{"id":18798,"date":"2014-11-12T10:32:19","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T15:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=18798"},"modified":"2014-11-12T10:35:20","modified_gmt":"2014-11-12T15:35:20","slug":"joe-firestone-elizabeth-warren-better-but-not-there-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/11\/12\/joe-firestone-elizabeth-warren-better-but-not-there-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Firestone: Elizabeth Warren \u2013 Better, But Not There Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Naked Capitalism<\/em> has the article Joe Firestone: Elizabeth Warren \u2013 Better, But Not There Yet<\/a>. I agree with almost everything Joe Firestone said.\u00a0 Although I strongly promote Elizabeth Warren for President, I do realize she is not perfect.\u00a0 I’ll quote one sample of what Firestone had to say, but if you really want to understand the good and the bad of Warren’s positions, you will really have to read the article yourself.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what happened in 2009 \u2013 2010. Democrats structured legislation in a vain search for bipartisanship, and in doing so produced:<\/p>\n

\u2014 an inadequate stimulus bill that lowered unemployment only very slowly,<\/p>\n

\u2014 a Credit card Reform Bill that did not limit credit card interest rates to non-usurious levels,<\/p>\n

\u2014 a FINREG bill that still allows Systemically Dangerous Institutions (SDIs) to thrive and threaten the financial system, and that still allows trading in derivatives, and finally:<\/p>\n

\u2014 a \u201chealth care reform\u201d bill that, four and a half years after its passage in early 2010, covers only 10 of the 45 \u2013 55 million people without insurance, leaves us with 35,000 to 45,000 annual fatalities due to the absence of medical care, and still leaves millions of people who have insurance in danger of bankruptcy, due to overwhelming medical bills.<\/p>\n

So, Warren is dead-on about this. We don\u2019t need compromise for its own sake, and legislation that creates the short-lived illusion that Congress is finally \u201cdoing something\u201d about our problems. What we need, and have needed since the election of 2008 is that Congress actually legislate solutions to those problems, and end the kabuki theatre.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I posted my reaction<\/a> to the article on the Naked Capitalism site.<\/p>\n

My only quibble is that it is unrealistic to demand promises about specific legislation. No President has free rein to get exactly the legislation that she wants. We all know that. So a promise to get the Congress to enact specific legislation is a promise that no one can believe.<\/p>\n

We need to think about what kind of promises we should expect that are within the power of the President to keep. The President can certainly promote certain legislation, fight for certain legislation, take executive actions that are within her power, rally the people to put pressure on Congress, etc. We need to think about what else we should demand that is realistic.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t need more arguments about unrealistic promises not kept.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Naked Capitalism has the article Joe Firestone: Elizabeth Warren \u2013 Better, But Not There Yet. I agree with almost everything Joe Firestone said.\u00a0 Although I strongly promote Elizabeth Warren for President, I do realize she is not perfect.\u00a0 I’ll quote one sample of what Firestone had to say, but if you really want to understand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18798","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18798"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18800,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18798\/revisions\/18800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}