Give her real power to knock heads and get to the bottom of this, and I have confidence that she would get the job done more than anyone on Wall Street would want to think about.

Honeymoon is over, Ms. Warren. If you don’t know where the money is, you are partially culpable.

Here’s the scary thing, though. What if the election system is so incredibly gamed that you can’t get to square one unless you have big money in your pocket. Think how smart candidates are declared to be “not serious candidates” and “minor candidates” just because mainstream media declares that they aren’t among “the anointed ones.” It takes big money to get credibility in our screwed up thoroughly corrupted political system. And now, the United States Supreme Court is about to make it easier than ever for big money from profit-driven corporations to drive message of non-monied candidates into the far dark corners of the media. It will make Swift-boating look like a kid’s game, if the SCOTUS. http://dangerousintersection.org/2009/09/05/us-supreme-court-to-decide-whether-corporations-have-the-same-first-amendment-rights-as-individuals/

Then what kind of choice to candidates really have? Play the game somewhat or not at all, right? And once they play “somewhat,” it’s a slippery slope, the kind of slope that has (in my opinion) kept Obama from invoking meaning reform that should make the Wall Street financial sector squeal in pain for the benefit of Main Street and the ordinary citizens who supposedly run this country.

We need someone who will run on one very basic principle — the refusal to accept corporate money. That someone will have to be willing to be a symbol of voter empowerment. If someone like Elizabeth Warren doesn’t want that responsibility, well, she shouldn’t have gone into office and gone on TV making all that sense and shit. She’s pushed for transparency in the Fed, is openly furious about the misuse of bailout money, and seems to take personally the chicanery that credit card companies and banks use to game the suckers out there. I simply cannot see her suddenly flipping and holding $2000-a-plate fundraisers with Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon.

“Despite the aspects of TARP that could reasonably be viewed as a substantial success,” he wrote, “Treasury’s actions in this regard have contributed to damage the credibility of the program and of the government itself, and the anger, cynicism and distrust created must be chalked up as one of the substantial, albeit unnecessary, costs of TARP.”

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/21/neil-barofsky-bailout-hel_n_328079.html