Modest Proposal For Occupy Wall Street

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Anonymous November 2, 2011 12:58 pm (Pacific time)

Occupy movement lacks Tea Party's strengths...

Editor: I will not carry your stupid comment.

Mike November 1, 2011 6:20 pm (Pacific time)

DJ, Conrad Black and many others put out some great concerns, but are these people out there camping out with the protestors, or sitting comfortably behind their keyboards? I have seen, it seems, endless hours of media (all major networks) interviews of hundreds of protestors who state quite clearly they want their school loans forgiven, free housing, and many other types of things most people work for. I certainly agree that more criminal investigations need to be pursued in the financial industry (mostly of politicians though), but we are talking about extensive crony capitalism with the taxpayers money, so until there is a change of power these investigations will be smoke and mirrors. Here's something interesting to view in terms of whose really behind the OWS movement. Looks like the late 60's to me: "The 99%: Official list of Occupy Wall Street’s supporters, sponsors and sympathizers [below link]." To go along with Mr. Stone's suggestions, the author of this article, the below link will allow those interested in pursuing tactics/strategy in formulating policy in addressing political candidates this coming election cycle... well here's some groups you can contact. Please note the list does not include the major unions, but they are easy to look up. I hope you all like some of these wonderful organizations, many who most likely consider the Constitution anathema. http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2011/10/31/the-99-official-list-of-ows/
"These instruments were made deceptively presentable by certifications from the main rating agencies that they were investment-grade, as if issued by serious entities and secured by unquestionable assets." The subprime loans began under Clinton's watch. They found their way to Fannie and Freddie where many democrats in the Clinton and Obama Administrations sat on the policy-making boards.

DJ: Is that Koch brothers' money I hear jingling in your jeans as you walk?

Mike November 1, 2011 12:41 pm (Pacific time)

Members of the mobs apparently believe that other people, who are working while they are out trashing the streets, should be forced to subsidize their college education — and apparently the President of the United States thinks so too.

But if these loud mouths' inability to put together a coherent line of thought is any indication of their education, the taxpayers should demand their money back for having that money wasted on them for years in the public schools.

Sloppy words and sloppy thinking often go together, both in the mobs and in the media that are covering them. It is common, for example, to hear in the media how some "protesters" were arrested. I protest against all sorts of things — and don't get arrested.

The difference is that I don't block traffic, join mobs sleeping overnight in parks or urinate in the street. If the media cannot distinguish between protesting and disturbing the peace, then their education may also have wasted a lot of taxpayers' money.

Among the favorite sloppy words used by the shrill mobs in the streets is "Wall Street greed." But even if you think people in Wall Street, or anywhere else, are making more money than they deserve, "greed" is no explanation whatever.

"Greed" says how much you want. But you can become the greediest person on earth and that will not increase your pay in the slightest. It is what other people pay you that increases your income.

People who cannot distinguish between democracy and mob rule may fall for the idea that the hooligans in the street represent the 99 percent who are protesting about the "greed" of the one percent. But these hooligans are less than one percent and they are grossly violating the rights of vastly larger numbers of people who have to put up with their trashing of the streets by day and their noise that keeps working people awake at night.

Moreover, this is not an enduring class of people. Nor are people in other income brackets. Most of the people in the top one percent at any given time are there for only one year. Anyone who sells an average home in San Francisco can get into the top one percent in income — for that year. Other one-time spikes in income account for most of the people in that top one percent.

But such plain facts carry little weight amid the heady rhetoric and mindless emotions of the mob and the media.

DJ: Conrad Black, the quintessential capitalist, disagrees with you. He wrote in a recent column:

"The Wall Street protesters denounce government bail-outs, the political and economic short-shrifting of students and young workers, the high cost of post-secondary education, various forms of discrimination, U.S. foreign policy, union-busting, outsourcing, the oil industry, media misinformation and (more generally) capitalism and globalization.

"Of course, this is a pretty hackneyed scatter-gun indictment by people who haven’t really thought it through, but their anger and frustration are largely justified nonetheless: In the past decade, many prominent financial houses joined in the process of issuing consolidated debt obligations (CDOs), consisting of unfathomable patchworks of mortgages on packages of residential real estate, unsupported by any real base of invested equity in the underlying assets by their ostensible owners, and covered by diaphanous fig-leaves of default insurance. These instruments were made deceptively presentable by certifications from the main rating agencies that they were investment-grade, as if issued by serious entities and secured by unquestionable assets.

"The financial system was revealed by the light of the thunderbolt in 2008 in its ghastly infirmity. And a great many people probably are guilty of fraud or of negligence on a massive scale, yet have escaped prosecution, let alone conviction and punishment. "

Read the entire article here: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/10/15/conrad-black-why-theyre-occupying-wall-street/

Anonymous October 31, 2011 4:24 pm (Pacific time)

DJ it's all in the math. Those who offer the dismal view base it all on emotional opinion, no hard data that proves a set and permanent downward trend; look at our stock market and it's averages over the last 30 years and you will see that it's pretty stable in it's upward growth. Over 100 million Americans are vested some way in the stock market, usually their pensions. When you have people take the "self-reporting" that comes with the census questionaires, you will always get misleading info, for people tend to play down their economic situation when the government comes asking. These people who use actual facts look at a wide array of stats and data to come to their conclusions. The bottom line DJ is that 130 million people are still working and retail sales of lots of differnet types of products are being purchased. Lot of misguided people are vested in America failing, and they simply are going to continue to be disappointed. I dare say even Obama and his cabal are doing their best to harm our economy, but we are simply too big and will be able to out wait him and his destructive policies, even if he wins another term. Also regarding the link about the Calgary damage, I put that in just for your benefit. Did you go to that "function?"

You're trolling. Are you funded by the Koch brothers?

Anonymous October 31, 2011 10:31 am (Pacific time)

DJ, "...The most recent figures from the Census Bureau suggest a level of income today that is no higher than two decades ago. Numbers such as these have prompted Washington Post pundit Harold Meyerson to declare, “Post-industrial America turned out to be a bust.” Others have called the past three decades the “Great Regression.” The Democrats are emphasizing declining living standards and a battered middle class, when living standards for the vast majority of people have risen and the long term changes in the material circumstance of the middle class have been good.... when you account for taxes and measure inflation correctly, there has actually been considerable improvement in the material well-being of the middle class over the past three decades. Median income and consumption have both risen by more than 50 percent in real terms. In addition, for families with income in the middle 20 percent, there have been noticeable improvements in the homes they live in and the cars they drive. Living units are bigger and are much more likely to have air conditioning and other features. The quality of the cars that these families own has also improved considerably. The data are clear: middle-class Americans are better off today than they were three decades ago.This improvement is due, in part, to policy changes including lower tax rates and a more-generous child tax credit that leave middle-class families with more disposable income. But the most important factor is economic growth.

When the economy grows, the middle class is better off. To be sure, some groups (most notably very rich households) have benefited from economic growth more so than the middle class, but this does not cancel out the substantial progress that the middle class has made...The overwhelming reason for the recent plight of the middle class is a sluggish economy. But a recession, even one that’s both severe and prolonged, is not a justification for turning our backs on sound economic policy.

Calls for a “neo-industrial America” or counter-productive restrictions on trade or immigration in order to rebuild the middle class should be resisted. Instead, we should continue to reduce trade barriers and keep spending on Social Security and Medicare in check. History tells us that by encouraging economic growth, we can revitalize the path of progress for the middle class." (Bruce D. Meyer is McCormick Foundation professor at the Harris School, University of Chicago. James X. Sullivan is an associate professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame. This essay is drawn from a paper prepared for the American Enterprise Institute, “The Material Well-Being of the Poor and the Middle Class Since 1980.”)..

DJ: American Enterprise Institute--an institute of counter-savants, set up and funded by wealthy conservatives to pull the wool over the eyes of the sheeple to be fleeced. You'll have to do better than that.

COLLI October 31, 2011 7:02 am (Pacific time)

If only either the Democrats or the Republicans valued ethics and morals, we might have a chance of playing one against the other but such is not the case. Both promote the "Rah-Rah Team" mentality meant to shift focus from what they do and do not do to the "Support your home team regardless" stance that facilitates the individual tenure these vermin rely upon. Examine the rewards given to Wall Street and the huge international banks that run it behind the scenes after the 2009 trashing of our economy. Having the same government that lavished taxpayer dollars on these parasites step in to set things right would likely result in more rewards doled out to them. We hear that the relationship between banks, Wall Street, and the worker/taxpayer is a symbiotic one but on one end of that symbiotic scale egregious excess is the target while the other end is bare survival. Anonymous makes an excellent point when he recommends reviewing re-election donations. Such a review would give great insight to why this approach simply would be wasted effort.

Occupy Sydney October 30, 2011 11:50 pm (Pacific time)

Occupy has no "main organizers". no leaders. everything is done by consensus. To arrange an occupation in specific places when a politician is on tour, contact the nearest occupation site on Facebook.

Anonymous October 30, 2011 6:24 pm (Pacific time)

Did you see what the democrats in the Senate and House did with the Tea Party people who were asking questions of them since 2009? Most were called terrorists by these elected officials for asking questions on why they voted the way they did. Please note that literally every democrat in the House and Senate voted to pass both the Healthcare Bill and the Stimulus Bill, and none of them read the bills before voting to pass them. Not one Republican voted for these bills, so who are the elected officials who appear not to give a damn about out of control spending or the concerns of those who they represent? They are also the same people who get the largest share of political donations from Wall Street and all the other banking institutions around the country. Google FEC donation list to see. I really doubt that any of the leadership from OWS, considering whose funding them, are going to be interested in asking probing questions of democrats currently in office, or those running for the 1st time, but the republicans, sure, it's partisan. Did you see that Gov. Brown of California is asking for cuts in public union employees salaries, benefits and pensions, that would dwarf those that took place in Wisconsin? So we know why there is not the same outrage. Fortunately the majority of voters are getting wise to these double standards.

DJ: The middle class has steadily lost ground over the last thirty years while the top 1%, and more particularly, the top .1% have gained so that now the top 1% is taking in 25% of the national income. Are you okay with this?

Amanda Black October 30, 2011 12:13 pm (Pacific time)

That is indeed a very good, and promising success, idea.. Did someone contact any of the main organizers to suggest this strategy???

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