美国国家公共电台 NPR Elizabeth Warren's Journey From 'Pro-Business' Academic To Consumer Advocate

Elizabeth Warren's Journey From 'Pro-Business' Academic To Consumer Advocate

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Long before she was a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was a Republican. When did that change? Well, she taught law at the University of Texas, and it was there that Warren's political identity emerged. The ideas she stresses now about a shrinking middle class and a government that benefits the wealthy came from her academic research. NPR's Asma Khalid has the story.

ASMA KHALID, BYLINE²: In the fall of 1981, Calvin Johnson used to walk a block and a half from his house to hitch³ a ride to work with Elizabeth Warren. They were both teaching at the University of Texas Law School in Austin and would debate public policy during their commutes⁴.

CALVIN JOHNSON: We would go in and we would argue all the way in, and then we would take a temporary respite⁵ to teach our courses and do research, and then we'd argue all the way back.

KHALID: Johnson, who has long considered himself a liberal Democrat¹, remembers thinking Warren's opinions were strange.

JOHNSON: She was quite consistently pro-business, and I'm sure she would not like to be called anti-consumer.

KHALID: But he did think she was anti-consumer. He remembers one particularly fierce debate about public utility accounting⁶. It's wonky. Johnson says at the time, utility companies were raking in huge profits and abusing the rate payers.

JOHNSON: She came out very strongly in favor of business industry, the utilities.

KHALID: Warren was not overtly⁷ partisan⁸ at the time, but she was guided by a law and economics movement that was sweeping⁹ through universities. Critics say this movement was trying to proselytize¹⁰ professors into believing a conservative, pro-market worldview. And Warren was a believer, according to some of her colleagues. Around this time, she also became increasingly interested in bankruptcy¹¹, and when she talks about her attitude from the time, she sounds kind of Reaganesque. Here she is reading from her memoir¹², "A Fighting Chance."

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ELIZABETH WARREN: (Reading) I might not have said so at the time, but I think I was on the lookout¹³ for cheaters and deadbeats as a way to explain who was filing for bankruptcy.

KHALID: In 1978, Congress had passed a new bankruptcy code.

JAY WESTBROOK: There was an enormous amount of contention¹⁴ over the new code.

KHALID: That's Warren's longtime research collaborator¹⁵, Jay Westbrook. He still teaches law at the University of Texas.

WESTBROOK: The creditors¹⁶ were saying, oh, people are just getting away with murder. They're not paying their debts. They're getting an easy discharge. And we wanted to know if that was true or not.

KHALID: So Westbrook and Warren helped lead a massive, multi-state study to figure out who was filing for bankruptcy and why. Here's one of Warren's former research assistants, Kimberly Winick, who helped her go through a lot of the files.

KIMBERLY WINICK: And this is back when it was all paper, and we'd show up with a portable copying machine and - you know, it rolled like a rollaboard suitcase, and you get it there with reams of paper and start copying.

KHALID: They would then sift¹⁷ through the paper files. Catherine Nicholson, another one of Warren's research assistants, says they were looking for answers to specific questions.

CATHERINE NICHOLSON: Was the debtor¹⁸ employed? Were there medical bills? I mean, what kind of debts did they have? Was it unsecured debt? Did they run up everything on credit cards? Had there been a divorce in the family recently?

WINICK: That's just empirical data.

KHALID: That's Warren's other research assistant, Kimberly Winick, again.

WINICK: That is how she works. Ask a question that's a clean question and get an answer.

KHALID: Winick took three classes with Warren, and she says one thing she admires about her old professor is that when the facts became irrefutable, Warren was willing to re-examine her own opinions. Winick doesn't remember talking politics with Warren, but she had a hunch¹⁹ her old teacher thought people filing for bankruptcy were gaming the system. The research ended up illustrating²⁰ a different story. Here's Warren's co-author, Jay Westbrook again.

WESTBROOK: She saw more of the very difficult side of life of the people who go through the bankruptcy process. She saw their struggles, and she saw a variety of ways in which the credit industry manipulates things in order to get them ever deeper into debt.

KHALID: The end result of the research was unprecedented²¹ - essentially²², the first independent data-driven analysis on bankruptcy in the country. It resulted in two books and drove almost everything Warren has done since. She became known as a bankruptcy expert. She worked as a legal consultant²³ for some big corporations like Dow Chemical and for consumers in a major class-action lawsuit²⁴ against Sears. Recently, Warren's campaign disclosed that she made nearly $2 million through her corporate²⁵ legal work. Then in the 1990s, Warren also joined the National Bankruptcy Review Commission.

WESTBROOK: Well, this is the kind of person that when she sees somebody doing something that she thinks really is going to screw things up, she's not going to be quiet about it.

KHALID: So Westbrook says, Warren started speaking up loudly in political circles about financial issues.

WESTBROOK: It's just that none of it was in the context of being partisan until it was.

KHALID: Warren's work on the bankruptcy commission made it clear. Republicans in Congress were not her ally. Old colleagues insist all these years of studying bankruptcy changed Warren. It's why they believe she eventually registered as a Democrat in 1996. The thing is, this bankruptcy research did not just affect Warren. It left a deep impression on how people who collaborated²⁶ with Warren see her - people like Catherine Nicholson, who worked as her research assistant for three years.

NICHOLSON: I've known Elizabeth Warren forever. She cares about families and their struggles. So come next year, it'll be a hard choice for me in the ballot²⁷ box.

KHALID: It'll be a hard choice because Nicholson, who now lives near Omaha, Neb., describes herself as a conservative Catholic - a Paul Ryan sort of Republican. She voted for Donald Trump²⁸ in 2016.

NICHOLSON: However, I believe in Elizabeth Warren, too.

KHALID: In the time since Nicholson met her, Warren has evolved from being described as an economic conservative to arguably one of the fiercest liberal consumer advocates in the country. Some of Warren's progressive critics say this evolution makes her inauthentic. Some who have known her argue it's why voters should believe her. Asma Khalid, NPR News.

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1 democrat   

n.民主主义者，民主人士；民主党党员

参考例句：

• The Democrat and the Public criticized each other.民主党人和共和党人互相攻击。
• About two years later,he was defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter.大约两年后，他被民主党人杰米卡特击败。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 hitch   

v.免费搭(车旅行)；系住；急提；n.故障；急拉

参考例句：

• They had an eighty-mile journey and decided to hitch hike.他们要走80英里的路程，最后决定搭便车。
• All the candidates are able to answer the questions without any hitch.所有报考者都能对答如流。

4 commutes   

上下班路程( commute的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• She commutes from Oxford to London every day. 她每天上下班往返于牛津与伦敦之间。
• Barbara lives in Oxford and commutes. 芭芭拉住在牛津，通勤往来。

5 respite   

n.休息，中止，暂缓

参考例句：

• She was interrogated without respite for twenty-four hours.她被不间断地审问了二十四小时。
• Devaluation would only give the economy a brief respite.贬值只能让经济得到暂时的缓解。

6 accounting   

n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表

参考例句：

• A job fell vacant in the accounting department.财会部出现了一个空缺。
• There's an accounting error in this entry.这笔账目里有差错。

7 overtly   

ad.公开地

参考例句：

• There were some overtly erotic scenes in the film. 影片中有一些公开色情场面。
• Nietzsche rejected God's law and wrote some overtly blasphemous things. 尼采拒绝上帝的律法，并且写了一些渎神的作品。

8 partisan   

adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒

参考例句：

• In their anger they forget all the partisan quarrels.愤怒之中，他们忘掉一切党派之争。
• The numerous newly created partisan detachments began working slowly towards that region.许多新建的游击队都开始慢慢地向那里移动。

9 sweeping   

adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的

参考例句：

• The citizens voted for sweeping reforms.公民投票支持全面的改革。
• Can you hear the wind sweeping through the branches?你能听到风掠过树枝的声音吗？

10 proselytize   

v.改变宗教

参考例句：

• I assured him we didn't come here to proselytize.我向他保证我们并不是来改变他的信仰的。
• Christians were arrested for trying to convert people,to proselytise them.基督徒因为试图改变他人信仰而被捕。

11 bankruptcy   

n.破产；无偿付能力

参考例句：

• You will have to pull in if you want to escape bankruptcy.如果你想避免破产，就必须节省开支。
• His firm is just on thin ice of bankruptcy.他的商号正面临破产的危险。

12 memoir   

n.[pl.]回忆录，自传；记事录

参考例句：

• He has just published a memoir in honour of his captain.他刚刚出了一本传记来纪念他的队长。
• In her memoir,the actress wrote about the bittersweet memories of her first love.在那个女演员的自传中，她写到了自己苦乐掺半的初恋。

13 lookout   

n.注意，前途，瞭望台

参考例句：

• You can see everything around from the lookout.从了望台上你可以看清周围的一切。
• It's a bad lookout for the company if interest rates don't come down.如果利率降不下来，公司的前景可就不妙了。

14 contention   

n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张

参考例句：

• The pay increase is the key point of contention. 加薪是争论的焦点。
• The real bone of contention,as you know,is money.你知道，争论的真正焦点是钱的问题。

15 collaborator   

n.合作者，协作者

参考例句：

• I need a collaborator to help me. 我需要个人跟我合作，帮我的忙。
• His collaborator, Hooke, was of a different opinion. 他的合作者霍克持有不同的看法。

16 creditors   

n.债权人，债主( creditor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They agreed to repay their creditors over a period of three years. 他们同意3年内向债主还清欠款。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Creditors could obtain a writ for the arrest of their debtors. 债权人可以获得逮捕债务人的令状。 来自《简明英汉词典》

17 sift   

v.筛撒，纷落，详察

参考例句：

• Sift out the wheat from the chaff.把小麦的壳筛出来。
• Sift sugar on top of the cake.在蛋糕上面撒上糖。

18 debtor   

n.借方，债务人

参考例句：

• He crowded the debtor for payment.他催逼负债人还债。
• The court granted me a lien on my debtor's property.法庭授予我对我债务人财产的留置权。

19 hunch   

n.预感，直觉

参考例句：

• I have a hunch that he didn't really want to go.我有这么一种感觉，他并不真正想去。
• I had a hunch that Susan and I would work well together.我有预感和苏珊共事会很融洽。

20 illustrating   

给…加插图( illustrate的现在分词 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明

参考例句：

• He upstaged the other speakers by illustrating his talk with slides. 他演讲中配上幻灯片，比其他演讲人更吸引听众。
• Material illustrating detailed structure of graptolites has been etched from limestone by means of hydrofluoric acid. 表明笔石详细构造的物质是利用氢氟酸从石灰岩中侵蚀出来。

21 unprecedented   

adj.无前例的，新奇的

参考例句：

• The air crash caused an unprecedented number of deaths.这次空难的死亡人数是空前的。
• A flood of this sort is really unprecedented.这样大的洪水真是十年九不遇。

22 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

23 consultant   

n.顾问；会诊医师，专科医生

参考例句：

• He is a consultant on law affairs to the mayor.他是市长的一个法律顾问。
• Originally,Gar had agreed to come up as a consultant.原来，加尔只答应来充当我们的顾问。

24 lawsuit   

n.诉讼，控诉

参考例句：

• They threatened him with a lawsuit.他们以诉讼威逼他。
• He was perpetually involving himself in this long lawsuit.他使自己无休止地卷入这场长时间的诉讼。

25 corporate   

adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的

参考例句：

• This is our corporate responsibility.这是我们共同的责任。
• His corporate's life will be as short as a rabbit's tail.他的公司的寿命是兔子尾巴长不了。

26 collaborated   

合作( collaborate的过去式和过去分词 )； 勾结叛国

参考例句：

• We have collaborated on many projects over the years. 这些年来我们合作搞了许多项目。
• We have collaborated closely with the university on this project. 我们与大学在这个专案上紧密合作。

27 ballot   

n.（不记名）投票，投票总数，投票权；vi.投票

参考例句：

• The members have demanded a ballot.会员们要求投票表决。
• The union said they will ballot members on whether to strike.工会称他们将要求会员投票表决是否罢工。

28 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。