The League of Women Cutthroaters

From our Late to the Party desk:

The hardworking staff just saw the League of Women Voters TV spot sandblasting Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (R-Killing Kids) for his vote to end the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of greenhouse gasses.

Yeesh.

Memo to Scott Brown: You never want to be the cause of a little kid wearing an oxygen mask, no matter how slimy the charge might be.

Last week in the Boston Globe Brown “accused the League of Women Voters of being a ‘pawn’ of his critics,” while yesterday’s Globe ran a letter to the editor from a former LOWV activist:

During my tenure with the Boston chapter of the league, I served along with representatives of other local organizations on the Environmental Protection Agency working group. We monitored the agency’s progress in bringing the Boston metropolitan area into compliance with federal air-quality guidelines.

Brown’s attempt to twist the league’s historical support of the Clean Air Act into a partisan attack on him displays his ignorance of the league and its mission.

A mission that has apparently become more – well – pragmatic lately, as the Globe’s Political Intelligence blog noted:

WASHINGTON — The League of Women Voters has offered strong support in the past for disclosing who pays for political advertising, but the voter education group this morning would not name the donors funding its TV ads attacking Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown—at least not this year.

“We comply with the spirit and the letter of the law and report all contributions in our annual reports,” said Elisabeth MacNamara, national president of the League of Women Voters, in a phone interview.

Gas masks all around, eh?

10 Responses to The League of Women Cutthroaters

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Pingback: Blue Mass Group | Votes have consequences. Some worse than others.
Charley on the MTA says:

May 7, 2011 at 4:35 pm

Sorry, John, but this ad is tough, but substantively true. If you imagine that environmental problems don’t affect kids, you’re wrong. If you think global warming doesn’t affect breathing disorders, you’re also wrong.

Science Magazine:

The adoption of readily available measures to lower GHG emissions in Santiago, Mexico City, SÃ£o Paulo, and New York over the next two decades would also provide major public health benefits from associated reductions in particulate matter and ozone ambient concentrations. Improved technologies to reduce fossil-fuel combustion could reduce these copollutants by about 10%, and thereby avoid some 64,000 premature deaths (including infant deaths), 65,000 chronic bronchitis cases, and 37 million person-days of restricted activity or work loss in these four cities alone through 2020. If the substantial public health benefits we have charted here become more widely recognized, and their full economic and social impact are integrated into discussions of climate policy, this could prompt a major rethinking of the climate debate and help break through the present impasse.

- Campaign Outsider says:
  
  May 8, 2011 at 12:47 am
  
  You make a reasonable case, Charley. The Leagues of Women Voters makes a kneejerk apocalyptic case. I know that’s what advocacy advertising does. But that doesn’t mean it’s what it should do. I’m just urging some rational, proportionate debate on issues like this. Is that too much to ask?
  
  - Steve Stein says:
    
    May 8, 2011 at 9:09 am
    
    If you’re looking to political advertisements for “rational, proportionate debate” you’re looking in the wrong place.
    
    An ad like this might SPUR such debate (by getting people talking about it), but ads of any type are for making a case in the most convincing terms. This ad works.
  - Campaign Outsider says:
    
    May 8, 2011 at 10:47 am
    
    I just want ads that don’t insult my intelligence, Steve. And yes, I know that IS too much to ask.
Steve Stein says:

May 7, 2011 at 4:47 pm

Here’s Think Progress’s fact check:

Brown did, in fact, vote to increase health risks for sick children. On April 6, Brown joined every Republican senator other than Susan Collins and four Democrats to support the McConnell amendment — originally introduced by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) — to reverse the scientific endangerment finding on greenhouse pollution and strike down ten other existing Clean Air Act carbon pollution rules

Read the whole thing. Scott Brown – if you make votes like this you deserve the criticism.

- Campaign Outsider says:
  
  May 8, 2011 at 12:48 am
  
  Steve – see my reply to Charley on the MTA.
  
Historian says:

May 8, 2011 at 9:35 pm

So Senator Brown opposes cap and trade and want to block EPA regulation of carbon and yet we know that accelerating global warming is going to cause extraordinary devastation.

You can’s sidestep this issue, though Senator Brown would like to: his aides have repeatedly refused to tell me whether the Senator even believes that global warming is real.

What’s the justification for anyone to defend any politician who favors global warming and pollution?

- Campaign Outsider says:
  
  May 9, 2011 at 1:39 am
  
  Not defending Brown – attacking the League of Women Voters. Their apocalyptic images short-circuit any reasonable criticism (like yours) of Brown’s vote. You should be as outraged as I am by their slimy tactics.