{"id":6863,"date":"2014-05-19T16:07:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-19T22:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/?p=6863"},"modified":"2014-05-19T16:23:06","modified_gmt":"2014-05-19T22:23:06","slug":"huzzah-for-elizabeth-warren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/election\/huzzah-for-elizabeth-warren\/","title":{"rendered":"Huzzah for Elizabeth Warren"},"content":{"rendered":"

EJ Dionne: No more liberal apologies as Elizabeth Warren takes the offensive – The Washington Post<\/a> <\/p>\n

\n

From the time she first came to public attention, Warren has been challenging conservative presumptions embedded so deeply in our discourse that we barely notice them. Where others equivocate, she fights back with common sense. <\/p>\n

Since the Reagan era, Democrats have been so determined to show how pro-market and pro-business they are that they\u2019ve shied away from pointing out that markets could not exist without government, that the well-off depend on the state to keep their wealth secure and that participants in the economy rely on government to keep the marketplace on the level and to temper the business cycle\u2019s gyrations. <\/p>\n

Warren doesn\u2019t back away from any of these facts. \u2026 <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nobody in this country who got rich on his own,\u201d she said. \u201cNobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.\u201d It was all part of \u201cthe underlying social contract,\u201d she said, a phrase politicians don\u2019t typically use. \u2026 <\/p>\n

Warren tells of meeting with Rep. Michael Grimm<\/a> (R-N.Y.), a former FBI agent<\/a>, to talk about the consumer agency. \u201cAfter a bit,\u201d she reports, \u201che cut me off so he could make one thing clear: He didn\u2019t believe in government.\u201d <\/p>\n

That seemed strange coming from the graduate of a public university and a veteran of both the military and a government agency, though Warren didn\u2019t press him then. \u201cBut someday I hoped to get a chance to ask him: Would you rather fly an airplane without<\/em> the Federal Aviation Administration checking air traffic control? Would you rather swallow a pill without<\/em> the Food and Drug Administration testing drug safety? Would you rather defend our nation without<\/em> a military and fight our fires without<\/em> our firefighters?\u201d <\/p>\n

How often are our anti-government warriors asked such basic questions? <\/p>\n

But doesn\u2019t being pro-government mean you\u2019re anti-business? Well, no, Warren says, quite the opposite. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing pro-business about crumbling roads and bridges or a power grid that can\u2019t keep up,\u201d she writes. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing pro-business about cutting back on scientific research at a time when our businesses need innovation more than ever. There\u2019s nothing pro-business about chopping education opportunities when workers need better training.\u201d [mjh: Ie, there is nothing pro-business about the Tea Party or drowning the government in a bathtub.]<\/em> <\/p>\n

Oh yes, and it really bugs her when people assert that \u201ccorporate\u201d and \u201clabor\u201d are \u201csomehow two sides of the same coin.\u201d She asks: \u201cDoes anyone think that for every billionaire executive who can afford to write a check for $10 million to get his candidate elected to office, there is a union guy who can do the same? Give me a break.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

EJ Dionne: No more liberal apologies as Elizabeth Warren takes the offensive – The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EJ Dionne: No more liberal apologies as Elizabeth Warren takes the offensive – The Washington Post From the time she first came to public attention, Warren has been challenging conservative presumptions embedded so deeply in our discourse that we barely notice them. Where others equivocate, she fights back with common sense. Since the Reagan era, … Continue reading Huzzah for Elizabeth Warren<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6863"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6864,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6863\/revisions\/6864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}