Liz Warren

       It seems that the latest Far right schmuck indoor sport is bashing Senator Elizabeth Warren. From Trumps' repeated "Pocohontas" insult, to the new fave, throwing stones at her because she was a highly paid Harvard Law professor before her Senate gig.

The new slurs go along the line "Warren was paid $430,000 annually for teaching a class at Harvard." This is actually the setup for then wondering how she can claim to represent the economically disadvantaged when she is a "one percenter."

       What has passed relatively unnoticed is that Senator Marco Rubio, that hero of the poor and downtrodden, termed out in the Florida House, was paid $69,000 annually by Florida International for teaching a class during which by his co-teacher's admission, he missed  30% of the sessions altogether. The class was not a law class (Rubio's area of study, although he has no teaching credentials) Although his salary was reduced in subsequent years, he continued teaching (or at least on Florida International University's payroll) into 2013 - two years after being sworn in as a US Senator! It is no secret that Rubio has had financial "issues" since his time as speaker of the Florida House, so perhaps he needed the extra job. He has also received compensation from FIU for "consulting' whatever that is.

So to review; we have a sitting US Senator still nominally working at a teaching gig 1000 or so miles south of his office to which we Floridians elected him and for which we pay him $174,000 annually plus benefits.

       So what about the senator from Massachusetts? Was she just a highly paid “no (or sometime) show”, doing no work and being over paid?  Her salary was less than the top professor in the Harvard school of medicine, although her resume is second to no one in the nation in her field.  First issue, she was paid in the high three hundred thousands , vice the stated $430,000, the rest coming from paid consulting jobs.  A significant portion of that pay was compensation in the form of a faculty mortgage subsidy and housing allowance. Warren was not a fiscally struggling state legislator when she went to Harvard and the big bucks, but a tenured professor with 34 years of university level Law School Teaching. 

       Elizabeth Warren started her academic career as a lecturer at Rutgers School of Law–Newark in 1977. She moved to the University of Houston Law Center (1978–83), where she became Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in 1980 and obtained tenure in 1981. She taught at the University of Texas School of Law as visiting associate professor in 1981 and returned as a full professor two years later (staying 1983–87). In addition, she was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan (1985) and research associate at the Population Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin (1983–87). Early in her career, Warren became a proponent of on-the-ground research based on studying how people actually respond to laws in the real world. Her work analyzing court records, and interviewing judges, lawyers, and debtors, established her as a rising star in the field of bankruptcy law. Rubio academically, can't carry her undies to the laundry.

Warren joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School as a full professor in 1987 and obtained an endowed chair in 1990 (becoming William A Schnader Professor of Commercial Law). She taught for a year at Harvard Law School in 1992 as Robert Braucher Visiting Professor of Commercial Law. In 1995, Warren left Penn to become Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. As of 2011, she was the only tenured law professor at Harvard who attended law school at an American public university. At Harvard, Warren became one of the most highly cited law professors in the United States.

        No one, as far as I can determine, has ever cited Marco Rubio about anything of substance, let alone in the area of law! Although she had published in many fields, her expertise was in bankruptcy. In the field of bankruptcy and commercial law, only Douglas Baird of Chicago, Alan Schwartz of Yale, and Bob Scott of Columbia have citation rates comparable to that of Warren. Warren's scholarship and public advocacy were the impetus behind the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

       In 2009, the Boston Globe named her the Bostonian of the Year and the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts honored her with the Lelia J. Robinson Award. She was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2009, 2010 and 2015. The National Law Journal repeatedly has named Warren as one of the Fifty Most Influential Women Attorneys in America, and in 2010 it honored her as one of the 40 most influential attorneys of the decade. In 2011, Warren was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.

In 2009, Warren became the first professor in Harvard's history to win the law school's The Sacks–Freund Teaching Award for a second time. In 2011, she delivered the commencement address at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark, where she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

      In debates, some have mentioned Warren’s Harvard salary — tax returns show it was close to $350,000 her last full year — and criticized her teaching workload. Harvard Law professors spend, on average, five hours a week in the classroom, with the bulk of their time reserved for research, writing, student advising, and administrative tasks. “Professor,” as critics use it, has become a somewhat pejorative title, something less than an honorific — an image conjured of Warren as Harvard elitist, liberal ideologue, scolding schoolmarm.

       At Harvard, she is known as none of those. Widely admired by students and faculty, she is considered tough but fair, whip smart but warm, inspiring, and accessible. Warren, who is on leave, because she actually shows up for her Senate gig, has won student-nominated teaching awards at four of the five universities where she has taught, including Harvard’s Sacks-Freund Award — twice — as voted by the graduating class.

       Senator Elizabeth Warren has missed just 11 of over 1093 roll call votes in her time in the Senate, Rubio has only shown up 7.1% of the time! Based on attendance Warren is worth a whole lot more than she's being paid., and Rubio considerably less.

       The real reason, of course for the slanderous treatment of Senator Warren, is to attempt to demean and diminish the impact of her advocacy for the financially disadvantaged. I guess the twisted logic is along the lines of "How can she care about the poor when she's so wealthy?"

       Here's how; she's been there! Warren was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to working class parents.  She was their fourth child, with three older brothers. When she was 12, her father, a janitor, had a heart attack—which led to many medical bills, as well as a pay cut because he could not do his previous work. Eventually, this led to the loss of their car from failure to make loan payments. To help the family finances, her mother found work in the catalog order department at Sears. When she was 13, Warren started waiting tables at her aunt's restaurant. So, spare me the "how can she identify with the economically disadvantaged" drivel!

       Warren became a star member of the debate team at Northwest Classen High School and won the title of "Oklahoma's top high school debater" while competing with debate teams from high schools throughout the state. She also won a debate scholarship to George Washington University at the age of 16. Initially aspiring to be a teacher, she left GWU after two years to marry her high school boyfriend.

       Warren moved to Houston with her husband, who was a NASA engineer. There she enrolled in the University of Houston, graduating in 1970 with a Bachelor of Science degree in speech pathology and audiology. For a year, she taught children with disabilities in a public school, based on an "emergency certificate", as she had not taken the education courses required for a regular teaching certificate. Again, super creds!

       Warren and her husband moved again, for his work, to New Jersey, where, after becoming pregnant, she decided to remain at home to care for their child. After their daughter turned two, Warren enrolled at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark, still a stay at home mom.  Shortly before her graduation in 1976, Warren became pregnant with their second child. After receiving her J.D. and passing the bar examination, she began to work as a lawyer from home, writing wills and doing real estate closings. Hardly the high life.  

       So, the next time one decides to slander Senator Elizabeth Warren, chastise her for succeeding in a male dominated profession, or diminish he on the basis of gender, one might want to consider that she has risen not through social position or daddy's money, but by intellect, determination and skill. She stands head and shoulders above any Republican candidate imaginable.