How (Bad) Process Creates Crisis

As someone whose focus in life has continuously moved towards understand process work and process change, this is a very important statement about our political process in California, and in our nation as a whole. I think this is in many ways what happens towards the end of an empire, as the strategies that used to work — namely force and the dominance of the upper class — no longer will continue to work. The progressive movement does not arise out of a vacuum — it arises out of the need for change, away from a very conservative stagnant society that no longer can economically move forward. Our economy is tied up in meaningless bank accounts, too large to be spent appropriately to create growth. As Dolly Levi said, “Money is like manure — it’s no good unless it is spread around encouraging young things to grow.” Our political process has become the same — no good at encouraging growth, it simply stinks.

We need to change it, and soon. Now.

Over the last several months, we have started to see a lot of attention at the national level devoted to this topic of the California budget crisis. And this would be pleasing to me, if it wasn’t for the minor point that all of it has been wrong. One hundred percent, no exceptions, wrong. You can start by the insistence on referring to it as a budget crisis. I’ll give you a related example. Right now we’re seeing this debate over health care, and the intensity of the town hall meetings and misinformation provided by Republicans and their allies in the health care industry. But really, none of that has to happen. With a Democratic President, and large majorities in the House and Senate, there should be no problem finding a majority that supports some form of decent legislation which includes insurance reforms and a public option to provide competition. But you have the hurdle of the filibuster in the Senate. In fact, the very undemocratic nature of the Senate itself, where the state of California and the state of Wyoming have the same representation despite one having over 70 times as many residents as the other, distorts the debate and creates abstractions from the expressed will of the people and the political will in Washington. Now, that ought to be understood as a political crisis, not a crisis over what to do about health care but a crisis about how to leap the institutional hurdles. Well, take that situation, multiply it by 10 orders of magnitude, and you start to understand the nature of the problem in California.

We have a center-left electorate and a center-right political system in which they must operate. And sure, Democrats in the state could do a much better job at negotiation and advocacy. But my contention is that this is not a problem of personality but process, and that process has created the crisis which we now face. We could elect Noam Chomsky Governor next year and still be saddled with the structural hurdles that must be jettisoned before we can even return to a baseline of sane and responsible governance in California.

And while the worst economic hole since the Great Depression certainly accelerated the problem, this is not the result of a perfect storm of factors contributing to the demise. It was a 70-year bout of rain, and at every step of the way, nobody properly challenged this slip into an ungovernable system. So it’s going to take a lot of time to restore democracy to California, just as it took so much time to take it away. But I believe that we can solve this problem in a way that can truly be a harbinger for the country at large, which is the state’s reputation. If we can really work to figure out the proper model for government that allows for the will of the people to be reflected in policy and provides the accountability for the public so they know whether or not they like the policy results, we will not only have saved California, but the whole nation. So that’s what we’ll be talking about today.

via Calitics:: California – How Process Creates Crisis @Netroots Nation Open Thread.

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5 Responses

  1. Well said.

    I’ve about decided, re: formed an opinion, that the Republicans and their fellow-travellers do all the pernicious rabble-rousing they do because they have perceived that change to our fouled-up oligarchy will never come from Washington, nor even from State governments. It will come from the bottom, and they simply cannot stand the idea that the ordinary people in this country will rise up against the rich/powerful/venal government they have sleepily allowed themselves to tolerate.

    Frankly, I think it is unlikely that the vox populi will ever be heard in a meaningful way in this nation again.

  2. From my humble perspective, the problem we face today has been erected by BOTH corporate parties over the last 200 years. It’s a system that serves THEM (not the people, of course) very well. The system has become so convoluted that it provides the party in power with an easy excuse for why they can’t get much of anything done.

    Sadly, however, I don’t expect to see progressive masses in the streets anytime soon, if ever. People have been drinking the kool-aid for too long. What passes for outrage and activism these days is a nasty letter to the editor or to scream and shout on talk radio. People don’t want to take to the streets because their lattes will get cold and they’ll miss the next episode of American Idol.

  3. gerry, I think the kids are alright. Our generation is too divided, but these 20 somethings are pretty impressive when they start getting their shit together — they are going to surprise us all, I think. Assuming we get out of their way and let them!

    lol, Rambling Taoist, too right!

    Me, the TV is off most days and that’s the way I like it. Gave up on letters to the editor, too. Who reads newspapers? Radio? Only wingnuts listen. I don’t drink coffee, either.

    So for me, the Internet remains the place to be, to communicate, and to get things done. We spread our ideas and let those who have ears, hear. And tweet. And share on facebook. And email, and blog… til they are everywhere. And I do have those friends still brave enough to go door to door and face to face, too, and who have the stomache to attend the Democratic party meetings, and even take them over, and are even now starting to spread into Republican turf. (Shhh!)

  4. My children and grandchildren all live in California so I am vitally interested in the economic situation there. I can remember when California had one of the best educational systems in the nation with free, or low cost, College tuition. Then the populace voted in Proposition 13. How did that work for California?

    California used to be a liberal state and a bunch of ‘no nothings’ from my state, Arizona, came in with their homophobia ads and a ton of money and got the voters to overturn marriage rights for gays.

    I don’t have much confidence in our Representatives, but I don’t have a lot of faith in the electorate either. They are so easily swayed by self seeking groups.

  5. I suppose it will never be all that hard to get folks to limit taxes upon themselves.

    Of course, people still want all those fine government services like roads, schools, libraries, and, last-but-not-least, more and more prisons. They assume someone besides themselves will pay for it. Just who that is they haven’t figured out yet.

    As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

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