Elizabeth Warren recalls Girl Scouts armed with sharp knives
Monday is the 100th birthday of the Girl Scouts of the USA, an organization that has made it their mission to help young girls develop their full potential. So what better way to mark the occasion for Elizabeth Warren, candidate for the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, than a fund-raising solicitation?
Democrat Warren, who is in a close race with Republican Scott Brown, reminisced in a note to supporters about the days when her daughter and some-time collaborator Amelia Warren Tyagi was a Brownie and Warren was a troop leader.
“When the girls were about eight, we decided to do a several-week project on cooking, culminating in each team of girls making an awesome mac-and-cheese. And the girls made other masterpieces: jello-with-canned-fruit, pancakes, biscuits, and barbecue sauce,” said the Harvard Law School professor and former Obama administration official.
“But the girls wanted one more session: they wanted to use knives — real, honest-to-goodness sharp knives.
“I really, really didn’t want to arm twelve little girls with knives, particularly when a couple of the girls were fairly excitable. But I couldn’t deny the girls’ argument that the safe use of a knife was a basic cooking skill, and they all absolutely, positively promised to be responsible, calm and careful. So I agreed. The hardest part was borrowing extra paring knives from all the neighbors with the explanation that I wanted to give them to children.
“The big day came, and we drilled on the basics: how to walk with a knife (at your side, never in front of you), how to hold a knife for cutting, and how to care for a cutting board. We successfully cut bananas with table knives, bread with serrated knives, and — the pinnacle — we cut celery, tomatoes, and green peppers with sharp paring knives, and best of all, without injury.”
If Warren wins her Senate race she will have plenty of Girl Scout alumnae with her in Congress. The organization reports that 10 of 17 women in the U.S. Senate and 45 of 75 women in the House of Representative are former Girl Scouts.
For now the knives are in their holsters between Warren and Brown, who recently hammered out an agreement that attempts to keep the deep-pocketed independent groups known as Super PACs out of their Senate race. But Warren has clearly put Brown on notice. She has knives, and she knows how to use them.
As for Elizabeth Warren? Barney Frank says: “Let’s fight!”
Is President Obama up for a Senate confirmation fight over Elizabeth Warren? Maybe not right now. But that’s just the sort of rhetorical rumble Barney Frank would like to see.
The former Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who co-authored the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, tells MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Warren might survive a confirmation battle.
His reasoning? “This is not just the left and the right. The Republican Party is united against healthcare and united against the environment. They’re not united against financial reform.”
Even more to the point: “The Tea Party people didn’t send people to Washington to defend derivatives. I think the fight over Elizabeth Warren would be worth having and I’m not sure how all the Republican senators would vote.”
Warren, of course, is the outspoken, bespectacled Harvard law professor who has struck fear in the hearts of bankers and their friends in Congress by pushing hard for consumer protection in the financial sphere.
Obama put her in charge of setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But he has not named her to head the operation, a post that would require confirmation in the Senate, where Democrats retain a slim majority. For now, she serves as a special advisor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
The confirmation fight Frank envisions sounds a bit like a fantasy match — a fantasy particularly for him, given that he sits in the House of Representatives and not the Senate.
Calm before the storm: Does silence on Warren signal decision soon?
An eerie calm has descended over the blogosphere after the feeding frenzy that broke out earlier this week on whether President Barack Obama was poised to name Elizabeth Warren to lead the new consumer financial agency.
The week started with an avalanche of stories and blogs speculating on the possibility of Obama naming Warren, a Harvard law professor, as an interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The move would have allowed Obama to avoid what would likely be a heated confirmation battle.
Senators Chris Dodd, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins expressed reservations about the temporary appointment on Tuesday, urging Obama not to bypass the Senate confirmation process.
But today, there has been little grist for the mill when it comes to public comments on Warren. Sometimes in Washington, silence means something is brewing.
Could this mean a decision is imminent?
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs seemed to signal the process was moving closer to a decision but gave no specifics on timing.
Obama to push message on economy, hold news conference
Washington pundits questioned President Barack Obama’s decision to devote so much time this week to foreign policy with his Iraq speech on Tuesday and his foray on Wednesday into Middle East peacemaking at a time when Americans are preoccupied with the economy.
But Obama’s message next week seems like it will be heavily focused on jobs and the economy. He will mark Labor Day with a “Laborfest” event on Monday in Milwaukee and travel to Cleveland on Wednesday for an event on the economy.
On Friday, he will hold a news conference at the White House.
Could next week bring a decision on how he will fill two key jobs — chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and the head of the new U.S. consumer agency?
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs won’t say. But he did advise that it was unlikely there would be a decision on either of those jobs this week.
Meanwhile, speculation is growing that Austan Goolsbee is the favorite to replace departing CEA chair Christina Romer and that Elizabeth Warren is likely to be tapped as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Talk that the White House might be getting ready to make an announcement on Warren grew on Thursday after The Washington Post reported that the Harvard law professor and outspoken consumer advocate will no longer be teaching a contracts class that had been on her schedule for the fall.
Elizabeth Warren’s rap video
Consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren is among a handful of candidates President Barack Obama is considering to become the first chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Some ardent supporters clearly think the Harvard law professor (and chief of a panel monitoring the government’s $700 billion bailout of the financial system) is up for the task of heading the independent agency created under the financial reform bill signed into law last month.
A group called The Main Street Brigade, which supported creating the consumer agency, really wants Warren to be the boss. The group has taken its case to YouTube in a western-themed music video, “Elizabeth Warren Rap Video – Got a new Sheriff.”
The new consumer financial protection agency will regulate a range of consumer financial businesses from mortgage lending to payday loans and check cashing businesses. Its mission — to protect ordinary borrowers from abuses by lenders.
The idea for the new agency was largely Warren’s in the first place, The Washington Post notes in a profile which delves into why her candidacy is such a hot topic in political circles. “She’s either the plain-spoken, supremely smart crusader for middle-class families that her supporters adore, or she’s the power-hungry headline seeker her critics loathe, a fiery zealot disguised in professorial glasses and pastel cardigans,” the Post says.
Many on Wall Street fiercely oppose Warren, who has long been an outspoken advocate for consumers. However, she has the backing of some influential Democratic lawmakers and Obama’s liberal supporters. Whoever is chosen must be confirmed by the Senate.
Warren was at the White House last Thursday to discuss the job. Afterward, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said an announcement on a nominee was not expected soon.
Photo Credit: REUTERS/Mike Theiler (Warren at the Reuters Financial Regulation Summit in Washington April 27, 2009)
Warren sees dark times if financial reform fails
Elizabeth Warren paints a disturbing picture of the realities facing the United States and the Obama administration as Americans claw their way clear of the worst recession since the 1930s.
Lobbyists for the financial industry have put the kibosh on market reforms that would aid the recovery. Banks, saved from Tartarus by taxpayer money, are using a free government guarantee against failure to rebuild profits and credit ratings, while either not lending to business or trying to milk American consumers of every dime they’ve still got.
“That’s our plan to rebuild the American economy. Think about it,” says the bespectacled Harvard professor who chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel set up to investigate the $700 billion banking bailout.
“What the government is doing right now is, it’s permitting a set of rules that says, in effect: ‘Hey, banks. We will lend to you at zero and you go out there and figure out what you can squeeze out of every American family. No new rules’,” she told MSNBC.
Why have the rules not changed? “There are very powerful interests that believe that they can profit from keeping status quo.”
Warren is seen as a front-runner to head President Barack Obama’s proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. But the notion of a free-standing CFPA has emerged as a main obstacle to broader financial reform. Republicans fear such an institution could fall into the hands of people hostile to financial markets.
No question we are doomed without true financial reform. Efforts to date have been laughable. The time to clean up Washington has come. No more lobbyists. No more career politicians; the greater good is not being served.
