DJasper Probincrux III

Stay strong brother. I've been in your boat too. I empathize with people paying 11k in property taxes, I really do. Ask yourself, why are your property taxes more than double mine? I'm in suburban Philly, not exactly the 3rd world and not exactly a spendthrift area for education. What else are you paying for with your 11k? PA has a really bad public pension system too. It also has labor union issues, bloated government (the largest legislature in the country), incredibly fractured local government with a million little municipalities, an aging and shrinking population, declining industrial base and corporate flight. I looked it up - Grand Island School District (where I used to be from) spends about $13k/pupil annually. The District I live in now in PA spends $12.5k/pupil annually. I looked up a house with a similar assessed value to mine. The annual property taxes are 10.5k. My property taxes were almost exactly 5k. Blaming spending on education for that difference is clearly fruitless. Where else are your dollars going? Schools and teachers are the easy targets because you have direct control of them. Demand the rest of WNY government to slim down. PA isn't exactly svelte with government, imagine how truly bloated WNY must be to require that tax load.

I agree that corporate folks have just as many bad people who abuse their positions but I do disagree that the money saved wouldn't go into american's pockets. In lots of cases the money has to come out of our pockets in the first place to pay for the projects. Also, bad unions do cause local problems and drive development away. Corporations and businesses in general, corporate or not, like to invest capital to make money. Lack of a union wouldn't make people get paid more but it would probably make two projects possible where there is only 1 now which puts twice as many people back to work and creates investment and renewal twice as quickly. Would you rather have 1 carpenter working at $80 an hour or 2 at $35? Would you rather have one derelict building revitalized and put back on the tax rolls or would you rather have 2? union domination in Philly has led to real issues including a pay-to-play culture that pervades government at all levels here and can be enforced by union bullies as it is the in the case of the developer I cited earlier at Phillybully.com Just for perspective, 500 million is a lot of money, but the Philadelphia City School District budget is 2.5 BILLION alone. The Commonwealth of PA spends about 25 BILLION combined on education annually. Philly spends 10% of the total by itself, the 500 other districts spend the rest for an average district budget of about 4.7 million dollars annually. Pennsylvania's plan allows that (not coincidentally, the politicians are in the same pension system as the teachers) I haven't heard anyone in authority actually make a statement to that effect but I hear plenty of regular people make statements like that all the time.

Well, if the politicians are part of the same pension system do you really have to blackmail them? The second part of this statement is just contract law. Case law backs that up all day long, it's not about provisions in the law itself. It's not hard to change the benefits of new entrants, it IS pretty near impossible to reduce the benefit of those who have already signed in. That ship has sailed. best you can do is change it now and not let anyone else in. States including NYS have been doing that for years. If you think modern pensions are bad you should check out the stuff they gave out back in the 60's and early 70's. My parents were both public employees and got into the NYS system in Tier I, they're currently up to Tier 6 with each Tier having reduced something - in some case quite a lot. Check out Tier I (which they closed in 1973), 50% of your highest 3 year average salary for life if you put in 25 years.

Super Bowl XXV and there isn't a close second. Home run Throwback induced anger - to the degree that my yelling at the TV pulled a stitch knot through in my mouth where my wisdom teeth had been the day before. No Goal however induced a level of sheer rage that I honestly hope I never reach again. I scared myself.

They became the enemy as soon as big business stopped calling out the Pinkertons. They became the only bullies on the block and quite honestly the leaderships are completely out of control. I'm in a union and I disapprove of many of the tactics that other unions use to "negotiate". Check this site out for why Philadelphia is a terrible place to get anything done www.phillybully.com This is misleading as well though. The federal government does not pay for education, the states do. The feds only pay a percentage of special ed (and not even what they're legally obligated to). It'd be like looking at a state budget looking for military spending, it wouldn't be there. In fact, I think you'd find a lot of people who would really like the feds to take their ball and go home since they aren't really supposed to be legislating ed policy in the first place. Utah told the feds to stick No Child Left Behind up their asses under the penalty of losing all federal funds. Utah's test scores stink...but they stunk before as well so you can't really blame the loss of money for that.

This is false. In actual dollars per pupil we're 4th. As a percentage of GDP we're 21st. We spend more than the rest of the G-8 though. Although keep in mind we spend a WHOLE lot of money educating everyone (special ed). Most of the rest of the world is pretty ok with excluding kids that don't fit the system and/or have a very rigid tracking system like Japan's where your life path is basically decided before you get to high school.

What I'm saying is if you kill my pension today that's fine. I want the money I've kicked in back. I'm legally obligated to contribute that percentage and didn't have the option to put it elsewhere instead. If you d/c the pension my money shouldn't disappear and actually there has been a rate of return earned since the state has been investing that money and the state's pension fund has been positive over that time (the issue is that it was less positive than projection). Also, the market today has doubled in value since 2008 so if your 401k is still super down you need a new fund manager. You should at least have broken even. I'm going on the premise that the pension was killed today, not if we went back in time and started over. Obviously if we went back in time and started over I wouldn't be able to expect anything because it would be a 401k. To kill a defined benefit that is legally protected and supported by a load of case law is going to take quite a lot of negotiating You take a glass half full approach to school taxes as well, you could also look at it that I've giving the District a 10% salary rebate every year. The FICA comment was more of a throw away but since Social Security is also a defined benefit that some people are eager to take away from people who have involuntarily put a significant amount of money into it seems like a reasonable corollary. I fully understand it won't work that way but it's the same idea. I've been legally prevented from investing that 14% myself in return for a promise of a defined benefit in the future. If you do away with the benefit it seems reasonable that people should be able to at least break even (excluding inflation) on the deal not be -14% of their lifetime income for a broken legal contract. There are plenty of things that ARE screwed up about pensions. For example, when I retire I can withdraw all of the money I put in and STILL collect the defined benefit with no reduction. i shouldn't be able to do that. It screws the current taxpayers who then have to fund the benefit without my contribution in the kitty anymore. I can go reinvest every dime in something else, keep earning a rate of return while continuing to collect the same pension checks. That's not right and I'll support a law change stopping that type of practice. I'll support changing pensions for future entrants or even eliminating them entirely for new people and going to a 401k match program but I won't support just deleting the pensions of people who have been in the system and paying in for decades and telling them "Oops sorry, thats just all gone now, here's a 401k with a $0 balance, good luck". On a semi-related note - our country's increased use of 401k accounts and other direct equity investments for retirement funds is IMO very dangerous. It creates tremendous pressure for politicians to make policies to keep the market moving higher because more middle class people than ever get royally screwed if the market drops. If Warren Buffett loses 50% of his net worth he's still insanely wealthy. if a 65 year old guy on the verge of retirement loses 50% of his 401k thats a big big issue.

I like how everyone sort of pretends that teachers aren't taxpayers too. FWIW, I pay roughly 8% of my gross towards my future pension each pay. I also pay property taxes where I live to the tune of about 5k per year. I also pay FICA and state income tax and local earned income tax and federal earned income tax. To imply that I'm getting a free ride is BS. You want to end pensions fine. I'll take a check right now for that 8% I've been kicking in plus the earned interest. Since at that point there will almost certainly be a matched percentage of contribution and I will have missed out on years of that match along with the compounded interest THAT would have accrued I'd at least like a check for the match amount retroactively. That seems fair since you're ending a guaranteed benefit that two parties entered into a contract for potentially 29 years into a 30 year contract. I'll go ahead and put that into the 403b I already have set up alongside my pension and have been kicking an additional 5% into myself already. So long as we're doing away with guaranteed benefits I'd like a check for the 14% FICA that has been already paid for that I'm due as well. Of course, if I retired today you'd only look at my pension and lifestyle and assume that you're footing the bill by yourself and refuse to account for any piece that I paid for or my own financial planning. Furthermore, teachers in WNY do start over 30k. They're also required by law to have a college degree. I started out in the private sector more than 10 years ago at more than 30k so it's not like that's an out of line salary by any stretch. I have more education and more qualifications than my wife and she makes roughly 30k per year more than me annually, not including her incentive bonuses, in the private sector. In our current step system I'd have to work for more than 20 more years in the District to make the salary she makes today. She puts in 8 hours in the office and does work at home. I put in 8 hours at the office and then work at home. Is being off in summer nice? Yup, sure is. Is being off on holidays nice? Yup, sure is. Is having a desk thrown at me by a 14 year old girl fun? Nope, not so much. EVERY job has perks and bad parts. My wife's perks are free tickets to events and food samples and comped meals at fancy restaurants and travel junkets to nice places. My perks are I get to see my kids in summer and I don't have to work on Christmas. You want to make school year round? OK, go for it. Just don't complain when we give you grief for yanking your kid out of school in July to hit the beach for 2 weeks. What you'll then do is rail about how teachers are pampered and spoiled because they want air con installed in 100 year old buildings that dont have it so we can work when it's 95 degrees...as though corporate America sweats it out inside those corporate parks in the burbs. I'm not asking for your sympathy or your pity and I'm not griping about my job in the least. All I'm asking is that you give the people in the business the same respect you would demand at your own job. Just because we teach doesn't mean that we can't, or haven't already done, something else. The prevailing attitude is that our job is in some way easy or less than a private sector job. I've had both. Pushing papers around an office and sitting in meetings all day is WAYYYYYY easier than what I do now an way more people can do it successfully. Non-union carpenters in Philadelphia make about $35 an hour. Extrapolated out over an 8 hour day and 191 days that I work we make almost exactly the same salary. Not that carpenters shouldn't make that but I don't think anyone would look at non-union carpenters as grossly overpaid.

I'm fairly confident that the fellas over at Bear Stearns and Lehman had quite a few Ivy League degrees in the fold as well.

One of these days an agent will be smart and work into a player's deal that X percentage of their weekly take home is transferred directly into an extremely conservative trust that neither the player nor the agent can touch that also contains a clause that forbids the player from borrowing against the future value of the trust. Anybody think a player will ACTUALLY let someone do that? Anyone think a high profile agent will ACTUALLY volunteer for this? If one of the big agents started trotting out their former clients who are now broke and broken I bet more than a few would do it. They could actually sell that they REALLY ARE looking out for your best interests. Sure we still max out what the club will give you but we just make a separate pile of money for you over here under lock and key so you cant blow it all on strippers cars and blow...at least until you retire.

Technically the odds are 1:65,535 :-P The probability of you choosing the correct permutation is 1 in 65,536. You have a 0.0015% chance of winning. Now on to my failure... Week 1 9/9: Buffalo Bills at New York - LOSS Week 2 9/16 Kansas City Chiefs at Buffalo Bills - WIN Week 3 9/23: Buffalo Bills at Cleveland Browns - WIN Week 4 9/30: New England Patriots* at Buffalo Bills - WIN Week 5 10/07: Buffalo Bills at San Francisco 49ers - LOSS Week 6 10/14: Buffalo Bills at Arizona Cardinals - LOSS Week 7 10/21: Tennessee Titans at Buffalo Bills - LOSS Week 8: BYE Week 9: 11/04 Buffalo Bills at Houston Texans - LOSS Week 10: 11/11 Buffalo Bills at New England Patriots* - LOSS Week 11: 11/15 (Thurs) Miami Dolphins at Buffalo Bills - WIN Week 12: 11/25 Buffalo Bills at Indianapolis Colts - WIN Week 13: 12/02 Jacksonville Jaguars at Buffalo Bills - WIN Week 14: 12/09 St. Louis Rams at Buffalo Bills - WIN Week 15: 12/16 Seattle Seahawks at Buffalo Bills - WIN Week 16: 12/23 Buffalo Bills at Miami Dolphins - WIN Week 17: 12/30 New York Jets at Buffalo Bills - WIN 10-6 - and we're all on suicide watch in mid-November.

And from everything I've read about Stevie Johnson, he excels in this offense because it doesn't require the precision in route running that some others do which accomodates the unothodox way he gets into and out of breaks. This guy is a matchup nightmare in the slot, Even if you just run him straight up the seam. We had nobody on the team with killer speed on the outside - I don't need the guy to do everything today. Run fast, scare safeties, break long runs off missed tackles. We have plenty of tall physical guys, need someone scary to free up space for the other guys. Think of it this way, even if he only runs 9 routes we reacquired Lee Evans for a 3rd round pick and still have the 4th we got for Evans in our pocket to take Bobby Massie or whomever else you had a hard-on for.

And yet the same people ballwash a 4th round pick we made 2 years ago who hasn't played a down.

This. The District I coach at is now tracking concussions as early as Middle School across all sports, including baseline and re-admittance testing. Once parents start getting this kind of data in their hands it's going to be very difficult to ignore. As kids fall out of the sport interest is going to wane. We are at the zenith of football right now. Scoff if you want to but tastes change very quickly. I'll say now that in 15-20 years soccer will have caught up to football. All those suburban kids who clamor to play football now will be getting steered into soccer by parents. It's happening already. We had 50+ kids with concussions at my school alone this year (1300 kids total). The most common occurrences were in football, wrestling, and hockey. I'll tell you one thing. I LOVE football but there's no way in hell I'm letting my boys play the game competitively. Risk/reward is not even close to worth it. There are plenty of other things they can do. Knowing what I know, letting your kids play football is very nearly like letting them box. How many of you would let your 8 year olds box competitively?

He was inexpensive. I can't really think of another reason.

I'll take this opportunity to wave my hindquarters at the people who thoroughly shouted me down when I was arguing that it would take around 10 million a year to re-sign Fitz. You can come off your high and enlightened horses now. You know who you are.

This was the worst movie ever and it is beyond me how it is part of the Halloween franchise at all. It has absolutely no relationship to the other films whatsoever. It'd be like making Nightmare on Elm Street with no Freddy but instead there were odd dwarfs with a business plan...

Cam Newton has certainly fixed a couple problems in Carolina. That guy is a beast.

Not yet. Probably soon, but not yet.

MSW fits the Chan system in several ways. He's tall, he's fast, and he's got good RAC ability. Best of all he's free, will already pocket the rest of his Rams deal for the year, will likely take the vet minimum for the rest of the year, and he has something to prove. Extra bonus, it's our bye so we have 2 weeks to get him up to speed.

I've been disappointed with the play calling in the 2nd half. They've shown the fake end around several times now but havent actually run it. The Giants were FLYING to the ball in the 3rd quarter and would have been owned by one of those plays.

Hofstra Pitt Panthers circa 1980 Kent State Akron Sweden Ukraine

Bills ones: Snow Patrol 1,2 Freddy's Comin for U Eat Drink and Be Merriman Batten Down the Hatches Ghost Faced Spiller State Your Naaman Address A Roosevelt by any other name Triple Dog Dareus One Size Fitz All Fitz and Starts Fitz the Bill Trust me it Fitz in there Fitz in Tight Spaces Throwin' Fitz Others: Texas Chainsaw Massaquoi My Vick in a Box No Suh for You Tebow 3:16 Brady Gaga Hockey: Don't Toewes Me Bro

There is a grace period and honestly if you wanted to sell the Bruins value is at an all time high right now.

Repeating the sins of the father. All defense to the neglect of the offense. Buddy couldn't win for the same reason. Gotta have both phases fellas.