Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Scott Brown set to support Wall Street reform bill

By

Globe:

Senator Scott Brown will support the financial regulation overhaul, giving Senate Democrats a key boost in their plans to pass the landmark bill this week.

“While it isn’t perfect, I expect to support the bill when it comes up for a vote,” the Massachusetts Republican said this afternoon in a statement. “It includes safeguards to help prevent another financial meltdown, ensures that consumers are protected, and it is paid for without new taxes.”

And so, once again, the guy elected as #41 becomes #60, as he will supply a critical vote to break a Republican filibuster and allow the bill to voted on (at which point it will easily pass).  This is all assuming that both Senators from Maine vote “yes,” which seems likely at this point.  (Note that because Robert Byrd’s seat remains vacant and Sen. Feingold is opposed, we do in fact need all three New England Republicans to vote “yes.”)

As I’ve said before, we give credit where credit is due, so once again, kudos to Senator Brown on doing the right thing on this bill.  The changes he demanded — while parochial, contrary to his expressed distaste for “Washington back-room deals,” and in some respects silly — did not undermine the guts of the bill, which has actually ended up better than some thought it might.

Looking forward to heads exploding over at RMG in light of Brown’s decision to vote “yes.”  đŸ˜‰

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. And he gets Front Paged!~ Good for them for making an appropriate response to our  Junior United States Senator!!

    <

    p>

    My Vote On Financial Reform     (+)by: Senator Scott Brown
    Mon Jul 12, 2010 at 17:35:10 PM EDT
    (Not the outcome I would have wanted, but I thank Scott for thinking of us and posting his thoughts here. – promoted by Rob “EaBo Clipper” Eno)

    <

    p>No heads exploding…….

      • And almost cost an esteemed BMG commenter their dinner.

        <

        p>As the risk of being excessively obvious, I think we can all agree it is a good thing that this video was taken from a work of fiction and that “Scanners” is not a documentary. It may, however, strike distressingly close to home for many of those swept up by the Brown campaign.

      • Especially in the comments to Scott Browns own diary. How rude!! I was too quick to comment on the RMG editor’s initial soapy recommendation.

        <

        p>Meanwhile I heartily recommend Mass Liberal’s Blog today in a very funny play on Marc Antony’s, or rather Shakesphere’s speech “Friends, Romans, Countrymen,……….ending thusly,

        <

        p>

        The evil men do live after them — the good is oft buried with their bones. So let it be with Brown, who has stood up for the banks and financiers who fuel his campaign while proverbially running his truck over the working men and women who supported him under false pretenses.

        And Brown is an honorable man.    

    • Here it is, taken by a screen cam in mid-post (keyboard is just below the frame):

      <

      p>

      <

      p>Brown’s campaign office issued a sympathetic statement on its Facebook feed: “It’s only a flesh wound.”

  2. I will admit that this is one reason why Brown can’t be underestimated — he’s a cleverer politician than I would have anticipated.

    <

    p>Now, he’s able to play it both ways in case financial reform comes up during the run-up to the 2012 campaign. To those supporting stronger regulation, he can say that he voted for the (largely Democratic-crafted) bill. To the Tea Party crowd, his message can be that he took a flawed bill that probably would have passed anyway and made it “better”.

    <

    p>I bet that he’ll take this line on a lot of different issues, though his power to be #41 would almost certainly evaporate after the next Congress is sworn in.

    • Clever implies a certain intelligence and Brown is not exactly a Rhodes Scholar.

      <

      p>He is more the “Accidental Senator” with a little Chauncy Gardner thrown in. Centerfold looks, d-list celebrity family, Squishy right leaning politics that bend towards Fox News Populism, huge Tea Bag surge peaking in January, poorly run opponent, speaks his jibberish with a convincing baritone while smiling for the camera….

      <

      p>… and once in office, he pretends he is Joe Lieberman.

      <

      p>It’s happenchance, not skill. Once he is not the swing vote, he is irrelevant.

      • and if he was one of “ours” – you’d be declaring him a genius.  We’ve got more than a few Congressmen who won’t be bringing the potato salad to the Mensa society picnic and sometimes they run for President.   That aside, Brown has shown a certain deftness that I certainly didn’t expect, to wit: the partnership with Congressman Frank.  

        <

        p>http://www.boston.com/news/nat…

        <

        p>I think Hoyapaul’s right…not a guy I would underestimate.

        • However, not all Dems are in the spotlight the way that Mr. Brown is. And given the gaffs that he regularly makes, I don’t think it is political skill that saves him time and time again.

          <

          p>I tend to think he still has the Golden Child teflon given to him by the media. When he is no longer the flavor of the month, we’ll see how he is portrayed and perceived.

          <

          p>I think he will be a strong candidate because of his celebrity and media savvy ways, but I also think he is very vulnerable if he actually has to engage with a bright and talented Dem. Without the media, Scott Brown is… not much.

      • He graduated cum laude from Tufts and graduated from BC Law.  He’s a member of the JAG Corps and has never been defeated running for office, including against some people who wouldn’t be considered poorly run opponents.

        <

        p>Unlike some other pol’s, he had to do all that on his own, rather than because dad was a famous such and such.  THAT implies a certain intelligence.  

          • At least Scott Brown didn’t get kicked out of Harvard for cheating… twice.

            <

            p>Globe

            <

            p>

            Chatter about how Ted had been kicked out of Harvard for cheating – proof in many minds of his inferior ability – finally forced JFK to intercede. The president summoned the Globe’s top political writer, Robert Healy, to the White House, where he negotiated how the cheating news would be released. Healy insisted it go on page one, but he and his bosses agreed to blunt the impact, using the softball headline of “Ted Kennedy Tells About Harvard Examination Incident,” and delaying any mention of the actual transgression until the fifth paragraph.

            <

            p>Back from the days when the press “negotiated” how bad news would get released (protecting the President).

        • is that Republicans are dumb.  Either dumb, or evil evil pure evil, so dumb is the charitable conclusion.  Were they not dumb, they would be Democrats.  Therefore, dumb.

          <

          p>I have observed that observations about the intellectual limits of Republicans by Democrats usually precedes a victory by the Republican, and a lot of egg on Democratic faces.  To be fair, this assessment of Brown is not universal among Democrats.

          <

          p>Brown got elected with support from the right, such as it is, and the vast reservoir of independents in Massachusetts– tea party nonsense notwithstanding.  He is now shedding some of that right wing support in order to hold, solidify, or gain among the independents, which he must do if he wishes to be re-elected.  That will be a difficult balance to maintain; I am sure the national GOP will embarrass him from time to time between now and 2012.  But so far, he seems to be doing pretty well.

          <

          p>The Democrats are going to run either a true-blue “progressive” or a “my turn” hack.  Absent some self-inflicted wounds by Brown that candidate will have a steep hill to climb.  The “gaffes” that are dutifully called out here seem to me to fall into the “statements we don’t agree with” category rather than the “political disaster” category.

          <

          p>I suppose the national GOP could go all in on Sarah Palin in 2012, and this could sink him.  But calling him a “Republican” three hundred times in a 30 second spot already didn’t work once.

          • I didn’t vote for Brown nor do I like most of his positions on the issues, but I was one of the few voices here who understood and understood early that he had a good shot at winning. It wasn’t until two weeks before the election that David, the other Editors, and most progressives finally woke up to the fact that Coakley was a dud and Brown was a stud, at least politically speaking. He has over $12 million in the bank already. And frankly I do not see any Democrat in this state who could beat him. None of the Congressional delegation can because they have liberal voting records, speak Washington-ese, and are not well known or well liked outside their districts. Most of the state-wide candidates will fall into the same trap as Coakley where they haven’t faced a real contest and take everything for granted.

            <

            p>I want Brown out as much as the next one, but you have to concede that a Republican who can win Ted Kennedy’s seat, right after his death and all the press coverage was positive, and do so in a state as blue as ours is incredibly smart and capable as a campaigner and a politician. We have to concede early that he is a formidable opponent before we underestimate him again. He also knows, more than most people here OR in the MA GOP that the highest number of voters in our state are independents and they are is true base. He gets Republican votes by default by not being a Democrat, and he can get most independents by continuing to be socially moderate, hawkish on defense and immigration, and fiscally conservative. That’s the Perot-McCain 2000 mantra in a nutshell. Whoever we run has got to be a Beacon Hill and Washington Outsider, be able to self-finance to some extent, and appeal to working class and populist voters.  

          • The only thing I would add is that it is not clear (to me, anyway, maybe someone who knows better can shed light) that a significant number of Independents voted for Brown: he was elected by about the same number of people as voted for McCain in 2008 — in other words, the most committed Republicans.

            <

            p>I agree he is not dumb, but quite smart, and especially skilled as a politician, which is a particular kind of intelligence.

            • I guess it is possible that Brown was elected by the most committed Republicans, and that he won because all of the Democrats stayed home.  Having now looked for a little while, I certainly can’t find anything that would dispute this.

              <

              p>That would also mean that Romney, Celucci, and Weld were elected by these same Republicans.

              <

              p>That is an awful lot of heavy lifting from 12% of the active voters in the commonwealth.

          • I agree. Republicans are very smart in two respects – at winning elections and in framing the debate. Sometimes this is by more clever campaigning, sometimes by voter suppression and intimidation of the media (as in Florida 2000).

            <

            p>I give Brown credit for running the more persuasive campaign. I can’t bring myself to say “better” campaign because he did not present constructive ideas for our state and country.

            <

            p>In office he is doing no more for the public than he will need to in order to be re-elected. Second to his re-election, he looks after his own, i.e. the very wealthy. Any other considerations are in the background. His wealthy donors will see that he remains loyal.

            <

            p>I wouldn’t call him dumb. I would call him lacking in empathy. I think this makes him dangerous. He has a great deal of power and his priorities often conflict with the general welfare.

            <

            p>

          • … have more to do with his lack of grasp of policy, governance and the actual workings of the Senate and the rest of the Federal Government.

            <

            p>- Saying that Obama was not imposing sanctions on Iran on the very day that sanction were being voted on.

            <

            p>- Saying that banks would only pass on a tax to consumers (i.e. taxpayers), so, instead taxpayers should pay for it directly.

            <

            p>- His inability to grasp the concept of risk-sharing in regards to health insurance.

            <

            p>- His remarkable flip flop from supporting Romneycare to opposing a very similar federal plan.

            <

            p>- Complaining on TV that he has not seen a jobs bill in the Senate, when, in fact his most noticed vote to date was when he broke GOP ranks and voted on a jobs bill.

            <

            p>If you want to know why Brown has never lost an election, read the abstract of this study. (Full disclosure – the lead author is my nephew.)

            <

            p>Good looking candidates beat “average” people almost every time. We, the electorate, are not nearly as smart as we think.

            • I view most of those as “I think he is wrong.”

              <

              p>If only he were intelligent enough to grasp the subtleties of policy, he would agree with us.

        • He’s strategically avoided killing anyone.  A pretty smart and savy political move if you ask me.

    • If you statistically extrapolate from his state senate voting record record as people did before the election, you would have gotten that if he voted as was usual for him, he would quite often be either the 60th or the 41st vote anyway.

      <

      p>I’m sure (since this isn’t exactly rocket science) that he’s realized the tactical value in trying to have your cake and eat it too. But this sort of dealmaking is just what the “last vote” in close bills always do, whether their name is Snowe or Lieberman or whatever.

  4. How did he do it?  By demanding that the $19 billion dollars in bank fees, a fee that would only effect banks with $50 billion plus in assets, be dropped.  He was, however, willing to accept that TARP funds be used to pay the cost.  Using TARP funds working/middle class tax payer dollars is AOK with Senator Scott Brown.  

    <

    p>Why on earth would we applaud him for this?  I’m not impressed and I’ll be sure to talk about how he threw working middle class tax payers under the bus to save money for billion dollar banks.  

    <

    p>And before I get the often heard statement that a bank tax would be passed on to consumers (says Scott Brown), let me just say that if we truly live in a free market where banks compete for customers, then this cost would not be passed onto consumers.  And please tell me what the difference is between a fee assessed on the largest risk taking banks with assets over $50 billion or a fee placed on deposit banks with assets over $10 billion.  Because that is where this compromise lands us.  They are literally giving the risk takers, i.e. Wall Street, a free ride and placing the cost on the taxpayers and FDIC banks.

    <

    p>NO KUDOS FOR YOU, SCOTT BROWN.

    • Brown’s position on the tax was silly, and most likely counter-productive, as you suggest.  But having a bill is better than not having a bill; we need three Republicans to vote for the bill; and Brown is one of them.  

      • But I will be sure to make clear at every opportunity exactly what he demanded before agreeing to vote for it.

      • If Russ Finegold wasn’t such a stubborn bastard we could have worked with him instead of Brown and gotten a better bill. I have always been a big Russ fan, but I am kinda tired of his lone-wolf approach to being a Senator, it can only achieve so much, and more often than not it gets him no legislative achievements and makes him look like a whiner.  

      • I don’t have an account with a bank that’s got over $50B in assets.

        <

        p>Thanks, Scott!

Archives