THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Friday, May 11, 2012

Ex-pats, exit tax, and mark-to-market

Well, well, well, it seems that someone noticed that a certain cofounder of Facebook (Saverin) has renounced his US citizenship.  There is a recent law called an Exit Tax that applies to ex-pats, and Severin is covered by that law.  Severin was born in Brazil, so he could have been exempted from the exit tax had he moved out of the US five years ago.  Or, he could have waited to declare renouncing his US citizenship had he waited for those five years to go by.  (I have no idea when he left USA.)

Anyway, with Facebook’s looming IPO, his shares have to be valued “deemed” as sold the day before be renounced citizenship, with a mark-to-market value.  HOW they are going to figure that out is unknown.  Presumably, the future IPO might be considered, or, the IRS will hire an underwriter to figure it out.  And the tax looks to be a hefty 30%.

It seems to me that Severin should have not made a move until the five years would have gone by.  After all, the IPO goes, and he keeps his shares, there’s still no capital gains.  He waits for the five years, renounces citizenship, and pays zero on the exit-tax.

That’s all I got, and maybe you Straight Arrow readers can educate us. 

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Generational Issues

Non-sports post.

“You know, when I go to college campuses, sometimes I talk to college Republicans who think that I have terrible policies on the economy, on foreign policy, but are very clear that when it comes to same-sex equality or, you know, sexual orientation, that they believe in equality,” he said.

Generational, Traditional, Inertial.  Call it what you want, but being opposed to how someone else leads their life, and in no way involves you, can only be considered hateful or willfully ignorant.  The President has decided to join the 20th century and call for same-gender marriages.  Get the hell out of the way of the LGBT community, and let them do what they need to do. As the incomparable Howard Stern once said: “Of course I support same-sex marriage… why should straight people be the only ones who are miserable?”

***

My favorite Seinfeld / gay bit is when he talks about men’s fear of gay is that they can be talked into being gay, because men have “low sales resistance”.

So, the guy goes to a gay store, and the salesman offers him to “try it, walk around, no pressure”.

Genius bit.  See if you can find it online.

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

When a non-news woman does a non-news story, the newsmen are upset of the non-professionalism!

This writer makes the case that everyone going in treated this as a non-news story.  However, because news professionals also happen to do interviews with a microphone, they decided to first label this as a news woman reporting on a news story, and then cite her lack of news professionalism, while also belittling the lack of news worthiness to begin with.  The media sure learns from politicians really fast.

It’s offical: America has solved all the world problems, because this is what outrages them these days.

And, yeah, if the roles were reversed, it wouldn’t be a big deal either.  I saw some jerk on TV get on his knees to propose to the SI cover girl, while apologizing to his pregnant wife at home.  I don’t remember the Twitterverse blowing up about that.  It was embarrassing, not as a news person, but as a person period.

Friday, April 13, 2012

(Federal) tax rate

Obama released his. 

In my view, the tax rate that is reported should include all donations.  I remember Romney had significant donation levels as well, and that should count as well.  Theoretically (though presumably there are such people), someone could donate 90% of their earnings for the year and pay 0% (federal) tax rate.

It reminds me of counting fuel costs only if you count the gas, but all the energy to charge the battery for the hybrids isn’t included in the cost.  So, you can build a 55mpg car by possibly spending a ton on other fuel sources, because the “g” is just gallons of gas.  We need a standard unit of energy, and I’m fine using gallon of gas as the standard, but you then need to get the equivalent of energy needed from the alternatives in there.

Back to the issue here: Obamas paid 162K in federal taxes plus 172K in donations.  With 790K in earnings, that’s a rate of 42%. 

If on the other hand you go with the Buffert rule of 30%, then guess what will happen: Obamas will STILL pay 42%, except now it would be split 30/12 between federal and charities.  That I think is ridiculous, and would go against the spirit here, not to mention it would kill charities.

The Buffett rule should be amended to include charities for the 30% level.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

What happens when your company gets so big that you can (ridiculously) bully anyone you want…

Beware: Non-sports post from the former baseball aficionado, MGL. If these get your ears red, then stop reading now!

Please read the lawyer’s letter at the bottom of this article and tell me what you think of it. In case you didn’t read the whole article, this guy that they sent the letter to has nothing to do with the chrome extension “Defaceable.”

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/03/facebook-threatens-to-sue-techcrunch-commenter/

First of all, this is one more reason NOT to patronize Facebook. Personally, I can live without it.  Two, if I received this letter, I would tell the lawyers and their employers to go shove it where Facebook does not shine.

I especially like these things that they are demanding and which are total and complete B.S.:

1) You will immediately remove references to Facebook from the website http://www.defaceable.com and/or any other website that you own and operate.

2) You will immediately remove references to Facebook from any other promotional materials that you control; and,

3) Facebook demands that you preserve all information and documents related in any way to your Facebook related activities…

These are lawyers, mind you, who are supposed to know and respect the law. No one has to comply with those ridiculous demands and you have to have rather large and arrogant testicles to demand that someone does…

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Bayes(no)ball: Bayes outside Baseball

This is a non-sports thread.

We have a thread of applying Bayes theorem to baseball, that was initiated via an article by Patriot.

I have moved the non-baseball comments of that thread into this new thread.

Monday, April 02, 2012

Almost every single one of us may be a criminal in Arizona…

From the state that is rapidly becoming the punchline of a joke:

The law (it is waiting for the Governor’s signature) would make it a crime to use any electronic or digital device to communicate using “obscene, lewd or profane language” or to suggest a lewd or lascivious act, if done with the intent to “terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend.”

Do they have any actual, you know, lawyers, who review these proposed laws in Arizona?

Clearly, this law is unconstitutional. And preposterous to boot.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Canada kills tradition in favor of progress: RIP Penny

Finally, someone who realizes that just because you always do something doesn’t mean you should continue to do that thing.  One man’s tradition is another man’s inertia.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Individual Mandate Severability

Non-sports post.

This is the best page I found that provides how to look at the issue:

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Saturday, March 24, 2012

Sandusky, 1998

More details.

Please read this story and tell me what you think…

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/al-sharpton-dismisses-self-defense-argument-in-shooting-of-teen/

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

She’s not racist either…

Can we just put to bed the notion that we have to wonder whether a person is really and truly racist in their mind rather than just deal with the ramifications of their actions? To wit:

A woman who owns a web company that sells this bumper sticker:

says that she is not racist.

When asked by Forbes if the sticker was racist, Hines said no, explaining that the N word is not attached to race.

“According to the dictionary [the N word] does not mean black,” she said. “It means a low down, lazy, sorry, low down person. That’s what the N word means.”

There you have it. She says she is not racist, so she’s not.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

And these people “run” our country? Are you kidding me?

More than half of Republicans still aren’t buying Obama’s story. 18 percent of them told Survey USA that they consider the long-form a forgery, and another 33 percent say they still have doubt. Moreover, nearly 60 percent of Republicans say that they either still consider Obama’s birthplace to be open to debate or aren’t sure, and 33 percent claim that the president was “definitely” or “probably” born elsewhere. (Among all voters, 77 percent now say that Obama was “definitely” or “probably” born in America.)

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Where do people come up with this garbage?

I like Ellen Degeneres a lot. I think she is pretty funny and the few times I have seen parts of her show, I’ve liked it. I did think she was terrible on American Idol though.

I love the humor in her JC Penny Commercials. I didn’t know there was controversy with them until I read this dreck (that is Jewish for excrement, rubbish, or trash):

Early last month, One Million Moms, a division of the American Family Association, called for DeGeneres to be replaced by the Texas-based chain because she is a lesbian.

“Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families,” the group wrote on its website at the time. “DeGeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store. The majority of JC Penney shoppers will be offended and choose to no longer shop there. The small percentage of customers they are attempting to satisfy will not offset their loss in sales.”

Who even thinks in terms of a person’s sexuality when they are a spokesperson for a company because they are famous and funny? I would suspect only a very insecure person (I am being hyperbolic...)

If you want to read the article on the “controversy” or see her commercials (I highly recommend the latter), here is the link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/one-million-moms-drops-ellen-degeneres-jc-penney_n_1332651.html?ref=mostpopular#s766055&title=Roman_Returns_

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Companies that have stopping advertising on Limbaugh’s program…

Not that I ever thought that Limbaugh was anything but despicable, professionally speaking. Yes, I know that he is an entertainer.

You can do as you like of course, but I am giving these companies more deference than before:

Sleep Number, The Sleep Train, Quicken Loans, Legal Zoom, Citrix, Carbonite, ProFlowers, Tax Resolution, AOL, Bonobos, Sears, Allstate Insurance, AccuQuote, ServiceMagic, Polycom, Hadeed Carpet, Sensa, Heart and Body Extract, Tax Resolution Services, Vitacost, Polycom Federal, WBEC Radio, and Thompson Creek Windows.

Here are some companies that still advertise, and I will try not to patronize them:

Amberen, Lear Capital Winning Our Future - Pro-Newt Gingrich SuperPAC, IncomeAtHome.com, Exergen Corporation, Stamps.com, ServiceMagic.com, Nova Armament, LLC., John Deere, HotProps, Network Capital Funding Corporationte, Department of Veterans Affairs, Right Size Health and Nutrition, NetFlix, United Healthcare, Ackerman, RegalGoldCoins.com,,Goodwill Industries International, Inc., Merit Financial, Robert Steinberg, Hillsdale College, American Forces Network

If you know of any others, either way, please post their names.

Keep one other thing in mind. Many of the companies that advertise on radio, especially talk radio, for some reason are “questionable” in the first place, as far as their legitimacy is concerned. So I am not suggesting that because a certain company has withdrawn from Limbaugh’s show that you should buy some questionable product or service from them…

Thursday, March 01, 2012

Can we stop trying to make a distinction between doing something racist and being a racist?

Here is another in a long line of, “I said or did something racist, but I am not a racist (or homophobe, or whatever), just ask my black (or gay) friends...”

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20120229/NEWS01/120229014/Chief-U-S-District-Judge-sends-racially-charged-email-about-president

One, does the distinction matter? Two, does ANYONE admit that they are racist? Three, does anyone who occasionally tells racist jokes and say racist things even think they are racist? And in this day and age, everyone knows black, Asian, gay, Jewish, etc. people whom they can proclaim as, “some of my best friends.”

You said something f***ed up. Admit it, apologize, make amends, and perhaps take a look at yourself in the mirror. No one cares if you say that you are not racist. It doesn’t make any difference to the people who are offended (and even to the ones who are not - who I submit are also hurt, whether they realize it or not). If you rob me and then proclaim that you are not a “criminal” - you just did a stupid thing - it makes no difference to me whatsoever.

Yes, it is true that some people will occasionally say something really stupid but not really “mean it,” while other people say stupid things all the time and on some level do mean it, but the distinction is not nearly bright line. And, you are NOT going to find out the difference by asking THAT person. They will both say the same thing. “I am clearly not a racist...”

Monday, February 13, 2012

Eyewitness testimony and wrongful convictions

http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/12/10376629-witness-error-how-mind-tricks-can-put-the-innocent-behind-bars

If you watch this entire episode, you will likely find it outrageous that this guy could have been convicted. I pray that he is ultimately released. There is a chance, I suppose, that he is guilty, but if you believe everything in the video and they left nothing incriminating out, that chance (of him being guilty) has got be less than 10%. Isn’t the justice system supposed to work the other way around?

I can’t believe this, I really can’t.  And this has to go on all the time. Who do I blame? It is hard to know, not being there of course. But, it appears that the police, the DA’s office, the defense attorneys, the trial judge, and the jurors are all to blame. Big time.

You know, all the nonsense about sports that we hear and read in the mainstream media and among the fans is innocent enough. Put those same things (lack of critical, objective, and scientific thinking, analyses, and processes) into the real world, and you get this kind of thing (a likely innocent man spending his entire life in jail), and others like it.

Believe it or not, that is why I champion sabermetrics.  Not for baseball. It is so that young people can take the same concepts, the same skeptical and critical eye, that we use in sabermetrics, and apply them to things in the real world that matter…

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

The will of the people?

As many of you know, the Unconstitutionality of Prop 8 (banning gay marriage) in California was upheld today by a 3-person panel of the 9th Circuit.

A leading proponent of Prop 8 said this:

“We are not surprised that this Hollywood-orchestrated attack on marriage – tried in San Francisco – turned out this way. But we are confident that the expressed will of the American people in favor of marriage will be upheld at the Supreme Court,” he said.

California voters passed Proposition 8 with 52 percent of the vote in November 2008, five months after the state Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage by striking down a pair of laws that had limited marriage to a man and a woman.

Putting aside the (important) issue of a majority being able to dictate the rights or lack thereof of a minority, it really rankles me when any group uses the “will or mandate of the people” argument when 50-something percent vote for against something or someone. I mean, isn’t 52/48 essentially a split? That is almost as far from “a mandate” or “will of the people” as you can get!

And the person quoted above says, “the American people.” Of course this was a California vote, not a national one. However, let’s talk about “Americans” since this guy did in fact say, “the will of the American people.”

According to this Gallup poll:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/147662/first-time-majority-americans-favor-legal-gay-marriage.aspx

53% versus 45% of Americans favors gay marriage!  So this guy, in addition to incorrectly (and irrelevantly, since Prop 8 is a state issue) talking about the “will of the American people,” is full of crap as far as his facts are concerned, at least according to the poll I referenced.

Monday, January 30, 2012

If outsourcing is bad then so are industrial robots and the like.

Non-sports post.

Almost everyone thinks that outsourcing of jobs to other countries where the labor (and sometimes materials) is cheaper is a bad thing. I listen to left-winger Thom Hartman all the time on the radio. He is a really smart and knowledgable guy and he constantly rails against outsourcing as do most commentators and political activists from the right and the left (and middle).

However, is this one of these things that everyone just assumes is bad because the pundits and talking heads say so and it sounds logical - after all, it puts hundreds of thousands people out of work and just allows large, money-grabbing corporations to make more money?

I don’t know the answer, but it seems to me to require a lot of complex thought and analysis and I lean toward thinking that outsourcing is a good thing for a country. Then again, I am far from fluent in economics and the like. Many of you are way smarter than I am in that field.

The basic wealth and prosperity of a nation is based on two things: One, natural resources that other countries need (as well as your own). If your country sits on a pile of oil, no one had to work. You simply sell that oil to other countries to buy whatever you want. I am looking at this on a simplistic level of course. Obviously some totalitarian governments can (and do) keep most of the profit for themselves, live like Kings and give out just enough to survive to the rest of the people.  But you know what I mean.

Two, developing technology and gaining knowledge that enables your country to produce things really cheaply and run things efficiently as well as sell that technology and knowledge to other countries to get things that you want (like the natural resources). If your country can somehow produce food, medicine, cars, etc., at very little cost, then everyone can live a great life and no one has to work real hard.

Anyway, one way to produce things more cheaply is to pay people that don’t live in your country $1 an hour to help you make something rather than $10 an hour you would pay people in your own country. Now, the disadvantage to that is that those people who are out of a job have to find something else to do to be productive.  However, one of the benefits, besides being able to produce things more cheaply, is that some of those people who are out of a job can get educated and do something more productive than answering a phone or operating a sewing machine. The more people you have in a society who do non-menial things, the more prosperous your society. In fact, ideally, a society would be most prosperous if no one in that society did any menial jobs - if all of them were outsourced to people in other countries or you developed technologies that replaced all menial labor. Of course outsourcing everything would be exploitative. But that is another issue.

So it seems to me that outsourcing always outweighs the temporary job loss of the people who are being replaced. In fact, even if some percentage of those people remain completely unemployed forever (and the rest of the country supports them), there is still a net gain.  After all, if one million people lose their $10 an hour jobs and are replaced by one million people in other countries making $1 an hour, a country saves 9 million dollars an hour right off the bat. With that savings, you can actually pay 90% of the people who lost their jobs $10 an hour to do nothing, and you break even!

Anyway, the piece de resistance counter-argument to the notion that outsourcing is bad is this: If outsourcing is bad, then any technology that replaces workers, which is pretty much ANY technology, like computers, industrial robots, machines, etc., have to be bad also!  Sure, that kind of technology creates some more jobs and also increases the overall level of technology in the society, but they are essentially the same thing. Whether I use robots and machines to manufacture my widgets or outsource my workers, it amounts to the same thing.

Finally, the argument that, “Well, the corporations will keep all the profits from outsourcing anyway,” is not an argument, although you hear it all the time. That is nonsense. Yes, the companies will make more money. But the consumers will also be able to buy things for a lot less money. Why can we buy computers, DVD players, watches, phones, TV’s, clothing, etc.  so cheaply?  Only because they are made in China and Taiwan (and Haiti, Mexico, etc.). If it were true that companies reap all or most of the profits from outsourcing and that the consumer (i.e., the whole society) does not benefit much, then it would also have to be true that any technological advance that enables a company to produce things more cheaply and efficiently also is not good because only the company will benefit. Of course, when a company benefits, so do their investors, their employees and everyone else from whom the owners of the company buy things from.

What say you guys?

Monday, January 09, 2012

Tyler Clementi’s mother versus “Amelia”

Non-sports post.

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