The Real News Network has published three parts of this series so far.

David Cay Johnston on Reality Asserts Itself (1/4)

LAPD Infiltrators and Agents Provocateurs Targeted Leftists and Panthers – David Cay Johnston on Reality Asserts Itself (2/4)

The Deep State and the Power of Billionaires – David Cay Johnston on Reality Asserts Itself (3/4)

I am sputtering in such outrage at the story these interviews tell, that I  haven’t go the time to put in the videos into this post the way I usually do for posts like this.

All I can calm down long enough to do is to quote one question and answer from the third video.

JAY: So what’s the consequence of this? We’ve gone from where there was at least some chipping away at some of the big estates–I take your point; it was porous, it wasn’t ever big chipping away. The big estates remain very big. But even that much chipping away is more or less gone now. What does that mean to country?

JOHNSTON: Well, what it means is the reason people don’t have jobs, the reason that the median wage is stuck at the same level since 1998 and the average income of the bottom 90 percent of Americans has fallen back to the level of 1966–look at my gray hair; I was in high school in 1966, and that’s where 90 percent of Americans have fallen back to–is this incredible concentration of wealth in very, very few hands at the top. We have created a system does that isn’t trickle-down. The Democrats invented that to denigrate Nixon, it’ll trickle down. No, it’s Amazon[the river]-up. We take from the many to give to the super-rich.

As Paul Jay said in a video-conference that I participated in today, he has had people tell him that the number of stories that they get on The Real News Network that tell of all these outrages makes them sometimes think that all they can do in reaction is to crawl into a hole and blow their brains out.  He promised that The Real News Network would try do more stories along the lines “So here’s what you can do about the situation.”

I did a YouTube search for talks by Don Berwick. The first one I looked at was The Hubie Jones Lecture in Urban Health featuring Dr. Donald Berwick.

As part of this year’s Global Days of Service programming, the University welcomed Dr. Donald Berwick, former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as the guest speaker for the third-annual Hubie Jones Lecture in Urban Health.
Dr. Berwick is the co-founder, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and has consistently been named one of the top influential healthcare leaders in the country. In his lecture, Dr. Berwick explores the urgency — and possibility — of changing healthcare in America to achieve better care, better health and lower cost through improvement.

The Hubie Jones Lecture in Urban Health is an annual symposium addressing vexing health issues distinct to the urban context, featuring prominent national and international leaders toiling at the intersection of health and social justice.

I defy you to watch the video below – Don starts talking a little past 11 minutes into the video – and not come away thinking that you want this man to be your Governor, and no other candidate comes close. If you live in Massachusetts, you can actually make this happen by voting in the Democratic primary on September 9. That’s next Tuesday.

If you fail my challenge, please spread the word about this video.

The Boston Globe has a front page story about Don Berwick and his run for Governor of Massachusetts. The title of the article is Brimming with ideas, Berwick looks for traction.

Berwick launched the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge in 1991. The $40 million nonprofit helps governments and hospitals around the world reduce medical errors and improve care. In 2005, he earned knighthood for helping an entire country, Britain, overhaul its troubled health care system. And from 2010 to 2011, he ran Medicare and Medicaid for President Obama.

I knew that Don Berwick was a very accomplished person.  However, I didn’t really have exact knowledge of those accomplishments.  There is difference between my understanding of Berwick in this point in the campaign (at least before reading this article) and Elizabeth Warren at a similar point in her campaign.  In the Warren case, I knew exactly why she was such a superior candidate for this office.  I had seen some of her lectures, and had read some of her books.  I knew exactly how much better she understood the financial crisis and its effect on people than almost anybody else, politician or not.

With Don Berwick, I only suspected his level of understanding, but I didn’t know the details.

Another part of the story from the article is this excerpt.

Berwick’s own career path shifted dramatically after Harvard Community Health Plan put him in charge of quality improvement in 1982. In the medical field, the job traditionally meant punishing doctors who made mistakes.

But Berwick took the position just as companies like Toyota were reshaping the corporate world with management theories that promised to cut costs while improving quality.

Frustrated that error rates were not dropping at his own company, Berwick met with Swissair executives, NASA scientists, and engineers at Bell Labs, looking for advice.
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Berwick became enamored of a particular brand of management theory — “total quality management” — that seeks to enlist the entire workforce in improving quality, rather than handing that task only to managers.

In the early 1970s, I had taken an interest in “total quality management” as it applied to my profession of software engineering.  I continued that interest, and tried to apply the principles of TQM for the rest of my career.  TQM is not just about the mechanics of doing a job.  TQM understands people and how essential it is to engage them in improving the quality of what they do. So Berwick’s interest in the subject and application of the techniques just raises my esteem for him as a potential Governor.

There is one final part of the article that I want to call attention to.

Then Berwick raised a point that had been bothering him. A woman at a fund-raiser had reacted angrily, he said, when he mentioned that Hamas uses civilians as “human shields” to protect its rockets in Gaza. She had argued there were no human shields, he said.

Berwick asked where he could find reliable information on the issue. Marsh suggested trying a range of news outlets and tried to steer the candidate back to local concerns.

“For our purposes, that’s not a road I think we want to go down,” the aide said.

But Berwick persisted. “I don’t want to say anything that’s wrong,” he told Marsh.

This highlights one area where I think Don Berwick is even superior to Elizabeth Warren.  He may have been espousing the usual, unthinking talking points about Hamas that come from all politicians who claim to be anywhere near the mainstream, but he was able to hear a dissent, and he wanted to find out more.

Massachusetts would miss the chance to elect a world class Governor if it passes on Don Berwick.  We don’t get chances like this very often.  We really need to take advantage of them when they come along.

In case someone notices this, I thought I would talk about it myself.

He met the woman he would later marry, Ann Greenberg, when they were lab partners in biology class in their first week of freshman year at Harvard. She is now chairwoman of the state Department of Public Utilities.

I did not know anything about Don’s wife when I became interested in his campaign. I did not know her last name before reading this article. As far as I know, she is not related to me in any way.