OPINION:
The left-wing revolutionaries who dominate the Democratic Party are beginning to devour each other. Led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a descendant of Robespierre as well as American Indians (she isn’t sure which ones), the liberals are doing all they can to destroy the professional careers of all within their ranks who disagree with the prevailing ideology.
The latest victim is Robert Litan, a liberal economist who served loyally in the Clinton administration and as vice president and director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. He was fired by Brookings last week after he incurred the anger of Miss Warren, who went after him for having testified that one of her regulatory proposals would do more harm to the economy than good, a view shared by most Republicans and perhaps half of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate.
Mr. Litan is generally regarded as one of the nation’s top authorities on the impact of government regulations. He has written extensively on the costs and benefits of government regulations, and is the co-author, with Hal Singer of the reliably left-wing Progressive Policy Institute, of a study which questioned the costs and benefits of one of Miss Warren’s pet Labor Department regulatory proposals to “protect the middle class.” That was bold and bad enough, but when he testified to his findings to a congressional committee, he had to be stripped and bound to the mast, lest such candor becomes contagious.
Miss Warren “discovered” that the study had been funded by the Capital Group, an investment management company, with a stake in the outcome of the study. This isn’t unusual. Think tanks, for example, often depend on outside funding without agreeing to parrot the views of the benefactor. Brookings receives enormous grants of cash from the government of Qatar to support its Middle East programs, and Miss Warren herself is cozy and comfortable with the largesse of a think tank funded by a hedge fund. Life is tense in a glass house on the side of a gravel road.
Congress requires witnesses who testify before its committees to disclose where their support comes from, to discern the possibility of conflict. Mr. Litan did this, and the masters of the economic science who reviewed his study concluded that it sound and unbiased. Miss Warren saw opportunity. She went after him like a terrier; he was a corporate funded liar (and she should know). Within hours the usually courageous Brookings sacked him without ceremony.
Five economic advisers quickly denounced Miss Warren’s ad hominem attacks, as if she were dealing in substantive policy disagreements. No one on the left was listening. The advisers are right, of course, but may be reflecting fear for their future, in which Miss Warren could be presiding over the guillotine. She had kept one economist from a high appointment in the U.S. Treasury Department, and earlier had prevented Larry Summers from an appointment at the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Dana Milbank, a Warren acolyte in a certain media neighborhood, led the mob yelling for blood. “It’s a sign of some clout that [Miss] Warren has [Mr.]Litan’s hide, and of [Messrs.] Weiss and Summers. But if her party answered to the people rather than its donors, she’d have many more.” Stifling debate, after all, is what the left does best.
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