Occupy Wall Street. by Wulfenstar

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

As usual, Wulf, you're a day late and a dollar short. We've been discussing this at length in another thread (try looking for "Wall Street"). That's okay, we'll wait for you to catch up.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 8:39 AM

DALEK!

Quote:
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

Okay, so it is looking more and more that with free trade the US is going to continue to lose out because we can't manufacture good and payworkers a good wage here and match countries that pay people pennies. A $20 per hour minimum wages is out of touch.

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Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

Universal health care is needed, I don't know if we have to ban all private insurers.

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Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

No. Go to work!

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Demand four: Free college education.

Okay, but only for state schools.

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Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

Yes, so yes!

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Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

That would go a long way to help.

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Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.

I disagree with decommissioning all of the nuclear power plants. If they are running safely let them run out there service lives.

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Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

Yes!

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Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

No, there has to be some kind of check.

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Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

I agree!

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Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

It is like a reset button, I don't know how the markets would deal with that.

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Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

Yes, so very yes!

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Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

Yes, but only with right to work laws. I should not have to join a union to hold a job.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 8:54 AM

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

In the end, if these assclowns get their way, there will only be a few people actually working.

Probably Rap, and myself... maybe a few others.

Our work will go to pay for the rest of you.

I'll take that. With one caveat.

Each of us have access to several dozen thermonuclear weapons, and the lawful right to use them.

We get tired of supporting your lazy, spoiled useless asses.. we push the button.

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 9:07 AM

DALEK!

Fine, just make me a sammich while you are up.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 9:11 AM

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Wheres Charles Bronson when you need him?

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 9:43 AM

DALEK!

You should make him a sammich also.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 10:11 AM

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Thats all you've got?

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 10:17 AM

DALEK!

What would you like me to say Wul? I disagree with somethings they want, such as a living wage regardless of work. I agree with them on other things.

You have it in your mind that no one on the left wants to work. If I stand here and tell you that is not true are you going to believe it? Most likely not. So really what is the damn point?

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 11:24 AM

Quote:
Okay, so it is looking more and more that with free trade the US is going to continue to lose out because we can't manufacture good and payworkers a good wage here and match countries that pay people pennies. A $20 per hour minimum wages is out of touch.

True on the $20 per hour part, but the rest sounds about right.

Free trade is awful. It screws the citizens of the more powerful countries, and exploits the citizens of the less powerful countries.

Also, I think controlled inflation and interest rates have really screwed up living wages. I know banks rely on interest rates, but I kind of think screw them too. All this credit and this loan based economy makes people slaves to trying to afford basic living conditions. If people can make houses out of SOD, then regular houses shouldn't cost a hundred thousand, and neither should education. Cost of services and living garrote the poor, working, and middle class, and prevents innovation and social mobility.

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o do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away

This kind of makes a good point, though somewhat oversimplified. Really what the insurance industries represent are a middle-man with a pool to draw from to pay out an injury claim - in that sense they really do just take a cut for moving money around. I think the bigger problem is skyrocketing health costs, though, and that would need to be addressed.

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Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

No. Go to work!

I dunno, might depend how it's done. I don't think people need to waste their prime years of life doing busy work for someone else. While yes there are some people who are lazy and might just take advantage without producing anything, on the other hand you'd also get people who are a lot more creative, and maybe people taking time to pursue intellectual hobbies with a community value. There needs to be a balance between these two possibilities.

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Demand four: Free college education.

Ooh, I like that too. I mentioned the debt slavery thing?

I'm not sure why it needs to be state schools. I might not be interested in the creationist trained biologist, but they'd be competing in a pool of more classical biologists, and in science, eventually better formed and supported ideas should win out. I'm not going to shy away from someone getting an education and possibly going on to make a worthwhile contribution in some way just because I disapprove of what they might learn.

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Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

Oh yeah, and more than that: I might sound like a broken record, but we need sustainability and self-sufficiency.

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Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

Keeping in mind the previous, of course, and also budgetary concerns. I wouldn't mind to see this come out of our war chest. We're fighting too many wars as it is.

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Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.

The first two are good ideas, the second may be unfeasible because of how many people live riverside and rely on levees. But maybe if we reconceptualize a riverside house to something like down in the bayou you can get what you want.

I can see the point against decommissioning the powerplants... It's just the problem is y'all want to send your waste to Utah and you don't know how to deal with it. Not real fair. Lots of problems to iron out with nuclear power too, and I'm not sure you want a nuclear powerplant to get so old as to run out it's useful service life. But maybe we can keep them up until we have something better.

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Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

...Technically we have those already, they're just not so easily enforceable. But while we're at it I'd like to see less discrimination against alternative lifestyles. So long as they're not hurting anyone, people should get to live with whoever and however they want to.

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Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

Actually I like this. One of my big worries, though I'm sure people are going to see it as paranoid, is how easy it is to control a population if they can't move away or escape. That can make you a slave just as easily as anything else. And the more law enforcement there is, and the more restriction of movement, the tighter that death grip feels to me.

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Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

Yeah, though we also ought to consider some campaign reform as well.

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Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all.

Well, it wouldn't be the same economy we have right now - it wouldn't be just a reset button, it'd be like starting from scratch. It'd be Black Thursday 1929, and the banks are closing down. The dollar wouldn't be the world standard economic currency anymore - it wouldn't even be the same dollar it was before the change.

But on the other hand, the current economy has tycoons and wage slaves... Odd that it's come to the point where Black Thursday and a complete economic collapse sounds almost like a good idea to get rid of the problems inherent in the system.

In any case, I do think markets would adjust to what people can PAY, because it's no good just holding on to something while it depreciates. There'd be scrambling at first, but it would even out.

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Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

Credit is nonsense and a flawed business strategy. Yes.

I don't know enough about how unions work to comment on the last one.

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 11:33 AM

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Like I said, in the end... if you clowns had your way... maybe 10 people would actually still be working..

Thats fine. I'd be one of them. Because Im not such a useless person that I want someone else to pay for me.

But the caveat... oh, the caveat.

Us 10 people get the "button".

Boom.

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 11:37 AM

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maybe 10 people would actually still be working..

So?

Maybe the non-workers would be planting vegetable gardens to feed themselves instead of sucking off a corporate teat. Who cares what people do with their time? How many people in a western frontier town do you think had set wages, versus how many were self-employed or between jobs and taking whatever came up?

Like I said, it really depends on how you do it, and if they do the "remove all debts" thing, we're REALLY going to be looking at more of a Great Depression thing than a socialist welfare state thing anyway. And if that's the case, we're going to be seeing a lot more vegetable gardens and scrambling than we are ten people supporting four million.

The best way to bring down this economic system and this insane bureaucratic state is to support every single bit of this. Heh. And good riddance.

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 12:00 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Maybe the non-workers would be planting vegetable gardens to feed themselves instead of sucking off a corporate teat.

Especially when outsourcing, the forever-mark-of-doom and other reasons like actually having a family make it all but unpossible to slave a 60-80 hour workweek on a 40hr "salary", or they're just too fuckin poor to piss money down a hole on transportation for a job that won't even cover that expense, yeah...
http://www.guernicamag.com/spotlight/1182/food_among_the_ruins/

There *IS* a lot of urban farming going on in Detroit, but the DNS is a bunch of monsanto-corporate asskissers and wants only big agro to do it for the tax rakeoff, and sure as shit those poor bastards are in the way, and not using only monsanto approved seed and fertilizer and whatnot, so right now we got em playin whack a mole by plating more stuff than they can possibly destroy before it's harvested with a healthy dose of the old blind eye, cause don't ya know fresh produce is a damn useful bribe in an urban environment.

Fuck regulations, COMMERCE CONTINUES, just not in a form so easy for corporate exploitation, and ain't that a bitch - maybe if you weren't so damn concerned about others paying their chunk to support your hateful intolerant malice which has sunk us up to the neck in war, wulfenwhiner, you might develop enough conscience to actually realize folks don't have any MORAL obligation to support YOUR lunacy with THEIR money either...

But I won't hold my breath.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 12:24 PM

I like those community gardens. I think the best bet a community has for most of it's members is if they know how to garden and has access to grow their own food. Once you do that, you avoid a lot of other hassles and concerns and you reduce your crime rate.

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 12:54 PM

JONGSSTRAW

It's nice to see the big mindless shitpile of lazy whiners and miscreants land on idiot Bloomberg's doorstep. They deserve each other.

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 1:00 PM

Let's just get some popcorn in here already.

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 3:43 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

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Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
Wheres Charles Bronson when you need him?

Dead.

By the way, tea-bagger princess Michelle Bachmann said that we should abolish all taxes of any kind.

I'll wait for you to say that's not what she really meant, and that you all don't feel that way. Or you can go ahead and come right out and agree with her, and show the world how much you "support the troops!"

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 3:45 PM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
Like I said, in the end... if you clowns had your way... maybe 10 people would actually still be working..

Thats fine. I'd be one of them. Because Im not such a useless person that I want someone else to pay for me.

But the caveat... oh, the caveat.

Us 10 people get the "button".

Boom.

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies"

Sure. But be warned, I've likely been working longer than you've been alive, and I might just use my button to target your lazy, stupid ass, Wulfie.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 3:52 PM

DALEK!

I most likely have also, been working since 16, and now I'm 34. In that time was also two years of high school and four years of college.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Wednesday, October 5, 2011 6:08 PM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by m52nickerson:
I most likely have also, been working since 16, and now I'm 34. In that time was also two years of high school and four years of college.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

Got my first "real" job in 1974, although it wasn't technically *MY* job - my dad took a part-time gig as a janitor at a Catholic school - it was agreed with a nudge and a wink between he and the school's head that I would be doing the work, to teach me the value of hard work. I was about to turn 13. Did that 'til I was old enough to get my OWN job, and haven't been without a job since, except for a 3-month "sabbatical" I took in 2005 to take care of some personal business. I'm 49 now, so 36 years of basically non-stop work. Hell, I haven't had a vacation since 2005, either. The only work days I've taken off in the last 6 years were when I was injured on the job a couple times (broken/smashed toe - took a day off for that; dislocated/hyperextended elbow - took a half-day for that), and two days when my dad died.

In short, I don't have any idea how NOT to work.

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Thursday, October 6, 2011 3:06 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

So the price of pretty much everything pretty much doubles, at least. Folks will need that $20 an hour to just get by.

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Thursday, October 6, 2011 3:44 AM

Yeah, the $20 wage thing is a dumb idea, and it's especially unrealistic if they want to apply it to everyone. That just isn't going to happen.

Maybe they're trying to put forward unreasonable demands hoping someone will meet them in the middle. I doubt anyone in the higher ups would agree to that debt deal, it'd collapse the system.

But if you look past the unreasonable stuff, they do make some good points about insurance driving up healthcare costs, and Free Trade (which is NOT a free market), and the utter hamstring for people that is debt.

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Thursday, October 6, 2011 5:08 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

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You have it in your mind that no one on the left wants to work. If I stand here and tell you that is not true are you going to believe it? Most likely not.

"Most likely"? Hah! I don't know whether he actually BELIEVES the idiocy he posts or not, but you'd never get him to SAY it, or to stop using his asinine buzz words and fantastical remarks about the left and the right...or himself. You're right about it not being worth your time (or anyone else's)

I don't think their "demands" are anything more than voicing the people's dissatisfaction with how bad it's become in America. I don't think it's even a case of

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Maybe they're trying to put forward unreasonable demands hoping someone will meet them in the middle.

First off, they aren't "theirs" or "demands". Given virtually every one of them is the diametrical opposite of what Wall Street and their "employees" (i.e., politicians) have been creating, to me they're just a statement, not something whose outcome anyone would actually expect. Especially given the rather important little caveat Wulf chose to ignore:

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This is not an official list of demands. This is a forum post submitted by a single user and hyped by irresponsible news/commentary agencies like Fox News and Mises.org. This content was not published by the OccupyWallSt.org collective, nor was it ever proposed or agreed to on a consensus basis with the NYC General Assembly. There is NO official list of demands. http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall
-st-moveme/ from their own website.

Nonetheless, since we're doing it:

1. Living wage: I don't know where $20 an hour came in, but a minimum "living" wage seems to me the very least we should do. I get that those like Wulf and Raptor would rather see people scrape by in poverty and kids go to bed hungry at night, but to me it's no more than common sense that people should be able to live on what they work to earn.

2. Hell yeah we need universal healthcare! Nobody needs to get rid of private insurance; those companies that stop being incredibly greedy would survive; the rest would cease to exist on their own. In some countries the two live together quite well, I believe. Along with it, tho', I agree with Byte, something about medical costs would need to be addressed.

3. Is kind of absurd. #1 covers it better.

4. Hell yeah! Our education system is under attack, and that's so short-sighted I can't believe it. Education is the basis of what allows a country to BECOME great, or stay that way, in today's world, and the way they've been hacking away at it has contributed greatly to where we are today, as far as competing with the rest of the world.

5. Good gawd yes, and for so MANY reasons!

6. Oh lord, would I LOVE to see that...and I wouldn't stop at a trillion! Something we desperately need and aren't getting--at which point I could make a snark about which portion of political system would rather DIE than get it, but I'll let that go. You know anyway

7. I'm not in favor of decommissioning nuclear; I don't like it, but it's a bridge and we'd need bridges if we actually decided to become less toxic to our country's ecosystem. Given their age and condition, I'd sure like to see them undergo EXTREMELY careful revision and updating, tho'.

8. Yeah, we've already got it, and it's unenforceable, so no more than a statement in my opinion.

9. Something in between.

10. Oh, gawd, do we need THAT! Electronic voting has made it SO much easier to fix elections, and with no backup, even easier. We're going BACKWARD as far as giving everyone the right to vote, as several laws in several states are having that effect, and we need to be going forward in as legal and fair way as is possible. I agree with Byte about campaign reform, too, in a BIG way!

11. Unrealistic and silly.

12. Good lord yes!

13. Yes, but with Nick's caveat.

I'd like to see something in there about cutting the military and ending the wars, too.

To me these are all "statements of principles", not demands, and that should be obvious to all. The only ones taking them seriously as "demands" would be those like Wulf, Raptor and Geezer, and that for their own purposes.

To anyone responding to Wulf: You might want to look into that.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Thursday, October 6, 2011 6:41 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Thanks for pointing this out Niki:

Quote:
First off, they aren't "theirs" or "demands"
Quote:
This is not an official list of demands. This is a forum post submitted by a single user and hyped by irresponsible news/commentary agencies like Fox News and Mises.org. This content was not published by the OccupyWallSt.org collective, nor was it ever proposed or agreed to on a consensus basis with the NYC General Assembly. There is NO official list of demands. http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall
-st-moveme/ from their own website.

On the right side of that site you may notice a comment: "This Site Has Nothing To Do With Us" which links to, presumably, the real occupy site (The People's Front of Judea). Once there you can see a video with some of the denizens of WSt. drinking champagne while the protestors walk by - this is fun for them.

The protestors appear like the G20 protestors to me, probably many are the same. I genuinely agree with many of their ideals, but the way they go about protesting makes me think they are doing more harm than good for achieving them. They end up underscoring how little power they/we the 99% really have. Why Protest to Wall Street? They'll only be emboldened by the attention and overall lameness. Obama's a soft touch, camp on the W-House lawn, flood YouTube with individual stories, "Dear Mr Obama..."
Hippy-esque sit-ins undercut the message, probably even encourage extra greed - it taps into the W-Streeters' hate.

I wish Christy was running - 2016.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Thursday, October 6, 2011 8:12 AM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

I think many of them HAVE written, and tried to be heard in other ways. To me it's an outlet for frustration, to show just how many of them they are and hopefully get those in government to realize how many they REPRESENT. This is a day when trying to get your voice heard by politicians is pretty impossible; just the fact that the majority of Americans are for raising taxes on the rich--and have been, pretty much all along--yet the Republicans keep saying they're doing "what the American people want", shows how voices aren't heard--or cared about!

I know protests don't work in and of themselves, but they DO send a message, and they do give those in power an idea of how many the protesters represent. I read once that a letter to a congressperson is counted as X many people, because for every one who writes, there are X who feel the same but won't bother.

Have to check out what you mentioned, sounds interesting. (After doing so): Yeah...that comment is way down the line now, but I found it:

Quote:
This Site Has Nothing To Do With Us

Posted Oct. 6, 2011, 11:48 a.m. EST (2 hours ago) by OccupyWallSt

occupyparty.org

We are not a political institution. http://occupywallst.org/forum/site-has-nothing-do-us/ may well see Christie in 2016...dunno much about him, but I sure like that he's not afraid to tell it like it is the times I've heard him speak. Anyone with brains wouldn't want to run now; if it can be salvaged at all, by 2016 things should be at least somewhat better. Who knows? I think he's smart not to run now, fer shore.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Friday, October 7, 2011 10:34 AM