Truth in Spending: Outlaw the Current Services Budget

Sorry, but it’s time to get a little wonky.  There’s a spending bias that built into how the government budgets called the current services budget.  This calculation is a baseline cost of doing next year exactly what the government did this year. Then budget "cuts" are measured from this base. If it would take $90 billion more to duplicate the current activities of the federal government next year, then spending $80 billion more next year than this year is a "cut" of $10 billion. As you can see, this builds in a bias for increased spending every year. What needs to be done is simple. No money should be spent by any federal agency to make a current services budget calculation. All budget baselines will be calculated based on current year actual spending. No need for a 50 page comprehensive bill. Stick it in a budget bill and let the Smartest President Ever try to explain why these two lines make the rest of the bill something he has to veto. I'm sure low information voters will love it. 

Death By Terrorism Unlikely, So No Worries?

Some people say that since the odds of being killed by a terrorist right now are much less than being killed by lightning, we shouldn’t spend much time worrying about it.  This position, that we don't need to fight terrorism because so far the odds of being killed by a terrorist are very, very low, reminds me of a bad joke. A man jumps off the Empire State Building. Half way down he comments, "OK so far!"

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413932/why-terrorism-more-frightening-lightning-charles-c-w-cooke

Feckless Policies May Leave No Time To Recover

In the article linked below, Professor Thomas Sowell remarks that today’s feckless policies mirror similarly feckless policies of the 1930’s.  The Isolationism in the US and the appeasement of Hitler in Europe lead to World War II.  He then notes that during the war, the Allies took a long time to make up for the position their feckless policies left them in.  He commented that in a modern nuclear war we may not get the chance to make up for our mistakes.  I would like to explain further why that’s the case.

During World War II the Allies were able to trade space for the time needed to build up the armed forces we needed to win. In those days, flying across the Atlantic or Pacific was done in a B-17 bomber with a cruising speed of 182 miles per hour. Since the bombers range was only 2,000 miles you needed refueling bases to get all the way across. The need for airbases was the reason for the island hopping campaign in the Pacific. Today, a B-2 bomber has a cruising speed of 560 miles per hour and, with air to air refueling, can fly nonstop from its base in Missouri to anywhere in the world. While the distances are the same, the time you can get for a given distance is much less. And, as Professor Sowell says, the destructive power of nuclear weapons also destroys military forces much more quickly than conventional weapons did in World War II. War today is a come as you are affair with very little room for second chances. 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/413953/nows-no-time-happy-talk-thomas-sowell

Sequencing DNA and Combinatorics Yield Intelligent Design

I don’t see much conflict anymore between intelligent design and natural selection.  Now that we are sequencing DNA we know that the genetic possibilities are not infinite and they are not random.  Applying a field of mathematics called combinatorics to DNA sequences, gives us a very, very large but finite number of genetic combinations that are mathematically possible. Of those, there are likely a lot smaller but still very large number of combinations that are biologically viable. At this point, if you want to consider the biologically viable genetic combinations intelligently designed I don’t think the science is changed at all.  The natural selection of Darwin chooses which of the biologically viable designs survive and which don't. There's no scientific conflict between intelligent design and survival of the fittest, but there is also no evolution driven by random events. The laws of genetics were all baked in the cake before the natural selection began with the original set of biologically viable designs.

The open questions have to do with the exploration of which of the mathematical genetic combinations are biologically viable. At the moment, we are in the early stages of genetics and can only glimpse that these questions will exist once we get further information. However, I would expect that eventually we will have models that will be able to explore the biologically viable combinations for clues as to hidden aspects of extinct lifeforms. If you want to dwell in the past conflicts of pre-genetic Darwinism versus creationism, enjoy yourself.

The creationists believe G_d designed man. The Darwinists believed man evolved through natural selection. At this point, our knowledge of genetics is leading us towards the position that both are right. So from a scientific point of view, we can stop arguing and get on with more interesting questions.  The only reasons left to argue this are political, not scientific. The argument allows Liberals to feel superior to Conservatives for being "scientific." But the science involved has moved on from the original argument.

Evolution is in the news lately, because Scott Walker refused to answer a question about it.  I think somebody should ask if belief in Darwin is a religious test for holding office in the US. Because any religious test for holding office is unconstitutional. Since Scott Walker refused to answer the question, I think they are assuming he has to answer the question and demonstrate a religious belief in Darwin in order to hold the office of president. They are saying failure to answer the question is disqualifying.