And The Knives Come Out for Elizabeth Warren

You go, girl!

It appears that the powers that be in finance are trying to gin up a story about how there were irregularities on Elizabeth Warren's TARP oversight panel because the details on compensation are not as granular as they would have liked.

It's the usual suspects:

• Politico, who has never seen a Republican talking point that they won't echo.
• The Boston Herald, which even if Rupert was forced to sell it, is still in his pocket.

In addition to being hostile to the idea that banks should be able to rip people off without consequences, she has also eloquently made the point that, "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own," because the accumulation of wealth is an artifact of the support that the rest of society provides you: (see the vid as well)

In the video (at left), which was filmed at an event in Andover, Mass., Warren rebuts the GOP-touted notion that raising taxes on the wealthy amounts to "class warfare," contending that "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody."

Warren rejects the concept that it is possible for Americans to become wealthy in isolation.

"You built a factory out there? Good for you," she says. "But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did."

She continues: "Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

It's kind of an anti-Randroid philosophy that Democrats should be shouting from the heavens, but the only other political figure of any national stature who does is Bernie Sanders, and he ain't a Dem.

I understand why the knives are out.  The Objectivist view of the divine right of wealth is an unspoken common wisdom among much of the political class, and real populism, as opposed to the teabagger rent-a-crowds,  is a threat to that.