Member of the reality-based community of progressive (not anonymous) Massachusetts blogs
On Sunday, in Lowell, Scott Brown held a rally. (Actually, it was more like a really?) But that can happen when you use such flawed surrogates, like Kelly Ayotte:
“I absolutely support and believe in marriage as between a man and a woman, and I do think it’s unfortunate that our state has made a different decision on that. And I know that many of you who are out there working at the state level, running for state office, I commend your efforts to repeal that law here in the state of New Hampshire. And I think that’s very important.
On Sunday, Kelly Ayotte helped Scott Brown diss on Elizabeth Warren and Federal Student Loan programs:
“Don’t let her fool you on that one,” Ayotte said, as more than 100 supporters cheered.
Brown said bills like the student-loan proposal backed by Warren are “not jobs bills, they’re tax bills.”
Yikes! 100+? The Brown clique should have kept it at the SAC club, like the last two times.
Elizabeth Warren held, what I would call, a RALLY. This rally was out in Northampton, on Sunday afternoon.
Elizabeth Warren draws 1,000 supporters in Northampton (more…)
Teddy Panos should be commended for putting these sorts of things on the intertubes. Especially, the local stuff. Radio Replay is good for Lowell!
Ban on assault weapons? Why bring that up?
By now, you’ve probably seen all three lying scumbag ads from Scott Brown tripling down on the Cherokee heritage thing. In it, he outright lies, since there is evidence that Warren did NOT get ahead because of her listing herself in a lawyer’s directory as having Native blood, and there no evidence whatsoever that she did get ahead. Yet the ads say over and over “she got ahead” because of it. (The ONLY argument you can make is that Harvard, for a time, “got ahead” by listing her a female minority briefly. However, Warren was hired by then, and she had nothing to do with that. To accuse her of “lying to get ahead” is to A) assume she is lying about her heritage that was passed down by her parents, and B) that everyone and everything that has come out about how she never used this to get her jobs is lying. Occam’s Razor, people.)
You might have also seen the latest ad where Brown attacks her work on the asbestos case he has been bringing up over and over at debates. He selectively pulled out quotes from the Globe which were seriously out of context, and distorted the truth to the point of lying again.
This is the result of having a Karl Rove acolyte running your campaign. Everyone remembers the swiftboating of John Kerry - lying about his war record, taking what is a big strength of Kerry’s and making it an albatross around his neck. It became so synonymous with Karl Rove tactic it became its own verb.
I think the voters of Massachusetts deserve way better than Karl Rovian, swiftboating lying scummy campaigns. And so do the people affected by the asbestos lawsuit against Travelers…not a one of the victims, workers, or any other person on the victim’s side of that lawsuit from Travelers has said anything but positive things on Warren’s role in the case, preserving future victims’ rights to sue and get compensated. The “disastrous results” Brown quotes in his ad are from long after Warren left the case, in a decision that Warren utterly disagrees with (vacating the payments).
So also say the Asbestos Workers Local 6. If Warren indeed was on the side of wrong on the asbestos case, these are the people you would think would be applauding Brown for his attacks and highlighting of this issue. Instead, they are calling on Brown to pull his ad immediately for being a lie. Via BMG, their open letter (bold mine):
Dear Senator Brown:
At your first debate with Elizabeth Warren, you accused her of siding with Travelers Insurance Company to deny people with asbestos poisoning their benefits and added, “I hope all the Asbestos Union Workers are watching right now.”
As the Business Manager of Asbestos Workers Local 6 – which represents 450 asbestos workers in Massachusetts – I can attest that many of us were watching and were shocked and upset by your mischaracterizations and politicization of this serious issue. We were also disappointed to see your totally unsupported and unsupportable subsequent allegation that asbestos victims “have died as a result of her efforts,” as well as to see you repeating these false attacks in your second debate and in a new false, misleading, and offensive television attack advertisement.
The truth is that Elizabeth Warren represented Travelers at a time when the company was on the same side as a vast majority of asbestos victims. Elizabeth fought for a principle that most asbestos victims agree with strongly: that settlement trusts are an important part of the law and should be continued to be used. To say otherwise is either ignorant of the facts or a cynical lie designed to trick people to vote for you.
Mesothelioma is a type of cancer caused by asbestos exposure. There is no cure for mesothelioma and the average life expectancy from diagnosis is generally from six to eighteen months. In our union, many of us have watched family members and or friends suffer and die painful deaths from this horrible disease.
We think it is inappropriate of you to use misleading personal attacks to distract people from your record against working families in Massachusetts, and we think it is offensive for you to campaign on the backs of suffering mesothelioma victims to win votes.
We would like to request a meeting to discuss this issue with you further as soon as possible and certainly before the next debate on Oct. 10, and before you make more false attacks. We are indeed watching your comments on this and other issues and have a keen interest in them.
Sincerely,
Francis C. Boudrow
Business Manager
International Association of Heat & Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers Local #6
303 Freeport Street
Dorchester, MA 02122
(617) 436-4666
Anyone wanna take the bet that Brown will meet with them or pull his ads? Didn’t think so.
I hope Dick Howe goes back to history and art, ’cause he’ll put all of us out of business.
I don’t usually comment on anything contained in the Sunday Lowell Sun “Column“, but one item this week caught my attention. It wasn’t that developer David Daly employed former city manager John Cox as a “consultant” on his proposal for a housing development on Westview Road, although that did explain a lot, especially the newspaper’s one-sided support for that project. (Note: I live on Westview and oppose the project). And it wasn’t that Daly, who I assume intends to continue doing business in Lowell into the future, took some very public and strong shots at state representative Kevin Murphy and Lowell Mayor Patrick Murphy, two guys with long memories and well-established political skills. No, the thing that really caught my attention was the section about former state senator Steve Panagiotakos predicting the defeat of not only Elizabeth Warren, but also of his former House colleague Colleen Garry, …
.
by his own hand.
New Year 2010, the shit had hit the fan for the Coakley campaign. Scott Brown was taking off and Democrats at local, state and national levels were piling into MA to try to stop it. Locally, we were making calls, person to person,to try to stir up Dems to go vote. Another tactic employed, frankly, overemployed, was robocalls. These taped messages were coming in from prominent Democrats, like Bill Clinton, to try to spur Dems to go vote in the special election. When I would talk to folks on the phone, I got yelled at for all the calls being done. But, worst of all, the robocalls were despised.
Since, Scott Brown doesn’t have that much organic support, he is a creature of the special interest fabricated “Tea Party,” there aren’t enough motivated Brown supporters to make person to person calls on his behalf. Enter Karl Rove and the robocalls. Thanks to the Mother Jones Blog:
TRANSCRIPT: Today, you can change your future by voting against Elizabeth Warren. A vote for Warren is a vote for the same type of government failures that got us into the situation we are currently in. Warren supports President Obama’s health-care takeover that will cut over $700 billion from Medicare spending. The health-care law backed by Warren could limit the availability of care seniors depend on from the Medicare program they paid for. Vote no on Elizabeth Warren for Senate this November. Paid for by Crossroads GPS.
This robocall was recorded here in Lowell, just a few days ago:
Map graphics come from the Boston Globe. URLs are provided.
This one is from 2008 and shows Obama leaving McCain in his dust. The thing to remember about this election is it had the highest Lowell turnout (31,905) since 1992 (32,984).
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/election_results/ma_president/
Scott Brown isn’t the brightest bulb on the porch.
This is a screen grab from his latest ad:
When I drive through “Old Lowell,” I see plenty of Scott Brown & Eileen Donoghue campaign signs cohabitating the lawns. Does Brown really think he will come out on top, if he tries to force Lowellians into a “push comes to shove?”
There may be a tiny Lowell crew that giggles at the idea of putting a crown on Eileen’s head. I wonder if trying to tie Warren around Donoghue’s neck, like the proverbial albatross, will have the same fantastic results?
In my politcal travels, several have poo-poo’d the importance of endorsements. They are skeptical that the face of a young Mayor, or even a decidely older one, can make any difference in the voter turnout and final results.
My skeptical pals may have overlooked that there is more to endorsements than the momentary media spotlight. A popular Mayor can motivate others to engage the campaign.
Lowell for Elizabeth WarrenRoom was crowded behind photographer. See all those Canvass packs? They were gone by the end of the day. More are stacked beside the Mayor for Sunday.
Now, I wrote this diary too late, so we missed the 10am canvass. But, there is the 2pm on deck:
Sunday – September 23, 2012 at 2:00 PM
Lowell Coordinated Canvass
Field Office at 73 East Merrimack Street
Canvassing is fun, btw. If you never have done it before, you’ll get paired up with a seasoned activist.
(more…)
Poor Gov. Chris Christie. Coming off an awful Republican convention in which he was a keynote, Standard and Poor’s “lowered its credit outlook for New Jersey from stable to negative.” Why so? (Bold mine.)
While Standard & Poor’s did not change the state’s AA- rating — one of the worst among the states — it warned the more drastic step of a lower rating loomed if Christie’s nearly 8 percent growth in revenue failed to materialize.
[…]
“We revised the outlook to reflect our view of the risk of revenue assumptions we view as optimistic, continued reliance on one-time measures to offset revenue shortfalls, and longer-term growing expenditure pressures,” John Sugden, a credit analyst for Standard & Poor’s, said.
[…]
Christie has spent much of the year boasting of a “Jersey Comeback” — an assertion that has fizzled in recent months as state revenue has fallen short of expectations, unemployment has risen and foreclosures remain a drag on the real estate market.
What’s Christie’s risky revenue assumption? That cutting taxes will increase the state’s revenues! The Governor’s response to S&P? Double down!
Unswayed by the latest batch of economic news, Christie repeated his call for an income tax cut at an appearance in Bergen County and said it was a “joke” that Democrats had not yet delivered the cut.
I hate having to state the obvious, but…trickle-down economics doesn’t work. Cutting taxes does not increase revenues. It decreases revenues. If I get a pay cut at work, I don’t take in more money than I did before the cut.
Why is basic math so hard for conservatives to understand? Look, we can disagree, and do, about what government should be involved in and how much it should spend. But can we, please, just agree on basic freaking addition and subtraction? George H.W. Bush called Reagan’s supply-side plans “voodoo economics” over thirty years ago - he was right then, and he’s still right. Tax cuts have slashed revenues in states who have implemented them, and destroyed our national budgets. Conservatives complain about deficits but make them worse…the Bush tax cuts account for a very large percent of our deficit right now, along with his war bill, and the severe downturn he left behind him.
If I was a more cynical sort, I’d say that most trickle-down adherents actually know that what they peddle is a crock of snake oil, but they inflict the country with this policy anyway so that when the deficit inevitably balloons, they can slash the budget in places that will hurt the worst off in our country - that they really, underneath it all, mean “trickle-UP” - cutting taxes for the wealthy so their buddies can get even more gawd-awfully rich and the gap between them and the rest of us gets wider.
And a number of conservatives do know this, and do do this, aka the Norquist “drown it in a bathtub” admission. But I believe the real core of the Republican party, especially its voters, are merely obsessed with “supply-side economics” in a religious way, clinging to trickle-down dogma. You know, like when you see an interview with Tom Cruise, and the host tries to talk about the science of mental health, and Tom Cruise bounces up and down on the couch in denial that mental disease even exists, because his crazy ass religion tells him so. You can try to get him to stop bouncing and listen to the empirical evidence, but dogma prevents him from hearing you.
Well, that’s most trickle-down adherents for you. They keep bouncing, because if they stop and actually think logically, never mind view and digest the evidence against it, it would throw their entire worldview upside down, and that is a very uncomfortable place to be.
(Article via dkos.)
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