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Elizabeth Warren 2020


Hugo Stiglitz

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New Plan:

Revitalizing Diplomacy: A 21st Century Foreign Service

https://medium.com/@teamwarren/revitalizing-diplomacy-a-21st-century-foreign-service-2d9d195698f

American security and prosperity depend on robust diplomacy. Our diplomats are the front line of our engagement with the world. They serve in over 270 posts worldwide, many in difficult or dangerous locations. They communicate our goals in more than 70 languages. They manage conflict, help U.S. companies compete, and assist Americans abroad. Most importantly, they reflect our values on the world stage. But a diplomacy-first strategy to meet the challenges of the 21st century means that we need world-class diplomats. And after the Trump Administration, that’s going to take a whole lot of work.

Through a toxic combination of malice and neglect, Donald Trump has declared war on the State Department. In one of his first acts, he attempted to cut the State Department’s budget by a third. Some senior career officials were pushed out, while others resigned in protest. The State Department has lost 60% of its career ambassadors and 20% of its most experienced civil servants. And too often, these skilled diplomats have been replaced with totally unqualified campaign donors and other Trump cronies.

But while Trump may have accelerated the exodus from the State Department, he didn’t start it. Years of hiring freezes and spending cuts have caused many talented diplomats to head for the doors. China’s spending on diplomacy has doubled under President Xi Jinping — while America’s spending on core diplomatic capability has declined over the last decade.

To take a meaningful leadership position in the world, to protect American interests, and to avoid conflicts around the globe, we need to reverse this trend. That’s why today, I’m rolling out my plan to rebuild the State Department.

Growing a 21st Century Foreign Service

Let’s start with the obvious: today our State Department is too small.

For our foreign service officers and specialists, opportunities for training are scarce and nearly 15% of positions abroad have been left unfilled for years. These vacancies increase workloads, damage diplomatic readiness, and contribute to burnout and low morale. And too few diplomats means missed opportunities to make important connections and develop a better understanding of foreign countries. Today, the United States lacks a presence in nearly 40% of world cities with populations over 3 million, many in the rapidly growing Indo-Pacific region.

The Pentagon is nearly 40 times bigger than the State Department — we employ more people to work in military grocery stores than we do foreign service officers. That has real consequences. Too often, our underinvestment in diplomacy and development causes our leaders to default to military action, instead of treating it as a last resort.

Our foreign policy should not be run out of the Pentagon. Under a Warren administration, it won’t be.

I’ll double the size of the foreign service and open new diplomatic posts in underserved areas to broaden U.S. presence. And to get the most bang for our buck, I’ll prioritize growing core diplomatic functions like political and economic reporting and public diplomacy, and affiliated functions like the foreign commercial and agriculture services.

Achieving that goal means we’ll need to recruit a new generation of foreign service officers while retaining the talented service we currently have. Here’s what I’ll do as president. First, I’ll establish a diplomatic equivalent of the ROTC program at universities across the country. I’ll double the size of the Peace Corps, exposing young people to the world and creating a direct employment pipeline to future government service. I’ll grow programs that fund scholarships for critically important languages; and develop or expand similar programs for new skill areas such as data science. And I’ll create new pathways to re-incorporate expertise into our diplomatic corps, including by reducing barriers for returning foreign service officers by fast-tracking reentry for those who return within 5 years; and expanding lateral entry and mid-career hiring authorities and pay.

We also need to significantly expand the pool of diplomatic talent so that our foreign service reflects the diversity of the country it represents. Today’s foreign service is 79% white and 65% male — and the nature of the recruitment process also limits the number of diplomats from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. That changes in a Warren administration. I’ll direct the State Department to correct the employment records of all employees fired or forced to resign because of their sexual orientation, to make it clear that all are welcome to serve their country. I’ll dedicate recruiting resources to applicants from HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions, women’s colleges, and community colleges. And I’ll double the size of fellowships designed to recruit minority and low-income diplomats.

For all its rewards, a life in diplomatic service can be hard — deployments to dangerous places, missed holidays and family events, years spent away from home. We must do more to take care of diplomats and provide growth opportunities over the course of a diplomatic career. My Secretary of State will establish a core professional development curriculum, focused not only on diplomatic tradecraft but also the leadership skills appropriate for each career stage. We will require a broadening professional development experience — a graduate degree, interagency assignment, or cross-cone deployment — before promotion to the senior diplomatic ranks. And I’ll enhance workplace flexibility to retain a diverse workforce, including by expanding parental leave and preferential postings for new parents and improving policies to ease hardships for dual-foreign service households.

I’ll make my decisions with input from those who know best — formalizing procedures for career civil servants and foreign service officers to advise my Secretary of State on talent acquisition, retention, and other management challenges. No more Tillerson redesign that wastes money on fancy consultants to tell us what our civil servants and diplomats already know.

Professionalizing our Ambassadors

Trump has perfected the act of selling swanky diplomatic posts to rich buffoons. In the Trump administration, $1 million buys you an appointment to the Bahamas — even if you’re not quite sure what that means. For $2 million, you can become Ambassador to the United Nations. Trump nominated a real estate lawyer accused of sexual harassment as ambassador to Romania. His South Africa nominee is a handbag designer. In all, Donald Trump has appointed political cronies to nearly half the available ambassadorial positions — far more than any president in recent memory. As a result, opportunities for career professionals are severely limited.

The practice of auctioning off American diplomacy to the highest bidder must end.

This president may think a fat wallet and a big campaign check qualifies someone to represent our country abroad. I don’t. I don’t spend my time at fancy closed-door fundraisers trading favors for money, and I’ll make my ambassadorial appointments based on only one thing: finding the most qualified person for the job.

That’s why I’m pledging to put America’s national interests ahead of campaign donations and end the corrupt practice of selling cushy diplomatic posts to wealthy donors — and I call on everyone running for President to do the same. I won’t give ambassadorial posts to wealthy donors or bundlers — period.

And I’ll also ensure that some of the most senior positions in the State Department, including at least one Deputy Secretary position and the Director General of the Foreign Service, are always filled by experienced career ambassadors.

As I travel I’ve had the opportunity to meet with our diplomats at posts around the world, from Beijing to Baghdad. Almost without exception, they are highly skilled, dedicated, resilient, capable professionals. Charting a safe and prosperous course in the coming years will require all of that and more. This is our chance to take our best and brightest young talent and put them to work for this country. We can create a bold and energetic diplomatic corps that looks more like the country it represents — and we can invest in diplomacy to make the world a little safer and a little more secure.

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^^This is one of my favorite Elizabeth Warren plans because it takes the necessary paradigm shift on how we approach foreign policy.  

Right now our foreign policy is run by the military with the credible threat of force.  Her plan puts qualified diplomats on the front lines instead of soldiers.  We’ve needed to move to this approach since the end of the Cold War.

 

 

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This couldn't be going better for Warren, IMO.  Kamala is tearing down Biden and pissing off his backers in the process.   Warren is also doing a great job drafting off Bernie without pissing off his supporters, while adding her own policies that are making her palatable to centrists. 

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4 minutes ago, Mojo Hand said:

This couldn't be going better for Warren, IMO.  Kamala is tearing down Biden and pissing off his backers in the process.   Warren is also doing a great job drafting off Bernie without pissing off his supporters, while adding her own policies that are making her palatable to centrists. 

Yup. My strongest criticism of Warren historically has been that she's not a great politician/campaigner but it's hard to think of what she could be doing better at right now with her campaign.

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In what the fuck news:

There’s a new whisper on Wall Street -- maybe Elizabeth Warren isn’t so bad.

The Democratic senator, who rose to national prominence by calling for tough regulation after the financial crisis, is winning respect from a small but growing circle of senior bankers and hedge fund managers. As the presidential candidate from Massachusetts takes aim at the “rich and powerful” with a slew of tax-raising policy proposals, some financial types who fit that description say she’s proven capable and makes some good points.

“If she ends up being the nominee, I’d have no trouble supporting her at all,” said David Schamis, chief investment officer of Atlas Merchant Capital, where he’s a founding partner alongside former Barclays Plc head Bob Diamond. While Warren isn’t Schamis’s top choice, he said: “I think she is smart, hardworking, responsible and thoughtful. And I think she thinks markets are important.”

Schamis said people in his network who studied under Warren, a former professor at Harvard Law School, think highly of her, including some conservatives.

 

For some Wall Streeters who lean liberal, Warren is an acceptable alternative to candidates who trigger their most visceral objections: Republican President Donald Trump on the right and Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, on the left.

It would be “just wrong,” Warren told CBS’s “Face the Nation” in March, to call her a democratic socialist: “I believe in markets. Markets that work. Markets that have a cop on the beat and have real rules and everybody follows them.”

At other times, she has derided parts of the financial industry as predatory.

Creating CFPB

“I clearly don’t agree with everything she says, but I do give her credit for getting things done,” Tom Nides, a Morgan Stanley vice chairman and former deputy secretary of state under Barack Obama, said of Warren. He didn’t share which candidate he’s supporting.

Warren’s work to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the wake of the crisis was “impressive,” Nides said. “You can’t argue with that. Having an idea, driving it to fruition, and having set it up is really hard to do.”

Some who like Warren might find that their backing isn’t welcome. Former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson recounted a 2016 episode in which she criticized him on Facebook for being a Wall Street insider who stood to gain from Trump’s policies. The attack surprised Tilson and his wife, who had previously made small donations to Warren and followed her career. She later apologized.

“I agree with her general assessment that we’ve allowed multiple systems to develop in this country that screw average folks in countless ways, from education, health care, criminal justice, trade, etc.,” Tilson wrote in an article last week. Despite the mishap, “I’m glad she’s running.”

The Pitchforks

More than a half-dozen other members of the industry agreed to discuss their warming views of Warren on the condition they not be named -- underscoring the potential pressure they could face from associates for embracing someone who derides their business. (LOLZ)

Indeed, Schamis and others were unwilling to commit to any candidate this early -- either with their vote or their money. (His business partner, Diamond, previously donated to campaigns for Republicans John McCain and Jeb Bush.)

Some said Warren certainly won’t be their first choice in the primary, though they could imagine supporting her in the general election. In addition to Biden and Harris, Wall Street executives have shown interest in candidates including Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Those drawn to Warren cited her intelligence and stance on social issues. They expressed sympathy for her calls to bolster regulation after the financial crisis, within reason, and for her concerns about income inequality. There are worries among the Wall Streeters that if the wealth gaps keeps growing it will trigger a more radical backlash -- what they ominously called the pitchforks. Yet that doesn’t mean they support her proposal for a wealth tax.

 

read more here:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-03/elizabeth-warren-wins-respect-in-unlikeliest-place-wall-street

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IMO, Warren is clearly the most intelligent, thoughtful candidate in the race.  I really hope she wins the nomination, but I'm not holding my breath, because  America doesn't seem to care about intellect in their leaders anymore. 

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Not really all that "what the fuck"

1) They're scared of Bernie.

Quote

For some Wall Streeters who lean liberal, Warren is an acceptable alternative to candidates who trigger their most visceral objections: Republican President Donald Trump on the right and Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, on the left.

 It would be “just wrong,” Warren told CBS’s “Face the Nation” in March, to call her a democratic socialist: “I believe in markets. Markets that work. Markets that have a cop on the beat and have real rules and everybody follows them.”

2) They think/know she'll bend the knee when the time comes.

Quote

Some who like Warren might find that their backing isn’t welcome. Former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson recounted a 2016 episode in which she criticized him on Facebook for being a Wall Street insider who stood to gain from Trump’s policies. The attack surprised Tilson and his wife, who had previously made small donations to Warren and followed her career. She later apologized.

I hope they're dead-ass wrong about #2.

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Nope. Using public funds to "incentivize" private development is nope. No no nope. Let's please not give tax money to landlords. NOPE

And holy shit 10% reduction in 10 years is quite an underwhelming goal

God damnit Liz, you were talking about building public housing! WHY THIS!??!?!?!?!

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At the time, busing was a highly unpopular policy in the US. Public polling in the mid-1970s found about three-quarters of Americans opposed it.
 
Warren's communications director Kristen Orthman told CNN that Warren stood by the article today and supported the Strength in Diversity Act, a bill which would "support voluntary local efforts to increase racial diversity and socioeconomic diversity."
"In addition, if localities are not taking action to desegregate schools, Elizabeth believes the federal government has a constitutional obligation to step in to deliver on the promise of Brown v. Board, including, if necessary, busing," Orthman said. 

"She has plainly done her homework"

Warren's decision to write about education in her first published law review article would mark the beginning of a long career in both education, as a law professor, and politics as a senator and presidential candidate. 
 
Her first article, according to Justin Driver, a professor of law at Yale School of Law, showed a remarkable understanding of the complexities in education law.
It was an "extremely accomplished piece of scholarship by a student," said Driver. "She has plainly done her homework." 
 
In the article, Warren predicted that de facto segregation -- segregation that occurs not because it was institutionalized by the government but because of social norms, prejudices and self-selection -- and de jure -- segregation that existed because of laws that mandated racial segregation -- had been silently "reaffirming" by the court and would take over American public schools.
 
The isolation of minorities in urban centers, Warren wrote, and a shrinking tax base to finance public education would lead to facilities that are inferior in "student-teacher ratios, and other educational advantages" for minority students. For Brown v. Board of Education to have meaning in northern urban centers, Warren said that "effectively separate schools, even if equal, and certainly if unequal, are condemned by the Constitution, regardless of the reason for the separation."
Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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13 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Is it wrong that I'm nervous about these promises of executive action? I thought we were trying to keep the president's powers in check? 

 

No, it doesn't matter to me even if a President is doing something I want by executive action, in the long term I don't like a President having broad executive power.  This applies to both parties and all future Presidents.  

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27 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Is it wrong that I'm nervous about these promises of executive action? I thought we were trying to keep the president's powers in check? 

 

It really depends on the nature of the executive action.   Here, she's commiting to changes in executive agency hiring practices and contracting, along with a renewed focus in civil rights enforcement.  All of that seems within the president's appropriate purview.

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6 minutes ago, Mojo Hand said:

It really depends on the nature of the executive action.   Here, she's commiting to changes in executive agency hiring practices and contracting, along with a renewed focus in civil rights enforcement.  All of that seems within the president's appropriate purview.

Thanks. I guess my question is could these Warren executive actions be easily reversed by a future POTUS? 

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Yes I agree that does seem within the President’s purview.

But I also feel like even the EOs that Obama enacted that were legitimate were still overturned by Trump just “because Obama”.

And I’m sure all of Trump’s EOs - even legit ones, if there are any - will be written away by the stroke of the next president that is a Democrat.

It’s worrying that we could see this awful seesaw of back and forth of overreaching EOs.

That’s why getting the senate is just as important as the WH.

Make some fucking laws.

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Our system is really only nominally democratic.

- 2 of our last 3 presidents got fewer overall votes from citizens than the loser of the race
- The Senate is wildly undemocratic
- Voter suppression is rampant nationwide, from the local races to the federal
- There are only two parties, both owned by the same corporate powers

Because of this, I am not the least bit worried about or intimidated by Elizabeth Warren saying she will take broad executive action. Shying away from it is yet another example of Democrats and liberals holding themselves to rules that no one else holds themselves to and, by being safe cowards, perpetuating the suffering of the vulnerable.

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