billsfan89

The cost of living in Western NY is a lot lower, plus the players do get taxed based off of where they play their games, so the games you play in Florida and Texas you don't get taxed on (although of course if you are playing 8 home games a year in a no tax state that's going to result in lower taxes.) But you have to be very naive to think that players care about state taxes that in any meaningful way. NYC, LA, and Chicago have always been high end player destinations across all 4 major sports. All 3 cities are among the highest taxed and most costly place to live in the US. Young people in their 20's generally speaking want to be where the best nightlife and culture are. That's what attracts them to want to live in a city. So I think major cities will always have an advantage in terms of drawing free agents. If you are 26 and have played in a small market your whole career are you really caring about the state tax or do you want to go to a city where there is a lot of nightlife, women, and things to do with the money you make? Of course winning is a big part of it too. But I think if I am ranking reasons for free agents to make their choice in where to play I would put state taxes and cost of living at the bottom of the list.

Cowboys defense looked elite maybe even the best of the league. Zeke looked like he could control any game while Cooper continued his strong play. BUT its just one game, the Saints were due to come out flat after 10 straight wins and it was a road Thursday game. Goofy things happen on Thursday games. Even though both the Saints and Cowboys played the previous Thursday I still always take the results of Thursday games with a grain of salt.

OBJ doesn't seem to fit the McD culture and he is on a very large contract. I don't think the Giants are trading him (you need him and Barkley to make the Giants offense go esp if you want a young QB you draft next year to have a shot at success) nor do I think on a big contract he is that tradeable cap wise. AJ Green on the other hand is an interesting trade option. Green however will be 31 in 2019, he has been a bit banged up 2 out of the last 3 seasons, and he has a significant contract. I would be willing to offer up a swap of a 3rd for a 6th. I think Green could have 2 or so good years left but I think he could also be on the decline. So to take Green on I would give up something but nothing too crazy. I would rather see if Denver wants to trade for Emmanual Sanders.

Assuming Teller finishes the year strong resulting in the Bills needing 3 positions along the O-line it is likely that the team will not be able to address all three needs in free agency. At best they will be able to do is sign 2 high end free agents along the O-line. So drafting a O-line player in the absence of a high end WR is good. It helps protect Allen and get the ground game going.

After a Rocky start Edumonds has played at an above average starting caliber level. He is 19 and raw coming out of college and he already is playing like a solid starter. Vander Eshe is playing like a pro-bowler right out of the gate. I think that in 2 years time both players will be tops at their position and the Bills will not regret the move.

2017 looks like there are 3 legit pro-bowl or near pro-bowl level starters (White, Dawkins, and Milano) and Zay could still develop into a productive player. 2018 setting aside Allen there looks like there could be 3-4 starters coming out of it. Edumonds is a 19 year old rookie playing above average for his position, Phillips looks like a solid player who could develop into a good starter, and Johnson is already a good nickle corner, and Teller has played strong as of late. If the Bills continue to draft well they will be just fine even if they are so so on trades and free agency.

Even if that is the case because they don't want to rattle the donors they won't push Medicare for All to the public. Meaning that you won't see your more center mainstream Dems going to talk shows and other platforms and pushing the fact that they passed Medicare for all and the Republicans blocked it. So they might make a token passing of it to appease the progressive base but it will not be at the forefront of the Dems policy agenda. They will push heavily the Russia probe and maybe something like Marijuana legalization and restoring Net Neutrality (there is enough of a lobby to put money into those sectors) but I don't see them actually doing more than token acknowledgement of a progressive/populist agenda. Sadly the American political system is organized around money and special interests. There was a Harvard study that stated that 90% of the time the policy that has the most money behind it wins regardless of how popular it is.

If McBeane can continue to pull 3-4 starters per-draft the Bills future will be bright. The Team has not put together 2 good drafts in a row since Polian.

I hear your point that they can do both but I just don't trust the more center and corporately affiliated members to vote with the more progressive caucus. The Centrist/Corporate Dems remain too corrupted by money from the Healthcare industry and various other interests that bribe them with campaign contributions. So even if the Medicare for All bill comes to a vote the Republicans will vote against it and enough of the corporately vested Dems will too. The Dems also won't pass or even attempt to pass other aspects of the populist agenda because their corporate interests will demand they don't. The Dems are also incompetent when it comes to framing a narrative. The Republicans are masterful or coordinating a narrative and pushing it out to the public. When an event happens the Republicans craft a message and go on all media and repeat the same talking points. The Republicans also message to their base much more heavily. So even if the Dems were to push Medicare for All they won't market it properly or they will instead generally ignore it and push the Russia probe instead. I am telling you that Legislatively the Dems will not use their House Majority properly and in terms of public opinion they won't drive home the populist agenda they should be. The Dems in general are incompetent due to fear of losing their donors driving their acts more so than pursuing the policy agenda their base (Which just turned out big for them in House and Governors races.) My only hope for the Dems is that the progressive caucus grows more and more within the party. Primaries in 2020 are going to be huge if the progressive/populist base of the party wants to continue to push the party more left. Right now the progressive wing of the party only makes up between 10-15% of the party seats in total. Not insignificant but they need to push 50% in order to really accomplish more than just token gestures. Its also a process that is going to take more than 1-3 election cycles to complete. The populist left has to realize that it is a 20 year process and not something that is going to happen by 2020.

Monopoly was a strong term that is not technically accurate, but I think the general sentiment that across a wide variety of industries the market is being more and more consolidated into one or two entities that own a significant majority of the market is true. I don't think large companies in an industry in and of its self is a problem but in certain areas there are mergers and purchases that are allowed that shouldn't be allowed. In other areas there have been regulations since the 1990's that have been stripped that would have prevented the conglomeration of certain industries. Large companies holding 60+% of the market space can quickly become a problem if they become too big to compete against. Does the USPS follow a similar methodology? I find the USPS to have in general better pricing than UPS or Fedex in most cases anyway. Just interested to hear if you know.

The Dems didn't push for Universal Healthcare because their donors from the Heatlhcare industry didn't want them too. The Dems are a corrupt party, they could have an insanely popular platform but they don't want to lose their donor base no more than the Republicans do. Universal Healthcare's popularity had been rising during the Bush Administration and has continued to rise since fairly consistently so its not as though all of a sudden the pollsters rigged it when Republican got control. Your narrative of polls say things I don't like so they must be rigged against the GOP just doesn't make sense. So if Polls are just a psy-op control mechanism, then how do you gauge what public opinion is? I would like some metric other than wither or not you think it is. Polls predicted the 2018 election with a high degree of accruacy and most non-2016 elections pretty well (I would say the 2016 election was a Bradley effect for Trump, more of an outlier.) So their predictive power is fairly decent enough to not be ruled out from a scientific perspective.

Polling isn't 100% accurate but it's the best tool we have at the moment to measure a populations opinions. Polls are usually pretty accurate or at least accurate enough to be something worthy of consideration. Even if you just look at the candidates that ran in 2018 under a populist left agenda they performed extraordinarily well. There is plenty of evidence that the populist left agenda is extremely popular. But you know maybe I should just defer to the metric of wither or not you think it is. It was a Reuters and Gallop poll, the question was around Medicare for All, checking now to see the exact methodology. I remember looking at it but I can't 100% say but I do know they asked the even if it increases taxes qualifier.

Based off of polling numbers they are popular and not by slim margins either. Medicare for all has a 70% approval rating including 52% of Republicans approving. All those other policies poll well above 60%. Wither or not you find it to be philosophically justified is not the point and a different conversation.

Trump isn't always the one making these places competitive, the GOP has run some of the worst candidates in these deep red states and they take what should be a layup and put it in doubt. I expect that with the Senate (hopefully) going back to its traditional role of the chamber where bad ideas go to die, that the Democratic House is going to be an even bigger circus than usual — especially given the unprecedented numbers of vocal “democratic” socialists about to join Pelosi’s caucus. If nothing else, it should prove entertaining. If the Dems were a smart political party they would push the populist left agenda of Universal Healthcare, paid maternity leave, raising the minimum wage, no student cost to public universities, and legalization of marijuana. Pass all of those insanely popular ideas and make the Republicans come out against them. The Dems have a big base that they need to over serve in order to win elections (The Republicans over serve their base and it works ) The Dems won't get that populist left agenda passed but it would state to the public where they stand on the issues and what the Republicans stand against. But the Dems are morons, they will do a soft centrist agenda mostly focused on subpoenas. They consistently fail to understand where the momentum and enthusiasm in their party is.

McCaffery is what Reggie Bush should have been, good enough in between the tackles and an elite player as a receiver of the backfield. The Panthers use McCaffery as a weapon on offense as opposed to just having him be a standard running back.

Marvin Lewis could have been fired at least once or twice in his tenure if not more, its only the cheapness of owner that has kept him around.

I think Dareus has a chance to play a decent role on a team once he is cut from the Jags. But Dareus is toxic to this coaching staff so I don't see Dareus coming back.

I am spitballing too so it's just a guess on my end but I think 2019 stays strong 2020 could go either way. I think that while the Fed is super Shady in general but they are actually doing the right thing in terms of economic policy to raise rates to normal non recession levels while the economy is good. That's responsible policy under the conditions the fed operates in. I don't know enough about if there should even be a central bank in the US but if there is one than raising rates now is the proper thing to do if you are a central bank. You need high rates during a non recession to make cuts an actual stimulus during a recession. I don't think Trump wants to get rid of the fed either. I think he wants control of it because he views the fed as trying to crimp his economy. I think Trump is a corporate thinker who only sees things in quarter to quarter growth and doesn't understand why you need higher interest rates.

I think 2019 the economy will be on the sugar high of tax cuts and deregulation. Under 3% growth but significantly above 2%. 2020 will be where it gets interesting. The sugar high will be starting to fade by then 3 years into new tax rates and the fed rate hikes will not help either.

The fed should raise rates, when the economy starts to slide into a recession you need to be able to cut rates to limit the damage. Right now rates are at 2.5%. That's pretty dam low for what is not considered to be a recession. Typically non recession economies have interest rates at least above 4%. So if you have rates set well below 4% you can't really juice the economy with rate cut when things start to decline because the impact of rate cuts will be lower. I think the fed needs to have rates at least around 4% by the end of 2019 and hold them stable until a recession comes in 2020 or 2021.

Keep Shady in 2019 see if you can get one more year out of him while a mid round pick develops behind him. I am not sure Shady has that much left but I think he can be an uber third down back splitting time with Ivory and a rookie.

Lorax I think will come back for 2019 on a one year deal, Lorax hasn't collected on a large contract, in fact the two year deal he is on now is the largest deal he has ever had. So I think because he is having a good year and a one year deal around 5 million would greatly increase his career earnings I think Lorax is back. However Kyle i am 50/50 on. Kyle had collected on a major contract so money shouldn't be an issue for him. Kyle also has been a starter for 11 seasons compared to Lorax who has only been a full time player for 3. Kyle also has a long injury history. But if the Bill's finish strong I can see Kyle coming back for one more year esp if his body feels good. Kyle likes the coach and his play ( which had been regressing in recent years) has improved. Kyle's return will come down to how he feels mentally and physically. Something we can't predict.

Punting seemed OK to me. I don't get the move either.

Allen doesn't have to be Mahomes for this team to be successful in 2019 and beyond. If Allen in 2019 can be what Trubisky has been the past 5 or so games he has played I think the team will be successful. Mahomes is playing at an MVP level. His numbers are as good as any QB if not the best in the league and his team is 9-2. But the Chiefs put all their eggs into the offense not just with Mahomes but even when Smith was there. The Chiefs didn't have the balanced approach in recent years, their defense while not as bad as they seem (Berry not being there hurts them a lot) is massively flawed. The Chiefs need a league best offense to win. The Bills in 2019 likely will not. The Bears had a good defense in 2017 and put some skill position talent around Their QB while adding Roquan Smith and Mack to the defense in an all in type move. They are a much more balanced team that just needs good QB play to win. Allen I doubt will ever have a season like Mahomes is having. But he doesn't need to toss 50 TDs to be a good franchise QB. Cam Newton has never tossed more than 35 TDs and Russell Wilson has never tossed more than 34 TDs. Both of those guys are legit franchise QBs that a team can win with consistently. So people have to adjust expectations.

Bad move, the Jags need to draft a QB high up and maybe bring in a decent vet like Tyrod. They can't keep the defense together likely they will cut 2 major contracts if not 3 on the D-line. Their cap is super limited even if they let go of some of their biggest contracts they still won't be in that great of a position cap wise. The Jags are best off rebuilding their offense and starting with a new coach as opposed to trying to hold onto the 2017 team as much as possible.