Occupy Wall Street Protests

Or maybe he was truly upset. Two tours in Iraq and comes back to police abusing unarmed citizens. The same people he fought for.
I don't know for sure do you?

What I do know is that ten years ago the NYPD were heroically taking care of the city in a time of crisis along witht he NYFD.

Seems times have changed and Sgt. Thomas took exception to it.

 

Why is it that most Americans allways portray Europe as Socialist LOL here in the UK the majority party is Conservative and the goverment is a Con/Lib coalition
The rest of europe is as follows
France/Germany/Portugal/Italy/Sweden/Hungary/Poland/Estonia/Ireland/Belgium are Center right
Netherlands/Finland/Romania are centralist
Spain/Greece/Denmark are Center left

I have left out a number of the smaller countries but feel free to check as to what the largest political groupings within them are I think you will find for the most part they are Center right

 

The ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER ​

This one is a little different.
Two Different Versions.
Two Different Morals.



OLD VERSION :


The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house, and
laying up supplies for the winter.


The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.


Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter,
so he dies out in the cold.


MORAL OF THE OLD STORY:


Be responsible for yourself!





MODERN VERSION :
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house,
and laying up supplies for the winter.


The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.


Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.


CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC
show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with
a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast.


How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is
allowed to suffer so?


Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah
with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green .'


ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, We Shall Overcome.


Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright
has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake.


President Obama condemns the ant
and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.


Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has
gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper,
and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.


Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act
retroactive to the beginning of the summer.


The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and,
having nothing left to pay his retroactive
taxes, his home is confiscated by the government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper .


The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.


The ant has disappeared in the snow,
never to be seen again.


The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize and ramshackle the once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.


The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest
of the free world with it.


I think I see some similarities here. JW
​

 

I live in Chicago, and have made a point of going to the Occupy activities in Chicago. Whether you agree with their underlying argument or not, it is going to be incredibly difficult for the OWS movement to gain any traction. While I grant you the people I have talked to are a small, unscientific sample, their commitment to totally equality in all things hold them back in that they are hesitant to choose one leader or speaker. The people I have spoken to are against choosing one member to speak for them because it would raise that person up. Now, I can understand the frustration that the OWS protesters have. I can also understand why some would be justifiably concerned about them. I mean, a lot of what some OWS protesters are proposing are really out there. But how can someone support or combat a movement without any articulated goals or purposes. Their principles actually prevent them from being successful, because without a leader, there is no message, and without a message there cannot be a response from anyone.

 

What exactly is the "underlying argument"?

 

I believe the underlying argument of the OWS (and I admit I could be wrong) is that corporate greed is bad and is stunting economic growth in this country, and that corporations should pay more in taxes and be subject to more extensive regulation. But even this is part of the problem. I don't know for sure, because I do not think the OWS movement has been definitive enough about what it is concerned about.

 

Can you define "corporate greed" for me? I always assumed a corporation's sole purpose was to generate profit. Profit makes a company more stable, helps protect/create jobs, rewards investors & allows the production of the goods and services we all demand.

 

Oh...I get it. You are confusing me for a liberal. I am actually a conservative. Member of the Federalist Society. Young Republicans. Only guy in my graduating class not to vote for President Obama. The whole nine. This is you calling me out to explain my liberal heresies, to try to trap me in a logical dead-end. Yeah, I was just doing my best to detail my understanding of the OWS movement is all, based on my discussions with members of Occupy Chicago.

As for "corporate greed," I believe their issue is less about the "generation of profit" as much as is it about how the profit is utilized. Specifically how it is accounted for, how it is distributed to management vs. reinvested, etc. And, again this is based on second hand conversations, the OWS'ers would not even have as much issue with how corporations ran their business if it were not for the fact that the federal government would rush into support the corporations when they were teetering on bankruptcy and then turn around and not try to tax them more when the businesses were flush with cash. Now granted, I disagree with a lot of the OWSers positions on how to fix this and what the government's role in business should be. Well, disagree with what was expressed to me by individuals because the overall organization does not have a position yet. But they are not entirely wrong to be upset at large corporations at banks. I just wish they would be more pissed at the whole government as opposed to just half of it.

 

This is a point I can agree with. If the protesters complaint is that certain businesses rec'd gov't money then they should be mad at the gov't. We should also point out that not every business in every industry in the country has rec'd a handout. Foolish platitudes such as "corporate greed" or "evil Wall Street" are mere radical bumper sticker slogans created for the disaffected & uninformed.

 

HEAR, HEAR

JW

 

The next decade is going to suck, for a whole lot of reasons. Everyone is familiar with the litany. The US has a huge amount of debt and unemployment. The Euro is teetering. China has rampant inflation and is a good food shortage away from rebellion. The new economy drives down the need for a lot of jobs, increasing financial insecurity. If the United States is going to ride this out we need to pivot and change the way we do things. And for that to happen we need both a strong Left and Right that is secure in their beliefs without being obstinate. Yes, the claim of corporate greed lacks...refinement. But so does, "Guv'mint sucks, burn it down to the ground." This is not equivocation or saying "we are all wrong, so we are all blameless." But we are going to have to rethink the way we work, the way we educate, and re-evaluate what we want.

Yeah, we are poorer now, but not all that long ago we were richer and not particularly happy either. We were, are, and will be for the foreseeable future a superpower. And we are not happy. The American Dream is about giving our kids a better life. What does that mean? Does that mean more degrees for them than we had? More money? Or something better? I am not advocating a Dawson's Creek, Coldplay song in the background, moment of reflection. But we need to realign our priorities and look to the future as opposed to letting our sentimentality for the past dictate our present. Unions aren't going to be what they were like in the 50s, and the nuclear 1950s family probably is not coming back either. Sacred cows from the left and right will have to be slaughtered. So what's next?

 

I'm confused. If profits make a business stable and create jobs, then why, when Bush was president, did corporations enjoy record profits while the rest of us enjoyed bailing out those corporations as they collapsed, creating record unemployment? Seems weird. Maybe they just need more of our money and sweat, right?

 

That is a tad of an oversimplification. Part of the record profit/no spending issue is because the businesses do not know what is going to happen...well...anywhere for the next few years and so will not spend until they are a little more secure. That is hardly an immoral impulse. I know that I have cut down on my spending while the economy has been doing what it is doing. That is just good sense. And bailing out the banks helped you too. Absent that bailout, there would have been runs which would have depleted reserves and wiped out the savings of a lot of Americans and a lot of American businesses. These banks that were in trouble in the first place due to their compliance with regulations that pushed them to give loans to individuals that could not afford them. And most of the companies that got bailed our were businesses that were NOT making record profits during Bush's administration. It was a failure of the market that the government bailed out these businesses, when every impetus suggested that they should be left to die.

Now if you want to discuss better regulation, targeted monitoring, and not bailing out defunct, nonprofitable businesses, I am with you. But consistency and a clear standard of what are required of businesses need to be established before they can be condemned.

 

It's a complete oversimplification, this is a forum
During Bush's first four years, businesses were doing great. The rest of us weren't. When the other shoe fell and the businesses started to teeter, we, who weren't doing well all along, were left holding the bag. Bush took the greatest period of economic expansion in US history and squandered it-- completely. That too is overly simplistic, but this isn't an academic treatise.

 

I seem to remember a little hiccup in the middle of "businesses were doing great". It took a bit of a tax break to keep the economy going until the housing market floundered . But that is what happens when the government tries to control an industry. Now they are trying to "fix" it better with the Dodd-Frank bill and people are wondering why their banks wont lend money and their banking fees are rising. Maybe they should ask Mr. Frank. After all, he said that Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac were in great shape. Right?

 

At some point we got to go into detail. Lets be better men and not go for the easy description, the cliched statements. The situation we are in demands that interested individuals do more than rehash catchphrases, and I think we can do better.

Yeah, Bush screwed up. And he wasn't alone. Every politician in America are arguing like this is a 1980s world. It isn't. Business has changed. Economies have changed. And that is only a bad thing if we do not respond to it. There are hundreds of people that are occupying cities across the country. Thats what this is about. Screw Bush. He is done. Screw the Republicans and the Democrats. They obviously do not know what they are doing. But if we want to be different than them, better than them, we cannot act like them. And repackaging their statements and suggesting it is new is not worthy of us. Thats why it is vital that OWS organize into something more cohesive than justifiable anger about their circumstances.

 

Ah, we agree on something! Neither "party" is interested in helping any of us do anything other than continue voting them into office. I simplify because this is a casual environment and I'm not looking to write a novel here. The republican idea that capitalism will save us all has been proven false every time it's been tried. Corporate beneficence made Elizabethan England a wasteland of pollution, worker deaths and child labor-- and they'll do it again if given a chance. Look at the towns that no longer have water to drink due to fracking! Democrats don't have the spine to go against the republicans, so they try to get by on handouts to their base. That's not working any more either. I don't want their charity, I want them and their corporate masters out from between me and the life I want to lead. But, until a viable alternative comes along, what are we supposed to do.

People wonder why the OWS is so disorganized and has no central message; how do you begin to make a list of all the things that are wrong right now? How do you even begin to organize grievances when they are so numerous and varied? And there certainly aren't enough fingers to point out all of the people who are to blame... including ourselves!

 

Three things. Thanks for making this not about name calling. It is nice to have an intense discussion without it being discourteous.

Two, I don't think it is lack of spine with the dems. I just don't think they really disagree on any of the big stuff. Obama has raised more money from Wall Street than any GOP challenger. Frank has gotten money and support from former Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac guys. I do not cite this as condemnation, only explanation.

To be cliche, because it is an internet board, the journey of 1000 miles begins with one step. If I were running OWS, first I would ask "What am I doing here?" Then I would begin by accepting my share of culpability. I would say "Yeah, I have screwed up. Its not just about blaming Bush or Obama. I am at fault too." Then I go out and prove that collective action does not begin and end with the government and corporations. The OWS should identify something that government and corporations have failed at, and then do it themselves. If I were really ballsy? I would use that donated money, find a project that the federal government has not done, and do it. Fix up a school. Clean up a park. Governments have power because people believe only government can get things done. Prove them wrong. Do stuff like that. American don't dig people who protest. Especially if it just looks like they are sitting around. They need to do something. Something that is not destructive and goes beyond "freedom of speech."

Just saying. Worst case scenario, even if they don't get the attention they want, the world is a little better. But I don't think they wouldn't get attention if they do it right.

 

I think that the key point is that nobody is running OWS. It's a bunch of fed up people who are fed up for a bunch of different reasons. If one group of them comes out with a list of demands, the rest will all divide into factions with their own demands. It will become another old joke like the tea party. Some groups will be scared off, some will be paid off, and some will just give up. They are creating real fear right now because nobody actually knows what they are after. I think some of the people in charge needed a good scare-- hopefully it serves as a wake up call for political leaders, but I doubt it.

I like civilized discourse. To be able to ask it of others, I first have to offer it myself. Thanks to you as well for being able to debate without a flamethrower!

 

Maybe I am old fashioned, but I can't be scared of a mob that is just random and has no real impetus. I ask this honestly, but you honestly think people are scared? I hang out with some real gnarly conservatives and they just kind of laugh about them. Not even much of an annoyance.