Live Book Talk with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (video) regarding A Fighting Chance (book)

"Washington works for those who can hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers. But for everybody else? Not so much. I saw it with the Big Banks. They cheated American families, they crashed the economy, they got bailed out, and now the Big Five Financial Institutions are 38% BIGGER than they were back in 2008. They still swagger through Washington, blocking reforms and pushing around agencies...a kid gets caught with a few ounces of pot and goes to jail, but a big bank breaks the law on laundering drug money or manipulating currency, and NO ONE EVEN GETS ARRESTED. THE GAME IS RIGGED. The game is rigged.

The game is rigged, and its not just the Big Banks, look around, our college kids are getting crushed by student loan debt, we need to rebuild our roads and bridges and upgrade our power grid, we need more investments in medical research and in scientific research. But instead of building a future, this country is bleeding billions of dollars in tax loopholes and subsidies that go to rich and powerful Corporations. Billionaires get so many tax loopholes that they pay less in taxes than their secretaries do...but Corporate lobbyists and their Republican friends refuse to close a SINGLE loophole. They protect EVERY privilege for the rich and the powerful. The game is rigged. The rich and powerful have lobbyists....lobbyists and lawyers and plenty of friends in Congress. The rest of the folks? Not so much.  

So this is why I wrote this book. We can whine about this. We can whimper about this, or we can fight back. Me? I'm fighting back!"   ~Elizabeth Warren

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She is introduced about 25 minutes in, and really gets going after her analogous toaster story at 32 minutes in.

Live Book Talk with Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Streamed live on Apr 24, 2014 (YouTube video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKvEQfPjNIg&feature=share

"Harvard Book Store and Boston Review welcome Senator Elizabeth Warren for a discussion of her memoir A Fighting Chance.

A Fighting Chance is Senator Warren's personal story of her rise from a working class family in Oklahoma to the United States Senate, where she is the senior senator from Massachusetts. The book is a rousing call for protecting the middle class—the backbone of America—and for building a stronger country. It includes her work in the Senate and her improbable campaign to get there; her fight to establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; her effort to expose the truth behind the $700 billion bank bailout; and her battles with lobbyists over bankruptcy regulations. Through stories of hope and triumph, the book shows how Americans can wake up a government that has too often been consumed by special interests.

It is also a very personal story of the opportunities and access to education that enabled her, as a young wife and mother, to become first a teacher, then a lawyer. The main focus of the book, however, is the conflict America now faces between giant institutions and the needs of everyday citizens."

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book:
A Fighting Chance
by Elizabeth Warren


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