“Even the Bush Justice Department filed suit to enforce this provision of that law. For Brown to claim this is some kind of plot against him is just bizarre.”
John McCain. Centrist. Maverick. Sunday morning talking heads. Fifteen years ago, he was widely respected on both sides of the aisle. Today, we know as His presidential campaign showed us just how smart he wasn’t. His subsequent senate primary race showed us just how far to the right he was willing to run. It took while for Americans to catch up with his shtick, but it’s safe to say most of us now have his number.
Scott Brown doesn’t call himself a maverick, and Brown’s handlers wouldn’t let him hit the talk show circuit with McCain-like frequency, but nonetheless, there is a remarkable resemblance to Arizona senator. Neither could be described as being the sharpest knife in the drawer. Both pretend to be bipartisan, claiming the straight and narrow, but most of the time turning right. Like McCain, Brown will say anything to get elected.
As time goes on, a clear picture of Scott Brown is developing as not very intelligent, frat boy who sees himself as a victim and takes cheap shots at the family of opponents.
1.Brown had a difficult childhood, a card he plays whenever he needs to justify himself. McCain used his POW experience to similar effect.
2. Brown joked about Elizabeth Warren’s physical appearance (and then blamed the host of the talk show who started it); He also compared France to an aging 1940s movie star trying to dine out on her looks. He also told a joke about a woman being raped by a gorilla and liking it.
3. Brown implied that Warren’s parents were liars during the tedious campaign to question her heritage. Now he’s accusing her daughter of part of being part of a conspiracy to defeat him by registering people who were deprived their legal right to vote. McCain told jokes about Janet Reno being Chelsea Clinton’s father.
In point of fact, Brown’s campaign is criticizing Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and the state of Massachusetts for following the law. That’s right. The courts found the Commonwealth of Massachusetts failed to implement the Motor Voter Bill, and as a remedy, 278,000 registration packets were sent out to people on public assistance because they were denied their right to register. For Scott Brown, this must be a conspiracy against him. Here’s ThinkProgress:
The 1993 National Voter Registration Act — better known as the Motor Voter bill –requires that citizens be offered the opportunity to register to vote when they get a driver’s license or apply for social services. Voting rights groups — including Demos — filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was not in compliance, after a 35-year-old woman was not offered the chance to register to vote when she filed paperwork with the state’s welfare office last June. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, recognizing its obligation under federal law, settled the case out of court. As part of that settlement, the state government agreed to contact, by mail, the 477,944 welfare recipients who might also have been denied their right to be offered a chance to register to vote and give them that chance now.
Voting rights groups have brought similar suits in other states. But seizing on the fact that Warren’s daughter is chair of the board of one of the groups suing, Brown made the argument that this amounts to a conspiracy to elect his Democratic challenger. His statement today said:
I want every legal vote to count, but it’s outrageous to use taxpayer dollars to register welfare recipients as part of a special effort to boost one political party over another. This effort to sign up welfare recipients is being aided by Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and it’s clearly designed to benefit her mother’s political campaign. It means that I’m going to have to work that much harder to get out my pro-jobs, pro-free enterprise message.
The story was released by the Boston Globe. Geppetto’s a$$hole buddy Howie Carr has today’s dose of agitprop, which neglects to mention the reason for the registration forms being sent out.
Hand in glove, Brown has been trumping up the false charges. Here’s his sound bite:
“I want every legal vote to count, but it’s outrageous to use taxpayer dollars to register welfare recipients as part of a special effort to boost one political party over another,” Brown said in a statement. “This effort to sign up welfare recipients is being aided by Elizabeth Warren’s daughter and it’s clearly designed to benefit her mother’s political campaign.”
You claim Brown isn’t the sharpest knife in the draw, here we go again. Are you requesting college transcripts? What is your point? Mitt is smarter than Barack by far, but you don’t seem to care.
Warren first mentioned how Brown modeled for magazine, so the rock thrower with the Mrs. Beasley looks got a stone thrown right back at her.
FYI, EW has zilch, nada, zero Cherokee blood, despite the racist comment she made that all Cherokees have high cheek bones. My parents told me Santa brought me presents, doesn’t make it real. Many wonder if Warren claimed minority status on job applications and asked for some paperwork, and she won’t produce it, similar to Barack’s graded at Columbia and Harvard.
Can taxpayers afford sending voter registration forms to welfare recipients when the State has $40 billion in unfundef health care and pension obligations. It is not a bottomless pit of cash and this needs to stop. It ain’t that hard to register, that’s the point miss.
Boring
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
been settling complaints over non-compliance with the Motor Voter law–that’s law, not Howie Carr’s opinion on it–for several years now. See
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/2008/10/mass-violating-the-motor-voter-act-galvin-still-asleep-at-the-switch as an example.
Then see David Bernstein,
Then see this 2009 memo directing Mass Health staff:
.
It’s all here. Democrats have been waiting for years to spring this conspiracy on a poor, victimized Republican like Scott Brown.
Are welfare recipients not “Legal Voters”. The voting rights act guarantees the voting rights of ALL:
I believe we have some constitutional amendments on the subject as well, but what do I know, I am just a dumb Democrat. I ain’t gut no fancy book learnin’ like Scott Brown.
No need to waste precious monies or voter registrations. That is the point.
waste precious monies on voter registrations. That need is stated in the law. You may not like that law, but it is the law.
The Commonwealth agreed to send out the forms because the DTA neglected to follow the law. Sending out these voter registration materials is what is called in legal parlance a remedy to people who were harmed by governmental negligence.
Had the agency done it’s job, the registrations would have been freeeeee!
Enuff of a nanny state.
Great, you get cracking on that. In the meanwhile, until you do that, the law has still got to be followed.
Misses more points than Little League batters miss pitches.
Yes, yes, in the early first G.W.Bush Administration, McCain was so centrist that there was talk of him jumping the aisle. However, a lot of that can be attributed to short-fused Senator’s anger at Bush after the Republican primary season of 2000. McCain shifted from being quite centrist to quite quite conservative when it suited his interests better in 2008.
Cutting slack for McCain, the Press — always eager to appear even handed — behaves as if the mavericky, centrist McCain were the real McCain. There’s just as much evidence that the cranky, conservative McCain is the real McCain. What’s constant is the ability to hold onto grudges.
stupid McCain turned out to be. He graduated 438 out of his class of 435 at Annapolis, but he fooled the country with the help of the press for a long time. His presidential campaign revealed a stupid old man, hopelessly out of touch.
I know we’re not supposed to say Brown is stupid because, well, because Diversionary Dan says so. But this is the kind of thing that makes him (Scott, not Dan) look stupid:
business people come up to him and say he must win the election in order to save capitalism. How dumb a comment would that be? Who would have the gumption to make such a comment? Do you know who?
does that make him 3rd in the next graduating class?
…that EW didn’t hear from business people about saving capitalism?
…that EW doesn’t have Cherokee heritage? (Actually there is now a Facebook page about this topic.)
…that Harry Reid did not hear from a Bain person about Romney’s taxes?
…that John Tierney knew about the dealings of his inlaws?
You have quite the skill of mind-reading that the rest of us can only be envious of!
I don’t have Facebook, but no evidence to suggest a drop of Cherokee blood. She never held any meetings or social events with Native Americans, did she?
Should the Majority Leader repeat every rumor from nameless sources? That the new standard?
With Tierney, nobody can be possible that dumb not to be aware. Sgt. Schultz was an actor.
This post is about Scott Brown’s poor judgement in calling out a mandated federal order to help people to vote, not a peeing contest. Just think, Dan, if he had praised it, welcomed more people to vote, and said he wanted to help them. Maybe he would have gained a few votes. Automatically branding people belonging to one party or the other is part of the dark side of American politics. Sen Brown has done this in spades with this issue. When Martin Luther King Jr asked for rights it was for all, not just Afro-Americans. He knew whatever wrongs were foisted on black people were the same as imposed on any poor person. FLASH: I have just heard on NPR that the Brown Campaign and the State Republican Party will have a meeting with the Governor and the Secretary of State to whine about this fully justified mailing. Instead of welcoming all citizens to participate in their government Republicans show their paranoid streak that the poor are some kind of illegal aliens and vote in lockstep for Democrats. By blocking people who need some simple aid to vote Republicans do not assist, they punish, and push for an oligarchy of their self centered friends. This is one of many good reasons to make sure such extremists do not get a foothold in our government.
They are just as capable of registering to vote as anyone else. I don’t understand this law requiring mail drops to specific segments of society. I would much rather take the $300K and hire a few extra teachers. We just cannot continue spending money like its going out of style. Otherwise, send every home registration forms if you really want everyone to vote.
Yes, Brown should have handled it a little bit better since his mom was on welfare, he knows what it’s like to be poor. But it comes down to money, money, money and I am sick of paying for all this stuff.
Really You still don’t understand even though it’s been covered several times in this comment thread alone? Fine, one more time:
The federal law requires certain state departments, like the RMV and MassHealth and the Department of Transitional Assistance (welfare) to provide voter registration forms when people register with them to enroll in their services. The DTA was not doing this. For the last N years (I don’t know exactly how long), the DTA was violating this federal law.
Well, they got caught, and got their wrists slapped, and settled out of court. One of the provisions of the settlement is to mail out these forms to everybody who registered with the DTA in the last N years. Not “specific segments of society”. It’s a very well-defined list. They’re not actually mailing all the poor people, you know.
If the DTA had been following the law, we could have saved a lot of postage, it’s true. That is a waste of money. But, due to the terms of the settlement, we can’t just say “don’t mail the forms to save money”. That would land the DTA right back in court and be even more expensive than mailing out the forms.
Do you get it now, Dan-o?
You want the states to follow federal law, when you agree with the law. But anything to do with enforcing the federal law regarding illegal immigrants, no can do, right?
Your comments really ARE like a Crazy-Eight Ball loaded with right-wing talking points.
… as written by the legislature, but about following a court order after a lawsuit. Failing to do this doesn’t just carry the risk that it’ll go to court, it carries a much greater risk of damages to all of us as taxpayers.
But not because they’re about illegal immigrants. Rather, because there’s a huge distinction between following laws and enforcing them. I want states to follow federal law, but I understand things can get messy if states try to enforce those laws.
Just like I want you to be a safe driver, but I really don’t want you enforcing local driving laws. (Unless you’re a police officer in which case god help us all, and I will never go back to Waltham.)
People are on welfare because of hard times in their lives. Paying for bus rides, cabs, or subways is a significant expense to people in this situation. Remember they have to come back also. You know Dan your empathy for some of your fellow Americans comes up short. Is there anyone in your family that has been behind the 8 ball and more formalized privileges in their lives had to take the back burner? Are you saying that people who could use the help shouldn’t have it if it makes it possible to vote? The bulk of those who are hampered in some way will be the ones taking advantage of this service. But don’t take my world for it. Go and check on it. We’ll wait for you. To start it was $273,000 not $300,000. You must have that Mitt Romney streak that thinks nothing of making $10,000 bets. Good luck on your research.
are all shut-ins, unable to do anything. If what you say is true, then they have no hope of climbing the economic ladder since they can’t even pay for a token, or make a phone call to their City Hall asking for a form to be mailed to their house.
What you see is despair and the need to do everything for people receiving welfare, while I believe in helping them, but allowing people to be as independent and responsible as possible. David threw a bible quote at me on another thread. Here is one for you. God helps those who help themselves….basically, we must exert ourselves if we won’t to succeed.
This isn’t about welfare recipients or the welfare program.
Scott Brown made another gratuitous and utterly unsubstantiated attack on public agencies doing their jobs.
isn’t from the Bible, you ding a ling!
Dan the man who changes the topic more often than new parents change diapers.