'Social justice' in contracts costing S.F. millions :: Political News and commentaries

« Re: Obama's big energy lie | Main | Thaddeus McCotter For Prez? »

May 10, 2011

'Social justice' in contracts costing S.F. millions

As the city of San Francisco should have anticipated, that "social justice" requirement in city contracts isn't working out so well.

[...] San Francisco's much-heralded "social justice" requirements for city contracts are costing local taxpayers millions of dollars a year in overcharges, according to workers in departments ranging from the Municipal Transportation Agency to the Department of Emergency Management.

In one case, a Muni worker said the city paid $3,000 for a vehicle battery tray. Such parts can be found online for $12 to $300, depending on the type of vehicle. City officials said they couldn't verify that purchase, saying the trays are usually bought in bulk with the battery.

Other city purchasing policies, if followed, would mean paying about $240 for getting a copy of a key that actually cost a worker $1.35 to get done at a hardware store on his break, the employee said. Another city worker called the use of catalog pricing for supplies "Pentagon-style purchasing."

Markups from approved vendors range from 10 to 150 percent, employees said, with one calling the city's requirement that contractors provide health care benefits for domestic partners "the expensive white elephant standing in the middle of the room (that) no one wants to mention."

It seems that there's no end to liberalism's follies. They're incapable of realizing that using fiscal policy to create 'positive social action' ('social' justice) will almost always result in "unintended consequences" ... as is the case with all of liberalism's attempts to bring about what they imagine to be "social justice."

Like Evan Sayet writes in his "Social Justice and the Modern Liberal":

To understand how the Modern Liberal thinks it is helpful to look at the language they use. The first place to look is at the origins of "Political Correctness." Since Modern Liberalism is Orwellian -- their belief is that paradise can be achieved if only everyone would forfeit their knowledge of right and wrong and exist as if there were no difference between truth and lies -- it needed an Orwellian conceit, "Newspeak" -- to prevent the speaking of the truth.

Here, then, lies the fundamental difference between the Left and the Right. The Right seeks to be correct. The Left seeks the opposite of truth so they need to add a modifier to the concept. They are seeking "modified" truth, not "correctness" but "political correctness" which is, by definition, incorrect.

This is not the only concept that the Modern Liberal seeks to modify. Notice that, while the Right seeks "justice" he Left seeks a modified version of justice -- social justice, the modifying of justice causing -- by definition -- something other than justice itself.

What is "Social Justice?" It's a conceit that allows the Modern Liberal to champion all that is evil, failed and wrong and then attack all that is good, right and successful and do it in the guise of "morality."

[...] To the Modern Liberal success -- simply by its existence -- is all the proof needed that some "social injustice" has taken place.

[...] The Modern Liberal sides always with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. They do so under the guise of "Social Justice" -- a "politically correct" term -- by which both being correct and seeking justice are, by their very definitions, modified to their liking.

More simply put, Orwell's 1984 wasn't meant to be an instruction manual ... but the Left has never understood that.