PseudoSABR

* On the hand you have: "Berrios should start in the rotation, the Twins were foolish to give out long term deals to Hughes, Nolasco and Santana" * On the other hand you have: "The Twins shouldn't let future prospects stop them from signing what could be stop-gap players to long term contracts" * (These are old refrains; substitute positions and players/prospects to fit other past and future scenarios). * I think many of the same people are professing both these contradictory beliefs. I, for one, am glad the Twins aren't interested in handing out long term contracts to relievers (or another OFer for that matter), especially after the market for relievers blew-up this winter.

That made me lol.

I think part of the premise of the initial trilogy and Force Awakens is that force-sensitive people are in very short supply. The other students might have been barely force-capable, while Kylo was clearly their superior, and no student could touch Rey's innate force-sensitivity. I take the history as they lay it out. If Kylo destroyed Luke's Academy, it suggests that Luke's students weren't up to muster--perhaps because the force had not awoken any one but those descended from Anakin.

I can't get on board with the idea that Rey is Luke's daughter. That's too obvious, and somewhat redundant--it also has too much backstory to overcome (aren't Jedi's neutered or something). I like the idea of her being related to Kenobi in some way (though if she were his granddaughter I'd cringe for the same reason as above). My guess is that Rey was a very young and precocious prospect for Luke's academy right around the time Ben Solo was becoming Kylo Ren, and her parents (or perhaps Luke) hid her on Jakku getting wind of it.

Another point. Industries probably over utilize universities as an outsource for their research and development. It makes sense for industry to allow universities to buy the super expensive machines and then assess if theirs any marketable value. When I was part of English Departments, I remember talking with the Chair and he said that our department's tuition alone paid for its operational costs four-fold, but since we were housed in the Arts & Sciences, the excess went on to fund the entire college. I'd also be in favor for a huge increase in tuition for international students. I fear too often people from other countries use our higher education system as a means to take root here, and inevitably take jobs their American peers would be similarly qualified for. Medicine might be a prime example of this, but maybe we really do have a lack of qualified doctors here. Just more food for thought.

A few thoughts on loans and funding higher education. I'm just thinking out loud and really haven't researched the viability of any of these ideas, but I'm curious to know what others think. I think loans, in general are a horrible way to finance higher ed. It gives too much leeway to both students and universities to misspend that money in all kinds of ways. So one idea I've been shuttling around in my head is to offer tuition-free education financed by a tax on post-graduates who meet certain income standards. So those who utilize the higher education system opt-in to a later tax provided they get jobs--this will emphasize universities to educate towards actual employment to keep their financing as robust as possible. It would also keep students from having a trough to spend not only on tuition, but anything under the sun. I realize that this alone wouldn't be enough to fund all of higher education, so another vehicle of finance would be necessary. Having a whole generation of Americans indebted to their education so that they end up paying twice as much in interest over their lifetimes hurts not only the individual, but deprives the economy of those dollars that could actually buy goods and services instead paying interest rates. While I don't think total loan forgiveness for everyone is really a solution, perhaps eliminating the interest rate debt all together would be a good step. It would be a lot more palatable if people could just pay down their primary debt, without the strange interest rules that keep that debt growing while you pay it back. I also agree with ideas that want to make vocational education more affordable if not free. There's probably a host of technological jobs that could be served by a vocational education as much as they could a university education. Part of the problem with current generation not getting the most out of higher education is that their primary and secondary schools don't teach them the skills to succeed at the university, and often universities are forced to dumb down their processes as a result. Moving away from standardized testing I think would be an important step. Finding a new way to fund schools other than property taxes would be another good start; I know some states pool all the property taxes, and this might be one solution. As much as we want problems like education solved locally, I fear, too often, that localized solution often involves inequitable solutions. All this said, I wouldn't have been able to go to college without access to loans. My folks made too much (barely) to qualify for a pell-grant, but still couldn't pay for my tuition. But the truth is, I misspent a lot of that loan money, and while it would have sucked, I should have been more frugal with my hosing, food, and incidental costs.

Via npr. I suppose that's one solution; no federal funding, and just don't charge them. Though that's no exactly a market solution.

You continue to ignore the problem of inelastic demand--that demand will never be curbed no matter what price is set. (Especially in emergency/surgery situations). The market is never going to properly price such a product. If your goal is cost control a market solution cannot fix it. If your goal is universal healthcare, the market will not provide. And I seriously doubt that Ron Paul competitively priced his practice, he charged as close to the monopoly price as he could. (But I'll do some research on this). And really, go read the history of anti-trust laws; your assumptions about the free market seem almost religious.

I don't want to argue on this point, but the ACA is a quasi-market solution. It is premised with market principles not socialistic principles. It's nothing like the single-payer system, which would totally eliminate the free market from health care. You still haven't addressed the problem of inelastic demand. Mike points some of this out. Consumers have literally no bargaining power, especially when they are at their sickest or have an emergency. In a free market, a hospital could negotiate with each emergency patient on a case by case basis, leveraging a person's entire wealth against their life. It's not like a person can shop around in an emergency situation. Unless you think we should get rid of patents for pharmaceuticals, I don't see how a free market would really do anything to alter the price of drugs. Given the demand for healthcare services, there would be little need for healthcare providers to compete on price; it's not as if healthcare providers are fighting for customers. Any doctor who charges lower than standard rates would be overwhelmed by capacity problems, leaving the doctors who charge higher rates with plenty of customers. What we find when there's inelastic demand for a given commodity, different firms simply don't compete on price. They charge as near-a-monopoly price as they can, only limited by their own capacity. You should read up on Anti-trust, to see how free market conditions over time tend to create monopolies more than it does make competition.

The problem is the free market. And we need stop preserving the free market in areas where they pervert the industry. We can't have a true free market with inelastic demand. Without government regulation, pricing would be set at near monopoly prices, excluding anyone who can't meet the most-profit-garnering price. I don't doubt that the Dems are well paid for, but as a liberal, it's pretty clear we wanted single-payer in spite of however much the party leaders have been paid off.

No it didn't fix health care, but fixing healthcare, unfortunately wasn't politically viable. When faced with one party who wanted to do nothing, liberals compromised (even though they would have preferred single-payer) to ensure that many more would have the opportunity to receive healthcare. The human factor counts for something, even if the economic factor is left largely unresolved. I'm not happy about the system we choose, but doing nothing was the only other option, so let's not kid ourselves. Student loans are a mess, but that loan forgiveness is a viable option matters, and so does getting rid middle-men banks as lenders. Still the system has huge problems. Again, doing nothing was the other viable option. In general, I do think it is ideal to expect your government to fix problems when one party doesn't believe in the problem (or will leave the problem to be fixed by the free market, which abdicates such responsibility). Any compromise between those that resist doing anything and whatever plan is adopted to address the problem will be a half-measure (or subsidized-markets). At some point we need to figure out that the free market can't address specific aspects of human civilization, and rather than resisting government regulation, let's make it smart and efficient. Waiting for the perfect solution to come along is akin to rubber stamping the status quo, and doing nothing.

I get that. Can we please divorce education from property taxes so that we can pay you more?

Well, if the private sector isn't making the poor and middle class better off, the government is the only entity that can step in. Investment is important only in so far as it creates sustainable wealth for many. (E.g. Opening a business does much more for the economy than buying stock does). Unfortunately, our investment model floods wealth to fewer people, not more. Innovation is important, and so is capitalistic efficiency, but such pursuits will still have value even if we do a better job taking care of the poor and the middle class. After all, spreading the wealth around, will still mean that there's much, much more at the top.

The problem is that the wealthy use too little of their buying power. You give a dollar to a poor man, that dollar goes back into the economy. You give a dollar to a rich man, he holds on to that dollar and only spends if he can make more than a dollar as a result. We need to get out of the mindset of guaranteeing a return on invest for the wealthy, and get the money into people's hands who need no incentive or guarantee to spend.

This is just for me, so maybe it's no boon for you, but having healthcare for the first time in ten years certainly made a difference in my life. The student loan reform didn't hurt either (though much more is needed in that regard). I think it's probably an unfair measure to judge a government's action by how it directly benefits you, especially if you sit on the right side of wealth disparity. There's much that needs to get done that the private sector can't or won't do, from infrastructure to energy to poverty to crime. The notion that nothing needs to be done is pretty baseless.

Study: Republicans are embarrassed to admit how much they like Donald Trump

I didn't mean to suggest they were betting the farm, but rather they've been avoiding a full-on rebuild. As your post points out the ChiSox have rebuilt with the right hand while trying to compete with the left. (Retooling, I think, ultimately leads to sort of mediocrity). And it's not just that they've been adding veterans, it's the kind of veterans they add: corner-power guys that don't always position flexibility (Lawrie is the exception here, but I imagine he's not quite the quality defender at second that he would be at third). As far as what I meant by "core" - I don't mean allstar level players; I mean a group of a dozen guys who have developed along the same time line, that provide a team with long-term, low-cost depth. Whitesox are already on this path I guess, so I realize that asking them to rebuild at this point isn't realistic given what they've done the past couple offseasons. I just don't think they have the depth to really compete, and they've resigned themselves to a mediocre form of competitiveness.

nicksavings basically answered this (after 2012). They do have some good players, but that they continue to trade prospects for barely-controllable vets, leaving their depth really bare. They also end up with an older team, with obvious, increasing limitations (like defense). Any success they may end up having, doesn't look sustainable, and won't allow them to better use Sale and Abreu's prime. It's one thing for the Twins to go out and sign Nolasco/Santana/Hughes for pricey long contracts, it'd be godawful if they actually traded prospects for such players (even if Frazier/Lawrie/Smardijza are clearly better); we'd be emptying out what is now our core.

Oh boy, the Whitesox win another off season. I think the Whitesox's aversion to a total rebuild will haunt them sooner than later.

His supporters have some innocence in their own self-interest and belief-in--the-unfairness-special-to-them. That Trump beckons such base desires, which are produced out of a sort of misery, and that he knows he's just telling people what they want to hear seems like a special kind of evil to me.

I'm not surprised. But he was an advocate of carpet bombing. Perhaps that doesn't violate his stance on supporting the one side or the other, but it does demonstrate clear (even reckless) involvement, to the point that his solution (carpet bombing) just begets another class of radicalized people in the region (which Libertarians seem to acknowledge that war sows future terrorism, maybe it's only Paul though.)

Cruz is a mixed bag on libertarianism (which I view as valuing both civil liberties and restrained foreign policy): he's in favor of limiting the scope of NSA data collection, yet wants to carpetbomb (he was merciless in this regard) ISIS regions/cities. And he only wants to bar some Muslims (not all) from entry (if they come from a specific region that's deemed dangerous). He also didn't really weigh in on the whether toppling a dictator was good idea or not. He's basically saying: liberties and protections for me, not for you.

Both Clinton and Obama are more hawkish than their liberal base, which is dismaying to many. Though it's also fair to say neither would go as far as carpet bombing, terrorist family killing, or ground troops to fight ISIS. These candidates (beyond Paul) refuse to grasp that ISIS (or their eventual iteration after obliterate them) can exist without territory or religious legitimacy. We cannot WAR the problem away.

Who do you find persuasive? Just curious.

I'm watching the debate, and Trump did say we should have utilized the trillions spent on toppling dictators, on building bridges, hospitals, etc. (Fiorina offered: That's what Obama says.) So there's that. I wonder if Trump's ego has lead him to start prepping for the general election, and his inevitable lurch to the middle. Trump is clearly a foil, a phony, but what's really dismaying is that his unconstitutional hate rhetoric is jiving with the Republican base.