Elizabeth Warren
All,
Elizabeth Warren, current Democratic Party candidate for the Senate in Massachusetts is by far the most progressive, inspiring, dynamic, and trustworthy person running for the Senate in this year's elections in the entire country and she has a fantastic 30 year public record of ALWAYS fiercely fighting Wall Street, the banks, and the corporate plutocracy on behalf of poor, working, and middle class citizens. She is a bona fide grassroots political heroine to many people throughout this country--including me!--who has never wavered in her heartfelt and intellectually challenging response to the ongoing conflict between Capital & Labor in this country and is the legendary founder and policy director of the national Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that officially became an important part of the federal government under President Obama in 2011. Please check out and support Elizabeth's dynamic agenda and plans for the state of Massachusetts and give her your support. Her campaign website can be reached at: elizabethwarren.com PASS THE WORD...
Kofi
GOP's Big Guns Trained, Elizabeth Warren Fights Back
10/25/2012
The Huffington Post
Outside groups are spending big to defeat progressive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. With little time left before Election Day, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and a Koch brother are taking advantage of a loophole in her anti-super PAC pledge with Republican Sen. Scott Brown to pour at least $1.6 million into the tight race so far.
Warren is hoping to turn that spending into an advantage. She said in an interview with The Huffington Post that the outside money helps clarify the race and that it's telling of how Brown, who has painted himself as an independent, would really vote if reelected.
"The Koch Brothers and Rove and Norquist are coming into this race because they want the Republicans to control the Senate and they know that Scott Brown and the Republicans will keep voting for Wall Street, for big oil and for billionaires," Warren told HuffPost. "These people are not supporting him because he's going to vote both sides on important issues. And they don't even pretend that that's the case. And he doesn't when he's outside of Massachusetts, and that's the real inside-outside."
Brown signed an agreement with Warren in January not to allow super PACs to bombard Massachusetts airwaves with negative television advertisements. The race was supposed to be a relatively civil affair, but cracks in that agreement started to appear in September, when Americans For Tax Reform, Norquist's group, sent out mailers, which were not covered under the pact.
Since then, Americans For Tax Reform has spent a total of $439,233 on the race. Crossroads GPS, a Karl Rove-run "dark money" 501(c)4 that does not disclose its donors, has spent $415,311. That total includes $182,709 used in just the last week on expenditures like robocalls against Warren. For tax reasons, and to keep its donors secret, Rove's group swears most of its money isn't spent on campaign politics.
And then there is the America 360 Committee, a previously unknown group that has spent all of its $442,816 in reported independent expenditures against Warren or in support of Brown. Its reported donations so far have come almost exclusively from William Koch, the lesser known brother of David and Charles, who usually operates independently of them. It too has spent money on anti-Warren mailers.
"I didn't expect Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and the Koch Brothers all to show up in this race, especially after we'd signed the pledge, but they know what's at stake and they're willing to go anywhere and put their money to work," Warren said.
And all that money, she argued, is not going to waste.
"Here in Massachusetts, Scott Brown says he's an independent, a Republican, and he has no say over independent groups. These people would not support him if they didn't know he would vote with them. It's that simple," Warren said.
The Brown campaign did not return a request for comment.
The latest poll in the race has Warren leading Brown by five percentage points.
Pro-Warren groups like unions and the League of Conservation Voters are spending money on direct mail, door-hangers and field organizing, which are also not covered under the so-called "People's Pledge." There are also signs that outside groups on both sides may be biding their time until the last days before the election to launch a final barrage of TV ads -- something the candidates have no power to stop beyond their promise to independently donate half the cost of those ads to charity whenever an outside group buys advertising in the race.
But even without that money, Warren and Brown have had no trouble getting personal on their own. Brown claimed that legal assistance Warren gave to an insurance company in a case regarding asbestos victims let the company off the hook -- something the victims' lawyers themselves disputed. He made his troubles worse when he falsely accused Warren of using actors in her ads featuring those same victims.
"It's really just offensive," Warren said. And she called the news that Brown himself took money from the political action committee of the company, Travelers Insurance, then returned it just before his attack ads began, "the kicker."
http://elizabethwarren.com/elizabeth
Elizabeth Warren says she “came up the hard way … out of a hard-working middle class family in an America that created opportunities for kids like me.” She has made her life’s work fighting for middle class families.
The Boston Globe calls her “… the plainspoken voice of people getting crushed by so many predatory lenders and under regulated banks.” TIME magazine has called her a “New Sheriff of Wall Street” and has twice included her among America’s 100 most influential people. She’s taken on big banks and financial institutions to win historic new financial protections for middle class families.
Elizabeth learned first-hand about the economic pressures facing middle class families. When she was twelve, her dad suffered a heart attack. The store where he worked changed his job and cut his pay, and the medical bills piled up. The family lost their car, and her mom went to work answering phones at Sears to pay the mortgage.
Elizabeth got her first job at nine, babysitting for a family across the street from her house. She started waiting tables at 13 at her Aunt Alice’s Mexican restaurant. All three of her brothers served in the military. She got married at 19, and after graduating from college, started teaching in elementary school. Her first baby, a daughter Amelia, was born when Elizabeth was 22.
When Amelia was two, Elizabeth started law school. Shortly after she graduated, her son Alex was born. She practiced law out of her living room, but she soon returned to teaching.
Elizabeth has been a law professor at Harvard for nearly 20 years and has written nine books, including two national best-sellers, and more than a hundred articles. National Law Journal named her one of the Most Influential Lawyers of the Decade, and she has been honored by the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association with the Lelia J. Robinson Award.
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Elizabeth served as Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Her independent and tireless efforts to protect taxpayers, to hold Wall Street accountable, and to ensure tough oversight of both the Bush and Obama Administrations won praise from both sides of the aisle. The Boston Globe named Elizabeth Bostonian of the Year in 2009 for her oversight efforts.
She is widely credited for the original thinking, political courage, and relentless persistence that led to the creation of a new consumer financial protection agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She led the establishment of the agency, building the structure and organization to hold accountable even trillion-dollar financial institutions and to protect consumers from financial tricks and traps often hidden in mortgages, credit cards and other financial products.
Elizabeth and her husband Bruce Mann, who was born and grew up in the Boston area, have been married for 32 years and now have three grandchildren. They live in Cambridge with their golden retriever, Otis.
Outside groups are spending big to defeat progressive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. With little time left before Election Day, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and a Koch brother are taking advantage of a loophole in her anti-super PAC pledge with Republican Sen. Scott Brown to pour at least $1.6 million into the tight race so far.
Warren is hoping to turn that spending into an advantage. She said in an interview with The Huffington Post that the outside money helps clarify the race and that it's telling of how Brown, who has painted himself as an independent, would really vote if reelected.
"The Koch Brothers and Rove and Norquist are coming into this race because they want the Republicans to control the Senate and they know that Scott Brown and the Republicans will keep voting for Wall Street, for big oil and for billionaires," Warren told HuffPost. "These people are not supporting him because he's going to vote both sides on important issues. And they don't even pretend that that's the case. And he doesn't when he's outside of Massachusetts, and that's the real inside-outside."
Brown signed an agreement with Warren in January not to allow super PACs to bombard Massachusetts airwaves with negative television advertisements. The race was supposed to be a relatively civil affair, but cracks in that agreement started to appear in September, when Americans For Tax Reform, Norquist's group, sent out mailers, which were not covered under the pact.
Since then, Americans For Tax Reform has spent a total of $439,233 on the race. Crossroads GPS, a Karl Rove-run "dark money" 501(c)4 that does not disclose its donors, has spent $415,311. That total includes $182,709 used in just the last week on expenditures like robocalls against Warren. For tax reasons, and to keep its donors secret, Rove's group swears most of its money isn't spent on campaign politics.
And then there is the America 360 Committee, a previously unknown group that has spent all of its $442,816 in reported independent expenditures against Warren or in support of Brown. Its reported donations so far have come almost exclusively from William Koch, the lesser known brother of David and Charles, who usually operates independently of them. It too has spent money on anti-Warren mailers.
"I didn't expect Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and the Koch Brothers all to show up in this race, especially after we'd signed the pledge, but they know what's at stake and they're willing to go anywhere and put their money to work," Warren said.
And all that money, she argued, is not going to waste.
"Here in Massachusetts, Scott Brown says he's an independent, a Republican, and he has no say over independent groups. These people would not support him if they didn't know he would vote with them. It's that simple," Warren said.
The Brown campaign did not return a request for comment.
The latest poll in the race has Warren leading Brown by five percentage points.
Pro-Warren groups like unions and the League of Conservation Voters are spending money on direct mail, door-hangers and field organizing, which are also not covered under the so-called "People's Pledge." There are also signs that outside groups on both sides may be biding their time until the last days before the election to launch a final barrage of TV ads -- something the candidates have no power to stop beyond their promise to independently donate half the cost of those ads to charity whenever an outside group buys advertising in the race.
But even without that money, Warren and Brown have had no trouble getting personal on their own. Brown claimed that legal assistance Warren gave to an insurance company in a case regarding asbestos victims let the company off the hook -- something the victims' lawyers themselves disputed. He made his troubles worse when he falsely accused Warren of using actors in her ads featuring those same victims.
"It's really just offensive," Warren said. And she called the news that Brown himself took money from the political action committee of the company, Travelers Insurance, then returned it just before his attack ads began, "the kicker."
http://elizabethwarren.com/elizabeth
Elizabeth Warren says she “came up the hard way … out of a hard-working middle class family in an America that created opportunities for kids like me.” She has made her life’s work fighting for middle class families.
The Boston Globe calls her “… the plainspoken voice of people getting crushed by so many predatory lenders and under regulated banks.” TIME magazine has called her a “New Sheriff of Wall Street” and has twice included her among America’s 100 most influential people. She’s taken on big banks and financial institutions to win historic new financial protections for middle class families.
Elizabeth learned first-hand about the economic pressures facing middle class families. When she was twelve, her dad suffered a heart attack. The store where he worked changed his job and cut his pay, and the medical bills piled up. The family lost their car, and her mom went to work answering phones at Sears to pay the mortgage.
Elizabeth got her first job at nine, babysitting for a family across the street from her house. She started waiting tables at 13 at her Aunt Alice’s Mexican restaurant. All three of her brothers served in the military. She got married at 19, and after graduating from college, started teaching in elementary school. Her first baby, a daughter Amelia, was born when Elizabeth was 22.
When Amelia was two, Elizabeth started law school. Shortly after she graduated, her son Alex was born. She practiced law out of her living room, but she soon returned to teaching.
Elizabeth has been a law professor at Harvard for nearly 20 years and has written nine books, including two national best-sellers, and more than a hundred articles. National Law Journal named her one of the Most Influential Lawyers of the Decade, and she has been honored by the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association with the Lelia J. Robinson Award.
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Elizabeth served as Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Her independent and tireless efforts to protect taxpayers, to hold Wall Street accountable, and to ensure tough oversight of both the Bush and Obama Administrations won praise from both sides of the aisle. The Boston Globe named Elizabeth Bostonian of the Year in 2009 for her oversight efforts.
She is widely credited for the original thinking, political courage, and relentless persistence that led to the creation of a new consumer financial protection agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She led the establishment of the agency, building the structure and organization to hold accountable even trillion-dollar financial institutions and to protect consumers from financial tricks and traps often hidden in mortgages, credit cards and other financial products.
Elizabeth and her husband Bruce Mann, who was born and grew up in the Boston area, have been married for 32 years and now have three grandchildren. They live in Cambridge with their golden retriever, Otis.
