Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first to use the image of dominoes to describe how the collapse of one government would lead to the collapse of others that were nearby. Said Ike, at a news conference in 1954:

"You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly."

Ike's "falling dominoes" principle was embraced by Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon and used to justify American involvement in South Vietnam. They believed that the fall of that country to the communists would lead to the fall of Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma and India. As with many hypotheses, this one was partly right and partly wrong.

Unfortunately, a more predictable demonstration of the principle might be just over the horizon in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

With the state facing a shortfall of at least $1.2 billion and planning severe cutbacks nearly everywhere, every municipality, school board and authority will be struck just as surely as one falling domino knocks over the entire line.

As cities, townships and boroughs struggle to revitalize, they turn to the state for grants -- which they often receive -- helping them attract private investment in their communities. In older communities, the state has been a critical source of funding for the replacement of crumbling water and sewer lines. This money will be cut.

School boards plan their budgets around anticipated state subsidies. What they get likely will fall well short of what they anticipated. Their problems will be compounded by the fact that many of them negotiated contracts with salary levels set to match expected aid from the state. That level of aid will not be forthcoming. But the contractual commitments of the school districts will remain in place.

The plight of municipal authorities across Pennsylvania is best illustrated by the problems facing the Port Authority of Allegheny County, which expects to cut service by 30 percent and lay off 500 employees if the state is unable to cover an expected $50.6 million deficit. With the federal rejection of the state plan to toll Interstate 80, the state is short around $500 million for mass transit across the commonwealth. It looks as if transit authorities will be left to fend for themselves.

At every level of government, pension funds are in trouble and solutions are elusive. When the state offered to help with certain economies of scale by consolidating the management of pension funds, Pittsburgh stupidly refused that help and maintains its pension fund death wish.

And at the very end of the line are nonprofit health care and social service providers that deliver necessary services cheaper and more effectively than government. Many of these groups will be out of business without state funding.

The symbiotic relationship between the state and these other groups has been both good politics and good government. But it might have created a false belief that the state will always give a helping hand.

For years, like children returning home to ask Mom and Dad for a little help with personal finances, these public and quasi-public entities have looked to the commonwealth for help. But if that first domino falls, so shall the rest.

As Mae West said, "It takes two to get one in trouble."

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