one from a close friend who thought I send too few of such. I responded
that I'd send them if he sent me some. I say the same to all. I find
very little encouraging right now, at least on the grand scale of things.
I very much admire the work of the Progressive Democrats of America,
Single-payer, Enviro and other organizations working to save or make
a better world for all of us, but would feel like a shill if I passed on
more than occasional emails out of the many I get. I include my own
cultural work wih the Ash Grove foundation.
But reflecting on the exchange, I send you this article on the possible
ascension to an important national executive position of someone with
qualities of humanitarianism, remarkable abilities, and perserverence.
Below is just a teaser, as the speech required 4 continuations. I hope
this intrigues and edifies you enough to check out more from this
remarkable woman. As said, please all, send me more of these.
Oh, she's great to look at, too, in the attachment. And many thanks to
those who wrote about Pete.
Ed
Elizabeth Warren: My Mission Is to Restore America's Great Middle Class
At Netroots Nation, Elizabeth Warren spoke about how to make the new
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau help protect the U.S. economy.
August 1, 2010
Photo Credit: Netroots Nation
Editor's note: The following is a speech delivered by Elizabeth Warren at
Netroots Nation 2010. Check out AlterNet's petition at Change.org urging
President Obama to appoint Warren to lead the new Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau.
My grandmother, when she was a teenager, drove a wagon in the land rush that
settled Oklahoma. Her mother was dead, and her little brothers and sisters
were in the back of the wagon. Her father had ridden ahead and tried to find
a piece of land that might be somewhere near water--a hard task in Oklahoma.
She grew up in that part of the world, she met my grandfather, they got
married, they started building one-room schoolhouses and little modest homes
across the prairie. They had kids, they stretched, they scratched, they
worked hard, they made a little money, and they put it aside, put it in the
bank. It got completely wiped out in 1907 in an economic panic. But like
many American families, they came back. They started scratching and
stretching again, and having more babies--and then the Depression came. And
they got wiped out one more time.
You see, my grandmother was born into the world of boom and bust, boom and
bust, as it had been from 1794 until the Great Depression. But my
grandmother also lived in a world of economic transformation. Because coming
out of the Great Depression, just three laws fundamentally altered the
course of America's history.
The first one, FDIC insurance, made it safe to put money in banks. The
second one, Glass-Steagal, tried to separate the risk-taking on Wall Street
from your local community bank. And the third one, SEC regulations, provide
some cops to watch the robbers. And so, out of that, what we got was 50
years of economic peace. No financial panics, no meltdowns. And during that
50 years, we built a strong and prosperous middle class in America.
Now, my grandmother, when she died in 1970 at the age of 94, had been part
of that. She owned a little house, she had plenty of groceries in the
cupboard, and she had some cash in the bank. She was part of the growth of
middle-class America. As were her children and her grandchildren. But
shortly after my grandmother died, within a few years, we began unraveling
that. Part of it was on the regulatory side. We hadn't been clever about
regulations. They stayed ossified. The regulations put in place in the 1930s
had not been updated. They had not adapted to a new world. And along came a
new group of people who said, "Let's just get rid of the regulations. What
are they there for anyway? They just cost money. Dump the regulations." And
so the regulatory framework, or the "cops," who were on the beat began to
disappear. They lost their effectiveness.
Another thing happened in that period of time, and that is the foundations
of middle-class America began to erode. Start with income. Income and
productivity across America had been intertwined after World War II. So
every year, basically, productivity was going up--so were wages. But
starting in the late 1970s those two begin to diverge, so that productivity
continues to rise--indeed rise at a somewhat steeper rate--while incomes
flatten out, so that today a fully employed male makes less money than his
father made a generation ago, once we adjust for inflation.
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