Discussion for article #231624
Yeah, tangling with Sen. Warren is becoming a favorite activity for the disturbed right-wing. She is sort of a substitute for Sen. Edward Kennedy, another target from the past… From Massachusetts.
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I can only read the first paragraph of the WSJ article without a subscription…
You can forgive Antonio Weiss for wondering where he went wrong as a good Democrat. He supports higher taxes—more than $1 trillion in new revenue over 10 years for starters. He favors higher tax rates on capital gains and dividends, and he thinks personal tax rates on the wealthy can rise substantially with little damage to the economy. He also supports the Dodd-Frank law, including the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau it created.
What exactly is the opposition to Weiss?
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Ok, so either Prez Obama or Sen. Warren wins ?? I can live with that…
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He is very close to all the important people/ big banks he would be regulating. People like Warren don’t think he would do anything to help regular people like you and me.
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I’m indifferent about Weiss but I think higher effective tax rates on the wealthy and higher taxes on cap gains and dividends would be a good thing. His work on the BK inversion deal doesn’t tell us anything about his personal opinion of corporate inversions. Maybe his experience would be help close the loopholes?
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I am not taking it to the bank, but some donkeys may be groking how to reverse maneuver some elephants. Here is hoping the fever breaks.
It is a WSJ editorial, not an article. The editorial page is controlled by Rupert Murdoch. Count on being misled.
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Here is a good explanation of the opposition to Weiss from Matthew Yglesias:
But as Warren made clear at a speech in Washington on Tuesday, Weiss is really caught in the crossfires of a larger dispute.
“Time after time in government, the Wall Street view prevails” she said, complaining that “conflicting views are crowded out.”
In other words, Warren thinks that in general the Obama administration is too friendly to Wall Street perspectives. In part that’s a specific issue of too many people with Wall Street ties staffing the government. But Warren famously had conflicts with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who hadn’t worked in banking. Warren dislikes Weiss less because she thinks he’s done anything uniquely terrible than simply because she thinks he represents continuity with Obama’s longstanding approach of giving Wall Street veterans too much of a role in regulating Wall Street, and she doesn’t like it.
See also the section titled “Why is there a big fight about this? It doesn’t sound important.” later in the quoted article.
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Maybe, just like the Geithner appointment helped find out where the “bodies were buried.”
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Wouldn’t it be refreshing if politicians did the right thing instead of the political thing. Warren is one who actually does the right thing.
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I think the argument against Weiss is less about Weiss himself than about the effort to loosen the party’s ties to Wall Street in general. (BTW, srumbalski’s link here to Yglesias’ piece about the dispute supports that assessment.) I’ve been ambivalent about Weiss, because while I don’t put much stock in Sorkin’s views I do in Bernstein’s (and the Burger King/Tim Horton’s inversion seems like the perhaps-rare case of one conducted for legitimate business reasons other than simply avoiding US taxes). So on the one hand, he really does seem like a good pick for the specific position; but on the other hand, the Dems’ links to Wall Street in general really have gotten far too tight since the 1990s, and his nomination happens to be a target of opportunity in the fight to alter that status quo.
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Thanks for that link. It provides important perspective.
WSJ, DRUDGE REPORT, The BLAZE, all the same difference.