The Occupation of Wall Street Spreads

[madd0ct0r]

That's fair enough, but the Tea Party moved fairly quickly past the sandbox stage, and OWS needs to do the same if they want to keep people's attention with things other than scuffles with the police.

I think they're worried about their message being defined at all.

And that's a fail. Incidentally, it also contradicts any apologism on their behalf which is made in response to the critique that they don't communicate their message or demands well enough.

... It's a good time to make your mistakes and learn from them.

Mistakes such as the ones I'm mentioning?

Training community leaders is all well and good, but a future generation of community leaders will need a community to lead. They're not cutting it yet, and this whole movement risks becoming a wasted opportunity.

Well, I didn't present the unwillingness to be defined as fact, it's just my opinion and I'm guessing from a long long way away. It might be because people are scared of splitting the movement - in fact such methods have been used historically time and again to undermine minority groups. A broad church invites more people, rather then incredibly detailed economic policy discussions. If it's the latter you're after, you probably already participate in politics or the tea party.
It might be an instinctive distrust of authority - we're talking about webheads after all, coupled with the sense 'Well, we're doing ok without them.' The increasing pressure the Occupy groups are coming under might well resolve that, isn't the normal ratio one person in a dozen rising naturally?

You think that without crystallizing into a solid political group, their voice will be lost and with it the opportunity for change?
I disagree, the moment has not yet come, I'm not sure that its possible in the current political environment. However, the diffuse generalised voice of protest IS changing the political environment, putting items contrary to the interests of Big Business back on the table.

America is arresting it's race to the bottom. thank god.

[Lord Zentei]

You think that without crystallizing into a solid political group, their voice will be lost and with it the opportunity for change?
I disagree, the moment has not yet come, I'm not sure that its possible in the current political environment. However, the diffuse generalised voice of protest IS changing the political environment, putting items contrary to the interests of Big Business back on the table.

At best, that depends on how things develop from here - and that requires actual development. And even success doesn't necessarily mean real Hope and Change if you'll pardon the turn of phrase.

Maybe I'm too pessimistic. But we'll see, I guess.


PS: I'd rant about their attribution of the ills society faces to XYZ causative factors (since as I mentioned earlier, I somehow get the impression that they're off base on that), but without them having a platform that's pretty pointless in any case.

[Elfdart]

Two interesting things to keep in mind about the horseshit excuses being used to break up these demonstrations:

1) All this week, many thousands of people are camping out in public places without being hassled by the police. I guess fans of sparkly vampires get special dispensation.

2) Traffic in NY is already backed up because as Keith Olbermann pointed out earlier tonight, they're filming a goddamn Batman movie!

Maybe OWS protesters should dress up like glittery vampires and superheroes.

[Simon_Jester]

Two interesting things to keep in mind about the horseshit excuses being used to break up these demonstrations:

1) All this week, many thousands of people are camping out in public places without being hassled by the police. I guess fans of sparkly vampires get special dispensation.

To be fair, by all signs they intend to eventually leave. The city has a legitimate interest in keeping its public spaces from turning into the permanent territory of specific groups- it's not like New York can go "well, crap, our parks are all filled with protestors and we can't use them for anything else, let's go make some new parks." If you camp out on public property indefinitely and show no sign of ever being willing to relocate, you've pretty well locked down that property so that no one else can ever use it.

There's also sanitary issues- you don't want outbreaks of disease or anything starting in the camps, and the doesn't seem to be any authority in position to inspect the arrangements the protestors have made to ensure public health and safety.

So I can understand that there needs to be some limits, some policing and patrol and enforcement. And maybe even that the protestors need to be willing to move cyclically, occupying some public spaces but not others, at least at any one time, so that no one space is locked down permanently so that it becomes unusable to the people of the city for any other reason.

What I dislike, and indeed despise, is the city's efforts to turn attempts to enforce the law on public spaces into violent suppression of the protest itself, by giving them inadequate time to remove their possessions and otherwise making a nasty production out of it.

[Elfdart]

My point is that if the NYPD and other police departments around the country had simply killed them with kindness, they would have more than likely gone away by now just like the Twilight fans. Everything from the pepperspray to the agents provocateur to the most recent attacks were guaranteed to get sympathy for the protestors.

The D.C. police chief during the Bonus March had dealt with previous demonstrators by bringing them coffee and donuts and the crowds got bored, then went home. Hoover wanted someone to thrash the Bonus Marchers, so he called in the army and got Dugout Doug MacArthur to do the dirty deed. The result was nationwide disgust and 12 years of FDR.

Keep it up Bloomberg and Quan!

[Count Chocula]

Here's a little more insight on OWS and what they want. Hey, at least one person in OWS has an agenda! The "movement" itself has no espoused aims or talking points on its Web site. Is it idiotic and puerile? I think so, but here are their his/her/its demands so go ahead and make your own judgment:

Posted 3 weeks ago on Oct. 23, 2011, 11:21 p.m. EST by bchang1987
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. Unionize ALL workers immediately.

Raise the minimum wage immediately to $18/hr. Create a maximum wage of $90/hr to eliminate inequality.

Institute a 6 hour workday, and 6 weeks of paid vacation.

Institute a moratorium on all foreclosures and layoffs immediately.

Repeal racist and xenophobic English-only laws.

Open the borders to all immigrants, legal or illegal. Offer immediate, unconditional amnesty, to all undocumented residents of the US.

Create a single-payer, universal health care system.

Pass stricter campaign finance reform laws. Ban all private donations. All campaigns will receive equal funding, provided by the taxpayers.

Institute a negative income tax, and tax the very rich at rates up to 90%.

Pass far stricter environmental protection and animal rights laws.

Allow workers to elect their supervisors.

Lower the retirement age to 55. Increase Social Security benefits.

Create a 5% annual wealth tax for the very rich.

Ban the private ownership of land.

Make homeschooling illegal. Religious fanatics use it to feed their children propaganda.

Reduce the age of majority to 16.

Abolish the death penalty and life in prison. We call for the immediate release of all death row inmates from death row and transferred to regular prisons.

Release all political prisoners immediately.

Immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Abolish the debt limit.

Ban private gun ownership.

Strengthen the separation of church and state.

Immediate debt forgiveness for all.

End the 'War on Drugs'.

bchang1987 has no public info available on his OWS profile. Curious.

Oh BTW Adbusters, a Canadian group, has claimed credit for the OWS Web site:

Posted 5 months ago on June 14, 2011, 12:20 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

On July 13, 2011, "Culture Jammers HQ" at Adbusters issued a call to action: Occupy Wall Street! The goal stated is to gather 20,000 people to Wall Street, in New York, NY on September 17, 2011, beginning a popular occupation of that space for two months and more. Inspired by the popular assemblies of Egypt, Spain, Oaxaca and worldwide, those gathered will work to find a common voice in one clear, unified demand.

This is why we've created OccupyWallSt.org. Technology has made it easier than ever before for the people to stay in close contact and assist one another in acheiving a collective goal. Our aim is to make these tools available so our users--the true organizers of this event--can make an occuptation of Wall St. successful. We may not be able to teach a person to fish, or do it on their behalf, but we can build a damn good fishing pole.

Astroturf. Oh yeah, what's that "clear, unified demand?" Hmm? Anyone? Bueller? OWS? I'm waiting.

Don't make me pull out the list of sponsors and advocates for OWS; there's not enough Red in the color schemes to handle them all.

[Simon_Jester]

My point is that if the NYPD and other police departments around the country had simply killed them with kindness, they would have more than likely gone away by now just like the Twilight fans. Everything from the pepperspray to the agents provocateur to the most recent attacks were guaranteed to get sympathy for the protestors.

Hmmm, I don't think the protests would have gone away quite that effectively this time around, but it would certainly have led to a more amicable atmosphere.

I basically agree with the idea that the police should, from a point of view of what it is most right to do, try to be on good terms with the protestors. But the protestors are under an obligation to respect the city's need to preserve, clean up, and ensure the safety of public spaces- people do pay taxes to the city of New York to maintain those parks, and the state has its own duty to do the job, even if that means temporarily shooing protestors elsewhere.

If the protestors don't move, then at some point they will need to be moved... but the announcement and timing of this should be public and aboveboard, to make it clear that the city is politically neutral in all of this.

Oh, Elfdart? Could you please shrink the NORRRV! line in your sig? It's so long it's overrunning the normal width of my browser window.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Good Lord, this list of demand is idiotic.

Posted 3 weeks ago on Oct. 23, 2011, 11:21 p.m. EST by bchang1987
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. Unionize ALL workers immediately.

Unionize ALL the workers? Even if they don't want to?

Raise the minimum wage immediately to $18/hr. Create a maximum wage of $90/hr to eliminate inequality.

Institute a 6 hour workday, and 6 weeks of paid vacation.

Institute a moratorium on all foreclosures and layoffs immediately.

So we're raising salaries, reducing productivity by 10%, and making it illegal for a business that's losing money to lay off employees. At least we'll all be equally unemplyed when all the businesses fail at once.

Repeal racist and xenophobic English-only laws.

Open the borders to all immigrants, legal or illegal. Offer immediate, unconditional amnesty, to all undocumented residents of the US.

If I'm reading this right, anyone could then fly to the US and declare themselves a citizen without any sort of process.

Pass stricter campaign finance reform laws. Ban all private donations. All campaigns will receive equal funding, provided by the taxpayers.

So parties are funded by the government? Why would they then have any responsibility to their constituents? Parties would exist solely to protect the party.

Institute a negative income tax, and tax the very rich at rates up to 90%.

Keep that up and there won't be any more very rich, then what incentive is there for them to generate wealth?

Allow workers to elect their supervisors.

So I'm not allowed to run my own business? Newsflash: the guy you like might not know shit about running your company.

Create a 5% annual wealth tax for the very rich.

So now the tax on the 'very rich' is 95%? Won't that make them middle class?

Ban the private ownership of land.

So the government is going to give me a house of my own? Great! I don't have to work anymore.

Make homeschooling illegal. Religious fanatics use it to feed their children propaganda.

Reduce the age of majority to 16.

And the millions of schoolchildren won't be fed any 'propaganda' in the schools controlled by the government, will they?

Abolish the death penalty and life in prison. We call for the immediate release of all death row inmates from death row and transferred to regular prisons.

A lot of people are on death row for a REASON, like killing prisoners. But we'll trust them to behave.

Ban private gun ownership.

Cold dead hands, etc.

Immediate debt forgiveness for all.

SWEET! My government student loans are gone! Whats that? Every lending institution in the US just collapsed due to loss of assets? Oh well.

End the 'War on Drugs'

[/quote]
He ended that personal battle LONG ago if he thinks any of this will happen.

[madd0ct0r]

it's a pretty transparent trolling attempt - but every time someone comments it drifts back to the top of the forum and it's google ranking grows.
the forum population seems to be about 40% trolls and rabid opponents

this is probably more helpful: http://occupywallst.org/forum/honest-questions/

and this for quieting down your gran if she gets worried: http://occupywallst.org/forum/im-a-millionaire-99er/
EDIT, although i wish people could figure out compound interest. sigh

[Spoonist]

@CaptainChewbacca
"reducing productivity by 10%"
Either your math is off or the US is working less than you tell the rest of the world.
If you go from 8h workdays to 6h workdays that would be a 25% reduction. Compounded with whatever the vacation increase would be.

The 6h workday is a leftish talking point in the eurozone. The idea is to spread out work in the population to reduce "natural" unemployment. This actually started out as a (dutch?) suggestion where you'd have one employee wanting to reduce their hours and someone unemployed who by state subsidies would each work 80%, but was immediately hijacked by the left as a 'solution' to unemployment and thus changed to the 6h thingie after a study which showed that productivity was higher per hour for those who worked 6h than those who worked 8h. (Missing that it was only paper-shufflers etc). So it is not based in reality but rather ideology. Very strange to see it copy-pasted to american politics, unless it is trolling.

[CaptainChewbacca]

My 10% was referring to the increase in vacation days, not the workday shortening.

[The Yosemite Bear]

those woody guthrie songs aare agian making sense

[PeZook]

Okay, why do people keep saying a 90% income tax bracket is going to ruin the very rich? Don't your high schools teach you how income tax brackets work, or something? Or is it just convenient to forget at certain times that ALL THE INCOME BELOW THE HIGHEST TAX BRACKET IS STILL TAXED AT LOWER RATES?

Ekhm. Excuse my annoyance, but this really bugs me. The only situation where the OVERALL tax burden would come anywhere close to 90% would be if all the lower brackets combined formed a miniscule part of your total income.

Plus, of course, empirical evidence suggests this doesn't do jack to discourage people from earning more money, because guess what? Even if you "only" take home five million out of your hundred million salary, you're still a rich fuck.

[K. A. Pital]

Even if you "only" take home five million out of your hundred million salary, you're still a rich fuck.

People think about the rich in the same terms we think about ourselves. "What if someone took 90% of my income?! I'd be hard pressed to fucking eat!" The "do unto others as you'd wish they do unto you" fallacy.

So the government is going to give me a house of my own? Great! I don't have to work anymore.

So what if the government gave you a house to live in? You'd instantly stop working? And how the fuck would you be earning income for life, by... what, begging in the streets? Or you'd become a downshifter and rent out your house and live in the streets of some god-forsaken Third World nation for the money earned from the rent? Seriously, that objection is even fucking dumber than the demand itself.

Keep that up and there won't be any more very rich, then what incentive is there for them to generate wealth?

All the very rich ran away from America before the 1980s! Or so Puppa Rigun told me!

At least we'll all be equally unemplyed when all the businesses fail at once.

Are you saying that it is critically important for businesses to survive to have chronically unemployed people? You're basically condemning the system right there. But let's examine the "fail at once" logic - why exactly would they automatically fail if effective demand would be rising? Care to explain?

And the millions of schoolchildren won't be fed any 'propaganda' in the schools controlled by the government, will they?

Propaganda is a separate problem as it is impacting politics only. Homeschooling results in mediocre learning since ... um... did you fucking skip over that whole "division of labour" thing and that people can't be geniuses and experts in anything, much less educate their child adequately in 20 diverse scientific disciplines while working - both of them - to earn a fucking living? "Ban homeschooling" is pretty much the most reasonable demand out there.

So now the tax on the 'very rich' is 95%? Won't that make them middle class?

In idiotland, where after-tax income is the only gouge of a person's class position in society - yes.

So parties are funded by the government? Why would they then have any responsibility to their constituents? Parties would exist solely to protect the party.

So he's saying that parties should be only beholden to corporations? That's more openly corporatist than I'd thought. If parties have no responsibility to anyone but their sponsors, these parties are a fucking sham and should be destroyed alltogether. Whoops.

If I'm reading this right, anyone could then fly to the US and declare themselves a citizen without any sort of process.

I heard that's how the US was founded. I also heard that "free movement of capital and labour" was a big goal of liberals.

[Xon]

Whether people are willing to flip burgers in order to make ends meet doesn't change that for years working in fast food has been painted as something only high schoolers and losers do.

Do you know what I got told by a manager at a fast food store when I was first looking for casual/parttime work while studying? I was too old, at age 19.

[Losonti Tokash]

I'd like to thank Chewbacca and Chocula for reposting an conservative email forward as if it was representative of OWS and also for discovering that OWS was initially organized by Adbusters, a fact revealed on the first page of this thread. Clearly, the movement has now been exposed as a sham and we can all go home.

[Shroom Man 777]

If that's the case, then what the hell is the problem? It's obviously big government sociofascism that's trying to regulate Adbusters' and OWS' small business enterprise. This is Stalinism. Communist scum are trying to crack down on the invisible hand of the flea market. I bet the cops wouldn't mind it if this were some fundamentalistic muslimistic muslimists trying to make a mosque in NY. Goddamn liberals. The Marxist police apparatus is enforcing Sharia Law on these freedom-loving protesters!

[Lord Zentei]

God damn it Stas, are you trying to provoke me with that bullshit?

BTW: the 1890 tax rate thing is certainly one argument that should never be used. The maximum tax bracket may have been very high back then, but OTOH the corporate tax didn't exist.

[Shroom Man 777]

Wait. How is government-funded/controlled schools going to be a medium for propaganda? Is Chewie honestly saying that? Since when did Boston Public become a lieberal homobortionist jizz and pot empornium slash shariatheistalibanazislamocommunistic FEMAdrassa?

[K. A. Pital]

God damn it Stas, are you trying to provoke me with that bullshit?

I'm trying to get Chewbacca to answer, but I wouldn't hold it against you if you reply

[SCRawl]

Some of these demands are, indeed, fairly idiotic, but so is your characterization of some of them. For example:

Pass stricter campaign finance reform laws. Ban all private donations. All campaigns will receive equal funding, provided by the taxpayers.

So parties are funded by the government? Why would they then have any responsibility to their constituents? Parties would exist solely to protect the party.

This measure -- perhaps the smartest and most useful of the bunch -- would end the current system of legal bribery. Representatives would be beholden to their constituents because they want to earn their vote, rather than because they want to earn their campaign donations.

Why do you think that campaign contributions (or the promise of them) make a representative more responsible to his constituents? And if it did, why is that a good thing? This would give preference to those most able (and willing) to contribute, which is pretty far from the "one person, one vote" concept of representative democracy.

[weemadando]

Have a look at Australian electoral law where funding for candidates is determined by prior election results and reimbursed expenses based on number of votes received in the current election.

Also, tight controls on who can spend how much and on what for political parties and third parties. Media is also subject to electoral law and requirements of equal coverage etc. All managed by a government department, the Australian Electoral Commission.

Seems to work for us.

[Stark]

We still get 'stop the boats' and have a party defined as 'unions'. There's always room for improvement.

[Simon_Jester]

Pass stricter campaign finance reform laws. Ban all private donations. All campaigns will receive equal funding, provided by the taxpayers.

So parties are funded by the government? Why would they then have any responsibility to their constituents? Parties would exist solely to protect the party.

This measure -- perhaps the smartest and most useful of the bunch -- would end the current system of legal bribery. Representatives would be beholden to their constituents because they want to earn their vote, rather than because they want to earn their campaign donations.

Why do you think that campaign contributions (or the promise of them) make a representative more responsible to his constituents? And if it did, why is that a good thing? This would give preference to those most able (and willing) to contribute, which is pretty far from the "one person, one vote" concept of representative democracy.

Put another way: your constituents are the people who live in the territory that you represent, and who can vote for you. Not the people who give you money so you can convince people to give you those votes.

I can understand if Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) is sticking up for his constituents by pushing on behalf of banks- Wall Street is physically located in his district. But no one else has much of an excuse, if "my constituents" and not "my donors" are the ones whose interests are being served.

Whether people are willing to flip burgers in order to make ends meet doesn't change that for years working in fast food has been painted as something only high schoolers and losers do.

Do you know what I got told by a manager at a fast food store when I was first looking for casual/parttime work while studying? I was too old, at age 19.

Yeah.

One of the big problems of high and chronic unemployment is that people not in the demographics most desirable to a given employer have almost no chance of getting into the job market. When there are more 35 year olds with 10 years' job experience out of work than there are job openings, you can just forget about getting a job as a 55 year old (who may have obsolete skills, and whose age tends to offset experience in employers' eyes) or a 25 year old who doesn't have that solid, heavily built up resume.

For manual and unskilled labor, the equation is different- but the effect is the same; it's a buyers' market and the employers are the ones buying labor.

[Stravo]

Can we please squash the fucking nonsense that Republicans have been vomitting regarding top tax rates as if 90% was unheard of before?

Seehere.

Are you telling me we did not have rich people generating wealth from 1950-1963? Because the tax rate was at 90% or higher during this time period. If we count a tax rate of 80% or higher then there must have been no fucking rich people generating wealth from 1940-1963. God, how did America survive with all those wealthy people hammered into submission by high taxes and not wanting to generate wealth??

Please stop swallowing the Republican KoolAid on this issue. Ever since the tax rate dipped to levels we are accustomed to wealth disparity has increases dramatically. Are they generating wealth or just fucking hoarding it?