Friday, July 07, 2017

Professional Left Podcast #396

"If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing."
-- W. Edwards Deming


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3 comments:

dinthebeast said...

Excellent podcast. I've tried to explain to people who weren't even around in 1978 what prop 13 was, and how it stomped my beautiful state into the dirt, and thus what a minor miracle it is that Jerry Brown has sort of funded the schools again (although you can't expect them to magically return to their former glory the minute you reinstate their budgets) and, gosh, we have a budget now, on time and everything, and also how catastrophic it could be if we try to do single payer here and fuck it up.
If we do that, it's game over for generations as far as getting the real thing in the country, and we really shouldn't play around with that lightly. Never mind that the actual proposal wasn't even a real bill, and would have been made into hamburger well before it could be fleshed out into an actual policy that could, you know, fund healthcare for Californians.
But no! The problem must be that I'm a "scabby seeming Hilbot" that doesn't want to change the establishment.
That's always the point where I get angry at having to, as you two pointed out, do the work of a conservative for them.
I'm very, very, far from being a conservative. So it does irk me to have to lecture folks who haven't thought the issue through and just want their way (and right now, dammit) on the drawbacks of destroying the institutions that hold our society up on the off chance that we can think up something better on the fly and get it instituted *as we thought it up* in time to still, you know, hold up the society...
One more thought about process. (Who did I just read that said that if you can't explain what you're doing as a process, you're not doing anything?) Barack Obama was very famously a "process guy" as a president, and there were times when his faith in the process was absolutely infuriating. Maybe he saw things I didn't. Because they sure have turned to attacking those processes themselves just now, and much of the damage they do will be really hard and take a really long time to repair. Like getting people to believe that those processes are actually worth having again, and getting them to trust in their function again.
It could also be the reverse and the nihilists on the right could just be attacking them because Obama thought they were worthwhile, but I don't think so.

-Doug in Oakland

DonP said...

The best overlooked story of the week was Greta Van Sustern declaring that now that she has lots of free time, she'd like to be Ambassador to Ireland. Hell, I'd like to be Ambassador to Ireland! (I'm half Irish). While we're at it, I'd like to be Czar of all the Russias,and the new Klingon Emperor as well.

starskeptic said...

4 yrs? - Obama gave Fox 6 yrs...