The NBA Least and Red

Sports Guy just wrote about it on ESPN - here is my take:

Miami and Detroit both mortgaged years of competing for NBA titles for a single shot. But at least they won - banners fly forever.

Check that against NJ and Clevland and you realize to win one is a special accomplishment. Those four teams right there should make the East a factor, but won't. The Pacers should probably be included here too - they are just hard to figure - and have had consistently bad management since the Artest incident.

Orlando and Chicago are interesting young teams that could make a leap anytime between now and never. Hopefully the Ben Wallace signing is instructive for Orlando.

Everyone else has such big problems they aren't worth talking about. By the way that means an awful team from the East will be in the playoffs and lose out on a lottery pick. Ouch.

This brings me to Red. The reason Aurerbach is the greatest GM ever (more so than Coach) is he build a winner that spanned thrity years. The C's one thier first one in 56-57 and their last in 85-86. During those thirty years, the C's won a championship at least once every five years. Red never used a number one pick during that time. A strong argument could be made that absent the two coke heads killing themselves (Len Bias and Reggie Lewis) that run would have lasted another ten years.

The other pretenders Phil Jackson and Pat Riley are just that - pretenders. When Jordan left - the dynasty died. When Magic left the Dynasty died. LA doesn't look to be contenders, and Miami looks flawed, but its too soon to judge. And yes they bare the responsibility for the personell - Jackson and Riley both had tremendous control in those decisions and never planned for succession.

Back to the East, betting on the lottery is a mistake. The worst team is more likely to come out of the West - where they will play confrence games against mostly good teams, and play road games far from home (while traveling East, always harder.) Also you can be lousy, and go on a three game win streak, and make the playoffs - ouch, now you have the 15 pick instead of a shot at the first.

American Statesman

My wife's grandmother recently moved into an assisted living home and out of her house. It’s very sad to see her condition deteriorating, which forced this move. In preparation for selling the house, her children and grandchildren have been going through and looking for any heirlooms or other things they want, rather than have some stranger buy them for 10 cents on the dollar at a tag sale.

My wife and I stopped by the day after Thanksgiving and found a set of books from the 1890's called "American Statesmen" (it’s a series) - I'm interested to see what's in these books. We already found an advertisement to buy "non-US" bonds from about the turn of the last century. At any rate it should be cool looking through these books.

Entitelement Reform - Transitioning Social Security

Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc. The government already employs too many people to be giving money away for free. I like Dan's ideas of what a target might look like. I'm a bit concerned about several implementation details though:

1. What happens to people who legitimately cannot fend for themselves? What if they have no family?

2. How do we transition of SS in a fair way?

3. What's the reality of HSAs? The switching cost of going from the current health care to the HSA plan he envisions may be measured in lives as well as dollars.

Here are my thoughts on #2:

First move the payroll taxes back into the general ledger. All money comes into one pot at the US Treasury regardless of source. All payments come out of one pot. Isolating the SS monies was an accounting trick, that makes things look better than they are.

Establish two lines, the line of guarantee (LOG) and the line of choice (LOC). The LOG is set around age 55. Anyone older than that line gets today's benefits, no questions asked, locked in. Anyone older than LOC (say around 40) is allowed to make a choice: stay in or cash out. If they stay in they get benefits as defined today, but with a "retirement age" indexed against life expectancy, and possibly a change in the way benefits are calculated. If they cash out, give them a one time payment, say through the tax, that returns some amount, which should be at least what they have paid in, plus some extra based on age. Anyone below the LOC gets the paid out option.

Convert Social Security obligations to "pension" obligations. End the SS tax.

Why this works: once SS is part of the general ledger, regular taxes can be used to pay any conversion costs, and SS taxes can't be pilfered. Older people don't get shafted, by getting some lump sum they have no time to grow, and younger people get out of a system they have zero belief in anyways. People in the middle can make the choice they feel is right for them. Converting the SS tax to an obligation similar to pensions, which congress cannot take away, allows you to cancel the SS tax. Until then people on SS payments (i.e. those who didn't take the lump sum) will not support eliminating the SS tax, because they will fear once the revenue is gone, the government won't pay their benefits.

Poor people typically have lower life expectancies than the affluent. Men lower than women. Certain ethnicities lower than others. Nothing is less fair than taking a person's hard earned income, income that could have been used to better his/her life, or educate a child, etc. and then never returning it. And that is what Social Security does for those who pay in, but die before they get any benefit.

NB: In this post any SS rollover amount would have to go into a RSA (see No Speed Bumps) and some portion of the SS tax would go there. Once SS tax is eliminated, that portion would still have to go to an RSA. Also government employees, local, state, or federal, would have to be in this system also, and the federal government should at the same time convert from pensions (whatever is left of them) to benefit plans in line with other employers.

What would you do?

If you ran the government what would you do? Remember you have to prioritize. I figure you can spear head two programs, one international, one domestic. For me GWOT would be #1, but I can't say I'd stay with Bush's game plan. CIA and State seem to be dropping the ball so far.

Domestically?

1. Entitlement Programs

2. Pushing for Strict Constructionalist, Federalist, and Originalist Judicial Nominees
(I want judges who believe the government is by default limited, strongly respect the seperation of powers between state and federal, and don't make up their own stuff.)

3. Immigration -

3a. Police effort to crack down on illegal entry and a "no tolerance" policy for any illegal immigrant breaking the law.

3b. Make it easier to be legal. All work permits, visas, etc. should be part of a path to citizenship, and include assimilation.

3c. Deregulation of the work force. There is a reason why the risk of being caught hiring illegals, is worth it. Minimum wage and pro-union laws create an unnatural balance in the labor marketplace.

3d. Normalization - We have to do something about the illegals here, but first we have to deal with a and b. After that we can find a path to normalization for those here. At a minimum, citizenship for illegals would HAVE to require a return to their home countries. At a minimum, legal immigrant status would be dependant on registering by a certain time frame.


4. Tax reform - this probably has to happen in conjunction with number one. Eliminate all loopholes. Determine what is and is not income. Figure out how to deal with companies. Personally I'm often in favor (but sometimes I oscilate) of eliminating all corporate taxes. Make it illegal to pass through benefits on a pretax basis. This would make the USA one of the most desirable places in the world from a tax perspective for a company to do business. It would also eliminate a major corporate incentive to bribe (I mean lobby) and remember the government is of, by, and for the people.

5. Reform of the federal bueracracy, the deeper the swamp, the more likely you are to get stuck, and currently the swamp is very deep. For example, how many federal law enforcement agencies are there? DEA, FBI, ATF all seem pretty redundant to me. Not even mentioning the regulatory commisions, FDA, FTC, FCC, and on and on. These groups get started and possibly for good reason, but organizations tend to start existing for themselves, trying to grow themselves.

6. Balanced budgets - I'm not against a deficit, when you need money you don't have, borrow. But only for needs.

Principles and Ethics

Did Republicans lose because of abandoning their principles? Or did all the scandals cause voters to doubt their ethics. both says La Shawn Barber.

So I'm wondering, isn't abandoning your principles a sign of poor ethics? In other words, the two issues aren't different. By abandoning the things they ran on, the Republicans (generally) exposed an ethical problem, far greater than Foleygate and Abrahamoffgate.

Genesis

I plan to blog here about ideas I have. Typically the blog will be about things that are important to me, and hopefully interesting to others: business, software, sports, philosophy, and politics. Maybe more, maybe less.

Hopefully this will help me improve my writing ability and be avenue for developing clarity in my thought.