm not even dismissing the fact that humans contribute, I just don't believe we contribute as much as many alarmists want us to believe/accept.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Mar 9, 2011 -> 02:27 PM) I happen to be friends with Y2HH. I'm not trolling him. And always winning. Last I checked you were NOT a member of Team Sheen, but Anti-Sheen...therefore you have never been winning, and will never win.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Mar 9, 2011 -> 02:01 PM) You have terrible opinions. At least my opinions are better than your opinions... BTW, still winning.