Occupy ROTH Army [Archive] - The Diamond David Lee Roth Army

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Dr. Love

09-25-2011, 06:18 PM

Not sure why I never see this topic reported on in the news...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/sep/25/occupywallstreet-occupy-wall-street-protests

Police crack down on 'Occupy Wall Street' protests
New York police accused of heavy-handed tactics as 80 anti-capitalist protesters on 'Occupy Wall Street' march are arrested

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/9/25/1316939037859/Participants-in-a-march-o-007.jpg
The Occupy Wall Street protests. Photograph: Tina Fineberg/AP
The anti-capitalist protests that have become something of a fixture in Lower Manhattan over the past week or so have taken on a distinctly ugly turn.

Police have been accused of heavy-handed tactics after making 80 arrests on Saturday when protesters marched uptown from their makeshift camp in a private park in the financial district.

Footage has emerged on YouTube showing stocky police officers coralling a group of young female protesters and then spraying them with mace, despite being surrounded and apparently posing threats of only the verbal kind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA&feature=player_embedded
YouTube footage of protesters being pepper-sprayed
NYPD officers strung orange netting across the streets to trap groups of protesters, a tactic described by some of them as "kettling" – a term more commonly used by critics of a similar tactic deployed by police in London to contain potentially violent demonstrations there.

The media here in New York has been accused of being slow off the mark to cover the demonstrations, which have been going on for more than a week.

Here are some links to our coverage over the past week.

• This is a gallery of photographs taken by John Stuttle last weekend. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/sep/19/wall-street-anti-capitalist-protest)
• Karen McVeigh visited the camp in Zuccotti Park on Monday (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/19/wall-street-protesters-angry)
• Later in the week, Paul Harris recorded video interviews (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/sep/21/occupy-wall-street-protests) with some of the protesters.

Now, however, the local media has paid more attention – almost certainly because Saturday's protest (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/protest) became disruptive, bringing chaos to the busy Union Square area and forcing the closure of streets.

The New York Times (http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/80-arrested-as-financial-district-protest-moves-north/) quoted one protester, Kelly Brannon, 27, of Ridgewood, Queens:

They put up orange nets and tried to kettle us and we started running and they started tackling random people and handcuffing them. They were herding us like cattle.

The scenes are showing signs of attracting high-profile criticism. Anne-Marie Slaughter, who was director of policy planning, at the State Department from 2009 to 2011, said on Twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/SlaughterAM/statuses/117775602349654016): "Not the image or reality the US wants, at home or abroad," linking to a picture of a police officer kneeling on a protester pinned to the ground.

Here's an extract from a Reuters report, which said the demonstrators were protesting against "bank bailouts, the mortgage crisis and the US state of Georgia's execution of Troy Davis".

At Manhattan's Union Square, police tried to corral the demonstrators using orange plastic netting. Some of the arrests were filmed and activists posted the videos online.

Police say the arrests were mostly for blocking traffic. Charges include disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. But one demonstrator was charged with assaulting a police officer. Police say the officer involved suffered a shoulder injury.

Protest spokesman Patrick Bruner criticized the police response as "exceedingly violent" and said the protesters sought to remain peaceful

And this is a fuller take from Associated Press.

The marchers carried signs spelling out their goals: "Tax the rich," one placard said. "We Want Money for Healthcare not Corporate Welfare," read another.

The demonstrators were mostly college-age people carrying American flags and signs with anti-corporate slogans. Some beat drums, blew horns and chanted slogans as uniformed officers surrounded and videotaped them.

"Occupy Wall Street," they chanted, "all day, all week."

Organizers fell short of that goal. With metal barricades and swarms of police officers in front of the New York Stock Exchange, the closest protesters could get was Liberty Street, about three blocks away.

The Vancouver-based activist media group Adbusters organized the weeklong event. Word spread via social media, yet the throngs of protesters some participants had hoped for failed to show up.

"I was kind of disappointed with the turnout," said Itamar Lilienthal, 19, a New York University student and marcher.

FORD

09-25-2011, 06:25 PM

You think the corporate media is going to report on any attempt to call attention to Wall $treet criminals?

Now if it were a half dozen teabaggers waving signs that the Koch Brothers professionally printed for them, they would get 24/7 coverage.

It will be interesting to see how hard the media tries to deny what's coming in a couple weeks....... (stay tuned)

Dr. Love

09-25-2011, 06:30 PM

I've seen sites where the people involved are saying that the egyptians were ignored until protestors surrounded the media buildings ... and they are printing maps where the big media studios are in NYC and planning to surround them. Will be interesting to see where it goes.

FORD

09-25-2011, 06:42 PM

Yeah, it will be a little difficult to ignore if it's outside their own studios. Especially for the news & talk shows that have a set on the ground floor with windows and a live audience outside as part of their regular broadcast. What are they gonna do, hang a bunch of big black curtains over the set and pretend they aren't there? :biggrin:

lesfunk

09-25-2011, 07:13 PM

Are the protesters "anti capitalist" as stated or simply anti crime?

SunisinuS

09-25-2011, 07:13 PM

I listen....must be that I am not rich.

Dr. Love

09-25-2011, 09:24 PM

Are the protesters "anti capitalist" as stated or simply anti crime?

My understanding is that it's some of both... started off by people being pissed that wall street people weren't being charged with things and the feeling the only way the government would punish those responsible would be by doing this. Then, the anti-capitalists joined in.

Dr. Love

09-25-2011, 09:37 PM

https://occupywallst.org/

They say if you can't help, you can have pizza delivered. :)

Dr. Love

09-25-2011, 09:43 PM

Here's another article

Wall Street protesters cuffed, pepper-sprayed during 'inequality' march

BY MATT DELUCA AND CHRISTINA BOYLE
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Sunday, September 25th 2011, 4:00 AM

Jefferson Siegel for News
Women screamed in pain after police rounded them up and sprayed them with pepper spray.

Jefferson Siegel for News
Dozens of marchers from the Occupy Wall Street demonstration were arrested.
TAKE OUR POLL
Protesting Wall Street
Do you think the NYPD cracked down too hard on Wall Street protesters?

Yes, the police were excessive and violent.
No, the NYPD did what it had to do.

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Scores of protesters were arrested in Manhattan Saturday as a march against social inequality turned violent.

Hundreds of people carrying banners and chanting "shame, shame" walked between Zuccotti Park, near Wall St., and Union Square calling for changes to a financial system they say unjustly benefits the rich and harms the poor.

At least 80 people were carted away in police vehicles and up to five were hit with pepper spray near 12th St. and Fifth Ave., where tensions became especially high, police and organizers said.

The National Lawyer's Guild, which is providing legal assistance to the protesters, put the number of arrests at 100.

Witnesses said they saw three stunned women collapse on the ground screaming after they were sprayed in the face.

A video posted on YouTube and NYDailyNews.com shows uniformed officers had corralled the women using orange nets when two supervisors made a beeline for the women, and at least one suddenly sprayed the women before turning and quickly walking away.

Footage of other police altercations also circulated online, but it was unclear what caused the dramatic mood shift in an otherwise peaceful demonstration.

"I saw a girl get slammed on the ground. I turned around and started screaming," said Chelsea Elliott, 25, from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who said she was sprayed. "I turned around and a cop was coming ... we were on the sidewalk and we weren't doing anything illegal."

Police said 80 protesters were arrested or ticketed at multiple locations for disorderly conduct, blocking traffic and failure to obey a lawful order but the number could rise.

Officials said protesters did not have a permit for the march and one demonstrator was charged with assaulting a police officer, causing a shoulder injury. The NYPD was investigating the use of pepper spray.

"I was shocked because it seemed like one person after another was being brutally tackled, and it wasn't clear why," said Meaghan Linick, 23, from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who attended the rally. "I was deeply disturbed to see them throw a man [down] and immediately they were pounding on him. Their arms were going back in the air. I couldn't believe how violent five people needed to be against one unarmed man."

The protesters, joined together under the banner of an organization called Occupy Wall Street, have been stationed in Zuccotti Park since last weekend, attempting to draw attention to what they believe is a dysfunctional economic system that unfairly benefits corporations and the mega-rich.

"The central message is that in this country, there needs to be more conversation about wealth and power," said 23-year-old student Patrick Bruner.

As night fell, those detained were hauled out of vans and buses and into police precincts to be processed.

Hundreds more protesters congregated in Zuccotti Park where for a while another clash with police seemed imminent, but as midnight approached tension eased as die-hards prepared to camp out for the night.With Ashley N. Fleming,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LaAEnB9owY&feature=player_embedded

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/09/24/2011-09-24_nasty_wall_streetfight_protesters_cuffed_pepper sprayed_during_inequality_march.html#ixzz1Z1DIDTVG

Dr. Love

09-25-2011, 09:48 PM

It's kind of sad to have watch the protests in other areas of the world and thought "we wouldn't do that to our own", only to have it happen.

Nitro Express

09-26-2011, 03:39 AM

Not sure why I never see this topic reported on in the news...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/sep/25/occupywallstreet-occupy-wall-street-protests

So much is not being reported in the news. It's all about protecting the banking elite and their political cronies now. The news also fails to mention Ron Paul is neck and neck with Romney and Perry in the polls. I guess you have to be a Federal Reserve lap dog to get any coverage during your campaign these days.

Nitro Express

09-26-2011, 03:45 AM

It's kind of sad to have watch the protests in other areas of the world and thought "we wouldn't do that to our own", only to have it happen.

It's a good thing. For years I have been watching corporations and the government screw the American people raw and wonder why aren't they pissed? Unless people get angry there is not motivation to change things for the better. The politicians should have just let the banks fail. They created a worse situation with the bailouts. We would be in the early stages of a recovery if we just would have let the dead wood rot. So much for green chutes and shovel ready jobs. The moral of the story is when a politician tells you they are going to take care of you they mean they are just going to take care of themselves.

Dr. Love

10-01-2011, 12:02 AM

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/occupy093011/s_o02_26115988.jpg

FORD

10-01-2011, 12:52 AM

A guy named Tony Bologna should never have been allowed to be a cop, unless he had a complete psychological work up first. Because you KNOW that guy got his ass kicked every day of his life in high school. And now he's spraying women in the face with pepper juice to deal with his own "issues".

Fucking coward.

conmee

10-02-2011, 02:38 AM

I think I see Kevin Garnett there up front in that last photo...

That is all.

Icon©®™

conmee

10-02-2011, 02:44 AM

Nitro Express

10-02-2011, 02:55 AM

Brethren and Sistren,

The problem with all these dumbasses protesting (besides blocking my way to work or to my penthouse) is WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY ON ELECTION DAY!?!!? They'll spend days without showering to chant and sing and carry signs but less than half will actually do the one thing that COULD make a fucking difference, vote all the pieces of shit in office the fuck out.

Want change? Start exercising your right to vote and stop voting for the same D-bags every time. And realize the Reps and Dems are BOTH bought and paid for by special interests and could give a shit about any middle class.

Corporate/special interest contributions and voter apathy and self-serving politicians of all stripes have fucked us.

That is all.

Icon©®™

One saying I always heard as a kid was freedom isn't free. When the blame starts I always blame the citizens first. Why? The citizens are the boss. Because we should be busy making livings for ourselves. Being entrepreneurs and making something of this thing called life, we need to hire people to run the country for us. Employees if you will. What's happened is we got lazy and distracted and let the employees take things over. Not only have they robbed us but they think they can tell us the boss what to do. I'm sorry but when you start letting an employee boss you around and act like the boss themselves and you don't can their asses and/or throw them in jail for theft, you are a sorry son of a bitch.

People seem to think being patriotic is going off to war but being patriotic is keeping your eye on the store. Being in the game. Knowing your rights and giving someone the proper lashing for violating them. It's work. Also, freedom is earning your own way and not becoming dependent on handouts. Politicians love to keep people dependent on them. They love to handout other people's money to buy votes for themselves.

Nitro Express

10-02-2011, 03:10 AM

I was talking to someone who grew up in Alexandria, Egypt. The discussion was on how little we actually know about our ancient past. He said Alexandria was one of the important cities 2,400 years ago with a lighthouse that was one of the seven wonders of the world and the famous library. He said there is hardly a trace of it now. He said will people know places like New York City or Washington DC ever existed 2,400 years from now? The point he was making is the world changes and what we now think is so important can be wiped off the face of the earth with the exception of written records or verbal legends.

When this person said they had recently been in Egypt I asked how the revolution was going. He said he thought the Egyptian people had become so passive and apathetic that they had just accepted their fate. He said the protests and peaceful revolution shocked him. He said it will take years to see where it's all going to go but a lot looks promising.

I just can't believe the American people are so far gone they are just going to roll over and let the constitution die and let a corporate oligarchy take it's place. Nothing starts to turn before the anger. People have to know they have been screwed. In 2008 people just didn't quite get it then. Now they know they have been played.

Blaze

10-02-2011, 07:56 AM

700 arrested after protest on NY's Brooklyn Bridge
http://news.yahoo.com/700-arrested-protest-nys-brooklyn-bridge-030009188.html

Ticketed and release (tagged and released) is how it should read. Remember to take ID when going on protests.

This is not the time for Anonymous.
Most officers just want to finish their shift with the least amount of paperwork. Overtime is great as we all know, but that does get old quick, for some. Help the police help you. Yes, there are corrupt among the police, just like there are corrupt among the protesters. But law enforcement, for the most part, are just working jacks too. Sorry to hear that the some BS'ers are trying to make ill among the protesters.And that Greed Day trick was just shabby. Cheers!

Va Beach VH Fan

10-02-2011, 11:10 AM

It appears that most of the protesters are doing so peacefully and legally, while most of the arrests are for "disorderly conduct by individuals who blocked vehicular and pedestrian traffic, but also for resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration and, in one instance, for assault on a police officer”

Nitro Express

10-02-2011, 01:22 PM

Make no mistake about it. Some of those police would love to beat some of those bankers like baby seals. They got screwed too but it's all about the paycheck. They have to follow orders or lose the paycheck. They probably go home and pour a big glass of whiskey and down it glad another day of bullshit is over.

Dr. Love

10-02-2011, 01:47 PM

These guys seem to be getting more organized... http://nycga.cc/calendar/

Seshmeister

10-02-2011, 05:18 PM

One saying I always heard as a kid was freedom isn't free.

Yeah but back then we were at war with Germany and Japan.

FORD

10-02-2011, 05:38 PM

Just saw this posted over at DU. Apparently the Marines are coming in.... and they're on the side of the people, not the fascists........

2037141, The Marines are coming to Wall St
Posted by Frosty1 on Sat Oct-01-11 03:17 PM

This was taken from a message I just received on facebook:

"The Marines are coming to Wall St...(to PROTECT the protestors) "I'm heading up there tonight in my dress blues. So far, 15 of my fellow marine buddies are meeting me there, also in Uniform. I want to send the following message to Wall St and Congress: I didn't fight for Wall St. I fought for America. Now it's Congress' turn. My true hope, though, is that we Veterans can act as first line of defense between the police and the protester. If they want to get to some protesters so they can mace them, they will have to get through the Fucking Marine Corps first. Let's see a cop mace a bunch of decorated war vets. I apologize now for typos and errors. Typing this on iPhone whilst heading to NYC. We can organize once we're there. That's what we do best. If you see someone in uniform, gather together. A formation will be held tonight at 10PM. We all took an oath to uphold, protect and defend the constitution of this country. That's what we will be doing. Hope to see you there!!"

Another Marine responds and says he can't be there, because he's going to the October 6 event in Washington DC, so hopefully there will also be a presence there of military personnel on the side of the people. Not officially on duty in either case, of course. But also not likely to let the Tony Baloney types assault women because of their own childhood traumas.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2037141

Blaze

10-02-2011, 06:18 PM

In Tyler We Trust on October 2, 2011 at 12:53 am said:

I’m new to this and I would like to know how exactly I can get more involved. I am unable to attend meetings, as I don’t live in New York, and don’t have much money to make very many donations.

Reply ↓

Nina
on October 2, 2011 at 1:40 pm said:

you can see if there are occupations forming in city’s near you

Reply ↓
justgoto on October 2, 2011 at 2:19 am said:

just go to http://www.occupytogether.org and find one near you!! support local efforts too!!

Reply ↓

Blaze

10-02-2011, 07:19 PM

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/298130_256475154394337_256464454395407_726945_4627 77790_n.jpg

Dr. Love

10-02-2011, 08:00 PM

FORD, that marine thing has been posted several times across the internet but no one has shown up ... I think it's just an elaborate troll to get legitimate marines / armed forces personnel to show up, which could get them in a lot of trouble.

FORD

10-02-2011, 08:03 PM

Bummer.... I'd like to see the cowards like Baloney piss their pants when they showed up. I'll bet they already did that last week when the airline pilots showed up.....

http://blogs-images.forbes.com/erikkain/files/2011/09/pilotprotestwallstreet.jpg

FORD

10-02-2011, 08:17 PM

And even when the local whore media (NY Times, in this case) makes even a half-assed attempt to cover this story somewhat fairly, "somebody" makes them change the story really quickly.......

http://roarmag.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/New-York-Times-Manipulation-Arrests-Brooklyn-Bridge.jpg

Va Beach VH Fan

10-02-2011, 08:27 PM

ashstralia

10-02-2011, 08:47 PM

yeah; cops v army.... what, is it somalia?

FORD

10-02-2011, 08:49 PM

I would think that "dress blues" would be inappropriate for such an occasion in any case. Especially if you're anticipating possible conflicts with mace-happy police.

Although my interpretation of the posted message is that this Marine and his friends are retired vets as opposed to active duty, so it's not as though they could get discharged for participating, if that were the case.

I'd like to think that General Smedley Butler would be smiling down on this, if it were to happen.

Dr. Love

10-02-2011, 08:49 PM

They'd be foolish to show up in uniform, trust me, that's a major no-no.....

yeah ... the people supposedly doing it were veterans, wanting to show up in dress blues. People had a lot of feedback on what to do to get around the regulations, etc, but it seemed like a group could show up in jeans and USMC t-shirts and get the point across just as easily.

hambon4lif

10-02-2011, 09:13 PM

I hear the government is sending in Radiohead to infiltrate the crowd and bore them to sleep.

Morello should stop wasting his time on all these stupid talk shows, and put his band back together....

"....what better place than here?....what better time than now?..."
Indeed!:thumb:

Va Beach VH Fan

10-02-2011, 09:23 PM

Yeah, the key phrase in what I said is "in uniform"....

Out of uniform, you can pretty much do whatever you want, but you must appear non-political in uniform....

And without knowing the people involved and their official status, the term "retired" can be misleading as well....

For example, I'm "retired", but officially for the Navy, I'm on "Fleet Reserve".... In two years, I'll switch from "Fleet Reserve" to "Retired", when my Active Duty + Fleet Reserve time will equal 30 years.....

The difference? Officially, in some kind of catastrophic situation, the Navy could recall people on Fleet Reserve status.... But it would have to be some really, really bad... Worse than 9/11, probably something along the lines of another Pearl Harbor, where they would have an urgent need for my job.....

So what I'm saying is that if those Marines aren't "offically" retired, the USMC could technically get them in hot water, and fuck with their retirement benefits....

Blaze

10-02-2011, 10:39 PM

ashstralia

10-02-2011, 10:40 PM

don't get me wrong, as a pragmatist i fully support people's rights to peacefully protest. and i fully agree that these bastard bankers should be held to account. we've had a situation here recently where public servants (including emergency services) have protested the new state govt's changes to industrial relations laws... but it should be done in an organized professional way, not as a stinky rabble who are simply out to create chaos.

Blaze

10-02-2011, 11:06 PM

Protesting dos & don'ts - mostly don'ts.

http://wave1049online.net/articles/op-ed/0020/index.html

Cops tricked protesters onto Brooklyn Bridge, then arrested them!

Or so we hear, coming from some of the protesters. And this may or may not be true. But does it really matter?

As usual, the answer is yes and no.

The plain and simple truth of the matter is that it's pretty likely that everyone who marched onto the Brooklyn Bridge was very aware that they weren't supposed to do that, and that they'd likely be arrested if they did. And yet they did it anyway, and they got arrested.

Whether or not the cops, or more realistically, some cops, or a cop told them it was okay is immaterial, because walking on the traffic lanes of the bridge is illegal, and a cop can't really tell you that you that you can do something illegal — that is, a cop telling you to okay just this once, to disregard the law doesn't make your violation of the law any less a violation, and he can, apparently, still arrest you.

It's not a very nice thing to do, but they can still do it.

It's against the law to exceed the speed limit, too. If a cop tells you go ahead and do 70 in a 35, and you do it, you can (and should) get busted. In this case, the cop probably should, too, for encouraging you to disregard public safety by doing 70 in a 35, but that's another matter.

The bottom line is: don't break the law, even if a cop tells you it's okay. Let's reiterate: a cop cannot authorize you to break the law, so don't do it.

If it is your plan to participate in any protest event anywhere in the world, it is emcumbent upon you to avoid violating any laws, unless your goal is to be arrested.

Most cops are good people, solid citizens, themselves, whose objective is to ensure the safety of the public-at-large, including protesters, at all times. If you attract the attention of a cop, then it's likely going to be because you did something to trigger this otherwise perfectly pleasant individual to switch into cop-mode, an agitated, high intensity mode of operation that he or she would rather not be in. It is stressful enough to be a cop, even moreso in a crowded situation where the mob mentality can kick in without advance notice.

While you're out there chanting with the crowd, the cops are already in a heightened state of awareness — an un-natural state to be in. If something happens and a cop or group of cops feels the need to regain control of an adverse situation, they're going to do exactly that, and they're not going to waste a whole lot of effort being overly concerned what you or I may think about it at the time. They're going to regain control. They're going to err on the side of public safety. They're going to do their jobs, and you aren't going to stop them.

This is the one thing that so many people don't understand about the police, so let's make this very clear: when you are challenged by a police officer, you must immdediately submit to the will of that police officer, or the officer will take steps to effect your compliance, which can be anything from the stink-eye all the way to a billy club against your noggin, even a bullet in your chest, depending on the severity of the situation.

If you are roughed-up, or injured, or even killed by a police officer, it was probably because you, somehow, challenged the officer's authority or will to control the situation, which is always a bad idea. Do not do it. If the cop says "stop," you need to stop. Period.

When you are the target of a cop's attention, remember that the cop is always right until your day in court comes, and then the cop is probably still right. Trying to play point-counterpoint with a cop during a stressful situation is not the plan. The more you resist, the louder you get, the more likely will be an unpleasant outcome for you.

Don't you people watch TV? Learn something, for chrissake!

Share and re-post. I have the italics and the bold all set, just sign in click to quote me then take it to another forum.

BigBadBrian

10-03-2011, 06:35 AM

Officially, in some kind of catastrophic situation, the Navy could recall people on Fleet Reserve status.... But it would have to be some really, really bad... Worse than 9/11

Actually, there were a couple chiefs (Chief Petty Officers for you non-Navy folks) assigned to my ship during Desert Storm along with several inactive reservists.

:gun:

BigBadBrian

10-03-2011, 06:42 AM

don't get me wrong, as a pragmatist i fully support people's rights to peacefully protest. and i fully agree that these bastard bankers should be held to account.....but it should be done in an organized professional way, not as a stinky rabble who are simply out to create chaos.

Exactly! Well said.

Blaze

10-03-2011, 02:10 PM

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FORD

10-03-2011, 05:21 PM

Actually, there were a couple chiefs (Chief Petty Officers for you non-Navy folks) assigned to my ship during Desert Storm along with several inactive reservists.

:gun:

I remember posting articles on this very board about Chimpy calling up literal senior citizens to go to his fucking stupidity in Iraq. Not exactly an emergency there, just an inability of the BCE to recruit enough volunteers for that clusterfuck.

Unchainme

10-03-2011, 06:05 PM

I don't think I'm one of the 99%.

I have my share of debt from college loans, and my dad has his share of debt from my medical bills (which in Canada, doesn't happen), I have only a part-time seasonal job at the moment, My dad is taxed at a fairly high rate, but I don't feel like I really relate to these people.

I just don't like to blame others for my problems. I like to try to solve them on my own, or if I really do need help try to see if I can ask a family member or a friend of some sort.

Maybe I'm looking at this from a strictly selfish standpoint. Again, I'm in good health, I'm covered by Father's healthcare plan which includes dental and vision, have a place to sleep at night, am able to afford food to eat, have access to internet, cable tv and a car. Which would seem terribly spoiled to a lot of people out there.

I'm thankful for what I have in this world. I'm not bitter at those that have more, nor do I want or expect anything from them. If I had money to give to those in need, I would, not by force, but because it's the right thing to do.

FORD

10-03-2011, 06:55 PM

Unchainme

10-03-2011, 07:04 PM

Just wait until you graduate, and aren't covered by that health care plan, can't find a job in your field, and still have to pay off those student loans.

I've actually tried to be smart about it. Went to CC (open enrollment, and their credits transferred easily) for two years knocked out my Gen Ed, transferred to a Branch Campus, took classes there for 2 semesters, and then finally transferred to main (4 dead in ohio).

I mean, no disrespect intended to those pictures posted above, but there are ways around getting raped by how expensive college is. If you budget it right and find a career field that has a decent enough job placement (my best friend is studying to be a NURSE of all things as the Med. Field is currently booming in my area) you can find ways to succeed.

I think maybe that's primarily why I struggle to relate to those above.

I'm not sure if shaking my fist at the ceo of bristol-myers squibb will change anything. It's going to have to come from the politicians on down to me. To me, The Bush and Obama presidencies have not created a very job friendly environment in this country. The lack of accountability these politicians have is disgusting and to me, is what's most needed.

jhale667

10-03-2011, 09:20 PM

Just wait until you graduate, and aren't covered by that health care plan, can't find a job in your field, and still have to pay off those student loans. You ARE part of the 99% (unless there's something you haven't told us, and your last name is Bush/Hilton/Rockefeller/Kennedy, etc).

Not all of the 99% are doing as badly as those pictured above. But all of us could be doing a lot better, if not for the damage caused by the 1%. Whether that means unemployment, or high gas prices, or higher food prices (for food that's less healthy no less), or ridiculous health care costs, or if you know anyone who was killed or injured as a result of the BCE/PNAC illegal invasion and occupation of the middle east. Yeah, it all comes back to these pampered criminal unregulated never worked a damn day in their life rich fuck 1%.

I was thinking I couldn't completely relate to the 99% theory being gainfully employed with excellent health-care, benefits, etc. but you're right, we could all be doing a lot better...the inflated prices of food and whatnot impact everyone who' NOT part of the 1%. But to Unchainme's point, not much good in going to Wall St and yelling about it...

Got into a heated online debate with an old friend today after he suggested this is the beginning of "Obama's violent Marxist uprising" ("This IS going on right now, and the MSM won't talk about it")...:umm: Then he starts sending me links with pictures of Hannity and BecKKK in their banners....fail. I wanted to send him a link to "Republicans are Idiots and Arguing with them is a Waste of Time". :lmao:

(Moral of the story: I remember now why I never really liked that dude...LMAO I keed!)

jhale667

10-03-2011, 09:35 PM

THIS is amazing though...watch this dude completely own a FAUX News reporter...how much you want to bet this was never broadcast...

Blaze

10-03-2011, 09:54 PM

I happen to disagree with Ford. I do not think old money is the issue. I think corruption is the issue. Not all old money is corrupt. Not all new money is corrupt.
Nevertheless, their is a serious corruption issues occurring.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/294636_2386017420646_1557097933_32546160_888974013 _n.jpg
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/316431_249383421774592_194464753933126_715043_1399 971482_n.jpg

I have not authenticated the NYPD statement, but the only things being said about the statement is that it was not recent. I do not know the dates, yet. Nevertheless, at the least the donation is a very questionable transaction.

Unchainme

10-03-2011, 10:04 PM

I was thinking I couldn't completely relate to the 99% theory being gainfully employed with excellent health-care, benefits, etc. but you're right, we could all be doing a lot better...the inflated prices of food and whatnot impact everyone who' NOT part of the 1%. But to Unchainme's point, not much good in going to Wall St and yelling about it...

I agree with that point of it.

I want to see jobs in my hometown again.
I want us to be kicked off foreign oil, and move towards an alternative source.
I want us to quit being fucked over by politicians and big biz like GE in bed together.

It's no doubt that things are bad, I just kinda disagree w/ the way the tea-party and the 99 percent/wall street occupiers are going about it. It seems fake to me on both fronts.

Dr. Love

10-03-2011, 10:12 PM

I am glad to watch the Occupy Wall Street movement. I just wish the fuckers would put on professional clothes so people take them more seriously. Perception is reality.

Blaze

10-03-2011, 10:16 PM

I did find the article in the jpmorgan site. However, it goes into a redirect. Either JPmorgan has been hacked or indeed they did give this to the NYPF and are now recanting. A statement needs to come from the NYPF.
Yes, I did screenshot the JPmorganchace site when I found the location of the article in their data base.

FORD

10-03-2011, 10:16 PM

Ray Kelly is a Nazi. He literally believes he has a right to run a mini-CIA within New York City. I suppose it could be worse though - 9u11ani and his mobbed up flunkie Bernie Kerik could still be in charge.

Blaze

10-03-2011, 10:21 PM

I am glad to watch the Occupy Wall Street movement. I just wish the fuckers would put on professional clothes so people take them more seriously. Perception is reality.
Professional clothes for an Occupation? What like a uniform? OK. Would you like to work with me to design, plan, and arrange for a uniform that would work?

FORD

10-03-2011, 10:25 PM

I happen to disagree with Ford. I do not think old money is the issue. I think corruption is the issue. Not all old money is corrupt. Not all new money is corrupt.

Certainly not. I mentioned the Kennedys in a previous post, because they're a rich family that everyone knows of, but they also have given back to this country time and time again, literally dying for this country, in at least 3 cases (Joe Jr in WWII, and Jack & Bobby in the war against the BCE) So they're in the top 1% as far as wealth goes, but at least they use much of it for the benefit of society. Compared to the BCE, for example, who have never done a single thing in any of their miserable lives which wasn't designed to make them more money.

Blaze

10-03-2011, 10:28 PM

THIS is amazing though...watch this dude completely own a FAUX News reporter...how much you want to bet this was never broadcast...

Wow! What little bit of that I got to watch before being cut was awesome! Cheers to that guy! Award him a uniform! :clap::clap::clap::clap::clap:

Blaze

10-03-2011, 10:30 PM

Seshmeister

10-03-2011, 10:30 PM

I don't think I'm one of the 99%.

I have my share of debt from college loans, and my dad has his share of debt from my medical bills (which in Canada, doesn't happen), I have only a part-time seasonal job at the moment, My dad is taxed at a fairly high rate, but I don't feel like I really relate to these people.

I just don't like to blame others for my problems. I like to try to solve them on my own, or if I really do need help try to see if I can ask a family member or a friend of some sort.

It doesn't really need to be like this though. Having medical debt at your age is unheard of in any comparable Western country. Your attitude is good about looking after yourself but remember that you and your family are through taxation forced to support a massive ridiculous military industrial complex and bailing out Wall Street criminals.

Unchainme

10-03-2011, 10:48 PM

It doesn't really need to be like this though. Having medical debt at your age is unheard of in any comparable Western country. Your attitude is good about looking after yourself but remember that you and your family are through taxation forced to support a massive ridiculous military industrial complex and bailing out Wall Street criminals.

ND, that is indeed bullshit. I'd much rather have my tax dollars go to things like supporting the national parks, education and healthcare (dual-system ftw). Goldman-Sachs and bullshit wars in the middle-east should not be receiving my money.

Blaze

10-04-2011, 12:17 AM

I found another document to back up the original document. In addition, a document that would be a bit more difficult to disappear.

The quote is from "Message from Peter Scher, Head of Corporate Responsibility"

"We also are contributing our expertise to help our communities, including a project
we began in 2010 with the New York City Police Foundation to provide expert advice and financial contributions to
strengthen the infrastructure of the technology at the New York City Police Department."

I did not know Chase was in "the infrastructure of the technology" field. What exactly was the expert advise?

PM me for the link.

Blaze

10-04-2011, 12:26 AM

This is interesting:

Foreclosure is the last and least desirable alternative
for everyone, but we know they will sometimes occur
despite all our efforts. We have found that, generally,
there are three reasons that necessitate foreclosure:

1. The homeowner does not respond. Approximately
20% of borrowers who ultimately end up in
foreclosure do not respond to multiple attempts
by Chase to contact them once they get behind in
their payments.

2. Improper documentation. Approximately 70%
of these borrowers either do not send us any or
all of the required documentation to apply for a
modification.

3. The homeowner simply cannot afford the mortgage.
Of the 10% remaining, many are offered a
modification but do not make all the necessary
payments.

I think it is anomalous that 70% ( that is a pretty large number) of people could not manage to get their docs into Chase.

Blaze

10-04-2011, 12:31 AM

I'd have to question do these people really exist? Or were they mislead with intention? Or was the requested docs over-burdensome or out-of-line?

Blaze

10-04-2011, 12:33 AM

Golly, this is really interesting reading. I see why ChiChi did not get back to me right away.

BigBadBrian

10-04-2011, 08:42 AM

and Jack & Bobby in the war against the BCE)

BCE :lmao:

Blaze

10-04-2011, 09:28 AM

BCE :lmao:

That's the best you have, you find Ford's dislike of corruption funny?

BBB, your shtick is ... well, pretty much clearly a shtick. I do not think even proper dress would assist you in being seen for anything more than a shtick. Cheers! And good morning!

Unchainme

10-04-2011, 01:21 PM

Overall, much like the May 4th protestors that happen each year on campus, when I see folks who are apart of the young socialist/communist, etc movement, it kinda takes away from legitimate points that could be made about the condition of things going on.

And I realize that those involved could be a small percentage compared to the entire whole that protests, but to me it's the same as the tea party. I don't think that all of those involved with that are racist, anti-abortion, bigots who are bordering on psychotic, but the problem is, that the possible minority are the one that get the attention and are the ones that get shown to be the face of the movement.

I'll say this, I think both movements say a lot of good things that need to be heard. Clearly we're in bad shape as a nation, and it's good that those involved are hearing perhaps the overall message. I just struggle to get behind those that are that extreme in that regard.

There needs to be one unified message from everyone across the country that the status quo has to stop and that changes have to be made. We can deal with whatever beliefs we differ as a country later when we cross that bridge, for now, lets try to actually make this country better.

Blaze

10-04-2011, 01:37 PM

You know, Unchainme, if you find your voice is not well heard, perhaps you are not speaking up.

occupytogether.org/events/midwest/ohio (http://www.occupytogether.org/events/midwest/ohio/)

Blaze

10-04-2011, 01:43 PM

Moreover, if you " just struggle to get behind", then try on a pair of leaderships. :lever:

Blaze

10-05-2011, 02:49 PM

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/310263_2414545613049_1533577973_2630260_1804030780 _n.jpg
OccupyTogether.org (http://www.occupytogether.org/)
Find an Occupation, make an Occupation, be an Occupant. Get Ready...for Occupation.

Blaze

10-05-2011, 10:48 PM

An Open Letter to Wall Street
Tuesday 4 October 2011
by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

Cancel my subscription
To the resurrection
Send my credentials to the
House of detention
I got some friends inside...

- James Douglas Morrison

http://www.truth-out.org/sites/default/files/100411pitt.jpg
Protesters, some dressed as zombies,
walk the streets as part of the Occupy Wall Street protests,
which began three weeks ago, in New York.
(Photo: Damon Winter / The New York Times)

Before anything else, I would like to apologize for the mess outside your office. It's been three weeks since all those hippies and punk-rockers and students and union members and working mothers and single fathers and airline pilots and teachers and retail workers and military service members and foreclosure victims decided to camp out on your turf, and I'm sure it has been quite an inconvenience for you. How is a person supposed to spend their massive, virtually untaxed bonus money on a double latte and an eight-ball with all that rabble clogging the sidewalks, right?

Your friends at JP Morgan Chase just donated $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation, the largest donation ever given to the NYPD. You'd think that much cheese would buy a little crowd control, but no. Sure, one of the "white shirt" commanding NYPD officers on the scene hosed down some defenseless women with pepper spray the other day, and a few other protesters have been roughed up here and there, and having any kind of recording device has proven to be grounds for immediate arrest, but seriously...for $4.6 million, you'd think the cops would oblige you by bulldozing these troublemakers right into the Hudson River. Better yet, pave them over with yellow bricks, so you can walk over them every day on your way in to work.

That's what you do anyway, right? Every single day. I know it. You know it. We might as well be honest about it, and if some shiny golden bricks wind up serving as anonymous tombstones for your working-class doormats, well, that's just what they call in Wisconsin "hard cheese." You're a Master of the Universe, after all, and this recess(depress)ion hasn't touched you to any great degree. Sure, you have to shoulder your way through more homeless people these days, and damn if there aren't a lot more potholes to tax the undercarriage of your Audi R8 GT, but your money is making money at a fantastic rate, and paying taxes is for other people; I mean, come on, your accountant bursts out laughing whenever he hears the words "capital gains tax," so your egregious sense of entitlement is entirely understandable.

Now is the time to bone up on your coping skills, because three weeks is nothing. The people camped out on Wall Street are not leaving unless and until they are cleared out by force. They look all kinds of silly in their outfits, and some of their statements don't make a whole lot of sense to people like you, but they have put down roots, and you better get used to them. I'm sure the whole phenomenon is quite perplexing to you - really, why don't they just go home? Don't these people have jobs?

I hate to be the Irony Police, but that's pretty much the whole point. They can't, and they don't. Have homes and jobs, I mean. There was a guy out there a few days ago holding a sign in front of a mortgage-lending institution that read "These People Took My Parent's Home." There are all sorts of people walking around Wall Street yelling their lungs out at you because, well, they really would like the opportunity to find gainful employment, as well as a future, but that nifty shell game you and yours pulled off (on our dime) wound up immolating the economy of the common man/woman, and so the common man/woman has decided - in lieu of anything else better to do - to spend their you-created idle hours on your doorstep.

Let's face it: the mess outside your office is your doing. You and your friends bought this democracy wholesale - ah, yes, the irony of freedom is found in the way you were able to corrupt so many legislators with your money, always legally, because the legislators you bought are the ones writing the laws covering political contributions, and thus the wheel of corruption turns and turns - and now you want this democracy to do your bidding after the bill for your excess and fathomless greed has come due.

You are always taken care of - see the Citizens United decision, which unleashed you in a way not seen since the dregs of the Roman empire - but, still, there are those pesky protesters, exercising their freedom of expression in order to expose you for the brigands that you are.

They're staying put, with many more on the way - to New York as well as every major city from sea to shining sea - and none of them are going anywhere else until people like you are taken from your citadels in handcuffs and made to pay for the ongoing rape of what was once quaintly called the American Dream...a dream that used to be something other than a dated metaphor, and can be something true and real and genuine once again, but only after we pave you under, and walk over you, on our way to a better, brighter future.

http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/3.0/us/88x31.png
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/)

WILLIAM RIVERS PITT
William Rivers Pitt is a Truthout editor and columnist. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know," "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence" and "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation." He lives and works in Boston.

:flame:

Blaze

10-05-2011, 11:08 PM

https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/277112_294421993905616_1028066127_n.jpg

Occupy Together
This video was recently posted on the Occupy Wall St. website and, while we obviously don't know the full details, we are trying to understand what warranted this brutal use of force. We must rise above the violence, rise above the negative emotions, and continue to fight for positive and peaceful change.
36 minutes ago

October 5th, around 8:45 PM. Cops beating up and pepper spraying people at the occupy wall street protest.

Occupy Together
Remember, you can watch the livestream here. They just called an impromptu GA. Police presence has been reported to have increased substantially and they are "beginning to create a wall." Please tune in: http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

globalrevolution
www.livestream.com
globalrevolution on Livestream. Global Revolution brings you live streaming video coverage from independent journalists on the ground at nonviolent protests around the world. The team includes members of Mobile Broadcast News, Glassbead Collective, Twin Cities Indymedia and the alt.media ninjas that...
https://s-external.ak.fbcdn.net/safe_image.php?d=AQCZOBZ74eZs4S1X&w=130&h=130&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthumbnail.api.livestream.com%2Fth umbnail%3Fname%3Dglobalrevolution%26t%3D590705

about an hour ago

Blaze

10-05-2011, 11:13 PM

Our little fire ball is really cute. But it's poor eyes are crossed. Could we get it some eyeglasses? :grouphug:

ashstralia

10-05-2011, 11:38 PM

my eyes cross when i'm on fire, too. :)

Dr. Love

10-06-2011, 12:33 AM

The one in Dallas is not far from where I work ... I might go!

Dr. Love

10-06-2011, 12:36 AM

http://i.imgur.com/GmSFY.jpg

they're gonna get that old geezer for wearing his uniform to a protest!

Nitro Express

10-06-2011, 01:01 AM

Our healthcare was the best in the world when you paid for most the care out of your own pocket. You negotiated the price with the doctor or cut some sort of deal. A lot of country doctors took all sorts of barter or even sometimes just cared for someone for free if they really needed the help. Obamacare makes giving free care illegal by the way.

Then you had health insurance to cover the catastrophic stuff. It wasn't health insurance it was really bankruptsy insurance.

Many hospitals were ran by your local county and if you were a resident of that country you could be admitted and if you couldn't pay the bill the hospital just billed the people who could pay more.

So we always had socialized medicine at the local level.

Honestly, who was worrying about their healthcare costs 25 years ago. The insurance was cheap and you just paid it and never thought a thing about it. My first jobs out of college had great healthcare benefits.

Nitro Express

10-06-2011, 01:09 AM

Certainly not. I mentioned the Kennedys in a previous post, because they're a rich family that everyone knows of, but they also have given back to this country time and time again, literally dying for this country, in at least 3 cases (Joe Jr in WWII, and Jack & Bobby in the war against the BCE) So they're in the top 1% as far as wealth goes, but at least they use much of it for the benefit of society. Compared to the BCE, for example, who have never done a single thing in any of their miserable lives which wasn't designed to make them more money.

I never had much use for Ted Kennedy. JFK and Bobby seemed to be a complicated mix between their father and mother. Joe Kennedy was a scumbag but I think Rose Kennedy was a decent person. I don't think JFK or Bobby loathed the average American and actually really loved their country. Do you really think Bush would put his neck on the line to save members of his PT boat crew the way JFK did? I often wonder if the country would be better off if the Japanese captured George H. Bush after his plane went down and he never survived the ordeal.

Seshmeister

10-06-2011, 07:18 AM

It's hard to see how it wouldn't.

Also I would have like to have seen one of Cheney's 5 Vietnam draft deferments refused.

Va Beach VH Fan

10-06-2011, 09:35 AM

Looks like the protests are getting bigger and more widespread, but frankly I don't see a realistic end result....

What are they expecting to happen?

Seshmeister

10-06-2011, 08:35 PM

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/299103_10150470524419815_518234814_11176417_143568 2484_n.jpg

SunisinuS

10-06-2011, 09:07 PM

Lol and London thinks that emulation of the most corrupt police force ever recorded (look it up) the NYPD is going to help them. Shows how the innocence of London since 1964 or so has become Ruprick Murderocks culture:

and in Answer to Chef....I hope some of the people responsible get a fucking pitchfork in the fucking eye. Look that up also.

Let them drink Champagne.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=2PiXDTK_CBY

I have always said that what happened in 1989 to the U.S.S.R. can happen here.....hope we give Texas it's independence back. Deh can be likes the Ukraine.

Unchainme

10-06-2011, 09:14 PM

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.

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.

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Demand four: Free college education.

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.

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

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.

Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

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

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.

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.

Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

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.

http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/

Unchainme

10-06-2011, 09:22 PM

SunisinuS

10-06-2011, 09:22 PM

http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/

Sounds like an extension of the founding father's vision. Sorry BBB....it is..... look up the first 3 freedoms...then the 1948 rights signed by most nations on this earth except the US.

It is so sad that it has had to come to this point.

jhale667

10-06-2011, 09:24 PM

SunisinuS

10-06-2011, 09:32 PM

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

This...actually pisses me off. "You know what? Fuck this. I'm just not going to try to strive to be a successful businessman, I'm just going to sit on my ass and play playstation all day"

I don't think that is what they mean. No one thinks teenagers should be in charge.

People that don't work are obvious.....the left or the right....so let's see...CEO's wages have Quadrupled since the '70's while income for the rest has actually gone static or down during the same time period. Since 2008 the Ceo's income has risen 37% in the same time their "performance" has actually gone down.

Is that fair for anyone?

Who is going to hold these people responsible?

When was the last time a cop "found" your stolen goods?

When was the last time a cop protected you from getting hit?

When was the last time your Congressman came over to your house and hammered one single fucking nail in the roof as you re-roofed your house or business.

Wake up.

Unchainme

10-06-2011, 09:40 PM

Cops around here are very good.

I had been involved in accident and both were very patient with me and came off as non-threatening.

Wake up for what? CEO's get paid a shit ton because they're position is fucking risky as hell. A lot of turnover for what they do.

May I also add in the world of business, it's the board of directors that have more of a say/fund said corporations, and the ceo's are pretty much just a puppet.

ashstralia

10-06-2011, 09:45 PM

if you click the link, that list is just what somebody posted. not an official statement. read the comments underneath it.

SunisinuS

10-06-2011, 09:47 PM

Unchainme

10-06-2011, 09:47 PM

if you click the link, that list is just what somebody posted. not an official statement. read the comments underneath it.

Didn't see that.

Big thanks ash. :).

Still to me it's just an asinine thing the very idea that someone could propose such an idea.

Unchainme

10-06-2011, 09:52 PM

Double Degree in Business and minor in Econ and a double masters.

School Me.

No, I'll be respectful.

Clearly you have more knowledge on the subject if you have a degree involving the subjects, and I'm just a kid relatively speaking.

I may really disagree with where you're coming from, but it'd be kinda like a mouse arguing with a lion. You'd probably eat me alive on the subject ;).

Blaze

10-06-2011, 09:59 PM

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

This...actually pisses me off. "You know what? Fuck this. I'm just not going to try to strive to be a successful businessman, I'm just going to sit on my ass and play playstation all day"
I am confused as to why you are angry. Many, if not most people work more than one part-time job. Many of these jobs are at minimum wage or just above minimum wage. The part time is an exploit used by business to keep from providing health insurance. If heath care was in place and a livable wage was provided, holding 2 or 3 part-time jobs would manage a household.

Note not all business use the part-time status as an exploit. Many small business simply do not need a full time person.

Let me expound on removing health care concerns from business concerns. I enjoy owning and operating businesses. I am very independent when it comes to vocation. Health care often prevents a person being able to utilize workers that have a family. In my many business, I have always paid well, but never been able to provide health care and rarely needed any one person full time, but I have needed skilled workers. And of course, no matter how they may like me, many persons cannot manage with out health care, therefore are not availed to small businesses owners such as my self.

SunisinuS

10-06-2011, 10:07 PM

No, I'll be respectful.

Clearly you have more knowledge on the subject if you have a degree involving the subjects, and I'm just a kid relatively speaking.

I may really disagree with where you're coming from, but it'd be kinda like a mouse arguing with a lion. You'd probably eat me alive on the subject ;).

They only thing the degree's say about me was that I was able to finish the courses.....and that has at least made me hold SOME jobs...

But I do get frustrated when people that have never applied themselves to a subject.....for even 9 months at a time...go on Glenn Beck rants (looks at Glenn Beck).

So I think a little revolution is a good thing thanks to my Econ studies.

Roth On!

Blaze

10-06-2011, 10:20 PM

An interesting note~
I will be attending negotiations tomorrow for my local Occupation. We are trying to work with the city
"We wish to work with the city of [retracted] to present a positive experience for the city of [retracted], for the state of [retracted], and for those aligning with the Occupation."

Please wish us well. I have informed my family, friends and associates. I have asked my family, friends and associates for their input, including a friend that I see to in a nursing home who will be greatly effected by my absence. All have clearly stated that it is indeed important. I have had no negative input.

Please support your local Occupation; tents, sleeping bags, gas cards, food, water, sign making supplies, legal services ( knowing what can and cannot occur or be and loopholes around obstacals), security personnel, sanitation personnel, medical personnel, rides, mail service, internet provisions, entertainment, weather gear, lighting (battery or windup), electric sources (non-grid)
Are a few things that come to mind.

Please pray, meditate or do what you do when a loved one is about to venture into an uncertain future for me and those around me. ~`~
Respectfully and warmest regards,
Blaze

FORD

10-06-2011, 10:21 PM

I heard a blurb on the ABC News tonight about 20,000 or so manufacturing jobs supposedly about to return to the US. Why is this the case? Because the Chinese want higher wages. So they no longer have slave labor to offset the higher shipping costs.

That's the good news. Bad news is, these alleged jobs seem to be returning only to red anti-union states with Koch whore governors, so they STILL won't be living wage jobs.

Blaze

10-06-2011, 10:27 PM

FORD

10-06-2011, 11:25 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhJfyWsKqiM

Dr. Love

10-06-2011, 11:54 PM

I didn't get to make it to the Occupy Dallas gathering today but I have several friends that went and took pictures at the Occupy Austin protest. Cool!

FORD

10-06-2011, 11:56 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imb4tYOk8GE

Blaze

10-07-2011, 12:20 AM

Thank you, Ford.
Cold you find the song Julia that is also from the White album and play it. ~`~

ashstralia

10-07-2011, 12:34 AM

Didn't see that.

Big thanks ash. :).

cheers mate :beers8:

fifth element

10-07-2011, 01:05 AM

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/occupy093011/s_o02_26115988.jpg

i'd say that these guys are definitely on the pissed side, Nitro....

fifth element

10-07-2011, 01:12 AM

fifth element

10-07-2011, 01:19 AM

I don't think that is what they mean. No one thinks teenagers should be in charge.

People that don't work are obvious.....the left or the right....so let's see...CEO's wages have Quadrupled since the '70's while income for the rest has actually gone static or down during the same time period. Since 2008 the Ceo's income has risen 37% in the same time their "performance" has actually gone down.

Is that fair for anyone?

Who is going to hold these people responsible?

When was the last time a cop "found" your stolen goods?

When was the last time a cop protected you from getting hit?

When was the last time your Congressman came over to your house and hammered one single fucking nail in the roof as you re-roofed your house or business.

Wake up.

What he said!
:amen:

fifth element

10-07-2011, 01:24 AM

Also, for those that knew, I might as well announce here.
I put off the MRI. Until a later date, I feel healthy enough. I will try to reschedule as soon as possible. My doctor's office was very understanding and supportive. A new nick name for me, lumpy. hahaha. God willing, it was only an echo.

gl Blaze....be safe

Seshmeister

10-07-2011, 05:04 AM

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.

This is silly and not the model anywhere else(apart from maybe Cuba). The point is that if you have a decent universal healthcare system most people don't pay someone else for insurance(why bother?) but if they want to you have to let them since that's their right. You may end up with 5% with private health insurance because they have plenty of cash and if they want to do that for better 'hotel services' in private hospitals there isn't a problem with that.

FORD

10-07-2011, 05:19 AM

This is silly and not the model anywhere else(apart from maybe Cuba). The point is that if you have a decent universal healthcare system most people don't pay someone else for insurance(why bother?) but if they want to you have to let them since that's their right. You may end up with 5% with private health insurance because they have plenty of cash and if they want to do that for better 'hotel services' in private hospitals there isn't a problem with that.

Sounds like you read Howard Dean's book.....

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/book.gif

BigBadBrian

10-07-2011, 05:50 AM

to red anti-union states

You mean "right-to-work" states. You know, the ones that won't require you to give money to union fat cats.

BigBadBrian

10-07-2011, 05:51 AM

decent universal healthcare system

that's certainly not Britain's NHS.

Google anything along the lines of "UK NHS horror stories" or something similar.

BigBadBrian

10-07-2011, 05:54 AM

fifth element

10-07-2011, 06:03 AM

You mean "right-to-work" states. You know, the ones that won't require you to give money to union fat cats.

for those who DON'T know, "right to work" is code for "right to fire"....as employers can get rid of you for ANY reason, real or imagined.

Don't believe it? You should, as that is exactly what my lawyer informed me after i was fired on a totally trumped up charge.
Yes, i live in a "right to work" state.

Companies in "right to work" states...(a name chosen for the sole purpose of getting the uninformed to back it because it SOUNDS good)
can fire you because they don't like the way you look....(generally citing garbage about the company image, etc, etc, etc.)

ashstralia

10-07-2011, 06:09 AM

we've had a situation here recently where public servants (including emergency services) have protested the new state govt's changes to industrial relations laws...

hey fifth element... check out this from post#37; we've had governments rise and fall on this in my lifetime!

BigBadBrian

10-07-2011, 06:26 AM

for those who DON'T know, "right to work" is code for "right to fire"....as employers can get rid of you for ANY reason, real or imagined.

True enough, but you also don't have to worry about a union pulling you onto a picket line if you don't agree with them. Besides, unions don't offer the employment protection they once did. If an employer doesn't like you, you're pretty much gone whether you like it or not. All they need do is document your shortcomings (real or imagined) over time and that is pretty much it. Your union has little recourse.

Hope you've found another job or will find another one soon.

BigBadBrian

10-07-2011, 06:27 AM

i'd say that these guys are definitely on the pissed side, Nitro....

I'd say these are the "great unwashed masses" Katie Couric was referring to.

BigBadBrian

10-07-2011, 06:32 AM

http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/

Their website seems to be as of the time I'm typing this. Hmmm...wonder why?

BigBadBrian

10-07-2011, 06:35 AM

Sounds like an extension of the founding father's vision. Sorry BBB....it is..... look up the first 3 freedoms...

How so?

BigBadBrian

10-07-2011, 07:14 AM

Keith "The Marxist" Olbermann = :lmao: :lmao:

BigBadBrian

10-07-2011, 07:20 AM

i'd say that these guys are definitely on the pissed side, Nitro....

Also, I see very few black people in these protests. These people must be racists. :gulp:

Matt White

10-07-2011, 08:43 AM

jhale667

10-07-2011, 10:37 AM

Typical...must be the same "shipped in Union Thugs" from Madison WI earlier this year................

same old Neo-fascist defense...............

funny how this movement is spreading...not disappearing...as Faux News & the Ailes Puppets would have had you believe...........

Exactly, exactly. :baaa:

Notice Brie threw out the usual lame knee-jerk "Marxist" crap about the Olbermann video...pathetic neocon troll. :lmao:

WACF

10-07-2011, 12:16 PM

fifth element

10-07-2011, 03:31 PM

True enough, but you also don't have to worry about a union pulling you onto a picket line if you don't agree with them. Besides, unions don't offer the employment protection they once did. If an employer doesn't like you, you're pretty much gone whether you like it or not. All they need do is document your shortcomings (real or imagined) over time and that is pretty much it. Your union has little recourse.

Hope you've found another job or will find another one soon.

thx, BBB, am gainfully employed atm, albeit at a part time, low wage position....

this event happened years ago, but I have not, will not forgetand still refuse to work in that particular field, as i know that i am not the only one that this has happened to...

"the highest level EXPENDABLE person is the one who has to go, regardless of where the fault lies.

FORD

10-07-2011, 03:39 PM

10 Things to Know About Wall Street's Rapacious Attack on America
By Les Leopold, AlterNet
Posted on October 6, 2011, Printed on October 7, 2011

When you climb out of the subway at Wall Street, you might wonder why there are no protestors in the cavernous alley by the stock exchange. That’s because since 9/11, Wall Street has been barricaded shut to prevent possible attacks. But up the block at Zuccotti Park between Liberty and Cedar streets, west of Broadway, the party’s on.

There you’ll find a festive group of about 1,000 people, mostly young folks having a good time accompanied by the occasional cluster of old lefties singing songs. People make signs while sitting on the ground then prop them up wherever they can find a space. They gather at tables filled with donated food and browse boxes of donated books. You also can’t miss the swarm of media folks milling around asking questions, taping interviews and taking notes: they’re the ones in dress suits who spend most of their time interviewing each other. My favorite sign held by an occupier is painted on a skateboard: “This is what Freedom Looks Like.” My son would agree.

And my recurring thought is, “It’s about f’ing time.”

What took us so long? How much worse did it have to get before public outrage would finally focus on those who caused the problem and those who are milking us dry? Several of us have been pleading in blog after blog for more than two years to build a broad-based assault on Wall Street. Where was our answer to the Tea Party? Well, here it is.

There’s no telling where this Occupy Wall Street can lead, especially if a virtuous media feedback loop continues: The more protestors, the more coverage, the more protestors. It’s about the only good thing the mainstream media has done in years.

If unions throw into the mix full force, we may have something powerful in the making. It’s far too early to tell, although the October 5 labor march in New York that drew upwards of 25,000 people was certainly a good sign. Will labor come back and do it again each and every week? Will unions mobilize support for the satellite occupiers in city after city? Or will most of their energy go into the Obama/Democratic Party re-election campaigns as if nothing much has happened? (They should listen to protestors, who agree that corporations and the wealthy are destroying our democracy by buying candidates of both parties.)

Already you can hear the chattering classes mumble about the lack of focus, the lack of consensus and the lack of a coherent agenda in this nascent movement. But they have this coherent call: We are the 99 percent, and we demand our fair share. The irrefutable fact is that 99 percent of us really are being screwed by the 1 percent who are looting our country (actually it’s more like the top 1/10 of one percent). So if you still harbor any doubts that Wall Street is the right target, here are 10 reasons to consider:

1. Wall Street caused the crash: Unless you are suffering from financial amnesia, you should remember that it was Wall Street’s reckless gambling that did us in. It was Wall Street banks and hedge funds, not home buyers, who created the enormous demand for high-risk mortgages to pool, to securitize, and to turn into Ponzi-like gambling structures with names like CDOs, CDO squared and synthetic CDOs. It was the money-grubbing rating agencies that blessed these pieces of garbage with AAA ratings. As a result, trillions of dollars of worthless toxic assets polluted our financial system. When the bubble they induced burst, our system crashed, causing 8 million working people to lose their jobs in a matter of months due to no fault of their own. Anyone who still blames low-income home buyers, or regulations or Greece -- or anyone other than Wall Street -- should be checked for dementia.

2. The Wall Street crash directly caused the gravest unemployment crisis since the Great Depression: We’re three years into the worst jobs crisis since 1937. Upwards of 29 million people are out of work or have been forced into part-time jobs. The number of people who have been jobless for more than 26 weeks is at post-WWII record levels. And there’s no end in sight to this misery. Meanwhile, Wall Street’s representatives in Washington want us to focus on cutting public employment and public services to address the debt that Wall Street itself precipitated. WE wouldn’t have a debt crisis were it not for the bailouts, the crash, the lost jobs and the soaring cost of jobless benefits that can be laid at Wall Street’s door. (The debt was also caused by tax cuts for the rich, and the bankers certainly don’t want to talk about that.) For those diversionary debt tactics alone, Wall Street should be occupied until it pays to replace the jobs it destroyed.

3. Wall Street profited from the bailouts and remains unaccountable: Taxpayers provided trillions of dollars in cash and asset guarantees to the wealthiest bankers and hedge fund managers in the world. But nothing was extracted from them in return. Here’s one egregious example: Goldman Sachs paid $550 million in SEC fines for selling mortgage-related securities that were designed to fail so that a large hedge fund could bet against them. The securities failed as planned and the hedge fund pocketed $1 billion in profits. But after we bailed out AIG, Goldman Sachs picked up nearly $12 billion for similar bets that AIG had insured. Goldman Sachs collected 100 cents on the dollar and those dollars were ours.

4. The super-rich are getting richer: When the economy was crashing during 2008, high frequency traders in hedge funds and banks made upwards of $20 billion from the turmoil. This trading scam provided no redeeming value to our economy. Rather, it was a hidden tax on our sorrows -- a transfer of funds from the many to the few. In 2010 the top hedge fund managers “earned” over $2 million an HOUR! The top 25 hedge fund managers took in as much as 650,000 teachers. Young people have the right to question these lopsided values. All of us have the duty to do something about it.

5. The super-rich are paying lower and lower taxes: While the government pleads poverty when asked to create a massive jobs program, our financial elites use every loophole available to avoid taxes. In 1995, the 400 wealthiest families paid about 30 percent of their income in taxes (after all deductions). Today their effective rate is less than 16 percent. And for what? What did society gain from their retained wealth? Not jobs, not debt reduction, only more Wall Street gambling.

6. Financial elites pay lower taxes than their secretaries: Venture capitalists and private equity fund managers, as well as some hedge fund elites, get a fantastic tax break called “carried interest” that allows them to pay a top rate of 15 percent on their income (rather than the 35 percent top rate regular people pay). This tax break, originally designed for small business partnerships, has made the mega-rich even richer. You might be wondering why this outrageous tax break continues for billionaires. The answer is simple: these elites are pouring money into Washington to make sure that Republicans and Democrats alike keep the loophole in place. Even some liberal Democrats are parroting the line that this tax break for billionaires is good for America. So when the occupiers say they are disenfranchised, they’re right.

7. None of those who caused the crash have been prosecuted: Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund billionaire, is going to the hoosegow for insider trading. Bernie Madoff is in prison for life for his Ponzi scheme. And about 40 others have pleaded guilty to insider trading crimes. Yet none of these scoundrels, as immoral as they may be, had much to do with the financial crash. They didn’t peddle toxic mortgage-related securities. They didn’t push predatory loans. They didn’t rate garbage securities as if they were gold. None of these perps pumped up the housing bubble. Those who did are still roaming free, financially armed and dangerous.

8. Wall Street is much too big and its salaries are much too high: The financial sector is supposed to be an intermediary that turns our savings into productive investments. It’s not supposed to be a casino and it’s not supposed to dwarf the rest of the productive economy. But after years of deregulatory foolishness, it has metastasized to destructive levels. From the 1930s until the mid-1970s, financial sector employees earned the same as those in other sectors, relative to their skills and experience. That’s the way it should be. But since we embarked on the long march of financial deregulation and tax breaks for the super-rich, people working in the financial sector have seen their incomes skyrocket compared to everyone else. The bigger that gap, the more danger we face. And unless we build a massive populist uprising, it won’t change.

9. Wall Street still owns the regulators: When you put too much money in the hands of the few and when you deregulate finance, you get a financial casino. That’s what happened in the years leading up to the 1929 crash, and it happened again in 2008. During the New Deal we regulated the tar out of finance, ending their reign of speculative terror. And it worked for nearly a quarter of a century as financial crises virtually disappeared. Since financial deregulation reappeared over the last 30 years, there have been over 180 financial crises around the world. So you would think after 2008, we’d be back to reining in the bankers. But, no…our leaders are afraid to stifle “financial innovation” (See next point.) The Dodd-Frank bill is weak and getting weaker, thanks to intensive Wall Street lobbying. High government officials still believe that Wall Street can lead the nation forward. The kids are telling us that we should shut down the casinos now. Right again.

10. Financial innovation is a joke: Washington genuflects before the gods of financial innovation: the adjustable no-money down mortgages with resetting teaser rates, the synthetic collateralized debt obligations that turn garbage mortgages into AAA securities, the credit default swaps that are financial insurance policies without regulation, the nanosecond trading programs that flip millions of stocks per second while milking slower investors, and the myriad of ways to make enormous financial bets using little or none of your own money. They tremble at the thought of whispering anything that might stifle these highly profitable Wall Street inventions. They are wowed by trading measured in nanoseconds, by the alphabet soup of securities, by the dark pools of financial trading and most of all by financial billionaires and their lobbyists. But to paraphrase former fed chair Paul Volcker, the only real financial innovation in the last 25 years is the ATM machine. The rest are simply gambling games designed to enrich Wall Street's elites who pocket the winnings and pawn off the losses on us. The protesters sense the game is rigged. It is.

Does Wall Street pay or do we? In the end, it comes down to a clear-cut struggle between the few and the many. (There’s that 99 percent again.) Who is going to pay for the jobs we need? Who is going to pay for the debt that was created to bail out Wall Street and prevent another Great Depression? Wall Street wants us to pay in the form of cuts in Social Security and medical coverage, reduced wages and higher taxes (for everyone but them). In fact, they want the kids to pay by working longer before they retire (if they can ever find a job), paying higher medical costs as they grow older, and turning their Social Security accounts into Wall Street playthings no one can rely on. At the same time financial elites are arguing for fewer regulations and lower taxes on themselves and their fellow millionaires and billionaires. Financial interests are hoping we’ll simply forget who caused what and instead focus on debt, more debt and still more debt. They’re hoping we’ll blame government, regulations and taxes, while they laugh all the way to the bank – their banks. Some of us may be old and tired and fatalistic about all this looting, and sour about the chances for change. Thank god the kids still have their wits about them—and a fighting spirit.

Get out there and join them. And if you’re too old to stay overnight (like me), visit often and urge your unions, churches and community groups to join the fray. A progressive populist uprising only works when it’s large, vocal and full of spunk.

Go occupiers, go!

Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and Public Health Institute in New York, and author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity—and What We Can Do About It (Chelsea Green, 2009).
© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/152629/

Va Beach VH Fan

10-07-2011, 04:27 PM

As usual, for the proper context, go to Jon Stewart....

<div style="background-color:#000000;width:520px;"><div style="padding:4px;"><embed src="http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:video:thedailyshow.com:399050" width="512" height="288" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" base="." flashVars=""></embed><p style="text-align:left;background-color:#FFFFFF;padding:4px;margin-top:4px;margin-bottom:0px;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><b><a href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-5-2011/parks-and-demonstration">The Daily Show with Jon Stewart</a></b><br/>Get More: <a href='http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/'>Daily Show Full Episodes</a>,<a href='http://www.indecisionforever.com/'>Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>,<a href='http://www.facebook.com/thedailyshow'>The Daily Show on Facebook</a></p></div></div>

Nickdfresh

10-07-2011, 04:56 PM

Nickdfresh

10-07-2011, 05:00 PM

You mean "right-to-work" states. You know, the ones that won't require you to give money to union fat cats.

Yeah, the ones that create a massive disparity in wealth as management and their shareholders get it all. Because of course, ultra-conservative "intellectuals" believe a society devoid of the annoying middle classes, educated and politically articulate enough to pander for their basic rights, is easier to control and far more stable (for their interests)...,

WACF

10-07-2011, 05:29 PM

Yeah, the ones that create a massive disparity in wealth as management and their shareholders get it all. Because of course, ultra-conservative "intellectuals" believe a society devoid of the annoying middle classes, educated and politically articulate enough to pander for their basic rights, is easier to control and far more stable (for their interests)...,

Don't forget....in right to work states occupational fatalities and injuries are much higher.

FORD

10-08-2011, 02:23 AM

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21646789/OccupySesamieStreet.jpg
Occupy Sesame Street?

Dr. Love

10-08-2011, 02:36 AM

If you insist

http://i.imgur.com/Q35Dl.jpg

FORD

10-08-2011, 02:40 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNQhxNVJoDQ

Dr. Love

10-08-2011, 04:48 PM

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/297914_289498871061098_114517875225866_1170111_388 911550_n.jpg

Blaze

10-08-2011, 05:18 PM

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/309671_10150330657339475_632674474_8349910_1938695 688_n.jpg

FORD

10-08-2011, 05:52 PM

Dr. Love

10-08-2011, 10:18 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bBb1U-PLJE&NR=1

hmmm

Blaze

10-08-2011, 11:31 PM

We need to deside where this will go. I am in a very fragile position. things like this could effect me and elders close to me. I wish to attempt an empowerment of our LEO's federal, state, and local. If they, the non-corrupt ones, feel they will not be molested for doing their job as they wish, I feel much can be averted.

However, as this processes we must understand that international judicial issues are at hand. Though most can and are able to be addressed by USAmerican justice. Some may/will have greater criminality in other jurisdictions. Moreover, those jurisdictions may better serve USAmericans well-being.

Blaze

10-08-2011, 11:34 PM

The jurisdictions should be selected that would best suit USAmerican needs.

ashstralia

10-08-2011, 11:34 PM

brian the marine from georgia is a legend.:happy0065:

Blaze

10-08-2011, 11:42 PM

Our military monies are most spent over seas. These men and women are not able to pick up and return to USAmerica as they wish. they can become like Axl, and be annoying, but that does not bring them to serve USAmerica. We cannot and shall not forsake them. Pace yourselves ~

Blaze

10-08-2011, 11:44 PM

brian the marine from georgia is a legend.:happy0065:
Who is this you speak of? This is not me! Cease and desist, you naughty male!

Blaze

10-08-2011, 11:48 PM

If just half of our military monies return to the homeland of USAmerica, indeed our restoration of honor would be restored.

ashstralia

10-09-2011, 12:09 AM

Who is this you speak of?

the guy in Dr. Love's video...

Blaze

10-09-2011, 01:24 AM

the guy in Dr. Love's video...

What else does this moving picture say? Do we have a transcript?

Dr. Love

10-09-2011, 01:44 AM

http://i.imgur.com/6oent.jpg

fifth element

10-09-2011, 04:25 AM

BigBadBrian

10-09-2011, 06:10 AM

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Evil-Corporations.jpg

FORD

10-09-2011, 06:20 AM

The difference between THOSE corporations, and the Wall Street corporations (Gold Mansacks, Shittibank, Bank of $5 Debit Card Fees, etc.) is that those companies actually MAKE something.

Granted, they make most of it in fucking China, which IS a problem, but that's a separate issue from Wall Street, which makes NOTHING.

The type of irony they were attempting here with that graphic was much better served the other day when the Phelps KKKult announced they would be picketing Steve Jobs' funeral - from a goddamned iPhone

Dr. Love

10-09-2011, 01:30 PM

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Evil-Corporations.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Ocnxs.jpg

Your implied argument is retarded, Brian. These people aren't protesting that corporations exist/make money. They are protesting that the people that damaged the economy so badly aren't being held accountable for their actions. There's no regulation. There's no prosecution. There's been practically nothing to make sure it doesn't happen again. They fucked it all up and were given huge bags of money as a reward with no real consequence to what they'd done -- and they have the audacity to push for even FEWER rules on them with the bizarre idea that less regulation means they'll do a better job.

Clearly, they care about money more than anything; more than this country, more than your life, more than my life. How many examples do we need of companies ignoring what they should be doing in order to get a better profit without really being held to account when it blows up (in some cases literally) in their faces?

And when people say, "Gee, apparently we can't trust these people to control themselves, maybe we should place some regulations around this" (as any sensible person would do when faced with catastrophe), they throw one hell of a fit and make veiled threats that somehow OUR actions are going to be what destroys the economy (even though they created the situation to begin with!)

Let's put it this way -- if you owned a business (I can't recall if you said you owned your own IT consulting firm or not) and someone working for you royally screwed up to the point that it just decimated your company's ability to make money, and you were having to lay people off, would you hold the responsible party accountable? Would you fire him/her? Would you put greater measures in place to ensure that a fuck up like that didn't happen again? And how would you feel if the people responsible threw a hissy fit insisting that you were going to destroy the company after they'd already royally fucked it?

There is a large-scale effort to discredit normal people that are rightfully pissed off in this country about what's going on, to claim they are unamerican and that they are a threat to freedom and democracy. That is disgraceful. These people aren't really much different in origin or spirit that the Tea Party people; the only differences so far are that they aren't carrying guns and making veiled threats at the president. I've heard you belittle atheistic people here before as lacking morals, but it is a true lack in moral and ethical code for the people that have the audacity to attack average people that have lost their homes. I truly wonder how people can wage a coordinated attack campaign on this movement and feel okay inside that they are doing the right thing. It is pathetic.

I hope these people don't get co-opted by the corporatist machine like the tea partiers did. I'd like to actually see something productive come out of this. Makes me wish our president was a lot more like Teddy Roosevelt. Too big to fail means too big to exist.

A lot of protections we used to enjoy as a nation have slowly and systemically been stripped away. When Exxon-Mobil merged, it brought back the two largest pieces of Standard Oil, which had been broken up in 1911. When a company or industry gets to the point that they are willing to destroy our economy to seek profits, and don't show any repentance, they are a danger to our way of life and the government has a responsibility to step in and protect the american people.

Dr. Love

10-09-2011, 01:58 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9ZVKKeKqOs&feature=player_embedded

FORD

10-09-2011, 02:09 PM

While I would have rather seen Elizabeth Warren running the Consumer Protection Agency that she herself proposed the existence of (before it was taken over by Timmy the Keebler Elf, and held hostage by the "Federal" Reserve), she will make a great Senator, and unlike that failed male model who currently occupies the office, she will be worthy of the seat held for nearly 50 years by Ted Kennedy, and his brother JFK before him.

Dr. Love

10-09-2011, 03:16 PM

http://s3-ak.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web05/2011/10/7/15/enhanced-buzz-17943-1318017151-61.jpg

Dr. Love

10-09-2011, 03:22 PM

As movement spreads, NY mayor slams protesters for 'trying to destroy' jobs
By the CNN Wire Staff
updated 1:24 PM EST, Sun October 9, 2011

Rangel talks to Wall Street protesters

New York (CNN) -- As the Occupy Wall Street movement grew and touched even more U.S. cities Saturday, the mayor of the city where it began blasted many involved and claimed they were targeting the nation's financial sector and "trying to destroy the jobs of working people" in New York City.

The protest effort continued into its 22nd day in New York on Saturday. Yet its spread well beyond that city, with its anti-corporation, anti-government message echoing in many places this weekend -- from Cleveland to Las Vegas, from Washington to Prescott, Arizona.

Yet this growing fervor has been met, in some cases, by vocal commentary. That includes New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who in a WOR radio appearance Friday said that city's labor unions -- many of whom swelled demonstrator ranks earlier this week -- depend on salaries that "come from the taxes paid by the people they're trying to vilify."
The mayor did describe the city's unemployment rate as "unacceptably high," and acknowledged that "a lot of people are disaffected."

"Some are legit, some aren't," Bloomberg said, describing the concerns of the demonstrators in Lower Manhattan.

His comments coincided with the city's announcement that 700 education workers will be laid off in an effort to close a budget gap. They also follow recently released census data that shows New York's poverty level has increased to 20.1%, the highest in more than a decade.

The remarks drew criticism from Tyler Combelic, a spokesman for Occupy Wall Street, who claimed Bloomberg "hasn't really represented all of New Yorkers."

"The fact is there are thousands and thousands of us out on the streets, and he's not really recognizing that we're a movement," Combelic told CNN on Saturday. "We should be heard by New York politicians."
On Saturday, New York protesters set up a second base at Washington Square Park. The park in Greenwich Village is about two miles north of Zuccotti Park, a private park that's been considered the main rallying point for the largely leaderless movement in the city.

A rally was held in Washington Square, followed by a now-customary people's assembly to discuss the movement and an art show Saturday evening. Demonstrators won't stay overnight at Washington Square Park, unlike Zuccotti, because it is a municipal park with a midnight curfew.

As of 9 p.m., the New York Police Department did not report any related arrests.

The ambiguously defined movement against corporate greed and other social ills has spread to more than a dozen cities, spurred lately by support from unions and other groups.

"Social and economic inequalities are the tipping point, and people are hungry for getting involved and trying to do something to change it," Jim Nichols, who has been involved in Occupy Atlanta protests, told CNN on Saturday. "It's almost like, I want the American dream back."

Even before Bloomberg's comments Saturday, the effort was stirring a growing number of strong reactions from public figures.

President Barack Obama, even as he defended the need for a vibrant financial sector, acknowledged that the protesters "are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works."

The No. 2 Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, Eric Cantor, meanwhile, slammed what he called the "growing mobs" who he claimed were "pitting ... Americans against Americans."

On Saturday, U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel backed the demonstrators -- whom he has been visiting regularly over the past three weeks -- for venting their frustrations and exercising their constitutional rights.
"Their dreams are being shattered," Rangel told CNN's Don Lemon. "They may be an inconvenience to a whole lot of people in that area, but people are going to sleep at night with an economic nightmare."
The New York Democrat urged "more spiritual leaders" to join a movement he claimed championed the poor and disadvantaged, saying "there's no moral reason why they have to wait for something to catch on." He also dismissed criticism that the demonstrators don't have a coherent purpose, saying despite their varied issues and lack of organization, their sentiments are raw and real.

"They don't have to know what the solution is," he said. "There's one thing they know is (there's) something wrong when so many people are out of work, and we find the disparity with the very rich. ... Something is wrong."

Combelic, the New York spokesman, said the movement chiefly is trying to showcase "active democracy and (show that) everyone has a voice in government." He said the protests -- which have been associated with progressive causes -- are "a rebuke of government, that includes the left and the right."

"We're trying to broaden the discussion base. ... We're trying to represent 99% of the country that's felt disenfranchised over the past five years because of the recession," Combelic said. "(Politicians) have not come together, they've not compromised on anything, and there's a reason why there's (low) congressional approval in this country."

The demonstrations have been largely peaceful. But in New York, some have been marred by scuffles with police.

Last Saturday, police made hundreds of arrests as demonstrators marched without a permit toward the Brooklyn Bridge, blocking city traffic for hours.

A week earlier, authorities detained dozens of protesters as they marched, also without a permit, through Manhattan's financial district toward Union Square.

People have the right to assemble. If he doesn't like that, fuck him.

FORD

10-09-2011, 03:37 PM

Cantor's the one who really cracks me up here.....

The No. 2 Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, Eric Cantor, meanwhile, slammed what he called the "growing mobs" who he claimed were "pitting ... Americans against Americans."

Really, Eric???

Isn't your entire fucking career based ENTIRELY on doing exactly that?

Seems that the only "American people" that Eric and Mikey care about are the "people", as defined by the Shittyzens United miscarriage of justice.

Dr. Love

10-09-2011, 07:38 PM

http://i.imgur.com/CjFXU.jpg

Unchainme

10-09-2011, 07:39 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mAUQYn6DjM&feature=player_embedded

found myself really agreeing with this guy.

FORD

10-09-2011, 07:49 PM

He makes some good points, but I think he needs to switch to decaf after 10:00 AM or so, before he gets some serious ass hypertension.

FORD

10-09-2011, 08:11 PM

As usual, Alan Grayson actually gets it (unlike most politicians)......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhrwmJcsfT0

Dr. Love

10-09-2011, 08:28 PM

http://blog.nj.com/njv_john_farmer/2011/10/occupy_wall_street_protestors.html

Occupy Wall Street protestors' wishes can be met only by reversing Citizens United decision

Published: Sunday, October 09, 2011, 7:21 AM
By John Farmer/The Star-Ledger

They couldn’t find someone to lead them in their frustration and anger; President Obama was unavailable. So they’ve taken to the streets themselves in cities across the country.

Occupy Wall Street is a protest not seen here since the 1960s, a seminal event devoid of the ’60s violence but equally intense. All that is missing are barricades and theme music from “Les Miserables.”

On the surface, the event is an attack on the imperious Wall Street banks. But to see it as nothing more would be to misread what’s been happening in Lower Manhattan and all those other cities.

This is a protest against the powerful — the corporate and political elite of the country — by people who feel maddeningly powerless, mere discards in an increasingly exploitative capitalist economy dominated by callous corporate giants.

The search is on now for what it all means, with no shortage of talking heads ready to explain it all. Odds are they haven’t a clue. Only the politicians seem mute on the meaning, which may be instructive since they’re part of the problem.

Democrats, desperate for a lifeline, think it might signal the emergence of a left-wing tea party and fresh enthusiasm. But, ever in character, they don’t seem quite sure. Republicans, like their banker buddies and the financial press, are confident it will all blow over.

In truth, it’s hard to tell who’ll benefit politically, if anybody.

It is, in a sense, a rebuke of Obama, who’s viewed as mired in a fruitless search for bipartisan accord while the economy burns. (Somebody give the guy a fiddle). He has started to show the signs of fight, but he’s very late to the struggle.

But the protests are also a shot across the bow of a Republican Party seen by the demonstrators — and others, the polls say — as the tool of the same corporate crowd that exports jobs, corrupts Congress with carloads of cash and manipulates the tax code for its own advantage.

The Wall Street banks, though hardly the only villains and maybe not the worst, are a made-to-order symbol for the economic mischief that brought the country to this sorry state. They collapsed the economy in reckless, close-to-criminal practices that involved sale of investment instruments so worthless, some banks even bet against their own products.

When the crash came, they rushed to Washington to beg for government help. Remember Henry Paulson, the Bush treasury secretary, on bended knee begging Nancy Pelosi for bailout bucks? Once saved, these ingrates invested millions on lobbyists to fend off federal regulation. Gratitude is not part of a banker’s DNA.

No one rationally opposes bank profitability; without adequate profit, they’d be unable to supply the credit essential to a market economy. But by the eve of the 2008 crash, bank profits had exploded, according to Simon Johnson, former economist for the International Monetary Fund — from 16 percent of all corporate profits to 41 percent by the mid-1990s, while pay for top executives had almost doubled.
Corporate greed isn’t confined to the banks, as the Institute for Policy Studies notes in its examination of something called, innocently enough, WIN America.

WIN America is a corporate campaign for a “tax holiday” on profits earned abroad — money, it argues, which, if brought home at a reduced tax rate, would create jobs here. Sounds good, until checked against the history of the last corporate “tax holiday” in 2004.

It cost the treasury $92 billion, the IPS contends, and instead of creating jobs, 58 of the corporate winners “shed almost 600,000 jobs after their tax holiday tax break.” Who’d have guessed?

The Wall Street protests are welcome events, a Howard Beale-type cry that “we’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” After all, this is the Year of the Common Man; even the Arabs are in revolt.
But what the demonstrators want — an end to the perversion of our politics by big money — is a cure that can’t be made any time soon, and certainly not by just reining in the banks and corporations.

The root of the problem is the U.S. Supreme Court. In a truly stupefying decision, it opened wide the floodgates to political money by ruling that money has free speech rights in politics — almost no holds barred — and that corporations are individuals. Only a change in the court can cure that malady.

BITEYOASS

10-10-2011, 01:01 AM

Hopefully this movement will get itself a little more organized before shit--literal shit--starts piling up in the park, activists start dying of frostbite or block regular people from going to work. Otherwise, the locals will get pissed and take matters into their own hands.

Blaze

10-10-2011, 03:59 AM

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.
Amos Bronson Alcott

Seshmeister

10-10-2011, 06:47 AM

As usual, Alan Grayson actually gets it (unlike most politicians)......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhrwmJcsfT0

Haven't seen(heard) this weeks episode of Real Time yet but I'm finding PJ O'Rourke a lot less amusing these days.

Gave up on his last book after a chapter. I think the problem is that if you aren't going to do shit or have fun with all that libertarian freedom ethos you just end up sounding like another grumpy old scrooge fuck who doesn't want anyone in trouble to get a leg up using your precious tax money.

Seshmeister

10-10-2011, 06:54 AM

Happier Days...

How to Drive Fast on Drugs

While Getting Your

Wing-Wang Squeezed

and

Not Spill Your Drink

When it comes to taking chances, some people like to play poker or shoot dice; other people prefer to parachute-jump, go rhino hunting, or climb ice floes, while still others engage in crime or marriage. But I like to get drunk and drive like a fool. Name me, if you can, a better feeling than the one you get when you're half a bottle of Chivas in the bag with a gram of coke up your nose and a teenage lovely pulling off her tube top in the next seat over while you're going a hundred miles an hour down a suburban side street. You'd have to watch the entire Mexican air force crash-land in a liquid petroleum gas storage facility to match this kind of thrill. If you ever have much more fun than that, you'll die of pure sensory overload, I'm here to tell you.

But wait. Let's pause and analyze why this particular matrix of activities is perceived as so highly enjoyable. I mean, aside from the teenage lovely pulling off her tube top in the next seat over. Ignoring that for a moment, let's look at the psychological factors conducive to placing positive emotional values on the sensory end product of experientially produced excitation of the central nervous system and smacking into a lamppost. Is that any way to have fun? How would your mother feel if she knew you were doing this? She'd cry. She really would. And that's how you know it's fun. Anything that makes your mother cry is fun. Sigmund Freud wrote all about this. It's a well-known fact.

Of course, it's a shame to waste young lives behaving this way – speeding around all tanked up with your feet hooked in the steering wheel while your date crawls around on the floor mats opening zippers with her teeth and pounding on the accelerator with an empty liquor bottle. But it wouldn't be taking a chance if you weren't risking something. And even if it is a shame to waste young lives behaving this way, it is definitely cooler than risking old lives behaving this way. I mean, so what if some fifty-eight-year-old butt-head gets a load on and starts playing Death Race 2000 in the rush-hour traffic jam? What kind of chance is he taking? He's just waiting around to see what kind of cancer he gets anyway. But if young, talented you, with all of life's possibilities at your fingertips, you and the future Cheryl Tiegs there, so fresh, so beautiful – if the two of you stake your handsome heads on a single roll of the dice in life's game of stop-the-semi – now that's taking chances! Which is why old people rarely risk their lives. It's not because they're chicken – they just have too much dignity to play for small stakes.

Now a lot of people say to me, "Hey, P.J., you like to drive fast. Why not join a responsible organization, such as the Sports Car Club of America, and enjoy participation in sports car racing? That way you could drive as fast as you wish while still engaging in a well-regulated spectator sport that is becoming more popular each year." No thanks. In the first place, if you ask me, those guys are a bunch of tweedy old barf mats who like to talk about things like what necktie they wore to Alberto Ascari's funeral. And in the second place, they won't let me drive drunk. They expect me to go out there and smash into things and roll over on the roof and catch fire and burn to death when I'm sober. They must think I'm crazy. That stuff scares me. I have to get completely shit-faced to even think about driving fast. How can you have a lot of exciting thrills when you're so terrified that you wet yourself all the time? That's not fun. It's just not fun to have exciting thrills when you're scared. Take the heroes of the Iliad for instance – they really had some exciting thrills, and were they scared? No. They were drunk. Every chance they could get. And so am I, and I'm not going out there and have a horrible car wreck until somebody brings me a cocktail.

Also, it's important to be drunk because being drunk keeps your body all loose, and that way, if you have an accident or anything, you'll sort of roll with the punches and not get banged up so bad. For example, there was this guy I heard about who was really drunk and was driving through the Adirondacks. He got sideswiped by a bus and went head-on into another car, which knocked him off a bridge, and he plummeted 150 feet into a ravine. I mean, it killed him and everything, but if he hadn't been so drunk and loose, his body probably would have been banged up a lot worse – and you can imagine how much more upset his wife would have been when she went down to the morgue to identify him.

Even more important than being drunk, however, is having the right car. You have to get a car that handles really well. This is extremely important, and there's a lot of debate on this subject – about what kind of car handles best. Some say a front-engined car; some say a rear-engined car. I say a rented car. Nothing handles better than a rented car. You can go faster, turn corners sharper, and put the transmission into reverse while going forward at a higher rate of speed in a rented car than in any other kind. You can also park without looking, and can use the trunk as an ice chest. Another thing about a rented car is that it's an all-terrain vehicle. Mud, snow, water, woods – you can take a rented car anywhere. True, you can't always get it back – but that's not your problem, is it?

Yet there's more to a really good-handling car than just making sure it doesn't belong to you. It has to be big. It's really hard for a girl to get her clothes off inside a small car, and this is one of the most important features of car handling. Also, what kind of drugs does it have in it? Most people like to drive on speed or cocaine with plenty of whiskey mixed in. This gives you the confidence you want and need for plowing through red lights and passing trucks on the right. But don't neglect downs and 'ludes and codeine cough syrup either. It's hard to beat the heavy depressants for high-speed spin-outs, backing into trees, and a general feeling of not giving two fucks about man and his universe.

Overall, though, it's the bigness of the car that counts the most. Because when something bad happens in a really big car – accidentally speeding through the middle of a gang of unruly young people who have been taunting you in a drive-in restaurant, for instance – it happens very far away – way out at the end of your fenders. It's like a civil war in Africa; you know, it doesn't really concern you too much. On the other hand, when something happens in a little bitty car it happens right in your face. You get all involved in it and have to give everything a lot of thought. Driving around in a little bitty car is like being one of those sensitive girls who writes poetry. Life is just too much to bear. You end up staying at home in your bedroom and thinking up sonnets that don't get published till you die, which will be real soon if you keep driving around in little bitty cars like that.

Let's inspect some of the basic maneuvers of drunken driving while you've got crazy girls who are on drugs with you. Look for these signs when picking up crazy girls: pierced ears with five or six earrings in them, unusual shoes, white lipstick, extreme thinness, hair that's less than an inch long, or clothing made of chrome and leather. Stay away from girls who cry a lot or who look like they get pregnant easily or have careers. They may want to do weird stuff in cars, but only in the backseat, and it's really hard to steer from back there. Besides, they'll want to get engaged right away afterwards. But the other kind of girls – there's no telling what they'll do. I used to know this girl who weighed about eighty pounds and dressed in skirts that didn't even cover her underwear, when she wore any. I had this beat-up old Mercedes, and we were off someplace about fifty miles from nowhere on Christmas Eve in a horrible sleetstorm. The road was really a mess, all curves and big ditches, and I was blotto, and the car kept slipping off the pavement and sliding sideways. And just when I'd hit a big patch of glare ice and was frantically spinning the wheel trying to stay out of the oncoming traffic, she said, "I shaved my crotch today – wanna feel?"

That's really true. And then about half an hour later the head gasket blew up, and we had to spend I don't know how long in this dirtball motel although the girl walked all the way to the liquor store through about a mile of slush and got all kinds of wine and did weird stuff with the bottlenecks later. So it was sort of okay, except that the garage where I left the Mercedes burned down and I used the insurance money to buy a motorcycle.

Now, girls who like motorcycles really will do anything. I mean, really, anything you can think of. But it's just not the same. For one thing, it's hard to drink while you're riding a motorcycle – there's no place to set your glass. And cocaine's out of the question. And personally, I find that grass makes me too sensitive. You smoke some grass and the first thing you know you're pulling over to the side of the road and taking a break to dig the gentle beauty of the sky's vast panorama, the slow, luxurious interlay of sun and clouds, the lulling trill of breezes midst leafy tree branches – and what kind of fun is that? Besides, it's tough to "get it on" with a chick (I mean in the biblical sense) and still make all the fast curves unless you let her take the handlebars with her pants off and come on doggy-style or something, which is harder than it sounds; and pantless girls on motorcycles attract the highway patrol, so usually you don't end up doing anything until you're both off the bike, and by then you may be in the hospital. Like I was after this old lady pulled out in front of me in an Oldsmobile, and the girl I was with still wanted to do anything you can think of , but there was a doctor there and he was squirting pHisoHex all over me and combing little bits of gravel out of my face with a wire brush, and I just couldn't get into it. So take it from me and don't get a motorcycle. Get a big car.

Usually, most fast-driving maneuvers that don't require crazy girls call for use of the steering wheel, so be sure your car is equipped with power steering. Without power steering, turning the wheel is a lot like work, and if you wanted work you'd get a job. All steering should be done with the index finger. Then, when you're done doing all the steering that you want to do, just pull your finger out of there and the wheel will come right back to wherever it wants to. It's that simple. Be sure to do an extra lot of steering when going into a driveway or turning sharp corners. And here's another important tip: Always roll the window down before throwing bottles out, and don't try to throw them through the windshield unless the car is parked.

Okay, now say you've been on a six-day drunk and you've just made a bet that you can back up all the way to Cleveland, plus you've got a buddy who's getting a blow job on the trunk lid. Well, let's face it – if that's the way you're going to act, sooner or later you'll have an accident. This much is true. But that doesn't mean that you should sit back and just let accidents happen to you. No, you have to go out and cause them yourself. That way you're in control of the situation.

You know, it's a shame, but a lot of people have the wrong idea about accidents. For one thing, they don't hurt nearly as much as you'd think. That's because you're in shock and can't feel pain, or if you aren't in shock, you're dead, and that doesn't hurt at all so far as we know. Another thing is that they make great stories. I've got this friend – a prominent man in the automotive industry – who flipped his MG TF back in the fifties and slid on his head for a couple hundred yards, and had to spend a year with no eyelids and a steel pin through his cheekbones while his face was being rebuilt. Sure, it wasn't much fun at the time, but you should hear him tell about it now. What a fabulous tale, especially during dinner. Besides, it's not all smashing glass and spurting blood, you understand. Why, a good sideswipe can be an almost religious experience. The sheet metal doesn't break or crunch or anything – it flexes and gives way as the two vehicles come together with a rushing liquid pulse as if two giant sharks of steel were mating in the perpetual night of the sea primordial. I mean, if you're on enough drugs. Also, sometimes you see a lot of really pretty lights in your head.

One sure way to cause an accident is with your basic "moonshiner's" or "bootlegger's" turn. Whiz down the road at about sixty or seventy, throw the gearshift into neutral, cut the wheel to the left, and hit the emergency brake with one good wallop while holding the brake release out with your left hand. This'll send you spinning around in a perfect 180-degree turn right into a culvert or a fast-moving tractor-trailer rig. (The bootlegger's turn can be done on dry pavement, but it works best on top of loose gravel or small children.) Or, when you've moved around backwards, you can then spin the wheel to the right and keep on going until you've come around a full 360 degrees and are headed back the same way you were going; though it probably would have been easier to have just kept going that way in the first place and not have done anything at all, unless you were with somebody you really wanted to impress – your probation officer, for instance.

An old friend of mine named Joe Schenkman happens to have just written me a letter about another thing you can do to wreck a car. Joe's on a little vacation up in Vermont (and will be until he finds out what the statute of limitations on attempted vehicular homicide is). He was writing to tell me about a fellow he met up there, saying:

... This guy has rolled (deliberately) over thirty cars (and not just by his own account – the townfolks back him up on this story), inheriting only a broken nose (three times) and a slightly black-and-blue shoulder for all this. What you do, see, is you go into a moonshiner's turn, but you get on the brakes and stay on them. Depending on how fast you're going, you roll proportionately; four or five rolls is decent. Going into the spin, you have one hand on the seat and the other firmly on the roof so you're sprung in tight. As you feel the roof give on the first roll, you slip your seat hand under the dash (of the passenger side, as you're thrown hard over in that direction to begin with) and pull yourself under it. And here you simply sit it out, springing yourself tight with your whole body, waiting for the thunder to die. Naturally, it helps to be drunk, and if you have a split second's doubt or hesitation through any of this, you die.

This Schenkman himself is no slouch of a driver, I may say. Unfortunately, his strong suit is driving in New York City, an area that has a great number of unusual special conditions, which we just don't have the time or the space to get into right here (except to note that the good part is how it's real easy to scare old ladies in new Cadillacs and the bad part is that Negroes actually do carry knives, not to mention Puerto Ricans; and everybody else you hit turns out to be a lawyer or married to somebody in the mob). However, Joe is originally from the South, and it was down there that he discovered huffing glue and sniffing industrial solvents and such. These give you a really spectacular hallucinatory type of a high where you think, for instance, that you're driving through an overpass guardrail and landing on a freight-train flatcar and being hauled to Shreveport and loaded into a container ship headed for Liberia with a crew full of homosexual Lebanese, only to come to and find out that it's true. Joe is a commercial artist who enjoys jazz music and horse racing. His favorite color is blue.

There's been a lot of discussion about what kind of music to listen to while staring doom square in the eye and not blinking unless you get some grit under your contacts. Watch out for the fellow who tunes his FM to the classical station. He thinks a little Rimsky-Korsakov makes things more dramatic – like in a foreign movie. That's pussy style. This kind of guy's idea of a fast drive is a seventy-five-mile-an-hour cruise up to the summer cottage after one brandy and soda. The true skidmark artist prefers something cheery and upbeat – "Night on Disco Mountain" or "Boogie Oogie Oogie" or whatever it is that the teenage lovely wants to shake her buns to. Remember her? So what do you care what's on the fucking tape deck? The high, hot whine of the engine, the throaty pitch of the exhaust, the wind in your beer can, the gentle slurping noises from her little bud-red lips – that's all the music your ears need, although side two of the first Velvet Underground album is nice if you absolutely insist. And no short jaunts either. For the maniacal high-speed driver, endurance is everything. Especially if you've used that ever-popular pickup line "Wanna go to Mexico?" Especially if you've used it somewhere like Boston. Besides, teenage girls can go a long, long time without sleep, and believe me, so can the police and their parents. So just keep your foot in it. There's no reason not to. There's no reason not to keep going forever, really. I had this friend who drove a whole shitload of people up from Oaxaca to Cincinnati one time, nonstop. I mean, he stopped for gas but he wouldn't even let anybody get out then. He made them all piss out the windows, and he says that it was worth the entire drive just to see a girl try to piss out the window of a moving car.

Get a fat girl friend so you'll have plenty of amphetamines and you'll never have to stop at all. The only problem you'll run into is that after you've been driving for two or three days you start to see things in the road – great big scaly things twenty feet high with nine legs. But there are very few great big scaly things with nine legs in America anymore, so you can just drive right through them because they probably aren't really there, and if they are really there you'll be doing the country a favor by running them over.

Yes, but where does it all end? Where does a crazy life like this lead? To death, you say. Look at all the people who've died in car wrecks: Albert Camus, Jayne Mansfield, Jackson Pollock, Tom Paine. Well, Tom Paine didn't really die in a car wreck, but he probably would have if he'd lived a little later. He was that kind of guy. Anyway, death is always the first thing that leaps into everybody's mind – sudden violent death at an early age. If only it were that simple. God, we could all go out in a blaze of flaming aluminum alloys formulated specially for the Porsche factory race effort like James Dean did! No ulcers, no hemorrhoids, no bulging waistlines, soft dicks, or false teeth... bash!! kaboom!! Watch this space for paperback reprint rights, auction, and movie option sale! But that's not the way it goes. No. What actually happens is you fall for that teenage lovely in the next seat over, fall for her like a ton of condoms, and before you know it you're married and have teenage lovelies of your own – getting felt up in a Pontiac Trans Ams this very minute, no doubt – plus a six-figure mortgage, a liver the size of the Bronx, and a Country Squire that's never seen the sweet side of sixty.

It's hard to face the truth, but I suppose you yourself realize that if you'd had just a little more courage, just a little more strength of character, you could have been dead by now. No such luck.

From P. J. O'Rourke, Republican Party Reptile, first published 1978, pp. 128-137.

Dr. Love

10-11-2011, 10:31 PM

http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/11322013526/1/tumblr_lswy1zY1y71qfengn

FORD

10-11-2011, 11:15 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87EPBfCbBko

Unchainme

10-11-2011, 11:43 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters

So are these the guys behind this?

interesting.

FORD

10-12-2011, 03:27 AM

A 1%'er defects to the other side.......

http://i.imgur.com/4C9G6.jpg

Nitro Express

10-12-2011, 04:36 AM

If you think about it, taxes are just an illusion. They have to have taxes to create the illusion the money is actually worth something. I would love to know how much money the Federal Reserve has put in various accounts under the table. If you think about it there has to be a huge underground economy that only those connected to the Fed know about. Once you have those electronic dollars in your account you can spend them anywhere. The taxes are just to control the unconnected people and to create the illusion that the money is really scarce. In reality, you can create as many dollars as you can fit on a computer and transfer electronically.

What would be a wonderful fuck you would be to issue US Treasury Notes and have people except for the corrupt elite exchange their Federal Reserve Notes for the new treasury notes and then no longer accept Federal Reserve Notes. That's how you really fuck over the rich. Make what they hold worthless.

The thing about revolutions is you have to be damn careful to not get another Lenin or Napoleon. It's fun to chop heads off and all that but usually revolutions don't end up very well unless they are carefully organized by decent people. Until I see some real decent leadership behind it, I'm not so sure it's a good thing.

Nitro Express

10-12-2011, 04:46 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87EPBfCbBko

Our local station dropped Glenn Beck's radio program and replaced him with Sean Hannity. I think Beck went so coo coo that even the large Mormon population in eastern Idaho and western Wyoming no longer could stand him. I guess he came here this summer for a fishing trip. He should come now and go hunting with Dick Cheney. Lot's of goose hunting going on. A perfect situation to have another hunting accident.

I really see a pattern here. The right wing is overhyping the dangers of the Wall Street protests just like the left wing overhypes the dangers of the Tea Party. I think both movements started legitimately with normal people and then the Republican Party overtook the Tea Party and ruined it and the left are trying to take over the Wall Street thing. In reality everyone got screwed by the banks and everyone is pissed. It's not just a left wing deal. More divide and conquer propaganda trying to keep the little guys arguing with each other so they can't organize anything to challenge what the banks have already bought off. What would scare these bankers shitless is if so called right wingers and left wingers organized together against Wall Street. They would shit their pants because they can't control that situation. One reason I ignore these left and right wing propaganda cheer leaders.

Seshmeister

10-12-2011, 07:03 AM

I advocate violence against Glenn Beck

BITEYOASS

10-12-2011, 08:10 AM

I advocate violence against Glenn Beck

I'll one-up you and advocate hilarious violence against Glenn Beck. Specifically I want him beaten over the head with a giant rubber dildo. :happy0158:[

Seshmeister

10-12-2011, 09:20 AM

I'm sure he would burst into tears the minute you pulled it out.

So to speak... :)

Nitro Express

10-12-2011, 10:58 AM

I advocate violence against Glenn Beck

I advocate a straight jacket, lot's of prozac and a long stay at the state mental hospital.

Nitro Express

10-12-2011, 11:04 AM

I'm sure he would burst into tears

Here's the caring compassion he claims he has.

FORD

10-12-2011, 08:16 PM

Nitro Express

10-12-2011, 08:27 PM

The one thing everyone - regardless of political affiliation or ability to join a protest - can do without much effort is, if you have an account at Chase, Bank of America, Shittibank, or some other Wall Street Fascist predatory institution, close it out immediately, and put your money elsewhere. Credit union would be the best option. A local bank would be the next best thing, if you can find one that's doing well, and not likely to get swallowed up by these predatory whores in the near future. If there's anyone here from North Dakota, you have a state bank. Hopefully other states will do the same.

I'm not saying this will necessarily break these predatory bastards, but it would certainly serve further notice that the People have taken enough of their bullshit.

That's exactly what people need to do. Fortunately we have some good banks and credit unions here to do business with. Keep your money as local as possible. The big banks get 0% interest money from the Federal Reserve and then they play high roller with that money. That's why we had a rallying stock market while losing jobs. Funny money at play. I'm getting a whiff the Obama administration is going to try and put some attention on Iran Dick Cheney style to distract the country from the problems and the Fast and Furious scandal. They are going to do some more dog wagging it looks like by the sounds of Biden. The neocons never left, they just brought in the second shift.

Seshmeister

10-12-2011, 09:36 PM

The one thing everyone - regardless of political affiliation or ability to join a protest - can do without much effort is, if you have an account at Chase, Bank of America, Shittibank, or some other Wall Street Fascist predatory institution, close it out immediately, and put your money elsewhere. Credit union would be the best option. A local bank would be the next best thing, if you can find one that's doing well, and not likely to get swallowed up by these predatory whores in the near future. If there's anyone here from North Dakota, you have a state bank. Hopefully other states will do the same.

I'm not saying this will necessarily break these predatory bastards, but it would certainly serve further notice that the People have taken enough of their bullshit.

It's a great sentiment and good luck with it but I'm afraid that personal banking is a very small part of these bastard's business.

The only way to fix it and it will never happen is an international deal in the West to legislate a framework to control their extreme cuntiness.

If you want to avoid paying tax, flouting the law, selling shit to your customers whilst making money on the fact it is shit, gambling and plain fucking up then you have to explain to your wife and kids that you need to live in Somalia because the civilized countries don't want you.

FORD

10-12-2011, 10:04 PM

Yeah, as I've said before, we need to roll back pretty much every economic/tax/trade policy passed after 1980 and go back to what actually worked for the 99%.

FORD

10-13-2011, 04:11 AM

The Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Coming Demise of Crony Capitalism
Tuesday 11 October 2011
by: Ravi Batra, Truthout | News Analysis

In 1978, to the laughter of many and the derision of a few, I wrote a book called, "The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism," which predicted that Soviet communism would vanish around the end of the century, whereas crony or monopoly capitalism would create the worst-ever concentration of wealth in its history, so much so that a social revolution would start its demise around 2010. My forecasts derived from the law of social cycles, which was pioneered by my late teacher and mentor, P. R. Sarkar. Lo and behold, Soviet communism disappeared right before your eyes during the 1990s, and now, just a year after 2010, middle-class America, spearheaded by a movement increasingly known as "Occupy Wall Street (OWS)," is beginning to revolt against Wall Street greed and crony capitalism. Will the revolt succeed? It surely will, because the pre-conditions for its success are all there.

The first question is this: Why does rising wealth disparity create poverty? My answer is that it causes overproduction and hence unemployment and destitution. It is all a matter of supply and demand. Inequality goes up when official economic policy does not allow wages to catch up with the ever-growing labor productivity, so that profits soar and rising productivity increasingly raises the incomes and bonuses of business executives. I have detailed this process in an earlier article. Then money sits idly in the vaults of bankers and big-business CEOs and restrains consumer demand, leading to overproduction and hence layoffs. The toxic combination of mounting layoffs and absent job creation raises poverty, which, according to official figures, is now the highest in 50 years.

The next question is: how has the government either restrained wages relative to productivity or made the rich richer and the poor poorer? It is easy to see that almost all official economic measures adopted since 1981 and contained in the following list have devastated the middle class. The list includes:

1. The Reagan income tax cut of 1981 that benefited the rich, but made it necessary to sharply raise all other federal taxes, paid mostly by the poor and the middle class, to finance that tax cut.

2. Unenforced antitrust laws, leading to mergers among large and profitable firms, but killing high-paying jobs in numerous industries.

3. Permitting the oil industry mergers in the 1990s that are now preventing oil prices from falling in the middle of the worst slump since the 1930s.

4. Permitting relentless mergers among pharmaceuticals and health insurance companies, so that America, far more than any other nation, now spends almost 15 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care that is mediocre by European and Japanese standards.

5. Unchecked use of outsourcing that kills high-paying jobs in manufacturing and services.

6. Ignoring the growth of the trade deficit that has destroyed our manufacturing base.

7. The 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act under President Clinton that led to reckless lending by banks and an unprecedented housing bubble, which collapsed in 2007 to trigger the ongoing slump.

8. The Bush tax cuts and bailouts that further benefited the rich while nearly doubling the government debt.

9. And finally, the decimation of the real minimum wage by President Reagan and other Republicans. (In 1981 the hourly minimum wage bought $8 worth of goods compared to $6 by the end of Reagan' presidency in 1988, and to mere $5.15 in 2006 under Bush.)

Looking at this nine-point list, is there any government program that a big business CEO would hate? Stated another way, is there any measure that has helped the middle class? I can't think of any. Thus, over the past three decades whatever the government did, ostensibly to help the people, actually ended up hurting them. Mergers, outsourcing and free trade raise productivity, but also lower wages, whereas the other provisions of the above list directly enrich the wealthy. The nine-point list is really a list of exploitation.

Let us now look at President Obama's record since January 2009 when he took office. The president's first act was to engineer another bailout, à la George W. Bush. The idea was that the $800 billion package of assisting banks and faltering industries would save or create some four million jobs. Did the measure succeed in its avowed purpose?

According to the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget office, the bailout created nearly 1.5 million jobs. Even if we accept the administration's claim of four million, the bailout was extremely wasteful and enormously enriched the rich. Dividing 800 billion by four million yields 200,000. In other words, the government spent $200,000 to create one job. When the average wage is less than $50,000 per year, where did the other $150,000 go? This suggests that companies that hired those four million people received $150,000 for each job they created. Thus, three-fourths of the bailout, or $600 billion, went to businesses, and a mere one-fourth benefited the unemployed. This is the best case for the Obama measure. It is clear that the bailouts, Bush's and Obama's, were extremely wasteful and hugely enriched the opulent.

The fact is that government deficits are not working and have always benefited the wealthy. Not surprisingly, the fastest and the sharpest rise in income and wealth inequality has occurred since 1981, when the culture of mega-deficits first began. Lasting prosperity occurs only when wages rise in proportion to productivity, as was the case through much of American history, especially from 1940 to 1980. Whenever wages trail productivity, debt and profits soar, only to be followed by overproduction and soaring poverty and misery for the middle class. Such was the case in the 1920s and the 1930s and such again has been the case since 1981.

If President Obama really wants to create millions of jobs, then all the economic measures adopted since Reagan's presidency must be abandoned. Of course, the Republicans would oppose him tooth and nail in this resolve; they would scream about the president hurting job creators, who in fact are job destroyers. Big business has decimated American jobs through mega-mergers, outsourcing, oil speculation and by shifting factories to Mexico and China. The nation can only prosper if the destructive ability of job destroyers is restrained through increased taxes or the creation of free markets.

When the government bails out mega banks and Wall Street firms, it amounts to shooting the economy in the foot. Our president seeks to bring about change, which was his campaign slogan. But once elected, he got sidetracked by thinking that change is possible through compromise. This has never happened before. Never in history have the exploited prospered by cooperating with the exploiter.

Compromise is what produced the government's nine-point list of measures described above. The Republicans were able to impose these measures whenever some Democrats compromised with them. When Reagan raised the gasoline tax and excise taxes in 1982, it was through the cooperation of the Democrats, who cooperated again in 1983 when Social Security and self-employment taxes went up sharply to pay for the massive income tax cut of 1981. The repeal of the Glass-Stiegel Act, the Bush tax cuts and bailout were all the handiwork of Republican lawmakers and right-wing Democrats.

America does not need another dose of increased government spending, but a rational economic policy that generates free-market capitalism to take the place of the current monopoly capitalism. In 1776, the nation declared independence; coincidentally, the same year Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, demonstrated how small businesses generate lasting prosperity for all, not just a privileged few. That is what we need again. It is well known that small firms have created the bulk of American jobs in recent years. This is then the best argument for breaking up business conglomerates not only to create jobs, but also to lower the oil price and the cost of health care.

The government should also adopt strong, not toothless, measures to eliminate the trade deficit, which is now running at $500 billion per year. This alone will create five million manufacturing jobs. Eliminating the trade deficit will raise US GDP by the same amount, and to produce that much output, new workers will be needed. Suppose it costs a business $100,000 to hire a worker, including salary, benefits and profit. Dividing 500 billion by 100,000 yields five million. In other words, eliminating the trade shortfall will generate five million new jobs, paying the average wage and benefits.

The trade deficit can be eliminated by setting up a low export-exchange rate, the way China and other Asian nations have done. But first, the government must see the value of balancing our trade and then proper economic policy can be devised to reach the goal.

Outsourcing is now the biggest job destroyer. The government should impose a hefty tax on this practice. This way, if a company has to outsource some work, it will compensate the nation for creating joblessness in the economy. Finally, we need to eliminate the federal budget deficit. This can be done by repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and by enacting a small tax on financial transactions, while preserving crucial programs for the retirees. There is no reason to cut Social Security and Medicare, because President Reagan raised taxes sharply to guarantee the benefits to retiring baby boomers. In short, President Obama should do away with the nine-point list of exploitation mentioned above. He will then be able to bring about the change that he promised during the election campaign in 2008.

Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By now, we should know that excessive government spending is one such insanity. It creates very few jobs and primarily benefits the rich. In fact, I have shown mathematically to some audiences that, under reasonable assumptions, increased government debt goes completely into the pockets of the opulent. As the latest piece of evidence, from September 2010 to September 2011, the deficit rose $600 billion, but only 400,000 jobs were added.

I call upon the OWS movement to demand that the above nine-point list of exploitation be repealed, so that a free-market capitalism of small firms is reborn. This will strengthen the president's hand and enable him to face Republican lies and tactics that are only meant to further weaken the economy and force the president out of power. We need to make sure that Mr. Obama is re-elected, provided he accepts the repeal agenda, because the Republicans always do the same thing over and over, namely make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Additionally, we should also work to defeat Republican incumbents and rightist Democrats who will compromise to maintain the status quo and possibly cut Medicare.

Our efforts are bound to succeed. I am an economist and historian and made many forecasts in the past about the economy and social change. While 5 percent of my economic forecasts have been wrong, to my knowledge I have never made an error about forecasting a revolution. My latest estimate is that monopoly capitalism will go the way of Soviet communism by 2016.

O' brave protesters of the OWS movement, your effort will not only shape the 2012 elections, they will also end, once and for all, the brutality of the rich and powerful, who are responsible for the sorry state you are in. The change that you are about to bring will be glorified as what Abraham Lincoln did for black Americans. I hope that, with your support, Mr. Obama will be the harbinger of that change.

Creative Commons License

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Ravi Batra

Ravi Batra is a professor of economics at Southern Methodist University, Dallas. This article is based on his two books, "The New Golden Age" and "Greenspan's Fraud." His web site is ravibatra.com.

Link (http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-wall-street-movement-and-coming-demise-crony-capitalism/1318341474)

Dr. Batra is also a frequent guest on Thom Hartmann's radio show. Always has interesting analysis of economic matters when he's on. Hope Thom invites him back soon to talk about where this is all going......

Seshmeister

10-13-2011, 05:38 AM

For a historian he's very optimistic. Insanely so.

Kind of weird for a historian to buy into the Lincoln myth to that extent too.

Dr. Love

10-13-2011, 11:04 PM

Good slogan going around that really sums it up -- Separation of Corporation and State

FORD

10-13-2011, 11:43 PM

The bumper sticker is already out there apparently.....

http://liberaleffects.com/thumbs/corpnstate.jpg

BigBadBrian

10-14-2011, 06:28 AM

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/gv101211dAPR20111012014523.jpg

BigBadBrian

10-14-2011, 06:42 AM

I hope these people don't get co-opted by the corporatist machine like the tea partiers did.

No, they're being co-opted by labor unions and other Left-wing organizations. You actually had a decent argument there until you made this statement above. You vilify those who criticize these OCCUPY protesters, saying freedom to assemble is their right, yet you're one of the ones casting stones at other groups who don't share the same political beliefs as you. Evidently they don't share the same rights as your group. While you have the right to criticize the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party and other groups you don't agree with, it is the right of others to criticize these OCCUPY protesters. Evidently you don't see it that way.

hambon4lif

10-14-2011, 12:24 PM

VAiN

10-14-2011, 12:39 PM

I skimmed the thread - pretty sure this wasn't posted:

Occupy Occupy Wall Street... I thought it was pretty clever...

http://www.occupyoccupywallstreet.org/

fifth element

10-14-2011, 12:58 PM

Here's the caring compassion he claims he has.

between Beck and our dear friend Rush, there is a MULTITUDE of (claimed) compassion for the people of the US....
too bad they both lie to the people of the US on a regular basis...
yes lie...

it's either that or simply assume that they are bothtotal crazed idiots....

oh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....they are!!!!!!!!!!!

FORD

10-14-2011, 02:19 PM

BigBadBrian

10-14-2011, 05:35 PM

The teabaggers were NEVER an authentic grass roots movement. It was controlled by KKKoch Brothers front groups from day one, and first unleashed in 2009 to ensure that no REAL health care reform ever took place. (Which wasn't necessary, since the moles in the Senate like Max Baucus already sabotaged that from the inside)

FORD, whether they're true or not, you can always be counted upon to parrot the talking points of the Left-wing Moonbat media sources. You're a thoughtless pawn. :clap:

BigBadBrian

10-14-2011, 05:37 PM

between Beck and our dear friend Rush, there is a MULTITUDE of (claimed) compassion for the people of the US....
too bad they both lie to the people of the US on a regular basis...
yes lie...

it's either that or simply assume that they are bothtotal crazed idiots....

oh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....they are!!!!!!!!!!!

And your boy Obama is taking you for a fool....so you and Glenn Beck are even.

And why does the left keep bringing up beck and Rush? Are they that scared of them? That's what it seems like.

Unchainme

10-14-2011, 06:31 PM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/14/donny-deutsch-kent-state-morning-joe-occupy-wall-street_n_1011065.html

this guy is an asswipe and can go die in a fire for all I care.

fucking calling for another kent state.

fucking douche tube.

FORD

10-14-2011, 06:39 PM

What a complete Deutschbag to say something like that! :mad:

jhale667

10-14-2011, 06:52 PM

FORD, whether they're true or not, you can always be counted upon to parrot the talking points of the Left-wing Moonbat media sources. You're a thoughtless pawn. :clap:

Says the RA's resident brain-dead Teabilly FAUX News/Repuke talking points vomit-launcher. Make sure your WHOLE HEAD is in front of the shotgun next time, will ya? :fufu:

Dr. Love

10-14-2011, 07:08 PM

No, they're being co-opted by labor unions and other Left-wing organizations. You actually had a decent argument there until you made this statement above. You vilify those who criticize these OCCUPY protesters, saying freedom to assemble is their right, yet you're one of the ones casting stones at other groups who don't share the same political beliefs as you. Evidently they don't share the same rights as your group. While you have the right to criticize the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party and other groups you don't agree with, it is the right of others to criticize these OCCUPY protesters. Evidently you don't see it that way.

I think you may have misunderstood what I was saying. The tea party had a popular start that was then hijacked by a lot of corporate groups to try to drive their own agenda. To some extent it worked/is working. I was stating at the time that I hoped the same thing didn't happen to the occupy wall street people. Which, it seems may be happening (which is a shame).

Tea party groups are very non-cohesive as a national movement, and a lot of groups are claiming to represent them to drive their own agendas and no one is really standing up to say "that's not what this is about." It seems possible the same could happen to the Occupation but I think that may be organized enough to push back on that (and I hope they do).

I would have similar criticisms about the Occupation as I do about the tea partiers if I saw them carry weapons and advocating violence and uprising (instead of beating a bunch of drums, which I think is stupid as well, but in a different way.)

The tea party is very big in my area and I know a lot of people that do it, and I think it's awesome -- they are participating and willing to intelligently debate and both myself and the people I know concede certain points or simply disagree. There's no conflict involved.

I actually have some other friends highly active in the local Occupation and they are willing to do the same, though they freely admit that they have a hippy problem (seriously, dress professionally and you'll be taken more seriously).

So no, I'm fairly consistent on this, and I'll be just as quick to criticize the Occupiers as I am to criticize the Tea Partiers (I happen to agree and disagree with both factions). It would be nice in fantasy-land to think that both populist/grass-roots organizations could come together to oust one or both of the established parties and bring in a new political age, but I think there's simply too much money for that to happen. But at the least, I hope it's not Tea Party vs Occupation

FORD

10-14-2011, 08:27 PM

Blaze

10-14-2011, 08:33 PM

An open letter and warning from a former tea party movement adherent to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

[Updated 10/13/2011]
I don't expect you to believe me. I want you to read this, take it with a grain of salt, and do the research yourself. You may not believe me, but I want your movement to succeed. From a former tea partier to you, young new rebels, there's some advice to prevent what happened to our now broken movement from happening to you. I don't agree with everything your movement does, but I sympathize with your cause and agree on our common enemy. You guys are very intelligent and I trust that you will take this in the spirit it is intended.

I wish I could believe this Occupy Wall Street was still about (r)Evolution, but so far, all I am seeing is a painful rehash of how the corporate-funded government turned the pre-Presidential election tea party movement into the joke it is now. We were anarchists and ultra-libertarians, but above all we were peaceful. So, the media tried painting us as racists. But when that didn't work they tried to goad us into violence. When that failed, they killed our movement with money and false kindness from the theocratic arm of the Republican party. That killed our popular support.

I am sharing these observations, so you guys know what's going on and can prevent the media from succeeding in painting you as violent slacker hippies rebelling without a cause, or from having the movement be hijacked by a bunch of corporatists seeking to twist the movement's original intentions. If you think this can't happen, it happened to the Independence Party and the tea party movement. Don't let it happen to your movement as well.

Here's how they turned our movement into a bunch of pro-corporate Republican Party rebranding astroturf, and this is how I predict they are turning your movement into a bunch of pro-corporate Democratic party rebranding astroturf. I believe many of these things are already happening, so take note.

1- The media will initially and purposely avoid covering your dissenting movement to cause confusion about what your movement is about within mainstream audiences. It might feel like this is to enrage you and make you appear unreasonable. Perhaps you will feel even invisible.

2- While the obsfuscation is happening, stooges will infiltrate and give superficial support, focus and financial backing to the targetted movement. In the tea party movement's case, it was the religious Republicans and Koch Brothers. In this case, it's many unions that cozy up to the Democratic Party (the organizations as quasi-human entities, not the members themselves) and Ultra Rich liberals who pretend to care, but frankly do not serve liberators and freedom seekers but rather the interests of some union leaders and the Democratic Party. Democrat, Republican, these parties are all part of the same corporate ruling system. Case in point: http://www.debates.org/

3-The media will cover the movement only after this infiltration succeeds. Once the infiltration is completed the MSM will manufacture public media antipathy towards the movement by using selective focus on the movement's most repulsive elements or infiltrators on the corporate Conservative media side, while the corporate Liberal media will create a more sympathetic tragic hero image -- this is the flip side of the tea party, but same media manipulation tactics. I go into greater detail on this tactic: http://vaslittlecrow.com/blog/2011/09/08/how-the-media-and-ideological-groups-manipulate-your-beliefs/

4- Someone in the Democratic Party will feign sympathy for the movement and falsely "non-partisan" entities provide tons of funding and unwanted organization, just as was done with the tea party movement by Republicans. Once people assume that the pro-corporate government operatives are their friends, they will hijack the movement and the threat of your movement will be neutralized.
If this new Occupy Wall Street movement is to survive, here's what needs to be done.

1- Loudly denounce violence and disavow the violent rabblerousers of the movement. They do not help the cause.

2- Be image conscious. Present your best face and call out those who act like fools within the movement. People are more likely to pay attention to you in your Sunday dress and bringing homemade food, than when you are drinking a bottle of Snapple and chomping on Big Macs while you are looking like a slacker rich hipster/unwashed hippie stereotype.

3- Accept that you've already been infiltrated by the corporate-funded government, and work hard to say, and state what your movement is and is not about. "No, this isn't about unions or liberals, conservatives or bored spoiled brats. This is about 99% of our population being exploited and manipulated for the sake of profit." "No we will not resort to violence." "Yes, all we want is for for the end of government collusion with corporate entities that are illegitimately recognized as people." And, so forth...

4- Don't forget who you are as the illusions are thrown at you. Corporatists are masters of illusions. That's the most powerful weapon they have. That's how they sell products you don't need and convince you to justify accepting atrocities for the sake of products Don't fall for it. Otherwise, your cause will be lost. Be wary of large donations from special interest groups or non-profit corporations that were not involved this movement from the inception. Special interests groups are not your allies. Non-profit corporations are still corporations, and unfortunately, too many of them care more about donations than doing the right thing. Killing a movement with kindness is easy.

5- Remain independent and focused. If you can, pick a face to represent your movement. Rosa Parks wasn't just a random lady in a bus. http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/systems/agentsheets/New-Vista/bus-boycott/ -- She was chosen. You too can use the power of illusion against those who oppose you.

6- On the web, you can prevent a lot of hijacking simply by checking the small print, or going to the about pages of a group or individual. Non-profits and political action groups are legally obligated to disclose a lot of things, and you need to be aware of this. If the information is nowhere to be found, do a whois page. Image searches can also be helpful. Examine who is posing with whom. Company owner? Where is that company located? Did they have a convention/charity event?

7- If you hear people who you know are part of the machine saying stuff like, "Progressives need to be more like the tea party," don't accept it on face value. Always follow the money, study past statements and groups they claim to be part of. If such people are suddenly telling you to emulate organizations that they once consistently denounced as evil or racist, without any rhyme or reason, they are lying to you.

I wish your movement better luck than we had with the tea party movement before it got hijacked by the theocrats and corporatists. We used to be non-partisan too. We were the older version of you. But, I believe that as the media apparatchik and infiltrators start to twist your cause, you will understand the frustration us early adopter tea partiers felt and that we were not your enemy after all. A fascist oligarchy on the verge of winning is our common enemy. This should be your focus. Don't be dazzled by the illusion as we were. For the sake of our future, know who you are.

Thank you for reading. I would love to read your ideas on the subject. Correct me where I am wrong. Explain what is going right. This is ultimately your fight.

EDIT: To understand how movements get hijacked, check out this fantastic video that JamesCarlin shared: http://vimeo.com/20355767

tl;dr Hibernator's excellent and much less paranoid sounding summary below:

"Someone starts a movement. It starts small, and there's a lot going on in the world, so the mainstream media gives it minimal coverage. Today's mainstream media is also understaffed, so they don't investigate and they wait for someone else to slap a label on it.

Eventually a sound byte X pops up above the noise and the mainstream media uses this to engage viewers and define the movement. This defining characteristic X spreads like a meme.

People in power now notice what's going on, and think to themselves "Hmm, this new movement is defined by X, and that's almost in line with my goals, so maybe I can use them to further my ends."

But people in power are all labelled as Democrats or Republicans, so now the media applies the polarizing filter of American politics to associate movement X with one of the parties.

The original movement has now been labelled X, and associated with a political party, and none of this happened because of any 'government conspiracy.' It just happened because that's what you get as output when you plug something new into the American political system."

Thanks to Whiskey With My Coffee, Feed the Protest, The Free Patriot Press, OccupyWallSt.org, Don't Feed the Animals, Politics in Zeros and all the other redditors who have been shared this letter.

Note: While I appreciate interviews, speaking and event invitations, I must respectfully decline them all.

http://www.reddit.com/r/occupywallstreet/comments/kyjo2/an_open_letter_and_warning_from_a_former_tea/

Unchainme

10-14-2011, 08:51 PM

Well, it's not exactly Kent State, but we now have cops punching women in the face and running over demonstrators with their motorcycles and then beating the crap out of them to the point of hospitalization.

Is that what Donnie Deutschbag had in mind?

Kent State is a weird situation.

A lot of those who were actually involved with the protests were not from the University itself.

and the days prior they had pretty much done things like burned down the ROTC building, and in general were assholes.

Now, opening fire on those who are unarmed is an asshole move, and that's whats most remembered. James Rhodes is looked upon as the ultimate textbook Nixon Croney. He fucked up. But, yeah, it's remembered as this supposed peaceful protest and it was far from it.

From what I can recall as well, the a couple that were shot were not actually in the protest itself (making it even more tragic)

If you want a more favorable and better comparison to make a statement, go off what Gahndi and MLK Jr. did and the protests they led. Both were great men and were able to make a great statement against their injustice without resorting to violence. Also, what was more successful in this country in the long run? What's looked upon more positively in the annals of history?

Blaze

10-14-2011, 08:52 PM

Occupy Wall Street is resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

Occupy Together is Occupations springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St.

Blaze

10-14-2011, 09:49 PM

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Blaze

10-14-2011, 10:50 PM

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All rights reserved by Wonggei St

Name:Johnny Choi
Joined:September 2010
Hometown:Ohio
Currently:NYC
I am: Male and Taken
Occupation:investment bank

FORD

10-14-2011, 11:24 PM

I skimmed the thread - pretty sure this wasn't posted:

Occupy Occupy Wall Street... I thought it was pretty clever...

http://www.occupyoccupywallstreet.org/

If those guys aren't working for Stewart or Colbert, they should be :biggrin:

Nitro Express

10-15-2011, 01:32 AM

Protests get attention but nothing really gets accomplished. You have to be very organized and you have to get people who represent you elected into office. The problem is they have made it such an ordeal to get on on the country ballots that unless you are a member of one of the two major parties, you spend all your campaign money on that. If you refuse to be bought and run in a major party they will just pretend you don't exist.

Maybe the first thing we need to clean up is our political parties. The current bunch of politicians aren't going to do anything to bring justice to the banking and corporate criminals.

I don't see a plan in all this protesting. I don't see any real decent organization. We are at the point where the American people no longer trust the politicians in Washington and they know Wall Street had something to do with ruining the economy but that's about the extent of it. Then you have politicians trying to blame Wall Street who took a lot of Wall Street money. What a circus it has become.

Blaze

10-15-2011, 03:53 AM

#OWS VICTORY: The people have prevailed, gear up for global day of action

Posted Oct. 14, 2011, 8:51 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

People power triumphs over Wall Street’s bid to end the protests mayor bloomberg and Brookfield Inc. back down on eviction world prepares for day of action Saturday October 15 in 950+ cities in 82 countries. We Are Winning!

NEW YORK, NY – Over 3,000 people gathered at Liberty Plaza in the pre-dawn hours this morning to defend the peaceful Occupation near Wall Street. The crowd cheered at the news that multinational real estate firm Brookfield Properties will postpone its so-called “cleanup” of the park and that Mayor Bloomberg has told the NYPD to stand down on orders to remove protesters. On the eve of the October 15 global day of action against Wall Street greed, this development has emboldened the movement and sent a clear message that the power of the people has prevailed against Wall Street.

“We are winning and Wall Street is afraid,” said Kira Moyer-Sims, a protester from Portland, Oregon. “This movement is gaining momentum and is too big to fail.”

“Brookfield Properties is the 1%. They have invested $24 billion in mortgage-backed securities, so as millions face foreclosure and eviction due to predatory lending and the burst of the housing bubble that Wall Street created, its not surprising they threatened to evict Occupy Wall Street,” said Patrick Bruner, an organizer with Occupy Wall Street from the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn. “But Brookfield and Bloomberg have backed down and our movement is only growing as the 99% take to the streets world wide to call for economic justice.”

The early morning announcement from the Mayor’s office in New York came after 300,000+ Americans signed petitions to stop the eviction, and flooded the 311 phone network in solidarity with those in Liberty Square. At 6 AM this morning, 3,000+ New Yorkers, unions, students, and others joined the occupiers in the square to send a clear message to the 1% who want to silence this peaceful assembly of the 99%. Donations poured into the protesters from Italy, England, Mexico and many other countries by everyday people hoping to help the movement grow.

“For too long the 99% have been ignored as our economic system has collapsed. The banks got bailouts and we’ve been sold out, ” said Harrison Schultz, business analyst from Brooklyn . “Wall Street’s greed has corrupted our country and is killing our planet. But today we celebrate victory and vow to keep fighting for justice and change on Wall Street, and in over 100 cities in the US and over 950 cities globally.”

On October 15th, Occupy Wall Street will demonstrate in concert over 951 cities in 82 countries and counting as people around the globe protest in an international day of solidarity against the greed and corruption of the 1%.

Occupy Wall Street is a people powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. #OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations on the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Italy and the UK, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people who are writing the rules of the global economy and are imposing an agenda of neoliberalism and economic inequality.

642 Comments
http://occupywallst.org/article/ows-victory-people-have-prevailed-gear-global-day-/

Blaze

10-15-2011, 03:57 AM

Over the last 30 years, the 1% have created a global economic system - neoliberalism - that attacks our human rights and destroys our environment. Neoliberalism is worldwide - it is the reason you no longer have a job, it is the reason you cannot afford healthcare, education, food, your mortgage.
Neoliberalism is your future stolen.

Neoliberalism is everywhere, gutting labor standards, living wages, social contracts, and environmental protections. It is "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." It is a system that ravages the global south and creates global financial crisis - crisis in Spain, in Greece, in the United States. It is a system built on greed and thrives on destablizing shocks.
It allows the 1% to enrich themselves by impoverishing humanity.

This has to stop!
We must usher in an era of democratic and economic justice.
We must change, we must evolve.

On October 15th the world will rise up as one and say, "We have had enough! We are a new beginning, a global fight on on all fronts that will usher in an era of shared prosperity, respect, mutual aid, and dignity."

Actions in NYC

http://www.occupytogether.org/

Blaze

10-15-2011, 04:02 AM

To those who Occupy: We stand with you.
http://www.benjerry.com/activism/occupy-movement/occupy-wallstreet-header2.jpg

We, the Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors, compelled by our personal convictions and our Company’s mission and values, wish to express our deepest admiration to all of you who have initiated the non-violent Occupy Wall Street Movement and to those around the country who have joined in solidarity. The issues raised are of fundamental importance to all of us. These include:

The inequity that exists between classes in our country is simply immoral.
We are in an unemployment crisis. Almost 14 million people are unemployed. Nearly 20% of African American men are unemployed. Over 25% of our nation’s youth are unemployed.
Many workers who have jobs have to work 2 or 3 of them just to scrape by.
Higher education is almost impossible to obtain without going deeply in debt.
Corporations are permitted to spend unlimited resources to influence elections while stockpiling a trillion dollars rather than hiring people.

We know the media will either ignore you or frame the issue as to who may be getting pepper sprayed rather than addressing the despair and hardships borne by so many, or accurately conveying what this movement is about. All this goes on while corporate profits continue to soar and millionaires whine about paying a bit more in taxes. And we have not even mentioned the environment.

We know that words are relatively easy but we wanted to act quickly to demonstrate our support. As a board and as a company we have actively been involved with these issues for years but your efforts have put them out front in a way we have not been able to do. We have provided support to citizens’ efforts to rein in corporate money in politics, we pay a livable wage to our employees, we directly support family farms and we are working to source fairly traded ingredients for all our products. But we realize that Occupy Wall Street is calling for systemic change. We support this call to action and are honored to join you in this call to take back our nation and democracy.

— Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors

Who’s on our Board?

What’s our position on the issues that matter?

Big Picture, Small World
Fair Trade
Climate Justice
Peace Building
Caring Dairy

http://www.benjerry.com/activism/occupy-movement/

Does Ben & Jerry’s spend money on lobbying in the United States?
Ben & Jerry’s has launched numerous activist campaigns over the years that are considered lobbying activities according to federal and state laws.

In the past four years, the positions we have taken in these activist campaigns are:

Support for a Constitutional amendment that would limit corporate spending in elections.
Support for stronger social and environmental protections in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
Support for the Youth PROMISE Act, which funds proven youth violence prevention programs.
Support for continued funding for the United States Institute of Peace.
Support for continued funding for the Complex Crises Fund which supports State Department emergency efforts to defuse volatile conflicts around the globe.
Support for aggressive federal legislation to limit and reduce carbon emissions to respond to the challenge of climate change.
Opposition to FDA approval of foods from cloned animals.
Support for a USDA program to require mandatory tracking of cloned animals in the food supply to support consumer choice.
Opposition to FDA approval of genetically engineered animals in the food supply.
Support for the right of dairy companies to label their products as being ‘rBGH-free.’
Support for the United Nations Millennium Development goals to eradicate extreme poverty and inequality.

Ben & Jerry’s has reported all expenditures on these grassroots campaign activities as required by federal and Vermont state law.

Blaze

10-15-2011, 04:25 AM

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Cull corruption, TODAY!

BigBadBrian

10-15-2011, 09:11 AM

BigBadBrian

10-15-2011, 09:16 AM

Another thing for Democrats to consider: protests among the people, particularly violent protests, have almost always spelled doom at the ballot box in the next general election for the party that occupies the White House. Check your history.

BigBadBrian

10-15-2011, 09:22 AM

Who Wall Street Bought in 2008
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Dr. Love

10-15-2011, 01:10 PM

I don't have faith in Obama anymore ... his latest bit of "fighting" for the middle class is simply a re-election ploy. If he gets re-elected, he will simply sell us out again (and again, and again). The demands on the forum are a proposal by one of the people, and isn't officially endorsed (nor do I think it should be).

I do think what they should be demanding is simple -- an amendment stating that corporations do not have the same rights as people and should not be able to contribute unlimited amounts of funding (Seperation of Corporation and State). Ideally, the election system should be publically funded from a capped fund and tv/radio, as part of their agreement to lease public airwaves/frequencies, should be required to donate certain amounts of time (or charge pre-defined amounts) to the FEC (or other body), who would then transparently split time up between registered candidates based on some fair and equitable formula to groups involved (say, national polling around at least 10% consistently, or something).

Furthermore, they should demand that the protections that built the middle class from the depression through the 1980s, that were slowly unraveled from the 1980s forward, should be put back in place. A strong, vibrant middle class is vital to the country and the economy, and should be protected and given the ability to thrive.

Dr. Love

10-15-2011, 01:11 PM

pasting this here as it is somewhat related (talks about Obama bowing to the interests of corporations and banks)

http://readersupportednews.org/7839-elizabeth-warren-the-woman-who-knew-too-much.htm

Elizabeth Warren: The Woman Who Knew Too Much
By Suzanna Andrews, Vanity Fair
11 October 11

Millions of Americans hoped President Obama would nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the consumer financial watchdog agency she had created. Instead, she was pushed aside. As Warren kicks off her run for Scott Brown's Senate seat in Massachusetts, Suzanna Andrews charts the Harvard professor's emergence as a champion of the beleaguered middle class, and her fight against a powerful alliance of bankers, lobbyists, and politicians.

n the afternoon of July 18, in remarks from the Rose Garden amid the bruising showdown with congressional Republicans over the debt ceiling, President Obama made what the White House billed as a simple "personnel announcement." In a brief speech, the president announced that he was nominating Richard Cordray, the former attorney general of Ohio, to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the new government agency set up to protect consumers from abusive lending practices. In his remarks he described the agency, part of the massive 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, as creating "the strongest consumer protections in history," set up "so ordinary people were dealt with fairly." After which he turned to thank the woman standing to his right, Elizabeth Warren.

A Harvard law professor, one of the nation's leading bankruptcy experts and consumer advocates, the 62-year-old Warren had come up with the idea for the agency in 2007. She had advised the Obama administration on its creation in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse and helped to push it through Congress. Warren had also spent the last 10 months working tirelessly to build the agency from scratch - hiring its staff of 500, including Richard Cordray, organizing its management structure, and getting the CFPB up and running for its opening on July 21.

As she crisscrossed the country, spreading the word about the CFPB, Warren became a familiar face to many, especially to those who had seen her on television - on CNBC, Real Time with Bill Maher, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She had gained millions of supporters. With her passionate defense of America's beleaguered middle class, under assault today from seemingly every direction, she had become like a modern-day Mr. Smith, giving voice to regular citizens astonished at the failure of Washington to protect Main Street - and what increasingly appeared to be its abandonment of middle-class America. By July, the AFL-CIO - speaking for its 12 million members - had called on Obama to name Warren to head the agency. So had scores of consumer groups. Eighty-nine Democrats in the House of Representatives had signed a letter, publicly urging him to choose Warren. Newspapers around the country editorialized on her behalf, as did hundreds of bloggers. By July 18, when Obama announced that he was passing Warren over, he did so after receiving petitions signed by several hundred thousand people and organizations urging him to appoint Warren as the country's top consumer watchdog.

At the end of his remarks, Obama turned to Warren and kissed her on the cheek. She smiled gamely, though if there are kisses a woman can do without, this was one of them. A Judas kiss, some would say. But if so, the betrayal was not just of Elizabeth Warren. In his remarks, Obama would hint at what had happened to Warren, commenting that she had faced "very tough opposition" and had taken "a fair amount of heat." He also alluded to the powerful forces arrayed against her, and against the CFPB - "the army of lobbyists and lawyers right now working to water down the protections and reforms that we've passed," the corporations that pumped "tens of millions of dollars" into the fight, and "[their] allies in Congress." But he was mincing his words. The fight against Warren and the CFPB was one of the most brutal Washington battles this year, up there with the debt-ceiling showdown and now the looming battle over the jobs bill - but part of the same war. Arrayed against Warren, and today against the very existence of the CFPB, was the full force of what many, most notably Simon Johnson, the M.I.T. professor and former International Monetary Fund chief economist, have called the American financial oligarchy: Wall Street firms and banks supported mainly by Republican members of Congress, but also politicians on the other side of the aisle, along with members of Obama's own inner circle.

At a time of record corporate profits, a time when 14 million Americans are out of work, when millions have lost their homes and, according to the Census Bureau, the ranks of those living in poverty has grown to one in six - that Elizabeth Warren could be publicly kneecapped and an agency devoted to protecting American consumers could come under such intense attack is, ultimately, the story about who holds power in America today.

When the CFPB was first proposed to Congress, in early 2009, the Chamber of Commerce, the leading business lobbying group in the country, announced that it would "spend whatever it takes" to defeat the agency. According to the Center for Public Integrity, from 2009 through the beginning of 2010, it would be one of the biggest spenders among the more than 850 businesses and trade groups that together paid lobbyists $1.3 billion to fight financial reform.

Although a Gallup poll in the fall of 2010 would show that 61 percent of Americans supported Dodd-Frank - which was designed to curb the risky bank activities that triggered the 2008 meltdown and the ensuing recession - the financial establishment would continue to attack it even after it became law on July 21, 2010.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2010 the financial industry flooded Congress with 2,565 lobbyists. They were financed by the likes of the Financial Services Roundtable, which, according to the Center, paid lobbyists $7.5 million, and is on its way to spending as much or more this year. The Chamber of Commerce spent $132 million on lobbying Washington in 2010. The American Bankers Association spent $7.8 million. As for individual banks: JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in TARP funds from taxpayers, spent nearly $14 million on lobbying during the 2009–10 election cycle; Goldman Sachs, which received more than $10 billion from taxpayers, spent $7.4 million; Citigroup, which was teetering on the brink of insolvency and received a $45 billion infusion, has paid more than $14 million to lobbyists since 2009. And none of this money includes the direct campaign donations these organizations, and their surrogates, made to members of Congress.

The banks "do not like to lose," says Ed Mierzwinski, of the National Association of State Public Interest Research Groups, which was part of the grossly outmatched consumer coalition that managed to scrape together a paltry $2 million to lobby in favor of reform.

While Wall Street and the banks oppose virtually every aspect of Dodd-Frank - from the new rules on derivatives to higher capital requirements - the CFPB would become among the most controversial aspects of the reforms, the banking industry's particular bête noire. Its chief mission, on the face of it, would seem unremarkable: enforcing the rules protecting consumers already on the books, bringing laws that had been overseen by seven different federal agencies under a single authority. Most of the rules were overseen by the bank regulators. The catch was that none of them had paid much attention to consumer protection. Their primary focus had been ensuring the "safety and soundness" of the banks, which for decades had translated as ensuring bank profits. For the banks, the CFPB meant not only a new regulator rifling around in their books but also a regulator with a mission that did not focus on their bottom lines. And in a world where the banking industry makes billions of dollars off consumers from what's hidden in the fine print - including $22.5 billion in credit-card penalty fees last year, according to R. K. Hammer, a bank-card consultant - the banks perhaps had reason to be concerned.

Talk to most bank executives and they'll still place the blame for the 2008 financial crisis on "irresponsible consumers" who took out mortgages they couldn't afford; dishonest mortgage brokers; and - at the top of the list - the government, which used Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to finance mortgage lending to "people who shouldn't own homes," as one senior New York bank executive put it to me recently. All of which is partly true but omits the enthusiasm with which Wall Street feasted on that market, and the fact, as Warren puts it, "that Wall Street made tens of billions of dollars" from it. In short, there is no remorse, let alone a sense of obligation, because bank executives generally do not believe they were the cause of the financial collapse. As Neil Barofsky, Treasury's former inspector general charged with oversight of TARP, the $700 billion government bailout of the banks, recalls from his interviews with bankers, the attitude instead was that "shit happens." The state of denial has been massive. On Wall Street today, says the vice-chairman of a private-equity firm, "there is this enormous persecution complex in the banking industry about Dodd-Frank, that everyone is going after the banks."

This Wall Street psychosis - "We did nothing wrong, but everyone is trying to hurt us" - was given a dramatic airing in June by Jamie Dimon, the chairman of JPMorgan Chase, at a conference in Atlanta. Clearly agitated during a Q&A with Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, Dimon launched into the reasons why the regulators were being too tough on banks. The causes of the financial crisis had been dealt with. "Most of the bad actors are gone," he said, rattling off a long list of the perpetrators, which included CDO's, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, "thrifts, all the mortgage brokers, and, uh, obviously some banks." He said that he worried that Dodd-Frank was "holding us back at this point" - suggesting that the regulation of banks was the reason why the economy was not recovering. In other words, what was bad for Wall Street was very bad for the country.

What Dimon did not say is that having been supported through the crisis by billions of dollars in TARP aid from American taxpayers, and another $1.2 trillion in emergency loans from the Fed, the largest banks are bigger today than they were before the crisis - way too big to fail - and that many of them are generating even fatter profits. At Dimon's $2 trillion JPMorgan Chase - which rewarded Dimon's performance last year with pay estimated at $20.8 million and $17 million in restricted stock and options - revenues hit $27.4 billion, with a profit of $5.4 billion, in the second quarter of 2011 alone. Nevertheless, Dimon's argument was essentially the one that bank executives, their lobbyists, and supporters in Congress would make against financial reform: that it would kill job creation, cut off lending to businesses and consumers, stifle financial innovation, and strangle free enterprise in America. Spencer Bachus, the Alabama Republican who chairs the powerful House Committee on Financial Services and who is one of the CFPB's leading opponents, would - invoking Mao Zedong - even suggest at a Chamber of Commerce gathering in March that Dodd-Frank was, as he put it, a move toward "a government command-and-control" economy.

Warren followed Bachus to the podium at that conference. It was one of countless meetings she had been having with bankers and business leaders to win their support for the CFPB. She spoke about her belief in free markets, and in government regulation as a mechanism that protected free enterprise by ensuring that the markets functioned fairly and honestly. Perhaps because she did not expect - or get - a rousing reception, she refrained from giving the passionate cri de coeur on the plight of the middle class that brought resounding applause and cheers from audiences around the country.

In those speeches, sometimes using slides filled with numbers and graphs, she would, as she did at a speech in Manhattan in early June, outline the impact on middle-class Americans of rising health-care costs, burgeoning debt, and the depletion of not only their savings but also, with the rise in joblessness, their confidence. She spoke of "the Wild West" conditions deregulation had created, where banks could sell virtually any product they wanted, on any terms: mortgages they knew consumers could not pay off, credit cards whose rates they could raise at whim, products that came with a mind-boggling array of penalty fees, many of them not fully disclosed. But it was her final remarks that brought down the standing-room-only house in June. "We cannot run our country without a strong middle class. We cannot run a democracy without a strong middle class," she said, her voice quavering slightly. "If we hollow out the middle class," she said, "then the country we know is gone."

But while audiences applauded her, Warren's opponents lacerated her. She was called incompetent, power-hungry, ignorant, a media whore, and, in a widely televised moment, a liar, by a Republican congressman during a hearing in May. "It was like she was the Antichrist," says Roger Beverage, the president of the Oklahoma Bankers Association and one of the few bankers who publicly supported her. She had become the lightning rod for the opposition to the CFPB. Says Barney Frank, the Massachusetts congressman who is the "Frank" in "Dodd-Frank," "It's partly sore-losership. They are blaming her for something they all swore would never happen." But it was also because she was eloquent and convincing, and relentlessly tough in her criticism of Wall Street and its enablers.

That bluntness was evident in an interview even in late May, when Warren, who learned only in July that she wouldn't get the job, still believed that Obama might ask her to run the CFPB. "It's money and power, the only two things we are talking about here," she said, speaking of the people who were trying to kill the CFPB "in the back alleys," as she put it. "There are many who are rich and powerful who say the system works fine as it is," she continued. "America had been a boom-and-bust economy going into the Great Depression - just over and over and over, fortunes were wiped out, ordinary families were crushed under it. Coming out of the Great Depression we said, We can build a structure that makes us all safer. And notice, it's from the end of the Great Depression to the 1980s that we built America's middle class. That's when we got stronger as a country. That's when that big, solid, boring, hardworking, play-by-the-rules group in the middle emerged and defined what America was. You still had the ability to become a billionaire, but the center stayed strong and, notice, provided opportunity for growth, opportunity for getting ahead, opportunity that your kids were going to do better than you did. That was what defined America. And then we started, inch by inch, pulling the threads out of that regulatory fabric, starting in the 1980s."

Today, Warren says, one "vision of how America works is that it's an even game, that anybody can get started - just roll those dice; that booms and busts will come and millions of people will lose their homes, millions more will lose their jobs, and trillions of dollars in savings retirement accounts will be wiped out. The question is, Do we have a different vision of what we can do? This agency is out here in a sense to try to hold accountable a financial-services industry that ran wild, that brought our economy to the edge of collapse," she said. "There's been such a sense that there's one set of rules for trillion-dollar financial institutions and a different set for all the rest of us. It's so pervasive that it's not even hidden."

Warren was not always a critic. Born and raised in Oklahoma, Elizabeth Herring spent most of her early life performing all the good-girl Stations of the Cross. She won the Betty Crocker competitions, married for the first time at 19, had two children before she was 30, and was once a registered Republican. She was the youngest of four children and the only daughter. Her father worked as a janitor, and her mother brought in extra money working in the catalogue-order department at Sears. Warren would recall her mother hesitating to take her to the doctor because money was so tight. A brilliant and competitive student, Warren was named Oklahoma's top high-school debater at 16, the same year she graduated with a full debating scholarship to George Washington University. She left G.W. after two years to marry her high-school boyfriend and moved to Houston, where she finished her degree in speech pathology. The first member of her immediate family to graduate from college, Warren then worked as a teacher, followed her husband to New Jersey, and had her first child in 1971. She got her law degree in 1976 from Rutgers University. In the next years, as she divorced and remarried - her current husband, Bruce Mann, is a Harvard law professor - she moved around the country, teaching at the University of Texas, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania, before finally settling at Harvard in 1995.

It was in 1979 that Warren had her Damascene conversion - the experience that would lead her to become the nation's top authority on the economic pressures facing the American middle class, and trigger her passionate advocacy. In 1978, Congress had passed a law that made it easier for companies and individuals to declare bankruptcy. Warren decided to investigate the reasons why Americans were ending up in bankruptcy court. "I set out to prove they were all a bunch of cheaters," she said in a 2007 interview. "I was going to expose these people who were taking advantage of the rest of us." What she found, after conducting with two colleagues one of the most rigorous bankruptcy studies ever, shook her deeply. The vast majority of those in bankruptcy courts, she discovered, were from hardworking middle-class families, people who lost jobs or had "family breakups" or illnesses that wiped out their savings. "It changed my vision," she said.

From then on, Warren would focus her research on the economic forces bearing down on the American middle class. She would chart the disintegration of government policies that, since the New Deal, had helped create perhaps the strongest middle class in the world - in particular, the deregulation of the banks that began in the 1980s. It was a process that she says transformed the middle class into "the turkey at Thanksgiving dinner," carved, "pulled from," picked at, something from which everyone "could make a profit." Her research into how that profit was made would take her into the world of subprime and teaser-rate mortgages, huge credit-card and checking-account penalties, and everything that was buried deep in incomprehensibly worded fine print - the "tricks and traps," as she calls them, that banks used to lure people into increasingly risky credit products. It would be her immense knowledge of banking practices that would make her such a dangerous and natural foe to Wall Street.

Warren's first foray into politics was a bitter experience. It began in 1995, when she was asked to advise the new National Bankruptcy Review Commission. She helped draft the commission's report and then spent several years fighting congressional legislation that would severely restrict the right of consumers to file for bankruptcy. It was a brutal fight. "On the one side you had a huge business alliance, starting with the credit-card companies," says Travis Plunkett, legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America. "And on the other side you had a sort of ragtag public-interest coalition." The bill that finally passed in 2005 was a resounding victory for the business lobby and a defeat for consumers. The wheeling and dealing - the millions in political donations, the spectacle of even sympathetic allies in Congress swayed by wealthy special interests, particularly the banks and credit-card companies - left its mark on Warren. And what happened next would be the genesis of Wall Street's outrage at her.

In November 2008, Warren received a call from Senator Harry Reid. Lehman Brothers had collapsed two months before; A.I.G.'s bailout had just been upped to $150 billion, and Congress had passed TARP. Reid asked Warren to head the congressional panel overseeing the $700 billion bailout. The job was vague, with no clear goals, but Warren would turn it into a tough, prosecutorial committee. She did real investigations, grilled government officials, and issued blunt monthly reports demanding more accountability from banks and better returns for the taxpayer. She held public hearings that were televised, asking the questions that many taxpayers wanted asked - and questions that bankers and Treasury officials did not want to answer.

Perhaps the most widely watched hearing is the one that took place in September 2009. A video of part of that hearing can still be found on YouTube, under the title "Elizabeth Warren Makes Timmy Geithner Squirm." It opens with Warren asking the question that was on the minds of many taxpayers: "AIG has received about $70 billion in TARP money, about $100 billion in loans from the Fed. Do you know where the money went?" What followed during the rest of the hearing was the spectacle of the Treasury secretary tripping over his words, his eyes darting around the room as Warren, calm and prosecutorial, kept hammering him with questions. At another hearing, in December 2009, Geithner appeared to be barely able to contain his annoyance, at one point almost shouting at her. Warren's questioning "was masterful," says Neil Barofsky, who ran the TARP oversight for Treasury. "She eviscerated him." But Warren would pay a price for those hearings.

"Geithner hated her," says a former administration official. Part of it was seen as personal because she had scorched him in public. But the whole thrust of her work on the oversight panel - getting the facts out to the public - was at odds with Geithner's perceived conviction, shared by the Wall Street establishment, that the details of the banks' TARP rescue should be hidden from public scrutiny whenever possible in order to give the banks time to recover, an assessment that a Treasury spokesperson disputes, insisting that "Secretary Geithner initiated unprecedented disclosure requirements for financial institutions."

According to Barofsky, however, "Treasury's descriptions of what was happening were very skewed towards the positive and often incomprehensible. There was this reluctance towards transparency," and Warren's work on the oversight panel "helped bring light in a lot of dark areas." As Treasury sought to cosset the banks, never requiring them, for example, as Barofsky points out, to explain what they were doing with their billions in TARP bailout money, Warren persisted. She went on television shows to criticize the government's secrecy, the huge bank bonuses, the fact that even after the bailout the banks had escaped disciplinary measures. Obama's top economic advisers, according to a former administration official, thought Warren was "a pain in the ass." On Wall Street, Warren was regarded, says one bank vice-chairman, as "the Devil incarnate," and, according to another executive, a "showboater," who didn't really know what she was talking about.

But her sin was actually quite the opposite: she knew what she was talking about. Wall Street's power in Washington, says a former congressional staffer who worked on the Dodd-Frank bill, has been built partly on the fact that few people outside Wall Street understand the esoterica of finance - the intricacies of CDO's and the labyrinthian structures of credit-default swaps. And that knowledge is used to control and confuse. But Warren did understand. Says Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democratic representative, "She understands the information as well as the top players in the business." She knew the secret handshake, the secret language - and she used it against "that tight little group," as Warren would refer to Wall Street CEO's and Washington officials who basically controlled the terms of the bailout.

In early spring, several weeks before Obama's April announcement that he was running for re-election, 24 Wall Street executives gathered in the Blue Room of the White House for a meeting with the president. According to the New York Times account of the meeting, Obama spent more than an hour listening to the financiers' thoughts on the economy, the deficit, and financial regulation. After the meeting, Obama would follow up with phone calls to the executives who had not been able to attend. The event, the Times wrote, was organized by the Democratic National Committee and "kicked off an aggressive push by Mr. Obama to win back the allegiance of one of his most vital sources of campaign cash." The financial industry contributed $43 million to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, a record haul. But his relations with Wall Street had soured - remarkably many of them were enraged over his criticism of their bonuses in late 2009, which is also when he called them "fat cat bankers."

By April, however, Warren's standing in the White House was shaky. Three months earlier, in what was seen as an attempt to "repair" his relationship with his Wall Street donors, Obama had brought in William Daley as his new chief of staff. A former banker at JPMorgan Chase, Daley came into the administration just as senior Obama adviser David Axelrod left. But while Axelrod and another top adviser, Valerie Jarrett, were perceived as strong Warren supporters, Daley had reportedly opposed the creation of the CFPB. A spokesperson for the White House said that, although Daley was "not recused from" discussions about the CFPB, he chose "not to participate in the process of selecting a nominee for CFPB director." Which is possible. But with Daley and Geithner - one of Obama's closest advisers - sharing center stage, the balance of power in the debate over Warren shifted. Geithner would never criticize Warren publicly - and indeed, as a Treasury spokesperson says, he "has expressed his support and admiration for Professor Warren many times" - but few people in Washington doubted that he remained opposed to her candidacy. To at least one person who saw them in meetings together it appeared that "he looked down on her for no apparent or justifiable reason." As for Warren, if one mentions the video "Elizabeth Warren Makes Timmy Geithner Squirm," she says nothing, but an impish smile crosses her face.

By this spring, Spencer Bachus, along with his fellow Alabaman, Senator Richard Shelby, was one of the CFPB's leading opponents. But they would be joined by the vast majority of Republicans. Some of them had previously admitted to having no particular interest in or understanding of banking, but had developed strong feelings about the CFPB after receiving campaign donations from banking groups. Among them was former MTV Real World star Sean Duffy, a Wisconsin Republican elected to Congress in 2010, who has been showered with $178,000 in campaign donations from the financial sector for his next election. But the real battle was against Dodd-Frank. Attempts were popping up throughout Congress to slash the budgets of regulatory agencies, including the CFPB. There was even one that denied funding for a consumer-complaint database at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which businesses had opposed on the grounds that consumers might call in fake complaints. In a sense, says Barney Frank, the CFPB and Warren had become "a symbol" in a broader battle that was partly ideological. The anti-government, free-market, unregulated-business-as-the-savior-of-America sentiment of the Republican Party today, assisted by Wall Street's campaign donations, dovetailed perfectly with the interests of the country's banking Goliaths. To a degree, the attitude regarding Warren, Frank says, was "How dare this woman criticize the free-enterprise system?"

But it wasn't just Republicans. In May, Christopher Dodd, the former Democratic senator from Connecticut, who had chaired the powerful Senate Banking Committee, denied to Politico the rumors that he was trying to kill Warren's nomination. But his cryptic statement about people with "ego" problems standing in the way of the bureau was widely seen as a poison dart aimed at Warren. During the passage of Dodd-Frank, Dodd, who is now chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, was seen as one of Warren's more influential opponents. Among Wall Street's staunchest allies - to the tune, in his last election, of almost $4 million in campaign donations for a race he did not even complete - he had sponsored the reform bill in the Senate but had several times appeared to yield to bank opposition, entertaining a number of proposals that would have either killed the CFPB outright or severely restricted its independence. Warren fought back, not only by calling in support from the White House, but also by speaking out in public. In March 2010 she lashed out in the Huffington Post: "My first choice is a strong consumer agency," she said. "My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor."

If the friction between Warren and Dodd was an open secret, there would be other Democrats - apparent allies - who also appeared to be trying to pry her away from the CFPB. Those most notable would be Senators Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer, who led the effort, which began in the late spring, to encourage Warren to leave Washington to run against Scott Brown, the Massachusetts Republican, who is up for re-election next year. Some speculated that they were doing the president's dirty work, trying to rescue him from a tough decision. But others would note the gush of Wall Street donations these Democrats received for their 2010 elections: $6.2 million for Chuck Schumer, the most of any senator, and $4.7 million for Harry Reid, who would clock in as the third-highest beneficiary of Wall Street largesse in the Senate - after New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand - according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

In a letter dated May 2, 2011, 44 Republican senators issued an ultimatum to Obama. Citing "the lack of accountability in the structure" of the CFPB, and "the unprecedented authority" of its director "over financial institutions and main street businesses," they announced that they would block the confirmation of anyone he chose to nominate as CFPB director unless the bureau's structure was overhauled. There were many in Washington who viewed this as the perfect opportunity for Obama to appoint Warren during a congressional recess. It would have triggered a bitter fight in Congress, but one that many of Warren's supporters believed was worth having. "It would have sharpened the issues," says Jonathan Alter, the author of The Promise: President Obama, Year One.

But for weeks Obama did nothing. As the attacks on Warren and the CFPB heated up during May and June, the silence from the White House was deafening. Even leading Democrats, like Barney Frank, were confused about the president's intentions - would he name Warren in a recess appointment or not? And they were stunned when Obama jettisoned her.

Today, David Axelrod, who is now Obama's chief campaign strategist, denies that placating Wall Street donors influenced Obama's thinking on the CFPB. "If we were concerned about that, we never would have brought in Elizabeth in the first place," he says. Nominating Warren to head the CFPB would have been "a big bloody fight," he says, insisting that if it had been the right battle Obama would have gone for it. "Look, the president expended a lot of political currency on passing Dodd-Frank and on passing this consumer bureau because he believes in it. So we're not averse to battles," he says. "The question is: What are the battles that are in the best interests of the enterprise?" While the fight "would be a wonderful rallying tool in the campaign," a "symbolic battle that would thrill people," he says that trying to "score political points by martyring her" would ultimately have hurt the CFPB. "With middle-class people and consumers having so much at stake here, we don't have the luxury of self-immolation; we don't have the luxury of symbolism."

Axelrod's argument that a fight over Warren's nomination might damage the CFPB - although utterly pragmatic and a passionate argument against taking a stand on principle, a view which seems to have overtaken the president on many issues - makes sense. Except for one key point. The man Obama chose, Richard Cordray, is hardly more likely to win Senate confirmation, or Wall Street's support, than Elizabeth Warren. The Wall Street Journal would write that his career "sounds like Mrs. Warren without the charm." As Ohio's attorney general, he had been one of the nation's leading prosecutors of the financial industry. Before he was nominated, Cordray, who was then chief of enforcement at the CFPB, announced that once the agency went into business he would continue his tough approach "on a 50-state basis ... with a more robust and a more comprehensive authority."

On September 6, Cordray went before the Senate Banking Committee for his confirmation hearing. He met with far more polite treatment from Republican members than Warren ever had, but Republican senators reiterated their pledge to block any nomination to the CFPB until their demands for changes to the agency were met. Whether they will back down from that promise is anyone's guess. But the CFPB will be under fire either way, as will Dodd-Frank. Today, with the battle over regulating Wall Street already an issue in the 2012 presidential race, there are at least a dozen bills and amendments floating around Congress that would weaken the CFPB or kill it outright. How hard the Obama administration will fight the attacks is another question. The president's concessions to Republicans on the debt-ceiling deal inspired little confidence among the agency's supporters. But a new Obama appears to have suddenly emerged - one who, perhaps propelled by his sagging approval ratings and the coming campaign, has suddenly stopped compromising "with himself," as The New York Times recently editorialized. An Obama who - with his jobs plan and his call for economic fairness in cutting the deficit, including raising taxes on corporations and the rich - seems, for the moment, to be taking a stand for Main Street.

As for Elizabeth Warren, on September 14, ending weeks of speculation, she officially announced that she was entering the Massachusetts Senate race. Today, Warren is considered the Democratic front-runner in what is likely to be one of the most closely watched congressional elections next year. In early September, one poll put her within nine points of Scott Brown - even before she had announced her candidacy. A few weeks later, after her official entry into the field, another poll had her ahead of Brown by two points.

Speaking from a car on her way from one campaign event to another, Warren told me that the stakes are too high for her not to run, too high not to try to continue the fight "for the middle class." Too high not to try to bring it into the belly of the beast, to the floor of the US Congress. Middle-class families "are getting hammered and you know Washington doesn't get it," she said. "G.E. doesn't pay any taxes and we are asking college kids to take on even more debt to get an education, and asking seniors to get by on less. These aren't just economic questions. These are moral questions."

Although heavily lobbied by leading Democrats to run, Warren was warned by many that the fight would be brutal. Even her brother David told her, "Don't do this, it's too nasty." Looking back on her time in Washington, though, and the months she spent setting up and fighting for the CFPB, she says, "I've done brutal."

But the fight for Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat is expected to redefine brutal. A Republican golden boy and Wall Street favorite, Brown was rolling in campaign money - some $10 million - even before Warren's announcement, thanks in large part to the financial industry's largesse. With Warren in the race, the Republican party and the nation's corporatocracy is expected to flood Brown's coffers with even more cash.

Dr. Love

10-15-2011, 01:11 PM

duplicate post.

Unchainme

10-15-2011, 01:29 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QZlp3eGMNI&feature=player_embedded

This was a true assshole move.

jhale667

10-15-2011, 01:41 PM

Who Wall Street Bought in 2008
http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab40/katiepavlich/CampaignContributions08pic.jpg

Who Wall St. bought? Short answer: All of the above.

The system is broken.

Dr. Love

10-15-2011, 01:41 PM

Blaze

10-15-2011, 02:45 PM

Now on livestream: Protesters who were attempting to close their accounts at a CitiBank in NYC are currently locked inside the building and being arrested.

http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

http://www.livestream.com/

https://www.facebook.com/OccupyTogether

https://www.facebook.com/OccupyTogether/posts/179622102119358

sadaist

10-15-2011, 02:53 PM

OCCUPY WALL STREET! Down with corporate America!

eBay Search term - "Occupy Wall Street"
Items found - 1,182
Brand - Hanes*
Buy it now - US $25.00

http://rlv.zcache.com/occupy_wall_street_tshirt-p235069468045185315z84n7_325.jpg

Also available found in Google shopping search under term "Occupy Wall Street" at over 1, 800 sites.

** HANES

Hanes has come under criticism for outsourcing its manufacturing to factories around the world, many of which are sweatshops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanes

sadaist

10-15-2011, 02:57 PM

Blaze

10-15-2011, 03:04 PM

If these protesters want to succeed with gaining support with their supposed goal (to make those responsible for the financial crisis be held accountable...which I support), they need to get rid of their 13 Demands right HERE (http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-for-occupy-wall-st-moveme/).

It makes them look like fiscal accountability wasn't the real reason they started protesting in the first place. Maybe Goldman Sachs has some people on the inside steering this moverment...steering it off a cliff.

A just world frightens those who gain much from injustice.

Your deceptive discourse is clearly noted, BigBadBrian. You do not speak for a group of people, you speak for yourself only. Moreover, you are of the sorts that clearly practice decption and corruption as a daily life pattern. Personally, I do not want your sorts support.
However, indeed, I do thank you for providing clear evidence that you are indeed not only partaking of corruption but indeed relishing corruption.

Cheers to you and yours!

Blaze

10-15-2011, 03:15 PM

Also what I have noticed from watching these Occupy Wall Street people on my Dynex 32" flat panel television using Direct TV satellite feed:

http://www.campingworld.com/
http://www.starbucks.com/
http://www.pearldrum.com/
http://www.megaphoneusa.com/
http://www.birkenstockusa.com/
http://us.levi.com/home/index.jsp
http://www.apple.com/
http://www22.verizon.com/content/verizonglobalhome/ghp_landing.aspx

http://i.imgur.com/Ocnxs.jpg

Your implied argument is retarded, (remove Brain, insert Sadist) These people aren't protesting that corporations exist/make money. They are protesting that the people that damaged the economy so badly aren't being held accountable for their actions. There's no regulation. There's no prosecution. There's been practically nothing to make sure it doesn't happen again. They fucked it all up and were given huge bags of money as a reward with no real consequence to what they'd done -- and they have the audacity to push for even FEWER rules on them with the bizarre idea that less regulation means they'll do a better job.

Clearly, they care about money more than anything; more than this country, more than your life, more than my life. How many examples do we need of companies ignoring what they should be doing in order to get a better profit without really being held to account when it blows up (in some cases literally) in their faces?

And when people say, "Gee, apparently we can't trust these people to control themselves, maybe we should place some regulations around this" (as any sensible person would do when faced with catastrophe), they throw one hell of a fit and make veiled threats that somehow OUR actions are going to be what destroys the economy (even though they created the situation to begin with!)

Let's put it this way -- if you owned a business (I can't recall if you said you owned your own IT consulting firm or not) and someone working for you royally screwed up to the point that it just decimated your company's ability to make money, and you were having to lay people off, would you hold the responsible party accountable? Would you fire him/her? Would you put greater measures in place to ensure that a fuck up like that didn't happen again? And how would you feel if the people responsible threw a hissy fit insisting that you were going to destroy the company after they'd already royally fucked it?

There is a large-scale effort to discredit normal people that are rightfully pissed off in this country about what's going on, to claim they are unamerican and that they are a threat to freedom and democracy. That is disgraceful. These people aren't really much different in origin or spirit that the Tea Party people; the only differences so far are that they aren't carrying guns and making veiled threats at the president. I've heard you belittle atheistic people here before as lacking morals, but it is a true lack in moral and ethical code for the people that have the audacity to attack average people that have lost their homes. I truly wonder how people can wage a coordinated attack campaign on this movement and feel okay inside that they are doing the right thing. It is pathetic.

I hope these people don't get co-opted by the corporatist machine like the tea partiers did. I'd like to actually see something productive come out of this. Makes me wish our president was a lot more like Teddy Roosevelt. Too big to fail means too big to exist.

A lot of protections we used to enjoy as a nation have slowly and systemically been stripped away. When Exxon-Mobil merged, it brought back the two largest pieces of Standard Oil, which had been broken up in 1911. When a company or industry gets to the point that they are willing to destroy our economy to seek profits, and don't show any repentance, they are a danger to our way of life and the government has a responsibility to step in and protect the american people.

I am amplification.

SunisinuS

10-15-2011, 03:30 PM

I had a hard time following what happened, but it seems they told him to come back and talk when the agenda has time allotted for anyone/everyone to talk. Seemed like they said he was basically just another citizen and doesn't deserve special treatment?

Or did I miss something in all the chanting?

I think that the correct thing happened. Frustration does not express itself rationally. And the people at the spot and conversation in time....are sick of listening to Resume's.

I am not interested in 13 points or 3 rules or 6 sicks.....I think the very point that no demands are actually expressed is the point.

Frustration is just Frustrating for the establishment.

Sorry. The Baby Boomers will not control my agenda anymore. They got theirs. And it is proven they do not share. Bad people in the Sandbox.

Now it is a time to share new ideals and a different direction.

SunisinuS

10-15-2011, 04:09 PM

Murdoch has had 15 to 20 years to get out his message.....can someone else talk for a change? Or does that scare you?

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/10/14/vo-murdoch-heckled.kgo

FORD

10-15-2011, 04:31 PM

I had a hard time following what happened, but it seems they told him to come back and talk when the agenda has time allotted for anyone/everyone to talk. Seemed like they said he was basically just another citizen and doesn't deserve special treatment?

Or did I miss something in all the chanting?

John Lewis is indeed a civil rights hero, but he's also currently a Democratic congressman, and there have been times when he has backed the party leadership when perhaps he shouldn't have. I suspect that maybe some might have questioned "which John Lewis" was showing up to speak.

Some Obama cheerleaders from DU - one of them (Steven Leser) literally a FAUX News employee attempted to hijack OWS last week, so it's not a bad thing that the protestors are watching out for this sort of thing.

SunisinuS

10-15-2011, 05:34 PM

Just for a break: I know I am a corporate stooge but I have no connection via uh money...with this cartoon break in the movie:

SunisinuS

10-15-2011, 05:41 PM

It is funny to me....that the US is even thinking of having a Mormon for President....makes the whole thing work.

Seshmeister

10-15-2011, 05:58 PM

Who Wall Street Bought in 2008
http://i847.photobucket.com/albums/ab40/katiepavlich/CampaignContributions08pic.jpg

I think that spreadsheet is all about the corporations giving money to the one they think is going to win.

Obama raised over $700 million, that lists just a couple of percent of that. Obama was particularly good at having a very wide fund base which should be reassuring. The fact his second biggest contributor was the worst company in the world, Goldman Sachs, has to be taken in the context that they gave 1/700th of his cash so logically you would think that wouldn't be enough to buy him.

Of course in an ideal world he would have refused it...

Seshmeister

10-15-2011, 06:00 PM

It is funny to me....that the US is even thinking of having a Mormon for President....makes the whole thing work.

The flip side is that if you don't believe in the Christian mythology like the majority of people on the planet then does that not make one crazy superstition is as good as the other?

The Morman one is easier to laugh at and disprove simply because it was made up more recently.

sadaist

10-15-2011, 06:09 PM

Sorry dudes. I'm having a tough time reading some of these very long posts. White writing on black background with super long text is kinda difficult to stay focused.

Carry on.

SunisinuS

10-15-2011, 06:24 PM

I think that spreadsheet is all about the corporations giving money to the one they think is going to win.

Obama raised over $700 million, that lists just a couple of percent of that. Obama was particularly good at having a very wide fund base which should be reassuring. The fact his second biggest contributor was the worst company in the world, Goldman Sachs, has to be taken in the context that they gave 1/700th of his cash so logically you would think that wouldn't be enough to buy him.

Of course in an ideal world he would have refused it...

The big short.

SunisinuS

10-15-2011, 06:26 PM

The flip side is that if you don't believe in the Christian mythology like the majority of people on the planet then does that not make one crazy superstition is as good as the other?

The Morman one is easier to laugh at and disprove simply because it was made up more recently.

Sorry I lived in Utah.

I know exactly what it teaches.

hitler has a funny mustache.

SunisinuS

10-15-2011, 07:13 PM

Romeo Delight

10-15-2011, 07:50 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QZlp3eGMNI&feature=player_embedded

This was a true assshole move.

I couldn't watch more than 2 minutes of the audience repeating what was being said. It would take all day to actually say anything worthwhile.

It reminds me of a cult or something. Yikes.

Blaze

10-15-2011, 09:24 PM

I couldn't watch more than 2 minutes of the audience repeating what was being said. It would take all day to actually say anything worthwhile.

It reminds me of a cult or something. Yikes.
You really are not well read are you? That is OK.
Perhaps a multiple e choice quiz of "Do you know Your Occupation procedures?" Or some such like that is needs circulation.
Cheers!

sadaist

10-15-2011, 09:50 PM

I hate this... I really do...but unfortunately...people are pissed off. And Saidist you are my friend....but the selfishness you were taught to believe in....will not save you.

Selfishness will not save you.

History will show you why Rush was wrong.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/05/opinion/rushkoff-occupy-wall-street/index.html?iref=obnetwork

You lost me here. Not trying to split hairs, but what of what I have said here are you referring to? I don't think I said anything like that....and if I did, perhaps it was either misunderstood or more likely very poorly worded on my part.

Blaze

10-15-2011, 10:01 PM

You really are not well read are you? That is OK.
Perhaps a multiple e choice quiz of "Do you know Your Occupation procedures?" Or some such like that needs circulation.
Cheers!
Oops I got stuck in a cyber loop~ corrected.

Nickdfresh

10-15-2011, 10:23 PM

Peter King in the 1960's would have been among those who cheered on the murders of JFK, RFK, and MLK. He's one of the biggest pieces of shit in the current Congress, and that's some tough competition.

Well, in the 1980's he was cheering the "left wing" IRA and their killing of British soldiers in Northern Ireland...funny how he has a very interesting view of "protest movements."

Blaze

10-15-2011, 10:24 PM

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/318297_2335731586534_1047174804_2623534_1348054916 _n.jpg
Photo credit: Tony de Carlo

Dr. Love

10-15-2011, 10:44 PM

I couldn't watch more than 2 minutes of the audience repeating what was being said. It would take all day to actually say anything worthwhile.

It reminds me of a cult or something. Yikes.

It started because the crowds were denied permits to use "electronic amplification devices" for their voices. Meaning, no bullhorns, no speakers, amplifiers, etc. This is most likely to limit their ability to organize if people couldn't hear speakers.

So, to adapt and to be effective, they adopted the human amplification system -- one person speaks, everyone around repeats in unison. One voice is faint, Many voices in unison is powerful. It's very symbolic and effective.

And kinda creepy too, cause they tend to sound like mindless drones... lol.

Dr. Love

10-15-2011, 11:08 PM

just like with the tea party, now they are attacking the occupation.

Meet the Guy Who Snitched on Occupy Wall Street to the FBI and NYPD

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/7/2011/10/1015_occupyfbi5.jpg

The Occupy Wall Street protests have been going on for a month. And it seems the FBI and NYPD have had help tracking protesters' moves thanks to a conservative computer security expert who gained access to one of the group's internal mailing lists, and then handed over information on the group's plans to the authorities as well as corporations targeted by protesters.
Since the Occupy Wall Street protest began on September 17, New York security consultant Thomas Ryan has been waging a campaign to infiltrate and discredit the movement. Ryan says he's done contract work for the U.S. Army and he brags on his blog that he leads "a team called Black Cell, a team of the most-highly trained and capable physical, threat and cyber security professionals in the world." But over the past few weeks, he and his computer security buddies have been spending time covertly attending Occupy Wall Street meetings, monitoring organizers' social media accounts, and hanging out with protesters in Lower Manhattan.

Full size
As part of their intelligence-gathering operation, the group gained access to a listserv used by Occupy Wall Street organizers called September17discuss. On September17discuss, organizers hash out tactics and plan events, conduct post-mortems of media appearances, and trade the latest protest gossip. On Friday, Ryan leaked thousands of September17discuss emails to conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who is now using them to try to smear Occupy Wall Street as an anarchist conspiracy to disrupt global markets.

What may much more alarming to Occupy Wall Street organizers is that while Ryan was monitoring September17discuss, he was forwarding interesting email threads to contacts at the NYPD and FBI, including special agent Jordan T. Loyd, a member of the FBI's New York-based cyber security team.

On September 18th, the day after the protest's start, Ryan forwarded an email exchange between Occupy Wall Street organizers to Loyd. The email exchange is harmless: Organizers discuss how they need to increase union participation in the protest. "We need more outreach to workers. The best way to do that is by showing solidarity with them," writes organizer Jackie DiSalvo in the thread. She then lists a group of potential unions to work with.

Another organizer named Conor responds: "+1,000,000 to Jackie's proposal on working people/union struggles outreach and solidarity. Also, why not invite people to protest Troy Davis's execution date at Liberty Plaza this Monday?"

Five minutes after Conor sent his email, Ryan forwarded the thread—with no additional comment—to Loyd's FBI email address. "Thanks!" Loyd responded. He cc'd his colleague named Ilhwan Yum, a fellow cybersecurity expert at the agency, on the reply.

On September 26th, Ryan forwarded another email thread to Agent Loyd. But this time he clued in the NYPD as well, sending the email to Dennis Dragos, a detective with the NYPD Computer Crimes Squad.

The NYPD might have been very grateful he did so, since it involved a proposed demonstration outside NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza. In the thread, organizers debated whether to crash an upcoming press conference planned by marijuana advocates to celebrate NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly ordering officers to halt arrests over possession of small amounts of marijuana.

"Should we bring some folks from Liberty Plaza to chant "SHAME" for the NYPD's recent brutalities on Thursday night for the Troy Davis and Saturday for the Occupy Wall Street march?" asked one person in the email thread. (That past Saturday, the video of NYPD officer Anthony Bologna pepper-spraying a protester had gone viral.) Ryan promptly forwarded the email thread to Loyd at the FBI and Dragos at the NYPD.

Interestingly, it was Ryan who revealed himself as a snitch. We learned of these emails from the archive Ryan leaked yesterday in the hopes of undermining the Occupy Wall Street movement. In assembling the archive of September17discuss emails, it appears he accidentally included some of his own forwarded emails indicating he was ratting out organizers.

"I don't know, I just put everything I had into one big package," Ryan said when asked how the emails ended up in the file posted to Andrew Breitbart's blog. Some security expert.

But Ryan didn't just tip off the authorities. He was also giving information to companies as well. When protesters discussed demonstrating in front of morning shows like Today and Good Morning America, Ryan quickly forwarded the thread to Mark Farrell, the chief security officer at Comcast, the parent company of NBC Universal.

Ryan wrote:

Since you are the CSO, I am not sure of your role in NBC since COMCAST owns them.
There is a huge protest in New York call "Occupy Wall Street". Here is an email of stunts that they will try to pull on the TODAY show.

We have been heavily monitoring Occupy Wall Street, and Anonymous.

"Thanks Tom," Farrell responded. "I'll pass this to my counterpart at NBCU."

Did the FBI and/or NYPD ask him to monitor Occupy Wall Street? Was he just forwarding the emails on out of the goodness of his heart? In a phone interview with us, Ryan denied being an informant. "I do not work with the FBI," he said.

Ryan said he knows Loyd through their mutual involvement in the Open Web Application Security Project, a non-profit computer security group of which Ryan is a board member. Ryan said he sent the emails to Loyd unsolicited simply because "everyone's curious" about Occupy Wall Street, and he had a ground-eye view. "Jordan never asked me for anything."

Was he sending every email he got to the authorities? Ryan said he couldn't remember how many he'd passed on to the FBI or NYPD, or other third parties. Later he said that he only forwarded the two emails we noticed, detailed above.

But even if he'd been sending them on regularly, they were probably of limited use to the authorities. Most of the real organizing at Occupy Wall Street happens face-to-face, according to David Graeber, who was one of the earliest organizers. "We did some practical work on [the email list] at first—I think that's where I first proposed the "we are the 99%" motto—but mainly it's just an expressive forum," he wrote in an email. "No one would seriously discuss a plan to do something covert or dangerous on such a list."

But regardless of how many emails Ryan sent—or whether Loyd ever asked Ryan to spy on Occupy Wall Street—Loyd was almost certainly interested in the emails he received. Loyd has helped hunt down members of the hacktivist collective Anonymous, and he and his colleagues in the FBI's cyber security squad have been monitoring their involvement in Occupy Wall Street.

At a New York cyber security conference one day before the protest began, Loyd cited Occupy Wall Street as an example of a "newly emerging threat to U.S. information systems." (In the lead-up to Occupy Wall Street, Anonymous had issued threats against the New York Stock Exchange.) He told the assembled crowd the FBI has been "monitoring the event on cyberspace and are preparing to meet it with physical security," according to a New York Institute of Technology press release.

We contacted Loyd to ask about his relationship with Ryan and if any of the information Ryan passed along was of any use to the agency. He declined to answer questions and referred us to the FBI's press office. We'll post an update if we hear back from them.

We asked Ryan again this morning about how closely he was working with the authorities. Again, he claimed it was only these two emails, which is unlikely given he forwarded them to the FBI and NYPD without providing any context or explaining where he'd gotten them.

And he detailed his rationale for assisting the NYPD:

My respect for FDNY & NYPD stems from them risking their lives to save mine when my house was on fire in sunset park when I was 8 yrs old. Also, for them risking their lives and saving many family and friends during 9/11.

Don't you find it Ironic that out of all the NYPD involved with the protest, [protesters] have only targeted the ones with Black Ribbons, given to them for their bravery during 9/11?

I am sorry if we see things differently, I try to look at everything as a whole and in patterns. Everything we do in life and happens in life, there is a pattern behind it.

Dr. Love

10-15-2011, 11:46 PM

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6057/6248019380_569152b347_z.jpg

OWS floods times square

Dr. Love

10-15-2011, 11:52 PM

Turning into a global movement now ... people protesting in over 100 cities around the world in unison with the occupy wall streeters. Also, 20+ people were locked inside citibank earlier today and arrested for trying to close their accounts. Looking for links to that story.

Dr. Love

10-15-2011, 11:57 PM

Occupy Wall Street Run on Citibank Ends in Arrests [VIDEO]
By Adrianne Jeffries 10/15 2:59pm

(twitter.com/celakabat)
Around 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, the Occupy Wall Street Livestream captured about 20 people being arrested outside a Citibank at La Guardia Place in New York. A protester announced via human mic that people had gone inside Citibank to close their accounts. They were asked to leave and complied, he said, but the bank’s security guards locked them in until the N.Y.P.D. arrived.

“Some wanted to close their accounts with Citibank,” he read from a cell phone. “When asked to leave, they began to exit but were locked in by security. When cops arrived, Citibank security came outside and dragged two individuals back inside to hold them under arrest.”

The protesters were loaded into the back of a police van as the crowd shouted, “Let them go! Let them go!” as 10,000-some people watched the scene on Livestream. “Liberate the unlawfully arrested!” one man shouted.

Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit, who was on a list of tycoons the protesters identified for a home visit last week, recently said he’d be happy to talk to protesters if they’d like to come by the office. Their sentiments are “completely understandable,” he said at a recent breakfast hosted by Fortune.

Video was taken by a witness, Logan Price:

By now accustomed to such interruptions, the protesters continued their march after the arrests with the customary chants. “The people, united, will never be defeated,” and so on. “OBVIOUSLY THEY NEED TO GO BACK AND RESCUE THE PEOPLE IN THE TRUCK!!!” one viewer said in the Livestream chatroom.

OccupyWallSt.org says 22 arrested, as of 3:43 p.m. Other protesters marched from Zuccotti Park, the protest’s headquarters in the Financial District, to the Citibank at 555 La Guardia Place in solidarity with the arrestees, the website said.

Update, 5:04 p.m. Another video, uploaded to the #OccupyWallStreet TwitVid account, more clearly shows a woman being arrested after telling the police that she was a Citibank customer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RqGzQ4SzCAk

Dr. Love

10-16-2011, 12:02 AM

My wife and I have been checking out several different local credit unions, which are not-for-profit and invest in the local community. Send a message with your wallet.

Romeo Delight

10-16-2011, 01:06 AM

You really are not well read are you? That is OK.
Perhaps a multiple e choice quiz of "Do you know Your Occupation procedures?" Or some such like that is needs circulation.
Cheers!

Not really sure I want to understand your post or care to.

As a concept I support what is happening and what is trying to be accomplished. I personally couldn't attend one as taking 5 minutes to make a single point would be exhausting.

Blaze

10-16-2011, 01:09 AM

just like with the tea party, now they are attacking the occupation.

That article is a smear campaign in its self.

I cannot stress enough this is NOT the time for Anonymous.
Let Anonymous "Let the cops chance them around"
Others are seeing to the plain duties of The Occupation.

Moreover, you will find that most law enforcement are Jack and Jackies themselves.
Moreover, intelligence is gathered in many way not just a scare tactic for the stupid by saying "ooohh, some security professional is listening"
Security professionals are being used, not only by the corrupt, but by the the noble men and woman too.

Here is a quote from an earlier context I was engaged in:

As the plundering of USAmericans are occurring, a small fraction of criminals profit. Few are held accountable for their vile actions against USAmerica. Stand against corruption! Many investigators that investigate these corruption issues, finds themselves and their families molested by the loons and goons of the criminals that plundered our USAmerica! Stand against corruption, TODAY!

Indeed, what you have found in this Thomas Ryan is a corruption protector and sling-er. Fare no mind, he is a very bad man, nevertheless, he is what he is a corruption sling-er. There is strong reason for certain sorts of security professionals to adhere to shameful ways. A significant amount of funds are indeed in security and military support services and as such leads certain sorts to greed, thus providing the motive of the fraud triangle.

Nevertheless, to broadly stroke all LEOs, Military personnel and their support services as harmful to society is grave tactical error. An error that sorts such as Thomas Ryan would relish.

Thomas Ryan is an old name within the Anonymous community, his stating that people are curious about The Occupation is indeed true. Of course they are both the noble and ignoble for different reasons. But do not let Thomas Ryan paint The Occupation as Anonymous for it is not.

I am not Anonymous. I am a fraud examiner. I am part of the 99%.

Blaze

10-16-2011, 01:12 AM

Not really sure I want to understand your post or care to.

As a concept I support what is happening and what is trying to be accomplished. I personally couldn't attend one as taking 5 minutes to make a single point would be exhausting.
We are all very tired. My service to The Occupation is scheduled for a year. Pace yourself. If you do not have the endurance for the GA's there is/are many way/s you can engage.
Cheers!

Nitro Express

10-16-2011, 01:13 AM

My wife and I have been checking out several different local credit unions, which are not-for-profit and invest in the local community. Send a message with your wallet.

Credit Unions are owned by the depositors and are insured like a bank. Some are good and some are lousy. If you go with one go with one that is managed well and has good service.

I went with a local bank that was well ran. What's nice is the bank president attends the same Rotary International meetings I do. It's nice to talk to the bank president when you need to. I had a problem with the state regarding a business account I had and I could go to the top and get it ironed out. The bank dealt with the state directly instead of me having to be middle man. It was a nice service.

The big banks get 0% interest money from the Federal Reserve and just let that earn interest or they play speculator with it. Small banks have to earn the money they loan out and are more careful. They want that money back. Big banks get bailed out if they fail and then just get more 0% FED money. Two different worlds and the big one lives in a la la land separated from reality. It's all about creating illusion from nothing and then having your political connections bail your out when you get in trouble. It's unsustainable especially when Joe Public figures out what has been going on.

Nitro Express

10-16-2011, 01:19 AM

FORD

10-16-2011, 01:23 PM

That was a fictional movie, of course. THIS is not........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH3kiaJ1-c8

Shittibank has 17 people arrested because they wanted to close their accounts. WTF, since when is it illegal to take your own money out of the hands of fucking criminals??? :mad:

Unchainme

10-16-2011, 01:36 PM

Two sides to every story?

More than 90 people have been arrested so far during this weekend’s Occupy Wall Street “Global Day of Protest” in New York City, and two dozen of those arrested were at the La Guardia Place Citibank branch Saturday.

While reports that the bank was arresting customers trying to close their accounts went viral, authorities maintained that the protesters were detained for trespassing and other violations, including wearing masks and resisting arrest.
The demonstrators staged a sit-in at the West Village bank Saturday, stating that they wanted to close their Citibank accounts. They were handcuffed and removed by police shortly after.

On Saturday evening Citibank Public Affairs issued a statement regarding the incident: “A large amount of protesters entered our branch at 555 La Guardia Place around 2:00 PM today. They were very disruptive and refused to leave after being repeatedly asked, causing our staff to call 911. The Police asked the branch staff to close the branch until the protesters could be removed. Only one person asked to close an account and was accommodated.”

“To be clear: no one was arrested for closing an account; we didn’t lock people in our branch – the police decided to close the branch; and we didn’t ask for anyone to be arrested - that is a police decision.”

There was also a brief standoff at a nearby Chase Bank, but no arrests were made.

The rest of the New York City arrests took place in Times Square and Washington Square Park. Demonstrators were ordered to leave the park at midnight, and those who refused were taken into police custody.
http://www.longislandpress.com/2011/10/16/occupy-wall-street-citibank-arrests/

FORD

10-16-2011, 01:48 PM

Similiar dickish moves from a Bank of America branch here, though at least the cops were cool about it........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK0O30aFT7g

Dr. Love

10-17-2011, 02:08 AM

good article

MARK CUBAN: "Tax The Hell Out Of Wall Street And Give It To Main Street"
Mark Cuban, Blog Maverick | Oct. 15, 2011, 8:05 AM |

I may not know much, but I know a lot of it. So I decided to share my opinions and thoughts on what I would do if the OWS movement either elected me Grand Poobah or asked for my advice:

1. The Great Lie of Wall Street.
Every CEO tells the same great white lie. It is at the heart of every communication. It is at the heart of every financial decision. It is, at it’s very base, the reason why you all are in the 99pct and they are in the 1pct. The Lie ?

Great CEO White Lie = “We are acting in the best interests of shareholders.”

When a CEO utters this lie, everyone automatically forgives whatever they do. Add 10k jobless to the unemployment rolls ? Sorry, we did it in the BEST INTEREST OF SHAREHOLDERS. Merge or buy a company and cut back across the board ? We did it in the Best Interest of Shareholders.

The problem is that unless the company is losing money and it is the only way to keep the company alive, in this era of 9.1pct unemployment it NEVER is in the BEST INTEREST OF SHAREHOLDERS.
Shareholders , whether they own shares directly or through mutual funds or pensions do not live in a corporate vacuum. Their lives are impacted by far more than the share price of a stock. Every layoff in the name of more earnings per share puts a stress on the economy, on the federal, state and local governments which is in turn paid for through taxes or assumption of government debt by….wait for it.. the same shareholders CEOs say they want to benefit.

If OWS really wants to change corporate structure and impact the economy, talk to shareholders. Talk to your parents, uncles/aunts, cousins, friends who own shares of stocks either directly or indirectly and have them state loudly and clearly that they would rather have a higher Price to Earnings Ratio and even a lower stock price than have their TAXES increase in order to support all the people laid off from their jobs in the name of shareholders !

You might even consider buying a share of stock. Just 1. Maybe you can all pitch in and then go to a shareholders meeting and let them know how you feel about the best interests of shareholders.

2. Push to Make All Financial Institutions Partnerships

We should make all investment banks become reporting partnerships (meaning they still have the same reporting requirements they have today ). I would have no problem with our government loaning money to the partners of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and other Too Big To Fail Institutions so that they can buy back all public shares of their stock. Of course all those partners would become personally liable for repaying that money back to the government. It would probably be about 120B dollars in total to take these 2 companies private. That is far, far less than a possible bailout would cost.

Those personal guarantees would change EVERYTHING in the banking industry. It would change the decision making process across the board. There would be a moral hazard to every decision. Today , a wrong decision and they vacation on their yacht. As a partner, the wrong decision and they are protesting right next to the OWS crowd as a 99pct er. It would be the definition of having “skin in the game”

3. Limit the Size of Student Loans to $2,000 per year

Crazy ? Maybe, maybe not. What happened to the price of homes when the mortgage loan bubble popped ? They plummeted. If the size of student loans are capped at a low level, you know what will happen to the price of going to a college or university ? It will plummet. Colleges and universities will have to completely rethink what they are, what purpose they serve and who their customers will be. Will some go out of business ? Absolutely. That is real world. Will the quality of education suffer ? Given that TAs will still work for cheap, I doubt it.

Now some might argue that limiting student loans will limit the ability of lower income students to go to better schools. I say nonsense on two fronts. The only thing that allowing students to graduate with 50k , 80k or even more debt does is assure they will stay low income for a long, long time after they graduate ! The 2nd improvement will be that smart students will find the schools that adapt to the new rules and offer the best education they can afford. Just as they do now, but without loading up on debt.

The beauty of capitalism is that people like me will figure out new and better ways to create and operate for profit universities that educate as well or better as today’s state institutions, AND I have no doubt that the state colleges and universities will figure out how to adapt to the new world of limited student loans as well.

Finally, the impact on the overall economy will be ENORMOUS. There is more student loan debt than credit card debt outstanding today. By relieving this burden at graduation, students will be able to participate in the economy

4. Tax the Hell Out of Wall Street; Give it to Main Street

In a world of High Frequency Trading and black box trading that does nothing but create a platform for “financial hackers” to turn the market into their own proprietary financial playground, we need to figure out a way to revert the Stock and Bond Markets, and the derivative instruments created from these equities, back to their original purpose, a place to raise capital for growing business. Instead, today its a platform for financial engineers and hackers looking to exploit every and any opportunity. When 60pct or more of trades are from High Frequency/Algorithmic traders and the correlation for every market index rushes past .7, the market is no longer a market, its a platform.

The simplest way to change this is to place a very simple per share tax on every transaction. 10 cents a trade. Every share. Every option. Every Bond. Every currency transaction. Every trade.
The obvious response is that trading volume will plummet. So what ? Let it. The next response is that traders will merely move their trades to foreign exchanges. Yes they will. Will transaction costs go up ? Duh.. that is the point. The market thrived when spreads and transaction costs were much higher just a few short years ago. It will survive now.

You see, in the real business world there is always a trade off between risk, reward and the law of unintended consequences. If we have learned anything from the past 12 years it should be that black swan events happen more frequently than we like and that the law of unintended consequences has a far greater negative impact than business as usual has a positive impact.

I would happily send transactions overseas and let them absorb all the risk that comes from a continuous effort of financial engineers and hacks trying to game the system. By letting them move overseas, we would still have risk because of the interconnection of economies, but our direct risk would be much less. And given that the UK already has a semblance of a tax on transactions, it wouldnt’ take long before they would need to expand that tax in order to hedge the systemic risk associated with financial engineers and hacks.

More importantly, it might just put the market back to the basics of what the stock and bond markets are supposed to be, a means of raising capital to support corporate growth. There used to be a time when Investment Bank Partnerships made their money scouting out small companies in need of capital and matching them with investors. They weren’t as big as they are now, but they managed to create quite a few growth industries. Something we could use some of today. Making the stock market a launching pad for companies will have far greater value and impact employment far greater than making sure High Frequency Traders can get their trades in.

What does everyone out there think about these ideas ?

and just for shits and grins, here are some old posts on related matters

Fixing Executive Compensation

Apr 1st 2009 10:57AM

I have a simple question. Why are profitable companies laying off people ? I can see if a company’s survival is at stake. If payroll can’t be met. If debt can’t be paid. Then layoffs are a necessary evil. Even if companies have created cash flow deficits through their own mistakes, that’s the nature of business. Mistakes are made. What I have a problem with is that discussion of executive pay never includes whether or not the executive has been good enough to pre empt or prevent layoffs.

Executives are not stupid. Usually. They recognize that killing off employees can juice a stock price. Even in this market. Which in turn can juice the value of their options and compensation. At the companies I run, we have cut raises, put a freeze on hiring, done what we need to do, but we have done all we can to avoid layoffs. Why ? Because its the right thing to do. Its the patriotic thing to do. I’m selfish enough and arrogant enough to think that maybe if I pay attention to the big picture that I can impact the big picture.

As a shareholder, where possible, I would prefer that the companies I own shares in do the same thing.

I own stock in some firms whose backs are up against the wall because of debt. Unfortunately, they don’t have a choice but to cut jobs in order to save jobs. I understand this reality. It’s unfortunate, but a fact of life. I also own stock in firms that are profitable. Put a freeze on hiring. Put a freeze on all raises to employees of all levels, including yours. You don’t have to try to squeeze every nickel to the bottom line. I realize these are extrodinary times. I’m happy to accept a P/E ratio that is 20pct or 50pct higher (lower earnings vs the current price) . I want you to manage for the long term benefit of the company rather than manage to the stock price.

I don’t have data, but I’m willing to bet that private companies are far less likely to lay off people than public companies.

As the discussion on executive pay continues, my message is simple. Give credit to those executives who bust their asses to avoid layoffs except in cases where its an absolute necessity. Pay ‘em a premium vs those who cut jobs in profitable companies. Look to private companies as guides to what a well managed company can accomplish, and how executives are compensated.

Capitalism isn’t about having the biggest bottom line for the current quarter. Capitalism is about individuals busting their asses to maximize value for shareholders. Sometimes you have to look at the bigger picture in order to reap the biggest returns. Not all rewards are short term.

My 2 Cents on CEO Pay

Apr 15th 2008 2:09AM

There is a game played by CEOs with the corporate issuance of lottery tickets. Otherwise known as stock. Stock can be issued in any number of ways, shapes or forms. Warrants, options, restricted or unrestricted stock. No matter what you call it, every CEO hired, is asking for equity knowing that their only goal is to hit the jackpot and create a pool of wealth that puts them in the “fuck you” wealth category. Thats enough money to buy or rent just about anything you can think of and put you in position to never have to work again. You just live off the cash in the bank.

Put another way, every hired CEO is looking to be in a position to look in the mirror , smile and tell themselves they have made it. They are living the American dream. The only way to do that is to grab as much equity equivalents as you can and do everything you can to get that stock price up as high as you can while periodically liquidating the stock and stuffing the cash in your bank account.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so. Any CEO who doesnt take advantage of this golden ticket opportunity is an idiot. In fact, although I don’t have actual numbers, I would hazard a guess that more than 95pct of CEOs hired to run companies with a billion dollar plus public market caps probably do get themselves to the position of having more than 10mm dollars in equity very quickly. While those who manage to hold on to their jobs a while and not screw up too bad, can relatively quickly get past the 25mm dollar in equity mark and reach the 50mm dollar mark with in 10 years. Its actually pretty tough to screw up and not get there if you have any brains at all.

Why ?

Because you have the entire Mutual Fund, Hedge Fun and Brokerage industry doing everything they can to get you there. Think about it.

You can’t turn on CNBC or Fox Business without them cheerleading the market to go up. Every man, woman, child, fund, index or interested party who buys the stock is doing everything they can to get the stock of the company to go higher. They don’t really care how you run the company and they care less about the results of the company than they do about the performance of the stock. Heck, even if they did care, shareholders dont really own anything and have zero say in the company. If you really dig into it, its the ultimate in social networking. Everyone who owns the stock belongs to the fan page or group for the stock and they are telling everyone they can how wonderful the company is and why the stock will go up, all while praying it does so.

Its the American way and it works ! Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year by brokerages telling every American that the stock market over time will go up 7pct per year. All you have to do is diversify and hold onto your stock long enough. For better or worse, everyone believes it.

With all of that social networking power, call it stocksourcing behind stocks, how can CEOs not get rich ?

The problem with all of this is that there is a huge disconnect between the CEO and shareholders doing well and those who work for the company doing well

Yes, its true, particularly in markets like we are experiencing now, stocks can hit 52 week, or even multi-year lows.(although more often than not, in spite of low stock prices, market caps have increased).
Yes, its true that CEOs see the value of their holdings shrink. However, unlike lottery tickets whose value goes to zero when you dont hit the number, the CEO equity positions retain their upside and history has shown us that if they go far enough underwater, they will get repriced and /or reissued. All in the name of keeping the CEO happy. So while CEOs may get “less rich” for awhile, the game is stacked so that a downturn gets them happy real fast when the upturn comes.

The disconnect is that there is a big difference between not making Wall Street happy and not making money.

The pressure from Wall Street is to grow earnings forever. Not matter what it takes. This isnt a problem when a company is doing well. EVeryone is happy. But when the economy hits a bump like it has now, when the market is hitting a bump and stock prices are declining, like it is now, the pressure comes. Everyone owning the stock reacts and whats to know what the CEO will do to get the price back up. This, as they say “is where the CEO earns their pay” Unfortunately, what this really means is that everyone who works for that company is at risk. At risk of losing their jobs, benefits, raises, you name it. Its at risk.

All of which is a long winded way of saying that employees live in the corporate cash zone, CEOs and the top few in management live in the equity/lottery ticket zone.

Those in the cash zone always take the first hit. People,places and things that consume cash are the first things to go because cash expenses immediately reduce earnings. If you or anyone like you consumes cash, unless someone upstairs thinks you generate a straight to the bottom line return on the cash expenditure, you are about to become a corporate ghost. Your person, place and thing will be memorialized as a cut to increase earnings mentioned in a press release that wall street will cheer and use to push up the stock price.

What makes me sad about all of this is that I really think that in this country if there truly was a connection between shareholders and management, that if given a choice by profitable companies, most of us would choose to hold on to our shares and accept an expanded PE for some period of time in exchange for people keeping their jobs.

I would love to receive an email from a company I own saying something to the effect of:

Dear Shareholder,

We are facing a very difficult decision that we would like your feedback on . Our earnings per share last quarter were 20 cents, and for the entire last year, 80 cents. Because of a downturn in business caused by XYZ factors, we face the choice of making 10 pct less, or cutting headcount and related expenses in order to maintain our earnings and possibly even grow our earnings a couple cents this year.

As a shareholder, we would like to ask you whether you would consider allowing us to retain these valued employees. We recognize that it would require you accepting a PE multiple 10 pct higher than the current market. We hope you would be willing to make this concession. We think that the jobs this will save will return far greater value to shareholders over the long run.

We look forward to your vote.

Personally, Im willing to give a higher multiple in exchange for saving people’s jobs. At least once.

Unfortunately, this of course is a fantasy that can’t happen in this country.

Which brings us back to CEO Pay.

As long as CEOs live in the equity/lottery ticket zone and employees in the cash zone, CEO pay is going to be outrageous relative to everyone else.

The only possible way to change this is to put CEOs in the cash zone. Make companies generate 100pct of their compensation in cash that is 100pct expensable in the quarter paid. Thats not to say they cant own stock. Hell yes they can own stock. But make them buy it either on the open market, or as part of the programs that make stock available to every company employee, on the same terms. They are getting paid enough in cash and if they believe in their ability to run the company, they can put their money where their mouth is. Eliminate all the free lottery tickets. Make them buy stock, options, warrants, whatever, on the same terms as everyone else can.

Shareholders tend to ignore how much stock is given to management, they don’t ignore cash. Companies will always be a lot more stringent with their cash, whether its paid to the CEO or anyone else. CEO cash compensation will go way up, but total compensation will come way down. More importantly , CEOs getting paid huge sums in
cash will stand out like a sore thumb when things arent going so well. They will be treated like everyone else in the cash zone and held far more accountable for their work.

Of course this is all just my opinion, but to me its a good thing for all involved. The rich can still get richer, but everyone shares in the risk.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-tax-the-hell-out-of-wall-street-and-give-it-to-main-street-and-other-advice-for-the-protesters-2011-10#ixzz1b155BeLB

Dr. Love

10-17-2011, 02:50 AM

awesome. the cops are told to 'move along'.

Police told to move along as anti-bank protesters camp out at St Paul's
Occupy London protesters set for long haul outside cathedral as global action against financial institutions gains momentum

reddit this
Caroline Davies
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 16 October 2011 14.50 EDT
Article history

Occupy London camp in front of St Paul’s Cathedral in the city of London. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP
In their stand against mammon, protesters occupying St Paul's churchyard to vent anger at reckless bankers found heartwarming support emanating from the house of God.

Far from requesting that the 300-strong crowd be removed from the cathedral steps on Sunday , the Rev Dr Giles Fraser, canon chancellor of St Paul's, requested that the police themselves move on as the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest entered its second day.

A line of officers had taken up position at the top of the steps to "protect" the building. "Which was very good of them," explained the canon. But then he had asked them if they would leave, "because I didn't feel that it needed that sort of protection".

And so those attending Sunday mass found themselves picking a path through the makeshift camp of around 100 tents erected at the foot of the cathedral's steps after Saturday's global day of action inspired by the US's Occupy Wall Street movement.

With the sermon of the day appropriately including a gospel reading about "God and money", the regular congregation was joined by some of the protesters. The canon had warned them the cathedral bells were "really loud", so it was an early start to their first full day of occupation.

An attempt on Saturday to set up camp outside the London Stock Exchange in nearby privately-owned Paternoster Square had been thwarted by police. But all the indications on Sunday were that a hard core of dedicated protesters were digging in for the long haul at St Paul's.

A field kitchen was being erected, offering basics donated by wellwishers. A first aid point was set up in front of a poster renaming the area as Tahrir Square. A media area, powered by a generator, was aiming to stream activities from the camp live on to the internet. A line of seven portable toilets had also been installed. "Pick up your litter" was one of the continual announcements over the camp's megaphone.

A spokesman said the purpose of the occupation was "to challenge the bankers and the financial institutions which recklessly gambled with the economy. This and 20 other occupations all around the UK have been directly inspired by what's happening all across America and especially in Wall Street."

Roy Alexander, 39, from Surrey, said: "We're planning to stay here indefinitely, we'll stay here and make a stand. I think we'll have more people join."

The protest indeed appeared to have struck a chord with many who were new to demonstrating. "I'm 40. Never been on a protest before. But I found myself here," said one man, who asked not to be named, from Sheffield. "I'm pretty middle of the road politically, so I wasn't sure about all the Socialist Workers placards at first. But this issue has attracted people from all walks of life. I'm a diehard atheist – there's a woman over there with a 'Jesus is Calling' placard. It's all of us."

Another on his first protest was Ollie Taylor, 23, from Aldershot. "I feel really, really strongly about this issue. I really think it is going to snowball." He, like many others, was having to leave the protest to return to his job, working in a photographic studio. But many pledged to return.

Police appeared relaxed, keeping a visible but low-key presence, and chatting and mingling with protesters. It was a different situation on Saturday, when an estimated 3,000-4,000 protesters converged on the cathedral. Supporters claimed a disproportionate amount of force was used and people were "kettled, grabbed and thrown off the steps forcefully".

The Metropolitan police said some "containment" had been in place to prevent a breach of the peace. Eight people were arrested, of whom six were charged with offences including affray and cannabis possession.

How long the camp will be allowed to stay remains to be seen. Asked about the impact it would have on businesses in the area, one shop supervisor said: "I can't imagine the shops in Paternoster Square are too happy about it – they haven't been able to open since yesterday."

As for the cathedral's blessing, the canon stressed that while he had not given specific backing to the occupation of St Paul's churchyard, he supported the democratic right to protest peacefully. "It's cold, isn't it going to be cold tonight?" he said. "We'll see how it goes. We're taking one day at a time and it's really good it's all worked out well for us today."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/16/occupy-london-protest-st-pauls?newsfeed=true