Senator Elizabeth Warren Channels Her Inner Trump

Threatening government action to stop "snotty tweets" is not a good look.

There are reasonable arguments to be had over whether Amazon or other internet companies are too big, have too much power, are insufficiently responsive to consumers, or engage in anti-competitive behavior. Such concerns may justify governmental action.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, sees other reasons why the federal government should cut Amazon down to size: So they don't "heckle Senators with snotty tweets."

I didn't write the loopholes you exploit, @amazon – your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did. But you bet I'll fight to make you pay your fair share. And fight your union-busting. And fight to break up Big Tech so you're not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets. https://t.co/3vCAI93MST

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 26, 2021

The attitude this tweet displays is quite disconcerting. Indeed, it's positively Trumpian. Thank you, but we've had more than enough of that already. If you're capable of being a Senator, you're more than capable of handling some mean tweets, even from Amazon.

Comments

[Don Nico]

Trumpian? No.
Its is more like Hitler and Mussolini.
Given half a chance Warren would be a petty despot.

[bernard11]

Oh, come on. Hitler and Mussolini?

I know she's a favorite villain of the right, but that's just silly.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Is it?

[NOVA Lawyer]

Is it Warren or Trump who promotes violence (e.g., pay your legal bills, take him out on a stretcher, etc., etc.) and has supporters uncomfortably similar to brownshirts (Proud Boys, storming of the Capital, etc.)?

She definitely is a statist, but not a violent, despotic statist. Trump, on the other hand, is also a statist, but one enamored of violence and a wannabe despot.

You can't really take shots at Warren, here, without acknowledging that Trump said and did worse in the very same category (he didn't just threaten to rewrite legislation to close loopholes for all similarly situated corporations, as Warren did, he literally threatened Amazon with executive and legal actions explicitly as payback for saying/doing things he didn't like). Did you call out Trump as Hitler or Mussolini?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"She definitely is a statist, but not a violent, despotic statist."

How do statists back their, uh, statism? A monopoly on force is fundamental to the concept of a state.

[Nige]

Not keen on giving Amazon the right to use force to back their various interests.

[Armchair Lawyer]

""We can't just afford to beat him by a little bit. We need to beat him—as Trump would say—bigly, because there can't be any dispute,"

-Warren

“He thinks somehow, if he calls me names, that I’m gonna shut up,” Warren said. “And I think he’s got plenty of evidence now that that’s just not gonna happen because that’s the way you gotta deal with bullies, you just stand up and punch back.”

[bernard11]

I fail to see the problem with these comments.

[Queen Amalthea]

What's more is that anyone who supported Trump who now points to these comments as problematic is living on a mountain of chutzpah.

[Armchair Lawyer]

"Punch..." "Beat"....

If you're going to object to words which promote violence, well...

[Seamus]

We've been told over and over again that calling on people to "fight like hell" was an explicit call for insurrection. If that's the case, then words like "punch" and "beat" must at least be explicit calls for assault and battery.

[Bored Lawyer]

She is not as evil, but she has made clear she is not above using the power of government to squelch criticism of her. That classic anti-democratic behavior.

[Don Nico]

I grant a bit of exaggeration.
BUT Warren's passion for authoritarianism as well as state control (NOT ownership) of major companies was the hallmark of the economic model of those two fascist dictators.
Warren tends more and more toward authoritarianism every year.

[Queen Amalthea]

It's a good thing economic models were not very important to those (and other) fascist dictators.

[Don Nico]

Why would you say that?
They knew just want they wanted. Powerful companies who marched in lockstep to their orders. Moreover, the term national socialist = nationalist + socialist was not an accident. And just like the Marxist-Leninists the expected the workers to fall into line. The fascists were more tolerant of bourgeois opportunists than were the Marxist-Leninists.

[Queen Amalthea]

Because the fascists weren't focused on economics (they often made up what they believed in this area depending on who they were speaking to). The things that Mussolini, Hitler, Franco had in common and were focused on were things like militarism, chauvinism, a love of 'action' over mere 'talking,' nationalism.

[Don Nico]

You ignore a large fraction of the economic origins of fascism focusing only on the "nationalist" aspects. That does not mean that the socialist aspect does not exist.

[Queen Amalthea]

Don, everyone was a 'socialist' then during the Depression people thought capitalism had 'failed.' Socialism was part of the 'new way,' every political party was promoting some version of it. But if you read Hitler or Mussolini's writings you'll not see the same focus on economics as you will on matters such as the need for action over talking, nationalism and military greatness. Indeed, one thing fascist thinkers and leaders often spoke of that they loathed in Marxism was it's ideas about economic determinism (what kind *man* could believe that bullshit?) and materialism and such.

[Don Nico]

They did not believe in materialism per se but (especially in Germany) in a sort of mysticism in an ersatz religion that embodied Nazism. The line "everyone was a socialist" does really explain anything. Moreover the impulses in Italy were different than in Germany because they were on different sides of the first World war.
In Germany, not only was there great resentment over the humiliating terms (in their view) of the WWI peace treaty. But the country was in the midst of hyperinflation and great economic turmoil. Nationalism may have been an stirring call to arms but to deny the great economic underpinnings of the discontent of the German populace is missing a crucial peace of history. Could Hitler have risen to power in a prosperous post-WW I Germany. One can only speculate, but his path would certainly been more difficult.
In Italy, Mussolini's fascism started as a social movement to restore the imagined well being of the Roman state, one in which the "socialist" policy of the Roman grain dole would be paramount in the minds of especially the agrarian proletariat of the Mezzogiorno. Obviously the call to recreate a "Third Rome" had powerful militaristic and nationalistic undertones. But overall the Fascist State offered the illusion of a path up for all as it was in the Roman Republic when by serving in the Army a citizen could be given a plot of land and wherewithal to retire in a self-supporting manner.

[Nige]

Germany was always a deeply Christian country. Famously so.

[bernard11]

More than a bit, Don.

Warren surely favors economic regulation, but nothing resembling the state control of Mussolini or Hitler. Would you say she favors more regulation than is found in some other industrial democracies?

Besides, there are two other points to consider.

1. Whatever its economic policies, fascism is not, as QA says, primarily an economic program. Unlike Communism, it does not have economic principles at its core.

2. Nazi Germany at least is a poor example. Germany was on a war footing from the moment Hitler took power. Countries in that condition tend to have very strong government control of industry regardless of their political system.

[Don Nico]

bernard,
I think that you are ignoring the roots of fascism in Italy. It did have a very strong socialist component with the powerful admixture of authoritarianism.

If you look at the practical side of Leninism, its primary difference was state ownership of the means of production rather than state control through compliant oligarchs. For the workers the condition was pretty much the same. And both had difficulties with the lumpenproletariat.

[Don Nico]

Bernard,
See my answer above to QA.
By conflating Italian fascism, German Nazi, Franco's Phalangism, Lebanese Phalangism, Argentine Peronism, all movement which very different historical and economic contexts, it is not surprising that all one sees is nationalistic militarism. But in every case, preserving the privileges of oligarchs was essential at a critical moment even if the autonomy of holdings of oligarchs was suborned to the interests of an autocratic state.

Warren favors more than economic regulation, even to the extent of seizing wealth without compensation (her wealth tax). Especially for the largest holders (the Bezos', the Gates, the Buffets) that would mean that in a few years large fractions of the means of production would be in US government hands. The government could not dispose of such holdings without undermining their value. Thus you would have a bedrock foundation for Warren's Corporate State.

[DaivdBehar]

The tech billionaires want the Chinese market, as big as ours. They kowtow to the Chinese Communist Party and promote its interests. They own the media and the Democrat Party. That makes the lawyer and the Democrat Party the agents of the Chinese Communist Party. They should be dealt with as such.

The platforms of these billionaires carry billions of federal crimes a year. They themselves defraud by inflating viewerships to advertisers. Half their viewers are bots or not real. There is every legal justification to seize them in civil forfeiture. Then auction them off like the Ferrari of a drug dealer. That will never happen because they have the protection of the skunk lawyer profession.

Instead, endless litigation for antitrust will happen, with employment for thousands of worthless lawyers for years. Anti-trust is total subjective, arbitrary lawyer bullshit. It is not even constitutional. The cover up for this rent seeking crime of fraud is justification to arrest every body suborning it.

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

The line about the snotty tweets is pretty obviously a joke.

[TangoDelta]

I don't know, she basically admitted she let lobbyists write the bill. Presumably she got something out of it and Amazon isn't being properly deferential to her for allowing the lobbyists loopholes.

[Nige]

It's a dumb tweet but anyone who thinks she meant it literally probably also thinks that either the election was stolen OR that maybe Trump went a little overboard but actually he did have a point. If Trump tweted a version of that there's a good portion of his base who would not only think he meant it literally (as opposed to the actuality which would be: how the fuck could you tell?) but cheer him on.

Post Trump, posturing over stuff like this proving the Democrats are planning their fascist takewover is weak sauce indeed.

[Cal Cetín]

Trump issued snotty tweets, he didn't threaten to break up companies because of their own snotty tweets.

[David Nieporent]

He threatened to break up (or shut down) companies because they criticized him.

[Cal Cetín]

What's a good example of this?

[NOVA Lawyer]

Um, Amazon?

Donald Trump threatens Amazon as payback for Washington - Vox (May 2016)

For example.

Or just peruse this list by googling the title of a 2020 Slate article: A Brief List of the Times Donald Trump Tried to Punish Jeff Bezos

These were direct threats to Amazon specifically for things Jeff Bezos said. While I do not like Warren's tweet and denounce it, the purpose of the legislation she proposed was to shut down loopholes, not to squelch speech. But she flopped the landing by then suggesting that had something to do with it. And that is deplorable and, with a stretch, Trumpian. But only in that Trumpian explicitly stands for the use of government resources to punish critics of powerful government officials. What a legacy.

[Queen Amalthea]

Also threatening tv licenses of CNN, NBC
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-media/trump-hits-cnn-and-nbc-urges-look-at-their-license-tweet-idUSKCN1LK1Z1

[Queen Amalthea]

"Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices," Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. "We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.

[Cal Cetín]

So he wants to punish companies for *censoring* people, not for criticizing him.

[David Nieporent]

Except that he considered slapping cautionary labels on his posts to be censorship.

[DWB]

Because it WAS censorship ... as are those "Explicit Lyrics" labels

[Queen Amalthea]

That's as silly as saying that this post censors Warren (I mean, they quote her but they also say warning things about her). What makes it even worse is we're talking about Twitter using their site to carry Trump's comments to millions but also putting their own speech about his on their own freaking site. That's censorship? Put on some big boy pants for Pete's sake.

[Nige]

No, he wants companies to unctitically and unquestioningly publish his lies and threats and undermining of public health and general foolishness, like they did for four years until he tried to overthrow an election and the companies, rather cynically and not without Trumpian calculation, decided he was on his way out.

[Cal Cetín]

Here's the Slate story (I think I'll skip whatever Vox had)

https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/donald-trumps-attempts-to-punish-amazon.html

[Cal Cetín]

So I'm technically correct - "he didn’t threaten to break up companies because of their own snotty tweets"

[Queen Amalthea]

Pedant's Progress.

[Michael P]

When did Trump behave in such a venally authoritarian way? Did he ever suggest that business should be stripped of their ability to use Twitter as punishment for garden-variety political discourse? I thought that was much more a lefty thing to do.

Maybe slagging Trump is just an instinct now, another bad habit to grow out of.

[David Nieporent]

Gee, when did Trump threaten Amazon because of its speech? I can't think of any threats Trump ever made because he thought Amazon owned The Washington Post.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Either can I....perhaps you should refresh our memory?

[NOVA Lawyer]

Google this: A Brief List of the Times Donald Trump Tried to Punish Jeff Bezos

Just a few examples. Apparently, you have the memory of your average gnat. His spats with Amazon were well-covered and extended from suggestions of antitrust actions to raising package delivery rates and, less directly aimed at Amazon (which, as noted, is synonymous in his mind...being generous...with the Washington Post), "tightening" libel laws.

[Queen Amalthea]

It's literally amazing to see Trump supporters making these kinds of comments. Is it some kind of 'we've always been at war with Oceania' cultist amnesia or disngeniousness?

Other people will come and give the easily found and recalled evidence of the many times Trump threatened media entities because he didn't like what they said about him, the real thing that has to be pressed with everyone of the cultists here making these statements is, after you've been shown to have been easily proven wrong by many examples, wtf is your excuse for being so wrong?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Google this: A Brief List of the Times Donald Trump Tried to Punish Jeff Bezos..."

So he didn't threaten Amazon, he did stuff that people speculate was in retaliation for Bezos's criticism.

Still not great, but neither of the individuals involved here are great.

[Queen Amalthea]

Did you miss this?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-media/trump-hits-cnn-and-nbc-urges-look-at-their-license-tweet-idUSKCN1LK1Z1

[TwelveInchPianist]

I did. That's a better example.

[Armchair Lawyer]

"Google this"

We'll use DuckDuckGo. Because, well....Google isn't exactly neutral here.

Link one. Futurist Transhuman News Blog. A bunch of code nonsense.

Link two. WN.com. Nothing there.

Link 3. Slate.com

Trump tries to raise the rates USPS charges Amazon. "Trump has repeatedly blamed Amazon for damaging the USPS by paying below-market rates for last-mile package delivery."

That doesn't really seem "speech" oriented, but business oriented.

Link 4: Reddit....well, that's valid.

Soo.... I'm not seeing much here.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Shockingly, if I do a news search on Warren and Amazon, I don't see any headlines similar to:

"A Brief List of the Times Donald Trump Tried to Punish Jeff Bezos"
or
"Donald Trump threatens Amazon as payback for Washington", etc.

What is see is headlines like, "Elizabeth Warren And Amazon Have Testy Exchange On Twitter"

[Nige]

So, accurate.

[Michael P]

Only to the extent that we agree that the Trump-related headlines were inaccurate.

[bernard11]

JEDI

[Nige]

'When did Trump behave in such a venally authoritarian way? '

Remember when he tried to overturn an election he lost?

[Michael P]

You just be thinking of Nancy Pelosi and her false claims that she could unilaterally overturn the results of an election.

[Nige]

No. I'm not thinking of anything like that at all. I'm thinking of when Donald Trump tried to overturn the election he lost.

[John F. Carr]

Warren is a puzzle to me. I'm pretty sure she is smart, but she does so many stupid things.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think the simplest explanation is that she was smart at one time, and is just coasting now.

[NOVA Lawyer]

Or, not unlike some people in this forum, is smart but has become so ideological that her intelligence doesn't shine because she doesn't ever consider that facts may contradict her ideological commitments (or she has stopped caring). But, I suppose you could call that coasting of a sort. It's certainly lazy.

[Brett Bellmore]

The worst Trump did was suggest that he should be on an equal footing with any random guy in terms of ability to sue for libel. And he said mean things about people who were saying mean things about him, the meanie!

She's not threatening to sue for libel, she's threatening to break them up for being "snotty". Much worse.

[Don Nico]

Each year she gets more mean-spirited and authoritarian than the last.
We're damned lucky that Biden did not choose her to be his Veep

[Brett Bellmore]

He was aiming for somebody who would outlive him, not somebody more likely to stroke out halfway through his first term than he was.

[Armchair Lawyer]

I'm not sure Harris is any better to be honest. She may be worse....

[Don Nico]

Harris is far more opportunist, pragmatic than Warren. You can see that from her terms as SF DA and CA Ag.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Like I said. She may be worse.

[Don Nico]

If you think that someone who blows like the wind is worse for your politics, then yes. But inherently Warren is more dangerous as a committed ideologue.

In either case, you're going to have to live with Harris.

[Armchair Lawyer]

"Worse for my politics"....no

"Worse for the country"....yes.

Personally speaking, I would prefer a politician who has a solid moral core, rather one who is simply "pragmatic" in search of as much personal power as possible.

Do I like Bernie Sanders politics? Not particularly. But I can respect it when he says is is "uncomfortable" with Trump's twitter ban.

https://nypost.com/2021/03/23/bernie-sanders-not-comfortable-with-trump-twitter-ban/

Would Harris ever say such a thing? Unlikely.

[Brett Bellmore]

Bernie, like any socialist actually in a position of power, is a con man. Socialism is the con, and people who think he has a solid moral core are the marks.

[Nige]

'is a con man'

You guys voted for the Trump University guy.

[Nige]

'I would prefer a politician who has a solid moral core,'

You guys all voted for Trump.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Each year she gets more mean-spirited and authoritarian than the last."

Disappointed ambition. She wants to rule and people just don't let her.

[bernard11]

she’s threatening to break them up for being “snotty”.

No she's not. Can you read? She's talking about their power.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, their "power" to heckle Senators with snotty tweets.

[bernard11]

That's just stupid, Brett.

You can break Amazon into a thousand companies and those companies wouldn't lose the power to heckle Senators with snotty tweets.

The power is the power to influence the Senators, some of which Amazon would lose if broken up.

Your hatred robs you of common sense, not for the first time.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Her words are right there at the top of the page. She literally wrote that she wants "to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets."

I agree that she's probably not going to be successful in that project, but that's not really much of a defense.

[Brett Bellmore]

To be fair to her, she's not imagining breaking Amazon up into parts that would still be relatively free. She's imagining breaking Amazon up into heavily regulated parts with reliable party apparatchiks installed in key positions.

[Nige]

No, you're the one imagining that.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"That’s just stupid, Brett."

Yes, but it's Warren who's being stupid.

"The power is the power to influence the Senators, some of which Amazon would lose if broken up."

Maybe that's what you wish she'd said, but that's not what she said.

You think we should take her seriously but not literally, is that it?

[David Nieporent]

That’s just stupid, Brett.

You can break Amazon into a thousand companies and those companies wouldn’t lose the power to heckle Senators with snotty tweets.

You're right that it's stupid, but it's what she said.

[bernard11]

How exactly would breaking Amazon up eliminate its power to tweet?

The point being made, awkwardly maybe, is that it is the influence that will be lost. Senators don't care about my tweets. They do care about Amazon's in the sense that they reflect actual power.

Anyway, if you want to read it completely literally, and imagine that she thought breaking up Amazon would cause it to be unable to issue heckling tweets, go ahead.

Adler is turning a (very small) molehill into a mountain here. The post is just a cheap partisan shot.

[damikesc]

"How exactly would breaking Amazon up eliminate its power to tweet?"

Why not ask Warren? She made the tweet.

Also, she's been in the Senate for a while and is just NOW commenting on lobbyists? Where were her broadsides about this issue during her terms?

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Stop deflecting to avoid acknowledging that you told Brett what he said was "stupid" because you were too stupid to bother reading what Warren herself said before reflexively rushing to her defense.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Anyway, if you want to read it completely literally, and imagine that she thought breaking up Amazon would cause it to be unable to issue heckling tweets, go ahead."

Uh-huh. Seriously but not literally. The sides aren't so different.

[Will Nonya]

So she's heckling them with snotty tweets ...

[Bob from Ohio]

"Can you read?"

Can you?

"break up Big Tech" Big Tech is not a college you know.

[ThePublius]

bernard, can you read?

"And fight to break up Big Tech so you're not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets."

[Noscitur a sociis]

You cannot possibly be serious.

[Queen Amalthea]

"The worst Trump did was suggest that he should be on an equal footing with any random guy in terms of ability to sue for libel"

Which could also be put 'rewriting one of the most important first amendment doctrines we have because someone said something mean about him'.

It's amazing to see ostensible libertarians and anti-government types looking the other way when a politician wants to get rid of the public figure doctrine insulating themselves from the kind of attacks they regularly make on the pols they don't like. Jesus.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"...the public figure doctrine insulating themselves from the kind of attacks they regularly make on the pols they don’t like."

If what you say is true, wouldn't they be exposing themselves to liability as well?

[Queen Amalthea]

Uh, yeah, that's kind of my point (which I said 'amazing' as in 'astonishing, bewildering, etc.').

[NOVA Lawyer]

Brett,

"According to a lawsuit filed this month, Trump influenced, and probably ordered, his Defense Department to deny Amazon a $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud-computing contract to punish the company’s owner, Jeff Bezos, for publishing the Washington Post." - NY Mag

And, of course, there is much more. For example: Trump Lobs Another Threat at Amazon, Driving Down Ecommerce Giant’s Stock Again (discussing his tweets suggesting USPS raise rates on Amazon, also noting hints of antitrust actions, etc.).

I am happy to hate on Warren with you, but be honest about Trump. Trump was worse (including because all Warren can do is threaten to be one of a hundred Senators to vote on legislation...oooh!, while Trump was the President and could interfere with contract bidding (JEDI), urge antitrust lawsuits, etc.). One is worse, but get straight which.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Seems like that was smart of Trump. Seems that Amazon likes to suddenly "deny" and "shut off" cloud computing services to organizations that it has a philosophical difference with. See "Parler".

I think a better, less political organization would be better.

[NOVA Lawyer]

So you find it perfectly fine with the President of the United States using his power to punish a private company that disagrees with him politically? But you are upset that a private company uses its power to dissociate from people it disagrees with politically?

Do you think you maybe are looking at things in a funhouse mirror?

Government actors using government power to punish political rivals is.....oh, I forgot, you are a Trump supporter who finds nothing wrong with that. But whoa to a private citizen who crosses Trump. I wish you'd move to Russia, China, or Iran, somewhere that fits better with your autocratic tendencies.

[damikesc]

I frequently cite a lawsuit as proof positive.

[NOVA Lawyer]

The lawsuit contains allegations. Also, I linked to stories about Trump statements and other actions targeting Amazon. So, yeah, it isn't just a lawsuit. Meanwhile, you have one, ambiguous statement from Warren (a statement I think is atrocious, but hardly comparable to Trump's statements and actions while President instead of as one of 100 legislators).

[Brett Bellmore]

Let's see if they can prove that he actually did it to punish Bezos. Rather than because it's stupid to use cloud-computing supplied by a company that has proven to be unreliable about providing those services?

[Nige]

'The worst Trump did was'

He tried to overturn an election he lost.

[OldCurmudgeon]

>I didn’t write the loopholes you exploit, @amazon – your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did.

Strange claim from a sitting Senator. Amazon writes laws, not Congress? She needed to pass those laws to find out what's in it??

[Michael P]

Congress effectively only starts writing the laws. Regulatory and enforcement agencies in the executive branch interpret the laws and decide when to prosecute. Someone in Congress could maybe argue that the lawyers and lobbyists mentioned here were influencing those executive branch agencies rather than Congress itself. Then, of course, one could reasonably ask why Congress doesn't fix the laws to prevent either that kind of binding interpretation or the specific mistake in question.

[bernard11]

Corporate lawyers and lobbyists have no influence on tax laws. Is that right?

[OldCurmudgeon]

"Influcence"? Sure. But the buck has to stop somewhere.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Corporate lawyers and lobbyists have no influence on tax laws. Is that right?"

They have as much influence as the legislators allow them to have. And rightly so, no?

[bernard11]

They have as much influence as the legislators allow them to have.

True. And it's way too much.

[damikesc]

Then it seems she has more influence than anybody but 99 people (she's only EQUAL to those 99) in the USA to deal with it.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"True. And it’s way too much."

Then take it up with the legislators. Like Senator Warren.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Corporate lawyers and lobbyists have no influence on tax laws. Is that right?

That's a Sarcastr0-level dishonest straw man right there.

[Life of Brian]

Poor thing -- I'm surprised she didn't copy @TwitterSafety.

But seriously, if she was hoping to capitalize on the recent wave of "hey, $1 trillion company -- shut up my opponent for me or I'll shut YOU up," picking another $1 trillion company as the target may not have been the swiftest move.

[Noscitur a sociis]

It is perhaps worth noting that Amazon's comments were not so much "snotty" as "unambiguously correct". The U.S. tax code is deliberately organized so as to encourage corporations to reinvest their revenue in exactly the way that Amazon does—it's not a "loophole", and demagogues like Warren would surely criticize companies for "hoarding their profits" or something similar if they acted differently.

[Union of Concerned Socks]

What a mendacious cunt.

[Queen Amalthea]

What an impotent pussy.

[ThePublius]

The original tweet of hers was:

"Giant corporations like Amazon report huge profits to their shareholders – but they exploit loopholes and tax havens to pay close to nothing in taxes. That’s just not right – and it’s why I’ll be introducing a bill to make the most profitable companies pay a fair share."

Amazon proceeded to school her on the taxes they pay and that they generate via sales tax, and my guess is that she became embarrassed at how wrong she was.

Their reply was:

1/3 You make the tax laws
@SenWarren
; we just follow them. If you don’t like the laws you’ve created, by all means, change them. Here are the facts: Amazon has paid billions of dollars in corporate taxes over the past few years alone.

2/3 In 2020, we had another $1.7B in federal tax expense and that’s on top of the $18 billion we generated in sales taxes for states and localities in the U.S. Congress designed tax laws to encourage investment in the economy.

3/3 So what have we done about that? $350B in investments since 2010 & 400K new US jobs last year alone. And while you’re working on changing the tax code, can we please raise the federal minimum wage to $15?

Brutal! That's when she said:

I didn’t write the loopholes you exploit,
@amazon
– your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did. But you bet I’ll fight to make you pay your fair share. And fight your union-busting. And fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets.

What a petty ass she is.

[Stephen Lathrop]

I'm trying to figure out if commenters hating on Warren are disingenuous. It strikes me that the notion she was complaining out of personal pique excludes insight into her policy preferences. Is that likely happening? Who doesn't know that Warren advocates getting corporate power out of the political process? Who doesn't understand the Amazon tweet as a political tactic?

I get that acknowledging Warren's remark was about policy—and not about personal offense—would just make it that much worse in the eyes of the pro-corporatist part of the VC. But at least you wouldn't be interpreting Warren wrong. She gets a lot of criticism consequent to what really is a rare political virtue—she is damned forthright about her politics.

[Don Nico]

Stephen,
Indeed she is forthright. She is proud of her statist views. And she is far smarter than AOC and less cranky than Bernie, other things that makes her dangerous as she fans the flames from the extreme left.

[Nige]

'from the extreme left.'

You have GOT to be joking.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Could be he is serious. A lot of folks, especially on the political right, have no notion what the extreme left looks like. And too many have been paying attention to a lot of crap media which has worked hard to confuse them about it.

Of course, anyone who looks into Warren's biography, scholarship, and advocacy, is at least equipped to understand she is an apple-pie, straight down the middle, ordinary American—except for one thing. Somewhere in that personal history, something convinced Warren that corporate America was not giving ordinary America a fair shake.

Not sure I would have pegged Don Nico as a doctrinaire pro-corporate advocate, willing to distort someone's actual record to defend corporatism. He seems to be proud to think of himself as objective, and scientific. Maybe that just means he has been misinformed by corporatists, and ought to look into Warren's particulars to get better insight.

[Squirrelloid]

Anyone who backs a wealth tax isn't middle of the road. I wouldn't go as far as extreme left, but she's pretty far left. There's not that many senators farther left than Warren.

The entire democrat party has moved noticeably left (and the republicans noticeably right) in my lifetime. Middle of the road politicians look like Bill Clinton, HW Bush, Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Joe Manchin, Lisa Murkowski, Angus King.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/report-cards/2018/senate/ideology

It's a little old (for the 2018 congressional term), but still a useful indication of just how extremely skewed the chamber is. IMO, anyone scoring 0.8 or above is far right. Anyone scoring 0.2 or below is far left. And to truly be moderate you probably need to fall between 0.35-0.65.

But Warren makes Mitch McConnell look like a moderate. Pretending she's a 'moderate' is laughable.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Squirrelloid, your remarks seem predicated on keeping history out of the analysis. You are mistaken about the movements of the Democrats. They have been moving rightward along with the Republicans.

Every supposed centrist you listed, including Clinton, would have been notably to the right of Eisenhower. When Eisenhower was President, the non-Southern part of the Democratic party was pretty much to the left of Eisenhower. And the Birchers of the day were assailing Eisenhower as a communist.

What Warren's left-flank position in today's Democratic party actually shows is that old-fashioned Democratic Party labor leftists can no longer get elected. Do you suppose Lyndon Johnson could get elected to the Senate from Texas today?

No doubt if you want to assail the Ds from the right, it's fun to say they are racing leftward. That is the opposite of what has been happening. The Democrats long ago threw overboard their leftist constituency, and now compete with Republicans to win money and political favor on the right, by selling influence to wealthy donors. Do you think either Schumer or Pelosi has anything else in their political toolkit except that?

[ThePublius]

The Trump angle is just an artifact of Adler's TDS.

[Queen Amalthea]

Trump was notoriously thin skinned with a long, easily documented record of threatening media outlets whose coverage of him he did not like. It's your TDS that's working here.

[Don Nico]

No kidding. Trump could never stand any criticism, and he whined like a baby about it.

[Liberty Lover]

Senator Elizabeth Warren Channels Her Inner Biden!
They are both nuts.

Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump,Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.
Trump is gone, give it a rest. The un-Reason TDS is getting old.

[Queen Amalthea]

'Are you still talking about that time my cousin shit on the living room floor last year? Well it's *your* sister who used all the toilet paper last night and didn't say anything!'

[Ben_]

Lots of very shallow people don’t care about policy and like to complain about tweets and how tweets make them feel. Try not being so shallow.

[Martinned]

Hang on, so Senators aren't allowed to criticise people who criticise them anymore? When did you guys decide that?

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Hang on, so Senators aren’t allowed to criticise people who criticise them anymore?

I see you're a proud graduate of the bernard11 school of commenting based on ignorance of what you're commenting on.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Hang on, so Senators aren’t allowed to criticise people who criticise them anymore? When did you guys decide that?"

Sure but they're not supposed to pass laws to prevent criticism.

[Nige]

Not sure breaking up big tech will stop anyone from criticising her.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

So her defense is that she and other Senators of her ilk are just impotent figureheads? That sounds like a pretty compelling reason to vote them out at the next available opportunity.