Decoding Sen. Warren

A friend just flagged Sen. Elizabeth Warren's 11 Commandments for Progressivism she talked about at Netroots Nation this week. I include them verbatim as they are in the National Journal article, with a translation below. NB: I'm not translating what she wants to happen, or that she thinks will happen, but what the history and experience shows will likely happen.

- "We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we're willing to fight for it."
Translation: We need more onerous loopholes through which we can enable shady accounting practices to continue, including--but not exclusive to--regulations that will empower the largest firms to hire a squad of lawyers to navigate rules while crowding smaller, less dangerous firms out of the financial sector, centralizing power and money in the hands of the already strongest and most powerful firms.  And, I will pretend that this and so much else of my favored legislation doesn't actually favor corporations over small firms. [Have you noticed so many independent/small practice doctors joining conglomerates since ObamaCare started? Not coincidence. Same stuff is going on with financial institutions under Dodd-Frank]

- "We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth."
Translation: While we rely on statistical evidence showing that anthropogenic global warming is real, we will fully ignore any and all statistical and political evidence that the regulations we suggest, when implemented unilaterally within the United States, will not only have no positive effect on climate change, but may in fact drive polluters out of the country to less regulated regimes thereby increasing carbon and other pollutants into the global atmosphere. These regulations will also likely have negative effects on our economy and make energy consumption harder on the poor. Our embrace of evidence only goes so far.