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FOCUS | Bruce Springsteen: Last of the Protest Singers |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11261"><span class="small">Ed Vulliamy, Guardian UK</span></a>
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Sunday, 10 June 2012 12:40 |
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Excerpt: "On his European tour, the Boss assails the banks and inveighs against the 'robber barons.' Yet among stadium rockers, he is a lone voice."
Bruce Springsteen performs on stage in Milan, 06/07/12. (photo: Daniel Dal Zennaro/EPA)
Bruce Springsteen: Last of the Protest Singers
By Ed Vulliamy, Guardian UK
10 June 12
On his European tour, the Boss assails the banks and inveighs against the 'robber barons'. Yet among stadium rockers, he is a lone voice.
 nder a full moon rising above the old Olympic stadium in Rome during the summer of 1993, Bruce Springsteen paused to catch breath between gale-force blasts of music - it was another of those thermo-charged, three-hour concerts - to cue his next number, Darkness on the Edge of Town. I was taking time out from frontlines in Bosnia, back across the Adriatic where no one gave a damn, for a bit of dolce vita.
"I wanna dedicate this song," gasped Springsteen, "to the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina!" The crowd, if it heard, was puzzled, and I was dumbstruck with gratitude - Springsteen? Here in Italy, ranting on about Bosnia? How good can this guy get?!
Last week in Berlin, he did it again - only this time his message, like his new album, Wrecking Ball, concerned a matter of more universal and mainstream concern: the looting of our economies and lives by banks brazenly gorging on our money. He railed against "greedy thieves" and "robber barons", saying from the stage that "in America a lot of people lost their jobs and I know that in Europe and Berlin also times are tough". He sang: "The banker man grows fatter, the working man grows thin …/ … Now sometimes tomorrow comes soaked in treasure and blood / Here we stood the drought, now we'll stand the flood … / ...If I had me a gun, I'd find the bastards and shoot 'em on sight / I'm a Jack of all trades, we'll be all right". Cop an earful of that!
Next month, after playing Sunderland, Manchester and the Isle of Wight, the Boss heads for London, where the darkness from the edge of town infests the steel and glass of the City and thereby all our lives. His concert falls on Bastille Day, only a week before the most aggressively corporate Olympics Games ever staged. The day also marks the centenary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, the father of American folk protest, of whom Springsteen is regarded as some kind of electric superstar incarnation. (Or at least that is how he seems to see himself.)
Why would we who love Springsteen's music and share his rage not await this night with bated breath? On the other hand, why does it matter so much? Why is it always Springsteen, and at this level of stadium rock and record sales, only Springsteen?
There are very few rock superstars from the Anglo-American axis who have played at this level over time - and a quick survey shows how far they have bloated away from serious commitment. Perky Sir Paul McCartney rounds off the jubilee for Her Majesty's whooping, servile subjects. Sir Mick Jagger showed a sign of rigor mortis by refusing to serenade the burghers of Davos, but struts and frets his years upon the world's stages to little cogent effect. Of the young ones, Coldplay filled the Emirates stadium with even less political content than Arsenal.
Across the Irish Sea, U2 traded Sunday Bloody Sunday for one of the great tax avoidance scandals in showbiz, and when a group of protesters raised a defiant balloon at Glastonbury, they were roughly handled - leading many to wonder that if you cannot peacefully and safely protest at Glastonbury, where can you?
The American greats are more complex. Bob Dylan cannot be said to count - he inspired a generation but now orbits another planet, despite playing Ballad of a Thin Man to very great effect during the 2003 Iraq war. Neil Young, author of Ohio back in the day that four protesting students were murdered by state troopers, veered into a Reaganite moment during the 1980s, but re-emerged to record the only album by a big star to overtly challenge war in Iraq. He was cheered by half his audiences, booed and middle-fingered by the other half. But last week, he did something weird, releasing God Save the Queen, perhaps ironic in the mode of Springsteen's Born In the USA, or - as Young has explained - integral to Canadiana, but the video taken from his new album is as bulimic as any other TV content of late. Aerosmith, Bon Jovi et al are simply excruciating.
Some do pronounce: Sting added rainforests to Tantric sex and Jarvis Cocker cares about melting ice caps, but so what? It's the banks, stupid - the looters, foreclosers, launderers of drug profits, arms deals and tax evasion, the new zillionaire global dictatorship that brings Death to My Hometown, as a new Springsteen song goes. Who is going to sing about them?
There is a roll of honour. In the UK, the estimable folk bards and balladeers: Dick Gaughan, Chris Wood, Martin Simpson, Martin Carthy and their small, devoted following. Billy Bragg lays claim to Orwell. In Ireland, rebel folk endures and develops, uniquely - just listen to Lizzie Nunnery's England Loves a Poor Boy.
In America, Jefferson Starship remains an unreconstructed project to plant a tree of liberty both from somewhere out there and within. Patti Smith strikes up People Have the Power on the stroke of midnight every New Year's Eve, even though they don't. Steve Earle clenches his fist and urges "Come back Woody Guthrie". But these are venerable - dare one say it, elderly - people, apart from the Dixie Chicks: blacklisted across American radio and their CDs ploughed into the ground at what amounted to musical book-burnings in George W Bush's America, after mildly criticising the then president.
Ah, then there's Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, now The Night Watchman, singing for striking teachers and assailed unions - playing both his own subversions and acquainting young America with the great radical folk canon. Morello became the watchman after an attempt to have his band crushed by the patriotic tsunami that followed 9/11, during which their music was blanket-blacklisted. Morello's response was to team up for a series of live performances with no equal in modern America: a blood-vessel-bursting account of The Ghost of Tom Joad - invoking Steinbeck's hero - with the man who wrote the song: Springsteen. Now, Morello features on the new album.
Even on this list, Springsteen stands alone for sheer stature, durability and profile. None of these others have been singing for 40 years to stadiums worldwide. His adrenalin-pumping shows are woven into American life, yet subvert its capitalist fundamentals, that innate American principle of screw-thy-neighbour, in favour of what he insists to be "real" America - working class, militant, street-savvy, tough but romantic, nomadic but with roots - compiled into what feels like a single epic but vernacular rock-opera lasting four decades.
Springsteen does this because he believes in what he says, and because it is easier to be an American leftwing patriot than a British one. We do not have that "redneck left", of blue-collar scaffolders who smoke weed and listen to Springsteen and even the Grateful Dead. And he gets away with it. As Glenn Stuart, front man for the tribute B Street Band, observes: "He's never been Dixie-Chicked".
Springsteen made his name in part by challenging and rejecting Reagan's attempted appropriation of Born in the USA, the irony of which the then president was too dim to grasp. But it wasn't only Reagan: Springsteen is so popular astride political fissures that Chris Christie, the recently elected Republican governor of his home state, New Jersey, wanted Springsteen to play at his inaugural bash. Springsteen refused, but the episode demonstrated Stuart's point that "either they don't hear what he is saying, or they just overlook it".
This leads to charges of ineffectuality. And to pointing out that Springsteen is himself a millionaire with a 378-acre horse ranch. It is further argued that the blue-collar working class for which Springsteen stands is largely Republican, though this was not true of the industrial and post-industrial swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan in which Springsteen performed for Barack Obama last time round.
Certainly, though, they do not account for feudal America's desperate poor - at food collection points and homeless shelters, working in fruit fields or online shopping warehouses, living in trailer parks across the edge of town - let alone the ghetto. But there it is: a song called American Skin (41 Shots), about those fired by New York cops, killing a young black man called Amadou Diallo in 1999 - and that is real American roots folk at its best.
Springsteen throws down a challenge no other superstar - or craven politician for that matter - has the vim, guts or gusto to even consider. That's why it matters. And he does so with an album at No 1 in the Billboard charts, with five stars from Rolling Stone and lyrics like this: "Yeah, sing it hard and sing it well / Send the robber barons straight to hell / The greedy thieves that came around and ate the flesh of everything they've found / Whose crimes have gone unpunished now / Walk the streets as free men now."
Bring on Bastille Day, bring on the Boss!
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Get Left or Be Left |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=7118"><span class="small">Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Saturday, 09 June 2012 16:06 |
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Gibson writes: "The most painful thing I ever watched was when Tom Barrett got his ass handed to him by a proto-fascist governor who ran on punishing working families to reward his wealthy campaign donors with the salaries of public servants."
Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett delivers his concession speech at his election night party in Milwaukee. Barrett faced Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in a recall election, 06/05/12. (photo: AP)
Get Left or Be Left
By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
09 June 12
Reader Supported News | Perspective
An open letter to Democratic Party leaders.
 ear Democratic Party leaders,
Your lackluster 2012 recall performance in Wisconsin reminded me of another lackluster performance I saw in Mississippi in 2010.
At a local bar's karaoke night in downtown Jackson, a dopey-looking middle-aged man in a jet-black toupee sang "Gimme All Your Lovin" by ZZ Top, drunkenly and off-key, to a group of young women at a nearby table. He was really getting into it until he stumbled off of the stage, knocked over their drinks, and spilled beer all over himself. The music stopped, and the women started laughing at him instead of with him. He sat by himself in the back of the room for the rest of the night. That was the second most painful thing I've ever watched.
The most painful thing I ever watched was when Tom Barrett got his ass handed to him by a proto-fascist governor who ran on punishing working families to reward his wealthy campaign donors with the salaries of public servants. This happened despite massive populist protests in Madison, an army of volunteers getting 1,000,000 recall signatures in the dead of winter and tirelessly knocking on over 1,000,000 doors leading up to the election, and his opponent's brand being associated with corruption. Despite what should have been a slam-dunk at a time when the far right is losing the battle of public opinion, Barrett's recall attempt fell flat on its face.
The Dems lost to Walker but took back the Senate, so I don't blame the unions or the volunteers. I don't even fully blame Wisconsin's shameless corporate-owned media, Super PACs, Citizens United, or Scott Walker's campaign war chest. Rather, Democratic Party leaders simply ignored and dismissed the powerful economic populist narrative that united the world around the Wisconsin State Capitol and Wall Street Occupations of 2011, and proved how out of touch they are with the 99 percent.
President Obama and DNC leadership treated the Wisconsin recall like a statewide race that didn't have national significance and put it on the backburner while the president campaigned for himself in neighboring states. But the RNC and their fascist wing, the Tea Party, outsmarted you in Wisconsin, so their multi-state class war will continue unabated, and perhaps even exacerbated. You'll continue to get pounded until you nominate and fundraise for candidates that are as far to the left as Scott Walker is to the right. I'm talking the kind of candidates who make stump speeches in the same vein of anti-robber-baron populism as FDR in 1934, or Martin Luther King in 1968.
Even British media smelled the stink of your failure in Wisconsin, calling out Clinton and Barrett for their milquetoast, plain-vanilla pitch to crucial voters at a crucial campaign stop. When your opponents actively seek to crush working families and the institutions that protect them, you don't energize those workers by telling them you'll work hand-in-hand with their oppressors. Wisconsin voters didn't force a recall to seek consensus with Republicans. They forced a recall to make a statement against a corrupt Republican regime that cares more about punishing its political enemies than serving the public interest.
Even though Blue Dog Democrat Tom Barrett lost handily to Scott Walker in 2010, establishment leaders still tapped him as the nominee for the recall election. Answer this: Why would the same guy, saying the same things, somehow have a different result against the same opponent he already lost to not even two years beforehand? Would it have killed you to nominate a woman, a person of color, someone younger than sixty, or at the very least, someone who doesn't wear the same color tie as his opponent? Why did you have to pick a boring white male career politician to challenge another boring white male career politician in a historic recall attempt?
Scott Walker made a mockery of the Badger State by ruling as the manager of the Midwest subsidiary for Koch Industries instead of serving as the Governor of Wisconsin. He proudly replaced union workers with prison labor, and oversaw the loss of over 30,000 jobs while middle class wages decreased and corporate profits have never been higher. Democrats chose instead to play defense to Walker's lies.
Even though corporate tax collections in Wisconsin are lower than the national average, Democratic Party leaders never forced the conversation about all the millions of dollars wasted on corporate tax breaks and subsidies that only exacerbated the jobs crisis in Wisconsin, growing wealth inequality, or the troublesome Orwellian police state Wisconsin Republicans gleefully brought about by arresting silent protesters in the Assembly gallery. In a state as polarized as Wisconsin, that type of rhetoric is exactly what was needed to motivate and energize the base. President Obama polled better than Barrett in Wisconsin: if he made good on his promise to put on his walking shoes and march like he said he would when collective bargaining was under attack, or if he used his presidential bully pulpit to oppose Walker's class war, if he did anything more than tweet for Barrett on election day, it may have made the difference.
People like those who run the DNC are the same reason my generation hates Democrats just as much as we hate Republicans, and why we're so turned off by the electoral process. You want votes from young, energetic 21st-century citizens? Stop running old and tired 20th-century candidates and 20th-century messaging. Leave the leadership up to the young leaders who haven't forgotten how to organize for meaningful change.
In the meantime, labor leaders should defy the outdated Taft-Hartley law and call for a nationwide general strike in the wake of the Democrats' recall flop. If the 1 percent is determined to wage class war, let's fight back. It's time to lead the Democrats where we want to go, instead of waiting for them to lead us.
Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Old Lyme, Connecticut. You can contact Carl at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
, and listen to his online radio talk show, Swag The Dog, at blogtalkradio.com/swag-the-dog.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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The Great American Treachery |
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Saturday, 09 June 2012 16:03 |
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Kennedy writes: "Forty months ago, a small but select group of Republican leaders, including recent GOP presidential contender and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, met in a Capitol Hill office to plot the downfall and humiliation of the newly inaugurated president and his administration."
Portrait, George Kennedy. (photo: George Kennedy)
The Great American Treachery
By George Kennedy, Reader Supported News
09 June 12
 ver the last three years, the rest of the world cheered America. The rest of the world wanted this nation, under the leadership of its first African American president, to succeed. People around the world were practically euphoric over the prospect of an America willing to detach itself from the disastrous economic, foreign, and geostrategic policies of the previous Bush Administration. Perhaps it was this spontaneous outpouring of worldwide affection and support for Barack Obama that sowed the seeds of anger, hatred, and unvarnished vitriol that came to characterize the attitude and behavior of the leadership of the Republican Party toward the new president. More likely is the fact that Obama symbolized the changing demography of America and the inevitable impact on power sharing arrangements.
Forty months ago, a small but select group of Republican leaders, including recent GOP presidential contender and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, met in a Capitol Hill office to plot the downfall and humiliation of the newly inaugurated president and his administration. To many Americans, this represents no less than a great American betrayal. History may judge the administration of G.W. Bush as the worst in American history but the Democrats did not plot to undermine him at the outset of his tenure as president. It is telling that the GOP continues to take comfort from an anemic recovery brought about largely by their intransigence.
The disappointing May jobs report provided temporary political lift to House Republican leaders and the Romney campaign because it offered a timely opportunity to once again portray President Obama as a failed president slavishly devoted to tax increases for "job creators" and more "job killing" regulations. Neither assertion is true but it is a line of attack that permits conservatives to frame the economic initiatives of this administration in the most negative light possible. No one, therefore, should have been surprised at their reaction to the jobs report.
Our system of government is dependent upon cooperation for effective governance. Americans like it that way; at least until recently they have. It is fair to say that the GOP's elected representatives today are largely unmoored from the constituencies they were elected to represent. Moreover, Republicans in Congress assume no responsibility for the consequences of precedent-setting practices to obstruct this president over every proposal he advances to elevate the economy from the morass he inherited from his predecessor. To the GOP, history began in January 2009, not January 200l, at least as far as the economy is concerned.
Meanwhile, income inequality in America continues to widen and the consequences have created serious ripples throughout society. Millions of Americans remain unemployed, homeless, and without much hope for the future as we approach the mid-point of this century's second decade.
The scope of the GOP's great American betrayal is breathtaking: bring the country to the brink of the abyss- and beyond; and, destroy the Obama Administration to reclaim power by any means necessary. Demand more tax cuts for the wealthy; resist any attempt to roll back the Bush tax cuts, and declare defense reductions off limits. Moreover, declare "Obamacare" as unconstitutional, lobby against consumer protection, and hold hostage any legislative proposals that help to recover from the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression. The betrayal was calculated to spread economic uncertainty throughout the private sector like a plague timed to destroy, not weaken, the President's prospects for a second term.
The betrayed are the tens of millions of Americans who believed in "Hope" and "Change" and brighter prospects for America after eight years of war, rising health care costs, wage stagnation, a housing market collapse, joblessness, and the collapse of Wall Street.
The betrayers never intended to govern when they could obstruct. There is no need to fabricate this assertion. The Senate Minority Leader admitted his "principal goal was to make Obama a one-term president." When reports of the agenda for the secret Capitol Hill meeting on Inauguration Day 2009 surfaced, the betrayal was complete. There was a time when this behavior might have been considered treasonous. At the very last, their behavior was a stunning act of betrayal of those they were elected to serve. The current GOP presidential nominee is the latest accomplice.
Mr. Romney, according to the New York Times, "scoffed at Mr. Obama's campaign slogan 'forward', saying the president was leading the nation 'backward.' The GOP's nominee refuses to advance any new proposals that would distinguish a Romney Administration from those of the president he wants to unseat. Romney's credibility is undermined among important segments of the electorate (women, Latinos, the GLBT community) when he consistently takes policy positions that appeal only to his base with whom, by the way, he cannot seem to disagree.
The New York Times frames the Republican betrayal in language that, to date, eludes the President's campaign rhetoric: "The way forward has been blocked, time and time again, by Republicans pushing the same tax cuts and deregulatory policies now espoused by Mr. Romney, that have failed in the past to spur the economy."
Romney and the GOP share selective amnesia regarding measures taken by the current White House, with bipartisan support, that helped to steady the economy. For example, the payroll tax extension through 2012 and how critical it was to our economic recovery and, as the President noted in a recent speech to the White House summit of key advisors and editors of influential online news sites, "the addition of four million jobs over the past few years." Republicans, however, continue to insist the Stimulus did not create a single job. Again, this is just another example of politically selective amnesia.
Is it not an act of betrayal to set millions of Americans adrift on a sea of hopelessness by claiming debt reduction is more important than real job creation?
Is it not perfidy for a Speaker of the House to publicly proclaim that his party's focus is on "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" while advancing numerous bills to restrict abortion and then calling them job creation? This does not fool Americans.
Is it not a breach of faith for Congressional leaders, with a fiduciary responsibility to the voters, to be willing to take the nation's credit rating once again into the tank rather than work with the White House on legislation designed to restore the Middle Class - the real economic growth engine in America? History shows the American economy experienced its fastest growth when broad segments of society prosper.
Joseph Stiglitz aptly noted in a Vanity Affairs article, "The rich do not exist in a vacuum. They need a functioning society around them to sustain their position."
This President still represents a profound disappointment to many of his most ardent supporters but they have not forgotten the excesses of his predecessor. The question for Ohama's campaign team is, can Obama retain the loyalty of those he inspired in 2008? Will he reap the rewards of that loyalty at the ballot box in November?
What distinguishes Obama from Mitt Romney and the GOP is his continuing commitment to govern on behalf of the country. He is not the philosophical ideologue prepared to sacrifice core principles. He believes in cooperation and is prepared to incur the wrath of his supporters to advance a broader policy agenda that would strengthen the economy, rebuild this nations crumbling infrastructure, increase domestic energy independence, preserve public education, advance reasonable regulatory reforms, and decrease our military presence in Afghanistan. This short list distinguishes him from Mitt Romney who fails to distance himself from a failed Republican agenda of the past.
The American people are looking for fairness, not just in income or wealth, but more broadly. They feel marginalized. Americans want a fully functioning government to address their concerns, largely the absence of opportunity.
Absent private sector investment and government-backed stimulus, one can only imagine the state of the economy, as it would exist today. Interminable sacrifice and perpetual austerity by the majority to preserve the power, privileges, and wealth of the very few is not a recipe for stability and social cohesion. The sinews holding this country together may be less elastic than envisioned by conservatives.
I noted in an earlier post)"Measuring the 2012 Fall Election - Life Under the Jobs Report") "The irony is that the path to success for the Romney campaign is an economic recovery that cannot be sustained, higher levels of unemployment, and just more bad economic news.
The Republican treachery is rooted in the notion that we collectively must endure more austerity and more pain. This is the route to success they envisioned at that fateful meeting on January 20, 2009.
Our collective frustration, fears, even bigotry among many, is the weapon the GOP depends upon to achieve power, the presidency, and total control over this country on November 6, 2012. The GOP, its SuperPAC allies, and the Koch brothers, have publicly announced they are prepared to spend one-billion dollars to create one job while funding the election of their acolytes to populate the House and the Senate, not to mention State houses. To date, only the State of Montana is prepared to wage war against the forces of darkness that stand at the gate.
What name does treachery have to have? What face must it present before we understand the gravity of the choice we have to make this fall?
When a political party is prepared to wage war against women (50 percent of the population); when that same party systematically destroys public education and public sector unions, flattens the economy, despoils the environment, and wages permanent war against presumed "enemies" for an oligopoly of interests, what greater act of treachery must we be prepared to endure before recognizing that all of us stand at the brink of the abyss?
For those that harbor the illusion they will escape the snare designed for others (the less deserving), remember the fate of the Air Traffic Controllers under President Reagan. They might also recall that if they come for others, then their friends and neighbors, you might be next.
Our choice is to contribute to the treachery that could engulf the country, or choose hope. What is the more reasonable choice?
George Kennedy is a retired senior Foreign Service officer with extensive international experience. He holds a B.A. from the University of Oregon and two graduate degrees from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. Mr. Kennedy was a political advisor to state and federal officials and has authored strategy pieces for Members of Congress and presidential candidates. He serves on the Advisory Board for the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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FOCUS | Are You Ready? |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=7122"><span class="small">Elizabeth Warren, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Saturday, 09 June 2012 13:17 |
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Summary: "Consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren addressed the 2012 Massachusetts Democratic Convention where she focused on the hammering middle class families have taken over the past several years and the need to have a Senator who will stand up to special interests and fight for workers."
Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. (photo: Getty Images)
Are You Ready?
Elizabeth Warren, Reader Supported News
09 June 12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHuyGh8NzLw
 hank you. Thank you so much. Aren't my girls great!
This is amazing. One year later, Springfield is back!
I never imagined I'd be here. As a kid, I had dreams. College. Teaching. Kids. A house.
But for decades now, the dreams of millions of other kids have moved further out of reach. Hard working families have gotten hammered, while lobbyists run the show in Washington.
And that is why I am running for the United States Senate - and I hope everyone in this room is ready to run with me!
Two years ago, Massachusetts sent someone to Washington who seemed like a decent guy, but boy, did he let us down. In no time at all, he chose Wall Street over Main Street, millionaires over the middle class, and big oil over big ideas.
We need a senator who will stand up for hard-working people, who won't sell out to Wall Street, who will fight for our future.
For so many years, our champion was Senator Ted Kennedy.
Like so many of you, I was deeply blessed to have had the chance to support Senator Kennedy in his fight for working families. To this day, I keep a voicemail from Senator Kennedy thanking me for my help on consumer work. I wish I could thank him one last time. I wish I could tell him, I'm doing my best to honor his memory.
It's a long way from Ted Kennedy to Scott Brown.
Look, I don't care what kind of truck Scott Brown drives. I don't care how he describes himself in his TV ads. I care about how he votes.
This election boils down to one question: whose side do you stand on?
What happens when the chips are down and tough votes are on the line?
Does Scott Brown stand with working people? Or does he stand with big money and his Republican buddies?
Well, let's look at how he votes:
Scott Brown voted against funding for summer jobs and voted twice to let the interest rate on student loans double - double.
Last fall, with almost a quarter of a million people out of work here in Massachusetts, Scott Brown voted against three jobs bills.
When some of us were working to rein in Wall Street, Scott Brown was personally negotiating to weaken the rules and to give the big banks a $19 billion dollar break.
Scott Brown cosponsored a bill to let employers block coverage for routine cancer screenings and birth control.
And Scott Brown voted to limit the EPA's authority and repeatedly voted to give billions in subsidies to big oil companies.
We know where Scott Brown stands - and it is not with the people of Massachusetts.
But we also know where we stand:
We stand for families. We believe in making investments in education and building a future for our kids.
We stand for jobs. We believe in putting people to work to rebuild our transportation system and investing in clean energy jobs.
We stand for working people. We believe in the right to unionize and in collective bargaining.
We stand for Social Security and Medicare. We believe in dignity and independence for all our seniors.
We stand for women, equal pay and access to birth control-boy I never thought I'd need to say that in 2012.
We stand with our veterans. We honor our service members - by honoring our commitments to them.
We stand for small businesses, and for the millions of people who work hard every day to build a better future.
And we stand for accountability and a level playing field, so that no one steals your purse on Main Street or your pension on Wall Street.
And there's one more thing we should not forget about where Scott Brown stands. He wants to see Mitt Romney get elected to the White House and Mitch McConnell take over the Senate. We have seen where the Republicans want to drive this country, and it is ugly.
We stand with President Obama.
So, Massachusetts, don't be fooled by Scott Brown.
Whoever he once was, I can tell you who he is now:
Scott Brown is a Wall Street Republican.
A big oil Republican.
A Mitt Romney Republican.
So how does a Wall Street, big oil, Mitt Romney Republican plan to win? His answer is to talk about anything except how he votes on jobs, education, the environment, oil subsidies, or special deals for Wall Street. His answer is to talk about my family and to tell me how I grew up.
Well, I say this, if that's all you've got, Scott Brown, I'm ready.
And let me be clear: I am not backing down. I didn't get in this race to fold up the first time I got punched.
I got in this race because people are getting hammered - and they are counting on me to stand up for them.
I'm ready.
I'm here to ask for your vote.
Are you ready?
Are you ready to take on Wall Street?
Are you ready to take on big oil?
Are you ready to stop the Republicans from taking over the United States Senate?
Are you ready to tell Scott Brown to put on his $675 dollar barn coat and go home?
Are you ready? Are you ready?
This is our moment. This is the People's Seat. And we will bring it back to the people of Massachusetts!
Thank you.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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o, I was at the Netroots Nation thing on Thursday, hanging with the invaluable David Neiwert, who has spent years tracking and reporting on the activities of America's violent white-supremacist underground. "Hey," he said to me, "what about that thing in Florida?"
