text:
- Michael email@example.com
- Phoenix, AZ
- United States
This conversation is closed.
If the universe is expanding - what is it expanding into?
what is THAT space called
and why isn't it part of the universe now?
Paila Race
Aug 18 2012: The beautiful magnificent boundless unlimited beyond our perception of imagination Universe is expanding cause it just is ... :)
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Radu Johnson
Aug 18 2012: I don't believe our imagination is limited , we will eventually know the answer to that question. Why do I think that ? Because I just do :) or hope ... ehhh , i don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
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Paila Race
Aug 18 2012: haha :D i believe our imagination is the key to discovering the unknown and creating things beyond what we think we know :) which makes us life forms quite remarkable beings :) haha idk what the hell I'm talking about either haha, but I'm happy :P
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Aug 18 2012: You should be happy , you look like you're from and exotic place or something , I live in Eastern Europe , it's all concrete here , everything is grey
Ken brown
Aug 18 2012: Actually you guys have a point because I've sat here thinking "If we have to imagine the expansion due to the limit of light reaching us then the only viable answer is that it's expanding only within our minds,it's actual calculated size does not mean that what we see today will actually be there at what they think is the actual size of today's universe at this given moment in time.
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Aug 18 2012: some nice pondering mate :) love that idea...or perspective of looking at it ...
Ken brown
Aug 18 2012: We can only guess at best what's beyond the deepest detected galaxies and give a projected placement for each galaxy for it's real time co ordinates but that's a prediction rather than fact,we don't know if they still exist or have gone black or are at where we think they are,i'm sure once we get a few more space based telescopes up that we'll be able to expand our sphere of detection but not in any considerable leap of distance.
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If you're interested look up Halton C Arp,the astronomy community has rejected his data but the data is still sound.He questions Hubble's Law, i can't say he's right but it is interesting.Aug 18 2012: sounds awesome!...and i have looked him up...he does have some really interesting articles...i enjoyed his article on "is physics slowly changing?" thanks for the heads up :)
Aug 19 2012: Here Paila, try looking at what this gentleman has to say,he's been at it for the last 30 years and what he has arrived at is if anything strange but his data is just as sound as anyone else s.
Both Chip and Michael have studied quasars most of their lives from different angles of perspective,to me what they reveal is a mystery that could change our current view of things if someone takes them seriously.Aug 19 2012: oh wow...thats amazinggg...!
so many mysteries to this whole expansion deal
so many great ideas
its incredible...
i never really noticed the quasar part of the equation, i always went straight to looking and studying the black holes as they seemed more mystical and the event horizon...
but this seems rather interesting as well to ponder on...hmm ...
Ken brown
Aug 19 2012: I use this site to glean what is being published,another person far more knowledgeable than me put me onto it,he use to trawl this site but has probably gone back to his usual haunts arguing the plasma universe theory.
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http://phys.org/space-news/astronomy/Aug 19 2012: WOW!!!
what an AWESOME WEBSITE! i both love astro and physics! i realy love the idea of quantum physics!!!
so thanks so much!!! awesome awesome awesome!!!
andrew jones
Jul 23 2012: THAT space is called "Garp", and it smells like a giraffe!
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But seriously, there is a point beyond which all conjecture becomes nonsensical.
Then it's time to back away, and return to what we love and understand.
Jul 25 2012: It seems that for me, and many others, we enjoy this nonsense.
Jul 25 2012: Dear Barry Palmer,
I meant no offense.
Jul 26 2012: Dear Andrew Jones,
No offense was taken, and I am sorry if you took my comment that way.
This discussion is far more varied and amusing than I ever expected.
Thanks for your contribution.
Mitch SMith
Jul 21 2012: Just at the moment, the idea of an expanding universe is not 100% proven fact.
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There is yet to be a good hypothesis to explain why the expansion appears to be non-linear.
Accepted belief is all based on the dopler fequency shift explaination of what is observed.
If it can be proven that photons decay into red-shift, then the dopler/expanding universe idea will become just another false assumption, and the universe will no longer be expanding.
The un-know-ability of it all is beautiful, the hypotheses themselves are elegant and inventive - and as it all evolves, each new moment is a new and wonderful thing - specially when you observe even the past and future moments drifting from idea to idea.
There is no "what" there is only "next" and it applies to all moments expanding infinitely into wonder.
Just jump in - make hyptheses and enjoy!
Etienne Lamy
Jul 21 2012: Hi, I agree to your idea, but I still have a question : a photon escaping from an intense gravity field (such as a black hole) will see its wavelength increase. Can we imagine that the redshift effect, that we explain by universe expansion, could be the consequence of the total energy density decreasing, due to the expansion of matter in the universe ?
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Indeed, a single photon would "have the impression" to go from intense gravity field to low gravity field (though there is no such gradient in space, as it happens in time).
Jul 22 2012: Paul Laviolette has some interesting hypotheses on these things - also, he does not believe that black hole singularities exist. And yes, his model suggests constant generation of matter in the form of subatomic particles (an exception to the Newtonian model).
Time is always the booger in these things. The notion of before and after seems to suggest some kind of wave-front, but it all seems part of the same thing .. how can a wave propogate through itself?.
Jul 25 2012: A function of the probability that it would indeed occur in a closed resolved system in which the probability exists as a function of the resolved whole.Jul 26 2012: "Paul Laviolette ...does not believethat black hole singularities exist."
I realize what the equations imply, but does anyone really believe that super massive black holes are "infinitely" dense and are smaller than an atom? It seems much more likely that the equations need some adjustments.Jul 26 2012: No, I don't think that black holes are infinitely dense, nor do I believe that it is a singularity.
Does an electron infinitely fall on his proton !
- If, a black hole can only be defined by mass, movement, rotation and charge, it means that it IS ONLY made of that... PLUS something else : spacetime.
Entering a black hole converts anything in pure, massive particles of energy : It must be the lowest energy, lowest entropy state of the energy-space-time continuum.
If I'm right, we must find quantum laws not only for matter and light, but also for space an time : in a black hole, all degrees of liberty are blocked, positions, time, rotations, and even those that separate a particle from another, a particle from a photon or a gluon.
Perhaps, the Theory of Everything that we seek, is seen in black holes just as the Big Bang.
Mitch SMith
Jul 22 2012: As an after-thought: perhaps an oscillation?
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We observe big things getting bigger(more massive) - then we observe them suddenly getting smaller (supernovae).
If we accept Einstein's work, there would also be time waves in such a system..
If, for instance, a galactic core mass oscillation occures, it could send a compressional time-wave.
THose experiencing it would not notice, but all their observations would become skewed - light entering the wave would be affected, but only within the wave.
It would follow that what we see as an expanding universe is just an artifact of observation.
If we are, indeed, within a time wave (leaving one?), teh observed light entering from outside teh local time compression would appear blue-shifted. As teh compressional wave passes, we would then see it all red-shift .. but it might take a few million years to observe it ;)
Jul 22 2012: Thanks for your imaginative response. I think you have indicated a link between gravity and time.Jul 22 2012: @ Jon, Well . there has to be .. If E is equal to M times Csquared, then gravity is in mass M and time is in C - which is distance over time.
Gravity has been demonstrated to occur in waves - and that such waves can be induced by electrcial discharges (E) .. I can't see why time cannot also be subject to waves ..
If time is subject to waves just as space and energy, then the observer's reference needs more consideration.
What one wonders is that: if a large time/gravity wave propogated from a single event at a single point, would the observer experience it? Or only the observer's observer? for instance, the time wave would travel with the energy wave .. would the time wave negate the gravitational affect?
Certainly, we observe energy coming from supernovae .. and there is speculation that gravity waves can travel faster than light under certain circumstances .. given that time is part of velocity, what speed would a time wave travel at? How could such a thing be measured?Jul 26 2012: @Paul,
Yes, it is hard to imagine anything that is not a closed system. Perhaps that is a failure of imagination?
But, supposing that any system can be closed, one then has to deal with concepts of unity.
Such unity seems reasonable, but is it necessary?
Personally, I am attracted to an asymetrical modal of the universe(es?) - that it is the asymetry itself that gives rise to everything - and that the asymetry is so small that you might as well call it 1/infinity. But dealing with singularities does not help much.
The asymetrical universe allows for an infinite spherical wave propogating in infinite dimensions.
I am attracted to the idea of probability as a dimension at 90 degrees to time. If that is the case, then probability itself will have rules of continuity - infering another dimension at 90 degrees of both time and probability (in addition to all the other 3 dimensions we are used to).
One could imagine a spherical time continuum arising from the asymetry of every point existing in in such a multi dimensional framework.
What then is the rule governing the prohibition of any energy flow from a point to itself, or the one before? Is the rule asymetry itself?
Expressed like that, are all waves an expression of asymetry?
This would be troublesome to Newton - a shame he's dead.Jul 19 2012: we don't know. what we know that the so called "observable" universe is expanding. as a result of the theory of relativity and our current understanding of cosmology, there is a limit how far we can see. and up to that point, we see expansion. what is outside of that is unknown, but there are these possible solutions i can tell:
1. no boundary - finite universe. it is like a surface of a sphere for two dimensional creatures. suppose there are bugs living on a ball, and their current observable universe is a dot on the ball. if they could observe the entire universe, they would discover that it is circularly connected, if you look far enough, you can "see your own back".
2. infinite universe. the universe has no size at all, it goes on forever. the expansion does not mean it gets bigger, it just means it gets more sparse.
3. there is some sort of boundary to the universe, and the outside is separated from us. it can be a boundary similar to the event horizon of a black hole.
Jul 21 2012: What however if we can only observe things through which some form of energy has traveled.
I personally think that particles are some sort of reaction between 'energy' (not entirely sure what that is except that it has to do with light and radiation) and 'empty space' (outside of our universe which I think is a merger between dark matter and normal matter which totals up to nothing).
Just like when we try to observe what light actually is it acts like a particle but when we observe light it acts like a wave. Which to me keeps the opportunity there that when light reacts with a photon you can get a particle (aka there is a strong link between pure energy (more pure than light) and the comming into existence of matter).
So let's say that once an energy wave travels through "nothing" it can seperate dark matter from normal matter while the energy itself is (possibly) not influenced. Then the place where our universe meets with "nothing" is a place where a wave of pure energy is traveling into nothing... creating everything thereafter.
It almost sounds philosophical when I write it like this... but I'm failing to find the right words at this moment :(Jul 25 2012: Isn't it possible that all 3 are true? So, there is a finite universe that is ultimately connected at its expanding "end" to its also expanding "beginning", making a sphere of some sort. But also, based on the rate at which it grows and distance it would take to lap an instance on the sphere renders it infinite and limitless. At the same time, it also has a boundary in that the aspects of this sphere are not a constant across its entirety - similar to how an ant walking across a sidewalk really only has to cross one "finite" piece of asphalt, but along the way there are dips, cracks, possibly even holes to the "other side" (the Earth beneath the sidewalk).
Radu Johnson
Aug 18 2012: The universe is probably expanding until there is nothing left. If big bang theory is correct then we all live in debris , or in a "nuclear explosion's" mushroom cloud. Logic tells us the dust will eventually disappear , or the debris will be pushed further apart , but don't start making sandwiches.
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Therefore , you are maybe asking us what is nothingness !
Hmm ...
I know , but I am not going to tell you , it's my little secret.Aug 17 2012: We don't know the answer to this question.
So it's speculation.
Within that speculation, there are some plausible ideas, though some are in conflict with what we do know.
I follow the mainstream (scientific) interpretation that it's no use talking about space-time outside our universe.
We can assume that the expansion creates the spacetime as it expands, but we don't need to assume anything to exist "outside" i.e. there is no outside.
However, if we assume a multiverse, then we have some kind of dimentionalities or fabrics that might be somewhat similar to spacetime. maybe holographic, maybe multidimentional. If so, then it would probably expand in our dimensions.
If you take the methaphor of a cone on a plane, where the start is the tip, and the cone stretches over a time axis, then you can think of this universe as existing already in that total space-time. Only thing in such a case is that we are currently somewhere along the time line (and not able to move back and fro at our own will), but it all "exists" from an outside perspective. (but then again, that outside perspective might be non-existent...)
To us, it expands in what is the total shape of our space-time continuum.
I think that's quite plausible...
Aug 18 2012: Exactly what I was going to say ...Aug 15 2012: Reality is an illusion caused by lack of alcohol said someone, and I believe that he was right. It's strange how we love to fall in our own mind traps by inventing things so big like universe, god etc and then struggling to explain them logically!!! Good headache to everybody, I'm going for a cold beer. Cheers!!
jing du
Aug 15 2012: we are limited by our human being's brain.our logic may be not right,why every thing needs an edge?Aug 15 2012: It seems to me that the whole drama is much more temporally variable. We speak of the big band "happening" all at once, which, of course, begs the question of what came before. Then we try and break down what may have "happened" in the first units of time, which runs roughshod over our own simultaneous supposition that time, like space, was only just being created. How do you measure something with something that is yet nonexistent?
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Time and space are somehow identical. You cannot have one without the other, and you cannot use one to measure the other.
Imagine instead that the whole process is ongoing. The bang is forever "happening". Time, along with space, is not so much expanding as accumulating.
If Einstein was on the mark in supposing that time slows down as we approach the speed of light, then we might conclude that time halts once the speed of light is reached. A photon traveling, naturally, at the speed of light would take "no time at all" to wander freely through the universe. In fact, it might roam playfully about CREATING the universe, outside of time as we know it, accumulating both space and time in its abandon. Then that photon might step into time at will to perceive and enjoy its own creation.
Just a playful little analogy ...but it helps me to break free of the philosophical conundrums with which science often leaves us.
Aug 15 2012: Good analogyAug 13 2012: I don't think TED is the appropriate platform to answer this type of question. It's a pure science question. A forum about physics is right place to put this question. Come here: http://www.physicsforums.com/
I think the question in TED Conversations should be social-oriented.
Aug 14 2012: Well, Chung, we are being very sociable here. What a party pooper you are!
I looked into the site you recommended, and it is for the *very* serious scientist. We are having more fun here, sort of like a fireside chat after dinner with friends, talking about a fascinating subject without needing a PhD in the stuff. That, of course, until you showed up with instructions for us to pick up our marbles and go to bed. Maybe you should let us decide what is appropriate where, OK?
Aug 15 2012: Classic...LolAug 18 2012: Problem with online conversation is that people tend to less kindness to strangers. Throw rock to the person, not the arguments.
I still think this kind of conversation (about pure science) is misplaced, wasteful and distracted to what we should do and can do on this medium.
Mark Kurtz
Aug 12 2012: Maybe what we observe is only one of many universes! Maybe there is primordial energy for everything and a "center of all" force organization far more powerful than our so called big bang!
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Interesting discussion from everyone. It appears we all are required to wait until our next life station to learn more. Maybe?Aug 4 2012: Our space is expanding, but why does that have to mean it is going into "another space"?
Not sure that makes any sense. We cannot see outside or beyond our universe, our space, so I think not to assume it is more space or another space. But, from within our space, we supposedly see our edge moving away from us in all directions. Perhaps our space is creating more space.
I think some in science and in metaphysics too, consider this in the same way: potentiality or infinite possibilities.
This so-called other space is nothing, and only nothing could be infinite in potential and possibilities but only through the manifestation of expansion.
It all exists or just is really, at the level of classical mechanics and at the quantum level. Yes?
Are there any theories that it isn't expanding, because we are seeing a mirage of sorts that leads us to believe it is, even though measurements that have been taken seem to confirm it is?
I believe there is a way to show it isn't really expanding but is a sort of optical illusion.
But, I'm not really very smart. I like to practice my typing.
Henk Mulder
Aug 2 2012: Space implies something that has coordinates, i.e. a place that can be determined. At the big bang, initially, neither space nor time existed, they were created much as everything else was created. Since the universe has been expanding since that time, it only makes sense that beyond the boundaries of that expanding reality, neither space nor time nor anything else has actually made it. Therefore, the universe is not expanding into anything but the same void that the big bang was in.
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What it is, that void, we don't know, but most definitely, it is not empty space or time.Aug 1 2012: Dark energy
Mark Kurtz
Jul 28 2012: Consider space respiration. It's really not expanding into more. Consider the possibility of two axis respiration. One axis contracts for a while as the other expands. Consider the possibility of reversing direction, say after a billion years or so.
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Consider our viewpoint from Earth. What a small scene we have from such a tiny planet. Even our exploratory vehicles cannot observe the whole.
Keep the questions coming!
Jul 28 2012: Neat! But what about the fact that expansion is speeding up. I thought we were not expecting the big crunch anymore.
Aug 2 2012: Not sure what is the big crunch. Consider the possibilities of relationship to other space bodies and angle of view to each. Maybe we are not speeding up, but our perspective makes such appearance.
Others are far more qualified to comment.
Aug 2 2012: The big crunch was the idea that gravity would eventually overcome the expansion of the universe and then we'd all end up hurtling towards where the big bang originated.
And the increased expansion comes from an increase in red shift observed over the years and it's expanding exponentiallyJul 30 2012: Mr. Kurtz, I find your analogy of space very interesting, I often wondered if anyone had the same thought of space. That is awsome :)
Aug 2 2012: Well Michael, I am not an astronomer, but I like to visit NASA's APOD daily (astronomy picture of the day) online. I don't know what is pictured there, usually, but do enjoy the ongoing comments from NASA.
We are here on Earth for such a short time and then we are gone. What of the possibility we will learn a lot more of the Cosmos at our next life station? We are awed now, but wait until you see more from that next viewpoint!!
Keep thinking of possibilities!!!Jul 27 2012: Imho, you are asking what something is that per definition does not exist. Our perception of "being" includes there being a fabric of space and time to "be" in. The Universe is not expanding into anything, but it's structure is changing in a way we perceive as expansion, measured by the red shift of light from far away objects. It's like asking what would happen if there would be no time - nothing would happen since per definition things don't tend to "happen" when there is no time.
Luke Monahan
Jul 27 2012: There is another way to look at this.
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If all objects are accelerating away from one another simultaneously, you could say that space itself is expanding but you could also say that space is remaining constant and matter is shrinking.
From our prospective we would be unaware of our shrinking because everything else is shrinking at an equal rate. It would just appear that everything is accelerating away.
If we are shrinking then the universe isn't "expanding" into anything.
paul Ashton
Jul 27 2012: Think the ratio of the amount of perceived travel so far, compared to amount stuff would have to shrink to Crete that perception, is off to the amount of everything having long ago disappeared. Remember though, just because matter is not bumping off of anything that does not mean it's not matter (dark matter).
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Luke Monahan
Jul 27 2012: What I'm saying is that there is a ratio between the size of the universe and the size of matter within it.
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You can express a change in this ratio by saying that the universe is expanding or by saying that matter is shrinking and you'd be equally correct because they are the same thing.
Jul 27 2012: Right. The way I figure it, the cosmos is like a machine or organism that produces significance, order, or 'sense' through privately experienced time at the cost of the production of entropy as a kind of topological exhaust (public space).
It sounds crazy, but I think it works, and it explains the existence of order, life, and consciousness in the universe.Jul 27 2012: I agree in respect to the the ratio of stuff to space being constant in ratio regardless of expansion or retraction. But the amount of space coud not remain "constant" relative to shrinking matter and maintain a ratio. I totally agree though, in a universe of Infinite paradox and subdivision infinite shrinkage might as well be a consideration. Could you frame this in regards to the perception of expansion speeding up? Or in this case shrinkage speeding up?Jul 28 2012: I believe this probably explains the concept much better than I could;
http://martinelli.org/rexpansion/Jul 26 2012: A new theory I've come up with. I'm going to stay with Milo Wolf and a Standing State Universe. The New thing I've come up with is this. The Universe is not expanding, it is fixed. Everything within the Universe bubble is condensing. Our solar system is just one of billions with its own Black Hole in the center pulling everything together smaller and smaller. We cannot measure it because everything is relative. Everything is shrinking in such a way the it appears that everything else is moving away form us. There is so much space inside every molecule of energy that this can go on until we reach a singularity a long time from now. At some time in our future we will be a lot denser so that we will exist at a higher frequency much like condensing gas in a pressure vessel. When the density of the matter we are made of reaches higher levels, we will began to experience greater abilities to understand the totality of the universe. This is a brief summary of my conclusion on the subject. What do you all think about that?
Jul 26 2012: Not bad. It's funny because you actually stare the exact opposite of a theory I saw on YouTube a while ago stating that everything is actual expanding relative to everything around it and that this is the mechanism of gravity. If you consider it this theory works with one of the deepest contemporary scientific mysteries, dark energy. A term describing the ever inflowing suspect for inflation which does not interact with regular matter but along with dark matter and constitutes 80 percent of he mass in the universe or something like that. We know it exists because it's been proven that the universe is expanding. My interest is peaked however regarding this photon decay I have been hearing about here and it's effect on the Doppler light shift.
Jul 26 2012: Is it not true that the universe, its planets, its matter, and every things solid has formed from the condensing of gas into smaller volume of space. It may be that there was a big bang that stated things off but soon after that everything had to condense into what we call our know universe. It's my belief that it is only our perception of the universe that is expanding. It is being reviled to us as we evolve. Some one said once that nothing exist until it is perceived to exist by consciousness. At one time the world was flat, then the center of our universe and so on. Technology for example, is condensing into smaller and smaller periods of time as our world evolves. Could there be such a thing as Dark Matter pressure much like the water pressure on a fish in a large body of water holding everything together? Stars, it seems, are collapsing into their black holes all the time. Besides, if we are moving away from something fixed at great speed, would not the Doppler shift have the same effect even if the other object is not moving?
Jul 26 2012: Not so much with the Doppler effect thing. The type of measurement scientists are conducting with light requires the standard candle of a particular type of star ( can't remember the type off hand) which is known due it's proportions and energy state to be a very stable and therefore it's light is a standard like the liter or meter which allows cosmologists to measure the light of other objects in space and measure their relative distance and speed. This is possible because like sound in which sound waves are compressed or extended relative to the listener causing the Doppler effect vrooooooooom! So are light waves extended in the color spectrum regarding the speed of a galaxy or star. Compared to the standard candle cosmologists can measure distance and speed accuratly. So, it appears as if the universe is expanding to cosmologists and physisists at an exponential rate because faster a source of light is moving the more red the light will appear to the observer us thus the term red shift.
The "measurement problem" backs up you thoughts regarding the revealing of the universe and counciousnesses role in the creation of reality. No one can really say you are crazy for believing in a rendered illusery world for the exact reason people will always be able to say we are in a created one. Consciousness and the interaction of the mind withas a reflection of a whole is the frontier of ultimate knowing not the edge of the universe.
Etienne Lamy
Jul 21 2012: Imagine empty space is filled with theoretical, invisible particles, ("vacuum particles" ?) and imagine every energy in our world acts as a waves on/around/through these particles. As well as sound waves travel through "air" molecules, energy waves would travel through "empty space" which would be "empty of matter, empty of light, empty of gravity" but not "empty of vacuum" (quite funny expression huh ?).
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Imagine that these theoretical particles all expand in "real empty vacuum", giving "more available empty space" for real particles and interactions.
Imagine a force that brings these particles closer to each other (gravity for instance, or global energy density, resulting in something like dark matter) and another force the other way (resulting in an accelerated expansion). At the limit, you will have seperate universes that can't reach each other, because there are no "vacuum particles" between them.
All this is purely imaginary, of course... Reality is more complex, interaction fields and quantum effects lead to really difficult mathematical constructions.
Jul 25 2012: Nice try there ate elements of "truth" in what you say pertaining to m-theory an innate expansion. The role of the speed of light in this universe now characterizes our ability to perceive beyond. Also is is now foreseeable that there are regions of space where the laws of physics result in casual formalities separate from those in our pocket. It will be interesting o see what happens when voyager truly enters interstellar space soon.
Jeff L
Jul 20 2012: The universe will expand the way we want it to. What ever our limited sensory and intellectual capacity can experience is what it will expands to. If our abilities to fathom evolves to greater capacity then we will experience the expansion the universe in that way. For this reason we will allways find what we are looking for. Because we can't find what we can't fathom. Every scientist knows this.....
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Jul 21 2012: doesn't sound scientific to me though.
Jeff L
Jul 23 2012: Science is what we can prove through trial and repetition. You can't prove string theory and most call it science. Allow for a greater interpretation or stay strict to the tenant of the field. Either way we can only work with the tools we have. We can fathom the possibility of string theory therefore we can look for it. It's that simple. That in my opinion is science in a nutshell. Fathom and search to prove. Not prove what you can't fathom.
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Jul 25 2012: Sorry but fact is what we can prove through trial and repetition.
Science is the search for facts.
We can explain several things with string theory that we have a hard time explaining with other theories.... which is why we persue ways of discovering if string theory is fact. The search is always called science. Even when a search for fact is done not scientifically (structured/ordered/mathematical/etc.) you can still call it science and get away with it.
Also all science, in the pure basics, come from describing that which we see... not that which we understand. The describtion we obtain leads to better understanding -> better observations -> better describtions -> better understanding.
If we already understood it there would be no fun in trying to describe/understand it now is there?Jul 19 2012: The general idea is that it creates what it expands into, the LISA satellite will be able to see whether we are a baby universe or if our universe has created a baby universe. But then general idea is the universe creates the space it expands into.Aug 19 2012: My vision is that the thing that is more than no-thing radiates from every point and every moment into every dimension.
These moments and dimensions are infinite in number. For the sake of simplicity I use the word moment - but these, are just points.
The difference between the thing and the no-thing is 1/infinity - this gives rise to everything and is the expression of the single assymetry.
Every thing progresses from one point to another along its primary dimensional vector which gets experienced as "time" - regardless of which, and how many other dimensions the "thing" participates in.
The progress along the primary dimensional vector is set in motion by the assymetry.
Whether the "universe" that we observe is expanding or not has nothing to do with any "big bang" that can be traced by extrapolating our time vector - because the big bang is happening in each instant and at every point in our observable universe.
And, as it turns-out, it's not such a big bang - it is the smallest bang possible.Aug 19 2012: Known space around our universe might be someThing that we think of as nothing, but I do think empty space has to exist where all things can be, and has to be endless. Otherwise you would have to explain what are the things that limit space and what is beyond our limits. Three dimensionally, how can there be an end other then empty?


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I hate to pile on but he says some dumb stuff.
Hopefully, he'll mature and stay the man he is but become more of a polished and respectful individual. We've all done that type of thing as kids/young men and it's just magnified with him because of his place as an elite athlete.

subset: commoncrawl


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(A Houston version of the Irish folk song)
Oh, Kenny Boy, your friends are disappearing.
They don't know you, much less your kvetchy wife.
Yes, it's sad when pols that you've been shmeering
Now hope that you'll get twenty years to life.
They sang your song: They passed deregulation.
They passed your laws. They bent the regs your way.
But now they track your every obfuscation.
Old Kenny Boy, their Kenny Boy's now Mr. Lay.
Enron, maker of big promises and big donations, stands revealed as a four-flusher.
Is the Enron story one of outrageous mendacity or stupefying ignorance?
This letter was originally published on January 29, 2002 at www.michaelmoore.com
Pôrto Alegre, Brazil--In US living rooms, talk about such policy measures as the White House's proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is likely to elicit clueless shrugs.
Having simmered on the back burner through the aftermath of September
11, Congress's effort to obtain records from Vice President Dick
Cheney's energy task force has now reached the boiling p
Right till the end of January, Dita Sari, an Indonesian in her late 20s, was preparing to fly from her home near Jakarta to Salt Lake City to bask in the admiration of assorted do-gooders and celebrities mustered by the public relations department of Reebok for its thirteenth annual Human Rights Awards, overseen by a board including Jimmy Carter and Kerry Kennedy Cuomo. Make no mistake, the folks--usually somewhere between four and six--getting these annual Reebok awards have all been fine organizers and activists, committed to working for minorities, the disfranchised, the disabled, the underdogs in our wicked world.
Dita Sari's plan was to proceed to the podium in the Capitol Theater in downtown Salt Lake City, on February 7, and then, when offered the human rights award, reject it.
Now, this annual Reebok ceremony isn't up there with the Nobels, or the genius grants from MacArthur. Despite Reebok's best efforts, it's definitely a second-tier event. Nonetheless, it has paid off for Reebok. Says Jeff Ballinger, an antisweatshop activist who's organized with shoe workers in Indonesia for the past thirteen years, "With this kind of ceremony, Reebok gets its name into respectable company. When they give a prize to someone like Julie Su, a lawyer for immigrant workers in California, people who wouldn't be seen dead in Nikes are impressed."
Dita Sari got picked by Reebok's judges because she defied her government on the issue of independent trade unions. In her own words: "In 1995, I was arrested and tortured by the police, after leading a strike of 5,000 workers of Indoshoes Inti Industry. They demanded an increase of their wages (they were paid only US $1 for working eight hours a day), and maternity leave as well. This company operated in West Java, and produced shoes of Reebok and Adidas."
She got out of prison in 1999. Since then she's been building a union in plants across Java. It was there that she got a good look at Reebok's contractors, the underbosses of all the apparel, footwear, computer and toy companies. These contractors run their plants in a notoriously harsh manner.
Reebok's flacks can brandish armloads of studies, codes, monitoring reports, guidelines and kindred matter, all attesting to the company's dedication to fair treatment of anyone making consumer items with the name Reebok printed on them. But nothing has really changed. "We've created a cottage industry of monitors and inspectors and drafters of codes," Ballinger says, "but all these workers ever wanted was to sit down in dignity and negotiate with their bosses, and this has never happened."
Due in large part to the efforts of the workers and Western allies like Ballinger's Press for Change, the daily wage in Indonesia actually went up more than 300 percent between 1990 and 1997, at which point the Asian economic crisis struck. Inflation wiped out all those gains. Workers' daily pay is now half what it was before the crisis hit.
These were the points Dita Sari was going to make when she got to Salt Lake City. Then she learned that Reebok intended to schedule her and other recipients for some public events before the actual award ceremony. Rather than let Reebok benefit in any way from her presence, Dita Sari pulled the plug and at last word is in Jakarta trying to raise relief money for workers left destitute by the worst flooding in decades. She's sent the speech she was planning to give at the awards:
I have taken this award into very deep consideration. We finally decide not to accept this....
In Indonesia, there are five Reebok companies. Eighty percent of the workers are women. All companies are sub-contracted, often by South Korean companies such as Dung Jo and Tong Yang. Since the workers can only get around $1.50 a day, they then have to live in a slum area, surrounded by poor and unhealthy conditions, especially for their children. At the same time, Reebok collected millions of dollars of profit every year, directly contributed by these workers. The low pay and exploitation of the workers of Indonesia, Mexico and Vietnam are the main reasons why we will not accept this award.
But isn't Reebok at least trying to do something decent? The way Dita Sari sees things, the attempt is phony. All the awards in the world--all the window dressing with Desmond Tutu, Carly Simon, Sting, Robert Redford--doesn't alter the basic fact that workers in the Third World are being paid the absolute minimum to make a very profitable product. The labor cost of a $70 pair of sneakers made in China, Vietnam or Indonesia is $1 or less.
Is there such a thing as a virtuous sneaker? Ballinger cites Bata, a Toronto-based company that runs its own factory in Jakarta. Its executives sat down with the union and worked out a contract with significant improvements on issues that employees care about greatly, like seniority. Though the margin has fallen recently, wage scales are better than minimum. Instances of bullying and intimidation are far fewer. Bata's shoes are sold in Indonesia for what an Indonesian can afford: $10 or less.
Ten years ago another courageous Indonesian, Teten Masduki, was asked by the Levi Strauss company to broker a clinic to be built near a contractor's factory. Teten, uncompromising labor advocate that he is, refused, even though the assignment would have made him a local hero. His reason: a clinic wouldn't give the workers what they need, a voice, the power to bargain.
Teten Masduki and Dita Sari see the world clearly, a lot more clearly than the celebrities and activists massed at such events as the one organized by Reebok in Salt Lake City, which is already awash with Olympian bunkum about human brotherhood. Dita Sari turned down $50,000 from Reebok. Teten Masduki turned down a tempting position with Levi Strauss. These days he's been responsible for chasing out a corrupt attorney general from his post as head of Indonesia's Corruption Watch. Do-gooders should study these fine examples and stiffen their spines.
The fortunes of American unions have taken a turn for the worse. Thanks to terrorism and recession, union members are reeling from a series of economic and political setbacks. Nearly half a million of them now face unemployment in the hotel and airline industries, and at Boeing, Ford, major steel-makers and other manufacturing firms. Many public employees will be clobbered next, as state and local budget crises deepen around the country. Already, teachers in New Jersey and state workers in Minnesota have been forced into controversial strikes over rising healthcare costs--a trend that affects millions of Americans. The accompanying loss of job-based medical coverage by many people who still have jobs should be fueling a revived movement for national health insurance, but few unions bother to raise that banner anymore.
Promising new AFL-CIO initiatives on immigration--like its call for legalization of undocumented workers--have been undermined by post-September 11 paranoia about Middle Easterners and federal scrutiny of thousands of them. Union organizing is stalled on many fronts, and rank-and-file participation in protests against corporate globalization--on the rise in Seattle and Quebec City--has faltered amid the myriad political distractions of the "war on terrorism." While labor's nascent grassroots internationalism remains overshadowed by flag-waving displays of "national unity," trade unionists have yet to be rewarded for their patriotism, even with a modest boost in unemployment benefits. Instead, President Bush is seeking cuts in federal job-training grants for laid-off workers. He's already won House approval for fast-track negotiating authority on future trade deals that threaten even more US jobs--and expects a Senate victory on that issue soon. To insure that collective bargaining doesn't interfere with the functioning of various executive branch offices now engaged in "homeland security," the White House just stripped hundreds of federal employees of their right to union representation. As University of Illinois labor relations professor Michael LeRoy observed in the New York Times, "a time of national emergency makes it more difficult for unions to engineer public support."
Into this bleak landscape arrives State of the Union, Nelson Lichtenstein's intellectual history of labor's past 100 years. Readers might take comfort from the fact--well documented by the author--that labor has been down before and, as in the 1930s, bounced back. Nevertheless, Lichtenstein's book raises disturbing questions about when, where and how that's going to happen again in a period when "solidarity and unionism no longer resonate with so large a slice of the American citizenry."
The author's views on this subject are informed by both scholarship and activism. A professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Lichtenstein wrote The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, a definitive biography of one-time United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther. In 1996 Lichtenstein helped launch Scholars, Artists, and Writers for Social Justice (SAWSJ), a campus-based labor support network. Through SAWSJ, Lichtenstein has aided teach-ins and protests about workers' rights and worked with AFL-CIO president John Sweeney to re-establish links between unions and intellectuals that might help labor become a more "vital force in a democratic polity."
Consistent with this mission, Lichtenstein hopes to revive interest in what liberal reformers in politics and academia once called "the labor question." State of the Union is thus a history of the ideas about labor that animated much of the action--all the great union-building attempts during the past century. "Trade unionism requires a compelling set of ideas and institutions, both self-made and governmental, to give labor's cause power and legitimacy," Lichtenstein argues. "It is a political project whose success enables the unions to transcend the ethnic and economic divisions always present in the working population."
He begins his survey in the Progressive Era, a period in which "democratization of the workplace, the solidarity of labor, and the social betterment of American workers once stood far closer to the center of the nation's political and moral consciousness." Politicians, jurists, academics and social activists--ranging from Woodrow Wilson to Louis Brandeis to Florence Kelley of the National Consumers League--all joined the debate about the threat to our "self-governing republic" posed by large-scale industrial capitalism. How could democracy survive when America's growing mass of factory workers were stripped of their civic rights, and often denied a living wage as well, whenever they entered the plant gates?
The Progressives' response was "industrial democracy"--extending constitutional rights of free speech and association to the workplace, enacting protective labor laws and securing other forms of the "social wage." Unfortunately, national-level progress toward these goals foundered after World War I on the rocks of lost strikes, political repression and Republican Party dominance in Washington. "Neither the labor movement nor the state, not to mention industrial management itself, generated the kind of relationships, in law, ideology, or practice, necessary to institutionalize mass unionism and sustain working-class living standards" during the 1920s, observes Lichtenstein.
The years of the Roosevelt Administration were a different story. State of the Union recounts how Depression-era unrest--plus the efforts of an unusual and uneasy alliance between industrial workers, labor radicals, dissident leaders of AFL affiliates, pro-union legislators and New Deal policy-makers--led to passage of the Wagner Act. It created a new legal framework for mediating labor-management disputes and boosted consumer purchasing power via the wage gains of collective bargaining.
As industrial unions experienced explosive growth before and during World War II, the previously unchecked political and economic power of the great corporations was finally tempered through the emergence of a more social democratic workers' movement, led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The CIO spoke up for the poor, the unskilled and the unemployed, as well as more affluent members of the working class. Even the conservative craft unions of the AFL ultimately grew as a result of the CIO's existence because many employers, if they had to deal with any union at all, preferred one with less ideological baggage.
Then as now, the nation's manufacturing work force was multiethnic, which meant that hundreds of thousands of recent immigrants used CIO unionism as a vehicle for collective empowerment on the job and in working-class communities. Successful organizers "cloaked themselves in the expansive, culturally pluralist patriotism that the New Deal sought to propagate," says Lichtenstein. "Unionism is the spirit of Americanism," proclaimed a labor newspaper directed at "immigrant workers long excluded from a full sense of citizenship." The exercise of citizenship rights in both electoral politics and National Labor Relations Board voting became, for many, a passport to "an 'American' standard of living."
State of the Union credits some on the left for noting, then and later, that New Deal labor legislation also had its limits and trade-offs. Wagner Act critics like lawyer-historian Staughton Lynd complain that it merely directed worker militancy into narrow, institutional channels--soon dominated by full-time union reps, attorneys for labor and management, not-so-neutral arbitrators and various government agencies. During World War II, attempts by labor officialdom to enforce a nationwide "no strike" pledge led to major rifts within several CIO unions and helped undermine the position of Communist Party members who tried to discourage wildcat walkouts.
The "union idea" that was so transcendent among liberals and radicals during the New Deal underwent considerable erosion in the 1950s. Many leading writers, professors and clergymen had signed petitions, walked picket lines, spoken at rallies, testified before Congressional committees and defended the cause of industrial organization in the 1930s. These ties began to fray after World War II and the onset of the cold war, when the CIO conducted a ruthless purge of its own left wing. This made it much harder for "outsiders" with suspect views to gain access to the increasingly parochial world of the (soon to be reunited) AFL and CIO. As Lichtenstein shows in his survey of their writings, the subsequent alienation of intellectuals like C. Wright Mills, Dwight Macdonald, Harvey Swados and others was rooted in the perception--largely accurate--that union bureaucracy and self-interest, corruption and complacency had replaced labor's earlier "visionary quest for solidarity and social transformation."
Lichtenstein questions whether unions were ever quite as fat, happy and structurally secure as some economists and historians claimed (after the fact) in books and articles on the postwar "labor-management accord." If such a deal had really existed during those years, State of the Union argues, it was "less a mutually satisfactory concordat" than "a limited and unstable truce, largely confined to a well-defined set of regions and industries...a product of defeat, not victory."
Measured by dues-payers alone, "Big Labor" was certainly bigger in the 1950s--at least compared with the small percentage of the work force represented by unions now (33 percent at midcentury versus 14 percent today). But union economic gains derived more from members-only collective bargaining than from social programs--like national health insurance--that would have benefited the entire working class.
Labor's failure to win more universal welfare-state coverage on the European or Canadian model led to its reliance--in both craft and industrial unions--on "firm-centered" fringe-benefit negotiations. The problem with the incremental advance of this "privatized welfare system" for the working-class elite was that it left a lot of other people (including some union members) out of the picture. Millions of Americans in mostly nonunion, lower-tier employment ended up with job-based pensions, group medical insurance, paid vacations, etc., that were limited or nonexistent.
The fundamental weakness of this edifice--even for workers in longtime bastions of union strength--was not fully exposed until the concession bargaining crisis of the late 1970s and '80s. As Lichtenstein describes in painful detail, employers launched a major offensive--first on the building trades, then on municipal labor and then on union members in basic industry. Pattern bargaining unraveled in a series of lost strikes and desperate giveback deals. This allowed management to introduce additional wage-and-benefit inequalities into the work force, including two-tier pay structures within the same firm, healthcare cost shifting, more individualized retirement coverage and greatly reduced job security due to widespread outsourcing and other forms of de-unionization.
By then, of course, African-Americans in the South, who suffered longest and most from economic inequality, had already risen up and made a "civil rights revolution." Their struggle was one that unions in the 1960s--at least the more liberal ones--nominally supported and in which veteran black labor activists played a seminal role. Yet the civil rights movement as a whole clearly passed labor by and further diminished its already reduced stature as the champion of the underdog and leading national voice for social justice. In a key chapter titled "Rights Consciousness in the Workplace," Lichtenstein explores how unions, their contracts and their negotiated grievance procedures have been further marginalized by the enduring legal and political legacy of the civil rights era. According to the author, this has created "the great contradiction that stands at the heart of American democracy today":
In the last forty years, a transformation in law, custom, and ideology has made a once radical demand for racial and gender equality into an elemental code of employer conduct.... But during that same era, the rights of workers, as workers, and especially as workers acting in an autonomous, collective fashion, have moved well into the shadows.... Little in American culture, politics, or business encourages the institutionalization of a collective employee voice.
Now, every US employer has to be an "equal opportunity" one or face an avalanche of negative publicity, public censure and costly litigation. Discrimination against workers--on grounds deemed unlawful by the 1964 Civil Rights Act and subsequent legislation--has become downright un-American, with the newest frontiers being the fight against unfair treatment of workers based on their physical disabilities or sexual preference. At the same time, as State of the Union and other studies have documented, collective workplace rights are neither celebrated nor well enforced [see Early, "How Stands the Union?" Jan. 22, 2001]. What Lichtenstein calls "rights consciousness" is the product of heroic social struggle and community sacrifice but, ironically, often reinforces a different American tradition: "rugged individualism," which finds modern expression in the oft-repeated threat to "call my lawyer" whenever disputes arise, on or off the job.
To make his point, Lichtenstein exaggerates the degree to which individual complaint-filers at the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (and equally backlogged state agencies) end up on a faster or more lucrative track than workers seeking redress at the National Labor Relations Board. There is no doubt, though, that high-profile discrimination litigation has paid off in ways that unfair-labor-practice cases rarely do. Among other examples, the book contrasts the unpunished mass firing of Hispanic phone workers trying to unionize at Sprint in San Francisco--a typical modern failure of the Wagner Act--with big class-action victories like the settlement securing $132 million for thousands of minority workers victimized by racist managers at Shoney's. The restaurant case involved much public "shaming and redemption" via management shakeups at the corporate level; Sprint merely shrugged off allegations of unionbusting until a federal court ruled in its favor.
Lichtenstein's solution is for labor today to find ways to "capitalize on the nation's well-established rights culture of the last 40 years," just as the CIO "made the quest for industrial democracy a powerful theme that legitimized its strikes and organizing campaigns in the 1930s." He looks to veterans of 1960s social movements--who entered the withering vineyard of American labor back when cold warriors like George Meany and Lane Kirkland still held sway--to build coalitions with nonlabor groups that can "make union organizational rights as unassailable as are basic civil rights."
In so doing, Lichtenstein recommends finding a middle way between a renewed emphasis on class that downplays identity politics--"itself a pejorative term for rights consciousness"--and an exclusive emphasis on the latter that may indeed thwart efforts to unite workers around common concerns. In the past, Lichtenstein notes, "the labor movement has surged forward not when it denied its heterogeneity" but instead found ways to affirm it, using ethnic and racial pluralism within unions to build power in more diverse workplaces and communities.
Given the enormous external obstacles to union growth, the author's other proposals--summarized in a final chapter titled "What Is to Be Done?"--seem a bit perfunctory. His "three strategic propositions for the union movement" do point in a better direction than the one in which the AFL-CIO and some of its leading affiliates are currently headed. State of the Union calls for more worker militancy, greater internal democracy and less dependence on the Democratic Party. These are all unassailable ideas--until one gets beyond the official lip service paid to them and down to the nitty-gritty of their implementation.
Too often in labor today--particularly in several high-profile, "progressive" unions led by onetime student activists--participatory democracy is missing. Membership mobilization has a top-down, carefully orchestrated character that subverts real rank-and-file initiative, decision-making and dynamism. The emerging culture of these organizations resembles Third World "guided democracies," in which party-appointed apparatchiks or technocrats provide surrogate leadership for the people who are actually supposed to be in charge. In politics, it's equally disheartening to see that labor's "independence" is not being demonstrated through the creation of more union-based alternatives to business-oriented groups within the Democratic Party or by challenging corporate domination of the two-party system. Instead, it's taking the form of very traditional and narrow special-interest endorsement deals with Republicans like New York Governor George Pataki.
This is not what Lichtenstein has in mind when he urges adoption of "a well-projected, clearly defined political posture in order to advance labor's legislative agenda and defend the very idea of workplace rights and collective action." His book applauds the authentic militants who battled contract concessions and the labor establishment prior to the 1995 palace coup that put John Sweeney and his associates in control of the AFL-CIO. While the author backs "the new agenda of the Sweeneyite leadership," with its primary focus on the right to organize, he argues that the fight for union democracy is equally "vital to restoring the social mission of labor and returning unions to their social-movement heritage."
How labor is viewed, aided, undermined or ignored by men and women of ideas (including the author) is, by itself, never going to determine its fate in any era. Workers themselves--acting through organizations they create or remake--are still the primary shapers of their own future, whether it's better or worse. Nevertheless, creative interaction between workers and intellectuals has helped spawn new forms of workplace and political organization in every nation--Poland, South Africa, Korea and Brazil--where social movement unionism has been most visible at some point in recent decades. In the United States, unions--and their new campus and community allies--face the daunting task of developing ideas and strategies that will "again insert working America into the heart of our national consciousness." If they succeed in restoring its relevance, the labor movement may yet have a broader impact on our society, and Lichtenstein's State of the Union will deserve credit for being a catalyst in that process.
There are no blue dresses to analyze in this one, or interns in berets to quiz. But make no mistake. The Enron scandal is the real thing--a window on the nexus of money and politics in Washington that is revealing our corrupted electoral, legislative and regulatory infrastructure.
Perhaps that's why the Bush White House is pushing the line that this is a business scandal, as opposed to a political one. But with mounting evidence that Enron executives were dictating Bush Administration appointments and policies affecting their company in particular and energy policy in general, Karl Rove is having a hard time getting his spin up to speed. Sure, there's a business component to the Enron affair. But, like most corporations these days, Enron was able to practice its brand of cutthroat cowboy capitalism only because of the ties it nurtured with the political class, which sets up the playing field on which businesses "compete." The Enron scandal reveals not just the lengths to which Wall Street and corporate America will go for obscene profits and personal enrichment at the expense of employees, shareholders and taxpayers but also the lengths to which politicians from Bush on down will go to help them.
Enron is about values, but not about the kinds of sexual peccadilloes condemned by Kenneth Starr and Ralph Reed--a notable beneficiary of Enron's largesse--or the traditional John Wayne-style flag-waving values of George W. Bush. As Michael Tomasky writes in the Washington Post, "'Values' can mean something else now, like integrity in business and government. It means that a president who ran on a promise of 'restoring dignity' to the White House ought to tell the truth about how long he's known the CEO who has been his biggest corporate backer. It means that the vice president should recognize as a simple ethical matter that the people...have a right to know which lobbyists he met with while formulating a major policy, just as Republicans demanded similar information from Clinton's health policy panel back in 1993."
If the political system works, if the opposition actually engages in opposition, if there is any justice--three huge ifs--the Enron scandal ought to shake Washington to the core and send tremors through the 2002 and 2004 elections. But that will happen only if Congress gets serious about performing its intended role in what is still supposed to be a system of checks and balances. The Senate must be aggressive not merely in issuing subpoenas to former Enron chief Ken Lay and his cronies but in pursuing the political players who associated with Lay. Representative John Conyers Jr., the Michigan Democrat who is the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, got to the heart of the matter when he announced that he will ask Rove to provide any information linking the Bush 2000 campaign with Enron. But Conyers will need a lot of help preventing the executive branch from weaving a cloak of invisibility around its inner operations (see Russ Baker on page 11).
Secrecy is a favored tool of the imperial presidency, and the Bush Administration's stonewalling on its Enron connections signals that it's declaring war on openness and is bent on quashing this scandal by any means. How about, for instance, distracting us with an endless war on an "axis of evil"?
Democrats must not be deterred by the Bush camp's attempts to erect a firewall of false patriotism as its defense against investigation. There are no longer any legal, moral or political grounds for not unleashing a multipronged, wide-ranging investigation into the Washington political culture that allowed an Enron--and how many more like it?--to operate unchecked. We already know a lot about who legally gave what to which politician, who lost pensions, who made out like bandits, how the scam worked, whose wheels were greased by soft money.
Now it's time for Congress to put the pieces together. Democrats in Congress should join reformer Republicans--yes, there are a few--to expose this scandal for what it is: a gamy display of excessive corporate power and a lack of economic democracy and government oversight. Congress needs to remember it's representing the people and deal with the tough issues raised by the cozy collusion between government and business (it should start with campaign finance reform in the House now and move on to putting labor and consumers on corporate boards, restoring defined benefits pensions, penalty-taxing excessive executive salaries, stopping stock price inflation and holding tricky auditors financially liable). The key vote on campaign finance is set for February 13. The outcome should tell us how serious the reform talk is.
Back in the spotlight, he condemns the trading of political favors for cash.


text: Close-Up Profiles When his school day was finished and on Saturdays, young Glenn Jacobsen would work with his father. Jacobsen senior worked at an electric company and in a tree care business on a part-time basis. "As a young lad, I grew up climbing trees and later cutting down trees," said Jacobsen. "It's a tough business, and I get my work ethic from my dad, who is a hard worker." In addition to going to high school and helping his father, Jacobsen was mowing lawns in the neighborhood. He was 15 years old. More


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Member Committees–
Executive Business Committee – Oversees the business activity of the Coalition. EBC Officers will oversee the following Sub-Committees.
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Finance Committee– Establishes policy and procedures related to expenditures, revenues, check signers, roles of and responsibilities of governance and management, audit considerations. Approves expenditures, reviews financial statements.
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Events and Fundraising Committee– Establishes annual fundraising plan and annual fundraising event. Plans for Annual meeting and Other events as necessary.


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Should you decide to turn hackberry, take shallows cuts to avoid splintering, and make them with sharp tools.
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Before we begin, we want to make sure that we get the name of this event perfectly correct: the Inaugural JE Pistons NMRA/NMCA West Coast Shootout presented by Lucas Oil. Why all the worry about making a proper introduction? That's easy—in bringing the NMRA/NMCA act to the Left Coast for the first time, the efforts of the sanctioning bodies and sponsoring companies combined to produce a great event period, no debate. It was a load of fun, an extravaganza with something for everyone—well, there were no open laps on the Auto Club Speedway oval, but short of that, there's not much more a gearhead could have asked for.
Right off the bat, the NMRA and NMCA had almost all of their race classes running. We say almost because Pro Street and Outlaw 10.5 classes had to sit out because of ongoing noise restriction issues at Auto Club Dragway. That left, however, plenty of other ways to tip down the straight line, including the Nitto Tire West Coast Shootout, the Mickey Thompson Xtreme Drag Radial and Wild Street classes, the Centerforce Hot Street class, the Ford Racing Mustang Madness class (for those who swing that way), and three bracket classes in place. Just that added up to a full two days, but believe us, there was much more going on. (You can find race results for the NMRA/NMCA slate at www.nmradigital.com or www.nmcadigital.com).
The premier event of the weekend, held on Saturday, was the Racers Against Street Racing (RASR) True Street Challenge present by Tremec, Muscle Mustangs and Fast Fords magazine, and Nitto Tire. Tremec True Street is one of the organization's most popular classes. Even so, it made it even bigger for this initial West Coast running by including a class for the many West Coast–based magazine staffers, and another manufacturer class, all in an effort to promote the event, as well as a cause: RASR (www.rasr.org). Take racing off the street and put it on the track (where it belongs), is their motto, and that's what the True Street participants did.
The idea? Any street-legal cars had to complete a 15- to 20-mile cruise (we heard this one was more like 30), which in this case happened primarily on the Cal Speedway ovals … not a bad way to go. Once complete, the participants pulled directly into special staging lanes (right in front of the spectator grandstands) and had to complete three back-to-back quarter-mile passes. The fastest average time won. Several NHRA Wallys were on the line, we'll tell you that, but multiple plaques were given out for time classes—along with lots of goodies—take it from us that the manufacturers were generous. Doesn't sound so hard to some of you? Well, here are the facts, or at least as close as we could get to them. Forty-three cars lined up to start the event; 15 did not finish, and three more were disqualified for receiving outside assistance (once the event started, only the driver could touch the car—even a push from a friend got you booted). In short, the event was a tough challenge that lived up to its True Street name.
Even then, that's not all that was going on. Hotchkis Sport Suspension came through in magnificent style for those who like to turn their cars a bit, sponsoring a weekend-long autocross event that did a brisk business both days of the weekend. The competition was close, we'd say even cutthroat, but the H-crew brought along plenty of extra helmets, and rides were available all weekend long. Along with that was the Baer Brakes Speed-Stop Challenge that presented quite the challenge by requiring participants to go from a dead stop to as fast as they dared before stopping 600 feet down the road within a 20x40-foot stop box—without taking out any cones, which is always easier said than done.


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Where's the Change?
The Democratic Party's long-term prospects have dramatically improved since the November election. They will control the White House for another four years. The Republicans, who lost the total vote for the House of Representatives, remain captive of an unpopular reactionary right wing. The "Obama Coalition" of minorities and single women is growing faster than the GOP's white male base. If demography is destiny, Democrats—and the progressive interests that they are supposed represent in the two-party system—are the wave of the future.
But the American dream is about upward mobility. Ultimately, "The economy, Stupid" trumps identity politics. If the Democrats are not the champions of expanding jobs and incomes for the majority of voters who work for a living—whatever their gender, color, or sexual orientation—their claim to being the natural majority party will amount to little.
So it made political sense that Barack Obama began his 2013 State of the Union with this economic challenge:
"Corporate profits have skyrocketed to all-time highs, but for more than a decade, wages and incomes have barely budged. It is our generation's task, then, to reignite the true engine of America's economic growth: a rising, thriving middle-class."
He went on to outline a second-term agenda that most liberals welcomed as finally revealing the true, audacious Barack Obama. "Incredibly ambitious," enthused Ezra Klein in The Washington Post. If Obama's plans were enacted, Klein wrote, "America would be a markedly different country."
Would it? Even if Congress were to whisk the president's entire economic agenda into law, the impact such an improbable feat would have on "our generation's task" of reversing the decline of real wages and incomes is nearly nil.
The root causes of the long-term slide in real wages and incomes are: 1) inadequate demand both here and abroad for what American workers produce; 2) financial deregulation, which has diverted American capital away from domestic production and toward short-term speculation; 3) the 30-year corporate war against trade unions.
Barack Obama's agenda will not change any of these conditions.
Presidents' rhetorical reach often exceeds their realistic grasp. But the issue here is not that Washington politics might prevent this president from delivering on his agenda. It is that the agenda is not designed to deliver.
Obama's No. 1 priority is to reach a ten-year deal with Republicans to reduce the federal deficit. Imagine that the president prevails completely; i.e., that by the end of this year Congress accepts his proposal for a deficit reduction of roughly $4 trillion (some of which has already been agreed to) with a roughly 55 percent to 45 percent split between spending cuts and taxes. Because the economy is operating below capacity, the net effect of the president's proposal would be to reduce the domestic demand for jobs, certainly between now and the election of 2016 and probably throughout the next decade.
In February, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that on its current path the U.S. economy would reach full recovery, i.e., 5 percent unemployment, by 2017. It was, to say the least, optimistic, given that it assumed no budget sequestration and no further bipartisan deal cut budget deficits. Assuming the average rate of job growth since the recovery began, we will not reach 5-percent unemployment until 2022. The CBO's projections rely on a leap of faith that somehow, from somewhere, the private sector will deliver a burst of new growth.
In fact, the CBO's model has been forecasting a return to 5 percent unemployment in four years ever year since 2009. But let's say this time they luck out. Recovery by 2017 would still mean at least another four years of joblessness and lost income for millions of Americans. Moreover, even reaching and sustaining 5-percent unemployment would not be enough to reignite middle-class prosperity. We averaged 5 percent for the seven years prior to the financial crash of 2008, but globalization, deregulation, and the erosion of unions continued to drag down wages.
The president has no intention of changing the trade policies that have been undercutting U.S. jobs and wages for more than 30 years. In fact, with the support of congressional Republicans, he wants yet another trade deal—this one with 11 Pacific Rim countries—that will once again bargain away the interests of American workers in favor of the interests of American corporate investors.
To make Americans more competitive, Obama says we need more investment in infrastructure, education, and technology. He's clearly right; such spending is an essential—although not sufficient—part of any competitiveness strategy. But just as clearly, the President's actual intentions do not rise to the level needed. In fact, they do not rise at all.
His prior commitment to deficit reduction would shrink the domestic discretionary budget, 50 percent of which is investment, from 3.1 percent to 1.7 percent of GDP. There is no conceivable reordering of priorities within that category that would keep the share of public investment untouched, much less increase it.
On the continued addiction of the country's capital markets to the destructive speculation that led us to the crash of 2008, Obama's agenda is silent. Meanwhile, the largest financial companies now have a bigger share of the markets than they had in 2008 and the administration's lax post-Dodd-Frank financial regulation is a national scandal. The Wall Street casinos are again open for business.
The president's proposal to increase the minimum wage would directly help many of the working poor put bread on the table and pay the rent. But history tells us that the major institutional support—both at the workplace and the ballot box—for assuring that all workers' wages rise with their productivity has been the labor movement, whose impact on the job market goes way beyond its members. Although he could not have been elected or re-elected without organized labor, Obama has no plan to resist the relentless gutting of collective bargaining by corporations and state legislatures alike.
Barack Obama is not stupid. Neither are his economic advisers. They understand how a modern economy functions. They know that reducing government deficits in an anemic economy will increase unemployment. They know globalization, financial deregulation, and the corporate war on workers is eroding American living standards.
They also know that there are alternatives. There is by now wide agreement among independent, Democratic-leaning economists on the elements of a serious national recovery program of short-term stimulus, long-term investment, and other policies to increase the demand for and the wages of working Americans. (See, for starters, the "Back-to-work" budget of the House Progressive Caucus, the Prosperity Economics plan endorsed by the AFL-CIO and a wide variety of groups, and the writings of Nobel Laureates Joe Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.) There is no dearth of ideas.
So what explains the unwillingness of this administration to present a plan that might actually "reignite" the middle-class prosperity the president needs for his legacy and his party needs for its future?
The most obvious answer is that Democratic leaders are afraid to threaten the economic power and ideological comfort of the country's corporate rich, who finance the Democrats' campaigns and careers, and whose hired help populates the upper reaches of the party's policymaking. To take them on, the president would have to launch and sustain a populist educational campaign to undo the myths about big government and deficit spending that have so confused the electorate. But that is too much heavy political lifting for a White House whose economic advisers will go back to Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and other financial firms, as well as the Washington lobbying groups that serve their interests. Easier to put his faith in the perennial happy-face projections of the CBO than tackle that crowd. Hope, it turns out, is a strategy—of sorts.
But do the decision-makers of the Democratic Party think that they can sustain a political majority with no serious strategy for dealing with the eroding living standards of a majority of the electorate?
Judging by their behavior, that is exactly what they think—and it's not irrational. If you assume their demographic advantage and that Republicans will remain deeply fractured by their lunatic fringe for some time, Democrats do not actually have to deliver on their promise to reignite middle-class living standards. They can win national elections just by being the socially liberal and economically conservative option.
The party's leaders have plenty of reason to think they have the loyalty of their activist base in their pocket. Yes, there is grumbling among unions, environmentalists, and the liberal bloggers about Obama's centrist instincts, his Wall Street advisers, and his political judgment. But it is just grumbling. After the election, progressives vowed to hold the party's "feet to the fire." But on the very first test—the opportunity for the Senate Democrats to end the conservative abuses of the filibuster abuses—they let the party leadership slip comfortably off the hook.
For a variety of reasons, the Democratic left lacks the independence, strength and hard edge of the Republican right. There is nothing on the progressive side of our politics like the Tea Party—which now even gets its own network slot, separate from the GOP, to respond to the president's State of the Union. The Republican establishment is afraid of their right. Neither the White House nor the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees are afraid of their left.
The message from the Democratic establishment to its base is: "Chill out—your turn will come." If you accept their rosy scenario, they make a plausible, if cynical, case to liberals for patience: Since time is now on the Democratic side, Obama's compromised improvements in government programs can be built on later. How much later? Who knows?
So far American voters certainly have been willing to wait—and in the meantime, suck it up. A few short years ago, it was unimaginable that a president could be re-elected after four years in which the unemployment rate averaged almost 9 percent. So if the people are OK with four years of rough times, why not six, or eight?
Disappointed and debt-ridden 20- and 30-somethings did not rally around Occupy Wall Street's call for active dissent; they have adjusted to hard times by working more hours, delaying marriage, and milking each other's networks in a desperate effort to find a career. Nor have the middle-aged breadwinners whose lives have been shattered by corporate brutality taken to the streets. Their elders, whose hopes for retirement have evaporated, seem resigned to working until they drop.
There are a few clouds in the Democratic leadership's happy, self-justifying scenario of how they capture the future. One is that in the absence of more stimulus, the economy might tank, with the Democrats taking the blame. Another is that the electorate's seeming passivity might mask a seething and volatile anger, which when it finally explodes will demand truly radical change. At that point, the Democratic Party, with an atrophied and co-opted left wing, could find itself unable to respond, while the far more organized right wing of the Republican Party, having developed a more sophisticated outreach to economically frustrated minorities, single women and immigrants, could fill the populist vacuum.
Democrats who dismiss these possibilities should keep in mind how quickly the political odds can change. Just two short years ago, the conventional wisdom was that it was the Republicans, triumphant from their Tea Party-driven victory in the 2010 election, who represented the majoritarian politics of tomorrow.
It's conceivable that the mainstream Democratic left could strike out on its own—building a political movement that is willing to take on centrists in primary fights, to refuse to support the party's grand bargains that undercut working people, and to take the risk of sitting out elections where there is little distinction between the candidates of different parties. In short, a strategy that forces the party to act in the interests of the majority it claims to represent.
But that requires that progressives abandon the hope that the future will fall into their laps if they are just patient and follow their leaders. If you believe that, you would have believed the sign that hung for years in the window of a tavern in the neighborhood where I grew up: "Free Beer, Tomorrow."
Thu, 2013-04-11 22:34
The premise of this article is a very familiar one in which the establishment is omnipotent and people are mere spectators. When buying into this premise the reader comes away with a view of the world that's long been sculpted by the establishment and that is now enhanced subtly with some new bush strokes. A magnificent masterpiece. That is, if your own aspiration is to compete for and win a coveted position in that establishment.
But what if you think that establishment stinks? Never fear, for the establishment has something for YOU too! It will calmly criticize itself to put your concerns to rest. It is a bad old establishment, but no badder than human nature, and how can you hope to better human nature? You can't. All you can do is cling to the lesser evil division of the establishment and be happy you weren't born into poverty on the other side of the planet. This has long been the foundation under the evolving establishment narrative.
But it's not beneficial to the people. The people's foundational ideas are that we don't need the establishment, but rather we only need ourselves. So messages should be framed in ways that resonate with the people's worldview, for example, that those in Washingtown have no legitimate agendas of their own, but that anyone and everyone who's there must answer to the people. Articles must be framed as such. Else, they don't work for the people.
Thu, 2013-04-11 23:06
Huh? Democrats don't have a "growing coalition." Just the opposite. When Bill Clinton took an ax to the Great Society programs, something that even Reagan said he would never do (though his reason was based on the fact that this would actually wipe out the middle class, thereby wiping out tax revenues), who didn't know that the next Democrat in office might take an ax to the New Deal? What's left of the Dem's coalition consists almost exclusively of what's left of the middle class. Already-stressed families are now faced with trying to figure out how to help provide for elderly and disabled loved ones, because of today's Democrats. This isn't the first time when the US was in this situation. In the past, the poor and middle classes, workers and the jobless, united to successfully push back, to the benefit of both. But this time, Democrats deeply divided (maybe conquered) the "masses," pitting the middle against the poor. The middle class stands alone, with no representation in government (tons of empty pandering by the rich and their media, intended to pacify the middle).
Fri, 2013-04-12 15:45
The right wing has promoted the false gospel that SMALL business owners are helped by the same things that help BIG business, and thus ought to vote the interests of big business; and that any help to the needy, even the deserving needy, is a threat to small business owners and to middle income workers. The truth is that BIG business profits if the regulations are not too expensive for THEM to meet (or better, regulations are on the books but they can lobby to have themselves exempted -- a word whose Latin origin literally means "bought out") but which will cripple their small competitors. And the truth is that poor and middle class workers have the same interests; middle class workers are brainwashed to think like investors, not employees, even though their potential income may be very small.
The Democrats did not have to turn the middle class against the poor; the conservative talk radio and Faux Newz have already done that. The situation is like three men walking into a bar where snacks are being given out: a middle class worker, a low income worker, and a CEO. As the CEO grabs all but one snack for himself, he tells the middle class worker to watch out because the low income worker wants to steal "your snack."
The Democrats are less reliable an ally of big corporations than the Republicans, since the Democratic base votes the other way, while the Republican base votes the way their TV and radio personalities and Christian Taliban preachers tell them to vote, at their own expense. The more support Democrats can get from the liberal base, the less they will depend on the crumbs their corporate "friends" give them. Like the fundamentalist "friends" of Israel, who only want to maneuver Israel into a war to fulfill their end-time fantasies, these "friends" really want to replace the Democratic recipients of their largess with Republicans, who will be their TRUE allies.
Again, thanks to gerrymandering and the propaganda power of big money, a Democrat who is "primaried" by a more liberal Democrat often gets a Republican elected by voters who liked the "moderate" Democrat more, and are persuaded by big money that the liberal nominee is worse than turning over the seat to Republicans. But a Republican who is "primaried" by a more extreme Republican MIGHT just see the extremist elected over a moderate Democratic candidate. We were lucky this last time (and the turnout for Obama helped too) that the GOP nominees for some seats were SO wacky that even moderate Republicans voted Democratic, putting a few good progressives in office in supposedly "red" districts and states.
So, as nice as it might be to fantasize about the coming liberal/populist tsunami, we really DO need the lesser evil part of the establishment in order to avoid being GOVERNED BY the wackos. And we also need liberal voters to turn out in state and local elections in OFF YEARS, to defeat a few more of the gerrymandered Tea Party wackos (and especially to defeat the even WACKIER people that might have defeated them in THEIR primaries). The President cannot govern as a Democrat, even a moderate one, with a gerrymandered House majority of Republicans and a gerrymandered Senate filibuster corps of over 40 percent Republicans, until the Republicans become sane again, which may not be for a long time.
Fri, 2013-04-12 15:49
Great article by Faux! Think he has caught the basic cynicism, if not arrogance of this White House and the Democratic leadership. I, just think that perhaps anger, frustration and lose of patience felt by the middle class, as well as the unemployed and union members maybe closer to the top and boiling over than many understand or are willing to acknowledge. Obama's and many Democratic Senators' willingness to capitulate with unnecessary S.S., Medicare and Medicaid cuts, may have crossed the line with its "let em eat cake", approach! Middle class working and professional sons and daughters, some of who are unemployed and/or partial supporters and/or care givers of elderly parents or seniors themselves have as yet to go to a grocery, only to find Peterson/Simpson policies, along with approval by Democrats assumes they will buy less costly , lower grade, unkosher (unclean) chickens and meats and canned fruits and vegetables, along with not so fresh produce? Perhaps, Obama's priority for dining with Republicans to get a bipartisan grand bargain, at the expense of the 98%, will leave him, not as the "pied piper" but rather the "emperor with no clothes" ,?
Sat, 2013-04-13 19:00
Whether or not the democratic coalition is growing, there will be no serious outcry from the disenfranchised middle class no matter what toll the economy takes. We have no serious alternative. Progressive groups offer no coherent blueprint for implementing their agendas, and even if they weren't hopelessly fragmented as a coalition, they couldn't attract large numbers of serious supporters because they have no comprehensive game plan. There will be no revolution instigated by unemployed citizens because there is no viable alternative on the horizon. And progressives lack the ability to adequately educate the masses (and themselves apparently) as to the underlying causes and the most feasible solutions to the economic crisis swallowing the country. People will continue to choose the lesser of evils in forthcoming elections.
Ben Leet
Mon, 2013-04-15 12:01
The progressives have a pretty coherent and credible plan of action and budget. I believe their message will begin to catch. They need challengers within the Dem party in primaries, such as Norman Soloman did in California, though he lost. At the top they need Russ Feingold or some known name to challenge the do-nothing Democrats now holding a majority of Congress. The truth will out, eventually. A quibble: the unemployment rate has not improved since the Recession bottomed out in June 2009, employment growth has just kept even with population growth, there is no improvement, 2017 or 2022 will not see improvement. CPEG, Chicago Political Economy Group, has an article this month on it. Also, election campaign finance is dominated by the wealthy, 1/3rd of all donations in the last election were over $10,000, and only 0.5% of U.S. adults donated more than $200. That's Obama's strength, where he and most politicians draw their power. You have to check Open Secrets, the web page for Center for Responsive Government to verify that claim. Excellent article by Jeff Faux.
In 2011 the Progressive Caucus in the California Democratic Party were de-certified, dis-owned, kicked out of the party because they floated the idea of challenging Obama in the presidential primary.
Thu, 2013-04-18 10:00
When Congress and Obama go against issues with 80% approval rating, they are putting themselves at risk. Clinton could triangulate and sign NAFTA without the media informing educated readers. Today the recent trade bill that gives away IT jobs to imported workers and other anti-American clauses is read and understood by large numbers on the internet. Perhaps the 30 year run of Reaganomics with its amazing success pushing money to the top and social services out of business will continue. But both Republicans and Democrats suffer when they see their children gunned down or their parents not able to buy cat food. We are at the extremes with Obama playing games that are the opposite of his campaign promises. Corruption is obvious, integrity long gone, Billionaires captured power. The red states are in open rebellion to the federal government. This can not continue. Something will happen.
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