As for the other decider in the Senate:
Elizabeth Warren Sells Out To AIPAC Already
Anyone who doubts the iron grip AIPAC has on US politicians should check out Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren’s position on Israel. It sounds just like every other Senate candidate’s (probably because it almost surely was written by an AIPAC staffer).
It won't save her because Brown already has his nose buried up Israel's ass, but it does mean the vote totals won't change much.
Also see: Warren Wobbly on Unions
Oh, yeah, and there's that then.
And this:
"Elizabeth Warren was key in asbestos case; Worked for insurer on fund for victims" by Noah Bierman | Globe Staff, May 01, 2012
Six months after Elizabeth Warren arrived in Washington to work as an adviser to Congress, she experienced another career milestone in the nation’s capital, a seat at the US Supreme Court’s mahogany counsel table.
The 2009 appearance was the only time Warren helped represent a party before the nation’s highest court. And it provides a rare window into a less-heralded aspect of the Harvard Law professor’s career, her time as a working attorney in the courts.
The case - Travelers v. Bailey - was remarkable in many respects. It
was sprawling and complicated, involving dozens of lawyers, thousands of
asbestos victims, and nearly three decades of court battles that still
have not ended.
Travelers was fighting to gain permanent immunity from asbestos-related lawsuits by establishing a $500 million trust. The trust would have been divided among current and future victims of asbestos poisoning who had claims against the nation’s largest asbestos manufacturer, Johns-Manville, which had been insured by Travelers before it went bankrupt.
Travelers won most of what it wanted from the Supreme Court, and in doing so Warren helped preserve an element of bankruptcy law that ensured that victims of large-scale corporate malfeasance would have a better chance of getting compensated, even when the responsible companies go bankrupt.
But after Warren left the case, it continued to twist and turn through the legal system, leaving a result that has been disastrous for asbestos victims. Travelers, in part because of its Supreme Court victory, has held onto its immunity from most lawsuits. But a ruling on Feb. 29 in a separate court has taken the company off the hook for paying out the $500 million settlement.
In the words of one judge who tried to preserve the settlement, Travelers received “something for nothing.’’
While Warren’s Republican opponent in the US Senate race, Scott Brown, has highlighted this business arrangement as an example of hypocrisy for a candidate who has portrayed herself as the champion of consumers, a Globe examination of the convoluted legal record paints a murkier picture.
It is clear that Warren received a substantial amount of money to help the company win immunity from all future lawsuits, with the expectation that the company would have to pay the settlement. But Warren’s work on the case may also have helped Travelers indirectly lay the groundwork for its current position, a position Warren and several other lawyers involved on both sides of the case say they did not foresee: where Travelers has immunity from most suits without having to pay the settlement.
“My heart goes out to the victims of this terrible, terrible disaster,’’ Warren said in a recent interview. “It’s heart-wrenching that there are new victims every year. . . . I think they should be compensated. That’s it for me. That’s what this is all about.’’
Warren, like many law professors, keeps her hand in the courts while she teaches and writes. But that aspect of her career is largely in the background as she runs for Senate, a Democrat seeking to unseat Republican Scott Brown.
The extent of her legal practice, and the clients she has represented, is unclear.
Her campaign would not release a full list of cases she has been involved in. And, while some representation appears in scattered court records, much of her consulting can be done without placing her name on dockets as an attorney of record.
What does she have to hide, hmmmm?
Her campaign detailed six Supreme Court cases in which she has filed so-called friend of the court briefs. They include two briefs on behalf of the AARP: one of which supports protecting individual retirement accounts in the event of a bankruptcy and another that fights to allow judges to lower consumers’ credit card interest rates in the event of personal bankruptcies.
The campaign also provided a 2001-2003 case in which she testified in two trials as an expert working on behalf of asbestos victims, winning access to a $300 million trust, against insurance companies.
Warren’s campaign would not say how much she has earned for her outside work in these and other cases. The $212,000 she earned from Travelers from 2008 to 2010 was included in Warren’s government disclosure forms, required when she worked in Congress and the Obama administration, and when she declared as a Senate candidate. The forms also show that she earned $90,000 for serving as an expert witness for a Florida law firm suing credit card companies.
Four years of her tax returns released on Friday show that she received an average of about $150,000 a year in gross income from her home-based consulting business that includes her legal work, public speaking, writing, and investing.
Warren is considered a leading authority on bankruptcy, and the Travelers case was among a very few that reach the heights of the Supreme Court. She began writing and lecturing about bankruptcy trusts in the 1980s. The trust issue was also addressed in a 1,100-page congressional report on bankruptcy law, drafted in 1995 by Warren, the primary adviser for the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. An attorney who worked with Warren on that commission was heading Travelers’ legal team and called her when the issue boiled up to the highest court.
Travelers’ main attorneys handled the oral arguments in front of the court. Warren sat with them as one of three attorneys of record listed on their brief, the important written argument made to the court.
An attorney for Travelers, Andrew T. Frankel, declined to comment on the case or Warren’s role in it while it remains under appeal. Jennifer Wislocki, a Travelers spokeswoman, said the company believes the most recent ruling in the case is correct, but would not comment further.
Warren says she was fighting for an arcane but important principle in taking on the case: the constitutionality of allowing bankrupt companies facing a flood of lawsuits to form what are known as trusts. The trusts are large bank accounts that set aside money for current and future victims.
Warren says that the trusts provide a fair system to distribute the money - rather than first come, first served. But companies only will agree to them if they receive protection from future lawsuits.
“The issue I was focused on like a laser was the constitutionality of preserving the trust, because the trust is a critical tool for making sure that people who’ve been hurt have a fair shot at compensation,’’ she said. “Without it, millions of people who’ve already been injured will get nothing, and millions more in the future will get nothing.’’
The legal saga began in 1986 when leading asbestos supplier and manufacturer, Johns-Manville, declared bankruptcy under a crush of asbestos-related lawsuits. Travelers insured Johns-Manville from 1947 through 1976.
As part of Johns-Manville’s bankruptcy proceedings, Travelers agreed to pay $80 million toward a larger $770 million trust fund that would pay off current and future asbestos victims who sued Johns-Manville.
In exchange for its contribution, Travelers won a court order protecting it against related future lawsuits.
Despite the order, the lawsuits kept coming, with some lawyers looking for ways around the protection order. Many made the new argument that Travelers conspired with other insurers and manufacturers to conceal the dangers of asbestos and failed in its own duty to warn the public about those dangers.
Travelers wanted to stop the suits. So the company entered into another settlement with asbestos victims in 2004, this one brokered by Mario Cuomo, a former governor of New York who works as a professional mediator. It clarified the 1986 order and it required Travelers to pay a sum now worth about $500 million into the settlement fund.
That Cuomo settlement was challenged by a smaller group of asbestos victims who did not want the company to gain immunity. It was also challenged by another insurance company, Chubb, which was being sued, along with Travelers and dozens of other insurers in multiple lawsuits, based on the theory that insurance companies conspired to hide the dangers of the substance. By suing to block the Travelers settlement, Chubb wanted to preserve its right to shift some of the financial blame back to Travelers in the event that it had to pay damages to asbestos victims.
Such conspiracy suits have not been successful, but neither insurance company wanted to take on what its attorneys considered additional risk or defense costs.
There are no conspiracies except.... sigh.
It was that issue that brought the case to the Supreme Court, where Travelers - with Warren’s help - crafted a case designed to allow the company to put this issue to rest: pay out the $500 million and win immunity from any future suits.
To do that, Travelers argued that the 2004 settlement was simply an extension of the 1986 agreement. Therefore, the case focused on the legality of that original agreement and the degree of protection it provided to Travelers against future lawsuits.
Though some asbestos victims still objected to the Travelers settlement, another larger group of victims was on the same side as the insurer - at least during this portion of the case - in seeking to have the settlement upheld.
The Supreme Court decision gave Travelers a victory, validating the legality of the 1986 agreement and the immunity it provided. But it left to the lower courts to decide whether Chubb had a right to challenge the 2004 settlement.
That triggered another series of legal arguments that ultimately unraveled the $500 million settlement, leaving Travelers with permanent immunity from most asbestos lawsuits without having to pay the victims.
The payment of the $500 million settlement was premised upon the company winning immunity from all lawsuits. But because an Appeals Court subsequently ruled that Chubb could still sue Travelers, still another judge ruled that the conditions had not been met to force Travelers to pay out the money.
In his Feb. 29 order, US District Judge John G. Koeltl cited the Supreme Court case, saying essentially that Travelers never needed the second settlement, the one that cost it $500 million, to protect itself from most asbestos suits.
Koeltl ruled that the 2004 settlement was simply a clarification to “obtain complete peace’’ against the likes of Chubb and other insurers. And because there was no peace from Chubb, there was no settlement.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers say they are not surprised Travelers would try not to pay the money. As a publicly traded company, it is obligated to serve its shareholders.
“It’s an insurance company,’’ said Michael P. Cascino, a Chicago attorney representing a group of asbestos victims. “Unless you believe a corporation’s a human being, how could it be sincere’’ in wanting to pay the settlement?
The empty suit masquerading as the Repuglican nominee for president thinks so!
Bruce Carter, an Ohio attorney representing 19,000 plaintiffs, added that “like any company, they’d love to get something for nothing. And that’s really where they’re at now.’’
--more--"
Her campaign going the way of Coakley?
"Bad week may haunt Warren" May 05, 2012|Noah Bierman and Frank Phillips, Globe Staff
Elizabeth Warren fumbled through her worst stretch as a Senate candidate this week, setting off a debate among strategists over whether the controversy over her claims to Native American ancestry would linger when the November election is closer.
You think we are going to make our decision based on that?
Related: Document ties Warren kin to Cherokees
Records shed light on Elizabeth Warren’s minority status
I thought women were a majority.
The Warren campaign will not say when top advisers learned that she considered herself part-Native American, but it was an element of her biography that seemed to catch them off guard.
When news emerged last Friday that Harvard Law School had publicly touted Warren as a Native American professor in the Harvard Crimson in the 1990s, Warren advisers saw it as a story that would go away quickly.
But the story took added dimension when it was revealed that Warren had listed herself as a minority in a major legal directory.
The fallout and her unsteady response to it subjected the rookie Democratic Senate candidate to tough questions, an unflattering national glare, and a recognition from others that she had hit her first real stumble. The Washington Post’s political blog, The Fix, gave Warren the dubious honor “Worst Week in Washington.’’
“I have yet to run into anyone in politics who believes that this was handled well at all,’’ said Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor at The Cook Political Report who tracks Senate races around the country. “The explanations have left enormous room for doubt and speculation.’’
About what?
Democrats and some outside strategists continue to believe the issue, first reported in the Boston Herald, will die down soon, though others caution the controversy could become part of Warren’s identity, damaging her reputation among socially conservative swing voters.
And thus the building of the narrative has begun.
The story also poses potential dangers to Senator Scott Brown, whose questioning of her Harvard qualifications risks undermining his campaign message that he is above personal attacks.
But most of the political critique has been directed at Warren.
Warren has been forced to respond to the story incrementally, as new details have emerged, including a genealogist’s finding that documents suggested she might have been 1/32 Cherokee but would not qualify for tribal membership.
She had her most awkward public response on Wednesday, when she said she had checked a box listing herself as Native American for the legal directory for nearly a decade in hopes that she would “meet others like me,’’ and mentioned that she heard her aunt admiring the “high cheekbones’’ of her grandfather.
“Brown is having a field day, and she is not responding effectively,’’ said Thomas J. Whalen, an associate professor of social science, and a political historian at Boston University. “She is just flailing around.’’
Peter Ubertaccio, a political scientist at Stonehill College, said the story got more traction than warranted because Warren was unable to offer a succinct answer....
What was the question?
--more--"
"From humble roots to top of income ladder; Warren, Brown release tax returns; Earnings become key in Senate race" by Brian C. Mooney and Noah Bierman | Globe Staff, April 28, 2012
Tax returns released Friday by Republican Senator Scott Brown and his likely Democratic challenger, Elizabeth Warren, show both have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in income in the last several years, despite campaigns that play up their humble roots.
Warren and her husband, fellow Harvard professor Bruce Mann, earned an annual average of more than $845,000 over the past four years, and Brown and his wife, Gail Huff, a television journalist, earned an average of nearly $428,000 over the last six years.
Brown’s earnings were augmented by $1 million he received for his 2011 memoir, “Against All Odds,’’ $300,000 more than the amount that had been previously disclosed.
Warren’s salary at Harvard and as the interim director of a new federal consumer protection bureau until last year has been supplemented by an average of nearly $142,000 a year she received as a consultant and lecturer.
Throughout the Senate campaign - one of the most closely watched in the country - class has emerged as an important marker of authenticity. For months, Republicans have been calling Warren an “elitist hypocrite.’’ And on Thursday, Democrats swung back, making similar claims about Brown and questioning the everyman image that he has crafted.
--more--"
Related: Checking In on the Ma$$achu$ett$ $enate Race
And the checks keep coming:
"A second committee raises funds for Brown" May 02, 2012|Frank Phillips, Globe Staff
US Senator Scott Brown, who played a critical role in the battle over the 2010 financial regulatory overhaul, has used a joint fund-raising committee to collect $2.9 million in political donations over the last year, nearly half of which came from the nation’s financial sector.
A Globe analysis of the money raised by this joint committee, which was launched without fanfare or publicity in March 2011, indicates that this sector’s deep reservoir of support for the Republican senator extends far beyond the contributions made to his campaign committee.
The Scott Brown Victory Committee, a joint venture between the senator and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, can receive donations of up to $30,800 per donor each election cycle, compared with the $5,000 limit for regular campaign committees....
--more--"
Also see: Warren ad counters earlier student-debt viewpoint
Scott Brown says daughter insured under health law
Warren hits Brown over his use of health law
Warren on the warpath!
Brown's staff performs balancing act
Brown's attention now angled toward Whole Foods fish policy
Related: Brown Fishing Boat
Made me sick.
Brown’s ‘amazing’ basket came after four missed shots
Who gives a crap about the sports when it comes to elections?
Yeah, I'm for Brown cuz he shoots hoop.
