I'm hitting the home office for a week, staying at the Mil Hilton, which is a block from the protests...I have to grab some shirts at the Brooks Bros in Liberty Plaza so I'll get to check all this out.
Are you too naive to realize that the vast majority of those who support the goals of OWS are not the one's actually protesting?
What I would love to see is that this is the embryonic phase where some vague entity called OWS begins to acquire followers and the demands of OWS develop and dynamically change according to the people in that group. If that is the plan, then remaining semi-planless now is a great idea. They need to continue building numbers for the time being. From all accounts I've heard, it seems that OWS is larger than the media portrays it to be. Is that true (if anyone's been down)?
I think that the noose is beginning to tighten around the necks of rich people who have not earned their money. A person who earns their money wouldn't fear OWS, IMO. Only the people who are worried about how they will continue to make money now that the easy way is being threatened. People who are unwillingly having their lives turned upside down by this manic financial industry should be able to opt out of this madness. Can you imagine that banks in this country have tightened up lending of credit to retail, but are ramping up providing credit to wholesale? While there is obviously a massive profit/risk motive for dealing with wholesale rather retail, I think it speaks volumes about what's going on: the financial industry is owned by the 1%, uses the money of the 99%, pays you interest in 99% figures, charges you interest in 1% figures. I could live with this. What I can't live with is the next part - the bank then decides it can make money using your money. When **** hits the fan the 'contract' you signed with the bank may be worth nothing, but cash in hand is cash in hand. This is great for the bank, because they keeped you locked down with the I.O.U. which in worst case the retail customers and the rest of the 99% will bail the bank out of. If a bank is told to keep 20% of its assets in reserve, don't you think they will focus 99% of their time on the remaining 80%? Because focusing on asset preservation does not generate as much revenue as revenue generation. If you're told to increase the company revenues by 5%, do you think you would be caught dicking around with how better to preserve consumer assets or how to milk customers of everything they have before you retire/resign/move on/defraud? How many companies set targets like "make sure the customer's money is 5% safer than last year!!" lol I can tell you first hand, it's less than 1%. I know people who were supposed to be making as low as $300 per month who lost that $300 per month for months or years and are now actively avoiding the urge to eat out of trash cans. They can't afford to fly back to their country, they can't afford HEALTH and HYGIENE. These people can't afford mortgage, personal loans, credit cards, car loans, nothing. Just about the only facility they ask from the bank is that once a month they will deposit cash, and then they will withdraw it. Is it so much to ask that their lives should go on without caring when in each decade or two the financial industry is going to screw up again? It doesn't help that I had to wait 2 hours in line at the bank today.
Wealth is not the issue. Rich is THE goal in the US as long as it is not on the backs of other people's children. Control of the political narrative is the issue. Money using money to control the system, to make more money. The People should be controlling the political power, to direct the common effort for the greater good, including deciding the reasonable tax and regulation rates. But to do that they need more debate and real information and less obstruction, less designed and directed advocacy and no outright lying duplicitous doublespeaking propaganda. That's what OWS is about. Limiting the bought (as opposed to free) speech as directed from Wall Street. That's it. No big socialist agenda, just the realization that the information system is out of blanace.
"We are not Socialists" <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_gaknDr3hZg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Do they make campaign contributions? Do they make issue ads? Do they have anonymous benefactors? Do they write their own regulatory laws? Do they lobby congress for profit? Do they routinely keep information secret or publish it? Do they have commonly understood ethical standards? Do they allow space for dissent and opinion? Do they have an agenda of personal gain other than the standard business model of selling papers? The PAC's of Karl Rove, Dick Army Army and Grover Norquist may have bigger budgets then the NYT. But you will never know, you will never know where the money came from, where it's going or what it wants. One of them could be a front for the CCP, spending $50 billion dollars a year lobbying for "free trade" in order to suck dollars out of the US, but you will never know. That's the problem. Thanks to Justice Roberts and Citizens United you can't know.
Of course working hard to increase your position in life is a good thing, and I don't believe most of the OWS protesters would disagree. The funny thing is that America isn't even in the top 5 as far as ability to work hard and move up economically. Nations with much more socialism like Sweeden, Denmark, France, and Canada are all ahead of the US when it comes to that. The thing I like about OWS is they are serious about making changes for the better and they are actually doing something about it.
"Anti-Capitalism Teach In" at Occupy DC <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/T2B3QiJDHTM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Occupy protesters should get behind someone like Paul or Johnson. If you look at the issues, there's actually quite a bit of common ground. You don't have to agree with everything these guys say to support them and teach the 2 big parties a lesson.
No thanks Elizabeth Warren 2016 ? Buddy Roemer has the more populist, campaign reform based message; but sadly, he is not a handsome man.
I don't support gun ownership, but with the police brutal beat down on the peaceful OWS'ers. I start to realize isn't the original intention of gun ownership is exactly for occasions like this? I am so happy to see people are starting to push back at those oppressors and more people come out to just support other people's freedom of speech. <object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/E1Z0jE88_x0?version=3&feature=player_detailpage"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/E1Z0jE88_x0?version=3&feature=player_detailpage" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="360"></object>
Chill dude, Nonviolence, civil disobedience, free speech, free assembly It's the way things get changed.
I like Buddy, but that is completely off-base. Paul and Johnson are about as grassroots as they come. Buddy is a cool guy, but he is lacking a philosophical backbone. Warren... I support her sentiments, but not her solutions. I too share the rage towards the well-connected bankers and businessmen who own the government and have successfully implemented a system of crony capitalism in their favor. And I wouldn't mind punishing these people and taking these benefits away. But increase spending, increase taxes? Modify and tinker the existing system with more rules that will punish innocent people as well? Not tackle the problem with the dollar itself? Not a fan of that.
I just think we could get actual things done with temporary coalitions rather than compromise. The compromise of liberalism and neoconservatism have given us crony capitalism, elements of socialism, interventionism, and a zombie currency.
