Elizabeth Warren: oppose me and I will ruin you

[maxparrish]

There is no evidence that
1) Warren is trying to ruin Litan,
3) Warren tries to ruin anyone who crosses her.

Was Warren trying to ruin Litan? Does she try to ruin anyone who crosses her?

I'm going to take a chance and give a short answer and a longer explanation.

The short answer is that she sought to discredit Litan's argument by employing "dishonorable political tactics" - particularly disreputable given that it was not directed at fellow politicians or government officials, but at a witness who crossed her political mission. That it may be McCarthyite in nature, or result in the damage to another's reputation is of no consequence to her - one of her key personality traits noted by others is that she is (with the exception to talking about her own wonder at her accomplishments) unsentimental.

These goals and methods are a part of her personality, politics, and cultural roots.

- Associates have said "Warren has long approached her scholarship with a crusading quality" and turned economic events into stories of "almost biblical tales of malfeasance, with villains and victims." Jacob Hacker, a Yale political scientist who has collaborated with Warren has said, “Academics are always very happy to say other people are wrong,“but Elizabeth would say they’re not just wrong, they’re bad people.” Apparently Litan was "a bad person".

- Even as a Republican, decades ago, she brought this needless personalized moralist villain bashing outlook to her work. In a legal debate over bankruptcy law in the Rutgers Law Journal she made clear her contempt for the Law and Economics school way of thinking for its "theory" and lack of moral and empirical content. In fact, she admits that her initial goal in researching bankruptcy law was to prove, in effect, that those who filed for bankruptcy were cheaters.

- It also seems her "good guy-bad guy" obessions are rooted in her background. As a lower class Okie from a struggling blue collar family she grew up in old fashioned populism. The typical Okie hated those "big banks", "insurance companies", "big business", and "elites". The newer fashioned identity politics (race and gender) may have been practiced among those west coast beatnik and later San Francisco hippie Democrats but Okies were born FDR populist democrats. To them (including my very political Okie wife) the Democratic party was the party of the common man...the dust bowl farmer and oil field worker. (Which explains another aspect of Warren's world view - her many decades of being silent on, and "establishment", on race and gender issues...in Oklahoma, most politics were over class identity (not so much race and none over gender).

- Warren's absolutist view of the noble "the common class" vs. the elites remains. Folks may recall when the middle class was disdained by the academic and cosmopolitan left, and "celebrating bourgeois values wasn’t something law professors did." Yet after she was hired for her first faculty position in Texas, "Warren made an impassioned speech...about her belief in the “middle-class values” of hard work and honesty." The event is remembered by her "fellow outsider" on the faculty, Mixon (son of a dirt farmer), “In the 1970s, it was considered to be sophisticated to put down middle-class values, smoke dope, and do the non-middle-class thing, and that’s why I was struck by her frank acknowledgment that she was a fan of middle-class values.” (She refuses to say whether or not she voted for Reagan).

- While she may be caring for an abstracted "middle class" in her research, when it comes to people no one recalls a person of notable sympathy or compassion. Peers thought her smart and capable, but with an unbridled ambition for climbing (or running over) the success ladder. Someone who knew Warren said "She was, in many ways, the most ambitious single person on that faculty at that point,” . Diver added. “And that’s saying something.” She was known as someone with "sharp elbows" and "not afraid to use" them (in fact she characterizes her own entry into a political world as one of "sharp elbows and gaining influence").

Finally, one must consider her politics. The modern left is not the old fashioned "can't we get along" liberalism. It does not focus on defending ethical principles of process and theory, they are "progressives" - believers of the "our ends justify any means" politics practiced by the Stalinists, Communists, and fellow travelers in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. While this generation's Conservatives think such tactics began with Alinsky (and liberals think it began with McCarthy), its modern antecedents are from the hard and relentless left of - the "comrades" that replace the fluffy feel-good "lyrical and literary left" of the 1920s.

Warren is a passionate and fierce - a populist-left moralist filled with "truthies", a demagogic view of an elite of exploitive corporations, banks, CEO's and the rich as evil people who are unjust to the common person (to the middle class). Her views are not theoretical or abstract, for her it's deeply felt and an an embedded cage of feelings that acts as a dogmatic lens for all economic events. It dictates that the law is not just a theory, it is a tool for a moral crusade to smite the evil demons and reward her innocent "class" victims.

And like much of the left, she much prefers to find "bad people" and suppress debate than to argue the merits of a policy. Like Raúl Grijalva's attack on Pepperdine and others, Harry Reid's reckless inferences (and outright falsehoods) on opponents "sources" of support, the numerous Left who demanded the lynching of Eich for different views, numerous left blacklisters on campus speakers, and the RICO20 the tactics are straight out of allegorical McCarthyite textbook.

Some of these common tactics are:

1. Focus on the source of funding as conclusive proof. One need not refute the Devil's arguments, one only need to find the devilish forces behind such arguments. Be they Communists, the KGB, the CIA, the Koch Brothers, Oil Companies, or the Illuminati the obsession over who "behind the curtain pulling the strings" is essential to befogging the issue.

2. Defamation. Suggest or outright claim (without proof) that the target are dishonest, if not a crooked. "He's a shill"..."He lied"..."he doesn't pay his taxes"

3. Promote guilt and intimidation by association. "Mozilla, do you really want to associate with Eich...maybe you should fire him?", "Pepperdine, we want your records and who is really funding your climate skeptics - and why are you associating with them", "Hospital, how can you accept a major donation from the Koch Brothers...do you really want that publicity?" "Brookings, do you retain that seeming charlatan Litan, and give us your records".

4. Blacklist. Do what you can to drive that person from access to the "reputable" public associations. Be it a climate skeptic, Eich, Litan, or many campus speakers. The goal is social ostracization, to be abandoned by former friends, colleagues, and institutions.

Elizabeth Warren - a school marm personality, brow beating on who are the "bad people"...unsparing and unsentimental. A crusader and prosecutor of the devils. Nurse Ratched, Serial Mom, and Torquemada rolled into one. What more needs said?


http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2012/08/19/warren_career_story/#sthash.geKXppDQ.dpuf

 

[fromderinside]

OK we have a petty exec exposed now more than overcompensated for by a petty critic of the exec.

I'm saying eye for eye principle applied. What do you think King?

I agree. This case is closed.

The real problem is with the submissive attitude of an institution that depends on its liberal base putting them higher than principle expected from such an institution.

Subscription cancelled.

 

[laughing dog]

There is no evidence that
1) Warren is trying to ruin Litan,
3) Warren tries to ruin anyone who crosses her.

Was Warren trying to ruin Litan? Does she try to ruin anyone who crosses her?

I'm going to take a chance and give a short answer and a longer explanation.....

Nowhere did you show or even attempt to answer either question - questions directly related to the OP. Warren behaved badly. The WSJ reacted with a hyperbolic and hypocritical response making a mountain out of a molehill. On cue, the conservative loonisphere jumped on the "attack the lefty" bandwagon.

 

[KeepTalking]

They both agree that she approached him directly after the meeting. That much is not in dispute. On the other hand, neither Warren nor Litan mentions whether or not there was any attempt from Warren to follow up in the intervening two months. ...We simply do not know at this point, so unless you have additional information...

You have all the information you need to make an informed judgement. Litan says she did not contact him for over 2 months after their face to face. He wrote it in a Fortune article.

So, several posts ago, when I asked you how you knew that there was no contact in the two intervening months, your answer should have been the above. Thanks for posting that then, rather than acting like a condescending prick for a couple of posts. Oh wait.

Stay on target. Your contention was that it served to divert attention from the testimony. If anything, the letter has put more public attention on the testimony, courtesy of the WSJ's article.

Actually I said her actions served to divert attention from the subject, the subject being the argument made against the Warren bromide, an argument expressed in Litan/Singer's cost-benefit report and in Litan's testimony. "Whenever a bromide is under is under fire, Warren (and the left in general) understands that it serves to divert attention from the subject and focus on an opponent's motives, associations, etc. as ploys of befuddlement. It ends the need to reply to anything the "culprit" may have said (or say) by portraying him/her as having been "exposed" or "sold out" to special interests."

The motive is obvious: the economic criticism did not evaporate the day after the hearing. She sees the growing opposition by democrats, notes the recent letter to her from Democrats referring to the opposition of economic experts and their concerns, and so she is motivated show the opposition's expert(s) as discredited sources.

Yet you fish for some other reason, unable to suggest any plausible alternative...lamely suggesting that because observers are now focusing on the distraction letter's controversy, is somehow "serves the subject" (the report's argument) .

So once more, the evidence that Warren "intended to smear and discredit" for political purposes, and distract from the paper's argument

Very few people would know about the letter, if not for the WSJ's article. Warren did not push for press coverage on it. It is the WSJ's rush to vilify Warren that made the letter widespread public knowledge. Several rebuttals to the report have been published, and linked in this thread. There was little in the public discourse about this until the WSJ decided to try to smear Warren. Warren must be some kind of genius, able to pull together the threads of her evil ruinous plot, and getting the WSJ to swallow the bait like that. No comic book super villain has ever had such great luck in their machinations.

You can easily put this to rest by informing us of what other credentials, if any, were mentioned when he was introduced. If it was a laundry list of his accomplishments, then I will concede your point.

You need not concede to anything other than what is commonly experienced as SOP for hearings, and what is specifically stated as a fact. It is SOP for chairmen/women to introduce panel speakers with short bios of accomplishments and for the reasons the panel speaker was asked to attend.

Go ahead and inform us as to which other accomplishments were noted when he was introduced, whenever you are ready.

Yes, Brookings was a third party that Warren decided to "pretend" was involved in the study. She was ominously pressuring them with the unsubtle message of; "Do you wish to be associated in any manner with this kind of person who is dishonest?"

Litan is the one who decided to mention in his report that he was a Brookings Fellow, in violation of Brookings rules, therefor he is the one who made them no longer a third party.

That really lame. A footnoted sentence that mentions a position the author holds does not drag the innocent institution into being a party, and certainly not to a complaint to a third party over the author's work for an unrelated consulting group (or their funder).

Apparently Brookings disagrees, which is why they have a rule against it.

More importantly, it does it make them the subject of a political inquisition, pressing for all internal records of contacts by any employee with that author's funder (Except for those who embrace McCarthyite ethics).

Well at least you aren't being hyperbolic about it, or anything.

If there is a question about how much influence the funding source had over the finished report, it only makes sense to ask for any records of contact between that funding source and the author of the report. That is where any evidence of impropriety will be found, you don't just take someones word for it that there were no ethical issues when their ethical conduct is in question.

Yes, a canard was the thrust of her letter. Litan and Singer disclosed that Litan and Singer's report was indirectly funded by a party of some interest to the outcome. After all, they were hired as "consultants", what would one expect? Duh.

Warren made all of this clear in her letter. She also made it clear that the disclosure was not sufficient. They were actually directly funded by Capital Group, and the extent of that funding was not presented to the full committee, but rather only to Warren after the meeting, and only because she specifically asked for that information.

Yes, she made clear her canard; that is to write Brookings, a third party smearing Litan and complaining about issues that have little or nothing to do with Brookings. Moreover, her canard was that the issue should be one of "who" supports a policy, rather than if that policy is, according to analysis, flawed.

The policy analysis has been done by others. I get it, you don't care about the extent to which Capital Group influenced the outcome of the report, even if Litan lied about it, because you are a cheerleader for their side. Others care that the entire truth be known, regardless of what that truth is.

Yes, they can invite anyone they want to testify. One important component of that testimony, however, is knowing who is providing that testimony, and who they represent. Had Litan been introduced as representing the views of Capital Group, rather than as an impartial Brookings Fellow, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

He was, to our knowledge, not introduced as impartial. And the committee also knew who he "represented". Its included in two extended footnotes to his testimony already provided. There is no substantive reason to believe he was portrayed as actually representing Brookings in his report or testimony.

Your relentless blindness to Litan's written disclosure on clients, pay, and his own responsibility for his expressed opinion (not speaking for any other) is as remarkable, as it is irresponsible.

Who he was speaking for, and whether he was expressing his own opinion, or that of Capital Group, is exactly what is in question here. The irresponsible thing to do would be to take him wholly at his word, and not investigate any communication between Litan and Capital Group regarding the report.

It does matter if he was portrayed to the committee as an impartial Brookings Fellow (or any of the other titles that may have been ascribed to him), while acting as a paid lobbyist. I know you don't care, as long as he says what his (and your) masters want him to say, but to those who are interested in the truth, it fucking matters. ...

A Brookings Fellow is assumed to be impartial, as stated on their website:

The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC. Our mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations [emphasis mine]

"Independent" in this context is synonymous with "impartial".

Because you assume Brookings says its mission is to be independent (which is not the same as impartial), everyone thinks it must mean it is "impartial", and that also means that it must be so? And then you assume that everyone thinks that every unpaid, non-resident fellow, must also be impartial?

So how is Litan responsible for your own careless assumptions regarding the meaning of Brookings goals and the the perception of its fellows? (Answer: he's not).

It is not just my perception. It is a reputation that Brookings strives to maintain. They do so by enacting rules like the one which Litan ran afoul of.