“Root Causes”

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The Biden administration wants to find and solve the ‘root causes’ driving the flood of refugees to the US from the south, and has assigned that task to VP Kamela Harris  More generally, liberals and ‘progressives’ like to talk about ‘root causes’ for all kinds of things: crime, for example: instead of arresting criminals, just solve the Root Causes of crime!

Someone needs to explain to these people the concept of ask why five times, and how that concept is properly implemented.  Example:

PROBLEM: There is oil on factory floor.  Why?

Looks like it’s coming from that machine over there.

ACTION: Clean up the oil. But then ask…
WHY is there oil leaking from that machine.

The machine has a bad gasket.

ACTION: Replace the gasket. But then ask..
WHY was the gasket bad?

Check out the condition of the gaskets on some other machines.
Looks like we’ve been buying inferior gaskets.

ACTION: Change the specifications so we don’t get any more of these. But also ask..
WHY did we decide to buy the gaskets that we did?

Uhh…they were cheap? Turns out the purchasing policy for supplies like this says “always buy the low bid.”

ACTION: Change the policy to give more weight to quality as well as price. But also ask…
WHY did the head of Purchasing ever approve a policy like this in the first place?

Maybe because his *incentive program* includes a big component for year-over-year reductions in supplies cost, with no measurement for downtime impact of bad items?

ACTION: Change the incentive program.
WHY did a one-sided incentive program like this get created and approved?

And so on. (There is nothing magic about the number Five)

But importantly, you don’t wait until you run all the way up and down the chain of causation before you clean up the oil on the floor before someone slips on it and hurts himself. You don’t go through analysis of why inferior gaskets are being purchased before replacing the gaskets before the machine loses oil again and shuts down or destroys itself.

Democrat politicians often act like they don’t understand these points, even informally and intuitively. Many of them really don’t, I think…but also, many of them just don’t care; accumulation of political power for themselves and their faction is all that matters.  Among their voters/supporters, though, there may be some who can be brought to understand the fallacies of root-causes-only thinking.

And, very importantly, if you pursue the chain of causation upward to enough levels, you are likely to find causes which are either beyond your ability to influence, or for which such influence has a very long time constant.  In the manufacturing example, for instance, you may be a factory manager in a large company with very little influence on the incentive policies that drive Purchasing to acquire inferior gaskets.  That still doesn’t mean you don’t need to clean up the oil and replace the failed gaskets, anyway.  In the Biden/Harris policy case, serious thought would show that the ability of American leaders to influence the policies, economic systems, and cultures of our southern neighbors is strictly limited, and what influence we can exert is likely to have a very long time constant. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to do anything about the border crisis.

The Arizona Recount

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At least Maricopa County has a new county recorder who defeated the Democrat who screwed up the 2018 election.

The preliminary audit aired several unsubstantiated conspiracy theories and baseless allegations of election fraud and partisanship on Fontes’s part, some of which didn’t even cite a source or origin for the claims. Though Richer labeled the claims as unsubstantiated, some Republicans portrayed them as established fact.

Richer also questioned some of Fontes’s other election-related actions in his report, such as the expanded use of emergency voting centers in 2018, his placement of those centers, and his new policy of reaching out to voters with potentially deficient signatures on their early ballots. Richer concluded in the audit that those policies were questionable but not illegal.

Of course a Republican accusation is a “conspiracy theory.”

I’m sure Soros backed Secretary of State would agree. She is convinced an audit of the voting is a waste of time.

“A group of Republicans are continuing to try to appease their base who refuse to accept that … Trump lost Arizona and that he’s not the president anymore,” Hobbs told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “Cuomo Prime Time.”

This was a few months after she referred to Trump voters as “neo-Nazis.” Certainly no bias there.

First, the Board of Elections denied use of official facilities. Then the Board of Supervisors Tried to prevent access to ballots

The Democrats then sued to try to stop it. The first judge recused himself, then the second judge, a Democrat, Refused to stop the recount.

Why are Democrats so determined to prevent any recount in an election they assert they have won and any questions about fraud are “without evidence?”

Now, the Biden DOJ is trying to intervene.

They really don’t want anyone checking on that election, do they?

Everyone knew this was coming…. The Feds are attempting to get involved in the Maricopa County ballot audit. The DOJ Civil Rights Division has sent a letter [pdf available here] to the Arizona State Senate claiming their review of Lawfare statements and media reports may show evidence of auditing issues that violate federal laws.

Last week a group of Lawfare activists [SEE HERE], including New York University Law School which leads to Andrew Weissmann, asked the DOJ to get involved.

The ridiculous letter from the Biden DOJ goes on to cite media reports from the Washington Post as evidence to justify their involvement.

Remember, previously the DOJ narrative was that each state makes up its own election rules. Now the DOJ is saying, falsely, that Arizona might be breaking federal laws.

No doubt there will be more to come. You’d think Democrats would be proud of how well the election that Biden won was conducted.

Road Trip

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The Daughter Unit and I did a moderately-lengthy road trip this past week. Probably the last until she is delivered by C-section of the Grandson Unit, which momentous event is likely to be scheduled for the last week of this month or the first in June after the neighborhood baby shower, and before the Memorial Day weekend of the Texas Book Festival in Seguin, at which I have a table. (The festival was cancelled last year, all of us who had bought a place at it were carried over to this year, when hopefully, all festival events will return to something resembling pre-Commie Crud normality.)

We drove the trusty Montero Sport to suburban Austin, to the Daiso store; Daiso might be described as the Japanese version of the Dollar Tree, Family Dollar or 99 Cent Store; all kinds of relatively inexpensive Japanese tchotchkes for hobby, household, and kitchen. We both have rather a soft spot for Japanese items of this kind, since both of us served military tours at US bases in Japan. There are no Daiso stores anywhere closer than Austin, although there are a number of them in Los Angeles. So Austin it was, and after Daiso, to Pflugerville for the Aldi grocery store. We both rather like Aldi, home of the quarter-to-get-a-grocery-cart and pack-your-own-bags. They offer a reasonable selection of quality goods at very reasonable prices. It’s just that there is no Aldi closer to San Antonio than Pflugerville, and another in Victoria; a mite too far to go, unless we were in the area for another purpose.

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Archive Post: Pax Romana

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(A snippit at Sarah Hoyt’s place reminded me of this post, from 2006 at my original milblog.

The stone ruins of Imperial Rome underlie Western Europe and the Mediterranean like the bones of a body, partially buried, yet here and there still visible and grandly manifest above ground, all but complete. From Leptis Magna in North Africa, to Hadrian’s Wall in the contentious border between Scotland and England proper, from Split in the Former Yugoslavia, to the 81 perfectly preserved arches of the ancient bridge over the Guadiana River, in Merida that part of the empire called Hispania and in thousands of lesser or greater remnants, the presence of Rome is everywhere and inescapable. The same sort of cast- concrete walls, faced with pebbles, or stone or tile, the same sort of curved roof-tiles, the same temples to Vesta, and Jupiter, to Claudius, Mars and Mithras; the same baths and fora, market-places, villas and apartment buildings, all tied together by a network of commerce and administration. Goods both luxury and otherwise, adventurous tourists, soldiers and civil administrators— the very blood of an empire, all moved along the veins and arteries of well-maintained roads and way-stations, of which the very beating heart was Rome itself.

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