Sen. Kyrsten Sinema

   Sen. Sinema is my hero.  She is an elected representative willing to risk her political future in order to save our democracy.  Our two political parties currently control our government and our corporations control our political parties.  But one of my favorite senators chose to cast off her political party and become independent.  What does that mean to her?  Well, she is free to vote according to her wisdom and her conscience.  She doesn’t have to vote like a “rubber stamp” for the party she is a member of.  I think that is a good thing.  My position is not always the same as Senator Sinema.  If you are an independent thinker, your opinion will often not be the same as another independent thinker.  But, we normally agree.

   There was a recent senate run off in Georgia.  It pitted a religious leader against an empty football helmet.  That should be an easy decision for the Georgia voter.  But, it wasn’t.  It was close and why was that?  The football helmet was a Trump Republican and the minister was a Democrat.  Democrat and Republican representatives can be counted on to reliably vote as their party tells them to.  The party punishes them if they do not.  I once asked Peter DeFazio, a congressman from Oregon, who voted against his Democratic party’s NAFTA position, what the party used as a carrot and what they used as a stick to control his vote.  He said, “The carrot is campaign funds and the stick is committee appointments.”   So the party controls the representative’s ability to be elected as well as their effectiveness if elected.  That is a lot of control over who you the voter elects.  This leverage is obvious on federal and state representatives as well.

   Mitt Romney and Jeff Flake are Senators who I see as moral men, who speak their truth.  But their vote does not necessarily walk with their talk.  It is the vote that counts and their party controls it.  I believe that Flake had enough of it and retired.  I would assume that Romney will also.  Had they been independents, both men would have been a good and long lasting influence on our government.  The Trump Republican Party is currently punishing Liz Cheney for her outburst of truth against the Party’s wishes.  Liz will not be able to run for any office in the future without following Sinema’s lead.  And, it remains to be seen if an independent thinker can prevail in Arizona or Wyoming.

   The two party system has very much brought our government to a standstill.  The Senate is so evenly split between Democrats and Republicans that a 60% yes vote (a filibuster braker) rarely happens.  And with a Democratic slim majority in the Senate and a Republican slim majority in the House, you will rarely see both bodies vote for a bill, as is required in order to pass legislation on to the President for signature and enactment.  It requires our gigantic military spending to pass that hurdle.  Outrageous annual military spending is a bipartisan effort.

  I asked Richard Carmona, past Bush appointed Surgeon General and a recent Democratic candidate for the US Senate, from Arizona, if he thought our two party system had outlived its usefulness.  He answered, without hesitation, “Yes.”  George Washington did not want to see political parties in our government.  George was right then and he is right now.

  Kyrsten, “Has anyone told you you’re my hero?” – Old Buz     12/22/2022

Remember:

“One cannot fool all of the people all of the time                                                                  … and that is why we have two political parties.”

Iambloggerbuz.blogspot.com 

The Big Plop Theory

   "Somewhere back in infinity ... it All began with a plop." - Divine Revelation 

   As an agnostic, I am a person of questions.  But some of the answers to these questions feel very improbable to me and some seem quite probable.  This leaves me with beliefs, but no faith.  So when I question the origin of the Universe, from the majority of friends in the scientific belief group, I hear The Big Bang Theory.  Friends in the scientific belief group believe in the Big Bang, but it seems to me they don’t fully understand it.  I find this theory highly improbable for oh so many reasons and have for many years.

   Big Bang sounds to me like everything from nothing.  My mind can’t accept that.  The universe from something the size of a head of a pin and located nowhere (space didn’t yet exist), expanding into a “known” universe 28 billion light years across.  You don’t believe that … do you?  Well, if you believe that God created the universe in 6 days, about 6,000 years ago, perhaps you do.   Big Bang got its start from an observation through a series of radio telescopes.  It was noted that when the system was focused in any direction, at a certain point, the image became static.  The Big Bang proponents see this static as a uniform background radiation caused by high temperatures (an explosion) and densities in the distant past.  I see it as the EHT (Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration) a finite measuring system attempting to describe infinity.  If the rate of expansion of the universe is increasing and the Bang took place an estimated 13.8 billion years ago, why is the rate of expansion still increasing?  It’s time to calm down, dammit.  The Big Bang proponents have a rough time explaining the first 5 seconds after the bang and without those first five seconds I don’t believe you have much of a theory.  Finally, if the building blocks of the whole universe were contained in that head of a pin, including the explosion itself, how was that Big Bang a creation?  It would simply be a change of form.  It sounds to me like mythology (B.S.).

   My Big Plop Theory is much more believable.  It sees the universe not being created but being infinite and not being created at a single point in time.  The Universe has always been and will always be.  We are seeing galaxies being created at the present time.  Their apparent source seems to be a giant Plop from a Black Hole.  Black Holes can suck in entire galaxies as well as releasing them.  Our galaxy, The Milky Way, has a Black Hole at its center, about 27,000 light-years away from Earth.  The Milky Way Black Hole is four million times more massive than our Sun and our Sun seems pretty massive to me.  But, everything is relative.  There is a distant galaxy named the Messier 87 galaxy that has a black hole at its center, M87 Black Hole, that is more than a thousand times larger than our Milky Way Black Hole.  So there you go.  Black holes and their galaxies can be pretty large.  We know very little about the workings of black holes.  That is primarily because they have so much gravity that they suck in light.  This plays hell with the workings of a telescope.

   Does it occur to you, as it does to me that a giant black hole, thousands of times larger than the M87 Black Hole, might have plopped out our entire known universe?  This is the basis for my Big Plop Theory.  If I am correct, this does not indicate a “creation” at all.  It is just a change in form from the entrance to the exit of the black hole.  And if galaxies are presently being created, as science observes, there is no beginning point.  It is all but a rolling out of infinity.

GOD* Bless you, Old Buz,    12.20.2022

iambloggerbuz.blogspot.com

“Born an agnostic and with the help of GOD* will remain one.” – Old Buz

*GOD – an acronym for Grand Omnipotent Dna – The system (or systems) of the Universe as studied by science. 

“There are some things only intellectuals are crazy enough to believe.”                      - George Orwell

Railroad Strike

    The seven days of sick leave for a railroad employee is a very basic moral question to industry and government.  There is no simple solution, but in this blog, I will pretend there is one.

  Railroads are both a utility and a private industry in America today.  This fact brings up questions in the area of regulation that are seen from both a political point of view and a private industry orientation.  Does the government have any right to intervene in union vs. management negotiations?  Is a railroad a utility or a private industry?  Does a union worker have the right to strike?  Does the ownership of a railroad have the right to determine the terms of employment for its workers?  Your answers to these questions will be right, from your point of view.  My point of view is liberal and independent.

   If a railroad corporation is a member of private industry then the government has little to no excuse for entering into labor vs. management negotiations.  What precedent would be set?  Do you want government to enter into negotiations in the automotive industry or the appliance industry or pharmaceuticals?  Where would this creeping socialism end?  When you authorize a fixed number of days of “sick leave” it becomes a benefit to be used or accumulated by the employee and it moves away from its intended purpose of paying an employee for illness or family emergencies to vacation time or early paid retirement.  That moves it into the area of wage negotiations.  The government has no business in that area.

   The government’s point of view here is that railroads are actually a utility.  A strike not only punishes the railroad corporation, but it punishes the nation.  There is no adequate backup in transportation for the rails.  A rail strike would cripple our economy and our economy controls the quality of life for its people.  The health of the economy is a primary responsibility of our government.  I worked my way through college, in the sixties, for Southern Counties Gas Co., and when I accepted the employment, by a utility, I agreed to give up my right to strike.  The company offered a fair wage and fair benefits for giving up a right to strike.  A utility like gas, electric or water cannot be shut off during labor negotiations.  We had a union, but it was more symbolic than effective.  Any business that supplies a necessity and is a monopoly or near monopoly needs to be considered a utility and governed accordingly.  This means either by utility commission or being nationalized.  Then government has every right to enter into labor negotiations or pricing of the product.  My liberal political point of view leans me in this direction.

   Both of the above arguments are valid.  Which side are you on?

Cheers, Old Buz     12/01/2022

The Solutions:

“There are no perfect solutions to the problems of our imperfect world.”

(But, it is nice to keep searching.) – Old Buz