Triple Play Thursday

BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT:
The notion of amending the Constitution to require the Federal government to balance the budget seems to be lingering on a bit more than I would like, occasionally popping up in the news commentary and frequently by bloggers and radio callers. It sounds good but the idea is truly awful. It wold give Congress a green light to raise taxes however high they want under the protection of being forced to by the Constitution. You could pass some spending amendments though. I think two amendments should be passed. The first one would be to mandate that funds collected for a certain purpose (Social Security) are actually spent on that item. Second, I would cap the governments total budget allowance to 80% of the previous years monetary intake. For instance, if the government collected 100 billion dollars in 2010, then they could have a budget of 80 billion in 2011. Exceptions could be allowed for wars and catastrophic natural events. This limit would increase the budget for government every year but would also prevent overreaching. It also safe guards against the possibility of a zero growth depression.

I DIP, YOU DIP, WE DIP:
The myth of the double dip recession is in full force now. What is going to happen though is nothing like a double dip because we never went back up from the start of this recession. The stimulus package essentially caused a flatline, as States used the money to prevent mass layoffs and service cancellations. There was no recovery to speak of. All of the economic spikes can be attributed to the fact that business were doing any business they could this year so that they could avoid the massive tax hikes coming next year. We've all heard of crony capitalism but this kind of economic activity is best described as panic capitalism. Once business have moved all the business they can to this year and the States stop getting the stimulus money, we will simply continue the downward economic spiral that started in 2008. That's not a double dip, that's just a sinkhole.

REALLY?
119 million for Joe Johnson? What were the Hawks thinking? I realize they had their best season in decades but this is a panic move. As the playoffs proved, if JJ is your best player, you can't win. For the Hawks to seriusly contend, they now need a legitimate max contract guy (LeBron, DWade, Melo) and a near max third option type (Boozer, Bosh). There is no way that the Hawks can afford that. They should have offered JJ 10-12 mil per and tried to build around him with some other 10-12 mil guys. If he didn't like that, they should've let him walk. Atlanta just doesn't support professional sports vigorously enough to make the team so flush with cash that they can splurge on 2 to 3 max contract guys. Classic overreaction to fleeting success. I hear Raja Bell is available though.