Edwards Attacks 'Robber Barons'

[JohnLocke]

Edwards Attacks 'Robber Barons,' Lobbyists to Win Votes in Iowa
By Nicholas Johnston--Bloomburg
Friday, August 17, 2007
----
Aug. 17 (Bloomberg) -- As the Democrats' 2004 vice presidential nominee, John Edwards ran as an ever-smiling optimist. These days, as he tries to catch up to better-funded rivals in Iowa's crucial caucuses, Edwards sounds more like the scourge of corporate America.

In campaign speeches and conversations with voters, the presidential candidate calls some companies ``robber barons.'' Business lobbyists have ``rigged'' the system to block fair trade policies and efforts to curb reliance on overseas oil, he says. Drug and insurance companies are to blame for 83-year-old Marguerite Erickson's $3,000-a-year health bill, he told her at a rally in Perry this week.

Did she believe it? ``You bet,'' she said after the event. ``I think he's got the right idea.''

(...)

Edwards's populist themes are nothing new for him. His standard 2004 campaign speech lamented the existence of ``two different Americas, one for people who have lived the American dream and don't have to worry, and another for most Americans who work hard and still struggle to make ends meet.''

Still, his rhetoric then, and even earlier in the current campaign, lacked the accusatory edge it has acquired in the past month. ``We need to take back America from the Washington insiders running the country,'' he said Aug. 14 in Pocahontas, Iowa. Earlier in the week, Edwards told a crowd in Perry, about 40 miles northwest of Des Moines, that health-care costs remain high because ``we have not taken on and beaten down the drug companies and insurance companies.''

Fischer, who isn't affiliated with anyone's campaign, said Edwards is bringing a new ``passion and emotion'' to his speeches. ``I haven't felt that he has shifted his positions at all,'' he said. ``What he has done is shift the rhetoric around those positions. He has sharpened that part of his message.''

Edwards himself agrees. On the bus he rode in this week to crisscross Iowa, he told reporters that his ``sense of outrage'' increased after a recent three-day tour of poverty-stricken areas through the southern U.S.

During his trip from Louisiana to Kentucky, he said, he met people who didn't have health insurance or adequate schools and were in danger of losing their homes. This had a ``personal effect'' on him, he said. ``They didn't change my views, they just intensified them.''

(...)

``These people have been screwed like nobody in America,'' Saunders, 58, said on the road between campaign stops, gesturing to nearby farmhouses. Edwards, he said, ``is going to screw those who have screwed us.''

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axt0_zeYamvU&refer=home

[iamjoy]

1. He Definitely Has An Edge Now

one he didn't have in 2004.

I don't mean edge as an advantage, I mean that he's no longer Mr. Sunshine.

[Hawkowl]

2. Outrage

That is what I want in my candidate. Passion and someone who will curb these protofascists.

[loudsue]

3. Me too. n/t

:kick:

[FreeStateDemocrat]

4. I was voting for Edwards due to Al not running but if he kepts this up I will not miss Al as much.

I hope he gets a bounce out of this so he can continue, since he is to be the only one that talks like a real Democrat, give'em Hell John! Harry Truman famously said, in response to calls that he “Give ‘em Hell,” that, "I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.”.

[smiley_glad_hands]

6. Same here.

I'm starting to think Al's not going to run. JE has been my favorite (other than Al). I might just open my wallet for him sooner rather than later.

[brentspeak]

5. Jack Welch is on the phone to NBC: "Do whatever it takes to smear Edwards!"

"We can't let this guy get the nomination! Call me back at the Augusta Country Club when you're done.

Waiter, you idiot, I said green olives, not black olives! Now get me green olives, or you'll be back on the boat tomorrow."

[Just-plain-Kathy]

7. There was an article about Edwards in today’s Wall Street Journal...

Edwards, Foreclosure Critic, Has
Investing Tie to Subprime Lenders
By CHRISTOPHER COOPER

...snip

As a presidential candidate, Democrat John Edwards has regularly attacked subprime lenders, particularly those that have filed foreclosure suits against victims of Hurricane Katrina. But as an investor, Mr. Edwards has ties to lenders foreclosing on Katrina victims.

The Wall Street Journal has identified 34 New Orleans homes whose owners have faced foreclosure suits from subprime-lending units of Fortress Investment Group LLC. Mr. Edwards has about $16 million invested in Fortress funds, according to a campaign aide who confirmed a more general Federal Election Commission report. Mr. Edwards worked for Fortress, a publicly held private-equity fund, from late 2005 through 2006.

...end.

The article goes on to say he “would personally provide financial assistance to New Orleanians who are facing foreclosure by Fortress-affiliated businesses or have lost their homes already”.

[jsamuel]

8. RW attack by the WSJ which Edwards opposes it's merger with NewsCorp

Edwards to End Investments With Lenders - "I will find a way to help (people being foreclosed on)"

Edwards to End Investments With Lenders
By MIKE GLOVER 08.17.07, 1:09 PM ET

DES MOINES, Iowa -

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who has called homeownership "the foundation of the American dream," said Friday he will divest his holdings in funds linked to lenders that have foreclosed on Hurricane Katrina victims.

"I will not have my family's money involved in these firms that are foreclosing on people in New Orleans," he told the Associated Press.

...

"My reaction is I'm going to help these people," Edwards said in a telephone interview. "I just learned about this. I don't know the details, I will find out and I will find a way to help them."

Edwards has decried the predatory lending practices that sometimes accompany subprime mortgage lending, which especially target minorities and the elderly, and can tie people to home loans that they can't repay. He has built his campaign on an anti-poverty message and has toured and worked in the neighborhoods devastated by the 2005 hurricane. In fact, a three-day poverty tour he embarked on last month began in New Orleans' hardest hit Lower Ninth Ward.

...

Asked Friday if his investments damaged his image as a poverty fighter, Edward's said: "No. Everyone knows I am completely committed to eliminating poverty in this country. I have the strongest national predatory lending proposal. These are things I will pursue."

Edwards has proposed passing federal laws to prohibit mortgage abuses and help homeowners at risk of foreclosure or bankruptcy.

...

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/17/ap4031168.html

Taylor Marsh says it is a hit piece.
http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=26075

[Just-plain-Kathy]

9. I wasn’t thread-jacking, I just was adding to the conversation.

Hurricane Katrina took place in August of 2005. John Edwards was then a part-time senior advisor to the Fortress Investment Group. As the article stated he has $16 million of his own money invested in the firm. ....I’m simply disappointed that he didn’t know his employer was foreclosing on these victims.

[jsamuel]

10. sorry, I misread your post and that caused me to go a little overboard