Here’s Elizabeth Warren calling out GE for paying no taxes in her announcement video. This is going to be a fun race, and third-party spending will probably break records.
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[…] Balloon Juice. September 14, 2011 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Political Theatre | Bookmark this post […]
Amanda in the South Bay
I guess I want to know…how the fuck is Scott Brown so popular? Massachusettians are letting me down.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Donate to your local Democratic candidates, then to Obama, and then to Warren. Even for us “pragmatists”, having her in the Senate will mean way more than just having one less Republican. We are seriously missing the kinds of Senators that will constantly speak up and fight for issues like this.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m in. I’ve always liked and admired Elizabeth Warren, and I will support her campaign as much as the law and my own resources allow. Georgia is far from Massachusetts geographically, philosophically, politically, and in a dozen other metrics. But having this woman in the United States Senate will make that body a better institution and will make this country a better place to live.
Citizen Alan
Is Scott Brown “popular” in Massachusetts? He doesn’t really have a strong legislative record and more than anything else just seems to get by on likeability. He was popular enough to beat one of the worst campaigners in recent memory (that Coakley idiot), but I’m not sure what that proves.
Rhoda
I’m sending as much money her way as I can; I really hope she pulls this out because a voice like that in the senate would be amazing. She deserves Ted Kennedy’s seat.
reflectionephemeral
How to get involved in the campaign? I’m a born and bred Massachusettsian, without much money to donate at the moment…
Special Patrol Group
I may go broke donating to Ms. Warren. Beats giving it to the dog track, I suppose.
burnspbesq
Meanwhile, the final Coast Guard/BOMERE report on the Deepwater Horizon disaster is out. Haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but the executive summary seems to be “BP blew it big time.” It doesn’t seem to say that “BP was criminally negligent,” but that’s really for DOJ to decide.
Full text is here.
http://www.deepwaterinvestigation.com/go/doc/3043/1193483/
c u n d gulag
I’m just hoping the debates are broadcast into eastern NY State.
That should be good for some shits and giggles.
But I still think Brown will almost certainly win.
Because, unless Brown says or does something incredibly stupid, a dimwit with a pick-up truck trumps someone with a vagina almost every time – no matter how dumb the guy driving the pick-up is, or how smart a woman that vagina’s attached to.
He’ll be looked at as folksy.
She’ll just be another smart angry bitch.
I sure do hope I’m wrong on this one.
There is no better person to fill Kennedy’s seat than Warren.
burnspbesq
It’s entirely possible that GE didn’t owe any Federal income tax for whatever year is being talked about. The nature and global scale of GE’s business pretty much guarantees that it benefits from nearly every benefit that Congress has seen fit to bake into the Internal Revenue Code. And the GE tax department is full of smart people who know how to take full advantage of whatever benefits Congress sees fit to make available.
The beef here is with Congress, not GE.
gene108
Should be amended. Third-party spending by Wall Street and other big businesses to keep Mrs. Warren from being elected will be break records.
Thanks to the Citizens United decision the money businesses are going to pour into MA to keep her from being elected will be unbelievable.
Nevgu
And like every other popular progressive candidate she will lose. So I hope the Dems learned their lesson last time and pick someone who can win this time. Picking Warren would be the dumbest thing they can do and since they have already screwed up once they have nobody left to blame but themselves this time.
boss bitch
@Amanda in the South Bay:
He’s got a pretty face and doesn’t say much. Very good at staying below the radar.
Linda Featheringill
@reflectionephemeral:
How to get involved:
I imagine her website includes contact information. You might give somebody a call and talk to them. They would probably welcome you with open arms.
SiubhanDuinne
@reflectionephemeral:
I would imagine there are plenty of opportunities to volunteer. Go to ElizabethWarren.com and I bet you’ll be dizzy from the range of opportunities from now to election day.
gene108
@burnspbesq:
Agreed.
The difference between accounting standards for tax purposes and for financial reporting are enough to create “tax breaks” for businesses.
It’s not the businesses fault for taking advantage of existing laws.
beltane
Did you know that Ron Paul is having a Constitution Day money bomb on 9/17? Would it be illegal to start a Republican PAC that donates a few dollars to GOP candidates and uses the rest on “expenses”? If so, that could be an excellent money-making opportunity for someone out there. If we are to be surrounded by stupid people, it almost seems like a crime not to profit off of their stupidity.
Linda Featheringill
What are Elizabeth’s chances? Dunno.
But I suspect the Opposition will have to get up before breakfast to beat her. She is a force to be reckoned with.
[and maybe some more cliches. :-)]
gnomedad
I hate to adopt the meme, but I like her because she pisses off Republicans.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
If GE was taking every legally available measure to in effect pay no taxes, the problem is obviously with the tax laws…and GE’s lobbying efforts to make sure that the tax laws permit them to do so.
So, yeah, the problem IS with Congress.
FlipYrWhig
I can’t understand why anyone besides actual corporate tycoons wouldn’t love Elizabeth Warren. That said, I don’t know anything about her views on any other subject than banking and consumer rights.
Linda Featheringill
gnomedad: #19
It is going to be fun to watch, isn’t it?
burnspbesq
@c u n d gulag:
There are several data points that your hypothesis, as stated, cannot adequately explain. You may wish to either elaborate or restate.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@gene108: So, are you OK with Murdoch’s empire getting money from the government because of their creative use of shuffling money?
boss bitch
We need to maintain or get a better Dem majority in the Senate. We don’t need another “voice”, we need more votes. I don’t know about record dollars being spent to defeat her but there will be record dollars spent by Repubs to take back the Senate and to keep the House. Don’t just focus on Warren.
Linda Featheringill
BTW, I replayed her announcement with the sound off in order to analyze it visually. Very well done, with a good deal of sophistication. It looks like she has some very competent people working with her.
And yes, I know visuals are superficial but they are a big part of the campaign.
beergoggles
Brown won because he was out there campaigning and meeting people while Coakley was complaining that it was too cold to go out and greet people. Brown also did the sports radio rounds which got him a huge amount of exposure.
If Warren is going to win this, she needs to go negative early and expose Brown’s congressional record and keep hammering at it. If she waits till it’s too late, we’re screwed.
Dave
I’d like to think that Mass voters won’t fall for a half-assed grin and a pickup truck again.
It also doesn’t help that Coakley was an atrocious campaigner who thought the (D) in front of her name meant an instant win.
Villago Delenda Est
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I’ll answer in gene108’s stead: I’m not OK with Murdoch’s empire getting money from the government because of their creative shuffling of money, but if it’s what the law allows, then you can’t use the law to go after them.
Unless you change the law.
Which is what needs to happen. Corporate welfare needs to end.
David
@SiubhanDuinne: Actually they don’t have any opportunities up yet, which is a shame because I bet a lot of people are checking out the site today. I mean signing up for emails is good, but you have to harness the first burst of energy. No contact phone number either. Hopefully soon!
burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s virtually certain that GE is paying tax somewhere, and probably a lot of somewheres. Just not in the United States.
It has oodles of foreign tax credits because it pays oodles of foreign taxes, and its structure doesn’t create much Subpart F income. If it has managed to get most of its valuable IP offshore (pure speculation on my part), then it would be paying lots of deductible royalties to the non-US owners of that IP. Plus it still makes stuff, so it gets depreciation on factories full of equipment.
It’s also critically important to keep in mind that what GE shows on its financials as its provision for US taxes is never going to be the same as what it shows on its tax returns, because those numbers are computed very differently, and only one of them is publicly available.
Dennis SGMM
We’re saving up the down payment for a new car to replace our twenty year old Escort wagon. It will have to wait another month or so so that we can max out our contribution to Warren’s campaign.
@Nevgu:
The difference between what you know, and what you think you know, is the difference between a grain of sand, a drop of water, and a beach.
gene108
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Link?
I haven’t read what you are talking about.
The differences between the tax code and GAAP reporting standards exists. The tax code and GAAP serve different purposes. I haven’t thought long and hard about eliminating these differences and thus eliminating the “tax breaks” businesses get.
For example, GAAP requires financial reporting to be done on an accrual basis, while the tax code uses a cash basis for determining your tax liability.
How do you eliminate that difference and what would the implications be? It isn’t a simple question to answer.
If News Corp. is acting within the law to get money back from the government, I really can’t fault them because of the law.
Dennis SGMM
@burnspbesq:
Thanks for the clarification. IIRC, foreign and domestic tax law is the arena in which you make your living.
Egypt Steve
Bah. Job creators! Class Warfare! Ronald Reagan! We’re broke! Ground Zero Mosque! Ronald Reagan! The science is uncertain! Ronald Reagan! Ponzi scheme! Job creators! Ronald Reagan!
Let’s see Prof. Warren refute that!
butler
Which is why she’s running for Congress.
Maude
If there’s a debate between them, Brown will be toast.
Yutsano
@Dennis SGMM:
That was very Zen of you. And a helluva lot nicer than I was gonna be.
@burnspbesq: I don’t do business side (at least not yet) and I don’t have the IRM in front of me to catch up on this, but you’re hinting at the real issues here. The tax code is a total mishegas.
FlipYrWhig
@Maude: Bush badly lost every debate I ever saw him in, proving himself to be either petulant, dim, cocky, or all of those at once. And he still won elections. Well, sort of.
WaterGirl
Exactly. Warren does deserve Ted Kennedy’s seat.
patrick II
@burnspbesq:
So, you are saying that the lobbyists who work for GE had nothing to do with laws that ended up giving GE zero taxes. Just being clear why GE has nothing to do with this.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@gene108: I’m at work, so I can’t go hunt right now, but I believe there was a BJ post about it not too long ago.
Mino
Elizabeth Warren is a warrior. A terrier type. Not all show and no go.
reflectionephemeral
Thanks, @Linda Featheringill and @SiubhanDuinne! I’ve done that much, will sit tight and wait to hear from them…
dpCap
I’m still pissed that Brown lied during the last election and nobody called him on it. (His campaign signs said, “Save Medicare! Vote Brown!)
Though admittedly he did back out of that Ryan scheme to destroy medicare, but it was only after a lot of hemming and hawing.
Dumbass.
Dennis SGMM
@Yutsano:
I’m a Buddhist. Have been since I was sixteen. It has treated me as well as I have treated it. Have to say though that being a Buddhist confused the hell out of the United States Navy during the years that I served.
General Stuck
In spite of everything, Obama will be reelected, and Warren will win Ted Kennedy’s old senate seat. You heard it here first. The rest is just so many chicken littles with internet.
WaterGirl
@beergoggles: It depends on what you mean by “go negative”. You can tell the truth about your opponent’s record, but when I hear “go negative” I think of personal attacks and fear mongering and attacks on your opponents character.
I think Elizabeth Warren will have no problem telling the truth about her opponent, without attacking him personally, without going negative, in the way that I interpret that phrase.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Yutsano: He hung out with the Coconut Monk in My Tho!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Also, I don’t want to get this too far away from the real discussion, which is that we need Warren to try to end a lot of the ways that companies get around paying taxes.
beergoggles
@WaterGirl: I think telling the truth about someone’s failings is going negative. I reserve swiftboating as a term for personal attacks.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Dennis SGMM: I became interested in Buddhism about 20 years ago. I always was fascinated by the monks in their saffron robes and wish I had looked closer when I was there. Do you know the work of John Balaban?
catclub
@burnspbesq: Well, she is running for congress, so the argument is highly appropriate, yes?
Upper West
@Villago Delenda Est: I agree — I think she knows that — but maybe she should be clearer that she’s not really going after GE.
SenyorDave
Warren is very bright, progressive, articulate. She can effectively get her message through. She should easily beat an emty suit like Brown in a state like Massachusetts. Unfortunately, the stupid in this country is very high right now. She better start hammering Brown as soon as possible. Get him on things like suppor4ting the GOP filibustering on every Obama nominee. Ask why he showed no leadership on issues like the debt ceiling. Republicans like Brown (supposed moderates) need to be forced to explain why they support a GOP leadership that clearly wants Obama to fail.
WaterGirl
Slightly OT, but still related to election 2012…
One of my favorite things about steve Benen, besides his well thought out posts are comments like this one, in reference to the governor of Florida saying he would reject the money from the jobs bill.
WaterGirl
@beergoggles: Interesting. I’ll bet there are a ton of people out there who think of going negative in the way that I do. I wonder if they take that into account when they say people don’t like it when candidates go negative.
Cat Lady
Brown won because of a few factors that he won’t have going for him this time. The special election a year ago January came not long after the third Democratic Speaker of the House in a row had to resign for corruption, and that was after Diane Richardson, an African-American Democratic state senator, was filmed stuffing cash into her bra. Y’all might remember that, it was on my tee-vee. That’s water under the bridge. He also had a couple of great ads which included the famous truck, and that will not be as cute again. He also has a lot of good will because of his wife’s long time appearance as a reporter on Channel 5, but she’s been gone from there a while now. He’s got no legislative chops, and he’s a dim bulb, but to his credit he is genuinely likable. He campaigns very hard, and oh yeah, he is very good looking so there’s the starburst thing.
Will Reks
Brown gets a lot of the blue-collar union vote. This will be a tough race. I think Warren can run against Brown/Wall-Street and still benefit from Obama being on the ticket.
gene108
@Maude:
Only in your “twisted liberal” mind.
As long as he looks Senatorial on T.V. and coolly repeats the necessary talking points, which have been thoroughly tested to appeal to voters, the debates will at best be a tie.
Example:
Q: What color is your tie, Sen. Brown?
Brown: Well, lets not get into these gotcha questions. What we need to do is to make sure we are not overburdening job creators, with unnecessary and complicated regulations and the highest tax rate in the world. My record in the Senate has been to create bi-partisan solutions, which is why I was the deciding vote for Obama’s ‘xxxxxx’ bill and why I have worked to strengthen Massachusetts voters by trying to simplify laws for job creators.
Q: Sen. Brown, what day of the week is it?
Brown: Well, lets not get into these gotcha questions. I’ve worked hard in the Senate to create jobs here in Massachusetts, by trying to get rid of regulations and unfair taxes, which discourage job growth and penalize job creators. I’ve also worked in a bi-partisan manner in the Senate, by breaking from my Republican colleagues and voting for ‘xxxxxxx’ Democrat* bill.
You can’t defeat that debating tactic. You can only hope to equal it.
* In the modern age, I can’t picture any Republican ever saying Democratic again. They are all talking like Rush Limbaugh now.
PeakVT
@Maude: You’re assuming people will pay attention to the content, which they frequently don’t. I hope the Warren campaign doesn’t make the same assumption.
@WaterGirl: Nobody “deserves” any seat. Putting someone in a political offices means giving them power, and sentiment should (!) have nothing to do with who gets chosen.
rlrr
@gene108:
For example: Kerry trounced Bush in the Presidential debates…
Admiral_Komack
@Nevgu:
Nope.
They’ll blame President Obama…they always do.
wasabi gasp
Watching the hologram that just popped out a droid.
WaterGirl
@PeakVT: Then allow me to re-phrase, to better reflect my original intent:
@Will Reks: I would think blue collar union folks would love Elizabeth Warren.
gene108
@rlrr:
I remember seeing clips of the Bush v Richardson debates, in 1994, for Texas governor.
Bush, Jr. just repeated talking points and won.
He did the same thing in 2000 against Gore and won.
Logic, reason and facts aren’t strong points most Americans look for in their politicians.
EDIT: People seem to respond well to having their beliefs reinforced in debates by politicians. If Brown can reinforce whatever people feel is right, he will win these debates. Reagan did this very effectively.
Judas Escargot
@Amanda in the South Bay:
If the vote were limited to white men over 50, Massachusetts would be deep red like NH: That group always goes Republican, they just usually get outvoted by the women and the younger/more liberal groups inside Route 128 (Boston’s “Beltway”).
Sen. Brown, however, has the face of a baseball player, so he got enough votes from the other groups to push him over the top. The High School Jock archetype is strong here in sports-crazy Boston.
Glad Warren’s running, I’ll vote for her, might even kick in some coin early next year when it counts… but I still doubt she’ll win. Middle-aged women and men alike will dislike her schoolmarm looks and all that fancy “logic” and “reason”.
Also, being from Harvard is not a plus out in the burbs, it’ll hurt her. For a state so driven by high-tech and education, there’s a lot of resentment against both here.
rlrr
@gene108:
Technically…
FlipYrWhig
@Judas Escargot:
I dunno. I’ve met a lot of flinty New England matrons who might be a little more “country” than Warren but similarly see themselves as logical, prudent, and common-sensical. Warren seems like a New England archetype — much more so than Scott Brown. I’ve never met a New Englander like him, and I’ve met a LOT of them like Warren.
ETA: I think that archetype is something between the soft-spoken mom who holds everything together and the teacher who’s your favorite even if she gives you a C.
Yutsano
@FlipYrWhig: Warren has the unique ability to go from policy wonk to warm grandma at the speed of light. I still want a cookie from her.
pete
@Nevgu: And like every other popular progressive candidate she will lose.
You mean, I think, “candidate popular among progressives,” which has a somewhat different ring. Warren has much broader appeal, which derives from her commonsense way of speaking and thinking about financial issues. She has been viciously attacked for a long time, and maintained her dignity, not to mention her ability to slap down stupid insults without yelling, all of which speaks well of her ability to survive the kind of campaign she will be facing. She is admittedly running against an incumbent, but she has a very good chance indeed.
gene108
@Judas Escargot:
I think her middle-class upbringing can off-set the schoolmarm-Harvard stigma, if she plays that up.
The insane amount of BS that will be slung at her by third parties will really hurt her chances. Brown doesn’t have to do much, but wait for Crossroads GPS and all the other groups to flood MA airwaves with negative, lying, ads.
Linda Featheringill
It looks to me like Warren has a really good chance. It also looks to me that Obama will win reelection. On the other hand, I am having a problem separating what I actually see from what I want to see.
So don’t take my word for it.
Corner Stone
But the PCCC has been raising money for Warren, to date a sum of over $100K. And as we here all know, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee are some of the most vile scum on earth, natural born grifters every last one of them. So, how to reconcile enthusiasm with Warren and efforts made by PCCC to raise money for her?
Liberals raise over $100,000 for Elizabeth Warren
ruemara
I gave up reading through the comments at around 30. Why are you all coming so pre-defeated for the GOP’s convenience? Shit. If I was in Mass, I’d be there volunteering if I couldn’t donate. My regular $20 for idealism will be split up a lot in the coming months, but damned if some won’t go to Warren. And I hope she wins the nomination because I am sure she can beat Brown. And he knows it too, having fundraised off the specter of an Elizabeth Warren candidacy just last year.
Judas Escargot
@FlipYrWhig:
I am surrounded by that very type of matron socially, and (in my experience) they tend to be “Rockerfeller Republicans” in the old New England style. They hated Coakley and loved Brown last time around.
Keep in mind that I want to be wrong, so I’m not going to argue this point too hard. Anecdote != Data, etc. Maybe Prof. Warren will be able to speak to something in them. I thought Deval Patrick was as goner last year, and I was wrong there, too.
Depends on social class: I grew up in blue-collar Somerville/Cambridge, and Scott Brown reminds me of the people I went to high school with (an affectation on his part, BTW– he’s from Wakefield/Newburyport). Every cop, fireman, state trooper and contractor on Facebook seems to love him. He presents himself as “one of them”, and the local talkradioheads have told them to support him.
I’ve coined the phrase “This Old House Voter” before, and I think it still applies– those are the core Brown voters, and I just don’t see them going for the smart lady from Harvard.
John Weiss
@Linda Featheringill: Linda, we all have that problem. It doesn’t matter. We do what we must: support the good ones. If we lose, we lose. If we support the ‘bad’ ones and they win, we lose.
So, is there really any choice?
John Weiss
Gods! I can’t help myself. I love that woman’s face.
General Stuck
@ruemara:
Pre-defeat almost never wins :-)
Baud
@Corner Stone: Not really interested in a fight with PCCC or its supports, but to answer your question, good and evil are often not black and white issues.
Linda Featheringill
@John Weiss: #77
No. We’ll just keep on truckin’.
Baud
@General Stuck: Agreed. I hate that.
Morzer
The last polling on the race, admittedly a while back and before Warren was in, had Brown under 50% and only 9 points ahead of Warren. This is a very winnable race, if Democrats donate and work and generally get off their asses rather than sinking into luxurious despair ahead of the game. Coakley was an abysmal campaigner, who made gaffe after gaffe in a very bad year for the Democratic cause. Was she annihilated by Brown? No, not really. If I remember rightly, the margin was around 5%. This race is very winnable.
Corner Stone
@Baud: There’s been a lot of Zen going round these parts lately.
ETA, I blame Obama.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Judas Escargot: Steve Kornacki has a good piece at Salon about personally popular Republicans who lost when their party was unpopular–Lincoln Chaffee and Gordon Smith. The counterexample is Susan Collins, who beat a good Democrat by almost the same margin that Obama beat McCain in Maine. Brown does seem to have a knack for playing the Regular Guy, on the other hand, who the fuck knows? The election is over a year away.
Morzer
The poll I mentioned:
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Brown-Warren-Poll-Massachusetts/2011/09/06/id/409951
Nevgu
@pete: Yawn, clearly you have learned NOTHING as well. You want her to win so bad you are willing to LOSE that seat on a hope and a prayer.
If you don’t believe me look at the latest polls. Did you see the latest polls? She is gonna lose. She is the wrong candidate just like Coakley was the wrong candidate. Get your head out of your ass and spare me with your “but but she has broad appeal” BS.
John Weiss
@Linda Featheringill: Chin up! That’s the spirit!
The difference between young me and old me: I know it’s a long haul now. In the sixties I thought we could get it done really soon. Like in a couple of years. I must smile. Silly rabbit.
Morzer
@Nevgu:
Like you know anything, you snivelling little fraud.
The Spy Who Loved Me
Given that Immelt (aka GE) swings a pretty big dick in the White House, is it really smart to go after them in your campaign announcement?
Nevgu
Always happy to hear from my furry little groupies Morzer.
Nutella
@burnspbesq
The GE lobbying department is also full of smart people getting Congress to make laws that benefit them, not us.
You’re right that it’s wrong to say that GE paying no US taxes is criminal. It’s not a crime at all if they’re obeying the crappy US tax code.
But politically it’s a great point and should be hammered over and over again by Warren and all the other Dems. “GE pays no US tax at all on $14 billion profit. The median MA household pays X% on $Xthousand income. Vote for me to fix those tax laws.” Even better: “Joe’s Pizza Parlor pays 35% on their 2010 profit of $Xthousand while GE pays nothing on their 2010 profit of $14 billion. Small business is subsidizing the fat cats. Vote for me to fix those tax laws.”
GE paying no US tax on $14 billion may be legal but it is unjust and very bad public policy. It’s also a very simple point easily understood by the voters. Warren is right to make the point.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
GE may be paying oodles of taxes somewhere, but the point is, unless you’re paying taxes to the United States, you’re getting a free ride on all the infrastructure that supports your corporate personhood.
Which means that the tax laws need to be changed to prevent that sort of freeloading.
Dennis SGMM
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
I have heard of Balaban. He’s one of the many on my get-around-to-it list. Complicating that is the fact that I’m writing my own never-to-be-published memoir.
Here’s a piece related to Buddhism.
My Navy outfit in the Delta would occasionally draw a “shit magnet” mission. That meant that we were to head upriver solo in a nineteen footer and poke around until someone opened up on us. The Nav had fixed-wing and helo CAS assets waiting for our squawk. It was a great strategy as long as you weren’t in the nineteen footer.
On one of these missions we went far into Injun Country and we were greeted by the sight of a tiny island in the Mekong.
Every one of the trees on that island was festooned with large, brightly painted Papier-mâché representations of people, animals, airplanes, a world globe, the moon, you name it.
WTF? We pulled in and tied up. The sole resident of the island was an animist-Buddhist monk. He spoke Vietnamese of course and a bit of French and very little English. He gave us to know that no one bothered with him and that he was happy and healthy and that all were welcome any time.
A couple of weeks later I talked my C.O. into letting me dropped off on that island in the interest of gathering intel. He told me that I was both crazy and full of shit but he acquiesced. I stayed two days. The monk and I exchanged fewer than five words. We just sat and watched the river go by. I was, for just a few moments, enlightened.
Sam Houston
@The Spy Who Loved Me: GE was a very interesting target choice! Why not the banksters?
Here’s hoping she lays down some pretty stark and straightforward policy videos.
Sam Houston
@Dennis SGMM: beautiful
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Dennis SGMM: And that is the Coconut Monk, no?
http://www.vietspring.org/religion/daodua.html
Corner Stone
@Sam Houston: GE is a bank. It’s just hiding behind its household appliance and MIC products.
MazeDancer
@Citizen Alan:
@beergoggles:
So hoping Warren understands she has to be a great candidate. Not just a great brain and ideological choice.
Coakley was like bad sit com level wretched as a candidate. Didn’t even make – or return! – phone calls to local Dem leaders. All she made were bad headlines in her whining, vacationing entitlement. A total idiot.
Massachusetts is a small geographic area. From the middle of the state, everything but some Cape spots can be less than 90 minutes drive. Personal campaigning matters. Smiling, shaking hands, raising money, listening to locals, schmoozing neighborhood leaders – all the old school stuff counts.
Please may she understand that. And learn how to do it. Well.
Corner Stone
@The Spy Who Loved Me:
IMO, yes. In fact, I’d run against the WH if I were Warren. Maybe not explicitly but at least implicitly.
Her populist stance seems to be prefacing that kind of campaign.
Svensker
Nevgu = derp?
Dennis SGMM
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
I believe so. All I know for sure is that he didn’t seem to touch the ground when he walked. There’s a saying in Zen that when two thieves meet they need no introduction. It was just for a while that way for him and me.
Rathskeller
You guys are talking about buddhist monks and GE, while all I’m thinking about is Elizabeth Warren with subpoena power.
I will donate whatever I can to her campaign, because you know every financial scumbag company(*) in the world has become Scott Brown’s new best friend.
(*) I was a VP at Goldman, worked at several other white shoe firms. Yes, it’s way more complicated than that. Still: fuck ’em with a rake.
Steve
I don’t know if Warren will win or lose. But if someone who is as unambiguously on the side of the little guy can’t win in a state like Massachusetts, I may just give up on politics altogether.
Corner Stone
@Svensker: He’s the Fredster.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Dennis SGMM: Balaban and John Steinbeck jr also spent time with him. Balaban went back on a Fulbright and walked around the country recording Vietnamese oral poetry. Then he came home and translated them into “Ca Dao Việtnam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry”.
Sam Houston
@Corner Stone: Ah, yes, you are correct.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Rathskeller: Talk about what you want to, I do.
Dennis SGMM
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Wow! I just moved Balaban to the top of my list. I was going to the bookstore anyway so this is perfect timing. Thank you for the rec.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Dennis SGMM: Remembering Heaven’s Face: A Story of Rescue in Wartime Việtnam. I emailed him after I read it and we had a nice exchange. He and I were in Can Tho at the same time.
Dennis SGMM
@Rathskeller:
Thank you for bringing your knowledge and experience to the conversation.
You are more than welcome to skip all of my occasional Tales from an Old Guy.
Sometimes the dreary contemporary political scene makes me crave a respite.
fuckwit
Brown won because he worked for it, and Coakley was a terrible candidate who thought she could coast to victory. Nuh-uh.
Remember: Senator Al Franken won. There actually is a Senator Al Franken!
If Warren campaigns as diligently and fights with as much heart as Franken did– and I see every indication that she will– then she will win too.
nepat
@Judas Escargot:
I’m with you as a fellow MA resident. Much of Warren’s effectiveness is up to Warren herself and her campaign team. And . . . so far, so good. Greeting commuters at a T-stop in Boston this morning was a smooth move (pressing the flesh was beneath Coakley), and this is the best way to make inroads into the flippable middle-class middle who were wooed into the Brown camp:
Warren needs to continue this offense 24/7. At the same time, oppo needs to ramp up. There’s plenty of evidence out there that the Brown “brand” is a total fraud (e.g. truck-driving man-of-the-people Brown is a former model who wore pink leather shorts on his first date with his future wife). Brown’s optics are a powerful weapon in his arsenal (handsome, popular wife, American Idol alum daughter) and the Warren campaign needs to aggressively rebrand him as an elitist phony who votes against their interests. This is really up to the Warren campaign. Looks like they’re off to a decent start.
I’m in but cautiously optimistic.
eemom
I thought the folks here were being overly defeatist too, until I stumbled upon this absolute masterpiece of firebaggery.
my fucking GOD. What a breathtaking spewage of condescending crap. How DARE the twat.
Corner Stone
@Dennis SGMM:
I probably didn’t chime in, but the thread where you and RossInDetroit and a few others were talking about machining and tools and alllgghhhalllhh…well, I had to contact my Dr due to something something longer than 4 hours mumble mumble.
sherparick
@Steve: You might want to give up politics altogether. The fact is the Democrats are a traditional, cacophonous, American, non-ideological political party. Until Nixon, the Republicans were also. Further, both parties had a right-wing that safely kept the wing-nut faction separate political families. The Civil Rights era, Vietnam, and Nixon ended all that, although the Democrats continued to be the default party of the South until 1994 when all the work of Nixon, Agnew, Reagan, Atwater, and Rove paid off and the big flip occurred and the majority of white southern Democrats became white southern Republicans and the Republican Party and Movement Conservativism became One. The Democrats are really at a disadvantage tactically and strategically when it comes to the Game of Thrones giving the Party discipline and ideological uniformity enforced by their opponents. I have criticized the President often enough here, but his perfectly sound and progressive, if to small bill, is facing the following criticism from the Senate. And these are Democrats mind you.
“Caucus Unity Still A Problem For Democrats
By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 14, 2011 at 9:15 am
Keep Manu Raju’s Politico article of Senate Democrats whining about President Obama’s American Jobs Act in mind the next time you hear that a bit more rhetorical magic would have produced wondrously different legislative results in the 111th Congress:
“Terrible,” Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) told POLITICO when asked about the president’s ideas for how to pay for the $450 billion price tag. “We shouldn’t increase taxes on ordinary income. … There are other ways to get there.”
“That offset is not going to fly, and he should know that,” said Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu from the energy-producing Louisiana, referring to Obama’s elimination of oil and gas subsidies. “Maybe it’s just for his election, which I hope isn’t the case.”
“I think the best jobs bill that can be passed is a comprehensive long-term deficit-reduction plan,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), discussing proposals to slash the debt by $4 trillion by overhauling entitlement programs and raising revenue through tax reforms. “That’s better than everything else the president is talking about — combined.”
A few things to note about this, which speak to the depth of the structural issue here. One is that Delaware is not a conservative state. Nor is it a swing state. The Democratic presidential candidate won there in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008. President Obama got 62 percent of the vote there. And even so, Carper is attacking the president’s jobs agenda from the right. What’s more, I think the most plausible possible account of this is that Carper genuinely believes that the best jobs bill that can be passed is a comprehensive long-term deficit-reduction plan because if he’s not expressing a sincerely held belief, it’s a bit hard to see the political angle here. Now on to Webb and Landrieu, what strikes me about their remarks is that they’re being mean. Webb isn’t respectfully disagreeing with the administration’s proposed offsets, he’s calling them “terrible.” Landrieu is calling the sincerity of the president’s motives into question.
For me, it’s difficult to imagine parallel behavior on the other side. Conservative states sometimes elect wishy-washy moderate Democratic senators, but when North Dakota or Alabama sends a Republican to Washington, they send a solid conservative. And while your Scott Browns and Olympia Snowes sometimes don’t vote with the party leadership, they rarely attack the leadership in quasi-personal terms. They don’t suggest that Mitch McConnell has “terrible” ideas that he’s pursuing for low political reasons.
In other words, it’s still the case that there are huge barriers to progressive change in Congress that people have to find ways of dealing with.”
I am thinking about what to do when in January 2013 we get President Perry, Majority Leader McConnell, and Speaker Boehner with what the percieve as mandate to repeal every Government program other than the drug laws and immigration laws that were enacted after the administration of William McKinley, if not the administration of James Buchannan, and with only a demoralized and divided rump of Democrats in the Senate that could slo them down.
Dennis SGMM
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Dang, you were about twenty klicks downriver from where I was at Binh Thuy. I loved Can Tho and whenever I was able to get there I made a point of stopping at a waterfront restaurant with no name to enjoy a bowl of steamed rice and those gigantic shrimp.
I miss Vietnam. It was to me a crazy-beautiful place. One of my few regrets is that we just don’t have the money to take the family there for a visit.
gene108
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m not sure how good GE-tax-bashing will be as a campaign point.
I can see the pro-GE ads out about how they pay their employer match for Social Security and Medicare, pay Federal Unemployment Insurance, pay state unemployment insurance and disability payments, as well as sales tax and if the ad has time, point out that every time GE ships something that requires them to fill up a tank of gas on the corporate dime, they’re paying gas taxes, which are non-refundable.
It’s taking the liberal point about how even though 50% (or whatever the number is) of people don’t pay federal income taxes, they are still paying taxes.
I really don’t think a debate on the tax code will be a winner. The tax code is too complicated to make any effective recommendations for change fit on a bumper sticker.
@Nutella:
Neither will fit on a bumper sticker.
Also, too if Joe’s Pizza parlor as a competent accountant, they will probably be filing on a cash basis, so they can pre-pay bills and reduce their tax liability and/or get a refund, even if they have a profit on an accrual basis (sort of like GE).
dww44
@gene108: Maybe not. But it would be nice, if on occasion, a multi-national corporation was a bit more altruistic and decided that paying a nominal fair share just might be the ethical thing to do. Oh, I forget, corporations, by definition, are not moral or ethical entities. But, they are individual entities who can game the political system with money.
Congress is culpabable, of course, because of decades of legislating tax loopholes and creating a tax code burdened by complexity and unfairness, but until we the people demand a better and fairer way, our individual voices and rights will continue to be ignored or preempted. All except our 2nd Amendment ones, of course.
FlipYrWhig
@Judas Escargot: Fair enough. My frame of reference is small-town never-been-industrial New Hampshire — shopkeepers and farmers’ widows who are temperamentally very like (my perception of) Warren.
I like the idea of the This Old House voter, but Scott Brown strikes me as much more the HGTV “guy who learned carpentry because he wasn’t getting acting jobs” than the low-key precision of Norm Abram et al.
(My in-laws actually appeared on This Old House…)
Dennis SGMM
@Corner Stone:
LOL! You wouldn’t be the first person to tell me that you had to split because you were expecting to be paged at any moment.
And you damned kids get off my damned lawn, also, too!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@eemom: They have their conspiracy theory, and no amount of Warren saying “I do not want to run it” will convince them otherwise.
Earl Butz
@Nevgu: You’re not a very good troll. Here’s some advice. ALWAYS GO AFTER A WOMAN’S LOOKS. It drives liberals into a foaming rage. Something along the lines of “Hey, I watched that video and I kept having an uncontrollable urge to get a bridle and saddle” or “Wow, I hit the play button on that video and my monitor cracked straight down the middle” will earn you a 300-plus post thread filled with all the butthurt replies that you could ever desire.
This “John Galt Cole” crap you keep spewing really does not cut the mustard. Go for the guts, not for the head.
FlipYrWhig
@nepat:
Plus, he bought the famous truck because he needed to tow a horse-trailer to his daughter’s equestrian events, but he stopped using it for that because he had too much trouble backing up. Seriously.
Corner Stone
@Dennis SGMM: Ha! The opposite amigo. I loved it. I wish I had the facility to work with tools and make things like y’all were talking about.
Dennis SGMM
@Corner Stone:
Thanks! All ya’ gotta do is be willing to sacrifice a few knuckles for the cause.
nepat
@FlipYrWhig:
Some great potential soundbites in that one.
Coakley: Sen. Brown may not have been able to figure how to back-up his pick-up truck, but he’s an expert at driving the economy in reverse.
Etc.
eemom
oh, and check out the consumer advocacy cred SHE has.
Dunno, there is something SO mind-blowing about this level of arrogant audacity from a fucking nobody blogger poseusse directed at a woman of Elizabeth Warren’s stature that it makes me want to SMASH something.
ed drone
@sherparick:
I’ve wondered for a while why the Republicans seem hell-bent to create a multi-party, ideological parliamentary system in the U.S.
By going all-conservative-all-the-time, they’re essentially going “small tent.” This eventually leads to fractures and splits, and third-party movements. We already see the business Republicans and the Tea Party Republicans in a forced marriage that can’t really last.
In 20 years or so, we’ll be reduced to a coalition-led system with as much cohesion as the Articles of Confederation, and entrenched antisocial tendencies among the voters.
I’m glad I’m not likely to live long enough to see it.
Ed
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Dennis SGMM: Know what you mean. I’d love to go back too.
sherparick
About Warren’s run. Again, the Democratic Party of Massachussets is microcosm of cacophonous Democratic Party. It has its very liberal faction, associated with the universities and the culture and life that thrive in those communities. But it also has a fair amount of culturally conservaitve, Roman Catholic, not particularly gay loving and often Black loathing, sometimes corrupt, ethnic types who dislike both Harvard professors and women in poolitics, and in particular women Harvard professors in politics, almost as much as they dislike the Yankees.
Warren though has a down to earth Okie streak about her, lots of experience of doing the book tour gig which is not much different than the political press the flesh kind of thing, and is also a sports nut, so perhaps she can at least win over the organization Democrats.
But Brown is not just sucking financial industry money from New York. Boston is the home of Fidelity Investments and other mutual funds , assorted banks and hedge funds, and Liberty Mutual insurance as well as smaller companies. Around 80,000 jobs, many of them very well paid, and so Scott Brown is representing a home town industry, the interests of even an elected Elisabeth Warren will have to represent. Brown has a base of support and a lot of the white working class like him and don’t hold his being servant of the rich against him, since by now they expect all their politicians to do the bidding of the rich.
WaterGirl
@eemom: I won’t click the link – was that from FDL?
Edit: what a terrible insult to Elizabeth Warren. Do these people even listen to themselves?
Steve
@sherparick: You made some interesting points there, but I have no idea what it has to do with what I wrote, nor do I understand why you suggest I should give up politics. I do not expect the Democratic Party, which is indeed a coalition party, to be unambiguously on the side of the little guy in every case. But that’s not what I’m talking about.
Mino
@sherparick: Hell, the Blue Dogs could switch parties and never miss a stride. In fact, why the hell aren’t they Republicans to begin with? I guess they can do more damage as Democrats.
Jay
The best thing about a Warren win? It will make Nick “Fonzi” Gillespie really, really mad.
Let’s get to work, people!
Mino
@sherparick: Warren has made a point of common interest with business. Transparency is good for honest business. You hear mid-level bankers speak well of her.
Corner Stone
@WaterGirl: No, it was from Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism. The “firebaggery” tag is just broadly applied to any argument as needed.
FlipYrWhig
@Mino:
Because in their states the Republicans are nutty Bible-bangers. Being a glad-handing corporate tool is a step up.
Jager
@Cat Lady: All of that and Brown owned sports radio…WEEI 850 was damn near a 24/7 campaign commercial for Brown the week before the election. Brown won the race by beating Coakley in male votes…and they listen to sports radio in Boston big time. Coakley’s cock up with Curt Schilling killed her.
Mino
@FlipYrWhig: Well, I could see that for the midwestern Blue Dogs, but Louisianna? I don’t see that there. And I never understood Webb as a Democrat, unless it was the single issue of what the Republicans were doing to the military.
WaterGirl
@Corner Stone: Thanks! I haven’t found a way, on my mac, to be able to see the URL for the link before I click it.
Ruckus
@Nutella:
@Villago Delenda Est:
Exactly.
gogol's wife
@Dennis SGMM:
I loved your tale. I’m interested in the rest of the thread too, but things like your story are why I read BJ.
eemom
actually, I did hesitate in using it, as I honestly felt it didn’t do justice to the depth of drek that is that post. But I was too mad to think of another word.
Fuck you, anyway, you tedious little worm. It was SO nice while you were out of here, tragically short though the interval was.
FlipYrWhig
@Mino: I think Louisiana Dems are beholden to the oil bidness, just like Arkansas Dems are beholden to the chicken bidness and Walmart.
I was originally a proud Webb voter here in VA, but he’s been dispiriting for a few years now. He’s basically a white working-class populist — the old “Reagan Democrat” profile suits him well, I think. He’s gotten all dopey about deficit and debt-related issues, though. I was just thinking of writing him a letter. Fat load of good that’ll do, since he’s retiring, but, it couldn’t hurt.
Corner Stone
@WaterGirl: I’m here to help.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mino:
Absolutely it was. He may not be a full-on tea-bagger, a racist or a Xianist, but he served in Reagan’s cabinet, and I would say has a fairly limited grasp of fiscal and economic issues.
rikyrah
I will be sending a contribution
Anne Laurie
Said it before, will say it again: The fear of “girl cooties” is very strong in the Massachusetts political machine — the only women who rise through the ranks are those who don’t make the Old Bulls nervous. Which means candidates like Coakley or Evelyn Murphy on the Dem side, or Jane Swift on the R ticket, succeed by being deferential to the ‘guys in charge’, keeping their heads down, and putting in time while they get slotted into positions where voters chose by party rather than personality. By the time they rise to the point where they need to campaign on “Vote for Me” rather than “Vote the D ticket”, whatever person-to-person political charisma they might have had (or developed) has been stomped out of them.
Elizabeth Warren has the great advantage of NOT having run this particular gantlet. She’s not ‘omg Martha Coakley’ (who, incidentally, seems to be a pretty damned good AG, a job that doesn’t require voters to wanna have a beer at the Sox game with her). Warren got the CFPB set up despite all the banksters’ bought political thugs could throw at her… and with tepid-at-best support from the professional friends-to-banksters within the Obama administration. The flak she’s gonna get from the Repub thugs propping up Cosmo Boy Brown will not be a surprise to her, and she deserves better from those of us who should be her supporters than “too bad she’ll never win becuz… ” pre-surrender to our mutual enemies.
boss bitch
@Corner Stone:
The PCCC is still a scam.
Judas Escargot
@Rathskeller:
I’ve been referring to him as “the Senator from Fidelity” in real life, and it seems to be one of the few things you can say that gets a laugh from either side.
So, yes, everyone knows.
Those financial groups will be putting lots of money up against Warren. Wondering what kind of ugly ads I’ll be seeing/hearing in a few months.
WhyKnot241
@burnspbesq and others
Just who do you think writes the tax laws…oh, excuse me, pays for the tax laws to be written to benefit them?
troll on brothers.
Jenny
@Anne Laurie:
I liked the idea of Senator Warren. But then Jane Hamsher said Warren would be more useful as a citizen and not in the Senate.
So based on Jane’s recommendation, I’m going to vote against her and for vote for the himbo.
burnspbesq
@patrick II:
I don’t think I said anything about lobbying. But since you implicitly asked, lobbying is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for any particular taxpayer to get any particular tax benefit.
Further, some things that allow certain taxpayers to reduce their U.S. taxable income under certain circumstances make sense. The foreign tax credit is an example. Once you accept the premise that two countries shouldn’t be able to tax the same item of income, then in a world where some countries tax based on source and other countries tax based on residence, then you need something like a foreign tax credit to prevent double taxation.
GE manufactures a lot of things in the United States (jet engines, MRI machines, electrical generating equipment, locomotives) that are purchased mostly in developed countries, so it pays a lot of foreign taxes. Which means, in turn, that it has a lot of foreign tax credits that it can use to offset its U.S. tax liabilities. That’s not a gimmick or a giveaway, it’s sound tax policy. GE may also take advantage of all sorts of gimmicks and giveaways. But unless we get to look at its returns, neither you nor I know that.
gelfling545
@Judas Escargot
But since then every cop, fireman & state trooper has found out what they can expect to get from Republicans. Sentiments may have changed with experience.
Corner Stone
@boss bitch:
Of course they are my dear. Of course they are. We all know that.
Corner Stone
@Jenbot:
Thank goodness you’ve finally seen reason, and are taking your instructions from a rightful authority on voting how you personally consider best.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@WaterGirl:
In Safari, View menu/Show Status Bar will show the URL at the bottom left of the window when the mouse hovers over a link.
.
.
Anne Laurie
@Jenny: Are you a registered Massachusetts voter?