Saturday, March 18, 2017

March 18, 2017


Phil Beaver works to establish opinion when the-objective-truth has not been discovered. He seeks to refine his opinion by learning other people’s experiences and observations. The comment box below invites sharing facts, opinion, or concern. If you like the wok, share with people who may be interested.
Note:  I often connect words in a phrase with the dash in order to represent an idea. For example, frank-objectivity represents the idea of candidly expressing the-objective-truth without addressing possible error or attempting to balance the expression.

The Advocate:

In a city plagued by mayoral black-racism, black theology, and black-church, St. Patrick’s Day seems an inclusive celebration that's growing bigger each year. I guess Americans can recognize light within the dark.

Our Views. I am distracted by Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, 1967 and making notes.

Yet I’m reading Twain’s book at http://literatureproject.com/life-mississippi/index.htm . So far, no notes seemed needed.
  
Today’s thought. Ephesians 4:32. IMO, this is one of Paul’s most egregious offenses against civic morality:  Immoral in that it asserts that only Christians should express human appreciation.

Each human being has the psychological power to perfect the unique person his or her body and mind empowers. The people in history who have asserted this first principle include Jesus, Pelagius, and Ralph Waldo Emerson (RWE). [Reader, please tell me others.]

I had read several erroneous books on progress in a virtuous life before discovering RWE’s assertion: Phil Beaver you can perfect yourself. Then, I gleaned the practical possibility from H. A. Overstreet’s book, The Mature Mind, 1949. I perceive I am beyond the beginning but could be wrong: I don't know. Overstreet mainly expressed the human journeys he professionally observed.

Part of perfection is sufficient humility. If worship and praise are essential to a person’s expression of humility, that’s it: He or she has the psychological power to make that determination. If a person does not value worship and praise as expressions of humility, that’s it: He or she has the psychological power to make that determination.

Either way, persons who express humility in living may be appreciated for their civic morality.

Recall “civic” describes mutually-appreciated-behavior between connecting/transacting persons there and then rather than either one party's arbitrary submission to an ideology (social morality such as Christianity) or to tradition (civil morality), yet upholding the republic (statutory law). Mutual appreciation requires real-no-harm connections and transactions.

BTW: Ephesus today is a ruin, whereas one of the other seven cities addressed in Revelation, Smyrna, is now Izmir, a large Turkish city. See christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2011/june/thursday-is-for-turkey-church-in-ephesus.html and biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+2 .
  
Letters:
 
Coast threat (Gasperecz). “. . . there is nothing we can do . . . to protect ourselves from a 3-to-6-foot rise in sea level.”

I beg to differ. Move to higher ground, build higher, and convert ground floors to non-use. If possible, don't count on government to solve problems you face.
  
Spending $50 billion on the coast when researchers are hinting that even $90 billion is insufficient makes no sense. Also, beware unintended consequences (ameliorating phrase for acting without a well-grounded plan). For example, over a century ago levees were built without silt-gates with downstream land dedicated for coast-protection only. See coastal.la.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MBSD_TO21_Report_Draft_07-28-2014.pdf and coastal.la.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MBSD_Alt_1_Base_Design_Report_30_July_2014_App_H_Opinion_Probable_Construction_Cost.pdf page 29 for total $1 billion estimate.

Also, as we saw last summer, local rain can cause flooding. We can move to higher ground, raise homes, and convert ground floors to un-used space.

Moreover, we have no idea where cosmos is taking the earth’s atmosphere, and therefore, we have no sound basis for trying to control the atmosphere, excepting to reduce population growth. But this, the only variable we may control we do not control: The people cannot count on government because the people are government.

This is why I work to establish a civic people: People who not only earn their living but collaborate for civic justice, in other words, public-integrity, during a lifetime.

To Scuddy LeBlanc: your post sent me looking for a neat graph with temperature scale changes that shows global warming predictions with red dots leading straight up, IMO to scare the people. The rest of the graph shows “what goes up always comes down.” I didn’t find it; the URL is in one of my earlier posts.

However, I happened upon this much more impressive and informative graph: see joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-65-million-years-of-temperature-swings/ . It is a graph of “interglacial temperatures,” meaning the record of temperature spikes that delineate ice ages. Quoting the author, “Despite recent rumors of global warming, we are actually in a deep freeze.” I have read this claim before, but never with evidence that it is true!

Thank goodness the people voted for Donald Trump, a listener more than a speaker.

(It is unfortunate that some people neither work for a living nor collaborate for civic justice---in other words public-integrity---but a person should never give up on the people.)

Compassion (Angers). Compassion is no excuse for failing the obligations of an elected office. As a Senator, Cassidy disappoints and so far has not inspired me to vote for him again.

Drop dead, Phil (Johnson). To Danny Garrett: I like the idea of a student writing a letter: I'm a student.
 
But the letter should reflect the student’s experiences and observations rather than dictate an erroneous adult agenda.

In this case, Johnson might have expressed what he is doing to live without contributing to his concern (which I don’t share).

There are better ways for The Advocate to encourage students to write.

After all, we don’t want to foster students who offer nothing to appreciate demanding respect from the university administration while they attack the professors, do we.
  
Froma Harrop column. For a change, Harrop seems thinking, IMO. 
 
And she helped me understand the wisdom of the approach being taken on health care. Take it out of the federal budget, which seems like an impersonal source of wealth and move to the states, where the people may feel the impact of self-discipline or its privation.
 
We already see this fairness in other areas, so governors and state legislatures need to reform to serving the people. And the people need to establish civic morality, in other words public integrity.
 
Even liberal democrats will need to collaborate for security so that they may responsibly push the envelope of civic constraints. "Responsibly" means either preventing real harm or paying the price.

Cokie and Steve Roberts column. Even liberal democrat writers ought to realize there are threats to civic morality a human does not make.

First, they present their opinion as “the most basic obligation of Christianity” as though Christianity somehow represents the-objective-truth rather than phantasms and mysteries.
 
Then, they invoke one version of the ultimate personal phantasm: after the body, mind, and person stop functioning---during the afterdeath---the soul survives or not or in hell or heaven. They threaten elected officials, “Their souls . . . could well be at stake.”
 
After so shaming themselves regarding civic morality, the Roberts, may realize they need counselling from a civic practitioner who has in mind the humility not to judge phantasms like “souls” and “scripture.”
 
Thomas Sowell column.  Thank you for coming from retirement to comment about Middlebury College’s violence.
 
I appreciate “current political correctness.” It emphasizes how temporal it is and how fruitless the struggle for dominant opinion is. For example, in the 1850s some Baptist preachers advocated slavery as an institution of God. In 2017, some Baptist preachers affirm slavery but posit that masters have black skins and slaves white skin. That’s black power and black liberation theology as imagined right here in Baton Rouge.

Thank you for affirming Walter Williams. Our hometown newspaper is publishing his column, and I am glad.

Regarding work to establish the civic sentence that is the preamble to the constitution for the USA as a means of creating public integrity, last week, someone in Mayor Landrieu’s office recommended I get a college professor to help me. I replied, “Do you think I have not tried?” I write plainly hoping some professor will help, but I get the impression none regard themselves as citizens, too; they are only professionals in their minds. Your column identifies some professors I should not approach.

Broome transition reports (Mar 17, Page 1B). Good grief! Our elected mayor produced an uncivic platform document that proposes imaginary remedies for mendacious “white privilege.” She has the right to her opinion, but in no way can she impose 1) dialogues on racism and 2) church on a civic people. 
 
Also, “African American,” cannot be imposed on Americans who prefer to collaborate for the aims and purpose stated in the preamble to the constitution for the USA. Civic persons want freedom from associations that would oppress their liberty to live with real-no-harm according to their personal preferences. 
 
I study the past but live now in this place with these neighbors, including the erroneous Ms. Broome. African kings and the erroneous Catholic Church initiated the Atlantic slave trade to shores that are now our property and our opportunity to defend and share.
 
These 560 years later the consequences of the Atlantic Slave Trade can be good for us today and the future world IF a civic people collaborate to maintain both the constitution for the State of Louisiana and the constitution for the USA---the obligations of Ms. Broome’s elected office, whether she accepts the responsibility or not.
 
The preamble to the constitution for the USA is intended for everyone who will trust and commit to its aims and purpose: collaborate for civic-morality, public-integrity. Always, there are dissidents to civic morality, and statutory law intends to constrain their harms.
 
In this land, people who beg woe may anticipate woe: For example, southern leaders who listened to their ministers in 1850-1860, ignoring the physics of slavery---chains, whips, guns, brutality, and rape to slaves with both physical and psychological burdens to maters. Mayor Broome may do herself a favor to fire her failed advisory council and open dialogue with a civic people.

To Jeanie Champagne:  I agree that the people need to vote, but a civic people also need a viable candidate and the GOP repeatedly disappoints.
 
Thank goodness candidate Trump beat both the GOP also-rans and the media. It will take Trump a few years to overcome the GOP, perhaps by drumming the career-losers out of office.
 
The Democrats are stupid not to team up with the President of the USA with the GOP in la-la-land as they are.
 
Also, Broome and others are stupid not to team up with a civic people. A question that occurred to me as I scanned the infamous product of the Broome team: How in the world can an African American person (AAP) establish private-liberty-with-civic-morality? He or she must conform to the AA-gestapo, whether black power and black liberation theology is involved or not.
 
An AAP has no chance to enjoy American freedom so as to practice liberty and live according to real-no-harm personal preferences.

Power shift (Page 1B). Quoting the charter, “While he does not set the city's public policy (that is the job of the Metropolitan Council) the Mayor-President influences policy through his relationships and his appointees.”
 
The Advocate’s report of the unpublished report by Dennis Blunt and Christel Slaughter caused me to imagine a recall vote regarding Mayor Broome. If anyone starts one with a viable plan for success, I’ll sign it. But I will not run such an effort: Good grief, I can’t even get a crowd to trust and commit to the aims and purpose of the preamble to the constitution for the USA for 2017 living.
 
Governance on racism and church is unconstitutional. A recall vote by the people of Baton Rouge would bring residents together in a way no one could have imagined.

Socialist tax plan (Page 1A). In this article, right at the end, The Advocate motivated me to look up “political right.” Google informed me “the political Right opposes socialism and social democracy.”

The Advocate attaches “right of center” to Scott Drenkard, then quotes him, “You can think of [the Edwards tax idea] as a transaction tax. It will stack up, cascade or pyramid throughout the production process. Some people have characterized it as a sales tax on steroids.”

For me, Edwards's idea is dead on announcement. Does The Advocate’s opinion classify them and Gov. Edwards for socialism and social democracy? I think so.

Any way you slice it, spending by the state falls back on the people in the state, and there are two kinds of elected officials: Those who want to redistribute the people’s money and those who want to serve the people. It seems like both The Advocate and Gov. Edwards want to redistribute the people’s money.

Redistribution equates to un-just spending. A civic people will fare better by forcing Gov. Edwards to reduce spending rather than increase taxes.

It is not a question of voting him out of office now. It’s a question of staying well informed throughout this critical legislative session, deciding what you want done with your money, and contacting your state representative and state senator to express your wishes respecting your money.

Flood recovery (Page 1A). The people, especially flood victims, may appreciate Rep. Garrett Graves for his tireless work on their behalf both during the flooding and for his forthright opposition to Gov. Edwards’s excuses.

Graves points out that blaming federal requirements after Edwards’s late applications both does not help and burdens Louisiana’s representatives in Congress. They face competition from other states, who confront them with Louisiana’s slow responses to its own emergencies.
 
Graves has the propriety not to chastise Edwards for the Vatican-Edwards-partnership meeting in Italy during the week of January 20, 2017, before the second application, for $2 billion and also presidential inauguration day.

Merkel can’t trust the Associated Press (Page 2A). Ken Thomas and Jill Colvin report Merkel meeting with “the celebrity real estate developer and former reality television star” rather than the people’s choice. I’ll get even with Thomas and Colvin for trying to discount my vote if it takes me a hundred years.
 
Perhaps a constitutional amendment that permits jail time for such terrible reporting by the media would do. Freedom of the press is true, but responsibility for that freedom is also true, and not now sufficiently covered.

No space to handle Mexican corpses (Page 2A). With a civically moral government, the Mexicans would gladly pay for a wall to curtail drug trafficking through Mexico to the USA border.

Tillerson in forefront (Page 2A). I perceive we are in better hands than we would have been with a career politician’s nominee for Secretary of State. Nevertheless, I am heartfelt concerned. History and current events show that people without human humility are crazier than you think.

Penny closings (Page 6A). If I could share with young people the idea that you cannot go back to before, I would. Fidelity is critical to success, but fidelity must look forward.

Trump ignores the AP again (Page 8A). Julie Pace and Vivian Salama ask pseudo-questions President Trump treats appropriately.

Phil Beaver does not “know”. Phil trusts and is committed to the-objective-truth of which most is undiscovered and some is understood. Phil Beaver is agent for A Civic People of the United States, a Louisiana, an education non-profit. See online at promotethepreamble.blogspot.com.

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