Political Thoughts Archive

Tara Hunt posted this on her Facebook feed and I had to share it…

Who's to Blame by Barry Deutsch

Yesterday, I spent the day in Philadelphia at Supernova 2010, and enjoyed the people that came. My greatest challenge came from the topics that occurred later in the day, which covered areas on social media (having to do with will SM save media), policy and small business. The topics, while relevant in some fashion, were somewhat the same as I have seen everywhere else. Lots of great rules for engagement, conversations on well-worn case studies, and a couple of gems of details I enjoyed to learn about (e.g. I have not heard about the extent of @twelpforce until this panel).

But what got me spurred the most had more to do with the last panel:

Crossing the Abyss
Allan Frank (City of Philadelphia), Chris Lehmann (Science Leadership Academy), Brad Garlinghouse (AOL)
Organizations that thrived in the prior era will not necessarily succeed in the Network Age. Yet the inertia of established practices, incentives, and culture is extremely powerful. If an organization needs to transform, how can it determine the proper path, and what does it take to achieve real, sustainable change?(emphasis mine)

While the conversation with Brad was enjoyable (hearing about AOL and Yahoo! and the Second Acts), I appreciated the stories, but wanted to hear (in this panel) some suggestions on how to achieve real, sustainable change (see above). When Chris and Allan joined the panel, there were great details on what was wrong and what was needed, but little in what works and what are the next great achievements to drive this change.

I personally got frustrated with the litany of problems that were enumerated and the demands that were to be made - as if there were infinite resources and it could be an instantaneous change that could occur in our schools, our governments and our corporations to bring about the successes we seek. But sorry guys, coming from a ABD PhD, gratification and change comes about slowly and often imperceptibly until the critical mass occurs and then all follow due to the standards of human nature. The question is - how to we determine that path to achieve that change?
Read the rest of this entry »

Sent to me by a mutual Democratic friend.

M E M O   T O   T H E   T E A   P A R T Y   M O V E M E N T
We had eight years of Bush and Cheney who trampled on the Constitution, but now you get mad.

You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President although that is nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution giving them that power…nor is there anything about corporations being “people.”

You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy…even when it was proved that the energy crisis in California was created by ENRON.

You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed and other acts of definable acts of treason were secretly done against the country.

You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed and we operated under a Soviet Union style of surveillance of citizens.

You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us and hanged it’s elected leader.

You didn’t get mad when we spent over $600 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn’t get mad when over $10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people even though we hanged Nazis for doing the same thing.

You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.

You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed which our returning wounded soldiers had to endure after fighting for their country.

You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown due to shoddy levees built by the government.

You didn’t get mad when we gave a $900 billion tax break to the rich and major corporations, many of whom paid no taxes on the billions in profit they made.

You didn’t get mad when, using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage which cost over 20 percent more for basically the same services that Medicare provides.

You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark.

BUT you finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, illegal surveillance of American citizens, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans…oh hell no.

SO NOW YOU’RE MAD?!

I was watching the Sunday morning political chatfests and it reminded me why I worry about the future of our republic.

When I got heavily involved in the political process, I was so upset at how the Bush Administration had destroyed American credibility abroad with the folly of the attack of Iraq, the snub of our responsibilities on the world stage with regard to our place as a world citizen and the general “holier than thou” attitude when dealing with issues that could seriously impact the entire world, not just within our borders (e.g. climate change).

Today, I watched Karl Rove on This Week do what he does best, which was obfuscate the issues at hand by claiming the Obama White House had done some things that I know the Bush White House had done over and over. I saw him use the Glen Beck process of using a whiteboard to prove his point when no one could actually read it. I could devote an entire post on his absolute arrogant process of FoxNews-ifying the show (see for yourself) with his hypocritical cries of how the Healthcare process was not bipartisan, while never once bringing up the point that his own party has been the inertia and friction that has brought government to a standstill in the frequent use of the filibuster and procedural tactics that causes America to think Washington is broken.

What are you talking about, Sanford?

Let me try to explain my frustration with a story that rankles my engineering sensibilities:

• You go into a problem with the assumption that all actors are their to work on the problem of X, and
• you are open to the conversations and arguments that are within X.

But if the opponents of X have a weak hand, or have a weak position, it is better to obfuscate and delay the process than to actually discuss the problem when they know they can not win the argument.

As quoted often in the legal profession, the lawyer’s primer is ““If you don’t have the law, you argue the facts; if you don’t have the facts, you argue the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, then pound on the table.” The idea of argue the argument you can win is the the issue of framing and turning the conversation. Consider:

• When Obama entered the White House, the credit issue and healthcare was top of mind. He had his financial team working on the credit crisis (and I might comment on that later), he focused on what people during his campaign asked for - solve the healthcare issue.
• As Obama got the work going, the Repugs did what they always do - delay, delay, delay. Use the rules of the filibuster and Roberts Rules of Order to delay actions through a single actor (yes, there is always someone to be the bad guy) to play to the meme “Government Doesn’t Work”.
• Tack on the Tea Party stories powered by our “friends” at Fox News with stories of “death panels” and how the country doesn’t want this bill - and see how the Repugs now own the story of how this bill is too big, this is a bill no one wants, etc.

Sorry - but it just doesn’t cut it with me. Sadly, I know far too many people think the Repug narrative of “big government, bad government” and “no one wants this bill” registers far too well.

Reconciliation is a procedural method for passage when you have a majority, and when the minority is delaying (even when Dems are in the minority) - there must be some way to either get the minority to agree - or to get out of the way.

With the polarizing media efforts, the killing off of moderates - are we surprised that the coalitions of yesteryear are almost impossible to create?

While I recognize the past two weeks have been absorbed with other issues from Congress, I have one simple question: where is the focus on Main Street? As in, what happened to the focus on truly kick-starting the economy - with a JOBS bill?

Reading Robert Reich’s piece on TPM today, I keep wondering what specifically happened to our focus on building up the economy?

I thought I remembered that the reason we did accepted the stimulus package was to free up the credit markets to ensure that banks would go back to lending. That the Fed Reserve Bank lending window was opened to these banks so they could get access to cheap cash: what happened to the spurring of the Main Street? Robert Reich had a great line in The Sham Recovery:

Business cheerleaders naturally want to emphasize the positive. They assume the economy runs on optimism and that if average consumers think the economy is getting better, they’ll empty their wallets more readily and - presto! - the economy will get better. The cheerleaders fail to understand that regardless of how people feel, they won’t spend if they don’t have the money.

The US economy grew at a 5.9 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2009. That sounds good until you realize GDP figures are badly distorted by structural changes in the economy. For example, part of the increase is due to rising health care costs. When WellPoint ratchets up premiums, that enlarges the GDP. But you’d have to be out of your mind to consider this evidence of a recovery.

Part of the perceived growth in GDP is due to rising government expenditures. But this is smoke and mirrors. The stimulus is reaching its peak and will be smaller in months to come. And a bigger federal debt eventually has to be repaid.

And with the Washington Post article from August 2009 and Robert’s own blog post on October 2009, we seem to be forgetting about the biggest bubble - the banks themselves.

As the banks continue to grow, are we not making this another tittering problem that we are ignoring? Why aren’t the banks HELPING in building up jobs? Should we be asking JP Morgan or Morgan Stanley for jobs creation instead of DC?

What is a guy to say when his own President suggests that children take responsibility for their own lives and future? I mean, REALLY! - take responsibility? Where are we living now - in America? Pluh-leeze!

You can read the entire speech here (thanks Jesse!). A few excerpts:

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have been watching the coverage of the passing of “The Lion” and thought of the two times I met the man.

Back in 2003, where I had joined the Kerry Campaign, we were in the DC office working away - and with the Dean Campaign having waves of good press and momentum, our office felt somewhat like a dead man walking. When JK brought on Mary-Beth Cahill, the office had an almost “game-over” feel - and suddenly, we were brought into the main conference room for a “meeting”.

As we were milling about in the room, suddenly - this enormous personality walked in with two dogs. I had never met Senator Kennedy before - and from television and other appearances, I assumed him to be a tall man like JK. This man was jovial, enthusiastic and here to raise our spirits.

He gave one of his patented “Kennedy speeches” which was designed to lift our spirits. And, truthfully, it did.

It is a shame to see a man with his legacy of service pass - but it is an honor to his memory that we commit to his work and carry on - beyond the short time he was with us on the earth.

A friend of mine from Genius Rocket sent this to me this morning, and I thought it was quite funny in its informative sarcasm:

Reading the articles these past 12 hours and wanted to say, I have to agree with many of the people’s opinions extolling the selection of Aneesh Chopra as the new CTO of the Obama Administration including Tim O’Reilly and Alan Davidson. To quote Tim:

“Aneesh Chopra is a rock star. He’s a brilliant, thoughtful change-maker. He knows technology, he knows government, and he knows how to put the two together to solve real problems. We couldn’t do better. “

I, myself, have also been knee-deep in various Government 2.0 projects in recent weeks, and must admit in the wisdom of having someone who understands both technology and government bureaucracy.

In one of my engagements, I met with a number of CIOs, deputy CIOs and other members of the technology community of a large Northeastern state, and I was encouraged by the restrained frustration they felt in wanting to do new things, but were concerned about the bureaucracy that they all felt might hamstring their progress. My most poignant story came from one of the project managers who described their outreach program for helping citizens with insurance issues, and when we discussed the idea of “crowdsourcing“, he rightly introduced me to the legal issues that a state government might face with information coming from a government source that may or may not be correct.

In the Government 2.0 Camp event in DC last month, there were some incredible people from the IRS that have really stretched the horizon working on building a community that will expand the reach of services, but always have to be cognizant of the constraints of the law and mission of their organization.

And at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco earlier this month, Andrew McLaughlin described the issues that the government faces when attempting to address the need for transparency while maintaining the safety and security of the nation.

In all cases, the need for an understanding of the bureaucratic lay-of-the-land is paramount in the largest business organization on the planet. While he may not have a technical background (his degrees are in public policy), I wish him nothing but the best in resolving the many issues he has to face.

Chief Performance Officer

One thing that may be overlooked in most stories is the announcement of Jeffrey Zients as Chief Performance Officer - a role which I have become intimately familiar with over the past five years. When you place a CIO with a CTO, the CIO’s role is often to deal with the budgetary issues of the organization, changing policies that govern the business practices within an organization. The CTO (in a startup) usually focuses on new technologies and is supposed to be familiar with the issues that can make or break a product direction - in the case of government, the goal is to understand the issues that will shape the public policies that can affect the infrastructure of the nation as a whole.

But the role of CTO and CIO rarely has any performance metrics on them - aside from revenue and costs - how to make money (grow the GDP) or to save money (reduce the costs within the organization). In the case of a CIO of such a large organization, someone must take the lead in understanding other secondary and tertiary benefits for optimization in the long run. TO this, I am happy to see someone had the forethought to consider this role.

Best of luck to the team.

This morning I watched This Week on ABC as I always do on Sunday mornings, and while I was getting annoyed at the standard back-and-forth about the Repug point-of-view (”We love tax cuts, let the free market sort it out. And Dems never saw a program they did not like.”) and the Democratic point-of-view (”Tax cuts do not fund roads. Tax cuts do not put firemen to work. Tax cuts are bad.”), what really blew my mind was what seemed to be a complete lack of understanding of what the world of technology actually is. And then, Rep. Barney Frank did something that blew my mind, as if transparency being requested was going to hurt the bedrock of democracy.

In the last few minutes of the segment, Eric begins to discuss placing information about the spending “on websites” - and that, if the government was able to track where the money was spent, that the arguments of who was right or wrong would be clarified by seeing what happens with the spending.

In the midst of Eric making this remark, Sen. Jim DeMint, [R-SC] says “You’re assuming we can track this money…” and Rep. Barney Frank [D-MA] suggested that Congress was going to put all of the spending on the web (I assume by the fact that the HR-1 requires these actions to be visible through their Transparency provisions at www.recovery.gov and the Inspector General appointment). But what stuck in my craw was this exchange (transcript from ABCNews):
Read the rest of this entry »