Hearing the Falconer #38 ~ 3-May-2019 ~ Elizabeth Warren's Announcement Speech

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world....
from The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats, 1919

The middle of the road is all of the usable surface.
The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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3-May-2019: Elizabeth Warren Announces She is Running for President
Senator Warren's Announcement Speech
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As a moderate Democrat myself, I get the impression that Elizabeth Warren is too far to the left for me, but let's start with her announcement speech on February 9, 2019, and get to know her.

Senator Warren starts and ends her speech by talking about the Lawrence, Massachusetts textile workers strike in 1912. The message is that we need to fight against oppression now, just as the textile workers fought and won more than 100 years ago.

Warren groups her major points into three main themes:

1. Root out corruption.
The Senator wants to:

• Require candidates to put their tax information online.
• Stop people in Congress from trading stocks.
• Slow down the “revolving door” between Wall St. and Washington.

2. Return economic power to the people.
The Senator promises to:

• Make it easier for workers to join unions and get worker representatives into corporate board rooms.
• Break up monopolies.
• Make sure bad corporate behavior gets prosecuted and punished. (She mentions that if you get caught with drugs you go to jail but if you are a banker and launder billions of dollars for a drug cartel, you get a bonus.)

3. Strengthen democracy
Elizabeth Warren also wants to:

• Overturn all voter suppression rules.
• Overturn Citizens United.
• Outlaw gerrymandering.

She also pledged not to accept any PAC money during her campaign.

Warren's overarching theme in this speech is captured by this quote: “Today millions and millions and millions of American families are also struggling to survive in a system that has been rigged; rigged by the wealthy and well connected. Hardworking people are up against a small group that holds far too much power, not just in our economy, but also in our democracy. ”

I agree with most of what Warren says in her announcement speech but a couple of times she takes it a step too far. As I moderate I cannot agree with quotes like: “We can't afford to just tinker around the edges” and we need “big, structural change.”

As a moderate I still believe in slow, small, incremental changes that will make our country better. Still, Warren has a lot of good ideas so I will keep listening.

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The "Hearing the Falconer" Library

Books for Independent Thinkers

Truman

Moderates: The Vital Center of American Politics, from the Founding to Today

The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It

Unapologetically Moderate: My Search for the Rational Center in American Politics

The Deliberate Moderate: Influencing From the Middle

Eisenhower: The White House Years

The Constitutional Convention: A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison

Lincoln

Reflections of a Radical Moderate

Washington: A Life

The Reluctant Republican: My Fight for the Moderate Majority

Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party

Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life

Theodore Roosevelt: A Life

The Three Languages of Politics: Talking Across the Political Divides

Beyond Red and Blue: How Twelve Political Philosophies Shape American Debates

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Copyright © 2019 by Joseph Wayne Gadway