In my latest column in The Hill I called for all out support for Senator Warren and the consumer agency and suggested that pro-consumer Democratic Senators should go to the Senate floor, with as much detail as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).
The choice of Ms. Ramirez has been widely praised by consumer groups, Democratic members of Congress and former colleagues.
It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency.
There are alternatives to consider along these lines -- structures that support economic justice, such as worker democracy and control, consumer cooperatives, social democratic policies, and democratic socialism.
The trade-at-any-cost advocates cannot understand that Public Citizen does not need any financial buyoff to assume its leadership role in advocating changes in the anti-consumer, anti-democratic rules of the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The Fed, responding to pressure from consumer groups and Democratic lawmakers, held three public hearings on the deal.
Consumer groups and Democratic lawmakers say those provisions are vital in restoring the credibility of federal safety efforts, while White House officials say the measures would encourage frivolous litigation.
C1 A House Response to Enron The House easily passed legislation addressing the accounting and financial-disclosure deceptions at Enron, but consumer groups and Democratic leaders attacked it as toothless.
But some consumer groups and Democratic lawmakers have expressed fears that weakening the rules will give too much power to a few large media conglomerates and limit the diversity of views on the airwaves.
BOSTON – With his trademark pickup truck, a pair of jeans and a familiar local issue – fishing — a new television ad by Senator Scott P. Brown evokes the down-home narrative that has become a routine component of his campaign against Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic consumer advocate.
("As Czechoslovakia becomes a free, democratic consumer society, you writers are going to find yourselves bedeviled by a number of new adversaries from which, strangely enough, repressive, sterile totalitarianism protected you," Roth told Ivan Klima in another conversation. "I am speaking about that trivializer of everything, commercial television").
