All about the banks: Washington Post scolds Elizabeth Warren for “irrational” populism
12/1/2014
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren hasn’t won many media fans with her vocal opposition to investment banker Antonio Weiss’ nomination to a high-ranking Treasury Department post.
Last week, the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin lamented that by opposing Weiss’ nomination as under secretary for domestic finance, Warren was making it harder for Wall Street veterans, that perpetually persecuted and politically voiceless class, to join the public sector. This week, Warren’s position has the Washington Post editorial board clutching its pearls.
A bit of background: Weiss is currently head of global investment banking at Lazard, a firm which has advised Burger King on its merger with Canadian coffee and doughnut chain Tim Hortons, a so-called inversion that will help Burger King avoid taxes. As Warren wrote in the Huffington Post last month, it’s a bit bizarre for President Obama to nominate Weiss even as his administration attempts to crack down on inversions.
The Post’s editors aren’t having it. Not only do they share Sorkin’s view that Warren’s opposition to Weiss is wrongheaded, they suggest that it’s borderline bigotry, borne of populist “prejudice, stereotypes and resentment.” Echoing other supporters of Weiss’ nomination, the Post contends that this misunderstood banker is actually a bona fide progressive, noting that he’s called for higher taxes on the wealthy....
...In asserting that Warren opposes Weiss for merely symbolic reasons, it’s unclear if the Post simply misunderstands Warren’s position or is just being intellectually dishonest. While Warren has indeed raised concerns about the Obama administration’s over-reliance on Wall Street veterans to fill key posts, she cites two substantive concerns in laying out her stance: the oddity of nominating an international investment banker to a domestic finance post, and Weiss’ advisory role in the Burger King-Tim Hortons deal. (While Weiss supporters say he didn’t have anything to do with the tax side of the deal, Warren notes that this line of defense is ridiculous, given that the deal was fundamentally a tax deal.)
But to hear the Post tell it, Weiss is a victim who “stands accused” by “irrational,” McCarthyite populists like Warren.
http://www.salon.com/2014/12/01/all_about_the_banks_washington_post_scolds_elizabeth_warren_for_irrational_populism/
This cracks me up. Poor wall street robber barons...
Run, Liz, Run!!!!!!!!!
= new reply since forum marked as read
I will defend Elizabeth Warren and her views before I defend the Washington Post.
As a prime example lets look at one George Will and his rape comments, I rest my case.
He should have been fired about his "historical comments ".
We, if we choose to read his dribble of right wing facts we are subjected to nothing more than whining editorial pages he graces in your paper.
Warren has a right to oppose a corporatist when we have people going around talking about "inversions" and then hiring someone who supports that un-American concept of greed and shifting the profits of taxes off shore or to another country and then have you (Washington Post)sniffling that Warren is saying something about this person character is she not correct in her assumption, I think so.
But these same firms this person supports and communicates with at his firm to get these tax breaks, uses our roads, street lights, police, fire houses, and other amenities, and then shifting those infrastructure costs on our backs with more burden, is alright with you, were is your transparency?
Why don't you report that fact, because your former boss may have gotten a tax break when selling the firm to Amazon for tax breaks
