Quote of the Day

The worst part is that, as reported by NPR this morning via an interview with a Dallas reporter, she was a huge failure as head of the lottery commission, and used her position to purge the Democrats.

some of her lovely accomplishments
from the:
http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002383.html

So far, intriguing...but it gets better, and more complicated. At roughly the same time all of this was happening, Miers was also the Bush-named chair of the scandal-plagued Texas Lottery Commission. The biggest issue before Miers and the commission was whether to retain lottery operator Gtech, which had been implicated in a bribery scandal. Gtech's main lobbyist in Texas in the mid-1990s? None other than that same Ben Barnes who had the goods on how Bush got into the Guard and avoided Vietnam.

In 1997, Barnes was abruptly fired by Gtech. That's a bad thing, right? Well, on the other hand, they also gave him a $23 million severance payment. A short time later, Gtech -- despite the ongoing scandals -- got its contract renewed over two lower bidders. A former executive director thought the whole thing stunk:

The suit involving Barnes was brought by former Texas lottery director Lawrence Littwin, who was fired by the state lottery commission, headed by Bush appointee Harriet Miers, in October 1997 after five months on the job. It contends that Gtech Corp., which runs the state lottery and until February 1997 employed Barnes as a lobbyist for more than $3 million a year, was responsible for Littwin's dismissal.

Littwin's lawyers have suggested in court filings that Gtech was allowed to keep the lottery contract, which Littwin wanted to open up to competitive bidding, in return for Barnes's silence about Bush's entry into the Guard.

Barnes and his lawyers have denounced this "favor-repaid" theory in court pleadings as "preposterous . . . fantastic [and] fanciful." Littwin was fired after ordering a review of the campaign finance reports of various Texas politicians for any links to Gtech or other lottery contractors. But Littwin wasn't hired, or fired, until months after Barnes had severed his relationship with Gtech.

Littwin reportedly settled with Gtech for $300,000. This all could be interesting fodder for a Miers confirmation hearing this fall. But Bush apparently went for Miers' top two credentials:

Loyalty...and a little inside information.

Miers Headed Law Firm Repeatedly Forced to Pay Damages For Defrauding Investors

In case anyone thought Harriet Miers wasn't a corporate-shill-in-White-House-clothing, take a gander at how Miers did her best Ken Lay impression while heading a major Texas corporate law firm. That's right, according to the 5/1/00 newsletter Class Action Reporter, Miers headed Locke, Liddell & Sapp at the time the firm was forced to pay $22 million to settle a suit asserting that "it aided a client in defrauding investors."

The details of the case are both nauseating and highly troubling, considering President Bush is considering putting Miers at the top of America's legal system. Under Miers' leadership, the firm represented the head of a "foreign currency trading company [that] was allegedly a Ponzi scheme." The law firm admitted that it "knew in March 1998 that $8 million in [the company's] losses hadn't been reported to investors" but didn't tell regulators.

This wasn't an isolated incident, either. The Austin American-Statesman reported in 2001 that Miers' law firm was forced to pay another $8 million for a similar scheme to defraud investors. The suit, which dealt with actions the firm took under Miers in the late 1990s, was again quite troubling. As the 9/20/00 Texas Lawyer reported, Miers' firm helped a now-convicted con man "defraud investors and allowed the firm's [bank] account to be used as a 'conduit.'" The suit said "money from investors that went into the firm's trust account was deposited into [the con man's] bank accounts and was used to pay for his 'expensive toys.'"

If you think Miers wasn't involved in any of this - think again. Miers wasn't just any old lawyer at the firm. She was the Managing Partner - the big cheese. True, she could claim she had no idea this was going on. But that would be as laughable/pathetic/transparent as the Enron executives who made the same ones after they ripped off investors.

I wrote earlier today that Democrats must focus on the fact that Miers' defining career experience up until her nomination was being a Bush crony. These new details about her career only enhance that case, in that it shows she is just like the other corrupt corporate cronies like Enron's Ken ("Kenny Boy") Lay that Bush has surrounded himself with over the years. There is no room on the Supreme Court for people like Miers who are clearly entirely compromised by partisan/corporate loyalties - loyalties that might make her an attractive candidate to the a corrupt elitists who run today's Republican Party, but a danger to the interests of ordinary Americans.

Sources:
Miers headed law firm fined for defrauding investors:
http://www.nathannewman.org/log/archives/003439.shtml
Details of first case that Miers' law firm was fined for:
http://bankrupt.com/CAR_Public/000501.MBX
Earlier post on Dems' strategy in facing Miers' nomination:
http://bankrupt.com/CAR_Public/000501.MBX

That line ranks right up there on the stupidity meter with, "You're doing a hell of a job Brownie."

This is the fuunniest quote, surely: "I've come to agree with the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who wrote about the importance of having judges who are drawn from a wide diversity of professional backgrounds."

Ahem. John Roberts: White House lawyer. Harriet Miers: White House lawyer