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Meet the Democrats who would be governor

WBUR reports on a gubernatorial forum at Harvard.

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Democrats and Harvard deserve each other. The circus is early this year. Send in the clowns

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They're not wicked smart like you.

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Eating the paste might not have been the wisest diet for you good sir. Fortunately there are plenty of jobs for people like you in the media as "experts".

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Where are all these non-clown republicans that are supposed to save us.

Scott Brown joined the NH Clown Union ...

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Where are these competent Republican or Libertarian saviors that you allude to?

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Michele Bachman, Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Ted Nugent, Rick Santorum, Paul Braun, Ryan Fattman...

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Ha ha ha, I know, right? ROFL.

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will you be voting for? Kayyem, good luck!

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Juliette Dayummm!

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to New Hampshire. It would have been fun to watch him lose the MA gubernatorial race, too.

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look good doing it.

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in a way that dudes with $80 haircuts rarely do.

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Apparently it also converts into a carpet bag.

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Carpet bag as in Elizabeth Warren? Or did you conveniently forget Itchy?

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That's quite a jerk you've got in your knee there, Jake. You should have it looked at.

Also, I think you need to look up the definition of "Carpetbagger".

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So who DOES get the coveted angry-liberal-hater-on-UH endorsement?

Who the hell is even running on the (R) side?

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But on the other hand, Dave Andelman is a big supporter, which suggests that in fact Baker is secretly as awful as The Kowloon and just paying the Tangerine D-Bag to pretend to like him.

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the personal magnetism and movie star charisma of Steve Grossman...zzzzzzzzzzzzfest

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Warren had been living and working in the Commonwealth for 20 years before she sought office here.

Five minutes ago, Brown left his lifelong residence in Massachusetts and moved to New Hampshire expressly because he thinks he might be able to win an election there. Having shown his true stripes in Washington (i.e., as a boot-licking toady for Wall Street), he appears to be washed up politically here.

This makes him the very definition of the kind of opportunistic outsider that is meant by carpetbagger.

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I just can't stand Warren. Can't stand her. She really gets under my skin ever since that finger waving video.

Ever see her in person? Ever write her office? I bet if you did you got the same canned response as I.

I miss Ted.

Did I mention how much I really can't stand Warren? ( I won't even call her Senator).

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As far as we know Warren has never killed an employee while driving drunk, nor presided over a party where an alleged date rape occurred.

To each their own.

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That is true but you can bet on the state has lost a tremendous amount of clout and ability to bring home the pork (see Big Dig). We'll see how the Markey /Warren team fares over the next few years.

I have little hope.

The Kennedys have a tradition of trouble. Did you read about the stunt Robert daughter (Kerry, I think) pulled in court today (driving while under the influence case)? It's definately a family thing.

I'd still take Ted over Warren in a heartbeat.

uggg Warren, I even hate writing her name I despise her so.

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What a tragedy that would be, if we never had another epic public works fiasco like the Big Dig in this state.

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only U.S. senators who is seriously trying to do something about Wall Street corruption and excess and to protect otherwise powerless consumers against its abuses.

Brown ran as a friend of the working man, and then once he got into office, worked on behalf of the wealthiest of the wealthy, personally getting key reforms like the Volcker Rule stripped from Dodd-Frank. Scottie Pickup Truck was a gutless tool of the big banks who showered money on his campaign. Warren is actually living up to her campaign promises.

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Ok, if you say so. Funny when warren goes on her tirade against high college debt, she never actually mentions why families are in so much debt. Sure, she wants to lower studen loan interest rates but she obviously still wants families to mortgage thier homes for a college education. Will she look at academia itself? Why does a years tuition to an average school cost 40+ grand? Why are college employees some of the highest paid in the state? Where does that money come from? You know the environment she and her husband have made a quite generous living (off the backs of tuition paying families, mind you) as well as being big financial backers of her campaigns? Or will she look everywhere but there.. time will tell.

I don't buy her shtick at all and I don't see her doing much to change anything. She's really that bad I'd take a Kennedy.

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the best endowed institution of higher learning in the country, mostly attended by the children of the very wealthiest Americans, who end up with a giant head-start in the job market thanks to the power of a Harvard degree. Pity those poor Harvard kids and the lifelong struggle with debt that they face, like Mitt Romney.

I'm all for making higher education more affordable, but if you think that it's Democrats that are standing in the way of that happening, I'd politely suggest that you are not paying attention. Every single piece of legislation designed to make it easier for poor and middle-class kids to attend college in the last 60 years has been a Democratic initiative. Republicans believe that if you can't afford college from the get-go, that's just too bad.

Meanwhile, Wall Street reform and associated consumer protections is an issue that affects every American, whether they have ambition toward college or not. The fact that Warren isn't doing more to address a pet issue of yours does nothing to undercut the value of her other arguably more important efforts.

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$300,000 for a part timer... OK. and I also don't buy that crap that I should be grateful for the democratic party. I'm an independent and don't believe either party is better than the other.

Also, if you've a link where the republican platform actually states that "if you can't afford college from the get-go, that's just too bad." since you attributed it to the whole party, it must be some kind of manifesto and I'm sure you can dig up a link.

Nope, not buying it.
Did I say how much I despise warren?

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starting with the bedrock of financial assistance to poor and middle-class kids who aspire to college: Pell Grants. Spearheaded by Lyndon Johnson, broadened by Claiborne Pell, most recently buttressed by Obama with the stimulus package -- this particular independent must note that those are all Democrats. The centerpiece of Republican efforts in education, as reflected in the party platform crafted for the 2012 Presidential election, is vouchers, which subsidize the expensive private schools that the wealthy send their kids to at the expense of public education funding for the rest of us.

I think it's weird and off-base to focus on what Harvard decided it was worth paying Warren while she was there, like that's some symptom of why colleges are so expensive. It's a private institution paying what the market will bear, and doesn't need to wave big money around to attract talent. If Harvard were bleeding red ink, you could say "Hmm, maybe they're overpaying their faculty", but as I noted before, it's easily the richest university in the country. The key recent driver of rising tuition costs is the drying up of state-level subsidies for state schools and private donations to private institutions in the wake of the recession, not faculty salaries.

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Pell Grants used to be a great equalizer, but they've been abused by colleges for the past 20 years or so. Any free money that schools can grab, they will. I had an interesting discussion with an econ major at my alma mater who was soliciting by phone for their Annual Fund. She wanted me to pay for scholarships so more kids could afford the great education I got. I said no and when she asked why, I explained that to do so just means that the college will feel free to up its tuition again. That if they needed my $200 to have some needy kid get a good education, maybe they should figure out why they needed $2000 more this year than last. They're not spending it on new tenured faculty or new learning halls or better resources. They're spending it on frivolous extras or just sucking it away to the endowment to be able to live off a greater and greater growing interest ROI.

Her response was that they only charge what they know the market will bear. And that's precisely the point. Everyone "has" to have a college education, so if they can absorb more Pell Grants, they will because it's free money and there's no risk to them doing so. Any money that deflects cost means more that they can charge all of the kids who can "afford" it (through mortgaging themselves into the ground before they even get a job...because of tons of federal loans setup to get more kids into college, damn the price).

What makes me sad is that the kids that need the Pell Grants are ultimately getting an education they couldn't have afforded. It's a win for them...but it's also a win for the college greed machine. It's a vicious cycle and it needs to break because we're reaching a bubble of what families can afford, what students can afford, and what colleges are charging.

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Mitt Romney, Bush 41 and many countless other GOP'ers went to Harvard. None have given their Harvard degrees back.

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?

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I haven't seen a single piece of legislation out of her office that would serve that purpose.

There is a giant screaming bulls-eye out there called carried interest (hedge fund managers making hundreds of millions even billions pay 15% cap gains on their income because they claim it's capital gains when they take compensation for making money using Other People's Money). Nobody out here is going to call me a screaming liberal and I work in finance and even I think it's one of the biggest scams going and she hasn't even gone after that fat ass sacred cow because apparently some of the biggest contributors to her fundraising efforts are in the financial services/hedge fund biz. Hmmmm.....

I've contacted her office by email, phone and twitter literally dozens of times for an answer to a simple question - If the top 10% are paying over 70% of the taxes and they are not paying their fair share as she repeatedly claims - what would be the fair share that the so-called "rich" should pay? Pretty easy question -assuming the answer isn't 100% is simply a two digit number between 75 and 99. Her answer over and over - crickets.

And for the record - there is ample evidence that the Volcker rule and a host of other rules do little if anything to protect against banking crises. There was a very near miss in the 1970's that I'm sure nobody here has even heard about, then there was Long Term Capital in the 90's and Glass Steagall did little to protect much of the industry in the late 1980's. Make all the rules you want. Greed, hubris and stupidity will still push us to the edge of the cliff for all eternity.

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will still push us to the edge of the cliff for all eternity."

That may be true, but throwing up your hands at the notion is like saying, "Screw it, one can't stop the weather, I'm just not going to bother maintaining my roof." The only thing that stops the relentless progress of entropy is the determination of humans to slow its progress. Warren is actually trying to do something about it. Your cynical kibbitzing plays right into the hands of the people who profit from an ennervated, hopeless citizenry.

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But make ones that make sense and a difference. Glass Steagall didn't prevent problems and the Volcker rule wouldn't have either.

From a Washington Post article:

As Benn Steil of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote, "A 'Volcker rule'—a ban on proprietary trading by commercial banks—would have done nothing to mitigate the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. " The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission did not identify speculative trading by banks as a factor in the crisis.

Like Sarb-Ox - it would have been a useless maze driving up costs with little efficacy - it fights the last war without preventing the next. Cynical? Nope. Just logical for those who read past the headlines and know how the real world works.

And to the main point - what legislation has our dear Senator proposed to help the poor and the downtrodden? And what of these higher taxes the rich should pay - if not 72% (now probably closer to if not exceeding 75%), what is the fair share of taxes the rich should pay? Since she doesn't seem to have an answer - do you?

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Many of Wall Street's excesses and dangerous interdependencies that led to the 2007 meltdown are directly attributable to Clinton's late-term repeal of Glass-Steagall, combined with W's stubborn refusal to provide any meaningful oversight of Wall Street. Steill is a pretty lonely voice disputing a sea of economists who believe that the Volcker Rule is critical to any meaningful long-term reform of Wall Street.

Warren has not tried to pass meaningful legislation -- yet. But nobody in Washington is asking tough questions of regulators and Wall Street executives like she is; she shows a rare courage in speaking truth to power on that score. If your starting point is, "There's no hope of taming that beast", we are all well and truly screwed, but I don't buy it: that is a myth promoted by the money men themselves.

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Read the literature on the crisis - Glass Steagall probably would have done nothing to prevent it. The banks made bad loans. The investment banks (mostly) exacerbated the problem with derivatives. There was definitely some overlap with the derivatives especially at Citigroup - but either way - the crisis still happens even if Glass Steagall had never been repealed (and as I said before - even under Glass Steagall it didn't stop two other crises and only a bit of luck prevented an even bigger one happening back in the 70's).

If you read the literature W was actually calling for reforms of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac - he even appointed someone to work on the problem - but politics in Congress (both sides of the aisle) thwarted the regulator at every turn and he eventually resigned.

W is almost never mentioned in the major books available so far on the crisis. The regulators didn't know how bad the situation was. The CEO's and chairmen of the banks didn't even understand the risk. Not saying W. didn't have his failures and I guess under the "The buck stops here" rule maybe he was ultimately responsible - but if you understand what happened the buck never made it to his desk in the first place - and it probably shouldn't have - the Fed regulates the banks - where were they? And to make matters worse, the biggest problem and threat to the system - a far flung and obscure subsidiary of AIG - was conducting their business in London with literally no regulation - exactly what was W. supposed to do about that?

Again - make rules - but make rules that work. Volcker would play a limited if any role in preventing a future problem.

It's not an easy solution - if it were we'd have come up with it. I don't claim to know what it is - but Volcker isn't it. And re. AIG - we can make all the rules we want - what happens when the problem just moves offshore?

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I understand that there's a whole cottage industry of right-wing analysis, the goal of which is to pin the entire blame for the financial crisis on the likes of Barney Frank and Fannie/Freddie, and absolve the private lenders that owned much more responsibility for the sub-prime lending bubble, as well as the dope who was actually charged with minding the store.

I suspect I've read a different subset of "the literature" than you. I'd encourage you to check out the minority report of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Roger Lowenstein’s “The End of Wall Street”, and Raghuram Rajan's “Fault Lines”, which share some conclusions about the root causes of the crisis, and aren't too wonky for non-economists to grasp -- the latter two are actually pretty entertaining reads.

They've helped me appreciate factors that Wall Street apologists tend to downplay, like the role of the larger credit bubble (not just the housing bubble), how Glass-Steagall set off the move to more complex new products and concentration of risk, the queasy complicity of ratings agencies, and the wretched performance of W's SEC and other regulatory agencies that required willful ignorance of many warnings and apparent cries for help. Andrew Ross Sorkin's "Too Big to Fail" is another essential read, though it focuses on the policy response to the crisis, not so much its roots.

Going back to the original point, Scott Brown did what his Wall Street masters expected him to do: ensure that Dodd-Frank would be greatly weakened by taking the teeth out of the Volcker Rule and gutting funding for the required regulatory efforts. It's a little tough to debate the roots of the crisis in a news forum comments section, but your notion that there's broad consensus in "the literature" is not supported by my experience. I'd be curious to know what you consider to be the essential post-mortem texts on the crisis.

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On Page 4 - you didn't even have to read much
:
As an example, non-credit derivatives did not in any meaningful way cause or
contribute to the financial crisis. Neither the Community Reinvestment Act nor removal
of the Glass-Steagall firewall was a significant cause. The crisis can be explained
without resorting to these factors.
We also reject as too simplistic the hypothesis that too little regulation caused the
crisis, as well as its opposite, that too much regulation caused the crisis. We question
this metric for determining the effectiveness of regulation. The amount of financial
regulation should reflect the need to address particular failures in the financial system.
For example, high-risk, nontraditional mortgage lending by nonbank lenders
flourished in the s and did tremendous damage in an ineffectively regulated environment,
contributing to the financial crisis. Poorly designed government housing
policies distorted market outcomes and contributed to the creation of unsound
mortgages as well. Countrywide’s irresponsible lending and AIG’s failure were in part
attributable to ineffective regulation and supervision, while Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac’s failures were the result of policymakers using the power of government to
blend public purpose with private gains and then socializing the losses. Both the “too
little government” and “too much government” approaches are too broad-brush to
explain the crisis.

In addition to the books you quote, you may want to read The Devils are all Here by McLean and Nocera as well as Michael Lewis' book The Big Short and a work he edited- Panic! The story of modern financial insanity. I nicknamed Ross Sorkin's book Too Big to Read - bud did make it through.

I haven't seen anybody blame Bush (and yes - his SEC had lots of problems - almost none of which had anything to do with the financial crisis).

Look at the 10 causes even your article:

•The credit bubble
•The housing bubble
•Nontraditional mortgages
•Credit ratings and securitization
•Financial institutions concentrated correlated risk.
•Leverage and liquidity risk
•Risk of contagion
•Common shock
•Financial shock and panic
•Financial crisis causes economic crisis

I don't see any of those that would have been prevented by the Volcker rule- you can boil most of it down to you had an entire, critical industry and in fact an entire country, suffering from group-think and basically making the same bet - with borrowed money. We are all at fault - and in our own silos we thought we were doing the right thing. This was systemic risk. At the end of the day I think the most blame goes on the Federal Reserve - not Bush. They were the only ones with the visibility to see what was going on - and even there they apparently had limitations due to accounting rules - not regulations per se.

The Volcker rule might have concentrated the role of some of the problems out of the banks and into the investment banks (or in the case of AIG - insurance companies) - but the contagion risk and most of the other causes remain. Bottom line - things like the Volcker rule make you feel good but they are so complex (I think it was 71 pages long?) they are easy to get around. Then you plug a hole and another one pops up. Brown was right to reject this. It was more rules with little effect, not "pandering to Wall Street" - and that's from an industry insider currently writing a book himself about how evil Wall Street is - but not for any of these reasons.

Come up with a way to measure the systemic risk - and rules about how much of any one side of any bet anyone can make (and that's well beyond my pay scale) and you have a solution. Short of that you're just killing trees.

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And thanks for the insight; you've given me a lot to think about. But I'm a little puzzled by your willingness to let W's SEC off the hook. Surely you're aware of how they ignored warnings from insiders at Lehman, Moody's and Chase, among others that might have spurred earlier action.

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To my reading list - I am fascinated by this subject - but having read everything I can get my hands on one conclusion I came to (and apparently the authors I've read as well) - Bush probably bears little of the blame - perhaps lots of blame for lots of other things - some issues at the SEC, Katrina response and Iraq high among them - but not this. There were lots of warnings - there was a gentleman named Fleckenstein among others yelling for years that these derivatives were going to destroy the world - but keep in mind - there are people right now claiming some odd things are going to destroy the world - and not just the guy at Fenway handing out religious fliers! (one of the chief arguments is that we've just traded private debt - personal and corporate - for public debt at the government level and that will cause the next crisis - but Bernanke and now Yellen and others including Krugman will tell you that you are wrong and there's nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, the reason we get these crises is that the causes aren't apparent until it's over).

I don't fault Brown on Volcker - like many of the things he voted against that the left hates him for, there were some good parts, but the totality of the legislation had much more far reaching consequences and may have in the end had little efficacy - again Sarb-Ox as a similar case (and his vote wasn't a swing vote on any of them so it could have been just for political purposes which like it or not is part of the job which is why I rarely judge politicians on voting records - more on their philosophies).

One thing on spurring earlier action that you'll learn I think in All the Devils are Here is that the real problem - the rapid multiplication of synthetic derivatives especially those based on sub-prime mortgages - happened in a relative blink of an eye - they went from almost non-existent to a global threat in about 18 months. By the time anyone knew what had happened - it was too late. And the other big threat- AIG as you learn in Too Big to Fail - didn't even become apparent until the CEO of AIG handed Bernanke and Geithner a two page document in a secret meeting in the middle of the crisis. It's my favorite scene in the whole book where I think Geithner says something like - you didn't have to be an MBA to realize almost immediately that the collapse of AIG due to default swaps that held no reserves with the world's largest financial institutions could alone bring down the entire global financial system - or as Barney Frank related in a breakfast I attended - They were selling life insurance to vampires. Great business. Vampires never die. Then the vampires started dying.

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If the top 10% are paying over 70% of the taxes and they are not paying their fair share as she repeatedly claims - what would be the fair share that the so-called "rich" should pay?

Gosh, I can't imagine why she wouldn't want to answer such a simple, sincere, non-loaded question.

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How is this loaded - the top 10% of taxpayers pay about 72% of the taxes (and before the rates went up - it's probably over 75% now).

She runs around and screams how the rich aren't paying their fair share. Obviously there is a number north of 72 and I'm assuming south of 100 that is "fair" - what would that number be? You may not like the question - but it's not loaded - it's very fair especially given her populist positions.

MC Slim says she has no fear of speaking truth to power but she won't even answer a simple question from a powerless constituent? Nor will she go after the hedge funders to pay their fair tax rate because they give her so much in donations? Hey - you and millions of others in this state fell for her crap - I saw her for what she was from the beginning - an opportunistic schemer hiding behind her granny glasses.

Simple question and there has to be an answer - 72 is too low according to her. What's the right number? How is that loaded? Inconvenient - maybe. Loaded no. And very simple for someone so comfortable speaking truth to power - unless it's me speaking truth to her power -

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It is loaded because that is not how tax rates are calculated.

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so that it's not loaded? My question is simply a derivative of tax rates - a very uncomfortable derivative for someone who runs around saying "the rich don't pay their fair share". Their share is now about 75%. How the hell else are you supposed to ask that question?

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and they're only paying 72% of the taxes, wouldn't that seem a bit low?

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If they were making 90% of the income - but they are only making about half that - so does that make it high?

Progressive tax is fine - but when we are relying on 10% of the country to generate 80% of the taxes we have a problem.

And while the gross pay is more skewed than at almost any time in history - net pay is actually in line with more historical norms - because you are taxing the high end so heavily, they are taking less and less home.

When you get to a point where more than 50% of the country is paying zero (or actually negative taxes due to the earned income credit/social transfers etc.) you are in a dangerous situation. We are getting close.

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... of the increase in _wealth_.

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So because the "rich" - live below their means and don't spend every dime they make they should be taxed more? I have a lot of clients who are even solidly middle class - by no means rich - and they are right on track to meet their retirement goals because they live well below their means and sock away 10-15% of their income every year. 40% of Americans live above their means and have a negative net worth, 20% spend every dime they make and another 20% spend almost every dime they make. Why should the wealthy be punished for saving money and investing?

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Give it a shot and let us know how much money you can manage to save.

There is a minimum amount of money needed to satisfy basic needs. This is not changeable. You clearly have no clue what it is like to be poor.

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If you only knew. But then again - you must - you know everything.

And skipping over the poverty level which I know you love to throw out there - why is it that the next 50% of Americans up the food chain STILL have almost no savings? It's only the top 20% that have any assets to speak of after their home and only about 5% have $1 million in savings (which will give you about $40-50k annually in retirement - not exactly the life of Reilly even after social security and even if you are one of the 15% lucky enough to have a pension).

This country - almost all of us - spends too much damned money and then we complain because we are broke. Must be somebody else's fault, because it's not me that had those kids I can't afford, not me that bought, or worse, leased, the fancy car, not me with the three pedigreed dogs and four cats I can barely feed, not me that goes out to dinner three times a week, not me keeping Zales and K Jewelers and the diamond exchange in biz, not me that has no health insurance and just got a diagnosis that will break me, not me that's causing Logan airport to be more crowded than it has ever been. Are you that little ghosty Not Me kid in the family circus?

Well if it's "Not Me" who the hell is buying all this stuff? So even if we cut ALL of the bottom 40% some slack - the next 50% is still effectively broke due to choices they've made.

At some point in the economic food chain people have to stop listening to enablers like you and look in the mirror.

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... it's just too bad that ordinary schlubs can't be as perfect as you are.

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I'm reminded of the first Pink Panther movie, when the judge asks Clouseau how his wife can afford all those fancy jewels and fur coats on a police inspector's salary.

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I'm just a frugal schlub - only my wife gets to call me cheap - and trust me she does.

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I'm pretty damn frugal myself - but so were my parents and they were perpetually in debt because ... POVERTY!

I also find that when you have money, it is much easier to not spend money on stuff like, oh, having a bank account, buying a house so your costs are stable, etc.

You just don't know.

I suggest that you read Nickled and Dimed for an education on life at the bottom.

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you are taxing the high end so heavily, they are taking less and less home.

This is nonsense. Top marginal tax rates are lower than they have been at almost any time in the last 70 years. If top earners are paying a "disproportionate" amount of taxes, it's solely because they're taking home such a huge percentage of the wealth in this country today.

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If you were a democrat from outside of Massachusetts, and you really wanted to become a US senator, or US rep, or governor, or mayor, wouldn't Massacusetts be the last state you would want to go to to for this opportunity?

What Liz warren did is kind of impressive compared to what a real carpetbagger might do.

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Hows that? It's basically a picnic for Democrats in this state. Or, are you saying there's too much competition?

I

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I cut myself off too soon :) I meant to add also, what warren did was not that impressive; a progressive Harvard professor whose a female. It was a walk in for her.

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Coming to the land of Kennedy's and Barney Franks isn't the easiest place to start a political for any democrat. You need to be really good to get elected here.

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She had no Kennedy or Frank competition. I guess I still don't get what your point is (that's on me, not you).

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Politics is local, and she has to get through the establishment to get elected. That's hard to do. People around here get elected on their name and where they are from, and where they went to college.

For an outsider to get elected, it's impressive.

That being said, maybe her type isn't the type to get elected in Oklahoma.

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Oklahoma had two liberal Democrats as US Senators....

But that was a long time ago.

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Slimey, Hey you're still awake? Good for you girl. Warren had to move to Mass to get elected to anything. This is the only state dumb enough to elect a phony like her. In her home state, where she was an 'Indian', she wouldn't have gotten 12 votes. She knew it. That Harvard education and job she cheated some real minority out of paid off for her in that way at least. And why am I not surprised that you, Slimey, would vote and support someone who lies, cheats and fosters class warfare at every opportunity? Kind of speaks volumes about you? But hey, this is Massachusetts and there are a whole nest of weird voters just like yourself. It's kind of amusing as are you.

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Warren had to move to Mass to get elected to anything.

Wow, how sneaky of her to move twenty years before she ran for office.

In her home state, where she was an 'Indian',

Oh, thank God! I was waiting for that.

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were the original carpetbaggers.

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Wow, in that case her opponent should have mentioned that, or based his whole campaign on that, or something

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Well, she did mention that she has "high cheek bones" as if that proved her ancestory. Unbelievable a Harvard Professor would say such a thing.

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She only said that after Brown and his supporters had been screeching about it for weeks. What's truly unbelievable is that a sitting US senator chose to make a box his opponent checked off twenty years ago the entire basis of his campaign.

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This poster must surely be a close relative of ex-Sen Brown, who is still working rhrough her grief and denial over his loss.

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Nope I hate to break it to you but I'm no relation to Brown. I just can't stand warren and refuse to believe her load of shite.

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... borders on an unhealthy obsession. Every regular on this site is fully aware of your (often-expressed) hatred -- and of all the "reasons" you (repeatedly) give for it.

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You don't find her comment to be a bit racey? What if Brown made a comment that she didn't have high cheek bones, how would you feel about that?

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Second grade called: it wants its juvenile taunts and name-calling back.

The adults will be over on this side of the room, discussing the actual issues. And when we want to fling insults, we'll try to exceed the level of wit found in the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese.

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Cute retort but I'm curious what you have to say about her claims of minority status? It's a wild guess on my part, but I would guess that if she was not a democrat running in Massachusetts it would've been a big thing. I can only imagine the "outrage" if someone running as a republican in this state did the same.

If she claimed NA special status for enrollment, taking a spot for someone who has more direct lineage, she should be ashamed and I am surprised so many people find nothing wrong with it.

I guess it all depends what side of the fence you sit on.

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I recall my grandmother claiming when I was a kid that we had some Osage blood in us from several generations before her, and I took this as gospel and was proud of it. Given some of the other stories she told me growing up ("Your great-great-uncle invented the Eskimo Pie!"), I now suspect it was apocryphal, harmless puffery meant to make a kid feel better about his humble background.

I imagine many other such claims by Americans who think it's cool to be some small percentage native (while being entirely white otherwise, and so suffering none of the disadvantages) would not stand up to scrutiny. But if that's what you grew up with, what reason would you have to question your family's story? And if you were applying for a faculty role at some highly competitive, prestigious institution, why wouldn't you take advantage of that if you thought it might give you a leg up? My own feeling is that Warren sincerely believed what she was told about her ancestry and never had any reason to question it. (You may also have noticed that Harvard has never had any problem with her claims.) The harsh glare of the political spotlight is a different story.

I thought it was funny and just desserts when Brown's harping on that turned out to be a fatal misstep in his campaign. (Note to future candidates: not all voters are as gullible as Herald readers.) I certainly saw it as a sign that he was afraid to debate Warren on the actual issues. In my view, he's a lightweight, and despite his friend-of-the-working-class shtick, has always been just another loyal Republican foot soldier, voting as he was told, which means always putting the interests of the 1% ahead of his poor and middle-class constituents. Once he had a voting record, it didn't take MA voters long to figure out he was a fraud.

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Well my daughter can actually trace her Native American ancestory (fathers side) but would never take a spot from someone more deserving. We spoke of it when it came out warren called herself Native American. I'm proud of my daughter, she's got more ethics than warren, that's for sure.

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was lying about it. You also appear to be assuming that Warren's ancestry was the key determinant in her winning that faculty position, and that she must have taken a spot away from someone with more credible claims to native ancestry.

None of your assumptions has any basis in fact. Maybe if your daughter had the academic credentials and experience to compete with Warren for that position and didn't get it, I might understand how her ancestry is relevant to the discussion.

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Can you believe she actually pointed out to someone to notice her "high cheekbones":? Un believable in this day and age someone would actually say that. Don't you agree?

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Wait, didn't Harvard use her "ancestry" to fill their NA slot? Could've been a factor in their hiring, no?

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But like all universities, Harvard does have incentives to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of its faculty, so claiming native ancestry *could* have been an advantage to Warren. But again, to ascribe wrongdoing or unfairness, you have to assume that: a) Warren knew her claim to native ancestry was bogus and lied about it; b) that claim was a *crucial* differentiator in her hiring; and c) in hiring her, Harvard passed over someone with more legitimate claims to native ancestry. Those are three giant, and from what I can see, utterly baseless assumptions.

Looks to me like most people who get lathered up about the Fauxcahontas issue are either the kind of hapless mouth-breathers who take Howie Carr seriously, or people that have a personal aversion to Warren's professorial, occasionally hectoring style. I see that style as a real asset when she's holding hearings about Wall Street abuses; she is an impressive interrogator, has deeper expertise on the consumer protection issues than just about anyone else in Congress, and cuts through bullshit incisively. By contrast, Brown was a weak sister in standing up for the interests of his constituents.

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Well, if you want to dismiss my opinions due to a radio station or her "hectoring" style - by all means for it matters not to me.

I just can't stand warren, but you guessed that by now.

I say we agree to disagree about that woman at this point since we're going round and round and I'm sure it's gone beyone boring for most at this point.

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that Warren's claim to native ancestry had any influence on Harvard's decision to hire her. As it turns out, the question only came up after she had been hired, when filling out a form for some sort of academicians' directory.

Howie Carr isn't just a "radio station". He used his call-in radio show and his Herald column to pump up this issue endlessly, every single day for over a year. Most people with a room-temperature IQ recognize Carr as the most clownish, intellectually bankrupt sort of right-wing demagogue there is. You have to be as dim as jakester to give him a shred of credence.

You have a right to your opinions, of course. Might be easier to understand your bile toward Warren if you had a single fact to back them up. I am grateful that MA voters saw this for the completely trivial, bullshit issue that it was.

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Lastly, her alleged NA status means nothing to me but a character flaw on her part - we've all got them. Ever since that finger waving video with trained seal like people applauding her made me want to vomit. Her "you didn't build that.." screech was what got the ball rolling for me and she's never given me any reason to change my judgement of her. Between next to no constituency services to her poltical life made up of well written scripts (never any off the cuff remarks for her, no sir not gonna stick her neck out), no she's a fraud but she's just the type of person many in this state wet their pants over and maybe that's why I dislike her so.

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directory."

"I see this as a character flaw."

Really?

The notion that she is incapable of speaking extemporaneously is absurd. I'm sure, like 99% of politicians, she works from prepared remarks when possible, but you clearly haven't spent much time watching her in Congressional hearings or on the stump if you think that's all she can do.

The more you talk about it, the more your extreme antipathy toward Warren seems irrational.

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A number of people who sat on her hiring and tenure committees said that they had no idea she had any minority ancestry; that it had never come up.

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I worked at Harvard for quite a while - marking any ancestry at all was just voluntary and anonymous for data gathering purposes.

It wasn't a factor in hiring at all. My veteran status counted for hiring - my native ancestry did not come up until after I was hired, and only for recordkeeping purposes.

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Could you please provide one piece of evidence that she ever sought preferential treatment on the basis of minority status?

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No of course not, she's just reciting Scott Brown's talking points.

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You'd be quite wrong. Anyone who knows me knows very well I think and speak for myself.

please continue....

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How odd, then, that while "thinking and speaking" for yourself, you come up with statements that are indistinguishable from Brown's and the Herald's talking points from the 2012 campaign.

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Could this be an automated anti-Warren bot that has somehow escaped into the wild -- and can't stop recycling its pre-programmed talking points -- even though they are totally stale and pointless at this point (and will stay that way until Sen. Warren runs for re-election -- when they will become fresh and once again worthy of pushing ad nauseam)?

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No, again I'm afraid not. What I find most interesting in this conversation is it seems others feel the need to justify my difference of opinion. No, can't be that this woman has her own thoughts - must be Howie Carr and the Herald, ya that's it!!

Am I right? Why am I not allowed a difference of opinion? We're still allowed to have our own thoughts, yes?

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But you have been battering us with the same endlessly repeated talking points for months and months and months. And you insert your Warren-bashing into almost as many (unrelated) threads as our old pal thezak inserts his stenographic musings. We have as much right to tell you your repetitious droning-on is boring and unwelcome as you have to utter them (again and again and again).

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I don't ever remember talking about warren before on uhub, let alone months and months and months. What other threads? I think you're confusing me with someone else?

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You posted under the same name for a while pefore you registered it -- so older posts wouldn't show up in any index. But here's one example of a post featuring the same sort of rhetoric:

http://www.universalhub.com/2013/why-cambridge-votes-way-it-does#comment...

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So, I am consistent and that post was related to warren. I sincerely don't remember hijacking any other topics to go off on a warren tirade and quite honeslty, I think we've run this about as long as we should've, can we agree on that?

If I've ever hijacked other threads to drone on and on about warren, I apologize to Adam and other readers. Like I said, I sincerely don't remember doing so.

and with that, I'm done.

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I also have to add I never said she was hired due to her claim to be NA. She did check the box, I believe. Someone else mentioned it may have helped in her hiring but that was not me.

I have a problem with her checking the box.

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I have a problem with her checking the box.

Why? As far as she knew, she had Cherokee ancestry. She wasn't signing an affidavit, she was taking a survey.

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She said while growing up her parents told her she had some Native American blood. Not too hard to believe. Are you saying her parents were liars? If your parents told you about your ethnicity, would you not believe them? As is the case so often, It's all so much Republican ado about nothing.

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Let's take a stroll over to Open Secrets and see...ooops..wait a minute...

Elizabeth Warren : Top 5 donors
EMILY's List
Moveon.org
Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Boston University

Scott Brown: Top 5 donors
FMR Corp
EMC Corp
Goldman Sachs
Votesane PAC
State Street Corp

Just follow the money, kids!

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More Candidates needed for Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to update the Elections Division and update the Public Records Division !

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Get yourself on the ballot!

I'm serious.

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Anyone but Coakley PLEASE!

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Martha's gonna win the primary anyway, who cares? Can't wait until she gets Scott Browned again.

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When she loses to an unknown 3rd party candidate.

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Click on... "Massachusetts Open Checkbook"
at
http://mass.gov/osc

Boston Herald Managing Editor for Web-print integration
http://bostonherald.com/2012/03/your_tax_dollars_work

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