Warren and Brown are not the 1%

…but otherwise I think the point is well-taken. Literally, they may both be in the 1% in terms of income or net worth, but both do pale in comparison to the CEOs like the diarist mentions. As if it needs repeating the point is that one candidate supports policies to prop up the 1% while the other supports policies that work toward leveling the playing field.

This kind of equivocation in the face of reality has to stop if you really want to get anywhere.

Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.

…

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?

Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.

Look ahead to the likely consequences of voters’ choices in the November elections. How would the candidates govern? What could they accomplish? What differences can people expect from a unified Republican or Democratic government, or one divided between the parties?

In the end, while the press can make certain political choices understandable, it is up to voters to decide. If they can punish ideological extremism at the polls and look skeptically upon candidates who profess to reject all dialogue and bargaining with opponents, then an insurgent outlier party will have some impetus to return to the center. Otherwise, our politics will get worse before it gets better.

Can we just call this a draw and recognize that neither of these people are the problem?

No we cannot. That would a elide a very strong distinction between the two of them: EW achieved her wealth by seriously and directly confronting some of the very issues at stake here. She is far more likely to be part of the solution. A 2011 Vanity Fair article had this to say about EW:

In 1978, Congress had passed a law that made it easier for companies and individuals to declare bankruptcy. Warren decided to investigate the reasons why Americans were ending up in bankruptcy court. “I set out to prove they were all a bunch of cheaters,” she said in a 2007 interview. “I was going to expose these people who were taking advantage of the rest of us.” What she found, after conducting with two colleagues one of the most rigorous bankruptcy studies ever, shook her deeply. The vast majority of those in bankruptcy courts, she discovered, were from hardworking middle-class families, people who lost jobs or had “family breakups” or illnesses that wiped out their savings. “It changed my vision,” she said.”

Without even making reference to SBs wealth, however it was attained, let us look at a selected list of publication titles by EW we find that she had, indeed, changed her vision and, what is more, had earnestly followed up on it. Some people, it seems, can change their mind after the seventh grade (I’m looking at you Grover…)

Articles

Warren, E. (1987). “Bankruptcy Policy”.
Warren, E. (1992). “The Untenable Case for Repeal of Chapter 11”. The Yale Law Journal
Warren, E. (1993). “Bankruptcy Policymaking in an Imperfect World”. Michigan Law Review
“Principled Approach to Consumer Bankruptcy”. American Bankruptcy Law Journal
“The Bankruptcy Crisis”. Indiana Law Journal Fall 1998.
Warren, Elizabeth; Westbrook, Jay Lawrence (January 2000). “Financial Characteristics of Businesses in Bankruptcy”. SSRN Electronic Journal 73:
Himmelstein, DU; Warren, E; Thorne, D; Woolhandler, S (2005). “Illness and injury as contributors to bankruptcy”. Health affairs (Project Hope) Suppl Web Exclusives:
“The Vanishing Middle Class”. In Edwards, John, ed. (2007). Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream. The New Press. I
Himmelstein, David U.; Warren, Elizabeth; Thorne, Deborah; Woolhandler, Steffie J. (2005). “Illness and Injury as Contributors to Bankruptcy”
Himmelstein, DU; Thorne, D; Warren, E; Woolhandler, S (2009). “Medical bankruptcy in the United States, 2007: Results of a national study”. The American journal of medicine

Books

As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America. Oxford University Press. 1989. ISBN 978-0-19-505578-8. (with Teresa A. Sullivan and Jay Westbrook)
The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt. Yale University Press. 2001.
The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke. Basic Books. 2004. (with Amelia Warren Tyagi)
All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan. Simon and Schuster. 2006. (with Amelia Warren Tyagi)
The Law of Debtors and Creditors: Text, Cases, and Problems (6th ed.). Aspen Publishers. 2008. (with Jay Westbrook)
Chapter 11: Reorganizing American Businesses (Essentials). Aspen Publishers. 2008.
Chapter 11: Secured Credit: A Systems Approach. Wolters Kluwer Law & Business. 2008. (with Lynn M. LoPucki)

I say the lawyer who gets rich by confronting laws and helping people is a better person than the poseur who appears on Cosmo centerfolds and swears fealty to Grover Norquist.