Rene Grasso: Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote for Scott Brown
Friday, November 02, 2012
Imagine the bewilderment in the newsroom, when one –half hour later, Ward called to cancel: “I can’t support Scott Brown…. I just can’t do it,” In that short 30 minutes, Ward took a friend’s suggestion to check out Brown’s voting record. That’s all it took! Ward saw that Republican Brown is no friend of working people; the Teamster fighter is now in Elizabeth Warren’s corner.
The lesson for MA voters is crucial. Check the facts: Republican Brown’s “one of us” claim is all show: Elizabeth Warren is authentic. A true outsider, pursuing public office for the first time, she’s a real champion of us, the people, the 98%. That a Consumer Financial Protective Agency that now affords us some protection against credit card, mortgage, and bank fraud, we owe to Warren’s ability and courage.
Victory didn’t come cheap. Warren, our David, battled and stood her ground against the formidable, entrenched Wall Street Powers in Washington. Against the big guns of ridicule and threat, Warren prevailed for our interests! Her reward was banishment from the Courts of Power; she wears it, a medal of honor, for us the people.
Warren’s resume shows a woman who has worked her way up,-babysitting, waitressing, teaching elementary school, a working mother running a small business in her home with children underfoot. As a scholar, writer, and professor, her reputation is rooted in solid peoples’ ground; she is nationally recognized for her knowledge of the economic hardships of working, middle class families, and in Washington she showed her loyalty to the home team
The private school Brown, posing nude for $10,000 “Cosmo” cover, strikes a pose very different from Warren, the young mother struggling her way through public college. Apparently, other than his nude gig, Brown has never struggled in the workplace like you and I. In fact, he is the ultimate insider; his resume spotlights a career politician on the public payroll.
Nor has Brown ever stood up to Wall Street for working people. To the contrary, in the worst Republican tradition, Scott Brown protects Wall Street at expense of us. Factually, what Ward saw in Brown’s 27 month tenure is that, without exception, Brown voted to serve the “us” who are millionaires and billionaires, always to the loss of "us," the people. His votes and obstructions were costly. He lost MA least 22,000 jobs, including those of teachers and firefighters.
Why?
To protect millionaires from an 0.7% tax increase ; he voted to double interest on student loans twice for the same reason; voted to maintain $26 billion in oil subsides; voted to protect corporations and financiers who defrauded us . Forbes reports, “Wall Street loves Scott Brown”; his biggest supporters are the mega financiers such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. They invest in Brown and he delivers! Differences that speak volumes: 82% of Warren’s funding is from donations of $50 or less.
That Elizabeth Warren’s not eight lengths ahead as we approach the finish line is due to the poisonous power of the mass media and right-wing radio hucksters. In the free market of ideas, access to the peoples’ minds comes without accountability, and Brown’s wizards of fraud pay well for their Machiavellian two prong campaign. One spreads the deceit of Brown’s “independence”; the other slanders Warren with distracting misrepresentations.
The goal is to keep the public eye blind to Brown’s loyalty to Wall Street, and to his many betrayals of us, the people.
Brown, the model- actor, lives the fraud as the one-man show on wheel. Costumed as an aged GMC pick-up truck, he cruises the hang-outs, the street and docks, where the ordinary hard working guys schmooze and back slap. He holds babies and charms the girls and old ladies with his arm around his supportive wife.
But enter stage, you, Micky Ward: pop open that hood, and the lie dies in the light. That GMC shell is powered by a platinum engine, fueled by a half million a year, and 2 million in assets (accumulated in the course of his public servant career), and a 14 karat carb with private pipeline to Exxon (Brown has $50,000 in their stock).
Google the facts, probe a little, and Brown’s mask melts. Those banners atop the building in Worcester, proclaiming Brown’s independence to drivers on 290, - like mirages, they fade with a trip to Brown’s campaign office on the ground floor donated by its tea party landlord.
Nothing about Brown adds up to scrutiny. He swears he’s a champion of women, but voted against the Fair Pay Act; that he’s pro-choice, but the National Right to Life endorses him because they don’t believe what he says: “in his heart he’s pro-life,” says the NRL President. His favorite Justice? Antonin Scalia who believes Roe v. Wade isn’t constitutional and that the Constitution doesn’t protect women from discrimination because “people” are not “women.”
In fact, Brown’s voting strategy is designed calculated to promote confusion, - a ploy that depends on voters perceiving his votes superficially and in isolation; the few votes he offers as proof of independence don’t hold up to examination, nor can they survive putting them in the whole context.
There’s his vote, for instance, against the Ryan budget’s attack on Medicare. Two weeks before the Senate vote, Brown stated that he loved the Ryan budget. He was bombarded by the senior voters who clarified he would never get their vote. Then, the day of the vote when it was clear that it would not pass, Brown cast his “maverick” vote. Consider how Brown’s supporters in Springfield booed when Warren promised, "I want to make clear: I will not go to Washington to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits.” Trust Brown on Social Security?
There’s Brown’s STOCK Act ad to persuade of his leadership and his looking out for the people. One, it wasn’t his bill; two, it’s a watered down bill without teeth, an extraction of protections honchoed by Republican lobbyist Wayne Berman-now Brown’s chief fundraiser. Finally, Brown was no Republican maverick; the bill passed with 96 Republicans for, 3 against.
The Brown campaign has woven an intricate pretence that exploits the media’s advertisement approach to politics; that preys on peoples’ vague and incoherent knowledge of his voting; that depends on Brown’s theatrical appearances and poses. Here, one wants to remind female seniors and seducible women that it’s the charmers who dupe us of our retirement funds and good judgment.
There’s a moral in the Micky Ward story: friends don’t let friends be hoodwinked. If you are one of us, the people, the 98%, be assured, a vote for Brown‘s a vote against your self interest. It’s that simple.
Warren’s got our backs; she needs our votes. And we need a David, expert in financial matter, to have a chance amongst the Goliaths of Congress. Scott Brown? On the record, “he’s for them”; - Warren, she’s for us,-tested and proven!
Rena Grasso, is an independent, freelance writer from Worcester, MA.
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