This story, which was just breaking through the Mueller fiasco yesterday, literally woke me up. If I’m ever going to get any sleep, I have to write this post now, because it simultaneously disgusts me and brings me great satisfaction.
I decided long ago that Elizabeth Warren was a principle-free demagogue and a liar. The first clue was her tap-dancing around the uncomfortable fact that she had been practicing law without a valid license in Massachusetts. Then there was her cynical use of a Cherokee heritage she didn’t have to gain diversity benefits when she was seeking positions on law school faculties, and her long, long, stubborn resistance to coming clean about the fact that she was not, in her words, a “woman of color” despite posing as one for decades.
This last should have permanently made a run for the Democratic Party 2020 nomination futile, but Warren threw her war bonnet into the ring anyway, counting on her considerable talent for demagoguery and her willingness to say anything and espouse any extreme position to make her candidacy viable in a shockingly weak field. She is, when you think of it, the closest equivalent to Hillary Clinton that the Democrats have, and as this story demonstrates, in all the worst ways.
Warren has been claiming for years that as a lawyer she fought for the women who were victims of dangerous silicon breast implants. Not only is that not accurate, it’s an audacious and calculated lie.
The truth was initially exposed by Professor William Jacobson, the proprietor of the conservative blog, Le*gal In*sur*rec*tion when Warren was running for the Massachusetts Senate in 2012, though it was largely ignored then: the news media was too invested in getting Democrats control of the U.S. Senate. Then she brazenly continued the false narrative in 2019, prompting Jacobson to tell Tucker Carlson about it this week on Fox news, but more importantly, inspiring the Washington Post to resort to actual journalism even though it harms a sweetheart of the “resistance” and a relentless critic of President Trump. [Why would it do this? I suspect because the Post favors Kamala Harris.] From the Post on July 15:
” When Dow Corning faced thousands of lawsuits in the 1990s from women saying they had become sick from the company’s silicone gel breast implants, its parent firm, Dow Chemical, turned to one of the country’s leading experts in corporate bankruptcies: Professor Elizabeth Warren.
Warren, now a Democratic presidential candidate, has never publicly discussed her role in the case. Her campaign said that she was “a consultant to ensure adequate compensation for women who claimed injury” from the implants and that a $2.3 billion fund for the women was started “thanks in part to Elizabeth’s efforts.”
But participants on both sides of the matter say that description mischaracterizes Warren’s work, in which she advised a company intent on limiting payments to the women.
“She was on the wrong side of the table,” said Sybil Goldrich, who co-founded a support group for women with implants and battled the companies for years. Goldrich said Dow Corning and its parent “used every trick in the book” to limit the size of payouts to women. The companies, she added, “were not easy to deal with at all.” ….
A person familiar with Warren’s role who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe litigation strategy said the future senator was part of a Dow defense team that had containing the company’s liability as a goal….
Shortly after The Post contacted Warren’s campaign for comment on this story, a lawyer from Warren’s campaign called Goldrich, the advocate for breast implant victims, to ask her to make a positive statement about the settlement.
“They asked, ‘Could I make a comment about whether the deal was fair? Would I say it was a fair deal? Was it fair?’ ” said Goldrich, recalling her conversation. “I wouldn’t say that.”
There is nothing wrong with representing the defense in a mass tort. Lawyers represent clients, good and bad, and litigants on both sides deserve competent representation. Doing so, however, and then claiming you were working for the plaintiffs-–the victims of your client’s alleged negligence and harmful conduct, takes a special kind of slime.
To those unfamiliar with legal ethics, the idea that Dow Chemical’s lawyer could be representing the manufacturer while looking out for the interests of the plaintiffs harmed by its product may sound reasonable, and that misconception must be what Warren has been relying on to sustain her lie. However, a lawyer who was working to help the opposing side in product liability litigation would be engaging in malpractice and flagrant unethical conduct warranting disbarment. Indeed, as the Post report shows, Warren was was a zealous, diligent, loyal advocate for Dow Chemical. That meant, however, that she wasn’t fighting for the injured women. She was fighting against them.
Here’s the professor on Carlson’s show:
This first came up in 2012 during her Senate campaign when her legal practice representing several major corporations against consumers became an issue in the campaign. It was raised by Scott Brown, including her representation of Travelers Insurance, regarding asbestos workers. She on the eve of a debate released to the Boston Globe, a list of 13 cases she was involved in to try to absolve herself of having been essentially representing corporate America against consumers. But she conveniently left off one key case she was involved in, which was the breast implant litigation against Dow Corning and Dow Chemical, its parent corporation. I discovered that case and brought it forward and her immediate reaction was, as you indicated, she was trying to help the women get money, which was preposterous. She was representing Dow Chemical, the parent corporation of the breast implant manufacturer, which was vigorously fighting any claim of liability and she was representing them at that time and advising them.
So there was nothing to suggest that she actually was trying to help the women. There’s everything to suggest that she was actually fighting it. And fast forward to 2019, the Washington Post just completed an investigation which confirmed exactly what I was saying, which is that she was not attempting to help the women. She was fighting against the women. And in fact they interviewed people who were involved, said, who said that she was on the wrong side of the table. So this is another example of Elizabeth Warren not being, not having lived the life she demands others live. She vilifies big corporations, she does all of those sort of things. Yet she represented Dow Chemical and many others. There’s nothing illegal about representing Dow Chemical or big corporations against consumers. And certainly if she’s playing that role, she’s obligated to do a good job for them. But why is she portraying it as something other than [it] was…?
Well that’s a rhetorical question if I ever heard one. It’s obvious why. Senator Warren is a phony, and she’s a liar, and she has counted on the anti-Trump media to keep her charade, as well as her rotten character, from wide exposure. The Washington Post has—finally—shattered that assumption.
To me, and I expect to many, this is no surprise. Anyone capable of Warren’s Native American hoax is literally capable of the most outrageous lies imaginable, and this one is impressively close to the limit. Warren has been telling her feminist supporters that she was on their side when a big corporation harmed thousands of women, when the exact opposite is true. As Tucker Carson neatly summed up her hypocrisy, “Elizabeth Warren representing big corporations against consumers is like PETA running a slaughterhouse.”
If this latest embarrassment doesn’t kill Warren’s White House chances, Democrats really have no standards at all, or are gullible beyond belief. I may be naive here, but I cannot believe they can be that foolish.
Not again.
Ethics Alarms 
Foolishness seems to be the least of their problems at the moment. They are a party led by incompetents, fronted by people of questionable intelligence, seeking to overturn the founding documents of the greatest modern republic the world has had, all while revolutionizing an economy toward a repeatedly failed model which has by accident or design starved nearly 100 million people to death in only a century.
Foolishness is not a problem for them. As far as I can tell, it is among their primary values. In many ways Liz Warren is the face of what her party is even more than foolish; it is intentionally deceptive and destructive.
Forgot to mention their most recently failed coup attempt. Foolishness is not a problem.
I’m thinking their imagination is failing them a little after three years, When a new employee asked us about the President’s imminent impeachment Wednesday, I asked if it was a new one than plans A through Q, before I turned on the tv to discover my show was preempted for another round of posturing. I think they are slowing- maybe some of the troops are getting bored, and the most anti-democratic aren’t clever enough for new ideas.
OR, they’re finally realizing that they should be finding better candidates for 2020 far, far sooner. I haven’t seen anyone yet, there’s no momentum for any, just Brownian motion.
It won’t kill her chances at getting the nomination, because the Democrats really have no standards at all. Standards have been identified as tools of white supremacist capitalism and cisheteronormative patriarchy, and therefore abolished.
These are just the means to the end. The end is power. They’ll get it however way they can by doing and by continuing to do the same things that they accuse their opponents of doing. And, when they get their Socialist paradise where everyone is equal, they will be the ones living in dachas eating meat and fresh vegetables while the rest of the country is standing in line for potatoes, bread and vodka while living in communal apartments.
But, at least, everything will be free and everyone will be treated equally.
Interesting you reference projection.
Yesterday Chuck Todd ranted about the Right’s ability to monopolize the media making it their propaganda arm and the left needs to do a better job communicating its message. I nearly fell out of my chair hearing that.
If Chuck Todd meant the left needs to communicate a coherent set of principles any rational individual could support, he’s correct. He probably failed to mention in his rant he and his cohort are working on the aforementioned, now that impeachment is off the table.
Admanjim
That was not his statement. He was saying the right has a implented a propaganda machine that the media can’t match.
Basically he is saying only they have the truth and the right is lying.
Mea culpa Adimagejim. I did not mean to misspell your handle.
Which is more appropriate; Oscar Wilde’s “every saint has a past, every sinner has a future,” or whoever said “nothing so satisfying as finding the righteous on the wrong side of town.”
Fauxchahontas is the worst, but for my money, Kamala Harris is even nastier. I think certain media are pushing Harris because she’s of color. Personally, I’m not sure the African American voting block (if it exists) is all that thrilled about electing an Indian woman president. But to white liberals, all people of color are the same and the one drop rule still applies.
It used to mean yer out, now it means yer in.
If anything’s done a complete 180° makeover, evolved if you prefer, it’s the One-Drop Rule, am I right?
“…but for my money, Kamala Harris is even nastier.”
Maybe the GOP supporters ought to take a page from the Democrat playbook. Seeing as how we will not have a primary choice better than our POTUS,* maybe we go vote in the Democratic primaries and help push out certain candidates.
Ethical? Maybe. Slimy? Definitely.
Also is the very definition of condign justice.
The Republicans might have their chance in 2024 — Nikki Haley will only be 52. I wouldn’t have a problem supporting her, although I’ve no idea what the field will look like (and who the incumbent President will be).
It won’t matter to them because Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders seem to be a perfect examples of the left today. They spout progressive rhetoric, but they will do whatever is in their best interests personally. They revel in telling everyone else how they have to behave, but don’t feel that such statements are binding to them. They demonize others, but will participate in the same activities themselves. They view racial minorities merely as gullible tools to win elections and bludgeon their opponents. The leftist, educated elite recognize themselves in Warren when these things come out. It may be uncomfortable, but they recognize that she is one of them. This won’t result in reflection and repentance, it will just make them more loyal to her.
Bernie is a great example of this hypocrisy… Wrote a book, made millions. Did he give his profits to those in need as a good socialist might do? Nope. Bet he’s already bought his dacha.
You forgot that his staff are protesting for $15/hour while he is scolding the rest of the country for not paying $15/hour minimum wage.
Well, it’s just a garden-variety big fat lie, isn’t it? Audacious, yes, but no more (or less) than “If you like your health care, you can keep it.”
Warren has been caught in these kind of falsehoods many times, and it has no effect. Frankly, I blame that on Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, but the truth is that people have long since decided to rationalize away blatant falsehoods like this under the rubric of “Politics as usual.”
I’m glad you pointed it out, but nobody will care other than conservatives stockpiling outrage. I doubt even if her opponents will raise it in a debate, because it might make them all look like hypocrites.
Then the questioners should raise it in the debate. I very much doubt that the Democratic feminist base doesn’t care if their chapions tried to stiff female victims of bad breast implants. You have to fight extreme cynicism. The truth does make a difference.
To whom?
Seriously, Jack, do you think this is going to change the opinion of a Warren supporter? If you buy what she’s selling, who wold you turn to instead? Kamala Harris, who’s told similar lies about her legal career? Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden or the rest of the dudes? Nah, because feminism. It’s much more important to elect a woman, even one who tells blatant lies about things dear to you, than the alternative.
There’s just nowhere else to go for Warren’s brand of nonsense, even though all the Democratic candidates look like Bernie Sanders “Mini-Me’s” to conservatives.
We live in a post-truth world, Jack. Truth matters, but on the scale of things, it’s been relegated to a decimal point.
It’s not cynicism. It’s just how things are.
If Warren supporters are informed, many will bail on her. There is no question in my mind.
I can anticipate at least some of the rationalizations she will use: “I was just doing my job.” And “I did work for the best compensation I could for the victims.” And “This is just the Republicans trying to question my character, again.” And I bet her supporters will buy them. I think you underestimate the number of thoughtless, hateful morons who still support her, even with everything that’s come out already.
The audacity of hope. May it be justified.
It’s funny because PETA actually DID run a slaughterhouse.
Only with puppies and kittens instead of cows and pigs.
And not for the purpose of providing food or anything. So, worse than a slaughterhouse in every way, really.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/peta-kills-puppies-kittens_b_2979220
(Don’t click that link if you don’t want to see dead puppies and kittens.)
Yeah, I knew that, but I didn’t feel like getting into it there. There’s a post on it here somewhere.