Replies

I've read this whole thread, and am having trouble deciding if he is a pretty-boy fool, trying to just get name recognition for 2008, or a serious threat. There's some fear in dealing with someone that can give a big closing argument to a jury, that produces a judgment that can bankrupt a company. I shudder when I remember that stupid juries are drawn from voter's lists...

There's some fear in dealing with someone that can give a big closing argument to a jury, that produces a judgment that can bankrupt a company.

I really don't know that much about his legal past. Did he actually argue those cases personally? Or just oversee a team of underlings that did?

Sen. Edwards Outlines Education Plan
Thu Nov 21, 4:38 AM ET

By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (news, bio, voting record) is proposing financial incentives to encourage teachers to work where they are most needed.

The Democratic presidential hopeful also wants the federal government to help states reach the goal of a quality teacher in every classroom.

Education programs passed under the Bush administration raised standards without providing the resources to meet new goals, he said.

Edwards said President Bush (news - web sites) "toured the country touting the law" at the same time "he proposed the smallest education budget increase in almost a decade."

"We have raised standards without offering teachers and principals the resources to meet those standards," Edwards said in a speech prepared for delivery Thursday at the University of Maryland. "We used to call this an unfunded mandate. I call it unfair, unwise and unacceptable."

Still, Edwards said, the most critical task is improving the quality of teaching.

"Study after study shows that no single factor at school has a larger impact on the quality of a child's education than the quality of his or her teacher," Edwards said.

He said the federal government should pay for the college education of teachers willing to make a five-year commitment to work in places where good educators are in short supply. He also suggested a $5,000 mortgage tax credit to teachers willing to buy homes in poor neighborhoods near their schools.

Edwards said the federal government should double the $3 billion a year it gives states to help put quality teachers in classrooms. States would need to increase teacher pay and hold them to tougher standards.

He proposed several ideas he said would make college or other training after high school accessible to all young people who are interested.

Students willing to commit five years to the nation's homeland security should get four-year college scholarships, Edwards said. He also proposed a program that would cover the first year of college tuition for students who take responsibility for the remainder of their education and commit to at least 10 hours a week of work study, community service or a part-time job.

"Providing a free year of college tuition will eliminate the sticker shock that scares off so many kids," Edwards said. "After students get through that first year, which is the toughest, they'll know financial aid is available, they'll know student loans are an investment worth making and they'll have access to people who can help them pursue both."

Edwards said much of the money for such improvements could be found by cutting expenses in other areas of government. He suggested scrapping the current program for student loans and making loans through competitive contracts.

Trial Lawyer Trifecta
Even McCain-Feingold can't stop the lawsuit lobby.

Sunday, June 9, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT

As John McCain kept telling us, campaign finance reform was going to reduce if not end special-interest influence in Washington. Perhaps the Senator forgot to tell the plaintiffs bar, which is dominating the current Congressional session as completely as any lobby ever has.

From asbestos-litigation reform to terrorism insurance to even the patients' bill of rights, the tort lawyers are blocking whatever they don't like. So great is their clout in the Senate that the lawyers are even inducing Democrats to kill their own self-professed priorities. Ed Hyman's ISI Group calls it the "trial lawyer trifecta," but even that understates their influence.

Take the patients' bill of rights. Let's assume, generously, that this long-debated legislation is really aimed at the interests of patients. Democrats have claimed as much for years and their leader, Tom Daschle, made a show of passing it as one of his first priorities after regaining Senate control last year.
Yet talks between Senate Democrats and the GOP House fell apart recently over--guess what?--liability caps. North Carolina Democrat John Edwards, the nation's most prominent trial lawyer, is leading the charge against compromise. We don't mind if the bill fails as a result, since what it would really do is price more employers out of the market for health insurance by piling on mandate and lawsuit costs. But the failure is worth noting as an example of how Democrats put trial-lawyer priorities above all others.

What about urbanites, with whom Democrats claim a special affinity? Fears about the post-September 11 real estate market cratering have so far proved exaggerated. But one reason may be market confidence that such uninsurable risks as nuclear terrorism would, in the end, call forth a responsible government policy. That faith becomes less viable with every month that Mr. Daschle continues to stall terror insurance legislation over a single issue: whether trial lawyers will be able to sue property owners who become victims of terrorism. Lesson: Lawyers beat construction workers, hands down.

The third big trial-lawyer triumph is stopping any restraint on the economic plague of asbestos litigation. Even many Democrats want to answer repeated pleas from the Supreme Court to bring some sanity here. But their Senate colleagues in the party of "working families" refuse to do anything about lawsuits that have busted out from companies that made or sold asbestos and now threaten to bankrupt those that merely used the stuff or knew someone who did. Reform here is dead too.

We recently asked Delaware Democrat Tom Carper about all this clout and he explained it crisply: "Trial lawyers raise a lot of money." He should know. As a rare Democrat willing to challenge the trial bar, he's sponsoring a Senate version of the class-action reform that has already passed the House. But he can't get Mr. Daschle to bring that one up for a vote, either. We're beyond trifecta now, into Grand Slam territory.
Harry Hopkins once said the Democratic electoral formula was tax and spend. Nowadays it's sue and sue, so the settlement proceeds can be recycled into campaign donations. The only thing left is for the lawyers to cut out the middle man and elect one of their own to the White House, which they may do in two years in the person of Mr. Edwards.

The intellectual elite is already rationalizing the Democratic Party's trial-lawyer captivity, as in New Yorker writer Nicholas Lemann's recent massage of Senator Edwards. Lawsuits, he writes, have become "the metaphor that does the political work for liberalism." Oh, please.