Dressed in gently faded jeans and a solid dark-blue sport shirt, John Edwards sauntered across the stage of the Northwest Junior High School auditorium on a hot Saturday morning in June, talking to a labor union audience that was warm to him from his opening words. “My view is not that complicated,” Edwards told the charter convention of Iowa’s Change… return to article
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Reader Comments (9)Page 1 of 1 pagesJohn Edwards is not the obvious posterboy for either poverty or unions. He has no history as an advocate for either cause, either as a lawyer or as a politician.
On the contrary, Edwards has done much to impoverish the very people he seeks to represent. Doctors in North Carolina cite Edwards as a main cause of the rise in their medical malpractice premiums, dating back to when Edwards was winning multi-million dollar awards in medical malpractice suits and driving some doctors out of North Carolina or out of the medical profession altogether. Higher insurance premiums and fewer medical practitioners both serve to raise the cost and limit the availability of medical services for everyone.
So, how did Edwards come to adopt poverty and unions as the signature themes in his presidential campaign? By process of elimination, obviously.
Edwards certainly could not run as a rich tort lawyer, because being a tort lawyer and being rich are causes of diapprobation in this political climate. He had no foreign policy experience. He had no domestic experience. He had no work experience. He had no technical experience. He evidenced no scientific training or experience, as his emotional courtroom arguments convinced jurors, but were widely discounted and ridiculed by the medical and scientific communities.
As improbable and ludicrous as it is, becoming the champion of the poor and of the working man was the only semi-plausible route open to Edwards. Now, if he can just reconcile his $400 haircuts with the attitudes and aspirations of working people.
Politics and ambition make strange bedfellows.
Posted by scorp on Jul 23, 2007 at 10:30 AM Doctors pay high medical insurance premiums because they or their colleagues occasionally commit medical malpractice. Someone fails to perform a necessary test, usually because the health insurance provider won’t cover the entire cost of the procedure, or prescribes a poorly tested medication, and a patient is crippled for life, or dead. That you would sympathize with the people who commit the malpractice, and against the people who suffer it, betrays your typical preference for the upper middle-class professional over the working-class laborer. I suppose in your fantasyland of a perfect free-market economy we should all just shut up and be grateful for whatever medical attention we can get from your noble colleagues in the modern medical priesthood. Unfortunately, the people who actually work for a living are the same people who can least afford to pay for the professional services of those who sit on their fat butts all day and pretend to do likewise.
Posted by Major Major on Jul 23, 2007 at 6:20 PM MM -
You really need to get yourself better informed. There is this marvelous Internet system called “Google” which contains all kinds of fascinating information. I highly recommend it.
Edwards earned (?) 50 awards of $1 million or more, and he kept one-third of each award. Edwards concentrated on psychiatric and cerebral palsey malpractice cases, and the science does not support the arguments that Edwards convinced the jurors of. Do not end a sentence with a preposition.
Edwards used a combination of psychic chicanery, witchdoctory, and flim-flamery to make himself very rich, and fifty unfortunate people moderately rich, and left millions of people in North Carolina and across the nation paying out tens or hundreds of dollars for increased insurance costs.
And you find virtue in this? You not only need a strong dose of information and facts, your values could stand some upgrading.
Posted by scorp on Jul 23, 2007 at 11:39 PM Public service is one of the noblest of causes an individual can undertake; a task undertaken by Edwards for which he deserves much credit. Regardless of his history as a trial lawyer and how he made his money, there is no doubt in my mind that he is genuinely in the pursuit of helping America’s poor. He has thus far dedicated and proven himself to a cause which most politicians seem to ignore. He has definitely done the work at the grassroots level
Posted by DavionRL on Jul 24, 2007 at 12:36 PM Davion -
You are as gullible as a goose.
In twenty years as a tort lawyer, Edwards made himself rich, and did absolutely nothing to help the poor, except for the fifty people whose cases he won. Millions of people in North Crolina and across the nation ended up paying higher insurance premiums.
After becoming rich, Edwards opted for political power, and then he discovered the attractiveness of poverty and unions. How convenient!
He (Edwards) has thus far dedicated and proven himself to a cause which most politicians seem to ignore.
You shitting me, boy? There was a man named Johnson who was President, who initiated a poverty program, which was a part of his “Great Society” programs. The poverty programs cost $6 trillion from the 1960s to the 1990s. The results were a disaster, destroying black families and achieving no beneficial results. It was so bad, President Clinton cancelled much of the welfare programs.
I suspect you genuinely do not know any of this. If you are that ignorant, what do you expect me to do about it, send you to school?
Posted by scorp on Jul 24, 2007 at 5:30 PM Unionism and unions are dying in American because too many Americans have drunk the Koolaid about this nation delivering ‘Equal Opportunity’ and ‘Meritocracy for ‘All’. In reality, the US has degenerated into a dangerously divided nation of ‘Haves’ and ‘Have Nots’.
John Edwards is just one example of Wealthy Euro-Americans masquerading as a ‘Man of the People’ when in fact he is a driving force behind the ‘Decline & Fall of American Democracy’. Despite his Wealth, Edwards has fostered an image of himself as an Egalitarian and an Everyman Candidate knwoing full well he will do absolutely NOTHING to endanger his Wealth or his capability to protect and expand it at the expense of the 95% of Americans who have made and make this nation an albeit ‘flagging’ Democracy.
He has no real interest in the Poor, Poverty or Economic Inequality. He’s merely staked out a highly popular segment of the Political Spectrum other candidates have left unattended. In short, he is just another Political Hypocrite grounded in personal self interest and greed. You will note how he accumulated his Wealth and he has spent his recent career ‘temperizing’ on his position to ensure its continued protection.
Americans MUST KEEP THEIR EYE ON THE BALL and realize he is too short on Integrity to be a Man of the Poor or a Union Man. He is not so foolish as to advocate - realistically - a movement that is too volatile for these times and which has seen its day. More to the point, he is no Hubert Humphrey or Paul Wellstone. Like so many candidates, he has let his Wealth and Position go to his head and explode his Moral Compass. In short, he is a shill who has hitched his political horse to an issue Americans MUST deal with but with which he will not - ever…
Posted by Joseph Conrad on Jul 25, 2007 at 9:23 AM At no point did I say that the man was saint or that he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize. All I am saying is that he is currently one of only a few politicians that actually talk about poverty, and I think he deserves some credit for it. Regradless of his motives, it is issue that needs to be discussed I and don’t see or hear many others doing it.
Furthermore your attempt to attack my intellegence and call me names is unwarranted. If we are going to have a discussion fine, but lets do it the right way. I left high school a long time ago and will not entertain this. At the end of the day we can agree to disagree......
Posted by DavionRL on Jul 25, 2007 at 10:27 AM Edward is responsible for rising malpractice insurance premiums? Ya’ gotta’ be kiddin’.
Who is responsible for the HUGE increases in health care costs? Malpractice lawyers? Baloney! Their combined “take” doesn’t even register on the medial industry’s seismograph. I am no fan of attorneys, but let’s put the blame where it belongs: the troika of for-profit providers, the pharmaceutical cartel, and the insurance industry are all responsible. The tired old “blame the lawyers” refrain was Bush’s answer in 2000. He lied about that back then just as he’s lied about nearly everything else ever since
Scorp (the Bill O’Reilly wanna’ be) is just a mouthpiece for the mean-spirited right. Pay him no mind. (I’ll wager someone he cares about is on Medicare.) Medicare is one of the most successful social programs of all time. It came about under Johnson. And the “$6 trillion from the 1960s to the 1990s” figure he cites to fund all of the Great Society programs is a drop in the bucket when compared to the $2.2 trillion the health care industry pulls down FOR ITSELF each year. Administrative costs for the private insurance combine run over 25%. Compare that to Medicare’s 3% - 4%.
From where I am sitting it is impossible for me to know how many folks posting on the site do anything more than post (whine). One of the major problems with America is that vox populi gets its “news” from the FOX, CNN, and Hannity crowd. If change is what you want, do something to bring it about! I put in several hours each week on behalf of New Deal principles.
Get out and door bell. Advocate for something instead of being against everything. Get active in your political party. Speak out on social issues and peace. (Odd, ain’t it? Not one person mentioned Edwards’ call to get out of Iraq now.)
In closing, a line from Sicko sums up much of what is wrong. “In France, the government fears the people. In the U.S., the people fear the government”. (You know that is true. Otherwise why would so many people allow the neocon president and his GOP cronies to steal our rights and get away with all the corruption they have rained-down on working class Americans?)
Posted by Rich Austin on Jul 28, 2007 at 7:03 PM Who is Scorp? Who are you? Google search? try using it yourself. Edwards founded the Poverty Research Center at UNC-Chapel Hill. He did it after he left the Senate. He did it because he came from a poverty sticken family. It’s an issue he lived. It’s also something he overcame. And yes, he did it as a trial lawyer, and unless you were in the room, involved in the case, then perhaps you shouldn’t speak. The way John Edwards speaks about the issue of poverty does not strike me as callous, the way I felt when George W. Bush spoke about compassion as he was killing a record number of people on death row in Texas, people who lacked the basic fairness guaranteed by our constitution. People found to have an IQ of 50, people who had public defenders who fell asleep in court, people who admitted to their crimes and then spent their entire time in prison working to better the lives of prisoners who had a chance to get out and start a better life. He mocked them as they were about to die and then spoke of compassion. Edwards populism does not sound like this. His ideas are big and they are frightening. They are not about throwing money at programs like LBJ. His ideas speak to creating new industries, and new paradigm, to fundamentally change how our wealth is earned and shared.
So, Scorp. Have an original idea. Contribute to the debate. Don’t demean it. Step outside yourself and notice how all the candidates are shifting the debate. They are following John Edwards lead. They are starting to make eradicating poverty an issue. They followed his lead on universal health care (which would lower malpractice costs, by the way), they have followed his lead on Iraq, they keep following and attempting to hijack his message.
I’m done. Feel free to rip me up with a post, Scorp. I won’t reply. I have original ideas to share and spread. What have you got?
Posted by donarmado on Aug 1, 2007 at 2:43 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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