Tuesday, February 3, 2009

A Great Superbowl and Why Republicans are Crazy

I know, my blog sucks ass now, but I'm going to give it the old college try to update it at least twice a week.

What a kick ass superbowl. An hour before the game, I was really debating if I should take the Cards and the money line. I just had a feeling that Kurt Warner was going to pull together a special game and I didn't have much faith in Roethlisberger. Furthermore, in big games, it's always a good idea to take the team with the best player, and that was clearly the Cardinals. The Steelers designed their whole defense around trying to stop Fitzgerald and he still had a monster game. He's a Randy Moss with a clue. He's a very special talent.

I ended up teasing the Steelers (-1) and the under (52). I played a few other prop bets and only hit 1. First to throw a pick (-115). I had the first Steeler to score a TD as Heath Miller (+500) and missed that one by a yard.

It was my first superbowl on the home coach in 3 years. I spent last year's superbowl in a Pub in Poland and the year priors in JFK airport waiting for my delayed flight. Alicia made me a tray of sliders and I scrounged up some chips and dip. Aside from the game ending at 0420 it was just how I remembered. I'll miss football, but March Madness is right around the corner.


On to those crazy republicans…

First, I'll just never understand why the constantly preach tax breaks and expect that to solve basically any ailment. Aren't tax breaks the reason where in this mess? Here's the misconception about tax breaks; it increases spending by people and corporations. Well it might if you give tax breaks to a 19 year old kid with his first charge card. They'll spend all of it. But if you give it to me or to anyone else making over 100K a year, they're probably going to throw that money in the bank at least part of it. If you give it to a corporation, they're going to use it to either prop up their stock value, so they can increase the amount of capital available to them. In essence, a company reflects more profitability that actually exists, takes out additional loans based on that and ends up looking like most of the companies in the US: a CEO making $20 million in bonuses, huge layoffs, and a bunch of shareholders looking at each other asking what just happened and an unfair amount of taxes paid. Republicans have this misconception about the supply chain. Demand happens not because people have more money. It happens because they want and/or need a product Companies theoretically spend because they can be more profitable in the future. Tax breaks don't influence either of those processes.

Secondly, the GOP put out a list items they deemed wasteful from the House's stimulus package. Don't get me wrong, I think there are some wasteful items on the list, but many of the items listed by the GOP are just ridiculous. It almost makes me wonder what they'd do aside from 'tax breaks' to stimulate the economy. The dems main objective in the package was to spend government money to get the economy moving. Essentially, they are creating the demand. The GOP listed things like hybrid vehicles for the government, improving the sewer system and buildings for the centers for disease control and homeland security. Those are exactly what companies need from the government. 3M and IBM aren't going to ask for new building even after tax breaks, so if the government needs them, then people will be employed to complete those projects.

I normally hate domestic politics, but President Obama has made it fun again. What I'd given to be at his superbowl party.


 


 


 

 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I won a cool 5 bucks with Cards +7.