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News & ArtsSunday, January 22, 2012
2012 / Politics Scott Brown Is One Dumb Motherfucker
Posted by Dan Savage on Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 11:22 AM
Seriously. Can't wait to watch him go down in flames this November.
1
Does this fit the classic example of a "red herring"? These guys should give it up. The longer they fight paying their fair share the worse it's going to be for their pals in the Republican party.
2
...except that's probably not going to happen. MA may be a "blue" state, but that's secondary to their tendency to return incumbents to office, no matter how incompetent, stupid or personally odious they may be. (See, respectively, Bill Weld, Thomas Menino and Ted Kennedy.) And the state Democratic organization has reached the point of inbred sclerosis where it is apparently impossible for them to avoid nominating complete and obvious idiots (cf Martha Coakley, John Silver), which only emphasizes the trend of sticking with the devil-you-know incumbent, on the grounds that it's entirely likely that the alternative is worse.
3
That's pretty dumb. I'm not so sure he's going down in flames, though. He's still pretty popular there. We shall see.
4
It's probably beyond the scope of editorials here, but it's been reported that Elizabeth Warren has been outpacing Mr. Brown in campaign contributions the last quarter. U.S. Sen. Scott Brown's campaign recorded $3.2 million in contributions during 2011's final quarter, democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren today announced a fourth-quarter fundraising total of $5.7 million. Senator Brown still has more money though. I'd think/hope the many Democrats who don't have credit card or mortgage debts competing for their dollars would moneybomb Mrs. Warren.
6
@2: More people signed the recall than voted for Brown. This includes many Republicans.
Seeing as he's not Tea Party enough for them, you're wrong. This has a good chance of working.
Seeing as he's not Tea Party enough for them, you're wrong. This has a good chance of working.
8
What about rich teachers? Well, and this is just off the top of my head, what if they paid their fair share of tax, like anyone else earning at that level?
9
I've known firefighters and other public servants who are doing just fine thanks to overtime, in an expensive suburb, on much less than $250K/household. If there are households headed by public servants that really are pulling down a quarter mil, that doesn't make them bad people, it just means they can afford to pony up their fair share in taxes. Shouldn't Teabaggers welcome the prospect of those government leeches returning the people's money, or something like that?
10
I don't know what's worse that Scott Brown thinks teachers are rich or that I was honestly shocked to see that teachers in Mass. average almost $70K. My mom is a teacher in Maine and the average salary there is only about $45K, for that matter in my mom's district the top pay available for any teacher, even one with 20+ years teaching and a Master's degree (which my mom has) is less than $70K. Teachers get seriously screwed over.
11
Whether it's two teachers making a total of $300k or two lawyers, that doesn't make them any less rich, or any less able to pay a small portion of their income more in taxes.
12
@ 2 But Warren is no idiot and is a great candidate that is why one should expect Brown to be defeated.
13
My husband and I live in MA. He teaches full-time for the state at the college level, and I assure you that we make much (much MUCH) less than 250K. Try 60 before taxes.
14
@#8, #11
The question isn't whether a teacher making $250k should pay their fair share in taxes. The question is whether teachers making $250k exist - and why does Scott Brown pretend that they do?
The question isn't whether a teacher making $250k should pay their fair share in taxes. The question is whether teachers making $250k exist - and why does Scott Brown pretend that they do?
15
Hey, a social experiment:
Pay more teachers 250k.
Let's see how many of them would object to that raise, even if it put them in another tax bracket.
Pay more teachers 250k.
Let's see how many of them would object to that raise, even if it put them in another tax bracket.
17
Hey Scott Brown: Division I college sports coaches don't count as "public school teachers". Neither do corporate consulting medical research scientists at the same universities.
18
@12 Here's hoping. Hey, could you explain to me the difference betwixt assassinations and targeted killings that you told another commenter they needed to figure out? I've been trying to figure out the difference myself, Democrat1234, really I have, but so far no luck. Could really use your help here.
19
As far as I can tell, the ones pulling down ridiculous amounts of money in the educational field are the administrators, who do no teaching at all. And yet their salaries seem to be conflated into the teacher's salaries. That's like saying the receptionist at a company must be pulling down $250K cos her boss is.
/facepalm/
/facepalm/
20
The Bush tax cuts aren't just "for the wealthy". There is no way to let them expire only for the wealthy unless we let them all expire, and then have some new tax cuts for those under a certain amount.
Just because Obama says he wants to do this, doesn't mean it will be done, or that his tax avaricious Democrats would every cut anyone's taxes, especially if the goal is really to get the upper middle class -- not the poor or the truly wealthy -- to pay more.
According to Salary.com, which tracks average pay across various professions, 90% of Boston police patrol officers made a base salary below $75,307 last year and 90% of Lowell patrol officers made a base salary below $70,857.
90% of firefighters in Boston make under $68,793, and below $64,729 in Lowell.
The average teacher in Lowell makes about $80,841 a year, according to the Massachusetts Department of Education, higher than the statewide average of $68,781.
So yes, you could have fireman married to a teacher making a combined salary of $140,00+, but yes, they would still be getting money from the Bush tax cuts. And remember, the less money you make, the more each dollar in tax cuts matters.
As we see in Washington, the game is to keep the yachts afloat by taxing those in the bottom 90%.
22
@7: Yeah, I dig the low expectations. I just don't find the outcome impossible to imagine, or even unlikely.
25
@24
Ok, let me put it this way.
I challenge the Democrats and Barack Obama to create a tax cut only for those earning less than $250,000.
Don't worry about the Bush Tax Cuts at all.
Then let them expire.
Is that too hard for you to grasp? If not, continue to put up something that the rest of us will look up in Urban Dictionary.
26
@#25
SROTU, you're literate; you can't be as dumb as you're pretending to be. The Democrats have tried several times to extend the Bush tax cuts on the lower brackets while letting the Bush tax cuts on the top bracket expire, and have been unable to overcome the opposition of Republicans and a few Blue Dog Democrats. I have no idea whether this fulfills the complete semantic requirements of the expectations you posed, but it unquestionably gets to the same point.
By the way, the reason that Obama's 2008 proposal to extend the Bush tax cuts except for the top bracket were a cut for those earning less than $250,000 was, iirc, that the top bracket covered income over $200,000, and it took the increased taxes on the last $50,000 to balance out the reduced taxes on the first $200,000. Everyone earning any amount of money was still getting a tax cut on the first $200,000 of income, if they were so lucky to earn all that, with the net result of a tax cut for anyone earning under $250,000.
SROTU, you're literate; you can't be as dumb as you're pretending to be. The Democrats have tried several times to extend the Bush tax cuts on the lower brackets while letting the Bush tax cuts on the top bracket expire, and have been unable to overcome the opposition of Republicans and a few Blue Dog Democrats. I have no idea whether this fulfills the complete semantic requirements of the expectations you posed, but it unquestionably gets to the same point.
By the way, the reason that Obama's 2008 proposal to extend the Bush tax cuts except for the top bracket were a cut for those earning less than $250,000 was, iirc, that the top bracket covered income over $200,000, and it took the increased taxes on the last $50,000 to balance out the reduced taxes on the first $200,000. Everyone earning any amount of money was still getting a tax cut on the first $200,000 of income, if they were so lucky to earn all that, with the net result of a tax cut for anyone earning under $250,000.
27
#26
You're missing my point.
What Obama is doing, in my opinion, is making a show of action while expecting to fail. By trying to modify the Bush tax cuts, he automatically sets himself up for the other side to come in and say it's class warfare and so on. Obama doesn't want to cut anyone's taxes.
However, again, if they really want to make good, and really prove they are sincerely "for the middle class", they will create a simplified and new tax cut on income taxes for anyone earning less than $250,000. I would put a cap on Federal income tax for anyone making less than $250,000 at 10%. This would be similar to those "flat taxes" that the libertarians want. At the same time it would be a blow for fairness for the Occupy types.
I don't think this can be made any plainer.
Otherwise I'd have to resort to Internet acryonyms like Venomlash.
Fruzity on the watzit...O.M.G.T.I.S.F.U.
30
1999: Troll, Definition.
Someone who deliberate places contrary or irrelevant information in a thread, seeking to generate as many irate responses as possible.
2012: Troll, Definition.
Someone who speaks clearly and logically to the point of offering a logical challenge, at which point the cultists attack en masse when they can make no reasonable argument against the challenge.
33
It's really amazing how much of politics and political discourse is about making claims without checking the stats. Are there people who do that, while at the same time thinking they're doing their country a service?...
34
This is wingnut, dogwhistle politics. The base consists of morons who 'think' using a mental framework of assertion-based reality. If I believe it, it's true.
35
1) For what they do, teachers (K-12, who teach in classrooms) never make enough money. 2) I know it is expensive to live in Massachusetts, so I'll assume that is why teacher's salaries seem higher than other parts of our country. 3) Scott Brown does need to go down in flames, but it's too soon to tell if that will happen. Send money to Elizabeth Warren! I did.
37
Scott Brown is an embarrassment to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and I hope my fellow MA residents will retire this clown.
39
Everyone deserves good salaries. I don't understand why people care so much if teachers earn more money. Everybody should earn just as much, no matter the profession. Every worker is valuable to the society. How much a person earns does not represent how much a person contributes to society. If salaries were matched according to positive social contributions, mothers, teachers, nurses, doctor, constructor worker, plumbers, restaurant workers, domestic workers would be at the top of the earning spectrum and Wall Street financiers would be at the bottom of the spectrum.
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