I heard this story on the radio Tuesday morning and, tracking down the online version now, it's not less interesting when I'm fully awake. Who knew that Elizabeth Warren began her adult life as a pro-business conservative? That her views began to change when, while on the faculty at the University of Texas Law School, she commuted to work with a colleague, a standard-issue liberal who argued, over her skepticism, that rate-payers were being ripped off by public utilities? And that the decisive event in her "journey," or conversion narrative, or whatever you want to call it, arose from her interest in bankruptcy law, which caused her to undertake a detailed study of bankruptcy cases across the country, a project she began expecting to find that irresponsible petitioners were gaming the system in order to escape the legitimate claims of their creditors—but found instead, between the lines of colorless court pleadings, evidence of personal catastrophes, a wide array of them, medical calamities leading the way, the troubles of desperate people often deepened by a legal but predatory system of consumer lending?
I didn't know about this aspect of her biography, and I think that I'm a more greedy consumer of news than most. There are vast quantities of political journalism and the value of the preponderant mass of it comes into focus when, very occasionally, one stumbles on something of genuine interest. Warren's biography likely explains her passion on issues relating to consumer protection, since from the time of at least St. Paul the converts to a cause have always been its most ardent defenders.
It happened that, having heard this story on the radio Tuesday morning, I spent most of the day with my 86-year-old dad who was not supposed to be alone for a period of time after a medical procedure. I was surprised how often his phone rang, how short the conversations were, and how rude he was. After about the third one, I asked him about it, and he said: "Ach, these lowlifes, I think they get lists of names with birth dates and call the really old ones to try and rip them off."
I am watching the impeachment hearings while typing this. Have to say that the witnesses before the Schiff committee—Fiona Hill, Bill Taylor, David Holmes, George Kent, Jennifer Williams, Alexander Vindman, Marie Yovanovitch—are generally more impressive seeming people than a randomly selected member of the House Judiciary Committee. In the federal government hierarchy, it seems the higher you go, the less apt you are to discover competence, intelligence, and a working vocabulary of more than a couple hundred words. At the pinnacle, the Oval Office, where Ivanka Trump presumably advises her father on grave matters of state, you've entered the realm of Theater of the Grotesque.
I know what your mean. Congressman Johnson from California thinks Guam is going to tip over because too many people will be on one side of the island.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cesSRfXqS1Q
Posted by: Lori | December 12, 2019 at 06:05 PM