Yesterday the coal miner who heads the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka was in Boston yesterday to endorse Elizabeth Warren. Coincidentally on the same day the news media learned that Elizabeth Warren worked against coal miners in a federal suit where she made $10,000. The Boston Herald has the story.
Democrat Elizabeth Warren, who has made fighting for workers a focus of her Senate campaign, was a hired legal gun for a steel conglomerate trying to dodge paying health and pension benefits to thousands of retired coal miners, records show.
Warren represented LTV Steel in 1995, when she was a Harvard Law professor, aiding the bankrupt company's bid to overturn a court ruling forcing it to pay its former employees and dependents $140 million in retirement benefits.
Warren was one of two LTV lawyers who wrote a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the appellate court decision siding with the coal miners, documents obtained by the Herald show. The high court never took up the case.
2. Rich Eustis Fundraiser
One of our best pick-up opportunities is in the seat formerly held by Jim Valle. Where Rich Eustis is our Republican Candidate. Yesterday, Eustis had a well attended fundraiser. He shared a strong vision for a better Massachusetts. Representatives Jim Lyons and Ryan Fattman introduced Eustis.
Also in attendance were C. Stolle Singleton and John Jewell who were the other two candidates in the primary.
3. Paul Craney debuts as columnist for the Fall River Herald and Taunton Gazette
Paul Craney, the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance has begun as a columnist for the Fall River Herald and Taunton Gazette. Here it is:
Massachusetts politics may seem overwhelmingly blue on the surface, but when you dig down and study the numbers, you will find a different picture than what most of the headlines lead you to believe.
Sure, we are the home state to political names like the Kennedy family, Deval Patrick, John Kerry and Barney Frank, but we also voted for the income tax to be rolled back to 5 percent.
Like the rest of the country, Massachusetts residents like options. Grocery stores continue to stock their shelves with hundreds of new products. A simple walk down any isle may be leaving you facing countless options. The point is if we like options for our products and the things we purchase, what makes you think we don't like options for our political parties and candidates?
4. It's not about what Warren's mom told her
The controversy around Warren's claims of Native American heritage are not about what her mother told her. Its about whether or not, Warren or Harvard falsified federal Equal Employment Opportunity Comission forms. Which of course is a crime. Legal Insurrection has laid out a pretty damning case that she or they have.
here is a standard and long-standing definition of Native American for employment reporting. That definition, as currently used by Harvard and presumably used by Harvard during all or most of Warren's employment, requires a representation of actual Native American ancestry and cultural identificaion either through tribal affiliation or community recognition.
This is the same definition used by the EEOC.
Warren never has had any proof to demonstrate actual origins in the original peoples of North America. It is an objective test. Family lore is not proof of actual origin.
5. My first Go Local Worcester Column
I've been hired as a Go Local Worcester MINDSETTER columnist. My first column is in today's edition. Here it is:
"We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections." Those elegant words were written, by John Adams, Founding Father, and the second President of these United States. Unfortunately, over the last two election cycles, serious questions have arisen about the freeness, fairness and impartiality of elections in the City of Worcester. It may be time for drastic measures to right that ship.
