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Religious Unity and the Synchronicity of Chaos Theory

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Religious Unity and the Synchronicity of Chaos Theory

 

By Michael Boyajian

 

Many years ago Huston Smith wrote a book on the world’s religions titled The World’s Religions.  Little did he know then that he had planted the ideas in the cosmos that would lead to people having the ability to pick and choose principals from all the world’s religions.  His book implicitly made each religion accessible to those of other faiths and one could say I like this about Hinduism and this about Buddhism and its ok and it works with my Christian beliefs.

Who Steal My Purse Steals Trash

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Foolishly, and with much regret, I waded into someone else’s fight, to defend a fellow blogger, JP (who I later learned was a pretty dark-skinned Latino), against what I believed were unfair and unwarranted accusations of racism emanating from Rock Hackshaw.

For my troubles, I got falsely accused of being JP, of leading a five year long vendetta against Rock, and most distressingly, of being a racist myself.

Albany is not big enough for Cuomo and Silver

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The race for governor is starting to heat up—but not necessarily between the candidates.

Instead it’s the top democrats.

Soon to be Democratic nominee for Governor Andrew Cuomo and the powerful speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver.

Of course both men are downplaying a disagreement.

Cuomo has started doing media interviews and Monday told Fred Dicker, the state editor of the NY Post ( on Talk Radio 1300 AM in Albany) he did not see Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver as an "obstacle" to his agenda.

A Pan African Olympics

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A Pan African Olympics

 

By Michael Boyajian

 

The idea for the Olympics is to use sports to bring the diverse nations of the world together for a moment of peace every two years.  The idea goes back to 776 B.C. when the games began in Ancient Greece and were used to bring together all the independent Greek city states until 393 A.D.

WHILE I AM WAITING

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Room Eight New York Politics (www.r8ny.com) is the blog site where one of my Puerto-Rican brothers in activism (Manny Burgos) promised an early response to my last column on the Puerto Rican situation -relative to its future relationship with the USA. A good thing I didn’t hold my breath. So while Mr. Burgos tries to (re)fashion and (re)shape his arguments for Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state of these (dis)United States, let me give him some more to think about. 

Whenever you ask Hispanics about the current PR situation (as a ward of the USA), I invariably get an apology of sorts. No matter where the person originated (Caribbean, Europe or Latin America), I will hear similar things like: “Well what else can they do?” “They don’t have natural resources of any significance to fall back on”. “They need the USA; otherwise they will be worse off than any of the many backward(s) 3rd world countries in Africa”. “You want another Haiti in the Caribbean Sea?” “The people will suffer; there will be even greater poverty”. And so on, and so on.

Four Years on Room Eight

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It’s been four years since I first started posting on this site, and I might as well continue the tradition with another retrospective. First, I’d like to thank Ben and Gur for providing me with a website to post essays on the public policy non-decisions no one wants to talk about, with the capacity to attach spreadsheets with the facts no one wants to see. Creating such a site was beyond my capability, and I appreciate their free web hosting and technical support.

Writing on this blog has been, in a sense, my final howl against the moon in frustration with the generations in power for selling out the future of my state and community, to hide from everyone else the cost of enormous resources transferred to those working the system. The recession, as recessions do, has just started to reveal to everyone else what has happened. Four years ago, in another election year for Governor, I posted a series of data analyses showing how New York State, and different parts of New York State, compared with other states and the national average, with essays that identified problems with state and local government and the state in general, and made a series of proposals. This year I’ll probably continue to post data as it become available, in case there is anyone out there who is interested in the actual facts, but I don’t think I’ll talk much about what should happen next. Because between then and now I’ve learned something: things are so rotten to the core that nothing will change prior to a collapse. Consider it my New York City education.

Politically Relevant Info From the Times Article on Pensions

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“Public pensions in New York City and State have had a cost-of-living adjustment feature since 2000, but it applies only to the first $18,000….The cost-of-living adjustment was the most expensive pension enhancement enacted in recent memory in New York, according to the Independent Budget Office. The cost has, once again, proved higher than expected.”

Expected by whom? In any event, that retroactive pension enhancement, neither worked not bargained for, was the means Carl McCall used to get the 2002 nomination for Governor over Andrew Cuomo, getting the support of the public employee unions. Not that the unions went all out in the general election to actually make McCall Governor. They had cut a deal with Pataki to sign the legislation, following the deal Pataki cut with Local 1199 and the Greater New York Hospital Association. Of course all this was a long time ago. Which is how things were planned, because we have not yet begun to suffer to pay for all of this.

The Times on Pensions

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So the Times has a two part series on collapsing public pensions in the business section today, with a debate on what to do about it. What the debate doesn't say is that all "solutions" discussed involve younger generations becoming worse off, as taxpayers (due to deferred costs that have to be paid for with interest later) and public employees (lower compensation relative to those who came before). And that even if the pay and pensions of future public employees is slashed, public services are going to be completely gutted for decades — particularly if inflation doesn't devalue what is owed. No matter what. Done deal. And, or course, the massive debts run up over the past two decades are on top of that.