House of Eratosthenes

My Governor, Gavin Newsom, is talking “social responsibility” which means money transfer, with him on the receiving end. Of course, people who use that phrase never have any other direction in mind…

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Sunday said approving coronavirus relief funding for state and local governments is “not charity” and that his state is facing budgetary concerns as a “direct result” of the crisis.

“It’s a social responsibility at a time when states large and small [are] facing unprecedented budgetary stress. It is incumbent upon the federal government to support the states through this difficult time,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Newsom said lawmakers have a “moral and ethical obligation” to help Americans across the country…[snip]

“I hope they’ll consider this next time they want to salute and celebrate our first responders…consider the fact that they will be the first ones laid off by cities and counties,” Newsom said.

“This is not a red issue or a blue issue. This is impacting every state in America,” Newsom added.

Hmmm. Our budget is a mess, give us money or else it’s the core essential services that will have to be cut. He says it’s not a red or blue issue, but it’s the blue states with their weird, perverse priorities that keep running into the problem.

Forty of the nation’s fifty states don’t have enough money to meet their obligations, with a total of $1.5 trillion in growing unfunded liabilities.

While most states are in hot water, the problem is worst in states with a Democrat governor alongside a Democrat controlled legislature. A new study from Truth in Accounting analyzed the fiscal health of the fifty states [and] the trend was clear.

California comes in 8th-worst, with $21,600 in unfunded liabilities per citizen. It doesn’t surprise me a bit. I’ve seen my own clear trends over the last quarter century of living here, with the law-making. It’s a busy feeding frenzy and no one takes the responsibility to find out what the law says…today. It’s just too much maintenance. You just ask yourself if a productive working law-abiding tax-paying citizen would want to do it, and if so then it’s probably illegal. Or, it’s taxed very heavily. If it’s something a parasite would want to do, it’s almost certainly allowed and there’s a good chance it’s generously subsidized.

Money There is a myth out there that blue states contribute more money to the federal government, from which the red states do more than their share of the withdrawals. This says a lot more about the blue staters who are manufacturing this propaganda, than it does about the red states which make up its subject. The blue staters have their own reality. If the real-reality doesn’t co-exist harmoniously with it, they just go with the reality they like and then they start proliferating it.

Now it’s true that the average taxpayer in blue states pays a higher per capita income tax than the average taxpayer in red states. But that’s because those states — particularly Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and California — have more rich people. Don’t the Democrats want the rich paying their fair share?

As for blue states allegedly getting back less, what numbers are they looking at? It is true that red states receive 35.75 percent on average of their budgets from the federal government, while blue states receive 30.80 percent. But this is because the blue states’ budgets are far larger due to all the bloat and waste.

Of course the blue staters aren’t going to call bloat and waste, bloat and waste. To them, this is the first & best stuff government is supposed to do. What they dismiss as peripheral concerns — the “first responders” Newsom is threatening to furlough — are more in line with what normal people consider to be government’s core functions. We’re having a disagreement and it’s a cultural disagreement.

We have had this separation for a long time, but of course things have become more contentious since somewhere around the Bush v. Gore election debacle. I see the democrat Attorney General of Michigan is grabbing headlines with the highly democrat-dominant talking point where the opposition is “not welcome here.” The issue is the mask. We’re all supposed to wear masks now.

Michigan’s attorney general said President Trump is a “petulant child” who is no longer welcome in her state over his mask-wearing habits.

In a CNN interview Thursday, Dana Nessel noted that Mr. Trump did not wear a mask when in public view during a visit to a Ford plant in Ypsilanti earlier in the day.

CNN anchorman Wolf Blitzer asked her “Is the president no longer welcome in Michigan?”

“Well, I would say speaking on behalf of my department and my office, that’s exactly right,” Ms. Nessel said.

This move, this sweeping gesture, has become so commonplace that it’s hard to remember how unfitting it is. “[Blank] is not welcome at [Blank]!” says…someone. Someone who has zero legitimate authority to say so, little to no relevant jurisdiction over the [Blank]. Usually it’s some petulant student “leading” a drive to keep a conservative speaker out of a university campus. Do conservative Republicans do this? I suppose our evangelicals make some pronouncements about who’s not allowed into Heaven…but that’s not exactly the same thing, is it? They’re not going through the motions of deciding the matter. They’re just echoing how the rules work, as they interpret them. It’s the loudmouths on The Left who are floating up this “so and so is not welcome here” stuff as actual trial balloons.

That’s kind of what Newsom is doing, in a way. His message is not that there is an “ethical obligation”; what he wants to get out there, is that he’s the one saying so.

It’s a style thing. You’ve heard of style over substance, as a logical fallacy. That’s not quite fair because Newsom and Nessel are not trying to convince anybody that a certain thing is or is not so. An “argument” is not the product they’re trying to sell. They’re just trying to impress, like peacocks with plumage.

I hate to sound like a broken record. I’ve been saying often, for many years, we shouldn’t allow democrats to run anything that matters. To a lot of people that just sounds like a Republican who wants democrats to lose elections, just as democrats want Republicans to lose elections. No that’s not it. I’m not saying it in that tone. What I mean by that is: Do not put democrats in the position of running anything because they don’t do it. They don’t want the job.

I remember one glowing performance review I got at a place where it took a few years for it to sink in that I was poor fit, waiting to be outcast; there was coded well-poisoning language in my first year, which ripened and pickled throughout subsequent ones. Something about my prior developmental experience happening at places where outcome of an engineering endeavor was more important, and that I was distressing some of the senior engineers who placed greater emphasis on following the correct process. Outcome…process. Process…outcome. Interesting concept. I had a little bit of concern over this, and shared it with one of my former bosses one weekend when we met at a shooting range. He mulled this one over as he unpacked his magazines, gazed off in the distance and said, “That’s not a liability, that’s an asset.” Is it really?

What’s more important? Process, or outcome?

I have learned over the years that it depends on your locale.

People like Gov. Newsom are not going to contest the raw facts that show the state is being poorly run. They’re not going to take issue with the inference that something must be way off kilter, way out of place. What they’re going to do is deflect the blame. But they’re not selling the outcome. It isn’t part of their world. They are process people.

This isn’t always apparent because a lot of process people, catching a glimmer of some statistic that might make it look like their management methods could be deserving of praise, will pounce on it. One notable example is President Obama claiming credit for a record 75-month streak of private sector job growth…for which even the NPR fact checkers concede He probably can’t claim legitimate credit. But even if He could, the streak thing is kind of weird, right? “I want a long streak of growth, the longer the better,” said…uh…pretty much nobody. I mean yeah, if you have a President who actually does make something like that happen, it’s a good thing, but it’s also the answer to a question no one asked.

My point is not that the likely outcome from democrat policies is substandard. My point is that, if we’re really going to discuss it honestly — they’re not trying to do that. That’s not the focus of their energies.

They’re about process.

Not about outcome.

This suggests there is a split coming. Attorney General Nessel’s not-welcome-here tantrum, empty as it may be, signifies an unwillingness to co-exist shared by many others besides just her. The process people don’t want to take responsibility for outcome…and they don’t want to be around outcome people. I made the mistake when I received that first-year performance review, of using it to assess my own performance. Ensuing experiences made it clear I should have taken it as a warning, that I was not where I belonged.

Trump’s election four years ago shows how widespread and how incendiary this conflict really is. People argue about Trump, for & against, and if you can pay close attention in those very few minutes before a Cheesecake Nazi lays down the edict of “Stop talking politics, there’s cheesecake” — you will then notice something. These two sides are talking past each other.

Romney betrayed us. Trump delivers.

But his tweets!

Kavanaugh. Gorsuch.

But his tweets!

It’s style versus substance. If a man runs out of a burning building with a baby in his arms, but his socks don’t match, or you find out he’s been unfaithful to his wife…would you throw the baby back in the fire? Some people would. They don’t care about the outcome. It’s not that they want the baby dead, they just don’t care. Something else has captured their focus.

Many among us have noticed the status quo seems unstable, in a way it has not been in times past, and some sort of realignment is in order. One person likened it to a divorce decree citing “irreconcilable differences,” that that’s exactly what we have here. I lost a job a decade ago due to irreconcilable differences…cultural differences…some have theorized that maybe someone in a position of authority discovered my blog. I suppose it’s possible.

Cheaper I don’t know. I do know that that was the first time in my life I ever encountered the mindset, of: We would rather the bug stay unfixed. Weird stuff. I’m not going to lie, it still creeps me out today. But only because, now that I’m consciously aware of it, I’ve seen it crop up in other places. Most notably in politics — post-Trump election. We’d rather the baby cook. His socks don’t match.

The Left thinks The Right should have more humility, be less sure of itself. But if I were in Gov. Newsom’s position, with my hand out, babbling away with this codswallop about “ethical obligations” of others…but my state had huge deficits where other states have surpluses…well, it wouldn’t get that far. No one would have to ask me to stick a cork in it before I’d stick a cork in it on my own, already. Just seems like a setup for self-embarrassment. But our friends the lefties who have so much to teach us about being properly humble, are not so troubled. So there he is. And not alone.

They are not monitoring outcome, looking for deficiencies or potential areas of improvement, and revisiting their methods looking for ways to self-improve. The rest of us like to think of them as doing that, because they want us to imagine they’re doing that. And we’re inclined to oblige, because that’s what we do…when we generate wealth they get to tax away to spend on their goodies. But they’re not doing it. You can’t monitor an outcome if you don’t care about an outcome. Process people don’t do that. There’s no reason for them to do so. Anytime something goes wrong, they demonstrate their lifetime-accumulated skills at finding scapegoats for the horrid consequences of their terrible policies. Outcome isn’t their thing. They just compare what’s in front of them with their clipboards full of check boxes, making their little checks and then squawking about what’s left blank. Or about the words we’re using.

Such scolding definitely does have an appeal. Not with me. But, based on my experiences of a decade ago, and before then, and since, I know there are places where I do not fit and I know there are people with whom I’m incompatible. In fact, based on all I’ve seen I surmise there are three different types of us: The outcome people, the “Architects” as I’ve called them; the process people, or “Medicators”; and those who fancy themselves capable of living in harmony with either one of the first two. That third group, I’m afraid, just hasn’t run into the learning experience. It’s still ahead of them. They believe in an emulsification factor, or process, or condition, that simply doesn’t exist. Irreconcilable differences lurk in the pathway upon which they have not yet tread. I hope for their sake that their learning experience is a gentle one.

The process people are made up, substantially, of people who want to be managed. They just want to labor away under the expanding burden of more-and-more rules. They don’t care that the rules do, or do not, make sense. They just want them there. This is not a novel realization. It’s the subject of one of my favorite Heinlein quotes: “The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” You’ll notice this defining sentence is ambiguous: Want people to be controlled? As in, themselves? Or somebody else? This is not a lack of attention on the part of Heinlein, I’ve gradually come to conclude; the ambiguity is intentional. And ingenious. Those who fall in with the process crowd, but do not want to be controlled, want to do the controlling.

To do the controlling. Not to take responsibility for how things go. It’s not their thing. They just like to sit way up high.

I see in this age of the Rise of Karens, many of whom are male…process people…check box people…Joe Biden is said to be taking a longer and harder look at Elizabeth Warren as his possible running mate. Whether that comes to pass or not, she’s made the short list. This is another adventure unfolding in a world to which I do not belong. I simply don’t understand and I don’t think I ever will. Senator Warren was summarily bounced out of the race, rather unceremoniously, because she’s toxic and has bad character and lies pretty much all the time about everything. People don’t like her. It was a rather decisive end to her campaign, and it was a decision handed down by democrats. So why is she on the short list of anything at all, other than “most execrable presidential candidates in history”?

It means something. Whether he ends up with Cherokee Liz, or someone else, that someone is going to be a Karen.

The Democratic Party is an assembly of Karens. That’s who it attracts. So it doesn’t matter which prospect Biden chooses. He gets a Karen.

The petulant yard duty teacher who’s just about had it up to here with me, and is scolding and scolding and scolding some more…again, I just don’t understand. That product keeps getting thrown in the hopper, to be shoved down our throats. No one is actually asking for it. Forty years plus something, I’ve been watching this.

Stein’s Law says that whatever can’t last forever, won’t. This is why people look on with worried anticipation toward some near-future alignment event…a separation event. This does look like something that can’t go on too much longer.

But if the separation does occur, I have a warning of my own that there would have to be a second shockwave. A re-redrawing of the lines, after the first redrawing that is due to confront us. Process people, in spite of their bravado about “not allowed here,” can’t exist without outcome people. Some outcomes are important, and so it follows that someone is going to have to pay attention to them as they materialize. You can’t eat a check box.

There is a reason why the red states have the most solid budgets and the best infrastructure: It’s necessary. Republicans grow the food.

You can’t build things that actually work, thinking like a lib.

So if you think our present situation is unsustainable, I say just wait until you see that next one. Wait until we have everyone properly pigeonholed according to the priorities they claim they have. With the people on one side of it entirely incapable of existing without the people on the other side, and at the same time, being wholly unwilling to admit it. But also with the people on that other side, being able to get along quite well by themselves. That’s an unsustainable situation, on steroids.

I can’t say how that second shockwave is going to happen. I haven’t got a clue. It will have something to do with an “ethical obligation” to give the Karens what they need but aren’t willing to admit they need. I’m sure there will be no gratitude involved, superficial or genuine. The narrative will be pushed that the providers aren’t providing anything at all, just fulfilling this “obligation” we were supposed to be doing anyway. Other than that, I dunno how it will happen. It just will. It’s Stein’s Law.

[…] I Remember About 2020 The Coming Redrawing, and Re-Redrawing, of the Lines Listening to the Experts A Week in American Statistics To Disbelieve in What is Seen Alignment That […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 05/22/2020 @ 13:46
HEY! I know……
Let’s START by making union free, independent contractors, and free lancers…ILLEGAL!
More licensing, based on school employee recommendation, and family association!
- CaptDMO | 05/25/2020 @ 00:49

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The Coming Redrawing, and Re-Redrawing, of the Lines
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