CDZ Hey GOP: What's wrong with truth?

[Compost]

For crying out loud. OP offers up a question about truth and a chart and you are jumping on me for not diving into research to try to figure out OP's point? Is that how "clean debate" works?

You claimed that there was no support to the chart and I implied you might find it at the site. I thought complaining about the lack of a link was rather weak. And I have no idea how "clean debate" works.

Clearly.

So, for my edification, which of the rules did I violate?

No Name Calling Or Putting Down Posters
No Trolling and/or Troll Threads
No Hijacking
No Personal Attacks
No Neg Repping

I'm talking about debating with meaning. Why are you wigging out?

 

[alang1216]

For crying out loud. OP offers up a question about truth and a chart and you are jumping on me for not diving into research to try to figure out OP's point? Is that how "clean debate" works?

You claimed that there was no support to the chart and I implied you might find it at the site. I thought complaining about the lack of a link was rather weak. And I have no idea how "clean debate" works.

Clearly.

So, for my edification, which of the rules did I violate?

No Name Calling Or Putting Down Posters
No Trolling and/or Troll Threads
No Hijacking
No Personal Attacks
No Neg Repping

I'm talking about debating with meaning. Why are you wigging out?

My bad. I don't see very much meaningful debate on this board so I try not to lower the standards.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

[Compost]

For crying out loud. OP offers up a question about truth and a chart and you are jumping on me for not diving into research to try to figure out OP's point? Is that how "clean debate" works?

You claimed that there was no support to the chart and I implied you might find it at the site. I thought complaining about the lack of a link was rather weak. And I have no idea how "clean debate" works.

Clearly.

So, for my edification, which of the rules did I violate?

No Name Calling Or Putting Down Posters
No Trolling and/or Troll Threads
No Hijacking
No Personal Attacks
No Neg Repping

I'm talking about debating with meaning. Why are you wigging out?

My bad. I don't see very much meaningful debate on this board so I try not to lower the standards.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

Uh huh. Being a pragmatist must be tough.

 

[alang1216]

Being a pragmatist must be tough.

Actually it is quite easy. If something doesn't work throw it out and try something else. It is ideologues that have it tough, they have to hold onto solutions that have been proven not to work. Usually with some excuse that it wasn't done with enough purity.

 

[Agit8r]

Politifact has a liberal bias. Everyone knows that.

No. Liberals have a factual bias.

 

[Compost]

Being a pragmatist must be tough.

Actually it is quite easy. If something doesn't work throw it out and try something else. It is ideologues that have it tough, they have to hold onto solutions that have been proven not to work. Usually with some excuse that it wasn't done with enough purity.

Uh huh. Good for you.

 

[sealybobo]

Politifact has a liberal bias. Everyone knows that.

Truth,all the facts and the entire story is liberal.

 

[320 Years of History]

Being a pragmatist must be tough.

Actually it is quite easy. If something doesn't work throw it out and try something else. It is ideologues that have it tough, they have to hold onto solutions that have been proven not to work. Usually with some excuse that it wasn't done with enough purity.

I have to agree with you.

Off Topic, sort of, but I'll eventually get back to the thread topic:
In my career as a manager of enterprise transformations for huge multinational corporations, the one thing I've observed repeatedly is that watering down one's goals and approaches is the surest way waste both time and money. Going for the "big win" is definitely higher in risk, but it's also offers far higher rewards. The key then to success is being incredibly good at managing the risks without watering down the rewards. Doing that requires very sharp people and it costs more up front, both in terms of time and money; however it returns much more overall and in the long run.

In politics, an ideologue is what in business we call a visionary. Quite often, especially on matters of social policy and economic policy, the specific vision, strategy and tactics they promulgate haven't been shown to work or not work. At some basic levels, even a few intermediate levels of economic, psychological and social theory/modeling, sure we know what results from "this or that" decision/action. At the detailed level at which the decision plays out in the lives of people, there's less certainty for the variables involved are simply too many. We just don't have the computing power to in a timely enough manner identify and accurately weight every stinkin' variable in play for some of the matters about which we must make decisions.

It's not hard to tell what things fall into that category of being "to big to know;" they are the things about which there's not overwhelming agreement among the experts whose job it is to figure out "what will happen if..." Maybe one day we will, but right now, we don't, yet right now is when we must make a decision of some sort lest we "screw the pooch" for future generations. I don't know about you, but I'd hate for ours to be deemed by future generations as the "Age of Idiotic and Ineffective Ideology," the "I-Cubed" era.

That said, ideologues have their place, and we need them. What business transformation projects like mine have that politics and government do not is people who don't have vested interests (their own or their supporters') in bringing "this or that" vision to fruition and who therefore consider the matter in a fully disinterested way. As consultants, we have the ability to say to our clients who ask, "Yes, this can/will work and we understand how to make it work," or "No, this is going to be disastrous and here's why."

Political policy making doesn't have that. What is has is folks who ask the question, get as well informed an answer as there can be, yet then go on and do whatever their ill/under informed constituents want, using the snippets that suit them from the answers they received and doing so without regard to the general thrust of the overall answer(s). The consequence of that is that whatever vision an ideologue promotes either doesn't get "trashed" or it gets transformed into something it wasn't ever supposed to be but that it must now be in order to satisfy some constituency. It's no wonder that any policy approach that either party espouses barely has any real impact or success.

In implementing business transformation visions, one technique we routinely use is what I call "milestone measurement." Periodically we and the client critically evaluate whether we're on track and whether the information we have produced or observed still militate for going forward -- with the vision as a whole -- as planned, going forward with minor adjustments to the plan, or cancelling the plan and overhauling it, be that temporally, substantively, in terms of the goals we aim for and when, or some other major revision. The basis of measurement is always what the vision aims to achieve. Impediments to achieving the vision are either removed, made impotent, or otherwise overcome, or the vision is scrapped.

The principles of milestone measurement, tactically speaking, can easily be incorporated into policy and legislation. One need only (1) say, "Fine, we're going to try 'your' way, "lock, stock and barrel," for X years, and see what happens," (2) define objective and reasonable criteria for measuring success -- criteria that are directly in line with what the law aims to and can achieve, not with what someone wishes it should achieve -- at or near the end of those X years, and (3) incorporate language into the law stating that if the measures aren't met to "whatever" extent, the law is repealed automatically.

You see, I don't actually think that policy makers on either side are actually out to "screw" the country or its citizens. I am equally certain that we just can't always know which course of action is the best, or if not "the best" effective to some acceptable degree. In the presence of that type of uncertainty about outcomes, the process we use to achieve a stated goal becomes more important than whether we implement "this or that" specific solution as the means to achieve that goal, assuming the goal isn't reprehensible to begin with, and I don't think either party's goals are in general reprehensible.

Unfortunately, lawyers and politicians, many of whom are attorneys, just don't think in terms of applying sound policy making processes to achieving social and economic goals for the nation as a whole; they think in terms of manipulating the policy making process however they can to achieve their "clients" desired policy outcome. That's a major stumbling block to applying sound, disinterested processes, when one has the situation we do today whereby only about million, maybe fewer, folks, "clients," actually have influencing access to policy makers. That's not partisan problem unique to Democrats or Republicans, but it is a problem that for as long as it remains, we'll have, Trump notwithstanding, have "politics as usual."

"Politics as usual," more so than any specific policy a party advances, is what annoys me more than anything else. I truly don't care much where Dems or Reps hold power. I care about "doing something" to the fullest extent and finding out if it works or not. It may work; it may not work. Either way, we can move forward from whatever be the outcome. This "watering down" of ideas, this endless debating about things that only "trying it" will tell who's right/better and who's wrong/worse, and the "politics of 'no'".... I've had it with all that BS. I am fully disgusted with ideologically driven legislative intransigence and stalled governance. I want that stopped far more than I want to see or not see any given policy implemented. I pay too much in taxes to be satisfied with that.

 

[alang1216]

Being a pragmatist must be tough.

Actually it is quite easy. If something doesn't work throw it out and try something else. It is ideologues that have it tough, they have to hold onto solutions that have been proven not to work. Usually with some excuse that it wasn't done with enough purity.

I've had it with all that BS. I am fully disgusted with ideologically driven legislative intransigence and stalled governance. I want that stopped far more than I want to see or not see any given policy implemented. I pay too much in taxes to be satisfied with that.

We all have core values that we will probably never change, I certainly have mine. I'll give an example of one of my core values: every child should have as good a shot at the American Dream as possible. I don't really care how this is accomplished but I'm generally for whatever brings us closer to this goal and against whatever moves us further from this goal.

The lies and spin I hear from the GOP certainly will bring us no closer to any kind of solution since we can't even have an honest discussion.