Diggapedia

  Have the Republicans given up or are they simply trying to destroy the country?   I get the role of the opposition is to challenge the party in power and make sure you extract something during legislative debates, but for the last five years, and I imagine for the next three years, they will be willing to induce significant harm to this nation.   I accept there will be some instances when the opposition will take a firm ‘no’ position and I get that.   But this is completely different, and what’s worse about it now is it is no longer about ideology, but politics.   Not the good kind of political bargaining and gamesmanship, but the nasty personal, damaging, and selfish kind.   Our government is dysfunctional and I just had to break out my copy of Patrick Lencioni Five Dysfunctions of a Team to analyze further. Lencioni’s leadership fable has been read by millions and it is simple and effective lesson in rooting out the sources of a team’s inability...

24 hours after most Congressional Republicans came to their senses we have effectively kicked the can into early 2014.   The president is feeling a little cocky, Boehner is holding on, the GOP is ruing the day it hooked up with the Tea Party, and many in the Tea Party are upping their Thorazine dosages. But what is in store for America?   The economic recovery is sputtering, labor markets are anemic, political will is absent, fiscal policy is missing, and too many of our representatives are preoccupied with re-election.   So how do we get this ship righted? For starters, fix immigration now.   It is the single biggest reason why we have few start-ups today than before 2001.   Start-ups become small businesses and small businesses are the labor engine of America.   According to The Economist , start-ups created 2.7m new jobs in the 2012 financial year compared with 4.7m in 1999 .   The Republicans need to accept that they have no one to blame but t...

  Unite Blue, tcot, OWS, Tea Party, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, Conservatives, Progressives, Americans Elect, Independents, and so on and so on.   By the way, if you join the “No Labels” organization, isn’t that in itself a label?   The growing dissatisfaction with political parties has led to an increase in loosely affiliated grass roots organizations, AstroTurf created special interests groups, and the ubiquitous ‘unaffiliated’   Independent voter.    Between 2008 -2012, 2.5 million voters left political parties to become independents raising the number of independents to 40% of all registered voters, larger than both primary political parties.   Of course, assuming Independents are a monolithic bloc is naïve and all too convenient. So why the political diaspora?   Have people connected with an inner Groucho Marx: “I don't want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”   The recent debate...