If you campaign for office talking about something you say you support. Then your life should contain actions demonstrating your commitment. When you have an opportunity to act or remain silent, your choice speaks to your character.
Do as I say, not as I do
Warren is a shrill and flawed presidential candidate. Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren claims to be one thing. Really she is another, based on her actions. Let’s take a look at a couple of her positions. She campaigns as a champion of the working class. That’s fine; every average American wants a champion.
She had the opportunity to stand up for low-income Harvard employees facing layoffs. What did she actually do? According to a former Harvard employee Stephen Helfer: Warren ‘certainly did not stand up’ for coworkers facing termination.
What happened
In 2009, Harvard terminated about 300 employees. The University cited their endowment falling to only $26 billion as justification. That plea fell on somewhat unsympathetic ears for a number of reasons. High earning law school professors, Warren fits in the category, were unaffected. The layoffs were imposed on administrative and clerical staffers.
The announcement led one employee to collect petition signatures. He was asking top earners at the law school to take temporary salary reductions in an attempt to prevent layoffs. According to Mr. Helfer, who spearheaded the petition drive, “Elizabeth Warren certainly did not stand up for Harvard staff.”
What her actions tell us
She talks the talk when she needs the votes. But she does not walk the walk when there’s nothing in it for her. The content of character clearly shows through. Is this what you want and expect from your President?
Helfer spent 22 years as a law school library assistant at Harvard. When positions similar to his faced layoffs, he took issue with Harvard’s salary differentials. So he made the case the salaries of employees such as Warren and then-president Drew Faust were unequal. Warren was paid nearly $350,000 to teach at Harvard in 2009. Faust made more than $775,000 in pay, benefits, and expenses during the 2007/2008 school year.
How others responded
Helfer’s call for temporary salary reductions came after administrators elsewhere had already acted. The presidents at Brown and Stanford universities cut their own pay in 2009. They took the action in response to similar budget constraints. Helfer’s petition received 120 signatures.
Numerous university groups showed solidarity with a “no layoffs” campaign. Actions including a protest during a Harvard commencement ceremony were taken. Helfer ended up taking early retirement after the university moved forward with the planned layoff.
Warren declares herself “in this [2020] fight for America’s workers every step of the way.” She has appeared in union picket lines. But she failed to support members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers. She had the opportunity to show what she was made of. She did exactly that. She’s at best an opportunist.
Advantage Warren
Warren went on to make more than $400,000 as a tenured Harvard professor in the 2010/2011 school year. After nearly 300 low-income employees were laid off. She knows which side of the bread the butter is on. Her principles require her to do what she deems best for Elizabeth Warren at any point in time. What happens to the rest of us, she could care less.
Warren is always talking about the middle class being hammered. She did not seem to take interest in the petition or any efforts to alleviate the layoffs. Warren did not support. She did not offer a voluntary pay cut. Make of it what you will. But understand she has shown you what she is made of. She lacks credibility to have a Union label.
Who pays the bill
Warren and her Harvard professor husband reported earning $972,654 in 2017. She has a reported net worth of $12 million. Warren continuously criticizes the rising cost of higher education. While she benefits from it.
She is proposing a student loan forgiveness plan. It would cancel student debt for more than 95% of borrowers. But doing so transfer the debt to the backs of taxpayers. And who exactly would that be? You got that right. The bill will fall on the average American. But it benefits university professors at the expense of average Americans. The tax payer will pay the bill.
Harvard offered Warren a tenured professor job in 1993. At the time there were protests and a discrimination lawsuit over the Harvard faculty’s lack of diversity. Warren had categorized herself as a Native American visiting professor. After she assumed the tenured position in 1995, the Harvard Law School news director touted her hiring. They had a professor of color… Look at the professor and think about that.
The color of integrity
Warren was the first tenured woman of color at Harvard Law. Public reports filed by Harvard to the U.S. Department of Labor show a single Native American professor at the university until 2011. Lani Guinier is now listed as Harvard Law’s first tenured woman of color in her university biography. You see, a DNA test shows Warren having as little as 1/1,024 Native American ties. The objective facts show her willingness to victimize those she says she is fighting for.
Not only will Elizabeth Warren remain silent when she advantaged by doing so. But, she will actively misrepresent the facts to gain advantage. She does not care for the average Americans she claims to fight for so much. She will enrich herself at their expense and go on about her business like nothing happened.
Conclusion
The senator is part of the problem; not part of the solution. That’s why her critics call her Lieawatha Fauxcahontas. If you are going to talk the talk, you gotta’ walk the walk.