ReadabilityElizabeth Warren's Senate Campaign: a tsunami of red ink, "coffee and pizza" to blame
From the “I can’t make this —– up” category comes this tidbit from boston.com: Elizabeth Warren, who raised more money than any Senator, challenger, House member, or challenger, ended her campaign in debt.
n an e-mail, the Harvard Law professor — considered one of the nation’s preeminent scholars of American debt — asked for donations to help her wash away the red ink.
Warren did not say how much debt she needs to pay down, but blamed the shortfall in part on the thousands of volunteers who flocked to her campaign, saying “that meant even more last-minute coffee and pizza.”
“One of the results of our embarrassment of riches was, well I’ll come out and say it — we ended up with a little bit of debt,” Warren wrote. “Everyone, we need a little more money to pay off our final bills. Can you help one more time?”
Emphasis my own.
Coffee and pizza, folks, coffee and pizza. That was before the ObamaCare taxes forced Papa Johns to up their prices, that will force Domino’s to post menus with 34 million different pricing options on them. Heaven only knows how much more money her campaign would need if she were buying snack food from companies forced to comply with the policies she supports.
Some people — like Mitt Romney — can run a campaign on time and under budget. They are also able to run their personal and business lives that way, and, in Romney’s case, the state of Massachusetts.
Maybe we ought to have a rule: if you out-fundraise your opponent, and you still wind up in the red, you don’t get to go to Washington. Do not pass Go, do not collect millions of dollars.
Update (DaTechGuy): They put a woman who with one of the richest campaigns in history still managed to run a deficit on the Banking committee? What were all the seats on Budget full, doubt it after all Senate Democrats don’t believe in Budgets do they?
From the “I can’t make this —– up” category comes this tidbit from boston.com: Elizabeth Warren, who raised more money than any Senator, challenger, House member, or challenger, ended her campaign in debt.
n an e-mail, the Harvard Law professor – considered one of the nation’s preeminent scholars of American debt – asked for donations to help her wash away the red ink.
Warren did not say how much debt she needs to pay down, but blamed the shortfall in part on the thousands of volunteers who flocked to her campaign, saying “that meant even more last-minute coffee and pizza.”
“One of the results of our embarrassment of riches was, well I’ll come out and say it – we ended up with a little bit of debt,” Warren wrote. “Everyone, we need a little more money to pay off our final bills. Can you help one more time?”
Emphasis my own.
Coffee and pizza, folks, coffee and pizza. That was before the ObamaCare taxes forced Papa Johns to up their prices, that will force Domino’s to post menus with 34 million different pricing options on them. Heaven only knows how much more money her campaign would need if she were buying snack food from companies forced to comply with the policies she supports.
Some people – like Mitt Romney – can run a campaign on time and under budget. They are also able to run their personal and business lives that way, and, in Romney’s case, the state of Massachusetts.
Maybe we ought to have a rule: if you out-fundraise your opponent, and you still wind up in the red, you don’t get to go to Washington. Do not pass Go, do not collect millions of dollars.
Update (DaTechGuy): They put a woman who with one of the richest campaigns in history still managed to run a deficit on the Banking committee? What were all the seats on Budget full, doubt it after all Senate Democrats don’t believe in Budgets do they?
I did voluntarily register; but the registration was not made on the blog publicly.
By taking my personal information and posting it; you’ve put yourself
in a position of liability.
If one of your readers takes that information and commits mischief your name will come into it.
My name age and so on have nothing to do with the topic – so why post them. If you had decent skills; you wouldn’t have to get personal.
Lady, the information you provide to me is NOT PRIVATE. You might want it to be private, but it is NOT PRIVATE INFORMATION. When you give it to a stranger, it is publicly disseminated.
If you were concerned about “mischief” coming of it, why would you give ME your name? For all you know, I could be a six-foot-five guy who lives three towns over from you and has bodies buried in the backyard. How stupid can you be?
What I’ve gotten from this is that you’re a naive airhead who likes to argue anything but the actual issue at hand, and, like almost 100% of Democrats, blames other people for situations she created. Like a full 100% of Democrats, you rely on questionable issues of “liability” to protect you, when you should (a) never put yourself in the situation to begin with, and (b) not rely on a legal theory to protect you from the big bad scary person you claim to be so afraid of.
Cripes, I clobbered you over the head with your own stupidity, and now you blame me. Just… wow.
Final thoughts, then into the spam folder with you:
1. You came here and purported to have authority over me – the authority to force your vision of the world upon me, to accept your judgement of me, and to accept your belief that addressing you as “Jeanne” is wrong. Well, it turns out that I’m not a student in your classroom – I’m an adult who is under no obligation to follow your orders or accept your vision of the world or even your vision of myself.
You are now grasping at every straw available to try to force me to do your will. The latest and greatest straw is some half-baked ‘privacy/liability’ scheme, or fear of a lawsuit on undefined grounds for undefined harm. But it is the same thing as your haughty “you’ve crossed a line” teacher-knuckle-rapping: the desire to coerce me to do something that I [reflective pause] don’t actually have to do.
You want me to stop calling you little Jeanne Lund of Tennessee? Start with the knowledge that you can’t force me to stop.
2. “If you had decent skills; you wouldn’t have to get personal.” Funny – the very first thing you did was to “get personal” with me by calling me names. The second thing you did was to insult this blog. Then you got your granny panties in a twist because I didn’t defer to you.
Not true. I privately provided an email address. You took that information and used it to look up personal information and post it here. And you did it for no reason other than anger over being disagreed with.
Colloquially, perhaps; legally, absolutely not. Legally, you don’t have a right of privacy in information that you give, unsolicited, to total strangers. Again, your email is your first name, last name, and state. It’s not like I tracked you down from a re-routed IP address and “jane@smith.com”.
So, Jeanne, at this point, you have:
*twisted my words and fought a straw man (by pretending that I am complaining about all debt)
*Made ad hominem attacks about the traffic this blog receives
*insist on fighting about restaurants or Bain Capital, not Lizzy Warren
*ignored the fact that Liz out-fundraised everyone, nationally
*provided unsubstantiated assertions about Romney’s campaign being in debt (provide links; I’m not under any obligation to google it), which is absurd – the guy is (a) not Liz Warren, (b) ended up in the black, and (c) is worth $250 million, so his vendors are going to get paid.
Yeah, I won this argument. Nice concession speech!
You did complain about all debt. Please review your own posts.
To claim, as you did in your post, that Romney ran his business “under budget” when his company was notorious for borrowing up to 90% of the purchase price of a company and then transferring that debt to the company purchased, is ridiculous. Check out “The Real Romney Record: Ampad”.
As for Romney’s campaign debt, your comment system does not allow me to paste links. You can Google these titles:
Romney reports first Debt
Campaign reports to show Romney in debt.
This is not a knock on Romney, campaigns run deficits.
But please note that you made claims in your post without knowing or understanding anything about Romney’s campaign debt.
As for Warren’s campaign, you are taking her comments about pizza and coffee literally-
The title to look for is “Elizabeth Warren campaign debt includes bills for printing, mailing, and professional servcies’
Regarding your attacks on me, I think you’re pretty swell at logical fallacies yourself [you've attacked me personally, declared victory to distract from the discussion, made incorrect assumptions about Romney's and Warren's campaign, along with being so angry at me that you found out and used my actual name instead of my nickname here on your blog. Please use the nickname. Thanks in advance.]
If you want something that qualifies as “you can’t make this shit up” try “Mitt Romney Campaign cancels staffers credit cards in the middle of the night”.
And one more time-Warren won. Now she’s fund raising from private donors to pay off campaign debt incurred in running against an extremely well-financed incumbent. Good for her.
You should know better than to lie on the internet, Jeanne Lund, when it’s right there for everyone to see.
Don’t want you real name used? Don’t be an obnoxious troll.
Now, for the “merits” of your response:
My proposal was that those who end their campaigns in debt, and who out-raised their opponents, shouldn’t go to Congress. Here’s the criteria:
1. End the campaign in debt,
2. Have raised more money than your opponent, AND
3. Said debt being campaign debt.
That you’ve refused to address the merits of this, instead talking about non-campaign debt, restaurant debt, or debt along the way, isn’t my problem.
“And one more time-Warren won. Now she’s fund raising from private donors to pay off campaign debt incurred in running against an extremely well-financed incumbent. Good for her.”
You blazing fool, as I keep pointing out to you, Elizabeth Warren out-fundraised Scott Brown by millions and millions of dollars. She had more money than anyone else and still couldn’t make ends meet. That’s why we’re laughing at her.
By the way, the “coffee and pizza” explanation beats yours – she should have known in advance how much she would spend on ads, mailers, etc., whereas “we suddenly had to feed scores of hungry college kid volunteers” at least falls under the “unexpected expense” category.
(It would surprise you, but not anyone else, to know that I’ve been the treasurer of a state-wide campaign that ended in the black. So keep condescending to me, Jeanne!)
You’re out of line, Roxanne. Use my nickname.
The restaurant example was an analogy to help you understand that going into debt in a venture like a campaign or a business is not a sin and it’s not a sign of incompetence. Romney’s Bain capital situation is another story-you said that Romney ran his campaign and business without debt, you were mistaken. Whatever other knowledge you may have, you were making incorrect and baseless assumptions about Romney.
The campaign you worked on-what was the candidate’s name. I’d like to check it out and see if he or she was successful.
Look, Jeanne Lund of the greater Nashville, TN area (last four of your phone number: 3813), you don’t get to make the rules on other people’s blogs.
Now, I know that women your age (late 50s, correct?) enjoy condescending to smart young women, but frankly, I’ve had enough. You came here to a discussion about Elizabeth Warren’s highly-funded campaign and started talking about Bain Capital, Mitt Romney, restaurants, and the traffic this blog gets. You’ve condescended to me, assuming that since I disagree with you that I’m stupid or I don’t understand how debt works. Honey, if you had read anything that I’ve written about marginal tax rates, you would know that I’m not ignorant about the need to invest in things like education, businesses, or homes. What I don’t understand is why the best-funded Senate campaign in the nation, a Democrat in one of the bluest states, would need to go into debt to win. Nor do I understand why Jeanne Lund of Tennessee would care about that to the near-obsessive point of leaving a string of comments on a site that she’s never visited before in her life.
Furthermore, I’m not sure why I have to give my entire campaign history (which is extensive) to a lady whose only political involvement was to complain about a parking lot.
[...] ZHScandal CentralGrassley keeping Fast and Furious investigation alive; heads roll: TwitchyElizabeth Warren’s Senate Campaign: a tsunami of red ink, “coffee and pizza” to blame: DTGMichelle Malkin: The right needs to stop navel gazing and start fighting the leftist [...]
[...] keeping Fast and Furious investigation alive; heads roll: TwitchyElizabeth Warren’s Senate Campaign: a tsunami of red ink, “coffee and pizza” to blame: DTGMichelle Malkin: The right needs to stop navel gazing and start fighting the leftist [...]
She didn’t get businesses to donate food? Wow.
She’s also claiming that volunteers scarfed down almost a half-million dollars worth of pizza and coffee. So let’s say that you have a thousand extra volunteers (absurd, since her campaign offices couldn’t hold a thousand, let alone an extra thousand) for whom you have not budgeted. Ten days of said thousand extra volunteers (they don’t work and they are doing this full-time). You’re still looking at spending fifty bucks a day, per person, to feed them “pizza and coffee”.
What is that, lobster-topped pizza with custom-made lattes? Wait, you’re still not at almost a half-million dollars.
This is very typical for campaigns – your comment is naive
Except Warren did not run a “typical” campaign – she ran the richest campaign in the nation (excepting the Presidential election). So your comment is irrelevant, because it’s plainly bone-headed to compare the most money-rich campaign in America, headed by a woman who is running on her understanding of debt and banking, to your average state rep campaign. Comical, really.
Warren ran a typical campaign; with typical campaign expenses including staffers; advertising; rent; telephones; and yes; coffee and pizza. It has nothing to do with any hypothetical state Rep campaign.
After elections; campaigns often have debt. She’s fundraising to retire that debt. It’s not unusual; and tsunami is sheer hyperbole.
Look, I’ll pretend this ONCE that you are not some no-life, liberal troll (despite having seen every other comment you’ve left on this site).
Warren did run a typical campaign, but she had an atypical amount of money – a very, very large sum of money. That she could not manage to come in under budget, despite having the largest sum of money available, is pathetic.
I would further posit that even if this is “typical”, it is not therefore “good”. Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that we are mired in unsustainable debt, and perhaps this business of enabling people to run their campaigns in a way that most people would never run their households is not, in fact, benign, but part of the problem. If you can’t exercise fiscal discipline with the most well-funded Senate campaign in the nation, you’re not going to exercise it when you get to DC and again are playing with other people’s money, but with no consequences to yourself.
A campaign is a dynamic enterprise. Like a business, you don’t succeed by counting pennies and patting yourself on the back for doing so. You succeed by taking risks.
For example, if someone starts up a new restaurant, and they find that they haven’t budgeted enough for condiments, do they walk around to each table and tell customers that there is no ketchup, and expect customers to feel pleased that at least the restaurant stayed perfectly within their budget, or do they call up their supplier and tell them that they need more ketchup?
When a campaign is doing well, as Warren’s clearly was, you don’t tell volunteers you have no phones for phone banking, no coffee, no buttons or stickers-you go out on a limb and get what you need to win.
Your “strategy” of perfect budgeting is a loser.
The idea that someone on a banking committee would be totally opposed to debt is incoherent. What is it that you think banks do?
As for my being a troll, it’s been easy for you to look at all my posts, because you get so little traffic. You ought to be pleased to get some attention. Or do you only care to hear from those who agree with you? If so, you’re certainly in the Romney mold, aren’t you?
By the way-the campaign you’re praising-Romney’s-not only lost, they repeatedly went into debt. Google it. As for Romney running his business dealings without debt, do you understand at all what Romney did in the business world? Borrowed money, and loaded companies up with debt.
Roxanne, you are out of line. Please use my nickname.
Calling you naive was the nicest word I could come up with in my initial post to describe what you had to say. That slight criticism has apparently pushed your buttons far more than I ever anticipated.
Getting back to the topic, I assume that the comment about forbidding people to hold office if their campaign ends up in the red is just hyperbole. Am I right?
Oh Miss Jeanne, bless your little heart, your entire response is predicated on the idea that I either care what you have to say, or am somehow obligated to abide by your values.
That you wanted to say something nasty upon reading my post (“Calling you naive was the nicest word I could come up with in my initial post to describe what you had to say”), at a blog you had never visited before, in response to a woman whom you had never interacted with before, shows that you are the one whose buttons are getting pushed. I laughed at Lizzy Warren and you just came marching in here, the aging belle of Ragland Avenue, with a fire lit under her saggy lil* tush, all ready to put Roxe in her place because by golly, your buttons were pushed and pushed hard!
Hysterical.
*Whether my words were a modest proposal, snark, hyperbole, or straight-faced seriousness, trust me, describing your rear end as diminutive is pure sarcasm. There has been exactly one time in my thirty-plus years on this planet that some menopausal woman has been nasty to me the way you are and had not ‘let herself go’. (That was a woman who, by her own admission, was a crummy mother whose children couldn’t stand her, and whose husbands kept divorcing her.) So let’s get at the root of this – you aren’t happy with your life and desperately need someone to look down upon. Nice try.
Blog hosts usually don’t post personal information because they are concerned about potential liability. You might want to check with Da Tech Guy and see if he’s on board with this behavior.
I’m an attorney, licensed in multiple jurisdictions, and am really unaware of how associating your comments with your name is going to trigger liability. Please explain!
Also, please explain how I’m the naive one when you gave your first name, last name, state, and city (via IP address) to a total stranger on the internet. You’re not some doe-eyed fifteen-year-old who sent her boyfriend a racy photo that he spread around school; you’re a middle-aged woman whose big problem is that her real name is being associated with her commentary.
Further legal thoughts:
What is the basis for liability? Your biggest problem is that we’re not in privity of contract, and most everyone understands that anything you put out on the internet is public and forever (i.e. there’s almost no reasonable expectation of privacy). Your second-biggest problem is that your email address is your first name, last name, and state, and, with the White Pages, that’s enough for me to find your address. Your third-biggest problem, tying in with the first two, is that there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy in your name.
Your non-legal problem is that you’re something out of an Ayn Rand novel. You come to this blog, insult me, laugh at me, call me naive, and when I spend ten minutes figuring out exactly who you are, scream that I’m violating social conventions. You gave me information voluntarily, then get your panties in a twist when I don’t fall on my sword to protect you from your own naivete.