Occupy ROTH Army

[PETE'S BROTHER]

What a ridiculous graph!

How the fuck are you meant to match up 30 shades of color?

color blind.jpg

[Blaze]

Camping out gets attention but it's not going to change anything until you get a lot of the working class people behind the movement and some decent people to replace the crooks in office. Some of the most screwed people in the country are the police themselves. They don't get paid very well. Many hate their job. I'm sure many are upside down in their mortgage. You know you are successful when many in the police organizations start to support your cause. Also, where are the protest songs to unify people around? Can't anyone write a decent protest song anymore or did that die in the 60's and 70's? It's a start. It hasn't been taken over yet like the tea party did but many of us are wondering where all this is going. What's the plan and who is going to lead it?

OWS is going nowhere until you get the people who are too busy to camp out in the park for weeks on end behind it. The overworked and underpaid trying to support a family in a world where the government takes more of their money, prices are going up, and college tuition has increased 60% in ten years. They don't have the luxury of not working. They might be working three jobs to support kids at home and they are burnt and angry. Until your get those people behind you, it's an empty cause. People complain that there are no jobs. Maybe good paying high end jobs. But there are always jobs and work to do and many people take them because they are too proud to get on welfare. The jobs may be way below their education level but they you got to do what you got to do and amazing enough, sometimes you make a connection that leads to a better job by working a job. You might meet the right contact tending bar or maybe someone you wait the tables of can use you. It takes a job to find a job. You have to get the workers behind the movement or you have nothing. These are the people the politicians fear. They can't be bought off or made dependent on a government program. They are too proud for that, they think for themselves, and they are motivated. These are the people who win revolutions.

People with careers and passing jobs are supporting the Occupation. People are taking their vacations to go to join up and or tour Occupations. The Occupation is indeed amassing, there is little need for hoopla while amassing occurs.



Protesters form a wall of signs at the Occupy Portland camp in downtown Portland, Oregon. (AP)

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Republican Governor's Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to rejuvenate, strategize and team-build. But during a plenary session on Wednesday, one question kept coming up: How can Republicans do a better job of talking about Occupy Wall Street?

"I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death," said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation's foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. "They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism."

Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about "income inequality" and "paying your fair share."

Yahoo News sat in on the session, and counted 10 do's and don'ts from Luntz covering how Republicans should fight back by changing the way they discuss the movement.

1. Don't say 'capitalism.'
"I'm trying to get that word removed and we're replacing it with either 'economic freedom' or 'free market,' " Luntz said. "The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we're seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we've got a problem."

2. Don't say that the government 'taxes the rich.' Instead, tell them that the government 'takes from the rich.'
"If you talk about raising taxes on the rich," the public responds favorably, Luntz cautioned. But "if you talk about government taking the money from hardworking Americans, the public says no. Taxing, the public will say yes."

3. Republicans should forget about winning the battle over the 'middle class.' Call them 'hardworking taxpayers.'
"They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers. We can say we defend the 'middle class' and the public will say, I'm not sure about that. But defending 'hardworking taxpayers' and Republicans have the advantage."

4. Don't talk about 'jobs.' Talk about 'careers.'
"Everyone in this room talks about 'jobs,'" Luntz said. "Watch this."
He then asked everyone to raise their hand if they want a "job." Few hands went up. Then he asked who wants a "career." Almost every hand was raised.
"So why are we talking about jobs?"

5. Don't say 'government spending.' Call it 'waste.'
"It's not about 'government spending.' It's about 'waste.' That's what makes people angry."

6. Don't ever say you're willing to 'compromise.'
"If you talk about 'compromise,' they'll say you're selling out. Your side doesn't want you to 'compromise.' What you use in that to replace it with is 'cooperation.' It means the same thing. But cooperation means you stick to your principles but still get the job done. Compromise says that you're selling out those principles."

7. The three most important words you can say to an Occupier: 'I get it.'
"First off, here are three words for you all: 'I get it.' . . . 'I get that you're. I get that you've seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system."
Then, he instructed, offer Republican solutions to the problem.

8. Out: 'Entrepreneur.' In: 'Job creator.'
Use the phrases "small business owners" and "job creators" instead of "entrepreneurs" and "innovators."

9. Don't ever ask anyone you want them to 'sacrifice.'
"There isn't an America today in November of 2011 who doesn't think they've already sacrificed. If you tell them you want them to 'sacrifice,' they're going to be be pretty angry at you. You talk about how 'we're all in this together.' We either succeed together or we fail together."

10. Always blame Washington.
Tell them, "You shouldn't be occupying Wall Street, you should be occupying Washington. You should occupy the White House because it's the policies over the past few years that have created this problem."

BONUS:
Don't say 'bonus!'

Luntz advised that if they give their employees an income boost during the holiday season, they should never refer to it as a "bonus."

"If you give out a bonus at a time of financial hardship, you're going to make people angry. It's 'pay for performance.'"

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/republicans-being-taught-talk-occupy-wall-street-133707949.html

Top comments:

I think all Dem and Rep voters would agree that there is no reason that Fannie/Freddie should be handing out bonuses to execs.

Congress has taken a Fiduciary oath to protect the Constitution and its citizenry.
Large Corporations have no allegiance to the U.S. , they are global conglomerates mostly and publically traded companies who have taken a fiduciary oath to protect and profit shareholders.

i am not anti capitalism. i am anti corruption. it is not about being anti republican or democrat. it is painfully obvious wall street cannot be trusted to do honest business without regulation. too bad it's this way.

Don't say "You're being screwed" that sounds bad. Say, "you're pleasuring the screwer". It's a happy thing.

Here's the official Republican response to OWS "Take a bath, get a job" - Newt Gingrich 11/27/11

[Blaze]

What OWS is about + data behind the movement!-Link
Numerous visuals and hard data graphs. Grab you one, grab you 5, and share a plenty!

[Blaze]

With support among police quietly growing, can Occupy cross over the thin blue line?
Silent partners
By CHRIS FARAONE | November 30, 2011

As Occupy camps from coast to coast face evictions — and in many cases have already been pushed out of parks and plazas like so much human trash — it's clear that the institutional response to the movement is escalating dangerously. Likewise, relations between police and activists seem to be deteriorating, as non-violent protesters continue to be arrested almost daily.
But as tensions build between Occupiers and Big Brother, what's also true is that individual officers are increasingly concerned about their role in combating Occupy. Even in cities where the overall police response has been barbaric, there's a growing sense that cops who've been charged with breaking camps are unnerved by such orders.
Earlier this week, Los Angeles authorities avoided a riot by working with protesters, and even thanking them publicly for demonstrating their right to free speech. On a smaller scale, last month in Oregon an officer was seen sobbing in his combat gear while raiding a Portland encampment. In October, Albany police — along with state troopers — refused to arrest protesters despite pressure from the city's mayor and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
At least one Occupier believes that such sentiments are not anomalous. Calling himself Danny — he wouldn't reveal his true identity — he created a movement-within-a-movement, Occupy Police (OcPo), designed to be an outlet for officers of all ranks, everywhere, to speak openly about Occupy.
"We think solidarity with police is needed," says Danny in the only interview he's granted to date. As he launches Operation SHIELD — an OcPo initiative calling for civilians, ex-police, and ex-military to physically step in between protesters and cops in the event of future confrontations — Danny's goal is to bridge this most glaring divide among so-called 99 percenters. He continues: "There are a lot of active cops right now who can't speak, can't get involved, and have no place in this protest . . . but they sympathize with the direction of the movement and its political standpoints — that the system is screwed up, and that this is about bad government. They also believe that it's not good for this to turn into a street war between police and protesters."

UNHAPPY OFF THE RECORD
Danny started OcPo in mid-October, after a series of intense talks with buddies on the Boston force about the eviction of Occupiers from the Rose Kennedy Greenway on Columbus Day. "My friends who are cops did not like what happened," he says. "They have to do their job — and they can't act out about it openly — but they're unhappy off the record with what's going on, and they're not happy with having to arrest non-violent protesters."
By early November, Ocpo had thousands of connections on Facebook and Twitter, and what Danny described as an outpouring of moral support and gratitude from police. While any cop who supports OcPo understandably can't say so in public (or to the Phoenix), the platform has allowed at least one officer to express himself. Fred Shavies of Oakland PD was accused by activists of attempting to covertly infiltrate the Occupy in his city. "I totally agree with Occupy Wall Street," Shavies says in a video on the OcPo Web site. "I identify with the 99 percent, but I also have a job to do."

Read full article -> http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/13...owing-can-occ/



RAY LEWIS, a retired Philadelphia polilce captain, joined forces with Occupy protesters, saying corporate America was using police “as hired thugs.”

[Blaze]

5,000 Military Families Illegally Foreclosed On
-- How We Can Prosecute Bank Crimes
Why is no one going after banks for foreclosing on active duty troops?


Photo Credit: The Nation

Shahien Nasiripour has a great scoop in the FT – bank regulators have uncovered up to 5000 military families who were foreclosed on illegally by mortgage servicers. Foreclosures on active duty troops is usually a big no-no, for a lot of reasons – for instance, when your credit rating is damaged by a foreclosure, it can impact your national security clearance. In addition, there’s enormous stress that the soldier goes through when his or her family is facing a threat of eviction, and it’s the kind of stress that makes him or her less equipped to be ready in a warzone. Congressman Bob Filner has even accused banks of “homicide” against American troops, blaming the banks for suicides resulting from the increased stress brought on by aggressive debt collection techniques.

There have been laws to protect troops from unscrupulous lending practices going all the way back to the First World War. The most recent revision to these laws is the Servicemember Civil Relief Act, which was signed in 2003. Congressman Brad Miller, who helped author the most recent version of this law, explained the rationale for the law as follows:

“The Service Members Civil Relief Act is very clear: if you’re in harm’s way in our nation’s military, you can devote your whole energy to our nation’s service without worrying what’s happening in a courthouse back home. And if you have a claim against someone in our military, you can wait until they get home and can defend themselves.”

Miller is a Democrat from North Carolina, but the bill was signed by George W. Bush, so there’s a bipartisan consensus on not foreclosing on troops fighting in wars.

Yet, as the FT story shows, it has become clear that big banks are routinely ignoring the law. Miller noted,

“The SCRA is not some obscure legal technicality that might just have escaped the attention of mortgage servicers. Those servicers are all affiliates of the biggest banks, but they’re huge and specialized. Servicing mortgages is all they do, and they really don’t have that many laws to keep up with. They have got to have known what the law required, and consciously decided that they could just ignore it, the same way they apparently decided it was okay to file false affidavits in legal proceedings.”

In all likelihood, these banks simply never set up their management processes to handle anything but an aggressive foreclosure steam-roller. And so, they are breaking the law.

Banks admit this. JP Morgan apologized back in February in a Congressional hearing for overcharging 4000 military families and illegally foreclosing on 18 of them. In that hearing, one foreclosure defense attorney pointed out that jail time for officials of the bank doing the foreclosing would be a deterrent to these practices, an apology would not be.

Much has been made of President Obama’s argument that the banks did nothing illegally, and various other scholars and officials have argued that prosecuting the banks is far too expensive and difficult. Yet, the SCRA is a simple law with teeth; it carries real jail time, and the parties have already confessed to the crime. Here’s Section 303(d)(1) of that law, which spells out penalties.

(1) MISDEMEANOR.—A person who knowingly makes or causes to be made a sale, foreclosure, or seizure of property that is prohibited by subsection (c), or who knowingly attempts to do so, shall be fined as provided in title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.

Interestingly, the Department of Justice seems to agree with this interpretation. Here’s a press release from the Department of Justice on a settlement of some of these claims, from Bank of America. I’ve bolded the important part.

Read the data -> http://www.alternet.org/economy/1532...te_bank_crimes

[Nitro Express]

Some things in OWS look promising but always remember take overs are always sold as solutions. It very well could be the shot heard around the world in an anti-fascist revolution. Hopefully a revolution without requiring an actual war. We will see where it goes. A lot of people are going to come out of the wood work offering solutions but the main thing we need to ask is who benefits and does it give our power as citizens away. Really be wary of free handouts. We don't want that. We want the freedom to work for ourselves and chase our own dreams. Not to be a surf in someone else's agenda.

I really don't like the term occupy. Wall Street is where some of the corruption happened but it's not the source of the problem. The Federal Reserve Bank and the politicians and government agencies that enable corporate fascism are the problem. Until people actually understand the problem in large numbers there will be no real solution. They will just sell us the next Obamacare styled program and take more from us and take more for themselves.

[BigBadBrian]

Interesting sources for Brian's graphs.....

Simply meant to prove anyone can post utter bullshit on the net! Like your "sources" FORD?

[BigBadBrian]

What a ridiculous graph!

How the fuck are you meant to match up 30 shades of color?

I knew you couldn't count past 10.

[Blaze]

An Open Message to Police & Military

This is a message to the Police, to the military, to the TSA, to Homeland Security and to members of every other enforcement arm of the government.

I know that most of you chose the life in uniform because you love your country; because you believed in what that uniform stood for; because you wanted to serve and protect... but I also know that deep down inside you sense that something has gone terribly wrong.

You've watched with the rest of us as elected officials have incrementally legislated our constitutional rights away, you've watched as the state surveillance apparatus has expanded like a cancer through the heart of the nation, and you've watched as the corruption has become more and more blatant. I can understand why you haven't wanted to acknowledge the implications of what you are witnessing. To face the reality of what is happening would mean admitting that you've been betrayed, and it would mean coming to terms with the fact that you... are working... for criminals.

I don't envy your position. I know your job depends on you following orders. I know you have families to support and bills to pay, and I know that if you stand up you could loose everything... but what you need to understand is that continuing to submit to unconstitutional, and immoral orders will not protect you from what is coming.

You may tell yourself that you will take a draw your line in the sand later, that there is a certain point where you will say no, but in reality, you crossed the line a long time ago. You are standing on the wrong side of history right now. You are already participating in the destruction of this country, in the trampling of our rights, of your children's rights, and grandchildren's rights. You are the enforcement arm of a criminal enterprise, you are a servant of a rapidly expanding police state, and you DO have a choice.

I'm not telling you this to condemn you. I'm telling you this because we the people desperately need you to take a stand. We desperately need you to have the courage to face your commanding officers, and tell them no, I didn't sign up for this. No this isn't right. No, I will not obey these unlawful orders.

You took an oath to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Time to start taking that oath seriously

On my honor,
I will never betray my badge,
my integrity, my character,
or the public trust.
I will always have
the courage to hold myself
and others accountable for our actions.
I will always uphold the constitution
my community and the agency I serve.

http://waitingforthestorm.com

[Starwood]

Damn, Blaze...you got Starwood believin"...

[Blaze]

damn, blaze...you got starwood believin"...

<3 4 u

[BigBadBrian]

You took an oath to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Time to start taking that oath seriously

Yeah, sweep up those protesters like the rabble they are. Hell, even the DNC agrees:

In John Heilemann's cover story "2012=1968?," he wonders whether Occupy Wall Street protesters will do to Charlotte's Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2012 what demonstrators did to the Chicago DNC in 1968. The North Carolina city, sometimes called the "Wall Street of the South," is not taking any chances, and is already working to pass an ordinance that would make occupying downtown spaces with tents a "public nuisance," in addition to banning "noxious substances," padlocks, and other camping equipment. The fact that it would knock out the city's current overnight demonstrators is an added bonus.

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx said dubiously last month that the rule, which could be enacted in January, is not aimed at a specific group. "Unlike many cities that have well-developed regulations governing protest activity, our local regulations contain gaps that need to be filled," he said. But a memo about the ordinance does note, "The recent issues related to camping on city property have further amplified the need to review whether the city wants to regulate this activity during the DNC." A city councilman added of the current Occupy Charlotte faction, "Once those ordinances go into effect, those overnight stays will end."

A local National Lawyers Guild director says that the rule's constitutionality might be challenged and could even spur "increased confrontation between protesters and police." For their part, the protesters say they don't even have a plan for the DNC yet, but acknowledge the opportunity it presents. "Everybody I talked to said the DNC is ground zero for everything," said one organizer. "Everybody wants to be involved. We're estimating several thousands of people coming especially from the Occupy community." The idea of an alternative convention has been floated, while another Occupy organizer called the DNC "a powder keg." Tents or no tents, Charlotte "has got a big target on it," he said.

LINK

[ashstralia]

Blaze; no. the oz coppers will take no crap.

as evidenced by our successful investigations.

[Nickdfresh]

...

In John Heilemann's cover story "2012=1968?," he wonders whether Occupy Wall Street protesters will do to Charlotte's Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2012 what demonstrators did to the Chicago DNC in 1968...

You mean become victims of an unlawful, brutal "police riot" of loose-cannon fascists (the words of an investigative commission, not mine)?

[Dr. Love]

Yeah, sweep up those protesters like the rabble they are. Hell, even the DNC agrees:

In John Heilemann's cover story "2012=1968?," he wonders whether Occupy Wall Street protesters will do to Charlotte's Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2012 what demonstrators did to the Chicago DNC in 1968. The North Carolina city, sometimes called the "Wall Street of the South," is not taking any chances, and is already working to pass an ordinance that would make occupying downtown spaces with tents a "public nuisance," in addition to banning "noxious substances," padlocks, and other camping equipment. The fact that it would knock out the city's current overnight demonstrators is an added bonus.

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx said dubiously last month that the rule, which could be enacted in January, is not aimed at a specific group. "Unlike many cities that have well-developed regulations governing protest activity, our local regulations contain gaps that need to be filled," he said. But a memo about the ordinance does note, "The recent issues related to camping on city property have further amplified the need to review whether the city wants to regulate this activity during the DNC." A city councilman added of the current Occupy Charlotte faction, "Once those ordinances go into effect, those overnight stays will end."

A local National Lawyers Guild director says that the rule's constitutionality might be challenged and could even spur "increased confrontation between protesters and police." For their part, the protesters say they don't even have a plan for the DNC yet, but acknowledge the opportunity it presents. "Everybody I talked to said the DNC is ground zero for everything," said one organizer. "Everybody wants to be involved. We're estimating several thousands of people coming especially from the Occupy community." The idea of an alternative convention has been floated, while another Occupy organizer called the DNC "a powder keg." Tents or no tents, Charlotte "has got a big target on it," he said.

LINK

Who gives a shit what the Democrats or the Republicans think ... OWS is good for America and most people that oppose it either have a vested interest in seeing it fail or are incredibly underinformed about the problems we're having in the nation.

I completely expect the establishment of both sides to be against OWS -- they stand to lose if it gains traction.