We don’t measure darkness, stillness, cold or silence.  These conditions represent the absence of something, namely light, speed, heat and sound.  There are no shades of black; it is the absence of color.  There are many ways to see, but blind is blind.  Scientists define a total lack of heat as “absolute zero.”  It is important to accept that there are “absolutes” in our lives and the presence of evil is one of those realities.  Evil is to goodness what darkness is to light, its absence.

We can increase light, motion, temperature and sound infinitely while their absences are by definition finite or “absolute.”  The absence of light can’t be made any darker. There is no state of stillness beyond motionless, absolute zero is as cold as it can get and silence can’t be made any quieter.  The bible tells us “But the path of the just is like the shining sun, that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day.” Proverbs 4:18.

Darkness is conquered by light just as goodness conquers evil.

God’s heaven is a state of total goodness and the lack of all evil.  Here on earth, we cannot create a heavenly state we can only strive towards goodness by rejecting evil.

Nature and Divinity abhor a vacuum and when goodness by way of Godliness decreases and when we reject God from our lives, evil moves in to fill that spiritual vacuum.  Just as the path towards darkness increases gradually as the sun sets, evil falls upon us as our souls give into the worldly and the wicked.  Just as the warmth of summer yields to fall and then winter’s cold, mankind in a spiritual vacuum tests the unworldly frigidity of absolute failing, absolute tragedy and absolute anguish.

While the angst, suffering and heartbreak we see today all around us overwhelms the feint of heart and the spiritually suffering, there is a solution.  The absolute Goodness of God overcomes evil but only when we embrace the former and reject the later through the grace of the Lord.  He tells us, “Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” Matthew 13:43.

The senseless killings we see day after day correspond with the mental and spiritual illness we see increasing in our world.  The objects people use to murder and snuff out life are distracting representations keeping us from examining the harder, less obvious problems of mental illness, the corruption of the human soul and the degradation of the value of life.  When we ignore or at best, fail to cultivate our own commitments to righteousness we see the proliferation of evil that fills the vacuum of our own making.

The Lord God possesses all goodness.  Striving to follow Him is the pathway to pushing evil back into the absolute pit of its own birth and to bury its presence in our lives through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

NOTE: I wrote this article in 2003 just before my dad passed away

The youngest of eight boys and a sister, my father’s biggest fear as a 17-year-old was that the war which had called all of his brother’s would end before he could enlist.

He just made it.

My father was a strong and decisive man, self-made in the tradition of the American hard work ethos, rising from a laundryman in a hospital to a policeman in our little town.  From walking the beat, then patrolman, finally detective, he persevered through bad bosses and good times.

He raised our family and demonstrated a strong faith.  He sang at the top of his voice regardless of whether he was in the church choir or sitting in our family pew dating to 4-generations.  He showed me the power of absolute values and uncompromising principles.

He listened to talk radio before it was popular, late at night the crackling faint and fluctuating AM-radio voices sounding so far away, making it feel so special.  He took me to a small church in the country on some Sunday nights so he could sing real loud and enjoy the company of the minister, his dear friend.

Dad showed me that crying was OK as a man and he leaned on me as a boy when I thought I couldn’t do things,  but I could, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.  He introduced me to death as his mother and then older brothers fell one by one.  I knew it was all a dress rehearsal.

He loved my mother harder than he should have.  He hadn’t considered his own vulnerability, it wouldn’t have been right.  That would undermine the commitment, the uncontested, no restrictions love that he thought transcended all.  He was wrong sometimes.  The divorce nearly killed him.  His only chance was to wade back in quickly.

No good deed shall go unpunished and indeed it did not.  Five children, all pre-teens and a 2^nd wife with shoulders built to carry a chip.  He did the difficult with no thanks and suffered at the hand of her having it both ways because he relished the task of being needed.

We all assailed him as adults with various and wide ranging admonitions, requests, presents, favors, accusations, automobiles and accolades.  He was accused of high crimes and misdemeanors and the saving of lives.  Some disliked him because he stood for something and was unashamed in defining it.

He was born late enough to have science save him from the heart disease that took his father and brothers, only to live long enough to be sentenced to death without parole in the cell of a nursing home, a prisoner lost in his own mind.  The Law of Unintended Consequences.

I speak of him as if he were dead because the disease insures that he is, forced to observe it all from his frail body with a capacity just functional enough to feel the terror of the reality every once in a while.  Where is God in all of this?  Why the loss of dignity to such a good soldier?

The only reason I’m not embittered by my father’s dilemma is the knowledge that if he were healthy and guiding me today, he would tell me not to be.  He would look me straight in the eye and tell me that God had nothing to do with this.  It’s because of his faith and example that I believe him.

An Open Letter to Former President Trump

Mr. President:                                                                           November 9, 2022

I strongly encourage you to run for the office of President of the United States once again in the 2024 election.  Armed with the experience you gained in your first term, I can only imagine what progress you will make in your second.  The country needs you desperately and the stakes could not be higher for refocusing, rebuilding and re-exciting both the country and the citizenry.

Mr. President, I believe that enlisting the support of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as your Vice-President will afford you the highest likelihood of gaining that second-term for which American’s so hopefully pray. 

Engaging Governor DeSantis as a protagonist is a mistake.  Instead of potentially weakening a terrific governor with a splendid track record, enormous name recognition and wide-spread public support, better to harness that positive energy for not only your re-election, but to insure the legacy of accomplishment two strong-willed and patriotic men can best accomplish together.

I believe the key to this alliance will be to assure the Governor that it is your solemn promise to do everything in your power to see to it that he is your successor.  Leaving Governor DeSantis out of the equation for 2024 will only spell trouble in splitting voters and by doing so, assist the opposition party by encouraging us to war against ourselves and thereby making their path to a victory that much easier.

Mr. President, please Take America Back Again and do so with the horsepower of a Trump/DeSantis ticket to a sure fire victory.

Kind regards,

Bob Kingsley

If you need an example of today’s double-speak and lack of personal responsibility, look no further than today’s story in the Wall Street Journal, (WSJ) regarding Tyson Foods Chief Financial Officer, (CFO) John R. Tyson entitled, “Tyson CFO Held On charge Of Home Trespass.”

This 32-year-old “man” is the silver-spooned-snot-nose son of Tyson Food founder John W. Tyson and according to the WSJ article, the younger Tyson got so drunk that he was found asleep in the wrong house.  He was subsequently arrested for criminal trespass and public intoxication.

Here is the money quote, from Tyson himself:

“I am embarrassed for personal conduct that is inconsistent with my personal values.”

Huh?

REALITY CHECK SON:

Your personal conduct DEFINES your personal values.  Tyson’s twisted logic here infers that his conduct was somehow independent from his values.  Sorry Johnny but that thinking won’t fly any better than your chickens.  If your alleged personal values were as elevated as you suggest, your CONDUCT would reflect that.

Here is a better public statement that would be at least honest:

“I am embarrassed that I didn’t take appropriate measures to enlist the help of others to monitor my drunkenness and keep me out of trouble.  Unlike most people, I can afford to hire any number of people to see to it that I stay out of trouble and I didn’t do that and for that, well, I’m embarrassed.  I’m counting on the fact that regardless of my personal life issues, Tyson Foods will continue to provide me the boat-loads of money I regularly receive for the rest of my life.  Thanks dad.”

Tyson’s chickens will never come home to roost.

Broome County voters are facing a terrible choice when it comes to electing our next sheriff.  NYS Senator and former Broome County sheriff Captain Fred Akshar is running for Broome County sheriff against Kate Newcomb, his former live-in girlfriend and current Captain in that same sheriff’s office.

The adage about politics and odd-bedfellows has never been more literal.

Akshar is campaigning on “Principled Leadership”.  Seriously?  How “principled” was it to have a sexual encounter with a woman involved in an active criminal case still at trial in which Akshar was involved?  How “principled” was it to dispatch his own brother, (also a Broome County sheriff at the time), to a domestic dispute involving one of his political friends who will undoubtedly be running for Broome County district attorney in the next election?  How “principled” was it to hire an assistant in his office and raise her salary exponentially while having a romance with her, only to be slapped down by the Senate ethics committee?

As for Newcomb, how “principled” was it for her to interfere with a NYS Police investigation involving her nephew, advising him to obstruct an investigation into his drunk driving and then protecting him while screaming at the troopers that she should be afforded professional courtesy because of her position in the sheriff’s department?

Barring a miracle, Akshar will win this race, parlaying the vote-getting appeal of former Binghamton mayor Rich David in exchange for his Senate seat.  After Akshar takes office, you can expect to see Newcomb resign and the county loses a career cop while gaining back a man with well documented integrity and judgment issues.

Then, God forbid, in two years, the Akshar political machine gets into gear and elects his buddy Paul Battisti to the Broome County District Attorney’s office, that’s right, the same guy who called in a favor in having his former wife arrested by Akshar’s brother in the parking lot of Dick’s in Binghamton.  The same Paul Battisti that owed more than 86,000.00 in back taxes to the IRS in 2019.

“Principled Leadership”

When the two most significant legal entities in the county are being managed by men with a history of manipulating the legal system, womanizing, using taxpayer monies to over-pay girlfriends and failing to pay their own taxes, what kind of a justice system will that mean for Broome County?  Those systems will be forged in the respective images of the men who manage them, striking at the very heart of institutions that rely overwhelmingly on morality, truth, character and high principles, qualities which go wanting by all those political players.

Thomas Jefferson was right when he said, “The government you elect is the government you deserve.”

The Covid crisis not only crippled ridership of the poorly run Broome County transit system, it shed much needed light on what is an under-scrutinized and opaque government operation.

According to a former career county worker within the department, BC Transit is a corrupt, mismanaged operation that misrepresents facts, cooks the books and cheats taxpayers out of millions of dollars. 

Because over 75% of the department’s budget is funded with federal and state tax dollars, management was quoted as saying to employees, “We don’t run this like a business because we don’t have to.”  No doubt about that.  The 21 fixed route bus lines run empty the majority of the time and most routes could be serviced with a motorcycle and side-car.  Instead, a fleet of nearly 50 full-sized buses traverse thousands of miles of roads, usually with only the driver aboard, little more than diesel-belching billboards.   Astonishingly, the department claims 2-million rides last year which equates to a just-not-believable 5400 plus riders a day, every day, a total fabrication.

In the competitive world of private enterprise, buses would be replaced with passenger vans, adjusting to dwindling demand and saving fuel and maintenance costs.  Instead, strong unions prohibit any changes and routes are set and unalterable.  Because of that, dozens of perfectly suitable vans sit silently in the Broome Transit lot.

When there is no competition and no profit incentive, there are no consequences and that crushes motivation.  BC Transit is little more than a 13 million dollar make-work-program for the 100 plus employees that devour an annual salary and pension cost of about 9 million dollars.

With alternatives like Uber, Lyft, electric scooters, bikes, and work-from-home situations becoming the norm, these realities don’t influence the “we’ve-always-done-it-this-way” mindset of an organization that has no reason to be better and brags about its own mediocrity.  Instead, we celebrate when Senator Schumer announces a $12M infusion of electric buses into the fleet so we can more greenly and grandly waste taxpayer’s money.

Just a few of the ways the county does this:

• The newer hybrid buses have power trains made by Cummins Corp.  Cummins contractors are on-site almost every day, at $1500/day fixing problems that the employees cannot.

• Instead of using an older bus closer to the end of usefulness to provide a Covid enclosure, management instead put a newer, $700,000.00 dollar hybrid unit into that role thereby rendering it inoperable for anything else and ultimately scrapped.

• When touring the BAE bus manufacturing facility to see the newest models, management overruled the recommendations of BAE officials when choosing buses, opting for all electric versions when experts were telling them that was the wrong application for our area and terrain, deciding instead that green symbolism was a better political choice.

BC Transit should be privatized, along with the Arena, the Forum and the Willow Point nursing home, all entities that the county has proven it cannot manage.  Government fails miserably when competing with the private sector.  Get back to basics.