RE: Group Reflections

[Ken Diamond <kenken5001@yahoo.com>]

I agree that it is often useful to step back and focus on commonalties within a decision making group when details create roadblocks. It is the proverbial inability to see the forest from the tree. But you asked what a reporter might bring from this group to the Senate. Since that decision-making body has to decide on details, how can we present ourselves as a model without asking as much of ourselves? Would anyone be satisfied if the Senate decided to end this with a Sense of the Senate resolution, a "general statements that reflect common points of interest" about money and politics? If our goal was to produce choices comparable to their task, there should have been a defined path to that end.

A popular writer noted that you should act with the larger ends in mind. A group should start with the largest of these ends in mind and move inward through those nested within always reflecting back up both to see if what we're doing reflects the larger worldview and whether it accurately reflect the more tangible realities of the specific choices we are making. It's the search for a coherent _expression_ between values, morals and principals we claim for ourselves and our choices and actions. 

I recognize that groups and individual are limited in what they are able and willing to do. There will always be a tension between ideals and practical realities. You can't let the former keep you from attending to the latter. A group should set out its goals and the process it will use to achieve them. That may change as things procede and perhaps the group might break down in unreconcialable differences. But to go back to your comparison to the Senate, when you don't make a decision on public policy, in effect you are making one. That one is the status quo and it is often not held to the same scrutiny as the other options. Unfortunately, that choice requires no agreement but is rather the beneficiary of the lack of agreement on any alternative.