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Laxtonto

Burnt Ends
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Posts posted by Laxtonto

  1. I played college lacrosse many moons ago

    My brother-in-law played D2 basketball and now competes in the Ironman competitions 

    My wifes cousins all did collegiate and professional rodeo (those dudes are crazy)

    My father was drafted as a SP in the later rounds years ago

    I am fairly sure there are more, but I don’t remember off the top of my head

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  2. 9 minutes ago, texaslong said:

    What is A&M's AAU status? Are they still in danger of losing it?

     

    That is a real good question. The AAU were targeting many of their members that received a disproportionate amount of their overall grant funding from noncompetitive sources (Agricultural grant funding  is the big one) and usually that puts a big ole bullseye on A&M. I wonder if that is why they keep aggregating their funding numbers instead of doing the multiple campus bit?

  3. Im curious about everyones viewpoint on the early voting numbers and more importantly declared affiliations and turnouts.

    Every time I see a state brought up, it seems like Rs are real close to their 2016 turnout numbers (and well above their 2014 numbers) while the Ds are lagging behind significantly their 2016 #s and more interesting slightly behind their 2014 #s.

    Historically the Ds have done very well with the early vote. If they do not, what does that mean? Is the Ds enthusiasm a mirage? Do we think that they will instead all show up on Nov 6th?

    If this type of early voting trend continues, it would be a major hit to the Democrats.

    Right now as an example NC

    Quote

    North Carolina through 2 days of early voting:

    2018

    257,325 ballots cast

    111,325 Democrats (43.3%)

    78,554 Republicans (30.5%)

    66,873 Unafilliated (26.0%)

     

    2016

    321,666 ballots cast

    162,494 Democrats (50.5%)

    82,803 Republicans (25.7%)

    75,674 Unaffiliated (23.5%)

    2014

    236,383 ballots cast

    117,002 Democrats (49.4%)

    71,650 Republican (30.3%)

    47,392 Unaffiliated (20.0%)

     

    Democrats DOWN 7.7% from 2016, 6.1% from 2014

    Republicans UP 4.8% from 2016, 0.2% from 2014

    Unaffiliateds UP 2.5% from 2016, 6% from 2014

    Any thoughts? Any ideas of what is going on?

  4. 1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

    I support this move - have actually followed this issue for a while (several sources have written on it).

    There, you have me on the record agreeing with this admin’s approach on a specific issue.

    It’s still a shitshow of an admin and is killing the republic. One issue doesn’t change that.

    This is one of those issues that should baffle the American public that it has not been addressed a long time ago.

    Everyone bitches about the postal service being a money pit , then we find out part of the reason is that we screwed them in a such a way with public policy decisions that it would be real hard for them not to be a money pit.

    Simply be removing parcel subsidies from the largest foreign shipper you can impact the total cost through the supply chain of small goods coming from China. Less come from China therefore more volume from domestic distributors at a higher rate. We may still take a hit through the idea of potential abuse of building the product in China and then transporting them for parcel delivery to areas like Vietnam or Mongolia, but it theory this should be a big boost for the USPS

  5. Not sure where this one should be put... Loce him or hate him, this should be a no brainier for anyone to get behind.

    Trump Opens New Front in His Battle With China: International Shipping

     

    Quote

    New York Times

    WASHINGTON — President Trump plans to withdraw from a 144-year-old postal treaty that has allowed Chinese companies to ship small packages to the United States at a steeply discounted rate, undercutting American competitors and flooding the market with cheap consumer goods.

    The withdrawal, announced by the White House on Wednesday, is part of a concerted push by Mr. Trump to counter China’s dominance and punish it for what the administration says is a pattern of unfair trade practices. The White House, in a statement, said “sufficient progress has not been made on reforming terms” of the postal treaty and that it would begin the withdrawal process while seeking to “negotiate bilateral and multilateral agreements that resolve the problems.”

    The Universal Postal Union treaty, first drafted in 1874, sets fees that national postal services charge to deliver mail and small parcels to countries around the world. Since 1969, poor and developing countries — including China — have been assessed lower rates than wealthier countries in Europe and North America.

    While the lower rates were intended to foster development in Asia and Africa, Chinese companies now make up about 60 percent of packages shipped into the country, taking advantage of the lower rates to ship clothing, household gadgets and consumer electronics. Many websites now offer free shipping from China, in part because of the cheap postal rates, administration officials say.

    The decision to withdraw was made at the urging of Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump’s hard-line trade adviser, who sees the move as a way to thwart China and an opportunity to challenge the authority of international groups, like the World Trade Organization, that, in his view, fail to give the United States voting powers commensurate with the country’s economic stature.

    Mr. Trump, who told “60 Minutes” last weekend that his biggest regret as president wasn’t quickly “terminating” the North American Free Trade Agreement after he took office, has also been eager to emphasize that he is tough on trade by pulling out of a treaty, even a relatively obscure one, according to people familiar with his thinking on the matter.

    State Department officials were expected on Wednesday to inform officials at the Universal Postal Union in Bern, Switzerland, a branch of the United Nations that administers the treaty, of their intention to pull out of the system and "self-declare” new, higher rates on China, a United States official said.

    According to the union’s rules, members will have a year to renegotiate new terms before the withdrawal becomes permanent. “If negotiations are successful, the administration is prepared to rescind the notice of withdrawal and remain” in the treaty, the White House statement said.

    The move will most likely inflame tensions with China, which the administration has accused of unfair trade practices and punished with tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods, investment restrictions and other measures. Administration officials are still weighing whether Mr. Trump will meet with China’s president, Xi Jinping, in Argentina next month.

    Mr. Trump does not need congressional approval to withdraw because the last version of the treaty was never put up to a vote, administration officials said.

    The pact has been long been a source of frustration for presidents of both parties, and prompted complaints from small businesses, big retailers like Amazon and shipping giants like UPS. The treaty was last modified in 2016 to raise some shipping costs on Chinese exports. But Mr. Navarro and Mr. Trump dismissed those changes as insufficient to deal with the explosion of online free shipping offers of goods from China.

    “These disparities have introduced a massive distortion in the eCommerce market,” Mr. Navarro wrote in a Financial Times op-ed last month. “It is often possible for a Chinese company to sell ‘knockoff’ products through online vendors, such as Amazon or Alibaba, to U.S. consumers for less than it costs for American mailers to ship authentic goods. Moreover, while USPS loses an estimated $1 on every small package that arrives from China, outbound mail of American exporters is charged at well above cost.”

    A 2015 report from the Inspector General of the United States Postal Service found that the treaty, which was created to ease the flow of mail and small parcels between 192 countries, had not been overhauled to reflect the new realities of eCommerce and China’s aggressive undercutting of international competitors.

    The price of shipping a 4.4 pound package, the largest parcel covered by the treaty, from China to the United States is about $5, according to United States estimates, according to post office estimates culled by Mr. Navarro’s staff. American companies can pay two to four times that amount to ship a similar package from Los Angeles to New York, and much more for packages sent to China.

    The “system creates winners and losers,” the report’s author’s concluded, especially China’s national postal service and "Chinese online retailers in the lightweight, low-value package segment at the expense of the U.S. Postal Service and American retailers.”

    It is not clear how much the disparity costs American taxpayers and retailers, in part because the Postal Service does not release detailed country-by-country shipping breakdowns. A 2014 study, cited in a Postal Service analysis of the issue, estimated that discounted shipping cost industrialized nations as much as $2.1 billion a year in aggregate.

    The losses to retailers and manufacturers could be much more, as online commerce expands further.

    Industry groups, even ones that have questioned the president’s tariffs on Chinese imports, applauded the move as proportional and targeted.

    “This outdated arrangement contributes significantly to the flood of counterfeit goods and dangerous drugs that enter the country from China,” said Jay Timmons, chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers, a trade group. “Manufacturers and manufacturing workers in the United States will greatly benefit from a modernized and far more fair arrangement with China.”

    But the changes could have an even bigger impact on small retailers who have found themselves outgunned and undercut by Chinese competitors.

    Jayme Smaldone, who runs a 12-employee housewares company in Rahway, N.J., first became aware of the problem when he noticed websites selling Chinese knockoffs of his “Mighty Mug,” a desktop coffee cup he designed with an anti-topple base

    “Something has to be done,” he said. “How can my government be subsidizing China and driving me out of business?"

     

    I am really shocked in the eCommerce world we live in that no one has thought about fixing this issues a while ago..

    People wonder why there is a trade imbalance and yet we cut our own throats with things like this. If it is cheaper to make the good in China and then we subsidize the shipping, why should anyone expect the consumer to not buy the Chinese knockoff? The price would be at that point significantly cheaper than the competing good.

    We lose $1 per every package shipped in from China and therefore American shipping is charge more than the market rate, which further hurts the "true" price difference.

    This makes me wonder how many other legacy trade treaties are there floating around.

  6. Some how I got a feeling that mine wont be popular on either side of the aisle.

    Voter reform - Mandatory voting for the populace with  a tax penalty for those refusing to vote. Everyone that is a legal citizen votes.

    Immigration reform - Easy temporary work permits, more stringent nationalization requirements and ending birthright citizenship for children of non-citizen parents

    Mandatory 2 year government service post HS - Either military or civil service related not in your current region. Use that to show others different parts of the country, provide hope for those who grew up in poverty in a centralized location and potentially a way out, reduce some the classic civil service positions, provide some basic job skills, and help reduce the insane student debt load by hopefully see a slightly older and therefore more responsible college student population.

     

     

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