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What Is Provisional
Truth?
As Charlotte Perkins Gilman observed a century ago (poem,
top left), "What we think
may guide our acts, but it does not alter facts."
Like an earth-centric universe, yesterday's "truth" has become
today's fables, superstitions and discarded dogmas and doctrines.
Today's "heresy" may become tomorrow's truth.
As such - like tax law - truth is provisional and always
subject to change.
Everything we "know" yet may
be altered, refined, perhaps someday proven wrong, so it's advantageous
to keep an open mind.
Provisional Truth | Quotes |
November 2008
Quotable
Ozymandius
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe
Shelley, 1817 -
Link
Continue to
Quotes...
Provisional Truth | Essays | June 2, 2008
As Published at LewRockwell.com 05/31/2008
Thanks Charley Reese for
Some Good Advice
A well
regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall
not be infringed.
Recently I took
Charley Reese’s advice (LewRockwell.com,
01/22/2008) and exercised my Second Amendment
right to keep and bear arms. I’m trying to exercise as many
of those constitutional rights as possible these days, while
available, given the increasing tendency of governments and
do-gooders to subjugate, circumvent or creatively interpret
those rights.
(Note: Many more
accurately have observed I was granted a "privilege" by the
state of Oklahoma.)
Fortunately I
have not had occasion to try out the Fifth, Sixth or Seventh
Amendments, but I thoroughly have enjoyed the First and now
am looking forward to the Second. Gettin’ while the gettin’s
good, I guess – one never knows these days.
Continue
Reading
Thanks Charley...
Provisional
Truth | Comment | 2008
Comment:
Something To Think About...
We Can't Make This Up, So
It Must Be True
01/25/2008
January 24, 2008: So... Exactly
Whose Economy Gets Stimulated?
Transcript
of comments during the Florida Republican Debate, January
24, 2007
Mike Huckabee: "But let me speak
to the really heart of what I think a lot of Americans are
concerned about with the economy and, frankly, in talking
about the stimulus package.
"One of the concerns that I
have is that we'll probably end up borrowing this $150
billion from the Chinese and when we get those rebate
checks, most people are going to go out and buy stuff that's
been imported from China.
"I
have to wonder whose economy is going to be stimulated the
most by the package."
--Comment: China now owns more than $380 billion of
US Treasury obligations, and foreign interests control
about 45% of the current $5.2 trillion of publicly held
national debt, up from 30% in January 2001 ($2.34
trillion as of 11/2007 vs. $1.01 trillion as of
01/2001). See
Major Foreign Holdings of US Public Debt.
US national
debt now exceeds $9.2 trillion, up from $920 billion in
January 1981 when President Jimmy Carter left office,
up tenfold in a generation, including $3.5
trillion in new national debt in only seven years
since January 2001, plus another likely $600 billion
before President George Bush leaves office in 2009.
How can anyone believe such a trend is sustainable?
Are we now a
"Blanche DuBois" nation: "dependent upon the
kindness of strangers" to keep our consumer economy, and
our empire, afloat?
Daily
calculation of US national debt, see
U.S Treasury Debt to the Penny at Treasury Direct.
01/08/2008
January 08, 2008:
Plan Would
Let Seniors Work to Pay Taxes
Tuesday December 25, 1:38 pm ET
By Jim Fitzgerald, Associated Press Writer
NY Town
Wants to Start Program to Let Senior Citizens Work Off
Property Taxes, for $7 an Hour
GREENBURGH, N.Y. (AP) -- Audrey Davison lives alone, gets a
$620 Social Security check each month and worries about the
sharply rising taxes on her four-bedroom house. Davison, 76,
raised her family there and after 43 years, she really
doesn't want to leave Greenburgh.
Greenburgh doesn't want her to leave, either.
The town is pushing a program
that would let seniors work part-time, for $7 an hour, to
help pay off some of their property taxes.
"People shouldn't have to sell their house, move away to a
place with less taxes, leave behind their family and
friends," said Town Supervisor Paul Feiner.
Continue Reading
It Must Be True...
Provisional
Truth | Essays | August 22, 2007
|
Link to OK Gazette Essay Published August 15, 2007
All Fired Up
Clean-burning natural gas or abundant, less-expensive coal?
Oklahoma's Corporation Commission has been asked to approve
a new power plant to be built in Red Rock, a joint venture
between OG+E and Public Service of Oklahoma.
As submitted, plans for the $1.8 billion, 950-megawatt
generating facility propose it will burn Wyoming coal and
that's got one central Oklahoma company with a vested
interest in natural gas buying more pages of advertising
than the Mathis brothers.
Chesapeake Energy Corporation recently began an open letter
campaign to influence the Corporation Commission to approve
the facility, but require it be fueled by natural gas, some
of which likely would originate from Oklahoma wells, not
Wyoming coal.
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All Fired Up...
Provisional
Truth | Essays | July 30, 2007
|
Link to Oklahoma Gazette Essay Published
July 25, 2007
Penn Square Bank's
Unexpected Legacy
A quarter-century ago,
Penn Square Bank failed spectacularly in Oklahoma City,
ushering in the untimely end of a previous oil boom,
indelibly changing the landscape of banking throughout the
state and hastening the emergence of national mega-banks.
And yet, after a
generation of national consolidation in the banking
industry, we enjoy one of the most competitive banking
markets in the country, a direct consequence of Penn
Square’s failure in 1982.
As the first domino to
fall in a chain reaction lasting a decade, Penn Square Bank
became the poster child for the inflationary excesses of
the Eighties, an era in which most bankers, oilmen and
gasoline consumers had been convinced the prices of energy
never again would decline from a $40-a-barrel peak in 1979.
Continue Reading
Penn Square Bank's Unexpected Legacy...
Provisional
Truth | Essays | June 23, 2007
Inflation's Early Warning System
Red lights are blinking on inflation's early warning system
control panel – fasten your seat belts. “Crude Foodstuffs
and Feedstuffs,” commodities such as grains, raw milk, sugar
and slaughter animals making up the raw materials that
eventually become the finished products we call “food,”
registered an unadjusted 35 percent year-over-year increase
in the May Producer Price Index reported June 14th. Its
five-month annualized increase is nearly 22%.
Extremely sensitive, and thus extremely volatile, the
commodities component of PPI nonetheless is a credible
harbinger of future inflation, and by extension, long
opportunities in a bullish commodities market, as previous
periods of rapid raw materials inflation since the 1970s has
shown.
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Inflation's Early Warning System...
Provisional Truth | Essays | June
13, 2007
Link to Oklahoma Gazette Essay Published June 13, 2007
Rein in the Rainy Day Fund
Oklahoma's economy is bright and sunny but taxpayers should
note the balance of the interest-free loan we have made to
the state in the form of our rainy day fund.
For the third consecutive year
Oklahoma will deposit a maximum contribution to the state's
Constitutional Reserve Fund, bringing the balance to more
than $561 million by the end of June, nearly quadruple the
high-water mark of $154 million in 1998.
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Rein in the Rainy Day Fund...
Provisional
Truth | Essays | May 23, 2007
Economic Tsunami Warning
More than anecdotal evidence now points to an economic
tsunami forming from the sub-prime mortgage meltdown
“ripples” which began to register on financial seismometers
18 months ago.
It's an instructive image, how a seemingly small,
inconsequential thing can later, unexpectedly manifest
itself in a big, deadly, destructive way.
As
with a real tsunami, when produced by an underwater
earthquake, it travels virtually unnoticed in open water,
appearing as mere ripples or swells moving across the sea.
Only when the wave energy and momentum approach the
shallowing continental shelf, and, ultimately, the
shoreline, does the destructive magnitude of a tsunami
become evident.
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Economic Tsunami Warning...
Provisional Truth | Essays | May 9,
2007 |
Link
Thin Paper Line
A
recent study funded by the Pentagon concluded the U.S. Army was
stretched to its limit, a “thin green line” as the media have taken to
calling the controversial conclusions of this report, referring to James
Jones's 1962 novel The Thin Red Line. The novel's title is
derived from an old Midwestern saying that “there's only a thin red line
between the sane and the mad.” War, accurately portrayed in his book and
the 1998 movie, seems to stretch that line almost to the breaking point,
as any combat veteran would know.
Our thin
paper line is the world's financial and monetary system – in
reference to the paper-based nature of world financial markets. It's
what separates global economic prosperity from catastrophic financial
depression.
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Thin Paper Line...
Provisional
Truth | Essays | April 29, 2007
|
Link
This I
Believe: Truth is Provisional, Love is Absolute
April 2007 CE
Like many, I received ample childhood religious instruction,
raised to follow the faith of my parents, but I never
encountered that sense of peace others professed and I never
outgrew my doubt and concern about the conflicting doctrines
proclaimed by myriad religions.
Over the years I sampled several variations of Christianity,
from Catholicism to Fundamentalism to end-times Hal
Lindsay-ism, but eventually, invariably, I drifted away.
Always so much attention –
infatuation really –
not on this life, but the next.
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This I Believe...
Provisional
Truth | Essays | April 18, 2007
|
Link |
Link to Oklahoma Gazette Essay Published April 18, 2007
The
Ethics of Ethanol
Addiction, it is
said, often blinds those so afflicted to the moral and
ethical considerations of behaviors intent on satisfying
their habits.
In our present
oil addiction we so fervently have embraced corn ethanol as
one solution to our petroleum dependency we have neglected
to question the ethical and moral propriety of using food
for fuel.
In 2005 we put about an
eighth of the entire
U.S. corn crop into our gasoline tanks. Those plump, golden
kernels, once destined to become snack chips or cereals or
tortillas or sweeteners, instead were converted into 4
billion gallons of ethanol and used as an additive to 150
billion gallons of gasoline consumed that year.
Continue Reading
The Ethics of Ethanol...
Provisional Truth | Essays | April
13, 2007 |
Link
Judgment Day - Apophis the Destroyer
As
if we didn't have anything else to worry about, here comes
some dandy news from outer space. Asteroid 99942 Apophis, a
thousand-foot diameter chunk of rock discovered in 2004,
will rendezvous with Earth again on April 13, 2029 (a
Friday, of course), hopefully slipping by us at a near-miss
distance of about 18,000 miles.
That's closer than many satellites and well-within the
Moon's orbit, and Apophis, the Greek name for an Egyptian
god of darkness and chaos – naturally – will be visible to
the naked eye in parts of Europe North Africa and western
Asia as it whizzes by. Talk about close encounters of the
worst kind, but wait, it gets better.
Continue Reading
Judgment Day - Apophis the Destroyer...
Provisional Truth |
Essays |
Link
2006 Essays
December 2006: Mass Transit: Get On Board -
Link
November 2006: Nuclear Power Necessity -
Link
November 2006: Disposable Consumerism -
Link
November 2006: Faith-Based Money -
Link
September 2006: Ask (Oprah) and Ye Shall Receive
-
Link
July 2006: Election Day Sobriety -
Link
July 2006: The Fever of Gaia - An Inconvenient Truth -
Link
June 2006: Addicted to Oil -
Link
Published Version - OK Gazette 05312006
February 2006: Thin Paper Line -
Link
2005 Essays
December 2005: Saving Social Security 2006 -
Link
November 2005:
Color Me Purple -
Link
October 2005: Summer Reading 2005 -
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