Althouse: Elizabeth Warren "speaks from that odd place of 100% overlap between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party."

October 5, 2011

Elizabeth Warren "speaks from that odd place of 100% overlap between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party."

Says Choire Sicha, after watching her in the Massachusetts Democratic Senator primary debate.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...: I'm not going to read the article, it's more fun to guess what the "100% overlap" could be. How about the need for REM sleep?; 10/5/11, 1:44 PM
Anonymous said...: Absolutely NO overlap toward Tea Party side. This reporter must have been wanting desperately for her to lean that way for some strange reason. Warren is most definitely for the middle class and reining in unscrupulous corporations and strengthening regulations.; 10/5/11, 1:57 PM
deborah said...: Althouse, I have long wanted to see you do a bhtv with Sicha, a favorite of mine.

Reading the link, I also think a Warren-Ehrenreich would be interesting.; 10/5/11, 1:57 PM
Anonymous said...: It is "impossible to tell left, right, or in-between" from the quote cited in the article because the quote says absolutely nothing. It makes no policy proposals at all; it's just standard politician speak. Why on earth do people fall for this sort of thing?

- Lyssa; 10/5/11, 2:18 PM
traditionalguy said...: The Tea Party talking back is only an excuse for mob violence by the Demo-Marxist party.; 10/5/11, 2:54 PM
ricpic said...: Elizabeth Warren is all in favor of taxing her beloved middle class into the ground as long as the taxes go to the right people to do the right things (which of course means the left people to do the left things).

And note that her mother was able to put bread on the table because she had a job at the dreaded Sears Corporation.; 10/5/11, 3:13 PM
Titus said...: Remember when Scott Brown was the "it" guy?; 10/5/11, 3:13 PM
Robert Cook said...: The 100% overlap is in the awareness by both groups that we're being royally screwed by forces who care nothing about us and who are more powerful than we.

(I say this without having read the article, so I don't know what it may say.)

The difference is that the Tea Partiers think it is free-love advocating, tax-and-spend "liberals," while (at least some of) the Wall Street Occupiers realize it is the financial elites--identified conveniently under the inclusive umbrella label "Wall Street"--who have bought and turned the government to their beck and call.

It as as when the Mafia moves in and infests and corrupts formerly legitimate businesses, looting them for their cash until they have nothing more to offer.; 10/5/11, 3:18 PM
Henry said...: Warren is nostalgic for a time when times were tough, but opportunity was real.

She objects to a Washington that is "ran for the big guns".

Her solution is to "take that money and invest in opportunities."

Anyone who wants government to "take that money" for any reason, no matter how lovely, has missed the point of the Tea Party and doesn't understand the nature of opportunity.

Every dollar spent by the government was allocated by someone just like Warren who wanted to "take that money and invest in opportunities."

And yet, look where we are.; 10/5/11, 3:23 PM
traditionalguy said...: Cookie...Ron Paul will need a VP willing to run with him.

Have you considered how alike you and Paul see things?

If we only disbanded the FED and moved to a gold standard all would be well...until The Illuminati meets again.; 10/5/11, 3:25 PM
ricpic said...: If the financial elites have all that power, cookie, how come their bottom lines are taking a drubbing at the hands of their supposedly bought and paid for pols, who just recently passed the hugely punishing Dodd-Frank bill regulating said financial elites? Or do you think financial elites are always making...er, stealing the big bucks hand over fist?; 10/5/11, 3:29 PM
Henry said...: @Robert Cook -- The problem is institutional. Money and power breed corruption. They breed corruption among those who spend it; they breed corruption among those who want it; they breed corruption among those tagged to supply it.

The fantasy of the left is that the government can solve its corruption problem by hiding the money from itself. You think you can do it with more regulations, more lawyers, more powerful bureaucrats. Thus you create the very thing you say you abhor -- an arbitrary, infinitely corruptible, anti-democratic kleptocracy.

If you want a different outcome, then go to the source of the problem -- the accumulated money and power of the state.; 10/5/11, 3:37 PM
Anonymous said...: And here's a guy who speaks from that odd place of 100% overlap between Occupy Wall Street and Cedarford.; 10/5/11, 3:39 PM
Jason (the commenter) said...: ...she came off as extremely pro-business...

She said there was no chance she would ever be named Wall Street's favorite Senator. Literally.

I saw the debate and thought she was trying to out-earnest everyone else. Hearing her talked about, there seems to be a lot of effort to do with her as was done with Obama, and make her out to be all things to all people.

I find such nonsense ridiculously decadent for a country in as much trouble as is ours.

Will she vote to repeal Obamacare? If not then she isn't pro-business at all.; 10/5/11, 3:45 PM
Palladian said...: Choire Sicha once flew the PLO flag over his Fire Island beach house.

He's on my shit list forever, for a record combination of offensiveness, lameness and cognitive dissonance.; 10/5/11, 3:54 PM
Jason (the commenter) said...: How can you overlap with the Occupy Wall Street guys? They have no positions!; 10/5/11, 3:58 PM
traditionalguy said...: The mob of thieves always comes in with the false accusation that someone stole from them and that makes the mob of thieves entitled to kill the owners and steal it back.

That is Karl Marx and Lenin's Bolsheviks being imitated and is not the individual right loving Tea party guys being imitated.; 10/5/11, 3:59 PM
Robert Cook said...: We'll see how "punishing" the Dodd-Frank Bill actually is in action. I'm not holding my breath, though it would be nice to think so, (to quote Hemingway).

I don't know whose bottom lines, specifically, you're referring to as having taken a drubbing, but the unintentional consequences of greed, whether individual or institutional, can be damaging. Henry Ford had the idea of paying his employees higher than the prevailing wages as he realized they would otherwise be unable to afford to buy his automobiles; corporations today who outsource tens of thousands of jobs overseas to pay cheaper wages and fatten their profits may not consider that when enough people have been made redundant and can no longer pay for necessities they won't be paying for the products and services that keep corporate bottom lines growing.; 10/5/11, 4:05 PM
Robert Cook said...: "Will she vote to repeal Obamacare? If not then she isn't pro-business at all."

One can be pro-business without believing they should have carte blanche to do whatever they please.

I'm not a proponent of ObamneyCare, but how, specifically, does it hurt businesses?; 10/5/11, 4:09 PM
Titus said...: Palladian's back!

Yea.; 10/5/11, 4:21 PM
deborah said...: From the first google link I followed (I don't know jack about finance):

"Neil M. Barofsky, the TARP’s special inspector general, spoke about the Dodd-Frank bill to a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on his last day in the position. He cautioned lawmakers that the nation’s largest banks are “bigger and more concentrated and even more dangerous to the system” than before the 2008 crisis.

“The big ticket question that we’re talking about today, does it solve ‘too big to fail?’” Barofsky said of Dodd-Frank. “The answer is certainly not yet, and by all indications… I’m not entirely optimistic that it will.”
***
“Dodd-Frank is not a magic wand,” Barofsky said. While the legislation created avenues for oversight, the Department of Treasury and regulators haven’t used their new authority to rein in financial institutions.

“Unless and until treasury regulators use those authorities, we’re actually in the status quo or slightly worse than the status quo,” he said. “Right now the markets are looking at Dodd-Frank, and they’re rejecting it.”

In response to questions, Barofsky also said cutbacks to oversight agencies could harm regulators’ abilities to enforce the law and prevent future financial crises, though he cautioned that it was a political question that he was ill-equipped to answer.

“If the agencies are cut so deeply to the bone, that they’re unable to implement provisions of regulatory reform, that’s going to have an impact,” he said."

http://www.boston.com/
news/politics/
politicalintelligence/2011/03/sigtarp_dodd-fr.html

My question: is there any actual overarching value to society from the complicated financial instruments that enrich bankers and investors?; 10/5/11, 4:30 PM
deborah said...: How old was he...how old is he? Oh, me, once a fag hag, always a fag hag.; 10/5/11, 4:32 PM
Wince said...: Notice, Warren likes to point her boney finger when she thinks she's telling it like it is.; 10/5/11, 5:04 PM
David said...: "Overall, she came off as extremely pro-business, which is not what one might have expected."

Two possibilities: (1) she's so far left she actually thinks her ideas are pro business; (2) she's lying.; 10/5/11, 5:13 PM
sorepaw said...: I'm not a proponent of ObamneyCare, but how, specifically, does it hurt businesses?

Are you really expecting an answer to this question?; 10/5/11, 7:33 PM
Robert Cook said...: I guess I'm not, now, after so long having passed without one.; 10/5/11, 7:49 PM
John henry said...: Lyssa asked:

It makes no policy proposals at all; it's just standard politician speak. Why on earth do people fall for this sort of thing?

They went to "J" school instead of getting an education and don't know any better?

John Henry; 10/6/11, 8:04 AM
MikeinAppalachia said...: "...to give more tax subsidies to those who have already made it big, or we can take that money and invest in opportunities for the next kids who are going to make it big."
And then, I suppose, she will tax the next kids to provide opportunities for the next next kids. Taxes seem to be the prevailing feature.
It would be nice to have her (and others for that matter) explain just exactly what the "subsidies" are as well as what the "opportunities" are that can be created by her and her ilk.
I think lyssa pretty much nailed it.; 10/6/11, 9:18 AM