Wrong again. OWS is a maturing process. It is a more mature society that has more cooperation and political pluralism, and a more immature society that depends on more individualism and autocracy You may not like it but it's true. With 7 billion people and counting, cooperation becomes more of a necessity and individualism becomes more of an anachronism, even an imposition on the greater good and rights required by the simple masses of people. Examples by hyperbole are easy: You and you band of 20 hunter gatherers roam 500 square miles. You can kill what ever you want and crap wherever you you want, That 500 square miles is now Houston with 4.5 million people, you quickly kill every living thing and the whole place is covered in crap... so we organize agriculture and build sewage treatment plants, not out of profit motive, though we might raise Kobe beef instead of soybeans for that, but because if we don't people die. The one place people will have more freedom, more individuality and more choice will be inside their own brains; but that's where reality is anyway.
Those are the policies they lobby for all the time. They want it because without regulation the companies they lobby for can do what they want, and have a greater chance of hosing the public with no regulation to stop them. Even if at best the OWS and you were talking about two different ways to achieve the same ends your way will never get done. There has been a libertarian party around forever and it hasn't done as much as the OWS has in two months. The OWS is actually making progress.
There's a whole blog dedicated to Officer Pike. http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-pepper-spraying-cop-meme there are some really funny ones!
While that definition places emphasis on people in authority it doesn't limit the definition to it. Also "authority" isn't limited to the government. For example an NBA referee isn't a government agent but is part of a private entity, if one was caught being paid off to make calls favoring a team I am pretty sure that meets all definitions of corruption. Leaving aside things like payoffs and insider trading. In your vision of a free market how are things like corporate espionage, copyrights, patents, and price collusion dealt with if there is no government regulation?
That's not a crime. Unless your talking about contract violation or something along those lines. If your talking about Tim Donaghy, he was charged with being part of a gambling scandal. That's not corruption. copyrights and patents are considered intellectual property matters not regulation. Property rights would of course be enforced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market corporate espionage is espionage and not a regulatory matter either.
1) tallanover, and other opponents of OWS, once and all are you in favor of the current distribution of wealth in this country? start with the upper .1% having over 50% of the capital gains? If so, please justify. If not, give us the libertarian or other angle e.g "tinkle down " economics , supply side or whatever theory will eventually change it. 2) do you like having all of our elected officials beholden to primarily the upper .1% to get reelected? do you like having them subjected to constant lobbying by well funded lobbyists trying to spin them? 3) do you think that corporations should have the "free" speech rights the recent S.Ct case gave them?
You and I have very different views of what constitutes corruption. Enforced by who though? How do you define corporate espionage? Lets say I pay off one of my rivals' employees so they get me plans to their latest product ahead of release? Are you saying that such behavior shouldn't be regulated?
the government? not sure what you are getting at. of course it should be illegal. That's not regulation. you don't 'regulate' theft, you abolish it.
This movement is finished, the wallstreet guys hold all the power, it was no contest from the beginning. They took a very calculated approach is discrediting them, they just didnèt get the mass support they needed to bring about change. Its over people, move on.
Having a bad day? Why be so discouraged? It isn't over. In fact it is just beginning. We are getting beyond the spin of Fox News and the corporate Dem, Repubs and econ 101 justifying immense inequality and folks are started to realize it isn't their fault and doesn't have to be that way. At my wife's work where the low paid clerical staff all "vote their faith" e.g GOP based on abortion and what their pastors tell them, they are getting riled up and starting to say things like "we need to take it to the streets like those Egyptians." Their employer is talking about messing with their benefits.
Obstructing the free movement of others, blocking a public thoroughfare, is far from nonviolent. It's a clever trick used by juvenile protesters who want to cast themselves as repressed victims. They block our way and deny others freedom of movement, unless they are removed, and they get to claim they are nonviolent. It really is like the brat kid in the mall who sits on the floor so the parent has to drag them, at which point the scream loudly to get attention. A university exists to educate people, it is not an area for squatting and disrupting others. Spray away I say.
It is the beginning of the Beginning... <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/n2-T6ox_tgM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
It's in the nature of protests to be inconvenient and annoying. You think nobody complained about or was inconvenienced by the Civil Rights/Anti-Viet Nam War marches and protests? You think nobody at Tienanmen Square got in people's way? Where do you think all these people took pisses and craps?
The People will eventually win, it's just a matter of how long it takes and and how deep the animosity gets. Because: 1. The general welfare and the greater good will always win the moral high ground once it overcomes self interested propaganda. Combine that with an exploding social media/ debunking mechanism and it's going to get harder and harder to control a message that is not the truth ...as best as people know it. 2. At some point, being a controlling monolith is going to be bad for business. Without a credit fueled middle class, all the low tax rates, and low regulation in the world won't generate profits. And, the boycott card has yet to enter the picture. When Anonymous or whomever drops a public bomb on Archer Daniels or Peabody Energy or Koch Industries and people decide to avoid their products and stocks, it will strike a blow. All bad guys eventually lose because their only loyalties are fear and money, not loyalties of conscience and altruism. The first is tentative and shaky the second is rock solid. And the worse times get, the more people band together, it's in the easy times they get hedonistic and self absorbed.
nice! Obama Gets A Note From The 99 Percent Movement: ‘We Got Sold Out’ President Obama received a note from a protester after his jobs speech in Manchester, New Hampshire this afternoon. The note tells the president to “stop the assault on our 1st amendment rights,” and “Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.” Obama addressed the movement directly after he was mic checked during his speech, saying, “You’re the reason that I ran for office in the first place.” See the note handed to Obama:
I wish Barry-O would jump on this as a rallying cry to elect some congressmen who will do something. It would be in theme with his pre-election speeches. "I ran on a platform and you elected me to do great things, and we have done some things, but I have to spend all my time and energy butting heads with obstructionist who's only agenda is to do nothing but flounder in the business as usual. I again am running on a platform of doing great things and i hope you will re-elect me to do those things but for God's sake get me some help up in here. I can't vote on anything myself, I need some congressmen that will vote for something not just against everything"
