She gave a barnburner of a speech yesterday:
Speaking at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, Warren cast her opposition to Weiss as part of a bigger battle against the influence of the finance industry in Washington.
“Why does the revolving door matter?” she said. “Because it means that too much of the time, the wind blows from the same direction. Time after time in government, the Wall Street view prevails, and time after time, conflicting views are crowded out.”
Warren also continued to make the case for why Weiss specifically should not be confirmed. She said Weiss’ defenders haven’t shown that his experience as Lazard’s head of global banking prepares him for a job focused on domestic markets and financial regulation. She railed against his ties to Wall Street as “a corporate deal maker” and stood by her criticism of the Obama administration for selecting too many bankers for government posts.
“For me, this is one spin of the revolving door too many,” Warren said. “Enough is enough.”
Warren said the undersecretary job entails more than just peddling U.S. Treasuries to foreign investors and that Weiss would play a key role in crafting policy.
Elizabeth Warren is a political lightweight. An empty suit if you’d like. Her message on domestic issues is right on the money, but she knows nothing about foreign policy. That makes her a one trick pony. Her instincts on foreign policy seem neo-conish and interventionist. Exactly the kind of thinking that we do not need. Lately the oligarchy seems to be pushing Warren as ‘the’ acceptable competitor to Hillary in the run for the Democratic nomination. She is being used. If Warren wants to save herself and her political career she had better begin pushing back against the oligarchy and the Clintonites. Otherwise she will find that she has become irrelevant and clownish.
Where’s the petition to can Weiss. Right now I like a politician focused on rational domestic policy. Foreign entanglements have been used continuously since WWII to distract and confuse.
You should rethink the foreign policy thing. The distractions and confusion are used to sustain a bankrupt foreign policy. Our foreign policy drives our domestic policy and not the other way around. If that is not the case why then does it cost us $585 billion dollars a year to run our defense department. Defense contractors require war just the same as oil producers need cars. Without wars and cars both of those industries would disappear. So would the oligarchy and all the money in politics. Propaganda is a tricky thing to see through.