blog by arwen

I’ve decided to start writing about people whom I feel are so important that everyone should know who they are. I begin with a woman who has become an amazing role model for me over the last year given her ability to speak truth to power eloquently and decisively.

Elizabeth Warren is a professor at Harvard Law School and Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, the committee responsible for figuring out where the TARP (aka bailout) money went.

She has been warning about the “coming collapse of the middle class” for years. The first time I saw her speak was in this amazing video of the same name hosted and presented by UC Berkeley’s Graduate Council Lecture series in March 2007.

Below is a great interview with her about her life, what motivated her to study bankruptcy and the middle class and how she got involved in consumer issues. She has co-authored two important books on the subject with her daughter, The Two-Income Trap and All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan.

Most recently, she spoke in a great interview with Yahoo! Finance at The Economist’s Buttonwood Gathering and had this to say:

Warren pulls no punches when it comes to her criticism of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson for his failure to put any restrictions on or monitoring of the initial TARP funds, and for using the money for something other than “toxic asset relief,” as originally intended.”I have a real problem when we describe to taxpayers their money will be taken and used one way and in fact it’s used another way,” she declares.

And you can always check out how the COP is progressing by watching the quickie video updates summarizing each new report or if you are a true die-hard like me, checking out the full hearings (I listen to them while I cook).

I would call her the greatest living advocate for the middle class in the USA today. Having been born into the middle  class to parents who have struggled my whole life and destined to die in the middle class (assuming I don’t outlive it as a socio-economic strata in our society), I cannot put into words the anger and frustration I feel towards the leaders in big business and government who have chosen to capitulate and ultimately, serve institutions with giant lobbying budgets over  individual citizens. Smarter people than me have argued their complicity and collusion have systematically reduced this country to an oligarchy during my lifetime and I wonder every day where this nation will be in 5, 10 and 20 years unless we drastically change things for the better.

On behalf of our nation’s disenfranchised individuals, I want to thank you Elizabeth Warren for doing everything in your power to help us.

Can someone tell me why The New York Times published this bullshit story about “artists” living in Williamsburg who are no longer subsidized by mommy & daddy?

F*#! YOU New York Times – your article is completely out of touch.

First – It IGNORES the reality and effects of rampant gentrification on local residents and the artists role in the process. this is a gigantic issue threatening MANY neighborhoods across the city (including mine) that the author is clearly IGNORANT of in every sense. the real story is that NYC is losing its working class neighborhoods because of people like this are inflating the market and the Times totally missed it. It’s really quite obtuse and offensive.

Second – How dare you hold these wanna-be’s up as “brooklyn artists” worth writing and reading about? it is disgraceful reporting and breeds anti-artist sentiment. how about profiling artists making critically acclaimed work for 5+ years in NYC while living on $15,000 annually? their resourcefulness could teach MANY in the C-suites of major corporations a thing or two…instead we get a piece about entitled, spoiled brats who evade the natural selection process that deems which artists CAN survive and manage to thrive here (does this clueless author not know the lyrics “IF I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere”?).

Third – It is  insulting to the artists in this city who are part of New York’s heart and soul by being productive members of the  MIDDLE CLASS for the long haul – not just as long as someone else pays for it. cultural production gives a place its identity, its character and its voice because it represents the people that inhabit the place. as I’ve heard they say in statistics: garbage in, garbage out.

check out the reader recommended comments if you get the chance – they are worth it.

i feel a letter to the editor coming on.