Senator Scott Brown made an odd request of Elizabeth Warren in the Massachusetts US Senate Debate:

“Professor Warren, you have to stop scaring women”

source: Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Elizabeth Warren / Scott Brown — Livestreaming Their First Debate.

Seems Brown is the reaper trying to kill the messenger. On tons of women’s issues, Brown’s Republican party has shown themselves to be actually scaring women. Warren is just telling them: you’re right to be fearful of a Republican senator.

So by talking about Republican policies, Elizabeth Warren is “scaring women”. Not the actual policies. Discussion of them.

Funny thing about Scott Brown, Guardian of Massachusetts Women-folk Before this debate, Harry Reid basically called Scott Brown a scaredy-cat for trying to actually dodge the debate by kicking it with his caucus around the capital:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid suggested Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) was looking for an excuse to skip a Thursday night debate with Elizabeth Warren (D). Tussling over an amendment offered by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the Senate delayed a vote on a short-term spending bill that is expected to pass. Brown had suggested he might miss the debate if Democrats scheduled votes conflicting with its start time. “I’ve been to a few of these rodeos. It is obvious there is a big stall taking place. One of the senators who had a debate tonight doesn’t want to debate. Well, he can’t use the Senate as an excuse. There will be no more votes today,” Reid said.

source: Harry Reid: Scott Brown ‘doesn’t want to debate’.

Was Warren really scaring women or was she scaring Scott Brown who realized he had to debate Warren while fighting top of the ticket drag courtesy of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney?

Mitt Romney on the Mideast Conflict – YouTube.

h/t to Janet Novack in Forbes for breaking down the math:

But since I write about tax and budget issues, let me make a few serious points about the 46.4% of American households who paid no federal income taxes for 2011. First of all, according to the Tax Policy Center, more than 60% of those non-income tax paying households did pay federal payroll taxes—meaning Social Security and Medicare taxes. (Considering all Americans households, including those that owed income tax, 62% paid more in payroll taxes than in federal income taxes.)

What of the 18.1% of U.S. households that paid neither income nor payroll taxes? More than half of them were headed by a senior–in other words, by someone who paid payroll taxes and likely some income taxes too, in the past. (No, the amount the elderly have paid in does not cover the cost of the Medicare benefits they are now getting. And that is true despite the fact that in a Romney TV adattacking Obamacare’s cuts to the growth in Medicare spending, an announcer seems to suggest otherwise, intoning: “You paid into Medicare for years, every paycheck…. So now the money you paid for your guaranteed healthcare Is going to a massive new government program that’s not for you.”)

Of course, it goes without saying, that those folks who aren’t paying federal taxes are almost all paying state and local taxes—state sales taxes, real estate taxes (either on their homes or built into their rents) and possibly state income taxes too, since those taxes tend to exempt fewer poor families than does the federal income tax. If they buy gasoline, liquor or tobacco, or have telephones, they’re also feeding the federal purse.

Yes, there’s a serious tax policy issue here. The percentage of households owing federal individual income taxes has fallen in recent years in part because both Republicans and Democrats have looked to provide help for working families through the child credit, the earned income tax credit and other “tax expenditures,” rather than through more direct spending programs. That might not be the best way to do things. But note again that the largest group excluded from paying income tax because of special tax expenditures are seniors, who get a bigger standard deduction than younger folks and more importantly, special tax treatment for their Social Security benefits.

source: Memo To Mitt Romney: The 47% Pay Taxes Too – Forbes.

Nothing Romney says is elegantly stated and a lot of it is just plain stupid. That bold in Novack’s article was mine: Only 18.1% pay no income or payroll tax and most of THESE households are elderly.

And look, here’s the real deal…the states with most non-income tax payers:

Fiscal Fact No. 229
Southern States Have Highest Percentages of “Nonpayers” (taxfoundation.org)

Also, remember “red states” get more tax money in than money paid to the federal government.

Any way you put it the real people he’s arguing against a lot of members in his base. He represents tax revenue protectionists, not tax revenue cutters.

Mitt Romney’s Mom Says his Dad was on Welfare – YouTube.

Mitt Romney is basically saying all the Obama 2008 voters who will vote for him again are broke, lazy freeloaders:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

source: SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters | Mother Jones.

That means when he spoke to NAACP (blacks 95% behind Obama) or NALEO (latinos 66% behind Obama) or Women (52% behind Obama) or Asians and Pacific Islanders (62% behind Obama). Obama also holds solid leads with LGBT demo and Millenials.

Romney thinks your all not worth worrying about. If a “President Romney” comes to be, basically: he’ll be happy to ignore all those groups.

What a consistently condescending prick this Romney is. It matches up with “I’m not focused on the poor”:

Donate to President Obama’s Campaign here.

These strikes are not just about teacher benefits, tenure and career security. They are often about availability of:

1. Manageable Teaching environments
2. Facilities (Libraries, laboratories and gymnasiums)
3. Supplies (books, writing materials, utensils)
4. Fine Arts, Phys Ed and Extra-curricular activity
5. School safety and security
6. Student Health Services (mental and physical)
7. Professional growth
8. Career security

Mr. Farmer quotes Director David Magill’s September 2nd Address to Returning Faculty of the University of Chicago Lab School where Penny Pritzker and Rahm Emanuel send their children to be educated:

I believe that the “business model” of improving education will fall on its own sword.

It is unfortunate that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation developed primarily by politicians and enacted in 2002 morphed into what many refer to as a “business model” of improving education. Measuring outcomes through standardized testing and referring to those results as the evidence of learning and the bottom line is, in my opinion, misguided and, unfortunately, continues to be advocated under a new name and supported by the current administration.

[…]

Listen to this from Ms. Ravitch:

We must honor those teachers who awaken in their students a passionate interest in history, science, the arts, literature, and foreign language. Such teachers (if acting today under NCLB) would be stifled not only by the data mania of their supervisors, but by the jargon, the indifference to classical literature, and the hostility to their manner of teaching that now prevails in our schools.

Without a comprehensive liberal arts education, our students will not be prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy, nor will they be equipped to make decisions based on knowledge, thoughtful debate, and reason. . . . Not everything that matters can be quantified. What is tested may ultimately be less important than what is untested, such as a student’s ability to seek alternative explanations, to raise questions, to pursue knowledge on his own, and to think differently.

And to that, I say AMEN and thank you, Ms. Ravitch, for seeing the light and for cracking the armor of the “business model.” Because of her and others like her, I believe this disturbing chapter in American education history is coming to a close.

source: University of Chicago Laboratory Schools: News » Detail.

Note: David Magill who got his start teaching in Kensington here in Philadelphia.

This is a few weeks old, but I think this is an important discussion.

MONICA MEHTA: Which is enabled by taking risks. And that was the big thing that was missing from the “you didn’t build that speech.”

HARRIS-PERRY: What is riskier than living poor in America? Seriously! What in the world is riskier than being a poor person in America? I live in a neighborhood where people are shot on my street corner, I live in a neighborhood where people have to figure out how to get their kid into school because maybe it will be a good school and maybe it won’t.

I am sick of the idea that being wealthy is risky. No! There is a huge safety net that whenever you fail will catch you (slams palms together) and catch you (slams palms together) and catch you (slams palms again). Being poor is what is risky!

MEHTA: Melissa–

HARRIS-PERRY: We have to create a safety net for poor people and then won’t because they happen to look different from us, it is the pervasive ugliness!

COATES: It is, it is.

HARRIS-PERRY: We cannot do that!

COATES: There is the other side being that small business owners do take risks, of course. And when we–

MEHTA: That’s what makes entrepreneurs different from other smart, hardworking people. And my point was that that is what was missing from the speech.

BOB FRANKEN: You mean the entrepreneurs who built things all by themselves?

COATES: They don’t build them by themselves, they build them by employing other people.

MEHTA: Yes, the ones that use the roads that all of us have access to, the teachers have access to. But some of us go to Dairy Queen and some of us start businesses.

GILES: I’m sorry but the whole notion of job creators—consumers are job creators. We’re the ones who make, who help make business, and who help make industry. And it’s very hurtful I so agree with what you just said (looking at Harris-Perry).

There was a picture on the front-page of the New York Times this Tuesday that really irked me. It was a black man that was in a homeless shelter in New Orleans and it showed empty beds around him and he was laying back with his feet crossed. And there was something about that picture to me that just looked like ‘This is an example of some lazy person, sponging off of the largess of other people.’

There are just these pervasive things that are out there. They just are!

FRANKEN: Besides which, your premise (addressing Mehta), correct me if you disagree. Your premise is that the person must be able to have all the wealth he can accumulate. All the wealth he can accumulate as a reward for taking risks. And I guess my question is, how many vacation homes do you need? How many private jets do you need? I suspect that if people were to give a little bit back to the government that enabled them, that they would, in fact, still want to take those risks.

MEHTA: I don’t think that’s the thought process of the small business owner who makes $250,000 a year. We’ve lost 220,000 small business owners in the last 10 years. We’re mixing apples and oranges. We’re talking about people that are super-wealthy and putting the policies that should affect them on real people who are just trying.

HARRIS-PERRY: You’re right, small business is different than Bain Capital. But I’ll also say, 10 years, President Obama has been president than few—less than four.

First of all Small Business is Bain Capital. it’s also Price Waterhouse-Coopers. It’s also the local laundromat. It’s also the local corner store . This is why “small business” is a meaningless classification when discussing risk. Owners of small businesses like Bain and PwC , have different access to debt relief, labor markets, capital and exit strategies than say a laundromat or a food truck.

Risk as something you choose is inherent to the neo-con informed view of personal risk offered to the discussion by Business Finance Expert Monica Mehta. This made the usually calm Melissa Harris-Perry lose her temper because of the neglect of discussion of small facts.

Note: What’s wrong with our political press is that the facet of the debate that was most newsworthy to most media outlets was that Harris-Perry lost her temper, not what was actually being discussed.

Harris-Perry apologized for losing her temper:

Harris-Perry: Let me start by saying that when I apologized, my apology was not for what I said. It was not even for the passion with which I said it. But it was for yelling at a guest. I’ve been a guest on many shows, shows where I agree with the host, where I don’t agree with the host. And I do feel like, as a host, the thing that I want to be is not someone who, even if I fundamentally disagree with my guests, makes my guests feel like I’m yelling at them. To me, it makes me feel like a bully. Because I’m sitting there in the host’s chair. So my apology was for yelling at a guest. No matter how much we may have disagreed.

And no one asked me to do that apology: it was just my initial reaction. I in no way apologized for the sentiment, because I am angry. Like, not just disappointed, and not just finding that it lacks facts: I’m angry at the portrayal of poor, working-class people in this country and the idea that, somehow, poor people, working-class people, have it easier, or that they’re lazy, or that they don’t want, or that they don’t deserve help. You can’t actually have lived in a poor neighborhood, seen how hard it is to live in our neighborhoods, and managed everything from public transportation to schools to crime to finding decent groceries. That stuff is actually hard. And so I don’t, in any way, apologize for the sentiment. My worry–at least at that moment–was that the sentiment would be lost behind the yelling. I studied black women’s self-expression, and I worried that all they would see is a yelling black woman. So I just want to be clear that the sentiment is still there.

The sentiment isn’t lost, it’s purposefully obscured. It’s easier to tsk-tsk tone than it is to actually discuss how difficult it is to mitigate the risks of being poor.

I was mildly surprised Harris-Perry lost her temper, but I was more surprised Mehta tried to compare and contrast financial risk between entrepreneurs and workers while discounting the risks inherent in attempting to be economically mobile as a member of either class of economic participant while starting out impoverished. When someone asserts a policy argument around facts omitting inarguable data it should be immediately disconsidered and vociferously challenged. Temper or not, Harris-Perry was correct to dispute the isolation of business risk from personal risk.