scott brown

Money in politics isn’t just about campaign funds, is also involves what happens after a lawmaker leaves office.

In office, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) saved Wall Street banks tens of billions of dollars by writing loopholes in the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law.

Today, the law and lobbying firm Nixon Peabody announced that it will be hiring Brown to assist its “practice on business and governmental affairs as they relate to the financial services industry as well as on commercial real estate matters.”

Nixon Peabody has clients that include Goldman Sachs, which paid it $140,000 in 2012.

Keep in mind that while it would be illegal for Brown to register as a federal lobbyist before his cooling off period ends, he is free to unofficially act as a lobbyist.

While Brown will literally work for Wall Street, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has been aggressively taking on the Big Banks. Last week, at a stunning hearing before federal regulators, she asked why banks that launder money for drug lords are not being put out of business. Watch it:

Click here to join Warren in demanding that federal regulators hold Wall Street accountable.
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The Massachusetts Democratic Party is reporting on the latest dirty trick:

If you witness any election irregularities or voter suppression, send us a tip about it at tips@boldprogressives.org. Or tweet it at us @boldprogressive.

We don’t yet know who is behind this dirty trick, but we know how to fight back.

Weai??i??re making final phone calls to voters to elect bold progressives like Elizabeth Warren. Click here to sign up.

Brown’s latest quip involves fearmongering by touting a “study” by one of his major donors.

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) must be getting nervous, with poll after poll showing that bold progressive Elizabeth Warren will likely defeat him tomorrow.

In an election rally yesterday, Brown told the audience that they should “look to the leftAi?? and look to the right,” and one of them may be losing jobs if Warren wins:

BROWN: She wants to raise taxes 3.4 trillion dollars! More regulation, more government interference with your every day lives. With all due respect even the respected the Ernst and Young, they say 17,000 jobs, look t the left and look to the right if it’ll be one of you, maybe not having that job.

Watch it:

Here’s something Brown didn’t tell the audience. Ernst and Young (EY) is not just some accounting firm providing independent and objective analysis. EY has been neck-deep in its ties to corruption on Wall Street. Recall that it was sued in 2010 by then-New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for its alleged role in assisting fraud at Lehman Brothers.

EY also happens to be a huge political donor. It has given $10,000 to Brown’s campaign and is giving 65 percent of its funds to Republicans this year. Its employees have also given three times as much money to Mitt Romney as they have Barack Obama.

Brown is shamelessly touting far from impartial numbers from one of his major donors to scare voters.

Don’t let Brown get away with it. Click here to sign up to make phone calls to Massachusetts voters to elect Elizabeth Warren.

Can’t make calls? Click here to chip in $3 to Warren’s campaign.

Help defend Warren against this dirty trick. Sign up to make calls for her.

It appears that somebody in Massachusetts is trying to use dirty tricks to prevent Elizabeth Warren from being elected.

Patch.com’s Susan Manning reports that at least one voter got a robo-call telling them to vote for President Obama and Warren on Wednesday — the day after the election. The calls apparently are claiming the election date has been changed due to Hurricane Sandy:

The call said “Hi, I’m one of your neighbors in Holliston and … I want to urge you to vote for Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama on Wednesday, November 7.” The date, said the call, had been changed because of Hurricane Sandy.

Manning was unable to ascertain the origin of these calls, the caller ID listed it simply as Massachusetts 000-0000.

We don’t know who’s behind this dirty trick, but we do know how to respond. We’re making calls to Massachussetts voters over the next few days asking them to vote for Warren on Tuesday. Click here to join our Call Out The Vote effort.

A month ago, we reported that Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown has held over thirty Washington, D.C. fundraisers with lobbyists and other elite donors but hasn’t held a single open town hall for all of his constituents to come to.

Since then, Brown has yet to hold any town hall events, even as he’s campaigning against bold progressive Elizabeth Warren, who has steadily overtaken him in the polls. That means Brown has been in office a whopping 1,000 days and he hasn’t held any open town hall events for his constituents.

In his last campaign for office, Brown said that he was running for “the people’s seat.” But he consistently refuses to meet with the people.

Take action. Sign up to make calls for his bold progressive opponent Elizabeth Warren.

Last June, Senate Republicans filibusteredAi??and killed the Paycheck Fairness Act, which was designed to make sure women can get equal pay for equal work at their jobs.

One of the Senators who joined this filibuster effort was Scott Brown (MA). Brown — who, remember, is running misleading commercials claiming he is a friend to women voters — told the mediaAi??the bill would’ve placed “job-killing burdens on small businesses.”

But what the media didn’t report was that many of the same Big Business front groups and lobbyists that battled the bill behind the scenes have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to re-elect Brown since he helped kill fair pay for women.

In the days leading up to the Senate vote for the bill, corporate lobbyists from groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) lined up to oppose it. One group, theAi??Society for Human Resource Management, mobilized human resources officers at corporate firms to lobby senators to kill the bill.

The resulting filibuster ended up killing the bill, in a blow to women everywhere who are discriminated against in the workplace. But as is often the case in Washington, the vote was just the beginning. The payoff was what senators like Brown were waiting for.

Before the vote, Brown received $238,028 from interests opposed to the bill. But in his campaign against bold progressive Elizabeth Warren, the real payday arrived. Two weeks ago, Norquist’s ATR dropped $162,000 on mailers attacking Warren on behalf of Brown.

Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — which has in the past been caught taking funding from overseas corporations like the state-owned Bahrain Petroleum Company — spent $300,000 to hire Meridian Strategies, …

New York City’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg last year shocked the world when he ignored a court order and moved to crush the nascent Occupy Wall Street movement. He famously deployed the New York Police Department to jettison protesters from Zuccotti Park, whose owners paid his girlfriend $109,954 in 2009.

Bloomberg is apparently not done with attacking the 99 percent. He has launched a new Super PAC to boost candidates who share his plutocratic vision for America. In an interview with the New York Times, Bloomberg threw his support to embattled incumbent Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) while absurdly invoking the Soviet Union to blast his bold progressive challenger Elizabeth Warren:

In the Senate, Scott Brown, who single-handedly stopped the right-to-carry bill. You can question whether heai??i??s too conservative. You can question, in my mind, whether sheai??i??s Godai??i??s gift to regulation, close the banks and get rid of corporate profits, and weai??i??d all bring socialism back, or the U.S.S.R.

It’s unlikely that Bloomberg is truly fearful that Warren will unleash Communism on America. Rather, Bloomberg has been one of Wall Street’s biggest defenders. In 2011, he famously claimed that it wasn’t “the banks that created the mortgage crisis.” The banks, of course, are all against Warren, and half of Brown’s top twenty donors come from the financial industry.

It’s sad that, torn between his desire to defend Wall Street and to desperately seek attention in light of his own failed national aspirations, Bloomberg would engage in such extreme rhetoric to smear Warren.

Stand up to billionaires and their Super PACs. Click here to sign up to make calls to voters for Elizabeth Warren.

This woman is outraged at being featured in Scott Brown’s ad that is trying to appeal to women.

Here’s the latest critical misstep by Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) in his re-election campaign.

In a new ad that is supposed to appeal to women, Brown is seen smiling and talking to a woman on the street. Watch it:

Here’s the problem. That woman, Carol Gorman, doesn’t support Brown. In fact, she’s outraged that he featured her in the ad even though she made clear she doesn’t support him. “He tried to exploit my presence. He knew what my position was. And yet he chose to put that on TV, to put me on TV as a supporter,” Gorman said.

Watch Gorman’s interview with a local news station:

This is only the latest campaign snafu by Brown. Earlier this week, he offensively suggested that family members of asbestos victims in Elizabeth Warren’s campaign commercials were actors.

Hold Brown accountable. Click here to sign up to make calls for his bold progressive opponent Elizabeth Warren.

Today, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) sunk to a new low when he suggested at a campaign stop that the family members of asbestos victims who were in a campaign commercial for Elizabeth Warren were actually paid actors:

During a question and answer session, one firefighter commented that both campaigns are publishing advertisements featuring family members of victims of asbestos-related illness. He asked Brown how Warren gets the victims’ family members to go on her commercial.

“A lot of them are paid,” Brown said. “We hear that maybe they pay actors. Listen, you can get surrogates and go out and say your thing. We have regular people in our commercials. No one is paid. They are regular folks that reach out to us and say she is full of it.”

This untrue and offensive accusation triggered a sharp rebuke from one of the women in the ads, widow Ginny Jackson, whose husband died ofAi??mesothelioma after working at a shipyard that contained asbestos. Watch Jackson tell her story in Warren’s campaign ad:

“What Scott Brown said today is so offensive to me and my family after what we went through,” Jackson said. “He’s sunk to a new low.”

Hold Brown accountable. Click here to sign up to make calls for his bold progressive opponent Elizabeth Warren.

UPDATE: Brown has apologized:Ai??”It was wrong for me to have jumped to those conclusions and I apologize to those I offended.”

Help defend Warren against the Super PAC attacking her. Sign up to make calls for her.

Last week, we told you about America 360, a mysterious Super PAC that is being staffed by a former employee of Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-MA) campaign. America 360 is taking aim at Elizabeth Warren, and so far had not disclosed its major donors.

Now, numbers have just been released that show the PAC’s major donors. We now know that the America 360 Super PAC is being funded almost entirely by a Koch company, and that it’s targeting Elizabeth Warren, an opponent of oil subsidies that help enrich the Kochs.

Here’s the scoop from Adam Smith of Public Campaign:

AAi??new reportAi??filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) shows that a pro-Scott Brown super PAC is funded almost entirely by Oxbow Carbon, the company controlled by William Koch, the lesser-known brother of Charles and David Koch. The group, America 360,Ai??recently spentAi??$200,000 on mailers in the Massachusetts Senate race to benefit Sen. Brown.

Mr. Koch donated $500,000 to the group in September through his Oxbow Carbon LLC. Former top Goldman Sachs executive Muneer Satter and Boston real estate developer Paul Robert Marcus each donated $25,000.

Note that one of the other major donors to the Super PAC is the Goldman Sachs executive Muneer Satter. Warren isn’t just a foe of oil subsidies — she’s probably the top opponent of Big Banks running for a Senate seat in November. That’s why nearly half of her opponent Scott Brown’s campaign funds are coming from the financial industry.

Don’t let Super PACs win this race for Brown. Click here to sign up to make calls for Elizabeth Warren and other bold progressive candidates.

The grassroots are excited about Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy. Fundraising numbers out today show that she raised a stunning $12 million in the third quarter, which amounts to $4 million more than incumbent Senator Scott Brown’s (R-MA) haul.

While the press is focusing on the fact that Warren has raised more money, it’s also important to understand theAi??kindAi??of money that both candidates are raising. As we told you last week, half of Brown’s top twenty donors are from the banking and financial industry. Meanwhile, Warren’s top givers are theAi??the grassroots donors of EMILYai??i??s List, employees of Harvard University, and members of Moveon.org.

We here at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee have raised over $1 million for Warren’s candidacy. That’s from over 50,000 grassroots donors, and the average donation is $16. Help keep it going.

Help Warren in her grassroots-driven campaign. Click here to sign up to make a few phone calls for her candidacy.

Elizabeth Warren’s blockbuster debate performance this week successfully exposed Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) as a shill for Wall Street and as someone who perpetually sides with Republican extremists like Grover Norquist — who once said he wouldn’t even be open to raising taxes during a war or huge natural disaster.

A new poll out by Public Policy Polling shows that Brown’s approval rating is plummeting while more and more voters are viewing him as a typical partisan Republican rather than an independent voice:

Warren leads Scott Brown 50-44. The big change over the last month is that Brown’s image is finally starting to take a hit. His approval rating is now a +7 spread at 49/42, down a net 14 points from mid-September when he was at 55/34. There’s an increasing sense that he’s been more a partisan voice for the national Republican Party (45%) than an independent voice for Massachusetts (44%). That’s a 10 point shift from our last poll when voters thought 49/40 that he’d been more of an independent voice.

Click here to sign up to make calls to help bold progressive Elizabeth Warren win.

A photograph of Alicia Preston from her firm’s website.

This past January, Massachusetts Senate candidate Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren made a historic pact to call on third-party groups — like Super PACs — not to air television, web, or radio ads in their race.

But a mysterious new campaign organization may be violating the spirit of this agreement and is casting a light on the ultra-thin walls between Super PACs and candidate campaigns.

This week, a new Super PAC calling itself America 360 began spending money in the Massachusetts race to boost Brown and attack Warren. It released a very poorly-produced web video warning that “outside groups” were supporting Warren, amusingly listing web boards like Democratic Underground as these independent entities.

It dropped $197,340 on the race, funds which it told the Associated Press would be used “on social media, website videos and mailers.”

While all of this may not violate the letter of the Brown-Warren pact, one detail about the Super PAC possibly violates its spirit.

America 360 is as of yet staying hush on its donors and staff. Super PACs are required to reveal their donors, but this particular organization set itself up over the summer and didn’t spend anything until very recently — probably to avoid disclosure dates. There is a single $1,000 donation listed in its disclosures, from a company in Florida, which means that less than .5% of the group’s donors are public. America 360 can, of course, voluntarily disclose its donors early, but it has not taken this step.

One thing that we do know about America 360 is the identity of its spokeswoman, Alicia Preston. Preston is a public relations flack at “The Preston Group,” which does “strategic communications” for …

In less than a month, Massachusetts residents will get a chance to vote on who will be their next U.S. Senator. In an act of desperation, incumbent Senator Scott Brown (R) is desperately trying to portray himself as a friend of the middle class and his opponent Elizabeth Warren as a friend of Big Business — due to some minor consulting work she did with Dow Chemical in the 1990’s.

But if there’s one thing that’s true in American politics, it’s this: you are who funds you. Senators bankrolled by Big Oil give the industries subsidies. Lawmakers backed by health insurers helped kill the public option. And if there’s one thing that’s clear in the race between Warren and Brown, it’s that Corporate America has sided with the latter.

As of October 2012, Elizabeth Warren’s top donors are the grassroots donors of EMILY’s List, employees of Harvard University, and grassroots members of Moveon.org. Scott Brown’s top donors are the financial giant Fidelity Investments, EMC Corporation, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance, and Goldman Sachs.

More than half of Scott Brown’s top ten donors are big banks, hedge funds, or other big financial institutions. Meanwhile, there is not a single bank or financial institution among the top twenty donors to Elizabeth Warren. It’s clear who’s on Corporate America’s side — or at least whose side Corporate America is on.

Unsurprisingly, Brown went to bat on behalf of the Big Banks. He helped weaken the Volcker Rule and voted against killing “naked credit default swaps,” a dangerous financial instrument. A week after he helped pass a watered-down financial reform bill, Morgan Stanley’s Political Action Committee gave him a $5,000 check.

So next time you see propaganda from the Brown campaign remember the lesson we …

As poll after poll shows bold progressive Elizabeth Warren leading Scott Brown (R) in the Massachusetts Senate race, he is growing increasingly desperate to distract voters from his pro-corporate record.

He’s attacking Warren for having a small consulting role to Dow Chemical back in 1995. He claims this shows that she’s not on the side of ordinary people.

But if Dow Chemical is so toxic (no pun intended) then why is Brown happy to engage in fundraising with the corporation?

Brown has taken $6,000 from the company’s Political Action Committee (PAC) in the current election cycle. He took $1,000 when he was running in 2010. Warren hasn’t gotten a dime from the company’s PAC.

Corporations don’t just like to give away free money. Dow is likely rewarding Brown for his 2011 vote to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases, an issue Dow intensely lobbied on the same year. In fact, he got a $1,000 check from the PAC the month after the vote.

They say those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. It seems like Brown just threw a boulder.

Help Warren win her race, click here to chip in a few dollars to her campaign.

A just-released Western New England University poll finds that bold progressive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren leads Sen. Scott Brown (R) among likely voters:

Warren leads Brown 50 percent to 45 percent among likely voters in a Western New England University pollAi??conducted for the Springfield Republican newspaper and Masslive.com.Ai??The Democratai??i??s lead is mostly unchanged from an early September poll showing her leading Brown 50 percent to 44 percent. Other recent polls have mostly shown Warren with a single-digit lead over Brown.

Warren maintaining her lead is likely at least partially explained by the fact that voters are beginning to wake up to Brown’s extreme pro-corporate positions. As one example, in his most recent debate with Warren, Brown admitted that his “model” Supreme Court Justice is the far-right figure Antonin Scalia — who has all but embraced the corporate dominance of American democracy as a matter of “free speech.”

The right is growing increasingly desperate, and that’s why super lobbyist Grover Norquist just dropped $162,000 into the race to help Brown. Help Warren win her race, click here to chip in a few dollars to her campaign.

Disclosures released today from the Federal Election Commission show that Grover Norquists’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) just droppedAi??$162,418.26 on direct mail pieces to attack bold progressive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. Here’s a screengrab from the disclosure:

When Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) pledges not to raise taxes on the wealthy, ATR is the reason why. It is a powerful lobby that is funded largely by corporations and billionaires.

When the right corporations pay off Norquist, he’ll even violate his own supposed free market conservative principles.Ai??Earlier this year, I confronted him about why ATR opposes letting Americans buy cheaper drugs from Canada — a free market idea. When I mentioned that his organization has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Big Pharma, he struggled to maintain his composure. Then, when my colleague and I asked him why he lobbied for Fannie Mae in the past even though he attacks it now, he quit the interview altogether.

Norquist is a powerful lobbyist and his organization is seeking to sink Warren because she’s dedicated to holding corporate America accountable. Help defend Warren from Norquists’s attack, click here to chip in a few dollars to her campaign.

(Photo credit: Flickr user DonkeyHotey)

During tonight’sAi??MassachusettsAi??Senate debate, moderator David Gregory asked the candidates who their “model” Supreme Court Justice is. Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) replied by saying that his model was far-right justice Antonin Scalia.

The crowd began booing, which prompted Brown to start naming off other justices he also favored, most of them conservatives. Watch it:

It’s incredibly telling that Scalia is the first one to come to Brown’s mind. Here’s a primer on Scalia’s views:

He Loves Money In Politics: Scalia was the deciding voteAi??in the Citizens United case to open new floodgates of corporate money in our elections. In a television appearance discussing the case, he compared billionaire spending in our elections to free speech. Brown helped kill the DISCLOSE Act, which would’ve exposed some of the corporations and billionaires buying our elections.
He Has Extreme Views On Immigration: Scalia was a huge backer of Arizona’s draconian anti-immigration law, and even cited Southern slavery laws in his court defense of Arizona’s measure. Perhaps Brown was taking after Scalia when he voted to kill the DREAM Act.
He Is Stridently Against Ai??Womens Rights: Scalia voted with the court’s conservative justices in the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. case to limit discrimination suits over equal pay. He is also tirelessly opposed to abortion rights. Keep in mind that Brown voted against women and with lobbyistsAi??by voting against the anti-discrimination Paycheck Fairness Act.
He’s An Apologist For Torture:Ai??During a 2008 radio interview, Scalia said it’s “absurd” to say the government can’t hit prisoners “in the face.”
He’s Anti-Gay: Scalia was the dissenting opinion in Lawrence v. Texas,Ai??which invalidated America’s last sodomy laws (focusing on Texas). Remember that Brown has refused to endorse …

During one of the final debates before his election, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) Ai??told Massachusetts voters that the seat he was running for was “not the Kennedy’s seat, it’s not the Democrats’ seat, it’s the people’s seat.” Watch it:

But one would imagine that if it’s really the “people’s seat,” that the people of the state would have a chance to actually interact with their senator. But Brown has yet to hold a single public town hall where any constituents are free to come and ask him questions. Instead, he’s opted for highly-controlled, often invitation-only events.

Yet while he’s avoided taking open meetings with his constituents, there’s one sort of event he has never shied away from: Washington, D.C. fundraisers.

Since he’s been elected Brown has had at least thirty fundraisers in the city (including two today), according to the Sunlight Foundation’s Political Party Time database. Many of these fundraisers feature elite lobbyists from various lobbying firms and corporations. Here’s a sampling:

Patton Boggs: Brown was in office for less than a month before he appeared at Patton Boggs, a massive D.C. lobbying firm with around 600 employees. Its clients range from weapons makers like Northrop Grumman to oil companies like Shell Oil to for-profit colleges.
The Washington Tax Group: When corporations want special favors and tax treatment, they go to this lobbying outfit, which brags on its website that it specializes “in the development and implementation of legislative and regulatory solutions” for corporations. In May of last year, Brown attended a fundraiserAi??hosted in part by Jan Fowler, its director. The lobbying group has powerful clients including Pfizer and Monsanto.
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB): The NAB — a notoriously powerful lobby of broadcasters that has …

Tonight, Senator Scott Brown faced off with bold progressive candidate Elizabeth Warren in a live television debate. At one point, he claimed he wasn’t a “friend of Big Oil” and talked about how he has taken a look at loopholes and deductions. Watch it:

If he’s not Big Oil’s friend, they’re at least really good acquaintances. This past March, Brown voted with all of his Senate Republican colleagues to give $24 billion to in special subsidies to the oil industry over ten years.

If someone gave you $24 billion, what would you consider them?

Tonight, Senator Scott Brown faced off with bold progressive candidate Elizabeth Warren in a live television debate. At one point, he claimed that he voted to keep student interest rates low, and then went on a tirade against Warren’s salary as a college professor.

But what he didn’t mention was his own role in trying to prevent student loan reform. Brown voted against the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which for the first time ever took Big Bank middlemen out of the federal student lending process, which is expected to save taxpayers and students billions of dollars in the coming years. Banks just happen to be his biggest donors.

Brown was obviously trying to distract voters from his own anti-student voting record with his personal attacks on Warren.

Tonight, bold progressive candidate Elizabeth Warren is in a live television debate on Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA).

During a moment just now, Scott Brown defended voting against President Obama’s jobs bill that would’ve created up to 1.9 million jobs nationwide. Ai??Warren first challenged him for voting against these jobs bills, and then he quickly responded.

Looking at the camera, Brown said, “The [jobs bill] that she refers to with all due respect would have raised your taxes $450 billion.” Watch it:

Brown pretended that the Obama jobs bill raised taxes on the very audience and constituents who were watching the debate. But the bill only raised taxes in its original form on Americans whose household income topped $250,000. Senate Democrats later proposed raising taxes only on millionaires.Ai??These tax hikes on the rich were included to pay for the bill. In essence, the bill asked the richest Americans to pay a little bit more to hire thousands of teachers, firefighters, and other important workers and to rebuild America.

Maybe Brown thinks only the super-rich are watching the debate, or those are the only people he wants to speak to. It’s entirely possible he didn’t want to tax the rich a tiny amount to pay for jobs for millions of Americans. Any other explanation would be that he simply wanted to mislead the audience.

Two just-released polls find that progressive champion Elizabeth Warren is now leading incumbent Senator Scott Brown (R) in the Massachusetts Senate race.

First, here’s a poll from theAi??Western New England University Polling Institute:

Of the 444 likely voters interviewed for the survey, 50 percent said they would support Warren if the election was held today, 44 percent said Brown, and six percent said they were undecided. Among the larger sample of 545 registered voters, Warren led Brown by 12 points, 53 percent to 41 percent, with six percent undecided. The margin of sampling error for the sample of likely voters is plus or minus 4.6 percentage points, and the margin of error for the sample of all registered voters is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

Second, here’s the results from a new Public Policy Polling survey:

Things have been going Elizabeth Warren’s way in the Massachusetts Senate race over the last month. She’s gained 7 points and now leads Scott Brown 48-46 after trailing him by a 49-44 margin on our last poll.

Warren’s lead is likely a result from her excellent convention speech and voters’ increasingly realizing that Brown has been a shill for Wall Street during his time in the Senate.

Brown stands on the opposite side of patients and most voters.

WhenAi??MassachusettsAi??voters go to the polls in November, they won’t only have a chance to elect bold progressive Elizabeth Warren. They’ll also be presented with the opportunity to vote on a ballot referendum (Question 3) which would legalize the use of medical marijuana in the state.

Polling conducted by Public Policy Polling has found that 58 percent of Massachussetts voters support the ballot initiative, while only 27 percent oppose it.

Warren’s Republican opponent weighed in against it on Friday. Senator Scott Brown told the Associated Press that he sympathizes with suffering people but that he thinks the law is too broad.

MassachusettsAi??voters should keep Brown’s unpopular position in mind when they vote in November.

Christopher Fallon

RepublicanAi??MassachusettsAi??Senator Scott Brown is in a tough race against progressive champion Elizabeth Warren. On Friday, Brown rolled out an endorsement by state representative Chris Fallon. “We know where your heart is, and your heart is with the people of Massachusetts – particularly, the people of Malden,” said the state rep. of Brown.

But Fallon and Brown’s hearts have been in very different places, when it comes to an issue the people of the state should be very concerned about: union rights.

Last year, there was a rollback of labor rights in the state, as some municipal employees faced cutbacks in their right to collectively bargain over health care. Although the majority of Democrats and Republicans in the state house voted to support this rollback of rights, Fallon was one of a minority of Democrats who opposed the changes and proudly stood with organized labor.

Meanwhile, Scott Brown has proved antagonistic to labor unions. He backed Scott Walker’s budget that decimated public employee collective bargaining in Wisconsin, calling it the “will of the people.” At the height of the battle over bargaining rights in the state, he appeared on MSNBC and actually praised Scott Walker. Watch it:

Brown started his anti-union record very early after being elected. He even demanded to be seating as soon as possible to stop the nomination of pro-union Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.

With the endorsement of Brown, Fallon is turning his back on an important constituency that he stood with in the past. It’s important forAi??MassachusettsAi??voters to not let Fallon’s endorsement whitewash Brown’s record (and it’s important for Fallon’s district to remember this next time he’s up for re-election).

(For the record, Brown actually lost much more high-profile support over his …