Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Social Contract’ an Ideological Fantasy
To hear Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren tell it, successful business owners get rich off the efforts of taxpayers and contribute nothing in return until they pay a hefty tax bill themselves. Warren gets the story exactly backwards.
Productive business leaders create the wealth that enables us to thrive, seek employment, and on the side pay for governmental services. Such producers typically work long hours, often for years with little pay, risking their own time and money to bring their vision to life. They turn metals, gasses, plants, and other natural resources into valuable commodities, and they direct others’ labor to more prosperous ends, expanding our quality of life.
Some say business leaders should “give something back.” But those operating in a free market never took anything from anybody, except in voluntary and mutually beneficial trade. Instead, they produce the goods and services — the computers and cell phones, the health care, the books and movies, the automobiles, the plumbing pipes — than enrich and extend our lives.
True, some pretenders in businesses shamefully use the political process to loot the taxpayers through “bailouts” and corporate welfare, and they seek to forcibly impair their competitors. But such actions should be stopped, not used as an excuse to vilify the true producers who oppose such political interference on principle.
Great producers deserve our gratitude and respect, not the ugly, envious sneers so often directed at them by today’s political left. Above all these business leaders deserve a government that protects their rights, including their right to produce wealth and use the resulting profits as they judge best.
Warren invokes the “social contract,” but if that means anything sensible it is to protect individuals from the violence, fraud, and plunder of others. In seeking to peacefully pursue our own lives and interact with others on a voluntary basis, we agree to respect the equal rights of others. We institute government to protect those rights for everyone.
Warren argues that business owners use the roads and education system, the “police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.” Warren ignores the fact that the most productive already pay the lion’s share of the tax burden. As the Associated Press recently summarized,
The 10 percent of households with the highest incomes pay more than half of all federal taxes. They pay more than 70 percent of federal income taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The wealthy also pay more in state and local income, sales, and property taxes (where applicable). In other words, the wealthy pay for most of the governmental services that others use.
Librarian Liz is as radical as they come. Her only vision is your wallet. The Leftists are raving about this woman because she is the female version of Barack H. Obama complete with redistributionist theology.
Then there’s North Carolina Governess Bev Perdue, who yesterday suggested that elections should be suspended for the next few years so the government can fix the economy. When she got a sh*tsorm of a reaction, her mouthpiece claimed that she was just using hyperbole. Which leads to my tree-falling-in-the-forest question:
If a leftist makes an insanely dangerous suggestion, but no one reacts to it, is it then still only hyperbole?
We have got some truly dangerous people in our government. November ’12 cannot come soon enough.
When you add in Peter Orszag’s call for the same thing last week, and The One repeatedly lamenting that he isn’t Premier of the People’s Republic of China (NB; if they want him, they can have him, as far as I’m concerned), the overall shape of the “new” Democrat philosophy is obvious.
And it has exactly nothing to do with the Constitution. It most closely resembles the mindset, and behavior, of the “looters” in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”.
Perdue needs to be impeached and removed from office. And if Warren wins the election, a recall effort should begin immediately.
The American people should not have to tolerate this sort of arrogance, and insanity, from their elected leaders. Period. Dot.
If they can not, or will not, serve as defined in the Constitution, let them find employment elsewhere. Although they might find it hard to obtain in the private sector they so despise, and obviously do not understand.
Of course, they can always go back to academia. Everyone else there lives in the same fantasyland they do.
clear ether
eon
I wish I knew how to post the picture of Lucy in the movie “Awakenings”, played by Alice Drummond. The similarities between Lucy and Warren are quite amazing.
Warren and other small c communists who are posing as populist centrists, just “merely” asking for “fairness”, in the cloak of “centrism”…not only do not understand business, they despise the capitalism that fuels it.
The sneering “nobody got rich alone” is code speech for hatred of capitalism. Leftists don’t give a Tinker’s Dam how many times an entrepreneur failed, how many days he at macaroni and cheese leftovers, how many years he worked sitting on an orange crate wondering how he was going to keep his phone from being shut off.
Leftists don’t care how many people are employed when the business begins to grow and flourish, they don’t care how communities improve when their tax base gets healthy….by having successful businesses at the base.
Leftists don’t believe in the American “success story”, because they don’t believe in any portion of it. They don’t believe in hard work, they don’t believe in private enterprise, they don’t believe in accumulated wealth and savings and they don’t believe that once you get to grab the brass ring…that you have earned it or deserve it. They believe that once you get there…you are the enemy.
Lucy in “Awakenings” cannot walk on a tile floor because the pattern stops and her ability to move forward is blocked by her mental deficiency…her diminished capacity to create the rest of the path on her own. If ever there was an analogy for the mindlessness of small c communists, this is it.
They know only one path. Class warfare, racial warfare, gender warfare, sexual orientation warfare, religious warfare, age warfare, national origin warfare.
This is why it is so frustrating to watch non-leftists fall for the bear traps and leg snares time after time after time. The small c communists play the same tricks over and over again. If they begin to lose momentum, if they are caught in their myriad of lies, deceits, distortions and slanders…they start a brushfire war on one or more of the above “suspect class” topics…and get the whole country (through their stooges in the propaganda machine fanning the flames of the brushfire) talking about some imbecilic sidetrack BS, diverting attention away, yet again, from the source of the real issues and their genesis.
Small c communists (often mistakenly believed to be the innocent lambs of Swedish meatball socialism, or “social democrats”), are masters at deflecting attention away from the fact that virtually ALL of this land of ours major stumbling blocks to fiscal health, social harmony, unity, safety, security, and yes, success…stem from their attempt to destroy, overthrow and replace our system of representative self-governance.
Their stealth “seize and transform” battle plan is well into it’s fourth or fifth stage and has accomplished many, if not most, of their objectives. They have seized all major forms of communication of the masses (news, pop culture, academia). They have seized more than half the economy (healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, real estate, banking, auto, energy and more)
They have seized the voting booths, deciding which laws to enforce based upon all the suspect class warfare fronts.
They have seized the NLRB, deciding who they will allow to build businesses where.
They have placed unions ahead of other creditors, openly breaking the law.
They have seized elections putting felons and Party Workers in charge of election fraud registrations.
They have not listened to generals in the military, have announced dates of withdrawal, gone to war without approval of Congress, and have set up a scheme to gut the military budget…by giving up medical protection of seniors.
They have put oppressive and crushing legislative blocades in the way of business at every turn, throwing as many taxes and red tape anchors on as they possibly can.
They have printed money like it was counterfeit, weakening the currency of capitalism as much as possible.
They have sued states trying to protect the borders from invasion of non-citizens.
They have emptied the coffers by stuffing entitlement after entitlement, while unionists Workers Party members and leaders are gorging on pensions…putting the tax burden on an implosion course.
They have bloated the payrolls of the Party State, making government Audrey III, screaming FEED ME….off the blood of the 50% who actually pay taxes.
And STILL…there are some who call us “silly”, tell us that we are making wild accusations, tell us that this is all “innocence” and “incompetence”, as if the road to the demolition of capitalism has been littered with nothing but incense and peppermints…by hippies who “don’t know any better”.
Anyone who keeps saying this…is a fool. Read what George Soros has written about capitalism. Barack Obama, Sr., (so, you can share in the dreams of this father), read Stanley Kurtz’ work, read the Shadow Party, read what Ron Radosh says went on in communist summer camps, read David Horowitz, ….this is not all a coincidence.
Understand the facts on the ground. You are in the middle…not the beginning…of being “transformed”.
Can I borrow this? Unfortunately, I think too many have blinders on for this to not end badly.
They are deliberately and systematically tearing society down in order to return it to the only model that existed from the time people began living in cities until 230 years ago…master and serfs.
They are the masters and we are the serfs.
Lenin and many who followed him did so with resounding success. The only problem has been that the USA got in the way. So now, we are the target. Ironically, the same modern communications that showed the world the better path is now used to fuel envy against us to bring us down. They solved that problem easily by taking over the media.
There is nothing they won’t do to complete the takeover. Nothing.
The 2012 election is too important to quibble over candidates. We have to pick the person who has the highest chance of winning. Perfection is not required. The ability to win is the most important thing. After that, we can turn to undoing the decades of damage.
@proreason,
We MUST stop going with “electability”, as that is just allowing the media to pick our candidates for us!
@vinny. I understand that all the talk show guys say that, and that most people let the talk show guys do their thinking for them.
I don’t buy it. It’s not only wrong, it’s 100% wrong.
Mark Levin lost the Nevada senate seat to Harry Reid in 2010 by preaching for a good conservative but a flawed candidate.
William Buckley had the better approach. Pick the most conservative candidate with a chance to win.
The hard part, of course, is figuring out electability. Everyone goes to RR as the example. But it isn’t logical to assume that weighing electability gives the make believe media the priviledge of picking our candidates. People saw through that for Reagan.
Do you think Bachmann is another Reagan? She is the most conservative candidate.
I’m 100% on the electability side of the issue. Any candidate on the Republican stage, if elected, will save the republic. But if the selected candidate loses to Obama, the republic is over. The ONLY rational criteria is electability.
It’s just like first aid. If you see a person with a bone sticking out and blood gushing out of a vein, ignore the bone and stop the bleeding. Worry about the bone later. Well, the country’s artery is severed. No way I’m going to vote in a primary for the most rigid conservative.
Communism = Slavery of “We the People.”
Slavery = Evil (read social pathology or mental illness).
Q: Are you willing to do for the truth what communists are willing to do for a lie?
Q: When did you EVER get a job from a poor person?
Q: Where has communism EVER proven to be successful in the history of the world?
Q: If freedom and liberty have created such a wealthy (read rich) nation what makes communists think slavery of the working class will sustain such wealth?
Q: If communism is a mental disorder why are we engaging the deranged as if they are competent and productive when they are so incompetent and destructive?
I agree with everything you said with one exception. Your suggestion that these people return to academia is a dangerous one. Much of the leftist philosophy we are seeing come into fruition now has been languishing in academia for decades and teaching their poisonous, moonbat philosophy to our children. Perhaps they could take an extended vacation to a country more of their liking instead.
We very much need to take back academia and teach the new generations of Americans good, sound, rational thinking.
I’ll go ya one better: The return to the benefits of actually teaching critical thinking skills. That being the real ability to see solutions, weigh potential outcomes and arrive at the best solutions for the benefit of all, not just a select few “in the right-think/right-speak” club. But for understanding consequences, penalties, potential disaster-areas, etc.
Human history is rife with examples of how egoism and economics got in the way of safety..the Titanic being a more recently investigated case where the substandard metallurgy, decision to use it, the captain’s decision to operate at a continued high rate of speed, etc.
What we, as a race, repeatedly move away from, is caution and perhaps a reasonable dose of cynicism in order to protect ourselves from “what could possibly go wrong?”.
I resort to my own several cases with a commander I once had who I tried to protect by informing him of the downside of his desires and orders. He classified me as “very negative” but when the sh** inevitably hit the fan, he laid the blame on me for not telling him it could happen. I then resorted to keeping a log of our conversations and politely reminded him of when I did warn him with specifics. No, it did not benefit my situation but I didn’t care anymore anyhow.
But in our society, I still stand on my argument that it is so much more important for individuals to feel wanted and to belong than it is to make the hard, correct decisions. Obama is very much a case in point. He makes decisions primarily on the basis that his “peer group” (such as it is” will think highly of him and accept him as one of their own. Among his other personality flaws and narcissism, this is perhaps the most obvious.
But at the end of the day, 2+2 cannot equal five and never will, no matter how many times the national socialists demand that it does.
After Orszag helps the current administration wreck the economy, he calls for even more government control over that economy. Priceless!!!
What is wrong with our economy, is the soviet style centralization of every aspect of that economy by federal government agencies. Actually we can apply that to every other aspect of American life today. There is a Department of….. Fill in the blank….centrally exerting control. The federal government IS the problem.
It is truly sad to see a Southern state being infiltrated with the Yankee mentality to the extent of allowing someone like her who spouts hard-left agitprop into public office.
The truly sad thing is that Perdue was put into office by people who moved to NC trying to escape the insanity of the Blue States. And in their attempt to escape IL, NY, NJ, or MA they turned NC into The People’s Republic of NC.
As for they rest who voted for her, they very probably thought just they were voting for Sonny.
1389AD-
Hey now!
As a proud Yankee, I must object.
True, what I MOSTLY object mostly to, is the recent (last century) left leaning political inclination of my beloved North East that has besmirched the fine reputaion of what I consider the true, appropriate, conservative, constitutional, patriotic version of “Yankee” to which I subscribe.
When I say I’m a “Proud Yankee”, I mean fife and drum, tri-cornered hat, fire a musket at the Redcoats yankee.
I mean “Yankee” in the Republican tradition of pro-Union and anti-slavery.
(due note, my home state of New Jersey is so blindly Democratic, Lincoln failed to carry it, TWICE)
I mean “Yankee” in the way the Brits and Ausies called us all “yanks” during the war.
As a Northeasterner who gets (negatively) called a “Yankee”, I feel like the conservative, non-hippie, traditional values “boomer” who gets constantly dumped on en masse as the original source enemy that created all our big government liberal socialist problems, when people scream ‘Boomer” as an insult. (hey wait! I’m that guy too!)
I’m a boomer, but dont CALL me a “Boomer”.
John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Chuch Schumer and their ilk are NOT “Yankees”:
They are Left-wing Commie Socialist Traitors who need a rope and a tree to fix what ails them
When I was in The Corps way back when, I used to tell my good’ole boy Marines this:
“When we get deployed someplace, chances are the locals wont like us.
They’ll call us names, throw stones, take pot-shots at us and carry signs…
and you know what them signs will say?
YANKEE go home…
They might even spell it with a freaking “Q”.
But they DONT know of any imaginary north-south bullshit you knuckleheads think matters. They hate ALL of us.
So like it or not, all you good’ole boys are YANKEES from now on,
you got that!?”
All in the spirit of comraderie of course
Southern or Northern (Rebs or Yanks) has nothing to do with the fact that communism is slavery and slavery is a mental illness. When one man lords over another man to his detriment, for profit, it is called slavery. Communism regardless of its geography is always EVIL couched in the rhetoric of reparations and redistribution. Men created equal by a loving God repulse and infuriate the mentally ill when there is so much plundering, raping and pillaging at hand.
The communists look at hardworking, profitable people of every stripe and color as the coyote looks at the road runner turning on the spit; drooling and salivating, willing to pull out all the tricks and deception from the ACME prop box to skin and cook that bird. They are mentally deranged and there is no way to rationalize, minimize and justify to get any other answer.
Said another way; the reason NONE of their schemes make sense to right thinking people is because ALL of their schemes are destructive. We shake our heads in disbelief as if we expect a deranged person to suddenly say “Gotcha, only kidding!” And of course, they never do!
Hopefully, our SWPL demographic(particularly women)will start to vote for candidates that actually represent their classically conservative interests. In the name of “white guilt” and misguided anti-tea party sentiment, this white, upper middle/upper class, college educated, industrious and TAX PAYING segment of our populace(including American Jews) has been captivated by this leftist, supposed pro-down trodden fallacious ideology. In doing so, they elect representatives who are indeed their nemesis, personally and politically. Their affluence has insulated from their idiotic politics. Per chance the “flash mob” egged on by its hero, Obama, will induce a shedding of the scales.
What the radical left is not admitting is that taxes = hours. Let me explain. I work well over 2000 hours per year and pay in excess of 25% in taxes. Lets just leave it at that for simplicity. So, 25% of 2000 hours is 500 hours. I pay 500 hours of my life in taxes each year! Those that do not pay taxes pay zero hours of their life. I want justice! If those that are in the lower income bracket cannot pay in $ let them pay in labor. There are plenty of public service jobs that need to be performed and those that cannot pay in money can volunteer their personal time to help out. Until everyone has an equal amount of skin in the game (hours out of their life) then paying more in taxes is NOT an option.
Serfs had their own plots to farm, but also were required to work on the lord’s land as well. Whether it is communism, socialism or fascism, it is nothing more than modern day industrial feudalism. The old nobility looked down on the merchant class.
Feudalism is nothing more than slavery minimized, rationalized and justified. The goal of evil is always enslavement. Slavery is a mental illness.
Ago Solvo
Doing the math will make blood quirt from your eyes,
just before your Head explodes.
With the median private sector salary in my area,
you get about 50k a year for those 2000 hours you put in.
A Left Wing Commie Union Thug TEACHER in my district averages 100K,
for about 1260 hours worth of work. (7 hours a day x 180 day school year)
Do the math:
We earn 25 bucks an hour,
and have to pay them 80 bucks an hour
Thats right, Public School Teachers in my district (Council Rock, PA)
make more than TRIPLE pay rate of the folks supporting them.
And they have the NERVE to STRIKE when they dont get MORE.
I agree with your math. My point is that if people with lower income cannot pay tax in money they can pay tax in labor, as we taxpayers ultimately do. Everyone needs to participate equally.
You are right, not everyone has skin in the game, but public employees have none in at all.
We are on the hook for their gross salary, we “give” 100k for them to go home with 80…their tax burden comes out of our pocket.
Rather like my employer and me…whatever the tax rate is or isnt, I “cost” my company 50k for my services….taxes can go down to zero, or up to 70%, the dollar “loss” encoured by my employer is still the dollar amount of my gross salary.
When you add up all the accounting and admin costs of the financial shell game by which public employees supposedly “pay public taxes”, it would actually be cheaper to simply relieve them of “paying” any taxes at all…just proportionally reduce their salary (to mimic what the net would be to a “real” worker) and let them keep it all.
Otherwise its like siphoning gas from your own tank, then adding it back in…a pointless exercise that gains you no fuel, but you do certainly spill some and suffer some evaporation in the endeavor.
This Warren personage is rather fascinating. She was specifically selected out of academia by BHO to set up a federal board which has the exact opposite effect that it states as its purpose: protection of consumer rights. In fact, upon reading its mission statement, it will assist in fulfilling the progressivist mission/agenda of hurting all of us. It needs to not come into existance.
Warren has never worked in the private sector. She has always drawn paychecks from public tax money, college donations, and charitable gifts to the university wherein she holds a professorship(in tenure yet). Thus, especially at Harvard, she has fallen in with the uber left/socialist, wealth redistributionist rutters.
Hers is not some kind of legitimate social contract. It is pure anti-capitalist, pro-communist, anti-American exceptionalism flapdoodle. It is even worse than that: this personage, backed by the socialism of BHO, represents the most reprehensible elements in the public system.
It is disgusting enough to know the damage she has done as a teacher to aspiring young American students. It is beyond alarming that she has been given the authority to establish that board. It is an absolute horror to speculate that she could conceivably actually become a member of the U.S. Senate! Heaven Forfend!
This writer relies on the coming Conservative sweep in Election 2012. And that this will at least put Elizabeth Warren back in her hole at Harvard where her continued poison will at least be limited. And efforts there need to be instigated to break her tenure, fire her, and force her to GET A JOB in the private sector……
Zeal is an unattractive and dangerous quality in a politician.
Since Harvard is not a public university, she does indeed work in the private sector.
I would disagree that she works in the private sector, which I would equate to the free market system since she is a tenured professor, which I would equate with unionism and the communistic practices of “everyone has a right to a job”.
“Notably, the core governmental services that protect people from harm — the military, police, and the courts…”
Two things: First, notice that those are the first services that Democrat politicians warn will have to be cut, if they have to cut spending. Second, also notice that they never say that they’ll have to cut layers of education bureaucrats, or EPA anti-asthma-inhaler rule writers.
It is so great to see Ms. Warren at her best. She kills off more human “desire to live” in 2 minutes than most of us can in a lifetime. She is an expression of the Campaign of Hate, now in full swing by the leaders of the Democrat Party.
I’m glad that people are confronted with deciding if they hate themselves and human life enough to support a Democrat.
I swear she is a cartoon caricature of an ultra-leftist, academic, Massachusetts, nanny-state know-it-all.
Meh. She’s just Millicent Fenwick with meat on the bones.
What people like Warren always, ALWAYS, never mention is that nobody ever forces people to work for these “EVIL” factory owners. Nobody holds a gun to their heads and says “You must work for me for no money so that I can make a fortune off of slave labor.” The only time that happened was when we had slaves on plantations, but I thought that stopped over 100 years ago? Yet many people worked for large corporations and not only liked it, but have become wealthy themselves because of it.
But you’ll never hear a person like Warren admit that. Nope, to Socialists like Warren, people that own large corporations are to be hated because they made their money off of the backs of “slave labor,” people who have been forced to work for no money at all. Well, I don’t know what century she’s living in, but it certainly isn’t this one.
And, if anything, we could also have a long conversation on how Unions are making it impossible to do business in this country forcing more jobs overseas. But you’ll never hear a person like Warren acknowledge that. No, to Socialists like Warren, the STATE deserves everything and YOU should be working for the STATE, because it OWNS you. This is what the 2012 election is going to be all about. Do you want our country run by the Warrens of the world, or do you want constitutional democracy to make a comeback here? The choice is really going to be up to us.
She’s a Communist who is too smart or too cowardly to admit it.
Or maybe she doesn’t even realize just what she is.
Probably not.
“She’s a Communist who is too smart or too cowardly to admit it”
Finally, someone calls Warren what she is…not a leftist or a Socialist or a Marxist, but a Commie. She’s the “C” word, but as you say, cowardly & silent about it. (She’s probably the other “C” word too, but that wouldn’t be civil).
Hey! Do not use the “C” word on her. I’m a dude. I like “C’s”. Now I will have to work hard to dissociate the “C” word from the image of Ms. Warren.
I have never understood using the “C” word as a pejorative.
@Marc Malone
I don’t want to get off topic here, but if you’re a dude that likes women and their anatomy, how can you NOT understand the “C” word being used as a pejorative?! Calling a woman that would be like me calling you (in Spanish) a “joto” or “maricón”. Yes, that language actually has diff. words for “top” and “bottom” in a gay relationship. Imagine anyone calling you, a “C” lovin’ dude, a guy who takes it up ye olde Hershey highway. Think THAT would be a pejorative? Please don’t make this kind of mistake again. That word is abhorrent and inspires dread & hatred — much as the “N” word horrifies most people.
Leftists, like Warren, hate capitalism so much they pick at it constantly for ‘evidence’ of its essential unworthiness to exist in the same universe as their beloved socialism, which, of course, works like a charm wherever it’s tried. One wonders if the thought has ever occurred to people like her that infrastructure is necessary for EVERYONE to prosper. An additional tax on “factory owners” for using this infrastructure would be like taxing them for breathing air.
Leftists ultimately hate man’s mind and that he has the power of volition. They hate that because they know men can refuse to choose them or their beliefs. So, they work to erect systems where all men are forced to their will. No matter what the justification, that is the bottom line of it all – far as I can tell.
When you get to the bottom of it, you really have to hate yourself to be this bad off.
No government provided or claimed ownership of the first roads. It all starts and ultimately is maintained by people creating value – by themselves or by persuading their neighbors to do it with them. Where the socialists go off the track is when they force their ideas and solutions on others. That turns life from the production and unfolding of every increasing values to a prison of “have to.” It’s the infringement of individual rights that has them be evil and a menace to human society.
What Ms. Warren doesn’t realize is that the creators of value, the producers, hold the trump card. They can choose to produce just enough for themselves to live and then where would she and other non-producers, the parasites, be? This was the point of “Atlas Shrugged” and now that we are clear about that, the socialist’s jig is up. It can no longer work because the producers know who they are and the vital role they play.
I found nothing about St. Liz’s quip that ‘nobody gets rich on their own’ either shocking or a surprise. Put Warren next to Van Jones or Stevie Chu or Cass (not momma) Sunstein along with the sad parade of Obama’s other than Russian Czars and Czarina’s and you wind up with the equivilant of an Academic Central Command Center for Obama’s idea of transformational change.
Ground Zero for why America is a mess today. All these nutty prof’s and so few jobs? Who would’a thunk it!
It’s pretty odd that Warren would take up this torch given how miserably she failed once Obama tapped her. Just as Sunstein’s dictatorial combativeness as Regulations Czar (Red tape? What red tape? We CHOOSE not to have red tape.)… loses it’s persuasiveness once off campus, so too did St. Elizabeaths wit and wisdom.
‘The American consumer never had a chance,’ was the sumation of her views on the fiscal crises, and the defining principle of her construction of the agency her President called her to ‘visualize’. AS told to the former comedian now Minn. Senator during hearings to clarify what exactly she was doing when commissioned to creat a ‘Consumer Protection Agency’, as if every debtor over age 19 was only capable of playing with marbles, unless of course, St. Liz was there to save them from themselves – and the evil bankers.
These academic superstars, Warren, Larry Summers, Sunstein, Chu, Geitner, and others, having earned a lifetime of accolades in their respective fields, have a really hard time dealing with criticism – either constructive or obstructionist (as is often an apt political tactic) – once off the comfortable confines of the university.
And it just doesn’t seem to be working as planned.
Obama, having taught adjunct – the most popular Prof on campus for better than a decade – IS ONE OF THEM. He was going to bring all of the best minds like Warren and fix – well – everything. Like Colussus he stradled both worlds – and now has decended from on high to salvage the republic – in a moment of crises.
So along comes Warren and all these brilliant minds only to discover they have to answer to a bunch of puny republicans in congress asking all these pesky questions. Don’t these Patrick McHenry types KNOW WHO THEY ARE TALKING TO?
Why was it that when before congressional types in important hearings concerning stuff that was way more signifigant than what wallpaper looks better in the facualty lounge at the Havard Yard this brilliant woman suddenly was so evasive and truncated in her responses that one could legitimately question whether her befuddlement was a symptom of something medical – and seriously so? Was she having a stroke? Did she just have a stroke? Is there medication for a condition the public is unaware of?
No it is really much more simple that it even looks, despite how complicated the MSM may claim it to be.
Because this is what you get with the best minds the progressives can produce. You see it with Lisa Jackson at EPA & Salazar at Interior – drill down deep into the belly of the bureacratic beast and bypass the inconvienent and problematic – which just happens to be the essense of representitive democracy -such as the checks and balances of the legislature or the Judiciary.
The least democratic institution on the planet this side of Tehran is academia, where these people hail from and have flourished. This is why Obama is Jimmy Carters second term on steroids – the first Black President who inherited a genuine crises at the onset of his election – thus given extroidinary leway to attempt implimenting a liberal fantasy for successive generations (and no where has this fantasy been more vibrant than Academia)- to ressurect the FDR juggernaut and implement the national equivalent of modern California – twenty plus years of Dem party rule going forward. (‘Lean forward’ for all the MSNBC types)
But a funny thing happened on the way to this ressurection; unlike ’32, the dispirited american masses didn’t turn on capitalism for the newness of massive government intervention. Instead, they awakend and rejected Obama’s perscription for such decisively – handing him historic defeats both in congress – and even more importantly in the statehouses across the land. The complete opposite of the mandate the country handed to FDR 2 years in.
Which is why Warren epitomizes the consumate arrogance of a know it all with blinders on – completely tone deaf to the actions the public announce politically.
So, St. Liz, a woman whose utter inability to tolerate the rough and tumble of the US congress cost her not only control over creating the new cabinate level Dept she had been dreaming of breathing life into for the past ten years of her professional academic life, but also required her surrendering running said dept because it was clear she’d never have a prayer at getting confirmed for the post, has decided, thanks to a draft movement of like-minded folk in and around the Havard Yard, that yes, Politics on the national stage is her next calling?
Whoa – talk about the absent minded prof! No wonder why the lady needs a driver – she certainly couln’t find her keys if her life depended on. Thankfully, ours doesn’t.
Maybe I’d buy it if she was running for Mayor of Cambridge. But she’s not. And while a lot of ink is getting spilled that she is the new darling of the left and all, she is going to be running against a guy’s guy who just happens to be the most popular pol in the state – who she will be running against statewide – in her first election ever.
Scott Brown has a lot more grief to fear from genuine Tea Party Caucus folks in his own party than this brilliant but totally confused hag from Havard. Brown will hand her her ass on a plate with a one way ticket back to the facualty lounge – without any box seats to see the Sox as a concilation prize.
Your analogy is dead on! Obama is very much like Christopher Columbus. He did not know where he was going, he did not know where he was when he got there and he did it all on borrowed money. Ditto for Obama.
Wow. Truly brutal fisking of the Left in general and of Warren specifically. Really well done.
“… hag from Harvard” Nicely alliterative.
I hope a large majority realize that Warren’s beliefs are contrary to everything the US constitution has designed for life in america.
I fear the likes of Warren don’t teach the constitution and too many don’t understand the constitution.
I’m sure her former students do not, unless they studied it on their own.
Ms. warren and her ilk, however, understand the Constitution perfectly. They simply object to its existence as a handicap to their ability to “rule without let or hindrance”.
That’s why they are constantly trying to at least undermine it, if not destroy it outright.
I never assume that somebody who openly expresses their hatred of me, or anything I hold dear, is stupid. Assuming that someone who intends to harm you isn’t at least as smart as you are is a very good way to get hurt.
clear ether
eon
Lincoln and Marx were wrong about labor coming first. An ‘idea’ forms first, then ‘labor’ assembles to ‘produce’ something of value. Then the value of the ‘something’ is shared disproportionately, according to one’s ‘contribution’ to the ‘something’ produced.
Right you are.
Message to Ms Warren and her ilk: Let’s say I’m thinking of building a factory in your state. I am going to hire thousands of your citizens, many who are currently unemployed and are draining your unemployment and welfare programs. I’m creating taxpayers. My company buys it’s supplies and services from businesses in your state, creating even more wealth. My trucks pay your gasoline tax. In short, my factory creates a huge amount of wealth and revenue for your state’s citizens and for your state government. If I employ 5,000 people each earning an average of $50k/yr. That’s $250M/yr alone. When you take into account the goods and services I purchase (and the taxes paid on them), I’m probably pumping a half billion dollars a year into the local economy.
And you’re telling me I have to ‘pay it forward???’ What the hell do you think I’m already doing???
+1
an introduction is in order– liz, this is adam smith…
There is an increasingly sinister yearning on the part of the “progressive” left for the abolition of constitutional democracy. Remember Tom Friedman’s whistful desire for the U.S. to have a Chinse-style dictatorship for a day so that “we can get things done?” Ms. Warren obviously sees herself as part of the new “uber-class”; that group of highly credentialed experts and policy wonks who will make the world a perfect place if someone would just hand them total and absolute power. And what could more clearly illustrate this then the assertion that a person is only entitled to what some some government bureaucrat deems is “fair?” I will agree to a point that most of the rich have not gotten rich on their own – They have gone out and developed goods and services that have created “customers.”
I believe it is fair to say that the likes of Ms. Warren, Governor Perdue and others of that ilk find the rest of us kind of repulsive. In their view the world runs best when we are “kept in out place.”
We (the public) PAY TO the government to provide jobs, proving by action how valuable we consider that action, yet we TAKE FROM private enterprise who provide equally, most would say ‘moreso’, valuable jobs.
For Master of Disaster…..Guess I stand corrected about Prof. Warren being in the private sector, being that Harvard is a private sector university.
Continuing along that line of thinking, that makes her a pro-capitalist, anti-communist, pro-business, anti-tax, anti-socialist pro-American exceptionalist marvelous person. Following on that, why, she’d make just the perfect Republican Conservative U.S.Senator from Mass.
Her drawing private sector paychecks makes her just like one of us, you know, those who have begun a business from scratch, stood/fell on all on our own and favor fiscal conservatism.
She is one of us then? If so, why does she have, in reality, the very same sick attributes and mind sets as nearly every other professorial member of academia from, oh, say, the Ivy League colleges, the UW, Berkeley, UCIrvine, and such? Great to know that she is private sector, yeah.
Here’s what I conclude from what she states: She is exactly like those of her ilk who are of land grant colleges and who do derive pay from the federal government. It is merely an accident of job selection that put Warren at Harvard instead of UCIrvine. So she is one of them, not one of us. For her to be placed in the same category as us who are REALLY in the private sector, who support American exceptionalism and free market enterprize and who love this country(as much as she hates it)is truly a travesty.
Rest my case.
Armstrong does a nice job debunking the “it takes a village” fallacy that drives so many on the Left. Too many believe that progress “just happens” or that the innovators are just “lucky”, rather than recognizing the hard work necessary to create new goods and services. The innovators don’t need to “give back” because they’ve already done so in spades.
Let her complete her mission.
This will turn the United States into a third world nation, which looks like the majority actually want. And it will take place faster than you think, because business will take their commerce to another country. They’ll have no income from business, and no jobs. The wealthy will scurry out of the USA like rats on a sinking ship; Therefore, no tax revenue.
They’ll cave in faster than a sand castle.
After that, they will see what it takes to actually build something with their own blood, sweat, and tears.
I am pretty certain that Professor Warren and her associates would be quite comfortable with the U.S. falling to second or third wolrd statue – Provided that they still hold on to power and that their class continues to call the shots. I believe the formula is “Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.”
Hell it would be; And the oppressed would get their revenge. Rulers like that don’t live long.
I hate to say this, but if you are doing anything other than preaching to the choir, you need to put numbers up. Which the author of this article did. the rest of you, too. The 50K/job guy did.
what Elizabeth Warren is saying is pretty commonplace in leftist-ish households. I thought what she said was pretty obvious. I grew up hearing it. Spluttering does just sound mean and self- centered. Laying out the tax levels already in place, does more for explaining that you are already meeting the leftists’ highest values, and really can’t, and won’t give more, and, really, ought to be taxed less, meets the other highest value- fairness.
Fairness, and community are good values- how one goes about supporting these values is the question. Apparently, most religious folks do this through churches or synagogues with thriving ministries. And fairness in the tax code is a total hobby, since the ratcheting up from Reagan rates. Conservatives also champion privacy, not the weird, fringe privacies, but the simple privacies of regular home life. That’s not aired out much at all, in any of these splutter-fests.
No, ari, it is not just about arguments to bat down Leftists. Those are important, sure. The “spluttering” also serves its prupose, the purpose of speaking to the general concepts. Not everyone who reads here is a Conservative. Those who are may still be missing parts of the whole picture. Certainly, this site has affected me over the years, despite starting as a Conservative. I am always surprised when I see a new person posting here, who has never heard these basics that are old hat, and we have to re-hash for his benefit. One always has to return to the basics.
Restating it again and again in different ways serves the purpose of getting us all to the same general place. The Left’s greatest strength is that they are all there. Sure, they put forth the marching orders, but there is also a weltanschauung supporting them. They are organized. We have not been.
So, preaching to the choir is necessary, in order to establish and re-establish the basics. This recruits for us and arms us. The more specific arguments are great for disarming the foe. Both are needed.
Warren’s position is a lot like that argued by Adam Smith in Book V of *Wealth of Nations* (if you don’t believe me, read it). It’s a sign of how illiterate and off the rails American “conservatives” have become that they could construe this as a communist perspective.
curious you go straight to chapter v without any acknowledgement of the previous books; it seems cherry picking out of context examples is one trickle down strategy the statists can believe in
I suggest you have no concept of which you speak.
An example of interconnectivity is not an admonishment of usery.
When one describes the Military’s instilling of Absolute Obedience without Question in Soldiers (for the purpose of keeping them alive in a combat situation) is not to Advocate Slavery. Even if the elements sound the same.
A Porsche 924 is not The Same as a Volkswagon Beetel even if they do both have four tires, an engine in the rear, and a steering wheel.
The fact that this woman totally thwarted the conscept of interconectivity into some sort of “the rich use what everyone else paid for” is the same kind of claptrap where the left alters only so very slightly the concept of Compassion into a method to enslave the taxpayer to the lazy!
daxypoo, it’s not cherry-picking if it’s what speaks to the matter at hand (and this is about public goods). Nothing in Warren’s remarks contradicts the other four books.
Warren understands what many do not. Main street has been robbed by Wall Street, big time. The first looting, where they took much of the wealth accumulated since WWII, was the internet bubble. Then they pillaged again, this time the money borrowed against the nation’s
real estate.
Of course it does. However, it does not seem so to some, because they view it through the lens of their overall ideology. It gets distorted. Warren’s prism is the primacy of the collective, with certain animals more equal than others.
Her view is that WE built it, and YOU want to use it. The truth is, there is no outside YOU. We all built it.
When a business starts, the founder pays fees and licenses. If he seeks to build something, he has to pay all kinds of mitigation ahead of time. In other words, he is required to build his own roads, power lines, and sewers, etc…. (Of course, the government takes those mitigation fees, and does not use them for the roads they were paid for, but uses them for roads in their more favored parts of town.) When he employs folks, the government gets their cut up front. He complies with all kinds of regulations and reporting requirements. He buys electricity and gas, and the taxes are built in. He pays for every damned thing as he goes, every step of the way! Only after he does, can he make a profit.
What Warren and her ilk are calling for is for that entrepreneur, the guy who creates ALL the wealth, to pay an ever greater and greater portion. They do it by claiming he pays none of it, or not “his fair share”. No matter how much he pays, it will never be “his fair share”.
Her lens is the lens of class-warfare. There are the affluent businessmen, and there are the downtrodden masses exploited by those rich men. It is the childish view of fairness. The results are not equal, so the system is not fair. Those who have more MUST give to those who have less.
They think thus, because they think the wealth just happens, that it is created ex-nihilo. The wealthy just happened into it. If they take more from the wealthy, there will just always be more. The river of wealth never runs out of water.
This was documented by the Obama administration itself. They looked at the financial crisis in 2009 when he started, and he was told that the economy always recovers from these things. Always. So they could just go forward with their plans and not deal with the economy. They really thought the unemployment rate would not rise above 8%, whatever they did. I think it was Romer who said this. They were truly surprised when the economy simply failed to recover and unemployment continued. Yet, they have failed to learn and continue to look through the same distorting prism.
The Wealth of Nations justifies mitigation. You do not simply latch your business onto a system without paying into it for the greater burden you place on it. You pay for your use of it. However, it does not justify the notion that it does not belong to YOU, but to US. Each of us is the heir of the generations that went before us. That industrialist has as much ownership as the next guy, and he is not required to pay more than the next guy. He is not required to pay for that to which he is already heir.
There is no us and them in this regard. There is only us. The industrialist gains, and so do we all, as do our heirs. Paying it forward happens naturally. It requires no special effort.
Once you get past the rhetoric, Warren is just another Communist.
Warren has the Mafia theory of government. Listen to this description of Pauley and the Organization from the movie, Goodfellas. See if it has a familiar ring.
Warren believes the government operates that way, they provide protection and so you must pay tribute.
Oh, and this discussion of the transportation and the development of small towns in Colonial Virginia seems to not support Warren’s idea of government/economic development.
The abolition of constitutional government is frequently on the tip of the tongue of these leftist politicians….It just shows what’s really in their hearts: Complete statist control of all aspects of life. Warren is glib when being interviewed, but has no real understanding of the private sector at all.
This post and many of the accompanying comments seem to yearn for some equally ideological libertarian utopia without any recognition of a “commons” that part of our society which is shared by and benefits everyone.
But my issue is that we’d better pay attention to Warren: She has gone from 20% down on Scott Brown to 2% above. Her message is obviously resonating….
Never underestimate the stupidity of Mass voters. After all, they kept reelecting Ted Kennedy.
this moveon slop was posted all over my Facebook page today- my liberal friends just salivating over what they think is “brilliant”! Back-slapping all around…
just had to laugh- or I would cry about it- can they not see the inanity of her drivel?
Sorry Ms Warren business does already pay back for social services they receive, in corp taxes, fees up the wazoo, they pay your SS by half in payroll taxes, they provide jobs, pay people’s insurance and more.
G-d please save us from stupid.
The Soviet Union had police, firemen and roads and yet it faced an economic collapse. Perhaps there’s some kind of X-factor in this country that Warren is missing…
Warren has a filthy rich salary, guaranteed lifetime empoyment, short working hours, and a full pension paid by Harvard Law.
She gets this compensation partially because Harvard is a tax exempt instution and contributions to it are also sheltered from income taxation.
neat trick
What idealogues like Ms. Warren don’t understand, among everything else, is that we capitalist pigs are not the only ones who benefit from the infrastructure. Our customers benefit by quick and ready delivery of our products over smooth and safe highways. If the highways were not smooth and safe, products would be broken up from bumpy roads, and may products would only make it to the black market because thieves and robbers will hijack a certain amount of product.
This will result, I’m sure to Ms. Warren’s utter astonishment, in higher prices due to higher insurance expenses and the need to protect our shipments with private sector armed guards.
She also does not acknowledge that we capitalist profiteers helped pay for all that infrastructure.
There was a time when our education system benefited everyone by giving us educated employees and consumers — but alas, those days are going away
In fact, we all benefit from a sophisticated modern economy that produces goods and services at the least cost to everyone.
“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”–Warren
Never in my life have I entered into any such contract. Nor will I ever enter into any such contract.
Warren’s “contract” is a figment of her leftard imagination.
She’s just another millionaire elitist fraud. She makes a huge, and largely unearned (I’m sure) salary that she claims she would be willing to pay more tax on, but so what? She uses her salary for spree money. That is not where her WEALTH lies. Now ask her how much of her family wealth she is willing to give to the “poor”? These people live in their cozy gated communities and they DARE to tell individuals who make more than $200,000 (in a good year) that they are not paying their “fair” share! This woman, and her ilk, deserves a thorough bitch-slapping. The same goes for Pelosi, Reid, Kerry — hell, just throw in the whole democrat congress, including the race-huckstering CBC). They ALL live lavish, carefree lives, far away from the noise, and the crime, and the decay that their statist policies engender. “Hate” is a strong word, but I truly do hate these people, along with all the multi-millionaire Dan Rathers, E.J. Dionnes, Thomas Friedmans, Katie Courics, Whoopie Goldbergs, etc., etc., etc. To say nothing of our big-mouthed Hollywood Idols who DARE to speak to us of social fairness, world peace (of which they know NOTHING), and The Global Environment (of which they also know NOTHING — I mean, they’re ACTORS for cryin’ out loud! — they get paid hundreds of millions of dollars for simply being photogenic, NONE of them are trained historians, political scientists, or physical scientists — they are FACES who know how to emote, that’s it).
Aw screw it. Screw Elizabeth Effing Warren, and her rich husband, too. Just more of the same old STUPID that comes down the pipe every goddam day.
Ms. Warren is not original. But we are supposed to be impressed because she has been a professor, at Harvard Law School, no less.
In 1929, Joseph Stalin, by then having consolidated much of his power announced that the “kulaks (owners of food producing land) will be liquidated as a class.” And so with the police power of the NKVD, the landowners (especially in Soviet Ukraine) were liquidated. Then lacking food producers, the inevitable happened: the famine of 1933. Starvation is bad news for the victims and for the government, so Stalin was defeated (well not really). His kill the producers policy failed, so he needed an explanation: let’s blame Jews and Poles and kill them. And that is exactly what happened next.
The only hope is that Massachusetts voters will read some history and not give Ms. Warren the power to test her scheme.
Palmer Hinsdale
Where are the Republicans? Why aren’t they doing more to stop this mess? I guess they think the same way. This is what we get when we don’t think we deserve better. It’s time to teach our children and their’s to demand more and insist that their leaders are the best. Please pray for our country and God’s grace.
To those of you who post here who aren’t rich:
Speaking of contracts, here’s what that “factory owner” (actually, such a creature barely exists in our contemporary collectivized corporate world) has been up to, suggesting that Ms. Warren’s Smithian remarks are far too mild for today:
http://www.amazon.com/Retirement-Heist-Companies-Plunder-American/dp/1591843332
Do you really think that there are huge differences between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown?
Everyone knows that we have to have some taxes. Working out what the percentages are for each income category leads us to make all sorts of extreme statements and judgements. Is it true that the difference between a “capitalist” and a “socialist” is about a 5% swing on taxes?
Capital gains folks want to pay a lower % because their money is more valuable. The poor want to pay a lower percent because they need the money more. O’Reilly said last night that he is willing to pay an extra 5% IF spending is cut. Ostensibly, he is putting something like a 5-5 plan out there to rival my 4-4-4 plan, which I will now amend to a 5-4-3 plan. If we raise taxes 5% (on the million plus that generates much less money than the amount we would be cutting with a 4% cut (realistically only certain areas will get cut, and it is hard to imagine ANYTHING getting real cuts, rather than limits to growth. Qualifying public employees retirees will get stiffed 3%, NOW, not in projected future adjustments.
The first principles conflict that we have had for some time is that Dems refuse to cut spending and Repubs refuse to raise taxes, leading to the deficits. Both have to give at least a little, evoking gnashing of teeth here and its equivalent sites on the left.
Dwight’s reasonable centrism makes one big mistake: it repeats the canard that the two parties sit on either side of it. The Democratic leadership (and especially the president) shares his enthusiasm for spending cuts (at least in the long term), but almost every Republican who matters pledges no new revenues, even as revenue is a smaller percentage of GDP than it has been in decades and even as the public debt continues to pile up.
Both John and Dwight, in their self-described “reasonable centrism”, use the same strawman: Republicans refuse to increase revenues because they won’t increase taxes. In fact, (conservative) Republicans believe that revenues are increased by increasing taxable income (economic growth), NOT by increasing tax rates on existing taxable income. They believe that the economic growth that results from decreasing tax rates on economic producers will result in more (not less) total government revenues. In other words, John and Dwight, they believe that you are wrong about raising revenues by raising tax rates!
And, by the way, (conservative) Republicans don’t believe that cutting government spending can only be accomplished by reducing the amount of the social safety net. They believe that spending can be cut by reducing the number of government employees distributing the safety net, as well as the number of government employees involved in generating the massive number of regulations that are restricting economic growth in the private sector of our economy. They believe in reducing the size and scope of the federal government, returning functions to the states where necessary and eliminating them when they are not necessary. And they believe that when less money is taken out of the private economy to fund an inefficient federal government, the result will be a growth in the private sector economy which will also generate more tax revenues.
OK, but the sad fact is that neither Obama’s stimulus nor the GWB reduced tax rates which have been retained have provided the hoped for increase in revenue. The Dems say stimulate more, the Repubs say reduce taxes even more. Is it any wonder that our deficit grows?
When you couple the stifling regulations and taxes imposed with the “free trade” claptrap, what large business in their right mind wouldn’t set up shop in China? Laffer curve, look it up.
I looked it up:
“[T]he whole California gang had taken [the Laffer curve] literally (and primitively). The way they talked, they seemed to expect that once the supply-side tax cut was in effect, additional revenue would start to fall, manna-like, from the heavens. Since January, I had been explaining that there is no literal Laffer curve.” — David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s budget director.
“The wealthy also pay more in state and local income, sales, and property taxes (where applicable). In other words, the wealthy pay for most of the governmental services that others use.”
In other words, the wealthy pay more because they earn more, own more expensive houses, and can buy more expensive things. Obvious point is obvious.
“The 10 percent of households with the highest incomes pay more than half of all federal taxes. They pay more than 70 percent of federal income taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office.”
From 1987–2008, the top 10% never paid more than 48% of federal income taxes. Source: http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html
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