Liberty and Fairness View 20110921

View 693 Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Information theory tells us that the more probable the event, the less information is conveyed by a message saying the event took place. That is, the more predictable the message, the less information it has in it. On that theory the news this week has had a fairly low information value.

It has not been without excitement. The White House has decided to let Obama be Obama, and he is hard at work at delivering the message of class warfare. Predictably it is put forth as a plea for ‘fairness.’ It isn’t fair that Warren Buffet’s secretary pays income tax at a higher rate than Warren Buffet does. It isn’t fair that the rich have corporate jets and mansions and yachts while people have no jobs, and great numbers of people are in poverty. It isn’t fair, because the rich aren’t paying their fair share, and something must be done about it. One thing we can do about it is to pass the American Jobs Act now, right now, just as soon as the White House gets around to submitting the 150+ page Bill to the Congress. For now just understand that it’s a Good Thing, and We Need It Now. Let’s chant.

This morning things changed a little, at least for me. The President told the UN that the US will not approve the Palestinian bid for UN membership. While that was the most probable event, it wasn’t certain. US policy regarding Israel needs to be reconsidered in the light of events in Egypt. Just what is the US commitment to Israel, and under what circumstances will we commit the Legions? What is our official view of the new settlements now that Israel has abandoned the “build a security barrier and leave them alone behind it”? Israel can’t do that now. The Gaza experiment showed that pulling the settlements out and handing the territory over to the Palestinians did not bring peace. Most Israelis want some kind of peace. No one can be quite certain what most Palestinians want, but it’s pretty clear what their governments want.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military must be regretting the return of the Suez and Sinai to Egypt in exchange for mutual recognition and a peace treaty. That peace was kept for a long time, but it appears to be in question now as Egypt gets closer to civil war, and the street mobs clearly demand renewed hostility to Israel. How influential the street movement will be in the government of Egypt is not certain. The Egyptian military sees their general on a gurney in a cage, which is not an inspiring sight for the career members of the ruling council. Former President Mubarak is accused of suppressing the street movement – the street movement that assaulted Lara Logan and sacked the Israeli Embassy, and which seems to be demanding war. It’s not clear what the war would be for, since Egypt got all its territory back in the Peace treaty. Now imagine yourself as a Major in command of a force defending the Israeli Embassy in Egypt, and keep in mind the picture of the President of Egypt in a cage on trial for ordering the troops to disperse a mob.

Insure the Blessings of liberty vs. Promote the general Welfare

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

At the time this was adopted it was never contemplated that these goals were in conflict. It was assumed that liberty was the best way to promote the general welfare, and once there was general welfare – that is, that the nation was faring well – the specifics would be taken care of by local government, by churches and lodges and civic organizations.

In this upcoming election, “fairness” is pitted against liberty, and “fairness” is, presumably, what is meant by general welfare. Of course it could be said that simply pooling all resources and allocating to each according to need, from each according to resources and ability, would be the most fair policy of all.

Make no mistake, substitution of fairness for liberty is the end of the Constitution of 1787.

From Wikipedia

The Deficit Control Act of 1985 provided the first legal definition of baseline. For the most part, the act defined the baseline in conformity with previous usage. If appropriations had not been enacted for the upcoming fiscal year, the baseline was to assume the previous year’s level without any adjustment for inflation. In 1987, however, the Congress amended the definition of the baseline so that discretionary appropriations would be adjusted to keep pace with inflation. Other technical changes to the definition of the baseline were enacted in 1990, 1993, and 1997.

Baseline budget projections increasingly became the subject of political debate and controversy during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and more recently during the 2011 debt limit debate. Some critics contend that baseline projections create a bias in favor of spending by assuming that federal spending keeps pace with inflation and other factors driving the growth of entitlement programs. Changes that merely slow the growth of federal spending programs have often been described as cuts in spending, when in reality they are actually reductions in the rate of spending growth.

There have been attempts to eliminate the baseline budget concept and replace it with zero based budgeting, which is the opposite of baseline budgeting. Zero based budgeting requires that all spending must be re-justified each year or it will be eliminated from the budget regardless of previous spending levels.

The result as been that proposing a mere 3% increase in school lunch programs is described as cutting the school lunch program budget and, more wildly, as gutting the program and a war on the poor.

A zero-growth budget is now considered a drastic cut, and of course will be opposed by public service employee associations.