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Open Letter to President Obama on the Nomination of Elizabeth Warren
April 1, 2011
Dear President Obama:
An interesting contrast is playing out at the White House these days—between your expressed praise of General Electric’s CEO, Jeffrey R. Immelt and the silence regarding the widely desired nomination of Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Regulatory Bureau within the Federal Reserve.
On one hand, you promptly appointed Mr. Immelt to be the chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitive, while letting him keep his full time lucrative position as CEO of General Electric (The Corporate State Expands). At the announcement, you said that Mr. Immelt “understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy.”
Did you mean that he understands how to avoid all federal income taxes for his company’s $14.2 billion in profits last year, while corralling a $3.2 billion benefit? Or did you mean that he understands how to get a federal bailout for GE Capital and its reckless exposure to risky debt? Or could you have meant that GE knows how to block unionization of its far flung workers here and abroad? Perhaps Mr. Immelt can share with you GE’s historical experience with lucrative campaign contributions, price-fixing, pollution and those nuclear reactors that are giving people fits in Japan and worrying millions of Americans here living or working near similar reactors.
Compare, if you will, the record of Elizabeth Warren and her acutely informed knowledge about delivering justice to those innocents harmed by injustice in the financial services industry. A stand-up Law Professor at your alma mater, author of highly regarded articles and books connecting knowledge to action, the probing Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) and now in the Treasury Department working intensively to get the CFRB underway by the statutory deadline this July with competent, people-oriented staff.
There were many good reasons why Senate leader Harry Reid (Dem. Nevada) called Professor Warren and asked her to be his choice for Chair of COP. Hailing from an Oklahoman blue collar family, Professor Warren is just the “working class hero” needed to make the new Bureau a sober, law and order enforcer, deterrer and empowerer of consumers vis-à-vis the companies whose enormous greed, recklessness and crimes tanked our economy into a deep recession. The consequences produced 8 million unemployed workers and shattered trillions of dollars in pensions and other savings along with the dreams which they embodied for American workers.
Much more than you perhaps realize, millions of people, who have heard and seen Elizabeth Warren, rejoice in her brainy, heartfelt knowledge and concern over their plight. They see her as just the kind of regulator (federal cop on the beat) for their legitimate interests in a more competitive marketplace who you should be overjoyed in nominating.
Yet there are corporate forces from Wall Street to Washington determined to derail her nomination—forces with their avaricious hooks into the Republicans on Capitol Hill and the corporatists in the Treasury and White House.
You have obliged these forces again and again over the last two years, most recently with the appointment of William M. Daley, recently of Wall Street, as your chief of staff.
How about one nomination for the People? The accolades on hearing the news of Elizabeth Warren’s nomination may actually exceed the enduring indignation were she not to be nominated. Just feed the Senate Republicans to the mass media that would cover the nomination hearings, all that calm, solid, wisdom and humanity that she communicates without peer. See who prevails.
Selecting Elizabeth Warren and backing her fully though the nomination process will always be remembered by Americans across the land. Not doing so will not be forgotten by those same persons. This is another way of saying she has the enthusiastic constituency of “hope and change”—that is “change you can believe in!”*
I look forward with many others to your response.
Sincerely yours,
Ralph Nader
PO Box 19312
Washington D.C., 20036
*If you doubt this observation and would like to see one million Americans on a petition favoring her selection, ask us and see how long that would take.
124 Comments so far
Show AllThe government only responds to lobbyists. People no longer have a voice that the government has to listen to.
Hoa binh
In Amerika democracy is for sale to the highest bidder.
I call that "dollar democracy". One dollar, one vote.
Yes, in "third-world" countries petty officials are bribed. In " first-world" countries, the highest officials are bribed.
Campaign finance is the key problem that must be solved to change our future in this country.
There are more subtle forms of bribery at work here currently. Needing millions to run for national office obligates our legislators to the corporate interests that hand out said millions. Thus our politicians are obligated to serve corporate masters prior to becoming legislators.
That's the "free market" democracy at work. And of course by "free market" what I really mean is "extortionate plunder." It sounds like a libertarian's paradise!
All capital letters.
Its hard to criticize Warren since the job does not allow any meaningful regulation, no matter who is appointed.
All I can say from what I've seen these last two to three decades is: the right wing corporate elites have bought out virtually all the media and have been having news their way for almost that long. Since I remember the days of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, back when news had much more integrity, and had to adhere to a fairness doctrine, I can certainly see the big change that has happened. To try and tell me that all we hear about are "right wing horror stories" is a very big stretch. I'm just glad we hear about them at all! When Maine's new governor is ordering the removal of historic murals in his state, it bears a frightening resemblance to the book-burning days of the Nazis. Similar kinds of radical activities are going on now in many states, and citizens must be very vigilant if we are to preserve the country we love.
It would be useful to have a type of wiki-site, where all Americans can input and help reveal a more accurate socio/political profile of public opinion. There would be no bantering or personality contests on a wiki-opinion site, just a checking off - "agree" or "do not agree" and then using the majority to hone a direction forward. I emphasize the word, "hone." It could be chaos in the initial stages but people would learn how to use the site and would eventually see the potential power in it. It would also be an excellent tool for critical thinking.
I envision a "political action" section where Americans can hone strategies for making meaningful changes. We might be surprised by what we discover. It wouldn't be perfect but it would be far better than turning to corporate media to find out what people think. MSM manufactures opinion, it doesn't reflect it. Organizations like MoveOn, under the direction of just a few people, manages opinion.
Example: Once an unemployment threshold is determined by We the People, someone might set up a new heading: "What are our options to reach the desirable threshold of a 2% unemployment rate?" I might start off with: "If Congress does not enact a credible plan that ensures, at most, a 2% unemployment rate, 1) I will join with other Americans in street wide protests and boycotts?" ........ and so on.
Another example: Once candidates profiles are established in line with what most Americans say they want, a list of preferred candidates can be created. I might make a call: "To deter "lessor evils" voting strategy, would you pledge to support [one of top three candidates here], once a [predetermined] threshold number of pledges is determined?"
If Americans can't come together and wrestle control of our country from the oligarchs, we are toast. As much as I love commenting on this site and others, and as much as I enjoy my role in the community's progressive choir, I - we - need to learn how to build bridges to people of other political stripes. I think we'll find that we have more in common with each other than we do the oligarchs ruling us.
Might be a better chance of people doing that if we didn't all just stand by impotently and allow whistle-blowers to get crucified.
sj
Thank you.
"Finally, I object to the "consumerization" of the U.S. public. Casting much of our civic activity in this mold serves to distort the definition of a citizen, and undermines our chances to establish a reasonable democracy in this country.'
I agree with you 100%.
We don't need Joan of Arc. We need some one who is competent, honest, intelligent-with the ability to explain complex matters in language ordinary people can understand. I assume you've got a better choice? Who might that be?
Visiting Professor tells us:
"For example, when Elizabeth Warren was overseeing the TARP bailouts, she did not push the Wall Street criminals hard enough to disclose what was really going on. And thanks to this soft regulatory approach, she actually helped justify their criminal acts and ensure that none of them would go to jail for their huge theft of money from the middle class."
This looks to be strictly a judgment call on the part of Visiting Professor. Quite frankly, I cannot evaluate VP's claim that Warren's "soft regulatory approach" as chair of the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel "actually helped justify their (the bank speculators') criminal acts...etc", and VP provides no more than his raw opinion on this (which, without more, I am not willing to buy into).
I think VP owes us more (much more) in the way of argument and example to support his negative evaluation of Warren, and to overcome Nader's support of her. Otherwise, we are to assume that Ralph Nader is carelessely, without adequate familiarity of what is at issue, supporting Warren for a position for which she has disqualified (or unqualified) herself.
If we're arguing from authority here, we have Nader's authority up against VP's authority. I think you have to bring heavier arguments (bigger guns) when going up against Ralph Nader.
VP - The Ubiquitous CD critic:
Here are a few "flavors" who have supported Elizabeth Warren in addition to Ralph Nader: Bernie Sanders, Paul Krugman, Simon Johnson, Al Franken, and Dean Baker.
Do better research on Elizabeth Warren and you will find that she is an exceptional talent who has long been a consumer advocate for the American people.
I don't know about that Sanders bank protection bit either.
Plesae enlighten.
Blaming Ms. Warren for the system which blocks any efforts, including her own, to reform and add justice to our governance is yet another tactic by those who continually shoot themselves ( and us) in the foot. This penchant for turning on any and all potential allies is keeping th eleft from any hope of progress.
Is this what you intended oh fatuous one?
Nice comeback. I like it!
Judging you by your constant negativity I would say that most, if not all of the words you so helpfully supplied would do quite nicely. Glad to be of service. Oh and fatheaded and egotistic might be added as well.
Considering that your every post runs down anyone and anything at all hopeful to progressive goals I seriously doubt your supplied resume and your braggadocio about how you, single handedly I suppose, made such important contributions to this nation. I cannot think of how you might fit into any organisation seeking to make a positive contribution as you never, not once, have done so here. I guess you simply pop into a phone booth, change into your superlefty costume and wreak havoc upon the forces of evil,huh?
That you attack those who dare post differing opinions to your crap, and fawn obsequiously on anyone who posts agreement seems a glimpse into a rather flawed human being. Sad for you, really I am.
Please except my signature to the above letter. If Mr. President you want to get re-elected, that would be your "Ace in the Cards".
Mr Nader, you're asking for an act involving courage from a president who has yet to exhibit any.
"Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse."
— Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)
You do not wait for a President to do something. If things are not forth coming to a people who are long suffering when by all understanding that everything under the sun that is held in common by the people and belongs to them, and when these effects are denied or withheld from the people...then it is time for the people to take all necessary means to recover their….. “ justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare.”
The President was NOT elected to make the rich wealthier and that the rest of us should all just rot in hell.
Saw a cartoon in the local rag a while back: Martin Luther King's ghost is in the Oval Office chatting with Obama. King's ghost says "So what's your Dream?" Obama says:
"Not to piss off any rich people-that's pretty much it."
Mr Nader isn't asking anything of the president. Mr Nader knows perfectly well (and better, probably, than anyone posting to his article) that asking Obama to behave in any manner against his selfish interests and on behalf of the public good is perfectly futile insofar as affecting Obama's behavior. Mr Nader knows that Obama hears the moneyed interests, and only the moneyed intersests.
It is dumbfounding that the people who post to this thread cannot recognize irony (and irony as blatant as this). Mr Nader knows perfectly well that he is not talking to Obama...that Obama talks only to the powers that be. Mr Nader is using this format to hold Obama up to the ridicule he has coming to him.
Michael F: Thank you for your excellent posts. Your reasoning is well-seasoned.
Yes indeed, one wonders. I for one wonder at the state of our educational institutions that allow "professors", visiting or not, to post fatuous positions and then lambaste any and all who dare disagree. Is it any wonder that we are turning out students who simply cannot think critically?
In a government in which there are so many targets one wonders at this attack on Ms. Warren, who, in every public appearance, seems sincere, well meaning and far more intelligent that this petty critic.
VP didn't make any statements about Warren's intelligence. VP stated that appointing Warren would not really matter because she would be unable to loosen the grip of the financial oligarchy, and unwilling to do so due to career aspirations.
The attack is not so much on Warren as on the corrupt system that will not be made just by a little regulatory tinkering.
Obama's appointment of Warren should be routine. That he can't bring himself to appoint even a moderate reformer reveals his plutocratic allegiances.
I like Warren, but to me this is so much more about Obama's corrupt nature, and not really about Warren's qualifications at all.
Perhaps VP is in search of bigger fish!
Thanks VP.
Sadly, the accurate summary part will only work for those who wish to at least understand what is being said.
We have a few "edgy" posters who prefer the construction of straw mem as they are so much more easily dispensed with.
Also, I don't think your style appeals to those who prefer to think in slogans.
Slogans have there place, and I will often employ them, but they are no substitute for actual reasoning in the face of complexity.
Thank you for all of your thoughtful contributions.
Joe Hill wants his name back.
That the history of your fatheaded friend's efforts here seem to escape you is obvious enough. Your own history here makes you a suspect lefty as well, regardless of whose name you choose to aid you in such deception.
I rise to speak against those who continually post negative comments regarding any and all who gain support from progressives and lefties, and I will continue to do so. Your academician is nothing less than an obstacle to progress and seems to utterly enjoy dashing the hopes of any and all. He is, in reality, one who works to keep us separate and powerless, all to feed, I suspect, an overly large ego.
It seems like you just can't stand being wrong about the ironic intent of Nader's letter and your response is to incoherently lash out .in a paranoid fashion.
Unimpressive.
"Ad hominem attacks reveal mainly the weaknesses of the arguments of those who level them, or didn’t you know that?"
I can't tell you how many times I've had to make that clear of detractors on other sites. You'd be surprised as to how some of them cover up on it. The worst I've met of them would try to call them "facts". They can be just as bad as Bush/Limbaughian GOP.
Dear President Obama, you have caved on everything for two years. I have absolutely no faith in you any more. However, you could try to do right this time - it is not too late yet.
Obama really hasn't caved or capitulated on anything at all. He has served his primary constituency effectively and efficiently since before day 1. The only problem is that his constituency is the same as his predecessor's; "The Have's and the Have More's."
.
But at least Bush was more honest about who he was serving.
Well stated.
Or to be a bit more crude: Obama is a fink.
Elizabeth Warren is, at least if what I've seen from her TV appearances, exactly the kind of person who should be there -- smart, knowledgeable, effective. This is why those in "high places" who feel they have a stake in the status quo will do all they can to keep her out.
They mostly don't get it that the status quo is primed to do us all in.
I always wonder whether "open letters" are actually read by the people to whom they are addressed.
I don't think open letters are really intended to be read by the people to whom they're addressed. They're intended to be read by the people who actually read them. Please refer to my response to Steve Woodward above.
I wouldn't hold my breath on those apologies.
Some people are never wrong.
Everything Obama does is calculated.
The case of the Consumer Protection Agency and Elizabeth Warren is no exception.
The main reason they put the new Consumer protection agency under the auspices of the Fed was precisely so it would not have independence -- ie, so the Fed (and Obama's treasury department run by Fed Chairman bernanke's pal Geithner) could maintain ultimate control over the agency.
Some claim it was so that the new agency could not be readily defunded by Congress, but if you look at just who was supporting that move their rationale is simply not believable.
I agree that everything the president does is calculated. I'm just not convinced he's the one doing the calculating. Mostly it seems to me that Barack Obama is running the country about as much as Alex Trebek runs Jeopardy.
Do I detect a resemblance between Obama and that "Lost in Space" character, Dr. Zachary Smith?
Yes both are psychopaths & both are finks.
All hail President Finkster
If everything Obama does is calculated, then he is in the process of calculating himself right out of office. Other possibilities are that he is clueless, or stupid ( not likely), or just a lousy politician who had little real experience in politics before becoming president, and is incapable of learning from his mistakes once in office. Personally, I think he's a spinless opportunist who is too dumb politically to realize that he's doing himself in.Probably has an IQ of 145 or so-but then, so does Jimmy Carter.
I think that we would be better off writing open letters to more voters asking that they vote with their hearts and minds so that we will stand a better chance of electing pols who will actually respect Elizabeth Warren. Besides, as long as Geithner is still in charge and Warren has to answer him, she will be marginalized.
God love this man.
Speaking of the Almighty!
You know I wouldn’t want to be one of those conservative right-wing congress people who are affiliated with the very annoying tepid tea-baggers, because when they ALL go to meet their MAKER, and someday they all will…… they may just have to answer a few questions before they are allowed to enter them there pearly-gates.
Because if it was me standing at those pearly-gates , and I was asked the most important question…..( deep heavenly voice here) “ What have you done for my people?”
Sweet Jesus! If that was “me” standing there..... I figure I had better have a damn good answer for that one.
No good reason to wait until "judgment day!"
from political beginnings using underhand tactics…
that took opponents off a ballot before first elections…
to present day deeds which contradict previous promises…
still shows how well leadership lacks in more decent actions!...
so what sorts of addiction does this behavior now follow?...
do corporate-based shots raise big fears in large egos?...
or high doses of power surpass commonweal levels?...
to sustain pricey dealers who rely on this mode!...
...
best wishes'n'ways for today to dawn on!... :)
(edited this... adding to it)...
Visiting Professor: Good post!
since 1492: In two sentences, you've said it all!
"Money talks and the other stuff walks."
How can anyone of sane mind with even a partial awareness of current events not see through the calculated deception of Obama? From his "catfood commission" of early last year by appointing people on it who want to do away with Social Security, Medicare, etc. to appointing Immelt--the anti-union, and corporate mogul who prefers sending GE jobs abroad, to another one of Obama's commissions to undermine the American worker.
In a way, "The Bomber" is much more dangerous than George W. Bush, because he has the psuedo-liberal/progressives cheerleading for him since he has a D after his name. After signinging nearly 700 petitions for all sorts of things these past ten years, I haven't seen much results for the effort.
I just read a post with a Bobby Kennedy quote that talked of individuals' pitiful rippling actions eventually adding up to waves and for a second, was renewed. But I'm with you; I am still out there with petitions and voting but seeing it as more and more hopeless. It is taking time away from the gardening and other tasks that would make my family more and more "self- sufficient" ( though I don't believe there is such a thing in our society). Anyway, your comment about the Bomber is so, forgive me, on target. Jesus warned us of "wolves in sheep's clothing" and that werewolf did not get my vote because I looked at the record. The first thing I thought after reading your comment was, "Yup, keep the powder dry." The second thing was "Machetes don't run out of bullets." and the third was yesterday I said I was a pacifist :-(.
My head must be spinning. I'm going to go sweep some salt around the thresholds and see if that helps.
For a "democrat" to betray progressives at a time like this may be a disaster from which America may never recover. With the Fed having given away $3.3 trillion to foreign banksters, the ongoing Japanese nuclear disaster, the Gulf gusher cover-up, industrial chemicals ruining our genetic future and global climate change being denied by people with too much power, we need somebody like FDR, and we need him NOW, before our time runs out forever! Otherwise, maybe see "On the Beach" or read the book. I've watched this happen over half a century, and I just can't believe this all could happen. If I could have, I would have done something about it. It's enough to make a man cry.