Fascinating. Email (no link):
We expect Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren to have raised millions of dollars from progressive activists when the quarterly reporting period ends September 30. Will you help us fight back by making a contribution today to Scott Brown?
If you want to know why she is raising so much from her ultra-liberal friends, I suggest you watch this video of Professor Warren that is being cheered on left-wing blogs. In the video, she argues for higher taxes on employers because of her belief that entrepreneurs and business people – “factory owners,” as she puts it — don’t share enough of their wealth with the state so that it can be redistributed.
Elizabeth Warren and her inflammatory rhetoric will divide our country and our Commonwealth at a time when we need to come together to confront the very serious economic challenges facing us. Let’s remember we’re Americans first.
Now Scott Brown needs your help to fight back.
Please help Scott send a message to Professor Warren that the type of class warfare she wants to wage will not create a single new job and will actually lead to a negative climate for business growth and expansion.
Please, don’t delay. Send your end-of-the-quarter donation now. Scott can’t do it alone.
http://scottbrown.com/end-quarter-deadline
Sincerely,
Jim Barnett
Campaign Manager
Scott Brown for Senate
In a related story, as we’ve already noted, Rush Limbaugh took a shot at Warren for that video – and, unsurprisingly, Warren is now trying to fundraise off of Limbaugh’s attack. The email I got on that (under Doug Rubin’s name) says that “there are two things I know for sure: When Rush Limbaugh attacks, you must be doing something right. And you must stand up to those attacks…. We’re off to a great start, but we need to turn our early momentum into a campaign for the long haul — a campaign that can stand up and fight back against Rush Limbaugh and the big corporate interests today, tomorrow, and in the weeks and months ahead.”
lawyermom says
I agree – when Limbaugh goes on the attack, you’re doing something right. Warren never said anything about “redistribution” of wealth. It’s about paying for what you use and for those services and institutions that enabled you to generate that wealth. These things do not happen in a vacuum, and if these supports weren’t there free enterprise couldn’t exist. It’s not about confiscation, it’s about obligation. Corporations exist because of the laws that allow them to exist. Nothing about corporations is immutable. If companies want to exist, they need to support the society in which they exist. And history has shown that high marginal tax rates didn’t quash corporate investment or profitability. Truly, let’s remember that we’re Americans first, and we shouldn’t be tolerating, let alone accepting, a crumbling infrastructure, an impoverished public education system, bankruptcies because of health care expenses, and children going hungry.
sue-kennedy says
sent out this on Elizabeth Warren yesterday with a photo of Brezhnev. Apparently Hitler and Stalin are already taken.
I
How do the majority of Americans understand the concept of pay it forward and a few are enraged by the idea? We have 2 wars and one of the worst economic crisis in our countries history. We love our country and when shared sacrifice is required for the benefit of our country most are willing. When face with the choice of leaving our children the same opportunities we were given or crushing debt, an angry minority insists on keeping tax breaks for millionaires and corporate loopholes, we cannot afford to continue. They believe the sacrifices of the previous generation, the current generation of workers is not enough and that the future generation of Americans should be saddled with the cost of tax breaks for millionaires and large corporations paying a lower rate or no tax at all.
This is likely to be one of the nastiest and silliest campaigns. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign is a continuation of standing up for us to the powerful monied interests the same as she has always done. Not a war on the wealthy, just a request that those who are making millions join the rest of us in ensuring the future for all of us. Together we stand!
sue-kennedy says
for Republican committee member, to be clear.
hesterprynne says
It seems that Grover Norquist has appropriated him as the prototype of Barack Obama.
(And any hints on who your rep is?)
hesterprynne says
n/t
karenc says
This really is going to be one nasty campaign. The other hint of nastiness today is Brown’s grandstanding on the Secure Communities program where he is calling out Patrick, even though what the program needs from the state are fingerprints of those arrested being sent to the FBI – which Patrick says already happens.
So, even for those who think using the local law enforcement to help against illegal aliens, the point is that the fingerprints are being sent to the FBI, which sends them to ICE. Boston Herald article – http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/2011_0928sen_brown_calls_on_feds_to_force_gov_to_get_tough_on_illegals/srvc=home&position=0
mizjones says
Since Scott Brown hasn’t done anything to address crushing employment he needs something to distract the public.
bidd50 says
Elizabeth Warren has played a part in ramping up the rhetoric. Believe it or not, there are Democrats who don’t find some of her quotes productive or effective. “Blood and teeth on the floor” is another quote that some love and other feel uncomfortable with. This is going to be one nasty campaign.
sue-kennedy says
DINO’s.
Ryan says
so many democrats who have been cowed into being absolutely terrified of the GOP. These people think that our views are so terrifying to the general public, and have so much shame over those views, that they get a little sick when people start talking about the things they’ve been too afraid to say out loud and in public for decades.
I can’t tell you how many older Democrats that I know who feel that way, who tell me, “Gee, Ryan, I agree with you on all of these things, but the public will never support it!” I call BS on that, and Elizabeth’s forthright defense of the middle and working classes has proven that when Democrats are proud to be exactly who we are, people will rally to it. It’s when we act ashamed of what we are, or betray who we are, that we lose people, because the citizens of this country know people who lack courage and conviction can never truly run a country.
So, go Elizabeth Warren!
flounder says
The result is that these fake dems, DINO’s, Lieberdems, or whatever you want to call them, have made themselves a lot of money and have guaranteed lobbying jobs for life. Meanwhile, the rest of us have gotten teabagged.
Christopher says
…your GOP neighbor’s reference to various other peoples IS a good reminder that we aren’t the only country on the planet and we should respect the contributions that others have made and continue to make. I guess it isn’t all American exceptionalism after all!:)
Ryan says
foreign kid getting a good education, and I say foreign both meaning “not your own” and, as the whole “heartless-gate” episode at the GOP debate indicates, minorities, too.
The fact of the matter is Americans like the notion that we’re all “born equally,” and get the fact that we need a strong education system and safety nets for our children to make that happen. That’s what “paying it forward” means, and it has NOTHING to do with “wealth redistribution” as the Republicans imply it, with red scare rhetoric. Unless we want an aristocracy, we need strong schools and opportunity for all. There’s nothing Bolshevik about that — but the GOP masters will do anything to sell the American people on that ideal, because they simply don’t want to live in a world where their own kids would have to compete.
Ryan says
I can’t imagine that 90% of the people who actually watch that video won’t be deeply impressed with Elizabeth Warren. Every time the Republicans show this video to their supporters and cast it in a negative light, when they read it, those supporters will know just how toxic the Republicans view their middle class lives. I suspect many will watch this video and begin to wonder why they’re supporting Republicans at all. So, thanks Scott!
bostonshepherd says
What Warren sez about the factory not paying their fair share is technically incorrect, a politically loser, and hyperbolic. It only appeals to progressive emotion, not to the thinking person.
When one DOES stop and think about it, Warren’s effort to paint the factory/business owner as an economic free-rider is, of course, simply incorrect. The factory business owner pays for police protection, fire protection, garbage removal, waste sanitation, public schools and more — through local property taxes.
As a matter of fact, in cities like Boston, they pay MORE than their fair share because commercial property tax rates are higher than residential.
Furthermore, the business likely pays a state income tax, various fees, fuel taxes, and certainly pays sales tax if they sell things in state. And gas taxes, telcom taxes, unemployment insurance, etc., etc. Oh, and of course federal income tax, a plethora of fees, gas tax, etc. etc.
It SOUNDS like class warfare however progressives try to spin it with your twisted definitions of “fairness” and “social contract.”
Warren makes it sound like if it weren’t for the generosity of the government, the business couldn’t exist (i.e., “we’ll let you keep some of it.”) There’s an attitude that is certain to get the average worker pissed off …. “hey, that’s my job!”
It is in reality the government that couldn’t exist without businesses and factories employing all those tax-paying people.
sabutai says
It’s nice to get the unbiased opinion of somebody who won’t stamp their feet anytime somebody says something bad about millionaires.
sue-kennedy says
A healthy economy and community is build on robust supply and demand. A couple decades ago, the supporters of this new theory of supply side economics out shouted the historical facts of supply and demand.
Supply side economics was class warfare and the economy is slowing because it is out of balance. Unless a business prints money, it most get it from consumers, who just happen to be the workers. If you squeeze them to hard, its not only unfair, the demand is strangled. Consumers are the real job creators.
Whatever numbers you try to justify your position, if a group has 90% of the income and is only paying 70% of the taxes – they are not paying their fair share!
The large corporations, with their special tax loop holes, tax breaks, subsidies and wheeling and dealing have also squeezed small business – the main employers.
David says
That is a fabulous line, Sue. I hope it gets picked up!
David says
you are indeed missing the point. Warren never says that the rich, or the factory owner, or whoever, are “not paying their fair share,” as you would have it. What she is doing is making a case for why “taxes” should not be a dirty word, and why the Republican effort to brand any effort to raise revenues via increasing marginal tax rates on the wealthiest as “class warfare” is a thoroughly bogus charge. Yes, she does so in strong terms. IMHO, it’s about damn time someone did.
Ryan says
Despite billions and billions in government contracts, and huge profits, they paid *no* taxes. There are literally hundreds of major corporations similarly like it in that regard. I’m sorry, but big corporations, by and large, simply don’t pay anywhere close to their fair share of taxes. Not even close. We prop them up everyday as they continue to lay us off, hire overseas and show that they could give a damn about this country… the country that made it possible for them to exist in the first place.
You drank the Kool-Aid.