Buried in its correction section, The Boston Globe has issued a retraction of its claim that a marriage license supporting the claim of U.S. Senate Candidate and Law Professor Elizabeth Warren that she is part Cherokee. The correction says that no such marriage license has ever been found and that the reference comes from a “family newsletter” and refers to an application for a marriage license. Moreover, no one has been able to find the paper, let alone study it. In the meantime, the Warren campaign is addressing new disclosures that Warren claimed to be a minority not just at Harvard but also at the University of Pennsylvania. Today another news story reported that Warren (who denied knowledge of being listed as a minority) was cited as “Harvard’s first woman of color” in a Fordham Law Review piece — quoting a Harvard official.
The Boston Globe earlier published an account that became the primary defense for Warren supporters:
A record unearthed Monday shows that US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has a great-great-great grandmother listed in an 1894 document as a Cherokee, said a genealogist at the New England Historic and Genealogy Society.
The shred of evidence could validate her assertion that she has Native American ancestry, making her 1/32 American Indian, but may not put an end to the questions swirling around the subject….
Chris Child, a genealogist at the New England Historic and Genealogy Society, said he began digging into Warren’s family history on Thursday, when media interest emerged.
At first, he found no link between Warren’s family and Native Americans in her native Oklahoma.
But Monday afternoon, he said, he discovered a few links. Warren’s great-great-great grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, is listed on her son’s 1894 application for a marriage license as a Cherokee.
Now however the newspaper has said that that was not true:
Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in the May 1 Metro section and the accompanying headline incorrectly described the 1894 document that was purported to list Elizabeth Warren’s great-great-great grandmother as a Cherokee. The document, alluded to in a family newsletter found by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, was an application for a marriage license, not the license itself. Neither the society nor the Globe has seen the primary document, whose existence has not been proven.
That seems like a pretty important disclosure to be simply pushed into the correction section of the newspaper.
In the meantime, the New York Times is reporting that Warren was not just listed as a minority faculty member at Harvard but also at University of Pennsylvania. At the very most, Warren is no more than 1/32 Cherokee, even if the account of the great great great grandmother is proven to be true.
As I have mentioned before, I do not believe that Warren was given her positions due to the claim of minority status. She is an extremely intelligent and talented academic. The claim as a minority however has caused a stir among academics who have been discussing the lack of any criteria for such claims. Minority status is an obvious advantage for a law professor as school strive to diversify their faculty ranks. Claiming minority status has an important impact on reporting academic data for schools as it does for governmental reporting.a
What is intriguing is the claim by Warren that she was not aware that she was listed as a minority when that status was asserted by both Penn and Harvard. I do not believe that she would be considered a minority by any conceivable definition without making most Americans minorities. Presumably, these schools did not arbitrarily claim such status for a faculty member, but had to be given an affirmative claim of being a minority by the faculty member. Yet, this process is remarkably fluid and ill-defined at schools. Schools are eager to list every possible minority members in annual reporting.
I am more interested in the general issue of how to define minority status than the campaign. But, putting aside the raw partisanship over the Senate race, how important should this issue in your view be in judging a candidate?
Elaine M. says, “I often wonder why right-wing men are so fearful of intelligent, competent women who can’t be intimidated by people with a “Y” chromosome.”
As a male guy, I wonder the same thing. There are plenty of reasons to be intimidated. Basing it on gender implies a deficient upbringing and/or history with terrific women.
Bron,
Do you have a link to that Fordham Law Review piece on Warren?
Bron,
Here are some more excerpts from that same article:
“Elizabeth Warren has pushed back hard on questions about a Harvard Crimson piece in 1996 that described her as Native American, saying she had no idea the school where she taught law was billing her that way and saying it never came up during her hiring a year earlier, which others have backed up.”
“She has pushed back hard on suggestions she got her job based on her heritage, and her backers have noted a 1995 Crimson piece, from the year she was hired, makes no mention of her background.”
*****
Does anyone have proof that Warren used minority status to get any of her jobs–or is it just right-wing speculation–speculation made with the purpose of calling her character into question?
Elaine:
The story the Professor linked to seems to indicate that she did indeed use her supposed heritage to enhance her hiring opportunities. Read the story yourself.
“But a 1997 Fordham Law Review piece described her as Harvard Law School’s “first woman of color,” based, according to the notes at the bottom of the story, on a “telephone interview with Michael Chmura, News Director, Harvard Law (Aug. 6, 1996).””
Did he pull that out of his nether regions? Why would he even think a blond haired blue-eyed woman would be a woman of “color” in the first place?
I dont like her ideas/philosophy because she thinks people owe other people for their success.
Typical liberal/progressive view. It is just tribalism which is a very primitive existence not to mention way of thinking. But then she is a member of a tribe so hey, primitive does as primitive is.
bigfatmike,
“If right wing men are so confident of their positions why can’t they use facts and logic to support their positions instead of call names or make accusations.”
Facts and logic? Surely you jest!
Bron,
Karl Rove, Howie Carr, and their right-wing ilk can’t find anything of substance to criticize Warren about… so they trump up a story. So typical. They enjoy swiftboating their opponents.They are determined to destroy the reputation of this woman because they–like you–fear her. So sad.
I just read that Liz even has a Native American name: Fauxcahontas.
Pathetic Wall Street men afraid of strong, assertive women
July 31, 2011
http://articles.boston.com/2011-07-31/bostonglobe/29836162_1_gender-bias-women-soccer-pitch
WHY IS it no surprise that the Elizabeth Warren and Sheila Bair departures raise suspicions of sexism (“The ‘pushy broad syndrome’; Did gender bias push out two of the sheriffs of Wall Street?’’, Op-ed, July 24)?
Cheering on the women’s World Cup team was a matter of national pride. Their aggressive play was appropriate and appreciated. Besides, the women weren’t playing against men.
Congress isn’t a soccer pitch. There, smart capable women such as Warren and Bair are not admired for their knowledge and their confidence in their ability to do their jobs. No. If they’re not diffident, they’re difficult. If they’re outspoken, they’re pushy.
That the boys’ network harbors gender bias and is resistant to a woman in charge is not news. Having two tough women regulating the Wall Street boys is like having their mother tell them to clean up their room. They can’t defy Mom, but they can get rid of the annoying watchdogs.
Karl Rove vs. Elizabeth Warren
Ari Berman on November 10, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/164517/karl-rove-vs-elizabeth-warren
The Karl Rove–backed super PAC, Crossroads GPS, has made the first major ad buy in the Massachusetts Senate contest between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, attacking Warren for her support of Occupy Wall Street.
Excerpt:
It’s no surprise that Rove and his ilk are attacking Warren. She’s a major threat to the Republican Party and its allied corporate backers for two reasons.
Number one: she’s running even with Brown in a race that may very well decide control of the Senate.
Number two: her reformist background and brand of progressive populism is deeply resonant right now. Unlike so many in Washington, she’s taken on the banks and their allies, is not beholden to them, and is not afraid of them. That makes her dangerous to the political establishment in both parties. No wonder Tim Geithner didn’t want her running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Karl Rove doesn’t want her in the Senate.
Republicans are particularly afraid of her—she’s the best spokesperson the Democratic Party has on economic policy and has the potential to become one of the most popular politicians in America precisely because of her tenacity in confronting the very corporate interests who caused the economic crisis. That’s why Republicans have tried so hard to demonize her—both when she was setting up the CFPB and now that she’s running for Senate.
It’s particularly noteworthy that Crossroads is invoking Occupy Wall Street as a means to taint both the Warren campaign and the broader Occupy movement, as part of a concerted GOP backlash strategy. The ad claims that protesters at Occupy Wall Street “attack police, do drugs and trash public parks. They support radical redistribution of wealth and violence.” It distorts a quote from Warren where she said that, “I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do,” making it seem as if Warren was responsible for lawlessness, violence and socialist-inspired chaos.
On Karl Rove & his GPS Crossroads going after Warren late last year:
Crossroads: Elizabeth Warren responsible for bank bailouts
By Lucy Madison
12/8/11
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57339840-503544/crossroads-elizabeth-warren-responsible-for-bank-bailouts/
Just last month, Crossroads GPS released an ad targeting Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren as a champion of the “extreme left” and friend of the Occupy Wall Street movement – which, according to the ad, supports the “radical redistribution of wealth, and violence.”
Now, the Karl Rove-linked organization is taking a different tack: In a new ad, which aired in Massachusetts starting Thursday, Crossroads GPS targets Warren for allegedly being beholden to Wall Street.
The 30-second spot, which was part of a $1.1 million dollar ad buy for four ads (concerning various candidates) that will be featured in Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana and Nebraska, features a brief clip of Warren pledging to “be a voice in the room on behalf of middle-class families.”
“Really?” asks a narrator following the clip of Warren’s remarks. “Congress had Warren oversee how your tax dollars were spent bailing out the same banks that helped cause the financial meltdown. Bailouts that helped pay big bonuses to bank executives while middle-class Americans lost out.”
The ad goes on to accuse Warren of going on a “charm offensive” with some of the banks that got bailed out.
The Oklahoma native, who is running against incumbent Republican Senator Scott Brown in what is expected to be a tight and costly race, has become a hero of liberals for her advocacy on behalf of consumers against the big banks.
But just as a new Boston Herald poll shows Warren leading Brown by a seven point margin, her detractors are accusing her of being on the other side of the issue.
“Tell Professor Warren: We need more jobs, not more bailouts and bigger government,” the narrator intones in the spot.
In 2008, Warren was indeed asked to head the congressional panel overseeing the billion $700 billion Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP), which bailed out hundreds of banks and as well as insurers and automakers. But her appointment to that role was largely a product of her reputation as a tough critic of banks – and the conception that she would hold banks, as well as Treasury officials, accountable for the money that TARP had allocated.
In a 2009 interview with the Daily Beast, Warren emphasized her opposition to allowing banks to get “too big to fail.”
“There are a lot of ways to regulate ‘too big to fail’ financial institutions: break them up, regulate them more closely, tax them more aggressively, insure them, and so on. And I’m totally in favor of increased regulatory scrutiny of these banks,” she began. “But those are all regulatory tools. Regulations, over time, fail. I want to see Congress focus more on a credible system for liquidating the banks that are considered too big to fail.”
Of the “charm offensive,” the Crossroads GPS ad points to a March 2011 Politico article describing Warren’s efforts to find “common ground” with the Chamber of Commerce and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a consumer watchdog agency created with the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. Warren, who conceived of the CFPB and had at one point hoped to head it, reached out to a number of CFPB critics in an attempt to win over the opposition.
Still, she did not apologize for her pro-regulatory stance.
“Let’s not pretend that a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme is attributable to too much regulation,” Warren said in remarks at the Chamber of Commerce event referenced in the Politico story.
In a statement to Hotsheet, Warren spokesperson Kyle Sullivan called the Crossroads ad “ridiculous” and “desperate.”
“Elizabeth was an outspoken critic of the bank bailout and its blank check to Wall Street. And that’s just one fact that makes these ads ridiculous,” Sullivan said. “The Wall Street bankers financing these attacks are desperate to stop Elizabeth Warren because she’s worked so hard to stop Wall Street from ripping off middle class families.”
He added: “Elizabeth’s worked to keep both the banks and the government accountable. Those are the facts. The people of Massachusetts don’t need more fast talk from Wall Street, they need a fighter like Elizabeth taking on Wall Street.”
Now we need to know what her gene pool is composed. She may actually be a make shift female. Whooooooo haaaaaa, I’m gonna get my tomahawk and be right back.
ANY MAN who uses the term “feminazi” is lousy in bed, knows it and blames it on the woman anyway for not pretending.
I often wonder why right-wing men are so fearful of intelligent, competent women who can’t be intimidated by people with a “Y” chromosome.
@Elaine M.
If right wing men are so confident of their positions why can’t they use facts and logic to support their positions instead of call names or make accusations.
If they have the argument then let them make it. Name calling speaks for it self. I am waiting for them to claim she has cooties – or did they already do that.
It would actually be interesting to hear them make the argument against regulation. A decade ago it was that the only people buying derivatives were so sophisticated they did not need anyone to watch out for them, and besides mere government regulators who obviously did not make the cut at the big financial firms could not possibly be expected to understand the complexities of such sophisticated financial instruments.
Well we all now how that worked out. The masters of the financial universe would be selling pencils on the corner if the regulators and our representatives didn’t bail them out.
One has to wonder what the argument against regulation is today. If there are good arguments against regulation lets hear it.
Oh I nearly forgot. The first argument against regulation is fruitloop and the second is she is a socialist. Very convincing. Did you all catch that. I realize the argument against regulation is a bit subtle, but you do catch the drift don’t you?
I bet she is a card carrying member of the People’s Republic of the United Socialist movement.
Elizabeth Warren is just another progressive professor who thinks she knows what is good for everyone else. She is probably a very competent busy body and would fit right in with the other competent busy bodies in the senate.
Elizabeth Warren: ‘That’s the strongest argument for a modern Glass-Steagall’
Posted by Ezra Klein at 03:19 PM ET, 05/14/2012
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/elizabeth-warren-thats-the-strongest-argument-for-a-modern-glass-steagall/2012/05/14/gIQAfxTLPU_blog.html
Excerpt:
Elizabeth Warren, who is running for Senate in Massachusetts, thinks JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon should resign his seat on the New York Federal Reserve. Beating up on Dimon is, of course, a popular position among politicians right now, but Warren has special credibility on this point: She chaired the congressional oversight panel on TARP from 2008 to 2010, and led the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from 2010 to 2011. We spoke by phone Monday afternoon. A lightly edited transcript follows.
Ezra Klein: So JP Morgan lost $2 billion. They’re not asking for a bailout. They’re not threatening to capsize either themselves or anyone else in the system. And so they say, and it’s not an entirely unfair question, why is this Elizabeth Warren’s business, or the U.S. Congress’s business? Isn’t making bad investment decisions legal?
Elizabeth Warren: That is what Jamie Dimon has said. He says it’s stupid and sloppy but we’ll fix it. So stay away. But what if the next loss is $20 billion or $200 billion? Is he saying JP Morgan should be entitled to continue to take these bets right up until the day it lands in the taxpayers lap again?
Banks are different than other kinds of companies. We learned that in 2008. They run the risk of bringing down our jobs, our pensions, our economy. The basic deal we made with them is they get to operate banks — the things that take savings and investments and checking accounts and get a federal guarantee — in return for submitting to substantial oversight to make sure their activities are safe.
EK: That gets us to the Volcker rule, which is what would keep banks that get that guarantee from gambling with customer money and a federal backstop. But at this point, I don’t think very many people — even people who follow this stuff quite closely — have a very specific sense of what the difference between a good and bad Volcker rule is. So how do you think about that?
EW: I’m going to reframe it slightly: Who profits from the complexity of the Volcker rule? It’s the largest financial institutions. No financial institutions want a simple Volcker rule. They want layers and layers of complexity because it’s in complexity that there are loopholes. That’s where it’s possible to back up regulators who are not quite certain about the ground they stand on. And it’s a larger problem with our regulatory structure: Complexity favors those who can hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers. The big push I made at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was simple rules. Simple mortgage documents. Simple credit card agreements. Because complexity creates too many opportunities for an army of lawyers to turn the rules upside down.
bettykath,
She’s extremely competent and she’s not afraid of the banksters on Wall Street or their tools in Washington. They do not want to see Warren elected Senator. Brown is a Wall Street favorite. He’s their boy. He has declined to disclose his connections to JP Morgan.
*****
Howie Carr is Limbaugh lite. He writes for The Boston Herald, right-wing rag that can’t really be called a “news”paper.
Elaine,
Think that Elizabeth Warren’s real problem is that she is extremely competent?
Holy smokes, the press can find all kinds of credentials and quite quickly, when it matters to them.
I wonder if Howie Carr did this on purpose?
Femanazis all stick it to the men, if she lied she should be called out. If Mitt farts it makes the news.
TPMDC
Politicians And Regulators Tread Lightly Around JP Morgan Debacle
By Brian Beutler
May 15, 2012
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/jp-morgan-wall-street-obama-romney-warren-brown-financial-reform.php
Excerpt:
Elizabeth Warren — a career Wall Street reformer, architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Democratic Senate candidate challenging Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) — has called for Dimon to resign from the board of the New York Federal Reserve; for Brown to disclose his fundraising ties to Wall Street; and for the reinstitution of so-called Glass-Steagall protections which for decades prevented federally backstopped commercial banks from owning hedge funds or other risky investment firms. Those restrictions were weakened over the years, and repealed entirely in 1999.
Brown played a key role in weakening Dodd-Frank — and the Volcker Rule in particular — as the 60th vote for breaking the GOP filibuster of the bill. His campaign has so far not commented on Warren’s call for Dimon’s Fed board resignation, and has declined to disclose the members of his New York Finance Committee.