I Wonder If There’s A Pattern
When attending university, one of the main tenets of logic taught is the concept of cause and effect. While that concept can be very fuzzy in the social sciences field, in the realm of hard sciences, where results do matter, this leads to discovery and knowledge. In fact, one of the foundations of the scientific method is the ability to replicate a result given a set of variables. At no time in my undistinguished school career did achieving the same dismal result from the same flawed inputs garner me any academic accolades. Quite the contrary. If I was expected to achieve result A on an experiment, it behooved me to find variables X, Y, or Z that would lead to the desired outcome. Continuing to input variables U, V and W would not lead to desired outcome A. In fact it would lead to the very undesirable outcome of D, or F.
In the real world, this logic is apparently discarded as soon as the cap and gowns are returned to the rental company. When you observe the behaviour of people in their everyday lives for example, it is clear that for most, the logic of cause and effect has been discarded as a quaint educational relic, like cursive writing. In the real world, people somehow lose their ability to reason with any clarity and are easily swayed by those who offer an impossible logic. The mesmerizing allure of lottery tickets are but one example of mass delusion. It is in the area of politics however that we find the most delusional behaviour.
According to the linked article, the City of Camden, New Jersey is now on the verge of having to lay off police and firemen in their bid to stem their budget deficit. Naturally, this makes headlines because in the “most crime ridden city in America”, this is incongruous. I know nothing about Camden, New Jersey, but from all accounts of articles relating to this city, it isn’t exactly Disneyland North. What we do discover is a pattern that seems to appear among major cities struggling under enormous budget deficits. That common denominator is that they are all run by governments controlled by the Democratic party. Coincidences happen of course, like having the only lighter in a bar when Charlize Theron pulls out a cigarette. More likely however, there is a cause and effect thing happening in the case of big deficits and Democratic governments. Exhibit A, a list of some of the largest US cities and their accompanying deficits:
Los Angeles, budget shortfall of $408 million
Chicago, budget deficit of $655 million
Philadelphia, greater than $1 billion dollar deficit
San Francisco $380 million dollar budget deficit
Washington DC $688 million dollar deficit
New York city, $4 billion dollar deficit, not to mention an unfunded pension liability of $59 Billion!
Is it purely a coincidence that all of these cities are controlled by Democratic party governments? I include New York because for decades, until Giuliani, it was a Democratic stronghold. Even Bloomberg, who now casts himself as an Independent leans convincingly left. The question is, why do they keep putting Democrats in office? There’s ample and glaring evidence that those affiliated with the party are incapable of sound fiscal management. They run on the same platform of Something For Nothing, or SFN (which could also mean Same Fricking Nonsense ) and people continue to believe them. The price paid for them getting into office however, always seems to be borne by the weary taxpayer. The fix seems to be predictable; raise taxes or ‘lay off teachers, police and firemen’. Somehow, excessive entitlements and waste never get laid off. As this is being written comes news that the city of Berkeley in California wants to make transgender surgical procedures a perk of employment.
If people want a different result, they’d better stop pursuing the same input. Maybe try option B.