In a recent posting in ShowMeProgress, a blogger going by the name of Willy K, residing in  southwest Missouri reports on an exchange of ideas that he had with the office of Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO).  Willy is concerned that Senator McCaskill is placing so much emphasis on the government maintaining financial accountability that she has put aside addressing the pressing social issues that confront us.

Senator McCaskill is one of those enigmatic Democratic senators who supports the public option for health care one day and abandons it the next day.  In the vernacular, she flip-flops.  While this is speculation, it seems that as an empathetic individual she knows that the public option is a viable way to provide universal, reasonably-priced health care for all Americans and keep the insurance companies in check.  That’s the flip.  But the flop is either her concern for re-election in 2012 or just a natural desire to please her Missouri constituents.  At a town hall last August in Hillsboro (Jefferson County), she said that she would base her position on health care on the “beliefs of the citizens of Missouri.”

We elect our leaders to lead.  And to be blunt, if I was going to “follow” I’d find an individual or group with better judgment than “the citizens of Missouri.”  It’s not politically correct to say this, but as we’ve stated before, the American people just aren’t that smart when it comes to public policy.

In his letter, Willy states:

Stop reading polls and listen to people like me. Educated people who watch the Sunday morning shows, read blogs, have hundreds of friends on Facebook, and have some idea of what the American public really thinks….

Watch John Stewart. He’s rude and crude, but he’s got it right about 95% of the time. Especially recently with regard to your total impotence about being able to accomplish anything in Healthcare. Visit his comments about what you might be doing while the Republicans are playing chess.

Either Senator McCaskill or someone in her office had the courtesy to respond to Willy’s letter.  Willy was not satisfied because of what he considered her “one-note response.”  That note was that fiscal responsibility trumps everything.  She said:

I know that Missourians are especially concerned about the size of the federal government and the size of our national debt. I share these concerns. We do spend too much in Washington, and our deficit is dangerously high. I want you to know that I have consistently voted to hold down spending.

As an isolated statement, this is fine.  However, we don’t live in a vacuum.  Forty-seven million Americans do not have health care coverage; nearly 17% of our population is either unemployed or under-employed, and to quote the great philosopher, Mike Shannon, “this list goes on and on.”

Why do so many politicians become fiscal conservatives on domestic programs that provide direct benefit to citizens?  Why are wars, often without clear purpose, exempt from fiscal restraint?  I think that Senator McCaskill provided the answer in August; she relies on the good judgment of the people of Missouri.  That’s a non-starter and certainly not leadership.  Senator McCaskill, we need more from you and your colleagues in Congress and the White House if we are to address our problems.   Which epitaph would you prefer, “She championed human rights and the welfare of the people” or “She pleased the people of Missouri.”  They’re not the same, and so far, your choice is not terribly impressive to those who advocate for the needs of the disenfranchised.  As is the case with President Obama, it’s not too late for Change 2.0.

The post Senator McCaskill: Please Lead! appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Dateline: Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  January 14, 2010.  A few television reporters had reached Haiti, now just two days after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the heart of Port-au-Prince.  Many reporters shamelessly touted that  they were “first” to get there (how many can be first?).  There were a few grizzled professional journalists who were “story first, me second.”  But the work of CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta brought journalism to a remarkably high level, perhaps because it was more than the act of observing.  It was the act of doing.  In the video below, you see the incredible metamorphosis of Dr. Gupta from reporter only to reporter / physician.

Despite the tragedy of the situation, Dr. Gupta’s piece thrilled me.  Dr. Gupta has the skills, the empathy, and the presence to show what human beings can be like at our finest.  There was nothing plastic about him; he was in front of the camera but not performing for it.  He didn’t get the ratings of the Super Bowl ads, but unlike the ads, he showed us what we could be rather than what we’re tempted to be.

But to paraphrase the great philosopher B.B. King a few days later, “The thrill was gone.”  Naively, I assumed that just about everyone saw this clip of Dr. Gupta.  As I spoke to more and more people, particularly teenagers, I found that television news is about as remote to them as Haiti.  Perhaps television news should be an afterthought; with the exception of PBS and a few other outlets, tv news reporting has earned that lowly status.  And to their credit, some of the teenagers were listening to NPR, but most seemed to just be getting blips from internet clearinghouses.

It’s odd to use the terms “good fortune” and” tragedy” together, but baby boomers had the good fortune to experience the power of live television repeatedly because it was really the only show in town when tragedy struck.  From the assassination of President Kennedy to the Challenger explosion, broadcast news was where you went when “real breaking news” happened (maybe once or twice a year).

A story is usually real until the media gives it a tag line; then things begin to deteriorate.  Dr. Gupta’s piece came after the tag lines had been written and the melodramatic music was playing.  But it cut through the chaff and showed us what real broadcast journalism and real engagement in a story can be.  I only wish more people had seen it.

The post Dr. Gupta calling and practicing his calling appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I’m hungry; thinking about getting a snack in fifteen minutes.  Considering my waistline, there’s a lot that’s unhealthy about that and it reflects much of the way our world operates today.  My hankering for food even though I don’t need it reflects my need for immediate gratification.  As a country, we tend to want what we want and want it now.  This short-term thinking is reinforced by the media that lives by the 24-hour news cycle.

But when news comes to us so quickly we extrapolate that the solutions to our problems will come just as quickly.  They don’t.  The short news cycle reinforces a myopic view of what’s happening and implies that all will be well if we just act now!

Imagine if we looked at solving problems over the course of a generation, or perhaps even longer.  One thing is that our options for solutions would grow exponentially.  But what may be more important is that long-term change is the only realistic path we have because our system is so corrupted and we as a people ….. well, many of us are not too bright.  Until we accept these realities and the burdens that they place on our growth, we’ll spin our wheels, and the spinning will be the news.

First we have to examine ourselves, or to quote the great philosopher Michael Jackson, we need to look at “the man in the mirror.”   While there are remarkable people amongst us, far too many people lack civic knowledge, and more important, the ability to logically process the information they have.  If they had more information and could process it better, they’d agree with Mark Twain’s famous words; “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know.  It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”  [Is Mark Twain American enough for Sarah Palin to consider these words?]

Before trying to put a positive spin on change occurring over generations rather than news cycles, we need to factor in another adage, “You get what you measure.”  The wisdom of this assertion raises are two problems: (1) We may not be measuring the correct things and (2) we spend an enormous amount of time believing in statistics about things that simply can’t be measured accurately.

In the book “Super Freakonomics,” economists Stephen Levin and Stephen Dubner depict the importance of “out of the box” analytical thinking examining phenomena such as why 38 people watched Kitty Genovese be murdered in New York and what caused the 1960s crimes explosion.  The surprises that they spring on us reflect the skepticism with which we need to view conventional data.

What does this have to do with advancing our society by thinking in terms of generational rather than election-cycle change?  It’s because our view of change is microscopic (one day to the next; one year to the next) and our strategies are based on short-term reward, be it for the politician winning the next election, the CEO posting increased earnings, the television network executive reporting higher ratings.

Here are a few areas in which measurement is biased towards the short-term and which prohibit our ability to view meaningful change when it happens.

Education:

Economics:

To look at generational change means that we must get away from conventional forms of measurement.  In fact, in some ways we may have to do the unthinkable – actually observe without measuring.  How can we measure if someone will become a life-long learner when they’re young?  How can we assess whether a business is sensitive to societal needs if we don’t use subjective criteria?

Our first step is to acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers and to be suspicious of those (primarily politicians) who purport to know everything.  Additionally we have to resist the arguments of “simplifiers” such as the tea baggers who bring to the table twin detrimental attitudes of (a) if it’s good for me, I don’t care what happens to others, and (b) if we dumb things  down, we can all be “common people” and rule with the one and only correct kind of “common sense.”

We need to find ways to assess whether we’re taking steps that will result in long-term positive change without relying on short-term data.  We need to recognize that as humans, our world is ambiguous and does not lend itself to simple answers.  We need to be patient with others who are thinking outside the box to advance the goals of fairness and justice.  None of this is easy, but if we don’t try, it will be more of the “same old same old” and that machine will eventually break down.

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