jjamie12

You've got it wrong. The 'morons' here have been arguing that President Obama's plans will actually hurt the poor and middle class. That has been a consistent theme here. So far, you'd have to say they were right. The wealthy are doing just fine. It's the poor and middle class that have gotten squeezed, just like folks here predicted.

I don't think so, LA. Most economists (at least the ones I've read or heard) think about the initial jobs report as something that you can either add 80K or subtract 80K from. I haven't looked at the revisions from this year or last, but I think if you go back over time, you'd see that 58K one way or the other would be something that happens somewhat frequently.

Mitt Romney has spent his life being right about most everything he's put thought into. It's not surprising that he would be right about these particular things, too. But his wife has a horse and he isn't 'relatable', so we didn't vote for him.

I just read a WSJ editorial that directly contradicts this article. From WSJ and According to BLS: 71% of min wage workers in the restaurant industry are under the age of 25. 47% are teenagers. 57% of industry workers are students. (Gee, I wonder why the average hours worked per week in the article is 26.4?) Because of the above (most especially the third point), that "yearly income of the average worker" of $12K from the article just doesn't makes sense. It makes even less sense to compare it to the poverty line of $11K. Just thought I'd throw it out there to anyone who wishes to be informed. I realize that the article is talking about 'fast-food' vs. the industry. You must also realize that any changes to law aren't going to only apply to 'fast-food' places.

http://www.grantland...option-football Great article about Marrone and the uptick in use of "Package Plays" in the NFL. Something to look for on Game Day.

It's a good thing birdog1960 can read these articles now to tell us that our health insurance costs are going to go up. If only someone could have predicted that before this law was passed on the (erroneous) premise that it would lower premiums.

The above do not define the entirety of 'Black culture' as simply the poor traits that you've confined this discussion to. You have taken the worst traits of individuals and defined it as the entirety of the 'Black culture'. There's a difference, and it's important.

A few things: 1. I don't think TYTT or 3rdnlng are racists. 2. The words you use matter. 3. When you take some of the worst traits about individual people and give it the name 'Black' culture, you are (intentionally or not), at a bare minimum, inferring (if not outright saying it) that those poor traits are 'Black' in nature. That's not OK. 4. By definition, 3rd, if you are Black, you are part of Black culture. Your argument about being African-American or Black but not participating in Black Culture is just silly. By your own silly arguments, you should be able to see that the very idea of 'Black Culture' being reduced to the above mentioned traits is silly.

No one thinks it's ALL about the money. YOU refuse to accept the idea that money is PART OF the incentive to be a doctor. Blindly dismissing the very idea that health care quaility *might* be affected becase of changing incentives ignores everything we know about human nature. As soon as you admit this very obvious thing, we can all (maybe) start to have the very real discussion about how big of an issue it might be.

Jesus Effing Christ. NO ONE believes that there are NO "..people who do noble and extraordinary things for reasons other than financial gain". Part of the incentives for people going into medicine is financial. It is YOU who can't accept that when you lower those incentives you will, BY DEFINITION, decrease the incentive for people to go into medicine. Since you refuse to accept that very basic and obvious truism, we can't ever get past that to have the real and important discussions. You're the problem. Not 'them'.

So - black folks are still being exploited by white people with some help from the construct of laws? Weird.

Except we now know (some even predicted that this would happen... imagine that) that this is absolutely false. Plenty of people's group plans are going to cease to exist and they'll be forced to the individual exchanges.

That is not what the President meant or inferred. Nor was that how the 'the people' understood it with respect to passage of the ACA. In fact, one of the only ways this thing was passed was under the guise of "don't worry, nothing is going to change for those of you who currently have insurance". That was always clearly wrong. At best, the President doesn't/didn't understand how the market would react to this massive bill.

Yes. Everything you said is, theoretically, possible. Great job. I tried. I really did. I'll stop now. Nope. None of that matters. Profit-driven medicine is evil and nothing good ever came of it. Furthermore, we can (and should!) completely take away the profit motive and employ some scientists in government and NOTHING will be different! We'll get the same amount of innovation, it will just cost less! AND the scientists will be the ones with the cool cars! Won't it be great?

Can we at least agree that, at a minimum, that this would provide less incentive to create new drugs? Further, can we both agree that, by definition, this will mean that we'll get less innovation because of it? Right?

Everything I wrote was in response to the later theme in this thread that developed that "The Banks MUST have been doing something wrong, why else would they settle?" As folks have been trying to point out to you: Because it made more sense, business-wise to settle than to fight it. Everyone wins. In response to the earlier portion of your post -- You actually answered your own question: Because it's more profitable to lend to the same borrower at a higher rate than at a lower rate. IE: "Internal" refis vs. HAMP refis. By the way, I'm not excusing B of A's alleged misdeeds on the referened CNBC article. If those allegations turn out to be true, I hope they come down extremely hard on them. My guess, though, is that the allegations are somewhat overblown and what we're really talking about are low-level managers of the people who deal with the customers and paperwork put into place some bad incentive structures, and/or were responding to incentive structures of their own that weren't thought out properly. I'd be HIGHLY surprised, if, for instance, there was a directive coming from a position of any relative authority that said "Don't process HAMP applications, let them sit in a stack and then lie to customers about it". Also, part of the huge problem with the early stages of HAMP was they way that (surprise, surprise!) the gov't designed the program. To keep it simple -- The reason the early HAMP (and other HAMP-type programs) didn't work was because the risk continued to be with the banks that originated that modification, whether or not they sold the loan or whether or not they followed the guidelines properly. When the gov't finally came out with the HAMP 3 (or whatever iteration it was) they finally got it correct by having the risk of the loan going into default ultimately come down to whomever bought and owned the loan.

See, this right here is the problem. i don't think you understand what you're talking about. I might be wrong, but the settlement you've been referencing all along was $9.3 BN, NOT $26. I *think* the $26 BN you're now talking about was a reference (I think -- since it doesn't seem like you fully understand how all this works, it's really hard to know exactly what you're trying to say) to the amount of $$ available to banks for the HAMP program. Even if it WERE $26 BN, you still don't seem to understand that $26 BN actually IS a pittance. The three main banks (JPM/Wells/B of A) made $44.7 BN in 2012. So you might look at this and say "See! This fine (even though that's not the right amount) was more than half a year's income for those greedy evil banksters... I'm glad the gov't is sticking it to them!" That's exactly what the AGs want you, Mr. Joe Public to think. What you, Mr. Joe Public doesn't understand is that they've been putting money away for years to pay for these settlements that they knew were coming and that the $44.7 Bn they made in 2012 on top of the billions and billions of dollars they've made over the past 3-4 years is over and above the 'huge' penalty they now face. This wasn't their first rodeo, cowboy. See how nice that is for everyone? Attorneys General, knowing their case is not nearly as strong as their inflammatory statements, love to throw a shiny object in front of the people so they're convinced "something is being done!" Not to mention the mileage that these AG's get out of this settlement when they inevitably make their Congressional/Senatorial/Gubernatorial run a few years from now. And Banks, God bless 'em -- They know how this works, too: It looks bad for them, even though they didn't *really* do a whole lot wrong, so they're willing to settle for a relative pittance (for them). The last thing any of these people want is a long protracted legal battle. The Banks because it's bad for their Brand. The AGs because they know that they probably won't win, or, at the least, won't win in any significant way... Isn't it great? This isn't the 'smaller' settlement. This is the settlement that you've been talking about, no? Edit: Now I see what you're talking about -- You're talking about the settlement where the bank's agreed to refi people rather than foreclose on them -- They agreed to put aside $26 BN or so to do the re-financings. That wasn't a 'fine', though. That's the banks re-financing under-water mortgages and such. Banks will, generally, come out way ahead on that deal, too because they'll continue to earn interest and fees on those loans that they modify. See the shiny object theory from above.

One could easily take the opposite position of yours and say: "Well if the case against these companies is so strong and the American people have been so harmed, why would the AG's settle for such a relative pittance"? Didn't the settlement amount come out to something like $800 per foreclosed customer or something? Ultimately no one can really get past the truth that 99.99% of the people who were foreclosed on weren't paying their mortgage and, independent of all the other robo-signing nonsense, that's what matters.

If what you say is true then why didn't they 'make it clear'? I don't buy the idea that Bachman and Palin hijacked the Tea Party. If the 'Tea Party' didn't like them, I'm quite confident 'they' would have made those feeling clear, and in a very public way. It's not like these folks are afraid to speak their mind... The problem is that the Tea Party's general platform on economic matters is very rigid (which is fine) with little room for compromise (Really smart people might even argue that 'compromise' is what got us in the 'debt mess' in the first place). It's not surprising, though, that people who are generally rigid in their thinking on economic matters would also be generally rigid in their thinking on social issues, as well. Throw in the general notion that Fiscal Conservatives tend to be (note I said 'tend', I didn't say that all) Socially Conservative and, voila -- You've got rigid social conservatives representing the Tea Party, alienating lots of people with their perceived crazy. I understand why you and 3rdnlng and a few others *want* the Tea Party to be what you want it to be, I just think you'd have better luck with the Libertarians.

The only issue with this is that, no matter what is in any of the various Tea Party mission statements, they are backing people that are absolutely taking positions on social issues, oftentimes in a really clumsy and alienating way to people who might otherwise vote for those people. People will always associate any 'party' with the people they back. The Tea Party is no exception to that.

If that doesn't work out, I hear that Bloomingdale's has a wonderful executive training program.

I kind of always assume that every media outlet does whatever they think will get them the most eyeballs/clicks/$$. Hate It Or Love it, I thought you were just goofing around until you posted an ACTUAL picture of the 12 yr old Trayvon... If those pictures have already been posted in this thread and discussed, why are you re-posting them?

Wait... You're not joking? You really think that picture three posts up is Trayvon Martin? Or are you just playing a Game?

I don't know all the legalese, but I can't possibly imagine myself convicting him. (Of course, that assumes that there is nothing new discovered at trial).

Really? That's what you've got? Slap your forehead all you want, people 'walking behind you' isn't the same as 'being followed'. I suspect you know that already, though.