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November 28, 2011 at 10:00 AM
Where Does Occupy Go Now?

Has Occupy Wall Street petered out? Topped Out? Or is it just getting started? We’ll ask where the 99% goes next.

Police officers evict Occupy Oakland protesters from their camp at Telegraph Avenue and 19th Street in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011. The previous night, protesters tore down a fence surrounding a vacant lot to establish the 20-tent encampment. (AP)

Police officers evict Occupy Oakland protesters from their camp at Telegraph Avenue and 19th Street in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011. The previous night, protesters tore down a fence surrounding a vacant lot to establish the 20-tent encampment. (AP)

Occupy Wall Street had a heck of a season just now. What began as a few campers in Manhattan’s Zucotti Park turned into vivid protests across the country and around the world. The defining Occupy battle cry – “We Are the 99 Percent! – put extreme inequality front and center in the American conversation.

It has changed the tone of political debate. But now, Occupy camps have been cleared out in dozens of cities and towns across the country. And winter’s coming. So what next?

This hour, On Point: Has Occupy Wall Street peaked? Is it done? Or is it just getting started?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Mattathias Schwartz, a journalist, his recent article on the Occupy movement appeared in the New Yorker.

Reihan Salam, a columnist for The Daily and lead writer of National Reviews “The Agenda.”

Catherine Murrell, spokeswoman for Stand Up! Chicago, a coalition of dozens of labor and community groups that work closely with Occupy Chicago.

Richard Kim, executive editor of The Nation. His latest article on the Occupy movement can be found here.

Highlights

The Occupy Wall Street movement that crashed its way into the national consciousness has come to a crossroads, as its camps around the country are emptied out. Now, the occupiers must now decide where the movement goes and how it gets there.

“You will still see [Occupy] six months or a year from now. I don’t know what form it will take, but it has only been 60 days and the movement has gotten very far, very quickly,” said Mattathias Schwartz, who wrote about the movement for the New Yorker.

The main question is whether the movement will join the political process in ways similar to the Tea Party, which helped Republican candidates in the 2010 mid-term elections.

“There’s one faction of Occupy that is very reform-minded — they want a repeal of Citizens United or a financial transactions tax,” said Richard Kim, executive editor of The Nation. “They don’t differ all that much from the left wing of the Democratic party.”

Many people in the Occupy movement are already actively participating in “the system,” Kim said, noting that not all aspects of the movement were anarchists looking to bring down capitalism.

That said, there are radical aspects of the Occupy effort that have taken hold in many cases and are now leading to confrontations with police, said Riehan Salam, a blogger with the National Review. “Suddenly, the movement becomes not about these larger economic inequality issues, but about the movement itself — about the right to protest in these particular ways,” he said.

However the Occupy movement impacts the 2012 election, there will likely be long-term implications, Salam said.

“Is there are smaller population of middle class, ex-college kids, who’ve been radicalized and who might actually go on to future kinds of social organizing and activism that could prove disruptive, destructive, or could prove quite productive in ways that we don’t fully understand,” Salam said.

From Tom’s Reading List

The New Yorker “Lasn was interrupted by a phone call about the Zuccotti eviction while in bed, reading Julian Barnes’s “The Sense of an Ending.” He rose and checked his e-mail. There was a message from Micah White, Adbusters’ senior editor and Lasn’s closest collaborator.”

Daily Kos “This past weekend I participated in a four-hour meeting of Occupy Wall Street activists whose job it is to come up with the vision and goals of the movement. It was attended by 40+ people and the discussion was both inspiring and invigorating. Here is what we ended up proposing as the movement’s “vision statement” to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:”

L.A. Times “Meanwhile, former Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton will head a UC-sponsored investigation into the incident. Bratton is to lead an independent review and report his findings within a month, UC President Mark G. Yudof said.”

 
  • Tim Hatfield

    Please comment on whether or not this story has any legs:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy?
    Thank you.

    • Michiganjf

      Nice, pertinent link!

    • Hidan

      Police Brutality the often Taboo subject for the Media(at least when it happens in real time). Than again we have returning Vet’s joining the police force with few checks on their mental state. Not to mention the often used Wall of blue that allows police to openly lie to support the state.Than the politicians creating laws making it harder for citizens to report police abuse and easier for police to abuse the law and even going so far as to arrest,intimidate citizens for reporting police abuse. .

      http://www.fair.org/blog/#post-19812

      Interesting Piece on the NYT

      The Kind of Journalist Authorities Don’t Mind Not Suppressing

      http://www.fair.org/blog/2011/11/18/the-kind-of-journalist-authorities-dont-mind-not-suppressing/

    • JustSayin

      I was not surprised at all with the uptick in aggressive containment and propaganda around the actual issues. The prime example being that Bank Of America removed its proposed debit card fees because some girl put up a webpage. The truth of the story was that OWS caused depositors to leave the investment banks in huge numbers that BOA could not ignore… and that consumers forcing change in corporate behavior by voting with their money is the one power that corporations can not yet control.

      The second hour is about Congress pushing for the spamming cell phones. This removes the consumer power of spending choice. The corporations will be allowed through an act of congress to drain all the minutes on your cell phone… The consumer is being forced to pay for advertising)… which is the equivalent of just allowing telecom companies and advertisers to draw money directly from your checking account to pay for their business operations.

    • Dalbin

      Good article. Wonder how our branded image is looking to the rest of the world, as they see us pepper spray an elderly woman and students, while denying journalists access to, and coverage of, the backlash to an inconvenient protest.

      First you discredit and then you suppress.

  • Michiganjf

    The drum circle kids may no longer have a place to go, but there is a LOT of extremely savvy talent and organizing which was mobilized by the OWS movement.

    … There is a level of activist smarts in the OWS movement that the Tea Partiers simply didn’t have the intellect or technical know-how to dream of, much less comprehend.

    OWS will have a long-lasting and very significant impact on grass-roots activism, internet based campaigning and money-raising, transparency and information dissemination in politics, and organizing (especially institutional organizing, such as at universities throughout the country).

    The OWS movement is going to be a significant force in 2012, and it will continue to grow in scope… the only force that might curb its influence will be a revolutionary change in wealth distribution, so count on OWS to be a resounding force in American politics long after TP is once again merely a paper product.

    • Terry Tree Tree

      TP became a paper product, when the let the GREEDY rich wipe with them, to get politicians that kiss where the TP wipes on the GREEDY rich!
          The few of the original TEA Party, are dumbstruck how to extricate themselves from the Koch brothers TP orifice!

      • Modavations

        The greedy rich are Obama’s crony capitalists.Dishonesty is not a good business model.Only people who have failed in life lust over those who made something of themselves.90% of American Millionaires,are first generation,self made men.The Dems.are crony capitalists and Trust fund babies.NPR is the home of the Limosine Liberal.

        • Terry Tree Tree

          Dishonesty has worked, and IS working for the Wall Street investment Banksters, that committed fraud, continue to commit fraud, and rake in $Billions of ill-gotten gains, from their paid lackeys in Congress and the Senate!

          • Modavations

            Would that be Governor Corzine?

          • John in Amherst

            The fraud includes but is not limited to the financial wizzards who dreamed up investment vehicles like collateralized debt obligations, and sold them rated as AA instead of the garbage that they were.
            Crony captialists are on both sides of the aisle, and resisit reform because insider trading is emensely profitable.  The Dems only dream of pals like the GOP has in the likes of the Kochs and various assorted billionaires from the energy and financial sectors.

  • twenty-niner

    Wait until the 99% gets bored with signs and tents, and sitting around getting pepper sprayed in the face. For a good reference point, check out France circa 1789. There might be good business ahead for guys who know how to erect two timbers with slots running down the middle. And stories like the one published by Bloomberg yesterday aren’t going to help matters for the guys who might potentially find themselves lying face down between said timbers:

    The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

    …

    Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.

    …

    $7.77 Trillion

    The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.”

    …

    Byron L. Dorgan, a former Democratic senator from North Dakota, says the knowledge might have helped pass legislation to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, which for most of the last century separated customer deposits from the riskier practices of investment banking.
    …

    Employees at the six biggest banks made twice the average for all U.S. workers in 2010, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics hourly compensation cost data. The banks spent $146.3 billion on compensation in 2010, or an average of $126,342 per worker, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s up almost 20 percent from five years earlier compared with less than 15 percent for the average worker. Average pay at the banks in 2010 was about the same as in 2007, before the bailouts.

    …


    Top officials in President Barack Obama’s administration sided with the FSF in arguing against legislative curbs on the size of banks.

    …

    Lobbyists for the big banks made the winning case that forcing them to break up was “punishing success,” Brown says. Now that they can see how much the banks were borrowing from the Fed, senators might think differently, he says.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html

  • Brennan511

    The Protests in Wisconsin were so different [shower? are you kidding?].
    And the TEA Party “gatherings” yet were another story, but made of gold.
    I have a technological solution, a modern type of vehicle/dorm room, that “automatically leaves” when it’s time to go, but then returns when any crime has slowed. But it’s still civil society weather… on the curb or on the road, And delivering a proper message is something that banks & Corporations will pragmatically hold, but what is actually told?
    And does society press or even extract the mold? I think a hospital would be as cold. History is being quiet not bold, and facebooks arab spring informs the new but is it bold? or just heated with diverse folds.

    • Brennan511

      Perhaps a slow parade would be more visible without the occupy cage or the propt-up rage, …and liberty will “walk this way”. Yet ambiguity is “the lost” wage, SOCIOLOGY will make big money behave, but anarchy preferes psychotics enslaved. I have the keys [annyt ...of course!lol] occupy is the cage. liberty will truely pay, when justice speaks secondary truth to the geographic sage.

  • Brennan511

    Don’t be a “Bratt” without the secondary socio-logistical facts of where [and  who in time/age and NORMALCY-active space] you’re at, Then differenciate the meat from the fat, and lean on the pressure point without sargent PEPPER in your hat. ForE civility is more than a spat… Solve the prime priMarily [row row row...] with secondary stats! that is where the cancer corrupts the fat cat, and the tertiary should live___ without all that “marching qat” or “Nam cigarets” or rat-TATouille S.B.Behavioral facts. WITH quaternary logical-civility maps ‘$.
    Big Business could surely do [and see] that, for civil-occuPatients are merely stats. and Normalcy is the remedy not mere chat. Social-engineering is WHERE it’s at. And quality CONTROL doesn’t just lie… on a MATT , but arrives with peace intact, and civiliy jives with the facts

  • Yar

    Here are my suggestions for the occupy movement.  Change the target to occupy congress.  All 435 house seats are up for election in 2012.  Start with a pledge not to take any money from PAC’s or any campaign contributions while in office.  Agree to  fix the citizen united issue,  Agree not to use the office for personal or family gain.  Agree to publish personal financial information and not to invest in the market while in office.  I believe with these simple concepts we can find smart, dedicated citizen representatives.  I think with social media and a grass roots ‘register to win’ voter registration campaigns we can find enough voters to tilt the elections away from special interests.
    A picture is worth 1000 words, this cartoon is in yesterday’s Lexington Herald Leader by Joel Pett.http://media.kentucky.com/smedia/2011/11/27/08/15/BHxL6.AuSt.79.jpg

    • nj

      Not sure what is meant by “agree” here. The only way any of these measures gets put in place is through legislation, and the only way to do that is to elect congress critters that will do it. And the only way to do that is to politically organize on the local level to either take over one of the two parties, or build a third party (or hook up with the Green Party) of overwhelming influence.

      If there’s some other way, i’m not sure what it is.

      • twenty-niner

        Vote every incumbent out.

  • John in Amherst

    Comparisons between the Tea Party and OWS are standard media fare recently, but seem specious.  The Tea Party had millions in financial backing from the Koch brothers and others, and had ceasless propaganda spurring recruitment and action courtesy of FOX and conservative talk radio, which, not surprisingly have put a lot of effort into portraying OWS as naive, crazed anti-american hippie hold outs.  The Tea Party has also had 2+ years to refine its message and lacks any international counterparts.  It is easy to imagine that OWS will evolve and perhaps factionalize as it continues to coalesce and strategize how to move forward.  It is hard to imagine the anger against the excesses of Wall Street evaporating.  

    • Anonymous

      Also I think one big distinction is that
      the Tea Party is primarily angry white voters.
      The OWS are primarily angry informed voters.

      I think that’s a fair characterization when you consider the number of birthers in the Tea Party… as if the Republicans in congress would not have impeached Obabma or used some other legal means to nullify the 2008 election altogether. 

      The Koch brothers, other ultrawealthy activists and their proxies have manipulated those folks into such a blind rage they don’t recognize the contradictory postions that they as individuals hold at the same time.

      • Modavations

        Tea=Taxed Enough Already.Look at a Tea Party Site after a rally and compare it to a similar OFWS site.The Tea Party site is pristine and the OWS site looks like Joplin after the tornado

        • JUST CORY PLEASE!

          So?

        • Fredlinskip

          Tea= totally egotistical A-____(fill in blank)??

          Sorry Moda- just the best abbreviation I could come up with on short notice.

          I see you TP’ers have refined tastes. Don’t forget your crumpets and Koch embroidered napkins when you leave.

        • Anonymous

          You mean after the police sweep through with night sticks, rubber bullets, tear gas and clubs?

          The Tea Party just shows up for the camera’s then get bussed back to the rocks they crawled out from under.

  • AC

    this is a good question. It started out promising, but in the end I never fully understood the goal. I wish they would push for new laws regulating banking, tho it’s too late to go back & jail some of the blatant irresponsible practices that went on. The one unified thing I’ve heard is for dismissal of student loans. I have thought this over and think this is an unfair idea. If anything, the universities and loan companies should be held more accountable, but to simply not pay? No.

    • JUST CORY PLEASE!

      I majored in History and Philosophy and graduated @20 years ago.  My degree has seldom helped me with employment, but I still managed to pay down my school loans.  I was part of a generaton that was taught that EVERYONE should go to college, and you should study what interests you.  I don’t recall any voices from the past telling me to make sure I was marketable or employable.  That turned out to be very poor advice as it turned out.  I will teach my kids to be flexible and pragmatic about their education.  Nowadays you don’t just have to educate yourself to be employable, you also need to consider careers that cannot easily be outsourced.

      BTW, I absolutely loved my college years.  A classical education on a red-brick campus with lots of socializing and idealizing.  Too bad you have to be rich to afford this sort of education now.
       

      • nj

        I eventually graduated from uni about 35 years ago. It’s hard to imagine/believe that my out-of-state tuition and fees at a state school didn’t break $4,000.

        Proportionally, all of life’s basics cost proportionally more now—and real income is proportionally less—since the 1970s, in many cases a lot more.

  • Anonymous

    Great link provided by Tim Hatfield.  Let me quote the link and let’s discuss what OWS wants:

    The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics… boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation… restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.Let me add a few:a1: No campaign financing period.a2: all DC lawmakers cannot invest in the stock market directly or by proxy.a3: Washington insiders must wait 5 years before being allowed to be lobbyists.I’m a cynic.  Politicians will make light reforms disguised in legalese that will effectively do nothing but satisfy people’s grumblings.  A larger social issue will arise diverting the nation’s attention, nothing will get done, and everything remains the same.

    • nj

      Add: Repeal corporate personhood. 

      There are pre-Occupy efforts and organizations working on many of these issues. Example: http://movetoamend.org/

      Let’s hope they get flooded with new members/supporters and that the the disparate efforts coalesce into one large, unstoppable movement.

  • Anonymous

    I would love to see a 3rd -’Main St’- party arise from all of this protest.  But, I am worried that, instead, we may get a subset of vociferous Democrats analogous to the Tea Party, which would make stalemates in Congress even worse!  Let’s pray that doesn’t happen.

  • Brett

    Maybe On Point’s show this morning has more to do with the way news cycles have to keep stories going, even when there is little to update? On Point has already shown how it has chosen to spin this story (from earlier offerings). Will this morning be different? I hope it will be more nuanced than to portray OWS’ers as pot-smoking hippies with no direction. 

    I have a friend who sends me videos she takes from OWS in NYC, and she tells me about her impressions of the movement…the media are spinning this thing for sure. Maybe some news outlets are doing so out of ideology, maybe some out of finding how many ways to slice up a story to keep it percolating. At any rate, it is being spun. 

    This is winter (well almost)…and the fact that protests are still going on at all is interesting. I think this is just the beginning. Think about next summer (and think 1968), when protest movements really start to heat up (pun intended)…you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet! 

    • JUST CORY PLEASE!

      Love your first paragraph. Brett.  Be careful though, they may decide to give us yet another hour on the “Arab Spring”!

    • nj

      I hope you’re right (about the “this is just the beginning” part. So far the actions amount to a collective Network “I’m not going to take this anymore” moment, drawing attention to the issues in a way that makes it impossible to ignore, drawing people together, and creating the possibility for a more organized effort.

      Defining goals, building consensus, developing an action agenda, getting the work done…These will be the next steps.

    • Modavations

      If NPR does not spin 125% Left,you take offense.90% of journalists say they are Democrat.90% of the stories are pro-OWS.They have 50 years of incriminating footage,if they wanted to show it.Your lucky the press is partisan.

      • Brett

        You state percentages as if you are privy to all sorts of data on what offends me and why journalists report the way they do on OWS!? Is your data-collection system of your own making,  maybe? Can you also provide evidence that On Point has offered up “pro-OWS” stories? …No, you can’t because they haven’t. Now, you may have smoked a fatty and thought you were listening to a “pro-OWS” On Point show, but that’s different, isn’t it? 

        aNyWhO…I don’t want my news to be either “Left” or “Right;” I want my media coverage to attempt to give a balanced overview of any particular event. 

  • JUST CORY PLEASE!

    It does not matter where this particular movement goes.  It is a continuation of dissatisfied Americans expressing their displeasure openly and publicly.  As things worsen for PEOPLE in this country, expect more of these movements with greater numbers and intensity.  Don’t be suprised when more property damage and acts of violence begin to accompany these growing movements.  Don’t be suprised as establishment reaction to these movements become more intense and violent.  It may be the beginning of the beginning.

  • nj

    Veteran Mitch Green’s An Open Letter to the Winter Patriot:

    http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2011/11/open-letter-to-winter-patriot.html

    excerpt:

    Now, more than ever we need your sacrifice.  But, I’m asking you to soldier in a different way.  If called upon to deny the people of their first amendment right to peaceably assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievance, disregard the order.  Abstain from service.  Or if you are so bold, join us. Make no mistake: The consequences for such decisions are severe. You will be prosecuted under the full extent of the law.  But sacrifice is your watch word. 

  • Modavations

    The OWS and Tea Party guys should hook up and march on the real culprits ,the US Govt.I’ve dusted off my old Gas mask and ironed my blue kerchief.Time for a new movement.Occupy Wash.

    • JUST CORY PLEASE!

      Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  The government IS us.  Hate the government, hate yourself.

      • Modavations

        I’m an old hippy and we loathe govt..Remember when Hippys were individualist,free spirits.Now they’re just another front group for Democrats

        • JUST CORY PLEASE!

          Okay, loathe government loathe yourself.  Howzat?

          • nj

            The whole “We the People” thing eludes Moda-troll.

        • Brett

          I don’t think smoking weed and going after “chicks” at protest rallies in your youth makes you a hippie…just sayin’, Mo-D

  • Modavations

    On Wed.on WRKO,they ran this ditty.It was being chanted by the OWs(don’t know where).”2,4,6,8 where we gonna defecate!!!The Dems.have sided and praised OWS.I can’t wait to see the ads the Reps. come up with

    • mary elizabeth.

      If WRKO is your point of reference, no wonder you are so lost.
      If one or a million disgustingly defecated, it would be all the same to WRKO.  They are the master class of distortion, lies,  and hate.  the only good thing that has happended there is the firing of Severin. 

  • nj

    Part of the solution(?): DIY capitalism; worker coops. Make (at least some of the) big corps irrelevant.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-richmond-20111128,0,3468665.story

    Making the most of cooperation

    Taking a cue from a Spanish hill town, the mayor of Richmond, Calif., is recognizing worker-owned co-ops as a possible path out of the poverty and unemployment that plague her city.

    • Modavations

      The Socialist Govt of Spain just took the biggest drubbing since the advent of Free Elections(speaking of Spanish).Even the Isreali Kibbutz is persona non grata.

      • JUST CORY PLEASE!

        So?

      • nj

        ZZzzzzzzzzzz…

  • ClearThinking

    Where does it go?  Home. America has already moved on.

    • JUST CORY PLEASE!

      ClearThinking…  The voice of America (RALPH!).

      • Modavations

        Hey,you missed the new NPR edict.No infantile name calling until 10:00

        • JUST CORY PLEASE!

          Ralph in this case refers to vomitting, not the name “ralph”.  Sorry!  I do try to avoid name calling, though.

          • Modavations

            Who said’Righties stroking each other”?Your hypocrosy knows no bound

          • TFRX

            I thought “Ralph” was a nod to “Pick a Winner!.

    • Terry Tree Tree

      Obviously America has NOT moved on.  The press has NOT moved on, nor has the movement died.

  • Thomas P.

    Naomi Wolf’s article in Friday’s Guardian newspaper contains fascinating information about what now appears to have been a concerted government effort to bust up the protests, information that, to my knowledge, has not been reported in the mainstream news media in the United States . . . 

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy

    • Modavations

      Excuses,excuses.Just spoiled brats.How pathetic is the fenced ,OWS Harvard site.They are the sons and daughters of the 1%.They have tent,room service.Naomi Wolf is a paid,Leftist propagandist.

      • Gregg

        Yea, but she picked out some nice earth toned suits for Algore.

        • Modavations

          General G,commander of the liberated middle states.I’d sooner slit my wrists then become a Metrosexual.Can you imagine spending your life looking like the MSNBC star,Mr. Wolf(?).My wrists go limp every time I see the guy.

          • Gregg

            I love the manly title.

          • Terry Tree Tree

            Careful, or he may go ‘Larry Craig’ on you!  I believe you are too old for him to go ‘Mark Foley’ for you!

          • Terry Tree Tree

            My apologies to Mark Foley!  Tom Foley was the Republican in D.C., that tried to seduce the under-age pages, wasn’t he??

          • Modavations

            I think T.Foley was a Dem.from Wash.StaGary Studs was the Page Boy molester.A Dem.from Ma.I didn’t even take Gay History and know that

          • TFRX

            Gender-bending projection insults are only funny when they come from Bender Bending Unit Rodriguez (Hecho in Mexico).

            From someone who feels the need to tout his manliness on the internet, it’s sorta sad.

          • Terry Tree Tree

            You see it too?

          • Terry Tree Tree

            Your wrist goes limp when you see Mr. Wolf?  You keep saying things like this, to tell us that are NOT interested, your sexual preference!

          • Modavations

            Long Haired Hippy chicks like Meg Ryan, in the flick about the Doors

          • Terry Tree Tree

            You’ve been raving lately about going limp-wristed about several guys! 

          • Modavations

            They seem like “Poofs”to me.

        • JUST CORY PLEASE!

          A couple of righties stroking each other.  If you can find a third you’ll have a circle. 

          • ClearThinking

            Get some drums, and they’ll have a movement.

    • Anonymous

      Naomi Wolf should be a guest on this show. Hey On Point people there is still time. How bout it. Give her a call.

    • Ellen Dibble

      That Naomi Wolf article is from last week, and from the UK.  I think maybe this is the default position among certain journalists, to say that the usual elitist forces are at work.  I think she’s prejudging, and the exception proves the rule.  She had heard that OWS had no agenda, no demands, amd she tweeted them the question, what do you want (I don’t know who “them” is; I have a bunch of bookmarked sites and twitter IDs from various OWS), and she got 100 answers in 15 minutes.  She reports:
      “The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.”No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.”

      • Modavations

        Would that be the domain of Herr Biden?

  • Anonymous

    I hope this show does not waste this hour trying to appease
    those who after several months of protest still claim they have no idea what OWS is about. By playing to dolts who can not, or do not want to
    read up on this movement is a waste valuable air time. It also serves those who try to discredit the movement by keeping the discussion stuck in the mud of willful ignorance. Tom I hope you do not fall into this trap. Those whose interest is in maintaining our corrupt government and its anti social relationships with our corporate keepers would be delighted.

  • Terry Tree Tree

    OWS will morph into continuing protests of the GREEDY rich, that want and demand MORE wealth, for far LESS effort, so they can have MORE POWER over people with traits of true humanity!
        The GREEDY rich can NEVER answer the question ‘How much is enough?’, because those that have $Billions are slithering toward accumulating $Trillions, no matter who they hurt!
        The GREEDY rich have spent $Billions to get a few people jobs where they can harm the people that earn $thousands-per-year, when employed!  The money spent getting Scott Walker the job as Governor, could have KEPT most of those state workers on the job!

    • Modavations

      Where do you get this Greedy stuff.You spew it daily.You spend your life with the “Classist”chip on your shoulder.Firstly,I disagree that  business guys are greedy(they spend millions to promote their good will).Hardly a good business model.Secondly,where does pointing fingers get us.Term Limits are the simple solution.

      • JUST CORY PLEASE!

        The part about the goodwill and charitable acts of the business guys is just awful.  Your point is much stronger without that canard.

      • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

        Intelligent voting would do the same, since there are already term limits:  elections.

        • Modavations

          I’ve told you a million times about the Gerrymander.During the last Cal.election,only one incumbent lost(they are now playing with redistricting,again).You are an appologist for Big Govt..To quote Bill bUCKLEY,i’D RATHER BE RULED By anyone of the first 500 peeps in the Boston Phone book.By the way,if they were on the Super Commitee,they would have solved it “toute de suite”

      • Terry Tree Tree

        GREEDY , like Rick Waggoner former CEO of General Motors, that put the company into bankruptcy, taking the wages, pensions, and medical benefits of the workers that put the cars together, and got a $20 $Million BONUS, in addition to his GROSSLY over-paid salary and benefits, to bankrupt the company!!   MANY other examples are easily available!
             When a Multi-$Billionaire gets lots of press for ‘donating’ a few $Million,  but others that make REAL sacrifices to do good things for others, get ignored, or even put-down, by the press and the $Kazillionaires, why does that impress you?

        • Modavations

          The Unions bankrupted GM.The uNIONS BANKRUPTED THE pOST oFFICE

          • JUST CORY PLEASE!

            Did the unions, or did our management’s lack of preparation for the inevitable rise of the 3rd world?

          • Terry Tree Tree

            How many assembly line workers’ pay does it take to equal $20 $Million?  These CEOs are paid BONUSES for ruining a company, then go to another company to do the same!
                Instead of putting back the money that GM negotiated to pay for union pensions, they spent that money!  On CEO pay and benefits, on Share-Holder meetings, but NOT saved to pay those pensions and benefits, as the CEOs and Management promised!

          • Terry Tree Tree

            Have you had the guts to repeatedly say this to your union Post Office workers, and letter-carriers? 

          • Terry Tree Tree

            $20 $Million dollars would have paid for a  LOT of cars to be assembled, or repaired, instead of rewarding an incompetent executive to ruin the company!

  • Tam

    “…petered out…”

    is not a headline
    men of a certain age appreciate

  • Sam

    The Time Has Come Today! 1. Occupy CONGRESS! Get out of the parks, out of Boston, L.A., Oakland, etc; and GO TO WASHINGTON, surround the Capital. THERE is the core of the problem. STAY FOCUSED on the two simple core issues: 2. Both parties are the vassals in the class warfare of the royals against the middle class; and 3. The royals OWN our nation and have destroyed our representative democracy. Surround the Capital until we re-new the revolution of 1776, the last time we threw out the royals!

  • Sam

    Oh yeah, and Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come, The harder They Fall” OUGHT to be our anthem!

  • Gregg

    The OWSer’s will go to the dustbin of history. The only legacy they leave is one of envy and destruction. It’s nothing like the Tea Party that brought about the historic 2010 elections. The Tea Party remains.

    • Terry Tree Tree

      The HISTORIC part of the 2010 elections was the amounts of money that the GREEDY rich paid for a few jobs for lackeys and crooks, instead of CREATING and KEEPING jobs, with Living Wages, for REAL people!

      • Modavations

        Get the Classist chip off your shoulder and make something of yourself

        • Terry Tree Tree

          By stealing from the poor?  by Deceit and Fraud?  By exploiting the weak and dis-advantaged?   I’d rather be an honorable working person, than a GREEDY rich, IMMORAL CRIMINAL!

        • Terry Tree Tree

          I risk my life to save lives and property!  You sell gems and jewellry?  You think I should Make Something of Myself?  A GREEDY rich, IMMORAL CRIMINAL, is Something, in your view?

    • JUST CORY PLEASE!

      Why?  Why will one stay and one go?

  • Sage.Radachowsky

    I camp at Occupy Boston. The camp is critical to the movement. It is a catalyst, a point of crystallization, that excites the consciousness of the population. It is an important form of protest that has opened up a space for dialogue to a degree that has not existed in the last several decades, until now. The camp at Occupy Boston has serious issues that need to be worked out, and we need to uplift ourselves to become a camp worth saving. Then, we need to defend our right to occupy 1/2 acre of grass in a world the rest of which is occupied by the wealthy elite and the culture of economic domination. 

    • Sage.Radachowsky

      By the way, I am 38 years old and I work 5 days a week. I go to work from the Camp. I am there for the movement. This is the greatest movement I have known in my life, and I will put everything on the line for it. We are a nonviolent movement for real democracy, and the time has come to take our country back from the control of the wealthy elite.

    • nj

      Thanks for writing. I think you’re right that the encampments have garnered and focused attention, and that’s a good thing.

      My concern is that the longer the “camp” persists, the more it becomes about the camp, supplying the camp, keeping warm, the response from police and municipal officials, etc., and less about the core issues the movement should be (and is) about.

      I think the tactics and the outward manifestation(s) of the movement can (and will need to) evolve to achieve the goals. New and evolving tactics and methods can capture the attention and inspire the support of the masses just as well as the encampments.

  • Sage.Radachowsky

    I wish to share this video, Vietnam veteran Jim Scarborough spoke yesterday, Sunday November 28th, at Occupy Boston. This is very powerful.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-8vw7bzb3s

    • Sage.Radachowsky

      Pardon — make that Sunday, November 27th.

  • Brandstad

    The 99% have spoken and the Occupy Wall Street people don’t represent us!

    • Sage.Radachowsky

      We have a very wide swath of support from regular people in this country. You may speak for yourself.

    • JUST CORY PLEASE!

      Why not?

  • Modavations

    The NPR forum is one big, self-help roundtable.Who are you influencing talking amongst yourself?Go to the Heritage websites(any right wing forum will do)and argue your side of the story..You remind me of ants, stroking each others antenna.You’re watching the pillars of your world philosophy dissolve and seek comfort amongst the fellow traveler

    • Anonymous

      And you? What do you do?

      • Modavations

        Jewelry,loose gems,textile sales.I taught Indiana Jones how to do it

        • Terry Tree Tree

          You’re over a hundred years old?
              Indiana Jones was an Archaeologist, NOT a gem and jewellry salesman!
              Do you NOT see a difference?

          • Modavations

            You’re pathetic son.All archaeologists are after the treasure.The academics is the pretext

          • Terry Tree Tree

            I hope we hear from a LOT of registered museum and academic Archaeologists, and their opinion of your statements!

          • Modavations

            Here’s how the typical dig works.Two pieces to the govt and one piece to the diggers.You are a niave kid

        • Terry Tree Tree

          Another Delusion of Grandeur!   A jewellry salesman teaching a ficticious Archaeologist!

          • Modavations

            I am an amatuer  archaeologist.I’ve been in Mexico for 40 years.If you’d quit crying,make some money I’d invite you along.I know plenty of sites that haven’t even been explored.

          • Terry Tree Tree

            Amateur Archaeologist, or tomb-raider?  Indy REALLY didn’t like the tomb-raiders!
                What qualifies you as an amateur Archaeologist?  Which official digs have you worked on?  What is your Archaeological contribution?

          • Modavations

            40n years of hanging with Mex.treasure hunters.

    • JUST CORY PLEASE!

      Round?  Stroking?  Sounds familiar…

    • TFRX

      You really have no idea what batsh!ttery exists in the right-wing forums, do you?

      Get on or off your meds, and try again when you are capable of making a more cogent statement.

      • Modavations

        Why would I go there.What will I learn.They’re my guys and that’s my point!!!

        • TFRX

          “What will you learn”, indeed.

  • TFRX

    Meanwhile, former Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton will head a UC-sponsored investigation into the incident.

    Hey, if I want something like what’s alleged there to be disappeared under the investigatory “zeal” of a Keystone Kop, Bratton would be my guy.

    • Modavations

      Men,women and children are shot dead protesting in the streets of Damascus.The Harvard OWS crowd has room service at the tents

      • TFRX

        ???

        • Modavations

          Most of your posts are ????.Read more!!!

          • TFRX

            I repeat, ???

            I’ll stop doing it when you start making sense. Or when I invent the Twilight Zone machine to send you back to 1951 as a black woman.

          • Modavations

            Less infantile name calling and more reading please

          • TFRX

            I repeat, ???

            I’ll stop doing it when you start becoming coherent. Or when I invent the Twilight Zone machine to send you back to 1951 as a black woman.

          • Modavations

            And I’d be a sucessful,self made woman

          • TFRX

            (Let me add, “in the South”.)

            Your delusion is complete. All that stuff won’t happen to you, nosiree!

      • Terry Tree Tree

        Civilized, peaceful protest?  OWS without the fringe-element that attaches themselves to ANY place ,or thing, that gives them a chance to commit crimes?

  • Modavations

    Attention,attention,the world is to take tommorrow off.Barney Frank is retiring!!!!!!!And the heaven’s sang, Hallelujah

    • Terry Tree Tree

      Another that causes you to get ‘limp-wristed’?  Maybe he’ll have time for you?

  • Sam

    Gregg, history? You’re on the wrong side of it. The “Tea Party” exposes their utter lack of KNOWLEDGE of history in naming themselves after an event in our history that was ALL about protesting British (royal) BIG business (East India Co) domination of the colonies. Taxation was sculpted by the British royals to benefit the already rich, at the expense of the American colonialists. And the richest, elite, most educated Americans (Hancock, Jefferson, Adams, Washington, et all) put their literal necks on the line for the People. Their counterparts today are sick sell-outs, the thugs who’ve brought back royal control of the People. But, let’s gut our education budgets, starting with history classes…who needs history.

    • Leatherstocking

      Regardless of your indignation, the real, grassroots tea partiers and liberty folks fully understand that.  Replace British Royals with Washington/Banking elite, and you have the Tea Party then and now.

      Just because many of you refuse to let Washington share the blame, and admit that much of what was done to fleece the public could never have happened without explicit and implicit Government actions, loopholes, legal exemptions and of course BAILOUTS, as well as the discretionary actions of the Federal Reserve allowing the full force of bubble-economics to be unleashed on us, doesn’t mean alot of other people don’t get it.

      If you are talking about establishment GOP and DNC cronies, you are correct, but if you are talking about the true grassroots tea partiers, you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and reducing our chances of seeing core change/accountability, if you want it.

      • Terry Tree Tree

        How can the grass-roots TEA Party separate themselves from the Koch brothers-shanghaied group?
             Many of your basic statements, I agree with.  The TP that is having the biggest effect, just wipes for them!

  • Modavations

    The Sun has broken through,the angels sing Hallelujah.Barney Frank has pleaded “no mas”

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

    Occupy and 99% Protestors will never go away until the US Government will pass a bill or bills to stop the corruptions in government and wall street.

    I have hundreds of proof from NBC prime time news. Those NBS reports on the Fleecing of America and be use has Evidence to show the world how the US Government spent money for nothing.

    The American people are still waiting for a change.

    Why do you Media ask the Protestors what is next.

    ASK THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT WHAT WILL THEY DO NOW AFTER 2 MONTHS OF PEOPLE PROTESTING. YOU HEARD OUR FRUSTRATIONS NOW DO SOMETHING!!!!

  • James Hayes-Bohanan

    In its physical footprint, the occupeligo might shrink over winter, but it has focused attention as never before on the concentration of wealth and the corruption of what it means to be a person. I expect that public discourse will continue to be influenced by the movement and that it will emerge even stronger in the spring. Tangible victories will take a while, not because demands are vague — they are not — but because they run deep.
    http://environmentalgeography.blogspot.com/2011/10/occupeligo.html

  • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

    I get tired of hearing the chanting.  Anyone who is chanting isn’t thinking.

    • Anonymous

      I get tired of hearing the chanting.  Anyone who is chanting isn’t thinking.

  • Proof

    We’ll all find out if “Occupy” has been a success in November 2012!  Get out the vote and show the world what a democratic coup d’etat looks like — kick the Tea Party out and Occupy Congress 2012 and give President Obama the House and Senate!  We should see where the majority lies.

  • Thomas S.

    The only reasons to support conservatives, in the state to which they have devolved in the United States, are because you are (1) rich and are rationally trying to protect your wealth, or (2) you are not rich, but you are gullible and easily fooled.

    John Stuart Mill wrote in 1866 (defending against Conservative opposition the right of women to vote):”What I stated was, that the Conservative Party was, by the law of its constitution, necessarily the stupidest party. Now, I do not retract that assertion; but I did not mean to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.”

    • TFRX

      I remember when “conservative” was a word that had meaning.

      The odd part is that there aren’t enough of them, for reals, to argue in the media against self-labeled (as opposed to “recognized by lege or platform”) conservatives.

      As a lefty, it now looks like a case of “let’s you and him fight”. (Not you, Thomas, but the proverbial “you”.)

    • Leatherstocking

      Stop supporting authoritarian conservatives and switch to liberty-based libertarian types.

      http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz

  • Anonymous

    The occupy movement succeeded in bringing attention to the problem of the 99% v. the 1% but it doesn’t appear to be of value now that that point has been made.  It is a now mostly a magnet for fringe elements and people who want to start some kind of leaderless community rather than advocate for any meaningful reforms.  You need leaders and an agenda for that, not drum circles and tents.

  • Leatherstocking

    Time to grow up, admit that with the “revolution” and anti-capitalism/America rhetoric, it is at BEST a 45% movement and not 99%.

    Then, avoid the establishment DNC and GOP, and join forces with true grassroots Tea Party types to focus on the core problem:Lack of Accountability within a Rule of Law, and the systemic collusion between Government and Finance.Lets get together and cut Wall St./Washington down to size by a renewed understanding and respect for the Rule of Law and Self-governance.

    • Modavations

      Take a bow

    • Proof

      The tea party is a tool of the GOP — they are neither grass roots nor do they seek accountability and the only self-governance that they seek is their own occupation.  Most of the tea party representatives elected are millionaires or multi-millionaires.  Who do they represent?

      • Leatherstocking

        Strange, why did they start during Bush’s term as a result of the bailouts?

        You guys with you rewriting of history are standing in the way of broad based reform of the power elite.

        But your self-righteous partisanship must feel good!

        • Terry Tree Tree

          Why were they so quickly abducted by the Koch brothers, and the GREEDY rich, to put GREEDY rich politicians in office that have tried to eliminate unions and collective bargaining, while using NO-Bid Crony-Capitalism to give over-lucrative contracts to poor performing companies?

  • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

    Nu-cle-ar, not nu-cu-lar!

    • Terry Tree Tree

      ‘W’ usually pronounced it NOOKIE-LAR!

    • nj

      Tri’-fling, not sig-nif’-i-cant

      • Four Elements

        What’s wrong with making the effort to speak correctly?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002398828995 James Scott

    OWS should take all of the evicted to The Mall @DC.  345k people might make politicians listen

  • Jlynfitz

    The 99% must maintain a presence until after the 2012 election if it is to have any lasting impact on the country. We(Americans) must make America work for more than the o1%.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1816544 Dan Trindade

    Right about now seems like a good time for the leaders or organizers of these protests to meet up somewhere and come up with a unified message. They don’t need to form a party or a set of demands or a pledge or anything like that, just a simple message that can sustain them through the winter and bring protesters back out next spring. To do otherwise I think would only lead to the movement being co-opted by politicians and ideologues and eventually be channeled away from what got them out in the first place: a sense of helplessness in the face of growing income inequality, a stagnating economy, and a do-nothing congress coupled with the desire to stand up and say something about it, whether people want to hear it or not.

    • Terry Tree Tree

      Re-direction, by the GREEDY rich, like the TEA Party?  Could that happen?  Oh, it DID!
          Let’s hope OWS, and the others avoid letting the GREEDY rich get control of the movements!

  • Leatherstocking

    Too bad the energy and outrage the Tea Party started during GW Bush’s term following the Bailouts, against the Washington/Wall St. collusion nexus, is being squandered by unfocused Utopian Marxist dreams.

    We can have Rule of Law and Accountability without communism.

    We should stop consuming, and start paying attention and self-governing.

    Liberty and Rule of Law is the American way, and we have lost it over recent decades.

    • nj

      What’s the stage below tiresome and repetitive? LeatherDave has arrived there.

      • Leatherstocking

        How about substance-free bash troll like you and TFRX?

  • Sage.Radachowsky

    I live at Occupy Boston. I am 38 years old and work as a researcher at Harvard. This is the most powerful social movement I have known in my lifetime. The camp form of protest is powerful. It provides a continuous epicenter, a physical space for dialogue, and catalyzes the rest of the population to continue to hold a space in their consciousness. It is also a crucible, an experimental microcosm of human life. Sometimes it feels like Lord of the Flies, and sometimes it feels like the Beginning of the next phase of human evolution. It is a bold act that excites the imagination, far beyond electoral politics, to the possibilities of human life. This is a rupture in the Matrix that suits the power-addicted elites. This is a historical turning point.

    • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

      You’re a researcher at Harvard?  Have you given up your good life to participate in this hairbrained band?  I hope that it’s worth it.

      • Leatherstocking

        It’s easy to feel generous when you’re supported by government research funding. I know.

        • TFRX

          Hilarious! And you wonder why more people with advanced degrees don’t stop at your Libertarian lemonade stand.

          Here we have a genuine OWSer, off the street, and this is the first thing out of your mouth when it comes to retail politicking?

          • nj

            I think it’s a Kool-Aid stand, though.

        • Sage.Radachowsky

          I have a job. What’s your point?

          • Leatherstocking

            When I was a Ph.D. student, supported by an NIH Training grand, I was at my most “radical” regarding the environment, politics etc etc. I had all the answers. Went so far to having dreams of homesteading….  When you really look at how hard a true, self-sufficient living is/would be, it makes you wonder how can all this “plenty” around us come so easy?  All the fluff corporate jobs, or all the expensive research jobs for that matter.

            The tradespeople, the farmers, they live in reality. They do real things, create real value and make “real” money for it.

            The vast majority have been living on derivative money, printed money, debt money.

            I have lost faith with alot of “Progressives” who seem to think we are all entitled to a comfortable material life, just because its a nice idea. No connection to reality of scarcity and productive work.

            The Democrats who they vote for just use the public purse and debt to keep this idea going writ large.

            The mainstream Republicans, doing the same, as well as attempting military domination via debt spending, are a joke too of course.

            I find the libertarian views on personal freedom and the economy, on banking and war, and sound money to be the most honest and reality-based set of ideas out there.

      • Sage.Radachowsky

        No.  I woke up at 6:30 this morning and hopped on the subway at 7, got to work at 7:30 and i am still here. Check your attitude brother.

        • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

          I’m not your brother.

          • Terry Tree Tree

            Not religious?  Not union, Not part of the brotherhood of man?

          • Four Elements

            Silly

  • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

    How about elite replacement?  That’s what it’s all about, no?

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=527065352 Columbine Phoenix

      Not replacement, dissolution.  We’re a democracy, not an aristocracy.  Occupy Wall Street will be necessary until all of the laws apply equally to all of the people, and corporations aren’t afforded the rights of people.  It will take nothing short of a Constitutional amendment – and Rep. Ted Deutch from Florida has proposed just the one.

  • http://www.facebook.com/lindsaykateh Lindsay Curren

    Asking whether Occupy is over now that many have been repressed by state and police power, and because winter is nearing, fails to see not only the immense creativity and drive of the movement both in the streets and online; but it also fails to contextualize that political unleashing midst the myriad predicaments facing our world, problems that aren’t going away in our futures.

    Roiling, contagious sovereign debt crises, escalating climate change, the dire implications of peak oil and energy shortages, means that we’ve only begun to see economies fall, and societies faced with grave and manifold problems that will touch every aspect of our lives. And who brought us this? White collar criminals and their lackeys in governments. The rise of plutocracy and the unseriousness of governance.

    Yes Occupy might have to retreat in order to advance, but advance it will. Finance and government are proving themselves more and more irrelevant to the bulk of society in ways that are productive and meaningful. Something will naturally step in to fill the void. God help us all that the demonstrators can remain non violent, and that the state learns to check its violence against those who would help repair the damage the state and finance have done.

    • Anonymous

      The police aren’t behind making them leave.  They were getting lots of overtime.

      • TFRX

        Genuine question: What does that mean, then? That the police want a constant state of “battle”?

        • Anonymous

          I think most of them wanted to stand around and get paid.  A number of them probably enjoy using brutality. 

  • Chris

    Nobody cares. America is too busy camping out at Best Buy.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

      I didn’t see alot of people shopping. The road was quiet. The consumers - instead of shopping they went to spend their money on vacations.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

    Why do the Media people are asking what next for the OWS movement. Why don’t you ask the federal government in what will they do now after 2 months of protesting but still the Politicians are immune from the Cry of the American people

  • Rob Waters

    It has crossed my mind recently, that when looking at movements in the US, that a counterculture brings in a counterfeit movement. Then comes the real movement which actually brings people together for solutions – and is always recognized as legitimate and caring.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

    You think the consumers are back shopping? Let us see the consumer report this December. It will be a another frustrations for the retailers.

  • Anonymous

    I am pretty sure the 53% will over run the so called 99% when the so called 99% stop getting hand outs from their corporate fat cat funders.

    • TFRX

      What’s 53%?

      Please back up your claptrap from something other than propaganda mills, or fatcattery-funded think tanks.

      • Modavations

        Same numbers I read lad

        • TFRX

          Time to adjust your meds.

          • Modavations

            He tells me this at least 5 times daily

          • TFRX

            I only go on because you’re the one who’s said you’re on them. But don’t listen to me; as the TV ads say, “Consult with your doctor.”

  • anon

    How about calling for a constitutional convention to update our constitution to modern times?

    • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

      Uh, no.  I don’t want the current people in power deciding that the pesky First Amendment needs to go, since it keeps the government from telling us what to think and believe.  There are plenty of other things that our old constitution protects and that we’d lose if we did too much tinkering today.

      • anon

        Really?  Scared because you’re too lazy to participate?  We’d have to force transparency, not let this fall to the elites.

        • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

          And how do you see me as scared or lazy from what I wrote?  Just because I don’t want to tear up something that works well doesn’t mean that I see no solution to our problems.

        • TFRX

          Elites were the guys in the room who adopted the Declaration, and later wrote the Articles of Confederation. Elites were the guys in the room who wrote the Constitution.

          I don’t think it’d be a different slice of our socioeconomic strata today. I do think the people who would get in the door (and those who pull their strings) aren’t trustworthy enough.

          “You play as you practice,” goes the adage. If “practice” is the ordinary legislative process, do you consider that the “play” of another Constitutional convention would be any different? That all those people would put aside their worst instincts for the greater good?

          • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

            The Constitution isn’t at fault here.  It’s a mass of voters who have no idea what they’re doing and tolerate the fools in power.

          • TFRX

            Agreed. But I’ve my antennae out for the first thinktank to get behind the idea of a new Constitutional Convention. Then our Beltway Inbreds will start selling it (I can hear David Brooks’ pablum on it already). Then I’ll know the thinktankers have a plan to keep it all locked up.

    • Leatherstocking

      Yeah, let’s let Geithner, Summers, Paulson and Rubin rewrite it for us…..Or Clinton, Bush, or Obama, who all those guys hide behind.

      Good lord, don’t open up the Constitution at this critical juncture when the wolves are aware we are on to them…..

  • JMC

    So someone that on this board that is against the OWS movement please explain in detail why you feel the continuation of gov and corporate greed is beneficial and how sitting at home doing nothing solves the problem. Thanks

    • Terry Tree Tree

      GOOD QUESTION!

    • Leatherstocking

      Most who are “against” OWS are against Marxist revolutionary nonsense. They are against naive utopian notions of erasing greed and the result of individual choices from the social fabric.

      They are critical of how the big-government status quo colludes with the financial class, to deliver consolidation of power to the Washington/Wall St class, and upset that naive “liberals” refuse to see the Big Government half of the Washington/Wall St. Nexus.

      • JMC

        i support OWS and feel Gov is part of the problem, the difference in Gov is that we can vote out the poicy makers, tell me how you vote out abusive corporations.

        • Leatherstocking

          Via your elected representatives, you establish a set of basic, evenly applied rules to the system, the  Rule of Law, the basis of Western Civilization, and ENFORCE THEM RIGOROUSLY.

          You stop letting the government use DISCRETION, instead of a clear, evenly applied Rule of Law that does not legislate ENDS, just legislates the RULES that cannot be broken in pursuit of ends.

          Otherwise, as we have, the system becomes riddled with favors and loopholes and complication that consolidates power, limits real competition, and allows EVASION OF ACCOUNTABILITY for the elite.

          If Corporations rig and collude, punish them. If you don’t like their products, don’t buy them.

          http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj30n3/cj30n3-3.pdf

      • TFRX

        Can’t talk about the left without shoehorning “Marxist” and “utopian” in everywhere? Check.

        Can’t talk about OWS without equivocating them with the top-down, AFP/Koch Bros/FoxNation Tea baggers? Check.

        Can’t help but wish, starry-eyed, that lefties will join forces with the racist, anti-gay/lesbian, xenophobic, anti-”elites” Tea baggers? Check.

        You’re making soooo much sense right now.

        • Leatherstocking

          You are becoming irrelevant TFRX.  There is plenty of Marxist and Utopian thinking in the OWS movement. Fact. We are old enough to talk about it.

          There are large swaths of America who are skeptical about government power, and who are NOT the “racist, anti-gay/lesbian, xenophobic, anti-”elites” Tea baggers” strawmen that bring you so much pleasure rolling in the hay with.

          Your view and self-righteousness will never get anywhere until you have control of the gas chambers and can start removing the masses who don’t share your vision, whatever that is.

          • TFRX

            Pfft.

            You continue to use the terms “Marxism” and “utopian” as shock words to scare RealAmerica(TM) into apoplexy about the left. Great job equating the systems that keep RealAmerica(TM)’s parents and grandparents out of the poorhouse with “Marxism”; that doesn’t even sell to them now.

            And when the moderate Republicans who aren’t all hepped up about the gays, lesbians, brown people, and women having sex without the Fundies’ permission are able to take down the right-wing crazies, I’ll listen to the moderate Republicans. Right now all the Eisenhower Republicans are retiring or putting on wolves’ clothing so the Teabaggers don’t primary them.

            Have you not seen a single minute of the Republican pep rallies that pass for “debate”? Is your head that far up or down a hole?

          • Leatherstocking

            Eisenhower Republicans and Clinton Democrats? So more of the same for you?

            We have a democratic/political/economic crisis that is a direct result of our decades of 2-party ping-pong rule that has done nothing but mock the Rule of Law by creating an ever-more-complicated legislative maze used to provide crony favors and assure re-elections and establishment of the D and R brands.

            We have gone along like good lemmings because the free stuff has been so good.

            We are hitting a reality wall now, and need to figure out what we will replace ALL THE BUMS  with.

            I am arguing for a renewed commitment to American ideals and Rule of Law society, that supports free market competition and individual opportunity, but that HARSHLY PUNISHES GAME RIGGERS AND CORRUPTION FOR A CHANGE, that I think a great majority could rally behind. Much more support than some new Socialism view and One World loss of sovereignty to Financial technocrats would ever garner here.

          • Leatherstocking

            If what you mean by Eisenhower Republicans would support that, then just say so, and help start building a Coalition for fundamental reform.

            We can do fundamental reform and a renewal of an Accountability, Rule of Law culture, without a socialist revolution.

            We need to keep the heat on the Wall St. perpetrators and Washington protectors.  We don’t need social engineering.

          • TFRX

            I’d respond, but this conversation you’re having with myself is something I’d rather sell popcorn to than interrupt.

          • Modavations

            Take a bow

        • Modavations

          From the guy who thinks MSNBC is real news.What’s up with ace Poverty Pimp,Al Sharpton.He seems to be wasting away.Has he got the “sickness”?

    • Modavations

      This was all caused by Fannie-Freddie,according to Mayor Bloomberg.I blame Greenspan for keeping interestv rates so low,that it created the Housing Bubble.Same with the Tech Bubble.Term Limits-Gold Standard,problem solved

      • mary elizabeth.

        You keep spewing false information.  Google the sub-prime fiasco ratio for the  facts.  Bloomberg is wrong.

        • Modavations

          Bloomberg made a billion bucks.He probably knows more about business then everyone on this forum combined,except me

  • Anonymous

    Gregg,

    I am thinking Sage.Radachowsky misspoke, and he is truly the researched, not a researcher.  I suppose there is also a chance he is researching the drug trade of college students from the inside… Wink Wink

  • Anonymous

    There is nothing wrong with the constitution other than we don’t follow it.  What do you want to change?

  • Sage.Radachowsky

    It is about BOTH revolution AND evolution.   It is about reinstating Glass-Steagall, and it is about a completely new kind of society that will emerge if we enact REAL DEMOCRACY.

    • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

      Would you care to be specific?  Revolution means changing the current government by force.  Evolution means genetic change.

      • mary elizabeth.

        Genetic change and change in consciousness.  We are more than skin and bones.  Spirit runs through us.

        • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

          Hippy-dippy nonsense.

        • Leatherstocking

          My God. (atheist) That is all fine and good for you to believe, and by all means pursue it in your own life, family and circles, but please don’t try to overthrow our Representative, Constitutional mechanism of Self government, and our individual personal and economic liberty within it, for some dream of the Celestine Prophecy that will save us from corrupt financiers and tyrannical governments.

        • Four Elements

          Believing in spirit does not imply hippy nonsense. Don’t let materialistic morons get you down.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002398828995 James Scott

    The OWS needs it’s own political party for the near future.  This is a great forum for debate (ows fb), but it’s all over the place.  Could this be the reality of our corporation (america) today?  Or is it evidence that we (US) need a politcal and economic overhaul.  Other major countries had had similar revolutions take place recently – why not US?  Or are we so Right that we are becoming more like Syria, Iran – desiring to squash the voices of opposition.  Wake up U.S.!!

  • Anonymous

    Too often in our society we confuse symbol with reality. Attempting to hold land in conflict with city officials who should be natural allies throws away political capital on defending a symbol. Structure, strategy, and leadership will be necessary for OWS to make a lasting difference.

  • Anonymous

    How can Occupy be a powerful movement if it has no list of demands, and Occupy is doing nothing to make our country better, they are only having a big camp out that no one knows much about.

    • JMC

      you know enough to take the time out to comment on the unknown demands, it is clear to most what they want and is naive or just plain predetermined ideology to ignore what they are protesting. I think you and I are very clear on the issues they are stating in the movement.

      • Anonymous

        Ok, please list the universal demands of all of the Occupy movements and please cite 3 sources.

        • JMC

          have you been living in a cave?

          • Anonymous

            No, and that is why I know definitively that the Occupy movement can’t agree on much of anything.  In my city, 5 Occupy protesters have been put on radio shows for an hour each and none of them can give anything but broad generalities.  They also seem to not know answers to simple questions like; Who is the FED? Who is your senator? who is your congressman?  

          • JMC

            the educated and highly regarded “experts” have put us in this economic divide, I am fully aware of what they are protesting and refuse to put my faith into the status quo any longer, it is a ponzi scheme and shouting down the opposition to the current system is only being stubbornly naive to what you know is inherently broken.

          • Anonymous

            I am still waiting for your list….

            That will never come.

            Thanks for showing your are full of wind but no facts.

          • JMC

            go back to your cave and learn how to read, i am not here to provide you with a moral compass

    • mary elizabeth.

      Occupy is more than bodies camping out.  It is a new level of consciousness rising among the people.  Long after the  tents have folded, the voice it gives to those who want a better, more just, less violent  world will  continue in the voting booths  and the illuminations it has brought forth.   Not to mention a global community with renewed spirit  and  sense of power.

      • Anonymous

        If the Occupy movement wants a less violent  world, why have there been so many violent attacks in their camps and so many people arrested.  I don’t remember seeing any Tea Party People being attacked by each other or arrested for anything? 

        • Sage.Radachowsky

          I am an Occupier, and I think this is an excellent question. Sometimes it feels like Lord of the Flies in camp. There are threats of violence, there is some actual violence, there is some drug use. Tea Party did not camp out for months … this leads to an evolution of camp as a safe space for some people who treat it like “Occu-Stock” — however, it is also a laboratory for figuring out how to help people with serious issues, and how to regulate human society through different, nonviolent means. I don’t know if we’ll succeed. However, i think it’s a worthy experiment, to a point. There is also a HUGE amount of positive interaction for every negative incident you may hear of in the news, and negative incidents of those kinds happen EVERY DAY outside the Occupy camps and do not make the news. That is very important to note. Occupy did not create these things, only created a place where a press with the motivation to demonize Occupy can latch onto certain incidents.

          • Leatherstocking

            As a Bostonian, you should appreciate we already had an American Revolution and a well thought out set of ideals based on the reflections on human nature of the founders, put into our Constitution.

            Time re-examine our founding ideals and to understand the mechanisms that are there to prevent tyranny again.  There is no reason we can’t use our model to stop Banking tyranny, as long as we are all largely on the same page regarding Rule of Law and Accountability, Voting and holding representatives accountable to our demands for a real, executed Rule of Law.

            We don’t need to re-invent the wheel, we just need to dust it off and use it again. That is what is so frustrating about all the revolutionary OWS rhetoric.  It will lead to a replacement of our round wheel with a square one that has already been shown to be a failure.

            Perfection is the enemy of the good or whatever that saying is. You may wish we could levitate, but a round wheel is pretty damn good.

        • TFRX

          Because the cops have been attacking them? See: NYC, Oakland, Davis, just for a start.

          I’d offer you a dollar to buy a clue, but I think you should wait until you get $5 and can go in for the “6 clues for $5″ special.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

    We will keep on Marching until the Politicians and Wall Street do something about our frustrations. The American People’s Frustrations.

    • Leatherstocking

      We have self-government here in case you forgot. I know, its hard to believe.

      This entitlement attitude for “somebody” to do something and letting the elite (Summers et al) take care of us, has been our undoing.

    • Proof

      Take Congress — don’t wait for them to give you something!

      • Modavations

        Fax68 another “gimme kid”.He was complaining about having to pay for his worthless Liberal Arts degree

  • Leatherstocking

    Where was “Sarah” when the Tea Party outrage at the Bush/Paulson bailouts started?

  • tired of hate

    The OWS protests have grown from one park in New York City, to hundreds around the world. Check this out..
    http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-spreads-worldwide/100171/

  • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

    Caller Sarah,

    If you push your words out hard enough, that makes them true.  Where’d you get that idea?

  • Modavations

    My animous to gays is this and only this.They talked  Randy Weingarten into neglecting Reading,Writing and Arithmetics for “Jimmy’s got two Daddy’s”

    • Anonymous

      What do you blame your teacher’s failure to teach you to spell animus on?

      • Modavations

        I’m typing with my nose.Richard Wolfe popped into my mind and my wrists went limp.Answer my charge and quit wasting our time

        • nj

          Gee, and all this time i thought you were just plopping your butt up and down on your keyboard.

  • Anonymous

    Slovakia, Belarus, and Hungary have the most income equality.  Why are we trying to be more like these poor backwards country?  The US is 1000x better then these countries in almost every way.

    • Modavations

      Vilnius<Lithuania is the murder capital of the world.Another haven of the Left

      • Modavations

        Vilnius,Lithuania is the murder capital of the world.Another shining light of the Left

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000309694846 Shaun Hensley

    We stay on the ground through winter and enjoy the bounty of support and new recruits come spring when the people at large see that we are steadfast and resolute.

  • Occupier from Boston

    To the people that believe the Occupy movement needs a list of demands:

    The Occupy movement does not need a list of demands. 1.) Because our politicians know why we are pissed, they are not stupid. 2.) A list of demands will ruin this movement because the media will focus on those demands and will start to ignore the movement. 3.) A list of demands might be different for every Occupy movement, do you believe a list of demands from Boston will be the same list of demands from South Dakota?

    The movement needs to remain demandless. Every American sees something wrong with this nation, it is our time to fix these problems. We need to stop relying on politicians and start to rely on ourselves to fix these problems.

    • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

      A movement is useless unless it does something.  You have to have something that you want and something that you’re willing to do.  At the moment, it sounds like a schziophrenic revolution of lead by the ADHD crowd.

      • Modavations

        WRKO on Wednesday,played the guys chanting….2,4,6,8,where should we go  defecate

        • nj

          This sucked the first time you posted it.

          • Modavations

            Do you find anything wrong with this chant.I also saw a clip of some kid with a sign that said “George Washington was a war Criminal”

      • Four Elements

        Your definition of “something” is not the only definition.

    • Paul, Boston MA

      Every American does see something wrong. But you have to start somewhere. Occupy began with one simple message – Get Wall Street’s mega-bucks and mega-influence out of the Government.

      (Thinking that this problem will be fixed outside the political process is pie-in-the-sky.)

      Should Occupy Boston and Occupy South Dakota have the same simple demand? Yes.

    • nj

      Legislation, regulations, trade agreements, etc. are the institutional tools that have created or exacerbated the problems we seek to solve. Under our current system, politicians act (or are supposed to act) as the representatives of the interests of the People.

      It would seem like politicians would be one of the main ways to effect the changes we seek.

      • Ellen Dibble

        But politicians have to spend some huge percent of their time keeping connections with the moneybags who fund their campaigns.  When your representative says he/she’s always available for meetings, that doesn’t mean in his office, or your office; it may not even mean in a church basement if the group is dedicated to a cause other than lining your campaign coffers.  He’s looking for an invite from a group prepared to offer a lot of money, and sotto voce, to have particular legislative interests that if not met will cause them to withhold that funding.
             If you want to be a legislator, you have to want to do a TON of schmoozing, and almost exclusively with wealthy and organized “interests,” lobbyists and their hangers-on.
            Being a legislator means less and less about earning your federal salary and benefits by doing the daily legislating.  If you want to to do that — to corral the energies of the people of a particular constituency, zero in on a goal etc.), don’t expect a salary, certainly not from Big Pharma, or Big Oil, etc.  Expect to do it on a volunteer basis, in a tent, door-to-door, with no predetermined constitution to tell you how to get an agenda item from here to there.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002398828995 James Scott

    Our government is not the problem- too many special interest $$ (lobbyists) pushing them around.  Regulate the fed.  stop paying lobbyists. disolve Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. REGULATE THE BANKS

  • Ellen Dibble

    I’m not sure greed is to blame; I think it’s the giant sucking sound taught in the business schools that is geared toward creating maximum profit at the top.  The Object in our version of capitalism is exactly to siphon the maximum amount of money into where it can be called profit and shared among investors (a lot of us, especially older ones).
        So to shift that as a value would be pretty elemental.
        The “greed” seems to me more to relate to power, the need to be able to manipulate Congress in order to maintain all that’s good about the status quo.
        Personally, I challenge the artists to help us define success as success versus outsize power.  After a point, more money is more power, not larger cars and gizmos.  I don’t think greed makes those maxed out on personal needs to keep accumulating $$.  I think they’re serving stockholders, for instance.  So it’s the system that brings us this ever greater inequality.  It’s about creating greater profit, which if it’s actually exploiting those with less money, heck, we’ve been into exploitation since the beginning.

    • Modavations

      Madam,rich guys live in the same world as you.They breath the same air as you.They want everyone to prosper,so you’ll buy product.Laissez Faire guys say Soc.Justice is everyone being affluuent,Dems.say confiscate their hard work,redistribute so that  everyone is equally miserable and poor.I prefer my brand of Social Justice

      • Anonymous

        Social Justice is about human rights and the dignity of every human being. You seem to have issues with this unless the people are rich.

        • Modavations

          The raison d’etre of the Left is keeping poor people,poor.After all,who needs the social worker when everyone iis affluent.All pathologies originate in poverty.

          • Ellen Dibble

            Those would be the rich people on the left, who find tax deductions in offering benefits to the poor.  Win-win; the poor become dependent on us, and we on them.  And without the poor, how could they keep the moral high ground by using those deductions?

          • Modavations

            Teach them to fish madam.We don’t need Social Workers,we need fishermen

      • Terry Tree Tree

        What percentage of rich guys risk their lives to protect the lives and property of others, regardless of race, color, creed, gender, or financial status?
            What percentage of rich guys stop on the road to help a stranded motorist?
            How many rich guys live where they have to smell the stench, or take the risks of the pollution that makes them rich?
           PROVE they live in the same world, breathe the same air!  With so many blocks thrown in the way of aspiring business-people, they PROVE they DON’T want ANYONE else to become affluent, much less, EVERYONE!

    • Terry Tree Tree

      I see that as CRIMINAL, IMMORAL, GREED!  GREED for MORE POWER, over the already dis-advantaged, that they COULD help!  A hundred-mile-per-hour yatch, swamping all other boats!

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Dale-Bogucki/100000618708499 Dale Bogucki

    Just getting started!!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

    We will not go away. 2 months is just the beginning of a long civil disobedience of the American people. You tear gas,mazed,arrested and beat us but we will come back again to protest until we are heard.

    • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

      I thought that you lived in Manilla–or so you’ve said.

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

        I used to live in Manila. I am here in Boston for about 20 yrs now.

        • Modavations

          And you haven’t learned a god damn thing about free men and free enterprise

          • Leatherstocking

            The warm glow was attractive, who cares about the “why”?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Dale-Bogucki/100000618708499 Dale Bogucki

    Here in Toedo, Ohio we will be doing work on foreclosed homes. We will work to keep people in houses in process, and put people in the ones people have moved out of. Then come spring, who knows? Maybe we’ll be occupying public space again.

  • JMC

    OWS will gain ground when they begin voter registration drives at the encampments with candidates from the movement, just a fact. Registration cards should be held up like a referendum in the face of the naysayers.

  • guy1

    Simple: They go home, back to there parents basement until they finally suck it up and work at McDonalds just like the rest of us. I f you dont like the U.S government then vote out the corrupt politicians if not they get out, no one if forcing you to stay here.

  • Ellen Dibble

    Will encampments stay?  As one in New England, I can say my city is hanging on.  Our mayor actually bought a portapotty and gave it to the local OWS encampment, and negotiated a spot for them to occupy (a church’s front lawn) that would not infringe on rules about our little park.  They are closer to City Hall now, and the tents look sort of planted, though they have to come down during weddings.

  • Anonymous

    Just tuned in. Is Tom asking dumb questions or not!  Wow!  I’m guessing he’s talking to the rep for ‘StandUP  Chicago’ and she’s terrific.  But Tom …!

    • Anonymous

      I agree. I can’t believe how ill-informed he is on the OWS.
      The next show on how the corporate lobbyist are going to open our cell phones to robo calls is a a very good example of how the government is in the pockets of corporations.

      If you ask me these two topics are somewhat linked.  

      • Anonymous

        I finally signed off after maybe ten minutes, tops.  He was shocking.  He has lapsed into a kind of lazy imitation of Fox, offering two choices on each issue.  For or again, socialist or capitalist, OWS or tea party, Manichean or outta here!  But that woman from Chicago was impressive, the little I heard of her call.

        Perhaps we should think about what kind of people we have become when we insist that Occupy hand us a list of demands — do our thinking for us, tweet us a quick message, spare us the hard work of listening and engaging.

    • Four Elements

      Yes. Sometimes I listen in spite of him – too much interrupting and too much golly gee intensity.

  • http://twitter.com/Matt_Burton Matt Burton

    Just getting started.

  • Proof

    I know wall street types that think nothing of taking the day off to golf, but would readily fire their secretary for being 10 minutes late to work.  This is the problem — self righteousism!  We have returned to a Dickensonian world!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

    We Don’t need Food, We don’t need money. We don’t need jobs.

    You give us these but the government will still be the same as ever before.

    We need more change!!!

    • Anonymous

      You can keep your change and I will keep my freedom!

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

        You cannot have Freedom without Change.

        • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

          Why not?  Freedom is the ability to do as I choose.

      • Steve

        Your freedom will not be assured without change.

        • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

          Change, by itself, is just change.  It isn’t necessarily in a good direction.

      • Anonymous

        Define freedom. Your idea of it seems to be more about control than freedom. 

      • Modavations

        Moi aussi!!!

  • David from Lowell

    I think there’s a generational divide at play between those who grew up in the internet-era and are fine operating in a diverse, diffuse, multi-faceted, networked movement, and an older generation who feel the need for a more linear, planned, and clearly-defined path from A to B.  It seems those from the older generation always ask for a direct explanation of this movment translates to actual change, while actual change is already occurring all around them.  

    • Steve

      David,

      do not discount the older generations if you hope to translate your dissatisfaction into change.

      I am 55 and am sympathetic to and have been voicing  quite specific objections of my own  for years.

      if you are truly interested in the 99% and not just seeking an edge to grow your piece of the pie, enlist us – you are not alone.

      • TFRX

        Yep. I’ve characterized a good number of folks older than I as Rascalbaggers (showing up to Tea Party events on their Medicare-bought Rascal scooters) but I know a bunch of them don’t cotton to that philosophy. One is wise to not conflate the two simply because of a single demographic charateristic.

  • Steve

    I think that the media, including NPR and Tom Ashbrook, are uncertain as to how to characterize OWS and are desperately seeking to shoe-horn the dissatisfaction into the Democratic/Republican horse race.

    It is my hope that the protests on both the left and the right are deeper than that.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Debby-Zamorski/100000596613539 Debby Zamorski

    The aim of OWS is to educate Americans about information that is propelling us to seek reform of the system we currently have in place, ie corporate person-hood, egregious abuse of power by corporations which can be amply illustrated with a reading of the most recent GAO audit of the Federal Reserve as well as a look at the finances of our elected representatives and the systemic inequities of the political process of representation. We are also poised at the brink of losing the freedoms that we cherish, because of the “battleground” now being declared to be on US soil. Congress acts on legislation  today or tomorrow – and If enacted, sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA would:
    1  Explicitly authorize the federal government to indefinitely imprison without charge or trial American citizens and others picked up inside and outside the United States;
    2  Mandate military detention of some civilians who would otherwise be outside of military control, including civilians picked up within the United States itself; and
    3  Transfer to the Department of Defense core prosecutorial, investigative, law enforcement, penal, and custodial authority and responsibility now held by the Department of Justice.
    To me this is really scary.

    • Terry Tree Tree

      Totalitarian State!  NO Democracy, No Republic, NO Justice, NO Morals!

  • JustMe

    Hopefully this is just the beginning! Democracy should not just be for the few. We have been asleep, falsely lulled into thinking we were doing the right thing with our 9 – 5 jobs (or not) that went no where and trying to keep up with ever increasing expenses that break us. Ever notice when you get that 1% raise that you immediately get the letters from all of the utility companies, the colleges, the health care companies, etc that they have tried to control expenses but need to raise their rates 9 – 10%. By the time they are done you are in the hole and then some. Why did they need those increases? It wasn’t to give the regular employees decent cost of living raises. It was to reward their top tier management and get bigger returns for their investors – the top 1% of the 1%. While this was happening our schools and towns had less and less funds to provide basic services and decent educations for our children. Our senior citizens had to worry about how to survive their autumn years. Do we really want this type of America? Now our middle class is falling, losing their homes, and being told they must be doing something wrong when they can’t find jobs after years of being productive and good employees. I for one was not paying attention but I’m alert now and feel very strongly that the Occupy Movement must continue.  Keep the dialogue going and keep the pressure on for change.

    • Terry Tree Tree

      Good Morning Sunshine!! Please Stay awake?

    • Terry Tree Tree

      Good Morning Sunshine!! Please Stay awake?

  • Charles A. Bowsher

     The Citizens United Debacle is the most important decision the Supreme Court has made in my lifetime (55 years). Question is, how do we, as lowly citizens get them to re-visit it and overturn it? There can be no question or argument made that will convince me it was properly decided.  The Supreme Court must answer for its  refusal to recognize the simple fact that corporations are already, and always have been represented in our political process and system. “They” (corporations) are represented by their owners, their shareholders and their customers. That ought to be enough representation for anyone!

    Besides, how will “They” ever be able to fit into a non-electronic voting booth?

    • Modavations

      What’s the difference between IBM and a Union.

      • Terry Tree Tree

        Are you THAT ignorant?

        • Modavations

          And the difference is what

          • TFRX

            Terry-cubed, apparently Moda is that ignorant.

    • Terry Tree Tree

      GREAT!  CONCISE!

  • Leatherstocking

    Good question caller.  They claim 99%, but the socialist views don’t come anywhere near 50%.

    • TFRX

      Always seeing Socialism (oogedy boogedy!!!) everywhere. You’d make a good warrior for Sen. Joe McCarthy.

      • Modavations

        McCarthy was right.Ever hear about Algier Hiss

        • Anonymous

          Do you rally believe this stuff you post? Or are you just trying to get people to react to your ill-informed bromides.

          • Modavations

            You’re sweating again son

          • TFRX

            You’re slacking off, not calling Jeffe a girl. Maybe you need a break.

        • TFRX

          Ah, the “Frank Drebin” excuse: Shooting into a crowd at a shoplifter and hitting fifty bystanders, one of whom turned out to be a drug dealer.

          Nice to know you’ll never get caught in the fire.

          • Modavations

            FDR was Uncle Joe’s soul mate.They met in Malta to divide up the world.

          • TFRX

            Pathetic rerun. Haven’t you got any new material?

        • Gregg

          Ann Coulter wrote great book about it.

        • Four Elements

          No. But I have heard of ALGER Hiss. 

    • Anonymous

      53% of the US pay federal income taxes.  Those people are truly the backbone of the US economy and they are not part of the so called 99%

      • Anonymous

        Not true. This is a false statement based on 0 understanding of the tax structure we have. I pay income taxes and while I get a refund it’s not nearly as much as I pay in taxes. I’m part of the 99%.
        Oh well there goes your argument.

        • Anonymous

          You are incorrect as usual.  Please read the IRS data for your self.  The 53% have government reports showing the fact that only 53% of Americans pay Federal income taxes.

          • Anonymous

            Everyone pays FICA. It’s a federal tax. You seem to forget that.
            You also are using data based on people who do not get refunds of have not done a long form to get them. The info you post is bogus and skewed for your right wing agenda.

          • Modavations

            His his #’s are correct

          • Anonymous

            Jeffe,

            unlike you I post facts.  Like Federal income tax accounts for 45% of total federal revenue as of FY2008 and Payroll taxes only pay 33% of the bill.

            It is true that 53% of Americans pay for 100% of the Federal income tax.

            http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numbers/revenue.cfm

      • JMC

        they pay only the fraction that is reported, if you use 100% of the average taxpayers utility, roads, education, workers (those that you actually dont outsource), yet move 80% of your revenues to offshore accounts to avoid supporting the resources of a country and citizens that put you in the position of wealth you are part of the problem. The amount of taxes most corporations pay compared to the resources they consume is completely out of balance and their overseas balance sheets for actual revenue is your factual evidence.

      • TFRX

        I’ll remember to bang your dimwitted bulb with this 53% crap the next time you bring up any other tax besides Fed Inc Tax.

        Apparently to you, that’s the only one that matters. Go talk to someone working two part time jobs and ask them what they pay taxes on. I dare you.

        • Ellen Dibble

          Let’s see, say I pay $15,000 in Social Security/Medicare taxes, and then I get a big enough deduction from half of that, so my income tax shrinks down to $1,000.  If I bought another special software for my business, that $1,000 would shrink to zero.  That’s an idea, depending on what next year promises to be.  

          However, that $15,000 is not put in the bank for me in retirement.  No, I think it’s going to pay for the war in Iraq, which certainly seems to be in the interests of the defense contractors.  

          So I’m thinking maybe whoever actually benefitted from that war  should start to think about how to help reduce the $13 trillion in debt.  If the solution turns out to be adding a 10 percent federal tax to that special software I’ll be needing, I’ll think of how nice it would be to able to use a nice tax deduction on Schedule A, like a contribution to the Red Cross, to reduce that 10 percent federal tax on my next, highly selective purchase.

        • Anonymous

          While I know that Federal income tax revenue is the largest source of federal revenue, I suppose it is only 45% of the bill as of FY2008.  

          Apparently you think that it was a lot smaller piece of the pie since you don’t pay for any of it!

          • TFRX

            Say that to my face, you little turd.

    • nj

      Says Dave continuing to misrepresent the Occupiers and “socialism.”

  • Leatherstocking

    Tom, 

    How about we try Accountability and Rule of Law before we have a socialist revolution.

    Please recall your Bill Black and Glenn Greenwald shows.

    • nj

      And yet Bill Black supports the Occupiers. Imagine.

      • Leatherstocking

        What’s your point? I’m all for the OWS developing a rational focus and demanding we re-establish, if not finally truly adopt, the ideals of our Constitution and founders.

  • Bob from Vermont

    Occupy Congress. Wait until next spring when the campaign season heats up and the cheery blossoms bloom. DC will still be balmy by the first Tuesday in November. Add some sport coats and skirts. The OWS and its cousins throughout the nation frankly have been too bohemian for much of middle America.

    • Ellen Dibble

      If I were going to camp out, I would take off my Brooks Brothers wardrobe and trade that for clothes that drip dry in the rain and so on.  I would do that especially if I took into consideration the types of people that camp out all winter anyway, and whose modus operandi includes making off with anything that can be resold, or traded, or simply taken.  If you have the $100,000-a-year types camping there, they probably don’t know exactly what it’s like to spend the night with those who usually occupy the alleys and doorways when it gets cold, but see a good thing, a safer sleeping place, when it occurs.

  • Charles A. Bowsher

    To the caller, It is not “Wealth Redistribution” when a thief is made to return what they stole. They should then have to go to jail Alexander!

    • Modavations

      90% of American Millionaires are self made and first generation.You know why the Left hates Forest Gump..He’s self made,that’s why.

      • TFRX

        Yes, there’s nothing the left agrees on more than venting its ire against fictional characters.

        Now if someone could do something about that little jerk Peter Parker, always faking photos and trying to tell us Spider-Man isn’t a masked thug.

      • Terry Tree Tree

        What percentage are drug-dealers, ‘Pain-Clinic’ owners, Banksters, Credit-Default Fraudsters, PayCheck Loan sharks, and other criminals?

        • Modavations

          Knock the classist chip off you’re shoulder,make some bucks and I’ll take you on a Mexican Arq. dig.Me and Indy are treasure hunters

  • JMC

    I love how socialism is stated to be the evil and capitalism has worked in harmony, are we that brainwashed to not see the clear problems of both and not willing to take the elements from both to create a balance, is it all or nothing? That clearly does not work on either ends of the spectrum.

    • Modavations

      Even Socialist Spain is “NO MAS”

      • Anonymous

        Do know the history of Spain? I’m worried about fascism coming back into the political fold. It could happen in both Greece and Spain.  

        • Leatherstocking
          • nj

            Scandinavia is clearly lurching toward totalitarianism.

          • Modavations

            Finland is run by Jyrski,his party is libertarian.i thiink it’s the National Coalition Party).Sweden is run by Reinfeldt,the Moderate Party and is center right.I don’t know what Norway is.The PM is Stoltenberg and I think it’s a center-green paerty coalition.When the population of your country is 13-20million white guys, you can adhere to any economic model

        • Modavations

          I know a little about everything.

          • Ellen Dibble

            A little learning is a dangerous thing;
            drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
            there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
            and drinking largely sobers us again.(Alexander Pope, 1709)

          • Modavations

            A suggestion Madam,read Adam Smith

          • Modavations

            I lied,you know I know everything about everything.I didn’t want to hurt his feelings

      • JMC

        I agree that pure Socialism is not the answer, but neither is the current form of Capitalism, also it is safe to say we already are practicing Socialism in the U.S., it is just distributed to a smaller population. 

        • Modavations

          That’s why we had the anti-monopoly laws.

  • Sam

    Guy1, “back to their parents’ basements”?  At 65, my parents are long gone, along with their basement. 1. These people are not all kids, by any stretch! But to the extent they are, look around the world, friend. As is usually the case in history and presently, it’s the youth who start revolutions. 2. Many of us HAVE JOBS but object to being paid far less than we were a few years and decades ago, while the “top guys” are making multiples more than they did years ago. I, for one, work three jobs, college degree in my 45 year field, and I make about one fifth of what I was paid in 1980, adjusted for inflation. Class warfare  has been being waged on us for 40 years!

  • Ellen Dibble

    Small d democratic, the guest is saying.
    “Oh, me, I go home and crash and watch TV with two beers and chips, and I vote for the one with the ads that most state my position.
    Oh, yes, I’m a voter.  I can just a candidate by his or her ads, oh, yes.  How else?”
    Isn’t that closer to the elections in the USSR, where you had a choice, but they all represented the Communist party or ideology?

    • Steve

      People in the USSR preferred vodka.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

    The Media should ask the Government What Now after 2 months of protesting? not us OWS and the 99% percent group.

    Why don’t the Mayors and Governors have a Forum with OWS in every parks in America.

  • Tim

    So long as corruption permeates our government, Occupy will still be here. As long as our politicians can be bought by corporations, Occupy will keep fighting.

  • tncanoeguy

    It’s not about redistributing wealth, but allowing for equal opportunity.  More and more the deck is stacked against too many people.  The dismantling of unions and globalization of corporations is leaving people powerless against influential and monied interests.  Congress looks out for their interests, not necessarily the interests of the majority of people. 

  • Daniel Baldor

    I believe it is time to Occupy local politics — the movement will be nothing but a blip in history if there are no good candidates in the political pipelines to ensure its continuity. This is a powerful tactic that will vet candidates in the maintenance of democracy; ‘maintenance’ because we have seen economic injustice outlive every major political movement along with a population that thinks “this is it!” every time a small victory is won on their behalf. The fight never ends in democracy.

    • nj

      : : :  *ding, ding , ding*  : : : We have a winner!

      This is exactly what the Teabaggers (and the Christian right before them, in the 80s) did to achieve the level of success (such as it was) they did. They started with local boards and commissions, then moved up to the state and federal levels.

      The progressives/occupiers need to develop the same strategy. Get invovled, it works! I’ve seen it firsthand.

  • Gilscott-heron

    The problem with the occupy movement is the same thing that is wrong with a liberal agenda that supports the top one percent. I see it where I live a strong low income housing movment that is supported by the top one tax breaks which ends up pushing wages lower and supports the cycle of poverty at a national level.  You know the Walmart conundrum we want cheap goods made in china and Walmart pays slave wages so we need to build slave wage huts to support Walmart corporate structure so the pigs at the top feast and the shrinking middle supports them.
    Until we smash all of the system even the supports nothing will happen that forces the real change.
    We shouldnt be left begging scraps or shaving off a nick from the top on e percent.
    Thats the problem if over half of us are not paying taxes and we beg money from the top this will continue.

    The Occupy movement is populated by a bunch of kids who have never worked hard for a living  it is an astroturf BS so far.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=527065352 Columbine Phoenix

    We’re already going where we need to go – not abandoning our camps, but establishing lines of communication between Left and Right, and solidifying, not demands, but the core of the necessary restoration:  SAME LAWS FOR ALL.  No “too big to fail,” no “corporations are people,” no revolving door between boardroom and government, no Citizens United miscarriage of justice.  If that’s still too confusing for most people, we’ll just keep on finding new ways to express it until nobody can play dumb any more.

    • Terry Tree Tree

      EXCELLENT!!

  • Jonathan Senin

    TOM! I’m Jonathan Senin, I’m a part of Boston University Occupies Boston.  We see the Occupy movement as a catalyst for a larger social movement that at the very least questions the status quo at the most fundamental levels.  The intellectual side of this has culminated into our Declaration of Intellectual Independence, which ask very simple questions like how has the military-industrial complex influenced our relationship with the military, why is our police militarized, what is advertising’s influence our on consciousness, is the emphasis on standardized testing destroying creative imagination?  The actual physical manifestation of this is our plan for a National Convention, which will coincide with next years elections.  We plan to get around 2000 people… THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

    • nj

      Keep us posted. I’d bet there are a lot of people wanting to jump and and get involved but can’t go (or don’t see the point in) camping out in a park.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002398828995 James Scott

    MARCH ON THE MALL!! and stay there….

    Demand a refund from the banks that stole trillions claiming too big to fail….we are the job creators….blah,blah,blah.

    False Advertising: no jobs were created  REFUND $13T

    • Leatherstocking

      I’d be up for a one time confiscation of all wealth from the Banking/Wall St/Finance industry, directly dispersed to the People.

      Start fresh from there with a limited government, strong Rule of Law, organic free markets society based on core American principles.

      I think given the corrupt crash, a case could be made for that, which would satisfy most peoples thirst for justice.

      At the same time it doesn’t pretend that some new Marxist system is going to deliver us from our duty to remain vigilant in protecting the Rule of Law that makes our freedom possible.

      • nj

        Arrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhh!!!! Someone, please make it stop!!

        “Organic, free markets” With unicorns and elves, no doubt.

      • Modavations

        Nonsense.I’d be for it if and only if it is used to reduce debt

  • Kristina S.

    I hope the OWS will eventually get the discussion on the real point. How to adjust our government and society to align with our values.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

    OWS and the 99% should have a leader than can be heard across the world.

    • Etapollo13

      id rather see millions of leaders… they can be heard across the world alot better

  • Scott B, Jamestown NY

    OWS needs to get out of it’s fear of having a leadership. While it’s good that they want to make sure that it remains true to its democratic ideal, at some point anarchy must give way, as all anarchies do, and chose some better ideals to get behind, or risk having it  fail entirely, or co-opted by some less-than-beneficial agenda, the way the Tea Party was.

    They need to make their case that it’s not about government, regulation, and capitalism. It’s about bad government, bad regulation (or bad regulation in the case of Wall St and big banks), and bad capitalism, and how to start fixing it, largely by getting those involved in capitalism separated from those in government.

    Reihan is taking the argument about incarceration being a bigger factor in upward mobility is fallacy of logic.  While it might be a factor some some sub-groups, on the whole the vast majority Americas have not been incarcerated and suffering from it. Maybe incarceration wouldn’t be an issue for those groups if we didn’t have a for-profit penal system that rewards law enforcement with more money and more power for jailing more people, with different sets of laws for different groups using the same drugs. Cocaine is cocaine, but somehow it being crack makes it worse for the groups that can’t afford to snort it as a powder. 

  • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

    Then caller, you just listen to the radio while you’re looking for a job (if you’re bothering).

    • Sage.Radachowsky

      Go grind your axe on actual facts, instead of engaging in ad hominem arguments against people you do not know. Your method of dialogue sickens me.

      • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

        Listen to what he said.  He’s claiming a status that he doesn’t have.

        • Sage.Radachowsky

          I am simply asking you not to make ad hominem arguments against people you don’t know, with things that you are supposing about them. You did that to me and you did that to a caller.

          • Modavations

            Free speech doesn’t sicken me

  • Tara

    The message continues to spread, and the voice is getting louder. It’s face is being shown not as the hippies or spoiled youths that the media has spun it to be previously, but as your neighbor, your grandmother, your friends. The spotlight is also now being turned on those who will stop at nothing to stop the spread of these ideas, evident in the widespread call for the resignation of the chancellor at UC Davis and the reactions to police brutality across the country. We are the 99%. We will right our country.

  • Glenn Koenig

    Tom, Congress is toast!  Continuing to focus on federal policy will soon be evident as worthless.  It may not seem like it yet, because most people don’t think it’s possible that the federal government is so impotent, but very soon now, it will get clearer.

    • Etapollo13

      agreed. our congress is broken beyond repair..

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002398828995 James Scott

    Let all 50 governors be on notice OWS want to talk. http://www.netstate.com/states/tables/st_governors.htm

  • Leatherstocking

    How do we pay for Utopia of free healthcare, organic food for all and an iphone in every pocket?

    Remember, if you confiscate all the wealth of all the wealthy, it barely makes a dent in our long term DEBT problem.

    Why do we always avoid the DEBT question?

    Do those sympathetic to OWS dreams (who isn’t?) even believe the DEBT is a problem?

    Just because you wish we could live in a money-less world, that idea will not prevent the horrible suffering and change of life that will follow the destruction of the US dollar.

    • Sage.Radachowsky

      I live at Occupy Boston, and I work 5 days a week, and what I want is REAL DEMOCRACY.  That is all.   We can go from there.   I want a democracy in which every voice has in theory an equal voice, not dependent on how much money you have.  We do not have real democracy now.  That is my single simple demand.  All the rest is fluff.

      • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

        At the ballot box, we already have what you just said.  Get voters to be responsible, and there will be no problem.

        • Sage.Radachowsky

          The ballot does not constitute real democracy, as we have it now. First, to get elected requires a lot of money in most cases, which comes with strings attached. Second, those with a lot of money seem to get continuous access to policy of their choice through lobbying and other means … a good overview may be the book Throw Them All Out.

        • nj

          By the time one arrives at “the ballot box,” it’s way to late.

      • Leatherstocking

        Vote and Demand Accountability to an evenly-applied Rule of Law.

        A simple set of Rules of the game, set and executed by us, through our self-governing legislature and executive, is what OUR Government is for.

        As long as we EXECUTE the rule of law, we can enjoy our freedoms and the benefits of competitive markets.

        If we refuse to self-govern with vigilance, then we can’t handle freedom and will have to look for the benevolent dictator, which I think most agree will end badly.

        Demand total transparency of political donations so we can see where the money comes from and where it’s going.

        We can judge who to vote for, and who will defend and enforce an equal Rule of Law accordingly.

      • Gregg

        Democracy is mob rule. We are not a Democracy we are a Republic.

        • nj

          Of course, a republic is a form of democracy, but that level of nuance is too complicated for Greggg.

          • Modavations

            He engages you guys with half his brain tied behind his back.Why don’t you go argue on Heritages Forumi nstead of preaching to the choir

          • nj

            What be this Heritages Forumi? The Moda poster speak in strange tongue.

    • Leatherstocking

      We are consumptive cows and cogs in the Washington/Corporate machine, not grass-roots productive citizens anymore.

      Ceding power to an Authoritarian Capitalism China model will not be the utopian answer people want, any more than the earlier Soviet Union attempt of Communism was.

      The China model certainly seems efficient (Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, Paulson, and  other technocrats must be drooling), but do you really hate “liberty” so much you are ready to give it away in exchange for cheap crap and consumptive bliss?

      • Modavations

        They’re on the verge of becoming a laissez-faire democracy.The nextTienamen Sq.will be their equivalent of the American Revolution against King George

    • nj

      Dave’s spew machine is running in full gear.

      Single-payer, universal-coverage health care reduces costs. Of course, it’s not “free” and no one claims it is.

      Eliminating corporate subsidies would reduce the debt.

      Taxing financial transactions would reduce the debt.

      • Leatherstocking

        Providing you could demonstrate the savings/quality, I could go for single payer health care (for this special market situation), in a Grand Bargain toward a more Rule of Law based, bottom-up, libertarian society that celebrates liberty and opportunity and rejects attempts to otherwise centrally plan our future in a top-down way, and threatens to bankrupt us.
        I think that is something you would see more than 50% support for.But if Health Care is just a Trojan horse for bigger government in other aspects of our life, forget it.

        Throw in Ron Paul and liberty-thinkers anti-war stances and we have a winner.

        • Modavations

          They get free  medical in Europe and pay north of 50% tax rates.

      • Modavations

        Chump change.Taxing the rich yields 70 billion a year and will croak the economy.The debt this year alone is 1.5 trillion.The interest on the 14.5 trillion debt is 457 billion this year alone

  • Leatherstocking

    Tom,

    You need to bring back Bill Black every week, to remind us that there IS A PATH TO ACCOUNTABILITY within the Rule of Law. 

    As a society we have failed to understand and appreciate the tools of our system, and are not demanding they be used, or that we use them as we self-govern.

  • tired of hate

    The OWS movement is a symptom of a very large problem.  Looking around the world at the problems facing humans, the larger the population becomes, the larger the gap between those who have and those who do not.  Those who have do not want to give up their money, power, and control.  They know that they can get people to do their s–t work for pennies.  This has been happening around the world to workers who are desperate to feed their families.  It has found its way to the USA, where we actually have freedom of speech. Watch it grow!  

  • Anonymous

    Why is he talking about that the goal of the movement should be to increase the more radical element of the movement from 1% to 1.5%?  Doesn’t that conflict with claiming to work for the 99%? 

  • Gilfillansw

    Education is an essential component of the inequality and the student loan complaint.  Now almost everyone goes to college and most are coming out with thousands of dollars in debt and with degrees that don’t provide them with employable skills.  Yes a liberal education is necessary part of citizenship but I would wager that the college degree now provides – at great cost – what formerly was provided – for free – by secondary education.  The secondary education system needs to provide what a general college degree is now providing.  Get ahold of a 6th grade reader from about 1950 and compare it with one today.  And then compare the 1950 6th grade reader with general education freshman and sopohomore college/university materials.

  • Yar

    How do anarchists define winning? A vandal can destroy everything I build, but that doesn’t build anything for themselves. 

    • Mia

      Anarchy is used as a synonym for chaos and vandalism but in reality it’s a political philosophy.  Anarchists believe that the state using force to make individuals comply is morally wrong.  They don’t like the idea of rulers.  I do find it difficult to understand, as there are many different schools of thought within anarchy but I don’t think they’re about smashing things, rather they would like to construct a utopian society.  I would say, from what I understand in talking with people who support this point of view, that they have a lot in common with libertarians except that they are more collectivist in their outlook.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

    Did the government ever send someone to talk to the OWS?

    We are here, We are still waiting!!!

  • A_Myrdall

    In Occupy New Hampshire being evicted kills two birds in one stone. One we have a stronger bond with the world when we stand up for the First Amendment Right. Second we are even more effective as a Roving Occupy that tours the entire state & bring occupy directly from home to home. The ONH occupiers comprise of a well rounded population from one very rural town to the next.The bondocks of New Hampshire is saturated with Occupy spirit. A small town of 500 people have an occupiers of 1000. How does that happen? What does that tells you?

  • Sam

    Leatherstockings, again…history! Whether in the U.S. back in the 20s and 30s, or Japan in the 90s, you do NOT get out of debt by cutting government spending. Period. Fact. When the private sector won’t spend, gov’t must. So we spend now, climb out of the recession, and THEN address the debt which, surely, we must. That’s the way it works.

    • http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

      Except that it hasn’t.  We just keep going deeper into debt.  We’ve heard this call many times–spend now, pay later.  The problem is that we never pay off the debt in the good years.  We just cut taxes.

      • Terry Tree Tree

        SPEND NOW, pay later-maybe, is EXACTLY what happened durring the ‘W’ admin.!  ADD the Tax-Cuts for the rich, and that is equivalent to SPENDING MORE, as when you personally spend more, then change to a job that pays a lot less, to pay for that spending!

        • Modavations

          The budget has only been balanced 5 or 6 times in the last 60 years.We’ve created a professional ruling class and you’re one of their foot soldiers

      • Modavations

        Dems-tax and spend…….Reps.-run up the deficit and spend.Easy fix,Term limits and gold standard

    • Leatherstocking

      Even dumb teabaggers are know the story of the Boy Who Wried Wolf.

      Debt/GDP ratio problems.

      Interest on the Debt problems.

      IMO it is clear that big government types have NO intention whatsoever of paying off our debt and having a sound economic system.  

      I think they are ready to see a “managed” default, in which they hand over the remaining shreds of sovereignty and liberty that we have left, to a global financial technocratic elite.

      We have traded consumptive bliss and a reluctance to get our hands dirty any more, for our liberty, self-determination and self-respect.

      Another Brick in the Wall

    • Modavations

      $50-90 billion in waste per annum, in medicare-medicaid alone.GAO says 200 billion per year wasted on duplicative programs.Cut the govt.in half.Belgium hasn’t had a govt.for 20 months and my pals in Antwerp say no one notices

  • Modavations

    Markets up 300 points.Bouyant Thanksgiving sales and Laissez faire economics.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

      300 points is nothing. Thanksgiving sales are bogus. 

      • Modavations

        No matter the good news,a Dem. will find fault

        • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

          I am a Liberal.

          • Modavations

            Dem.,liberal,progressive,socialists…Just Communists hiding behind names

          • TFRX

            Said with all the precision we’ve come to love from you.

    • Anonymous

      So.

  • Sg

    Regarding education – if there is a fault it would lie with parents who want/demand easier and better grades.  With support and respect our schools can provide the best education in the world.

    • Ellen Dibble

      I thought it was the school boards, and new state and national regulations, that demand certain standards or teachers get fired and schools get closed; the parents want their children educated (one hopes), but the “system” insists on their grades looking as though they’re succeeding regardless.

      • Terry Tree Tree

        Honest parents want honest grades for their children!  This gives parents a grasp of the education of their child, and where improvement is needed.
           Lazy and dishonest parents have pushed, coerced,, and gotten violent to get better grades for children that have NOT earned them!  They use the same tactics on individual teachers, school boards, and politicians, to get good grades for poorly-performing children, LOWERING the actual national education!  Texas is pushing for text-books that will GROSSLY lower this education even more!

        • Modavations

          What are they proposing to teach?

  • http://twitter.com/SignOnSoundOff Evan Litwin

    I think that it was inevitable that it would peter out from both eviction and from winter weather. We here in Boston had no eviction problem and generally avoided major confrontation with few exceptions. The plan from the getgo was to let them wait it out and see what happened in winter. That said, I think even if the movement goes back indoors for the winter it will regroup come spring and hopefully the winter months will be a time for the movement to regroup, reassess, and expand its membership… it would then truly be… THE AMERICAN SPRING!

    • Sage.Radachowsky

      I like your sentiment, but I think “peter out” is the wrong term, at least so far.  Occupy Boston is going strong, while others have been evicted by force, but you know the saying “disturb the hive and thousands more hornets will swarm” … 

  • Tina

    Our country cannot stay on this horrid path of inequality!  The triumph of capitalism OVER democracy is NOT good!!  Sadly, as a busy person, I just cannot get a CLEAR ENOUGH grasp on OWS’s ideas and demands, and the really good ideas that I occasionally see arising from OWS risk being ridiculed by the Extreme Right because of those ideas’ “association” with wackier ideas that are ALSO arising from the OWS environment.  BUT, brainstorming ideas is a GOOD thing, so I don’t REALLY know where I come down on those issues except to believe that clarity helps, realistically speaking!  Some PART of the profile of OWS demands as delivered by the various media makes REALLY CLEAR the former absolute brilliance of Martin Luther King, Jr., in putting forth his demands for the needed radical social and legal change in this country at his time. 

    Capitalism — including amended capitalism, perhaps like the forms of capitalism seen in countries with social democracies — is one of the tools that a democracy can use to help its citizens, NOT JUST its investors.  But economic forms closer to socialism can ALSO be used by governments, including democratic governments, again, like those with social democratic forms.  Our government is so skewed towards helping corporations and the investor class over regular citizens.  Our democracy is in jeopardy without Extreme Campaign Finance Reform, without so many changes, that I’ll not actually continue into list form.  My instincts say that letting for-profit corporations get into health insurance, for instance, is NUTS:  it ADDS the cost of profit into the cost of health care.  In that context, I find nothing wrong with improving Medicare and making it available to all thru a Single Payer system run by a government that decides it CAN do a good job at administering such a system.   

    I just heard the young man who called in say that OWS wants “regionalized” economies…. that is my IDEAL!  Yet, it was hit-or-miss that I heard anyone from OWS suggest that this was one of their ideals.  Again, as a busy person without a social group who is interested in these issues, I find it difficult to find their demands and rationales, which I can “guess at”, and I don’t even mind “guessing”, but my local Democratic Committee members are probably more concrete, and they may ridicule not only OWS for their lack of clarity, but may ALSO stay away from some of the ideals of OWS, therefore turning my  politicians who think Democratic toward the Right, and that is certainly not what I want!  

  • Laura

    Will you please do a program on the article from The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy?CMP=twt_gu  regarding police brutality in crackdowns against Occupy and the corruption of Washington politicians by excessive perks and money that has led to perpetual campaigning instead of governing for the good of the country.

     

  • Sam

    If I HAD any spare moneyI’d buy some of what Modavations is smoking :-!  “Markets up”? Till….they’re way down again. And lots of money being made moving the markets up and down…by the very people who have most of the money already…producing absolutely nothing, especially American jobs.

    • Terry Tree Tree

      Drug-induced delusions are counter-productive!

  • Charles A. Bowsher

    It has not been “Class Warfare”, it has been “Class Genocide”.  We (and you) the 99% have lost.  It is time to wave our white flags, and surrender.  Then we get to press the reset button.  I am hanging my white flag, out front, today.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

      Not me, the fight continue until they secede.

  • ArmyVet2008

    http://www.movetoamend.org this is our solution, we can not continue with the path we are currently on,

  • Gerald Fnord

    “Occupy” might work better as a shining, inspiring, memory than as a gritty, sometimes smelly, potentially violent, day-to-day actuality.

    “Only the good die young” is more a statement about retrospection of people and organisations that never had the chance to get worse or screw up than about actual selection.

  • Chandra L. Batra

    I think Boston’s Occupy from the get go had a different agenda too.
    We wanted to build community and allegiances with other social justice communities  not just a protest movement. A lot of Boston Occupy members are also members of non profit agencies and know personally what the disenfranchisement of the middle class has done locally -people who have had to turn away people from a food pantry because there was nothing left are not going to sit idlely  by and let this keep happening. Occupy at least has given a voice to the outraged and might just wake people up to the fact that for the last 30 years America has become a divided nation of those who have and those who have nothing.

  • Chris

    Overturn the Citizens United Decision. Bring back Glass-Steagal. Raise taxes on the richest 1%. Address Climate Change. Bring our troops home. 

    That would be a good start.

    • Anonymous

      Here, here.

  • Mike B.

    Wealth redistribution and class warfare? For some reason, the Bush era tax cuts which, along with the deregulation of the financial industry, have combined to nearly sink the economy, and make a middle class recovery next to impossible, are touted by the right as all but the patriotic duty of all freedom-loving citizens. Whereas, support for a genuine grass-roots movement, that calls attention to the shocking loss of jobs, wages and prosperity among the middle class will get you branded as a communist, if not entirely un- American.

    Most are not opposed to a certain amount of inequality within the current system, but when so many jobs, pensions, homes, etc., have been lost that choices must be made over which kid can go to college, which medicines are most necessary, people feel they have no choice but to react in radical ways. In this way, corporate America, the politicians and courts that do their bidding have reaped what they’ve sewn. Thank you Occupy for changing the conversation and reviving democracy in the USA!

    • mary elizabeth.

      Reminds me of “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.
      When I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.”
                           Dom Helder Camara

      • Modavations

        Jesus would say your charity is self serving.It makes you feel good.Jesus would say teach them how to fish

        • mary elizabeth.

          One can’t learn to fish on an empty stomach.  First things first.

          • Gregg

            As a struggling musician in the early 80′s (things are peachy now) I would have starved but for a nearby trout stream. The hungrier I was the more fish I caught. It’s a great motivator.

          • mary elizabeth.

            There aren’t many  trout streams  in  the inner city.

          • Gregg

            Squirrels?

          • Modavations

            Righteous One Gen.G,leader of the liberated middle states.I’m amazed at the acrobatics the Left go through.Contortionists one and all

          • Fredlinskip

            Righteous Confederate Grand Poobah Of the Extremest Rightwing Neo-Nazi Goofball Nation?

          • Fredlinskip

            There are certainly enough guns in the city to nip away at theose little suckers.
            Teach a man to shoot squirrel and I suspect that man is on the high road to heaven.

          • Fredlinskip

            Did you ever wonder if lack of nutrition may have permanently damaged your cognitive function at some point??

            JUST KIDDING! LIGHTEN UP.

            What kind of music did you play?
            You weren’t one of them there punk rockers were you?

            GREGG And The SCREAMING MEEMIES??

          • Modavations

            Starvation is the Mother of Invention

          • Same Ole Story

            Starvation is the mother of revolutions

        • nj

          I went to go fishing, but the lake was overfished by a foreign corporate trawler drag netting all the fish.

    • Leatherstocking

      Who deregulated the financial industry?

  • Modavations

    They’re holding a professor in the Boston jail, on $75,000 bond.He was watching porn on his flight.He said he was returning from a OWS protest.    “J”

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

      Very funny. He was caught by another first class passenger. He’s not OWS protestors.

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

        A man on a Delta Airlines flight from Utah was arrested at Boston’s Logan Airport on Saturday afternoon for allegedly viewing pornographic images of children on his laptop during the flight. Grant Smith, 27, of Cottonwood Heights, Utah was interviewed by Massachusetts State Police just after 4 p.m. Following that interview, Smith was arrested and charged with possession of child pornography

        • Terry Tree Tree

          Stupid place to view child-porn!  Perverted to view child-porn!  Women have enough for me to look at!

          • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

            Looking at Women is also a Pervertion.

          • Terry Tree Tree

            Ok.  Compared to all the other perversions, it’s my preference.  BTW, what is a Pervertion?

          • Modavations

            English is not his native tongue.I always thought you were a woman.I rescind my offer to take you on an arq.dig.Actually,if you get rid of the”Classist Chip”on your shoulder,I’ll think about it

          • Terry Tree Tree

            I have NO romantic, or sexual interests in children, males, animals or such.  I’m male, VERY interested in females! 

          • Terry Tree Tree

            What do you get excited about?  The opposite gender doesn’t interest you?  The same gender?  MOST that say they have NO sexual interest, are liars.  ‘abstaining priests, that molested children, are a GREAT EXAMPLE of HYPOCRACY!!  Not to mention perversion!
                 I enjoy looking at, and more with women!  No apology, no further explaination!

          • Modavations

            What percent of Pervert Priests are Dems.What % are Reps.?

          • Modavations

            In the old days,Dems.used to have senses of humor.Note “J” next to the post.You guys are so pathetic that I’ve been reduced to putting “J” for jokes.Laisssez Faire types understand!!!!

          • Brett

            It would probably be more useful for you to put “NAJ” (not a joke) at the beginning of your comments, Mo-D! I think ALL of your comments are jokes! ;-)  

          • nj

            And here i was thinking “J” = jackassery.

      • Terry Tree Tree

        You mean posting about a child-porn pervert is irrelevant?   Why is it here?

    • nj

      What a ville little man you are.

      • Modavations

        I can see you’ve shot you’re last intellectual quiver.And it’s only 12:00

        • nj

          “you’re last intellectual quiver”

          That kind of sums it up for Moda-troll.

          • Gregg

            “What a ville little man you are.”

            Playing grammar cop ALWAYS bites you in the butt. It’s better to be nice.

          • nj

            Your concern is appreciated but misplaced. Go tell your pal Moda-troll to be nice.

          • Gregg

            He’s a harmless, lovable fuzzball. What’s not to like?

          • Modavations

            He calls me that at least 3 times a week.

          • Modavations

            arrow.Did you not get the jist?

    • Brett

      They arrested a man from Boston the other day and are holding him on $100,000 bond. He had child porn on his laptop. He said he was a gems dealer… “J”

      • Terry Tree Tree

        Did he get ‘limp-wristed’ at the mention of several men’s names?

      • Modavations

        I don’t have a lap top,but I do have a sense of humor.I appreciate the “J”,so the rest of the crowd can discern the not so apparent,obvious

  • Ellen Dibble

    Why is the “Would that be the domain of Herr Biden”? showing up at the top of the thread as newest over and over and over for the last hour plus — since 10:23 AM?  Is the program that sorts these things failing?  I can see that somebody likes it.  I don’t see anyone explaining what it means.  Let us have what is really new up top, please.  

    • Modavations

      Delaware is where the banks and Credit Card co.s incorporate.The technology isn’t keeping up,that’s all

  • Modavations

    What would Jesus do?He’d teach them to fish.He’s a laissez faire social worker.He didn’t make an avocation on keeping the poor,poor

    • Ellen Dibble

      I was just reading up on Jesus, in Matthew, over the weekend, and about the point he was telling people that they might end up killing their parents, their families, and a page later, weasling his way around the ruling paradigms, the Pharisees with their entrapment questions — at that point I came to the conclusion that He was the prototypical OWS.  I decided my church probably doesn’t want to hear my whole take on that.  We hear in church highlighted parts that make Jesus sound a LOT less radical than he was.  He bothered the Roman empire.  He bothered the status quo of his own religion.  He wanted individuals to feel direct moral connection to their souls (something like that).  How such a movement became coopted into the HOLY Roman Empire is VERY interesting.  It began as a nonviolent grassroots — well, we all know at least “a little” about it.

    • Ellen Dibble

      As I understand it, he had rich backers, and maybe it’s because of them that the miracle of the fish to feed the multitude came about.  I recall that the followers of Jesus (as well as Jesus himself) had productive jobs, which they all had to abandon, essentially becoming a traveling Occupy troupe.  “Fishermen of men” he called them.  They became as the lilies of the field, not striving to mound up security and fancy garb on earth, but trusting to fate to care for them.  Remind you of anything?  Most of the 9 percent unemployed are more or less out on that limb, and maybe becoming fishers of men is their best choice.  Someone rich should give them all LLBean tents and fresh socks, etc.

      • Modavations

        .I took it to mean teach them a trade,teach them to provide for themselves,don’t just give them fish ,day after day.The problem with the current Social Worker Party,is that if they teach them to fish,they’re out of a job.You guys have become poverty pimps.You are forced to keep the poor,poor.If the poor can fend for themselves,what purpose do you serve?

    • Go Occupy Boston!

      That old “teach a man to fish” cliche is stupid. Fishermen already know how to fish. They just need the government to stop tax loopholes, trade policies, subsidies, and wage disparities that make “fishing” untenable as a profession. (stick with the metaphor- I’m not just referring to the fishing industry)

      • Modavations

        You will never suceed if you rely on excuses,percieved slights

      • Stierman-in-Boise

        Also, what happens when the fisheries are fished out? Just saying.

  • Charles A. Bowsher

    To MODOVATION 47 minutes ago
     I said “To the caller, It is not “Wealth Redistribution” when a thief is made to return what they stole. They should then have to go to jail Alexander!”

    You said
    “90% of American Millionaires are self made and first generation.You know why the Left hates Forest Gump..He’s self made,that’s why.”

    Where did you get that figure please? I guess you count Mitt Romney in that 90%? I don’t have a problem with people making money.  My problem is when they use their money to buy Senators and influence legislation to benefit themselves.  This country used to be one person, one vote.  Citizens United has destroyed that.  It is now donate $100,000 and all of a sudden your Senator has time to talk to you.  The truly wealthy are busy trying to assure that their future generations are flush with cash so their selfish influence will continue to rule us all.  When they are able to rob the treasury of billions by getting the estate tax reduced and/or eliminated entirely they don’t realize that they are killing the golden goose that helped lay their golden eggs in the form of government funded research.  Drugs, the Internet, miniaturization of electrical components, etc., etc., all thanks to government investment in basic research.

    • Mia

      Good one.  The elites are out of touch.  First it was the poor, then it was the middle class but it will be wealthy Americans too, sooner or later.  Greed breaks the sack.

      Christya Freeland wrote an article in the Atlantic last January about
      the increasing divide between the classes.  There was a guy, a CFO of an
      internet business who said “We (meaning americans) demand a higher paycheck than the rest
      of the world,”
      “So if you’re going to demand 10 times the paycheck, you need to deliver
      10 times the value. It sounds harsh, but maybe people in the middle
      class need to decide to take a pay cut.”

      I see several problems with this attitude.  This guy was a product of good
      American public schools which enabled him to go on to Harvard. The society invested in him and that bedrock of the middle class helped him become who he is today.  Another problem is that none of us really had any say in
      globalization.  It overrides democracy and national sovereignty.  It’s
      not just that Americans are supposed to take a pay cut, the services
      that keep a lot of us in the middle class are being cut too as well as the investment in R&D and other things that you mentioned which made this country great and helped business here.   It’s really sad. 

      • Terry Tree Tree

        Had that CFO taken a pay-cut multilples of what he was asking less-paid workers to take, or was he just another GREEDY rich HYPOCRITE, wanting workers to take a pay-cut, so he could line his own pocket MORE?

    • Anonymous

      Actually our nation has always had this problem with the wealthy influencing politics. It’s pretty much part of our heritage and really came into full steam in the 19th century culmination with the Robber Baron era, better known as the Gilded Age and right up to the 20′s culminating in the Great Depression. It did bring about some pretty strong reformers, Teddy Roosevelt comes to mind. As well as labor laws, such as the one Newt Gingrich was calling stupid, child labor laws. Unions came into the fold to fight for workers rights and what is now a dirty word with the right, collective bargaining. Well I guess it’s always been a dirty word for them.

      Nothing new under the sun, except that we now have the most dysfunctional government in modern history.

    • Modavations

      I stand by that #.You’re confusing my guys with the Jay Rockefellar(?),Kennedy Trust fund babies.I’m shocked only by the fact that you would think Americans need help and can’t suceed on their own.I don’t need a govt.handout,I don’t want a govt.handout.Take the handout and you are beholden.Free men don’t need sh-t.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Tim-Brown/1227104716 Tim Brown

    I’d have to agree with the giant “Batman signal” projected on to the Verizon building after the Foley Square rally, “this is just the beginning of the beginning.”

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Tim-Brown/1227104716 Tim Brown

    I agree, that would be more effective. The problem for Occupy is that it is primary an explosion of anger from people who feel totally disenfranchised by our current political system, so it’s hard to see it embracing that same system. Obviously this isn’t an uncommon sentiment with congress’s approval rating in the single digits and our very low voter turn out. In the end, while I think that outrage and disgust is a weakness for OWS having an immediate impact on elections, however I think if it stays going, it will also be a message that ultimately gives it widespread support.

  • Orion Kriegman

    We
    are the 99% is an unprecedented success in my politically aware
    lifetime. For the first time that I can recall, we figured out what to
    call ourselves – we aren’t left or right, liberal or Democrat,
    Republican or tea party, or any of that. We are the 99% is an identity
    with political meaning, a passionate reminder of the force for equality.
    We are the 99% calls us to sit up, look each other in the eye, and
    cheer: money for housing and education, not for wars and corporations.
    We are the 99% is hope incarnate. What comes next is the path we are all
    walking.

  • Anonymous

    The “Occupy” movement has doomed itself to failure by its inability to make any consistent or cohesive point. The only thing that is easily apparent to the average person is that a bunch of (young) folks are unhappy with the way things are. Having read 2 pages of comments posted here, it’s clear there are as many opinions about what the “movement” means as there are people commenting. The lack of an achievable goal or any unified direction has led me to believe the “Occupiers” are just squatters looking for a free ride. The spread of the movement beyond the borders of the USA into countries that are already well-socialized has further diluted any coherent message making the “Occupiers” appear to be merely socialist/communist anarchists who want, for free, what I & many like me, worked a lifetime to achieve.

    Having said all that, this country truly needs an injection of humanity into its cold-hearted financial systems…

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

      How come We are still Out There protesting for 2 months now? Post this again when you don’t see any Free Loaders without jobs. that’s including American Veterans, Unions, Nurses, people with jobs that are OWS and 99%.

    • Vanne46

      I don’t think wanting a fair economy is asking for a hand-out. The cost of housing, medical care and education has out stripped wages for years. I once had a job as a flight attendant and could support my family with that job. 20 years later flight attendants do not make the salary I made in 1986. The change was a result of union busting and deregulation. How many small businesses today struggle because there are not enough people who can afford to buy their goods and services? If this country values hard work, why do we tax those who work hard more than those who are fortunate enough to own resources?

      • TFRX

        Can I “like” this more than once?

    • Anonymous

      Ignorance is not a virtue one wants to propagate.

  • azgog

    Congress, by allowing the deregulation that brought on the economic crisis and then doing nothing ever since, created the Occupy movement.The leadership gap was the opportunity that the 99% needed to finally stand up and say if you won’t act then we will.

  • Dan

    It is my hope that parallel “movements” citing more specific individual demands will sprout up, so that the Occupy Movement will be able to build bridges and collaborate with other groups and individuals who might support only some of the still not explicitly defined demands/platform of the movement.  Just because someone doesn’t agree with school loan forgiveness doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be an ally in the fight for a more economically just society, or to stop Wall Street money from corrupting our political system.

  • Go Occupy Boston!

    So sick of people saying OWS has no message. It’s pretty simple. Go to the OWS website and click on “About.”

    There’s no concrete “list of demands,” to play into the media’s hands and splinter a much larger group that might not agree on every detail, but is more focused on getting a massive message of protest out there. Obviously there is a core of agreement and solidarity or there wouldn’t be hundreds of camps and marches and thousands of participants across the country.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

      I have been reading comments for the past 3 years now on One Point. I read a lot of frustraions against the Federal Government. Now people are actually doing something and marching in every major cities in the United States.

      I don’t understand Why are you Mad at the OWS or the American people who are actually doing something to eradicate corruption,greed, crony capitalism etc?

      I don’t get your mentality for being anti-OWS or anti-American.

      I rather protest and show my frustrations than writing my anger on message boards.

      • Modavations

        Are you one of Marco’s escapee colonels

        • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

          Let me tell you about the “1986 Occupy Edsa”. 1 million people in the streets of Manila. Marcos sent helicopter gunships,the Marines and tanks but we stop them. We stop them with human barricades and prayers.

          About the Colonels. No Philippine Army officers left the country except for one General Ver.

      • Modavations

        Steve Jobs didn’t need college and he didn’t ask others to pay his way.China has just banned all nonsense courses,that don’t prepare kids for gainful employment.You got duped and I’m not paying your freight

        • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

          Geniuses are born not made. He never finished college just to waste money. China curriculum has nothing to do with America.

          I never got duped. Because College tuitions fees in the Philippines are affordable and was paid in cash. compared to a $100,000 college degree in the United States that cannot guarantee employment and will be paying that student loans for the rest of that student’s life.

          Education should be FREE but not in the Capitalist world.

    • Anonymous

      Why do I need to go to the OWS website?  You’re the ones trying to make a point … and failing at it.

      It doesn’t matter what you believe in your heart … perception is everything. And the average person still doesn’t have a grasp on what the “movement” stands for so by default the “occupiers” are perceived as no more than youthful malcontents by the populace at large.

      • Go Occupy Boston!

        Fine:
        “ows is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations”There. You didn’t have to go to the website- I just cut and pasted for you.  This is getting to the point where the “they don’t have a message” nonsense is recycled propaganda that self-respecting media outlets should stop repeating since it’s not true and the message is easy to find. 

      • Anonymous

        I’m one of the so called average folks you are talking about an I understand what OWS is all about. It’s about bringing back some accountability to our financial system and stopping this madness that gives corporations the same rights as people. Since when is a corporation a human being and since when does money equal free speech.

    • Modavations

      I just went there and all it said was “2,4,6,8 where should we go defecate”

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

        There are more dog shit in the Commonwealth Avenue Park near Newbury Street.

        Guess who owns those dogs? the 1% who lives in the Back Bay area.

        The 1% percent who claimed to care about the people and environment are the hyprocrites.

        • Modavations

          ARE YOU ONE OF mARCO’s escapee colonels

  • Modavations

    Barney Frank,chief appologist for Fannie-Freddie(the cause of the meltdown)called to ask what he should say.I told him choose A,B,or C
    A.I resign because they redistricted me and I lost my Gerrymander
    B.I’m resigning to spend more time with the wife and kids
    C.I resign because I was offered a job coaching Football at Penn. State

    • Brett

      Mo-D, those “people” “calling” you are your OWN voice inside your own head. It’s called a hallucination/delusion…Nothing to worry about really, just put the weed down and maybe talk to your PCP (that’s “primary care physician” and not a horse tranquilizer, btw) about some kind of psychotropic medication… 

      • Modavations

        Why is it that the Laissez faire guys know when I’m pulling one’s leg.You guys need to relearn a sense of humor.Do you really think Obama,Rush,et al call me in the morning.I think you guys should smoke more and fret less

    • Anonymous

      Oy vey. Are you really this immature.

      • Terry Tree Tree

        You haven’t read the other Delusions of Grandeur type statements about News-making people calling him about such?

      • Modavations

        I am and if you weren’t a professional hand wringer,you’d laugh too

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

      He is gay. I didn’t know he has a family?

      • Modavations

        Duh!!!

    • Brett

      There you go, again, equating homosexuality with child molestation. Shameful, shameful. You get the finger-wag of the day, Mo-D! :-(

      • Modavations

        You know,when you were a kid,you would have laughed.Not feigned high dudgeon

        • nj

          Moda-troll’s target audience is immature, adolescent males.

    • Terry Tree Tree

      Another Delusion of Grandeur?
          If Barney Frank did NOT call you, that’s ALL it is!
          If it was an attempt at humor, you should NOT have stated that Barney Frank called you!  There are other ways to lead in to a joke, without a lie.

      • Modavations

        Do you really think B.F.called me.?Sorry I forgot to add “J”,but I thought it obvious

        • Terry Tree Tree

          It was obviously an invalid assertion!  Most on here seem to miss your attempts at humor(?), if that’s what they are!

  • Go Occupy Boston!

    Watch out for media diversions- for every “bad apple” or “dirty hippy” cited in a TV clip or by a OWS naysayer, there are dozens of so-called “normal” law abiding, educated, taxpaying, politically savvy citizens involved either at a camp or on a march or online.

    Anyone who pigeonholes Occupy supporters as “hippies”, “spoiled rich kids”, “socialists”, or whatever else they use to dismiss us is just plain wrong and misinformed. (and clearly too lazy or scared to inform themselves and have a civil debate)

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1340895480 Roger DiPaolo

    The movement is very much ALIVE.  Occupy Worcester (Massachusetts’ 2nd biggest city) has just established a new camp on a private lot downtown with permission of the owner.  I was visiting the Occupy Boston encampment this past weekend and the number of residents and visitors was just as large as ever.  In NYC the OWS movement gave out many thousands of hot meals to community residents in need.  Both Occupy Los Angeles and Occupy Philadelphia got the riot police to back off last night/very early this morning and are still occupying their public spaces.  Occupy Movement activity on the internet is huge and is growing daily – distributing the latest news on the biggest and most recent issues plaguing our nation, creating a multitude of online conversations and petitions.  Networks and connections between movement-savvy citizens are growing rapidly and actions are being planned and being taken every day.  This movement is alive, well, and growing!!!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1340895480 Roger DiPaolo

    What does the OWS movement want???  Get a clue here:

    From the “Boston Occupier” newspaper:

    A
    recent survey found that Boston’s occupiers share a number of common
    values and support several major issues, despite having a lack of
    centralized demands.
    The “Occupy Boston Issue Survey” received responses from  just over
    260 occupiers. The survey posed sixty questions to determine the views
    of occupiers on a wide variety of issues, ranging from tax policy to
    defense, in order to determine the aggregate opinions of the occupiers.
    It reached participants via email lists, Google Groups, Facebook, and
    Twitter.

    A frequent criticism of the Occupy movement is that the occupiers
    have expressed no central set of demands. Some critics have concluded
    that the lack of defined demands signifies that the protesters are not
    protesting anything at all. However, the survey finds that ten issues
    and beliefs have near-universal support among occupiers.

    They are:

    1. Revoke corporate personhood so that corporations have no ability to interfere in elections.
    2. Remove the “revolving doors” that contribute to the corruption of the regulatory process.
    3. Institute a progressive tax code which both removes loopholes as well
    as makes the rich and corporations pay their “fair share”.
    4. Re-institute the Glass-Steagall Act and place stricter regulations on capital leveraging.
    5. Increase the transparency and accountability of the Federal Reserve.
    6. Institute election reform so that money can no longer be used to buy elections.
    7. End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
    8. Invest in clean energy development and increase environmental regulations.
    9. End the drug war and institute rehabilitation programs for non-violent offenders.
    10. Protect unions and increase worker safety protections.
     

    • Anonymous

      These are all good points! However I still maintain that the “movement” is doing a lousy job of getting that message out and is therefore seen as radical…

      BTW who reads “Boston Occupier” newspaper??!!?!?!

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

        How can we Spread our Message if the media only take pictures and interview a handful of people. Majority are negativity and questions.

        Watch the news tonight and you will know what I am talking about.

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1340895480 Roger DiPaolo

        StarGeezer said: BTW who reads “Boston Occupier” newspaper??!!?!?!

        Anyone who has enough intellectual curiosity to do so, find it at bostonoccupier dot com.  BTW, don’t blame the OWS movement if the mainstream media doesn’t want to widely publish the movement’s message(s) – look at who owns the mainstream media and what their vested interest is in downplaying it.  A new day has come, where citizens need to take a little effort and educate themselves – is that such a bad thing in a “so called” democracy?

        • Anonymous

          It may not be too much to ask “citizens to take a little effort and educate themselves” but it is also extremely unrealistic. If you’re trying to reach the average person you’re going to have to find a way to overcome this “media advesity” and to do that you’ll need to compete with American Idol or Dancing with the Stars … that’s where people’s interests really lay. YOU gotta get the message out there … folks won’t go looking for it!

          • Ellen Dibble

            Network TV’s audience is  evaporating.  People find YouTube much more entertaining, and more participatory, and less likely to be warped by moneyed interests.  So is there a videographer and related artists and technicians adequate to make an impression, a positive impression?  Or are we going to wait for Saturday Night Live to monopolize that “space” in the national brainpan.

          • nj

            The movement, any movement, doesn’t need 100% citizen participation to be successful. The lazy/distracted/disinterested/lazy who are watching the Kardashians or camping out for mall deals are never going to do much of anything to help the cause, even when information is delivered to them on a platter.

            Nearly half the colonists didn’t wan’t to secede from the Crown. Things get changed by the people who show up.The key is getting just enough to show up at one time, in the right places.

          • Anonymous

            It may not need the participation of the”lazy/distracted/disinterested/lazy” but it needs their support … at least some of them … unlsess you’re talking about armed rebellion in which case why bother protesting in the first place.

            The folks who wanted to secede from British rule had a clear message and a well defined goal.

            I’ll re-iterate my original point: the lack of a clear and consistent message from the “movement”, indeed the lack of any leadership or stated goals makes the “movement” APPEAR to be nothing more than socialist/communist/anarchist rabble the likes of which show up at every G-8 and G-20 meeting. Not the way to win support … not mine anyway.

          • nj

            [[ It may not need the participation of the"lazy/distracted/disinterested/lazy" but it needs their support ... at least some of them ]]

            Yes, that’s what i’m saying. Of all the voting citizenry, one doesn’t need the lazy and indifferent; they can stay on the couch and it won’t matter. Things will change when the motivated and active show up; there are enough of those if they all get up and pitch in at  the same time.

            Dubya was elected in 2004 with only 27.6 percent of registered voters at the time.

      • Brett

        I would agree that the OWS’ers haven’t done a good job of getting out the movement’s message. I also agree that many in middle America see radicalism in the OWS’ers, and that scares people. But, the thing isn’t but a couple of months old. What movements that didn’t have billion dollar backing and an entire TV channel devoted to positive propaganda have been well organized in the beginning?

        If (and this is a big “if” for a truly grassroots movement) the movement organizes throughout the winter and develops strategies to attempt some kind of influence on our three branches of government, then…

        At the very least (we’re coming up on a presidential election, political conventions, a long, hot summer, social unrest waxing and not waning, and so on), we’ll see riots next summer. I just hope, as it was in 1968, that a candidate doesn’t win on a “law and order” platform, as did Nixon. I hope that the factions within the OWS’ers that are intelligent and savvy will prevail so middle America can support and not fear them.   

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

    Tell me how many of you watch Fox News?

    • Modavations

      I also watch C-Span,listen to NPR,listen to Rush, read the NYT and WSJ.

      • Leatherstocking

        I do the same and also eat twigs and berries.

        • Gregg

          God bless you.

          • Leatherstocking

            I was serious, think it gives good perspective.

  • Leatherstocking
  • Leatherstocking

    Why Does Keynesian Success Feel Like Failure?The most terrible thing about the bailouts is that they worked.http://reason.com/archives/2011/11/28/why-does-keynesian-success-fee

    • Leatherstocking

      ….But the most important goal of the stimulus was achieved almost a year ago: Consumer spending returned to its pre-recession level in the last quarter of 2010. As Robert Higgs, the Independent Institute’s senior fellow in political economy and editor of The Independent Review, noted in a blog post this fall, Commerce Department statistics show that the rate of personal consumption expenditures was “continuing to grow” and as of the second quarter of 2011 was “even farther above its pre-recession peak.” Real government expenditure for consumption and investment had also snapped back to its pre-recession level and in the second quarter “was running more than 2 percent higher” in real terms, Higgs wrote.So why aren’t Krugman and other Keynesian interventionists cheering? John Maynard Keynes’ general theory teaches us that now should be Miller Time. According to the standard macroeconomic model, you revive a stagnant economy by closing the gap in aggregate demand. Taking up the slack in demand is supposed to be the heavy lifting of an economic recovery, the part of the job so big only the government can do it. …..

  • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

    The OWS is just the preliminary movement within the cry for end of the domination of the economy of Thieves and a noticeable movement towards a reality where the laws of Humanity are more in alignment with those of Nature (where our “laws” truly come from originally), instead of Humanity coming from a place of narcissistic entitlement.  No news channel can stand in it’s wake, no “Government”, no “Authority”, no misconceived “Law, no “Weapon” ~ the truth of it is simply this; until authority and law are released from the Oligarchy and are allowed to come from a universal “within” there will no peace of mind ~ Nature rules Supreme, if you have any doubts about this try holding in your pee for a few days and tell me if your bladder doesn’t burst.  One Drop of Love  i~ Enough to send ripples to the all shores of the Universe….
    ps~No more dead Christmas Trees, duh!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

    When the Civil Rights movement started in 1954 majority of American people were against it including the minorities. But the movement finally succeeded in 1968. when the leader was shot

    Almost 2 decades the colored people fought for their Rights.

    The OWS will also succeed or the American people.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

      1954 to 1968 they marched and demonstrate civil disobedience and rest is History.

      To all OWS. We are started a new generations of Civil Rights movement but this one is for world not only for Americans but the entire human race.

  • Leatherstocking

    A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.‘Change Their Votes’“When you see the dollars the banks got, it’s hard to make the case these were successful institutions,” says Sherrod Brown, a Democratic Senator from Ohio who in 2010 introduced an unsuccessful bill to limit bank size. “This is an issue that can unite the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. There are lawmakers in both parties who would change their votes now.”Thanks to twentyniner for original link….http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html

    • Modavations

      Bloomberg says blame Fannie and Freddie,not Wall St

      • Leatherstocking

        All the colluders and pirates need to go down. 

  • Michaellong100

    RONALD REAGAN WOULD BE HUNG AS A SOCIALIST IF HE RAN TODAY. 

    1. Reagan raised taxes 11 times.
    2. Taxes were higher for 7 of the 8 years that Reagan was president.
    3. Glass Steagall regulated Wall Street and structures such as Credit Default Swaps would be illegal under these laws.
    4. The SEC actually did prosecutions, in fact 3 times as many people were prosecuted in 1983 as they were last year under Obama.
    5. Usury was a crime not a business plan.6. Reagan wrote that he wanted to overturn Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society but recognized that Roosevelt’s New Deal was needed.7. The wealthiest people in America built great companies and great products. They weren’t a bunch of Hedge Fund managers and Bank executives that relied on bad credit, fine print in contracts and government money for profits.8. America was a Capitalist country not a Kleptocracy orchestrated by the Federal Reserve.9. One thousand prosecutions for the Savings and Loan Crisis in the 1980s, zero for the mortgage mess now.10. Bankers invested in companies. The money actually went into the company through stock. Now the companies just bet on the outcome of bonds (Credit Default Swaps).11. Banks did not have the option of choosing their own regulator. 12. The most profitable hedge fund on earth was not Congress. Congress has better returns than any investor because they can legally trade on pure inside information.  13. Education was provided by the best education system on earth not Goldman Sachs education wing – Kaplan, Art Institutes, U. Phoenix. Schools with 28% grad rates, fully guaranteed government loans, and debt that can not be dismissed in bankruptcy.
    14. Paul Volker was chair of the Fed not Ayn Rand (Ben Bernenke). 

    Enough is enough. This is why I am a  at Occupy Wall Street.

    • Modavations

      What’s important is the debt to GDP ratio and Reagan left it at the picture perfect 3%.If you have debt at 300 billion(These are hypothetical #’s) and GDP at 10 trillion at the start of your term and leave with debt at 600 billion and GDP at 20trillion you are still right on mark.You’re reading Move On talking points.When Ronaldus Magnus died ,you’d think the king of the Cosmos had passed.When mARX DIED ,THE WORLD SHOUTED hALLELUJAH

      • Michaellong100

        Not according to Grover Norquist! Haven’t all the Republicans in congress signed the no new taxes pledge. Both parties talk about too-big-to-fail banks and then bend over backwards to kill all of the common sense regulation that kept our financial system working for sixty years (Glass Steagall). 

      • nj

        More dispatches from the Bureau of Moda-troll’s Butt. Anyone else would be embarrassed from posting bogus information on such a regular basis. But not Moda-troll. I guess that’s what low self-esteem leads to.

        The last time debt was 3% of national income/GDP was in the mid 1800s: http://elainemeinelsupkis.typepad.com/money_matters/2008/04/page/3/ (Scroll about 15% of the way down the page.)

        The ratio was 30-something percent when Rayguns started his Trickle-on-your-leg-and-tell-you-it’s-raining Revolution, from which point it rose steadily, except for a brief turn downward under Slick Willy.

        Here it is in chart form so even the statistics-impaired like Moda-troll can understand it:

        http://talkandpolitics.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/debt-to-gdp-1940-2010/

        • Modavations

          I stick to my #’s.Move On,et al are not credible.Under J.Carter it was 2.7%.Under B.Obama it is over 10%

          • nj

            If this were a serious debate, the ref would have blown the whistle and invoked the mercy rule. Maybe you only post here when you’re drunk. At least you’d have an excuse then.

            1. You can also stick to your kitchen floor when you walk across it; i don’t really care.

            2. MoveOn? WTF are you talking about?

            3. Here’s essentially the same chart as in one of the links i already gave (scroll down a bit):

            http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_debt_chart.html

            (Scroll down a bit)

            x-axis: time; y-axis: percent GDP; title: Gross Federal Debt In 20th Century US from FY 1900 to FY 2016

            30-something percent during both Raygun and Carter.

            (Data compiled from OMB and Census Bureau)

          • Modavations

            Regan started with 4.2% GDP to Debt ratio.It ended at the “picture perfect 3%.When you catch up I’ll run a course on advanced economics.I’ll teach you Haut’s Law and explain the Laffer curve

          • nj

            You’re too obtuse to realize that repeating bogus information doesn’t make it correct. As is usually the case (median family income, inequality rankings, etc.), you’re full of crap.

            Post a reference or stop wasting bandwidth.

    • Michaellong100

      I really don’t think that Move On has anything good to say about Reagan. I love Reagan he corrected the problem left from Carter and Johnson. Taxes were far too high. He fixed that and they have been more reasonable ever since. He was a great pragmatist when it came to the economy and his reconfirmation of Paul Volcker is a prime example. Clinton did a great job in his era and left a budget surplus. Unfortunately with the complete repeal of Glass Steigall we have created a system that has not been seen in 100 years. The problem is the derivatives market. It created a system where you can become rich by investing in bad debt and accounting fraud. The conservatives who used to promote free enterprise now blindly follow money – even if the money is made form third world style government-private kleptocracy.  I used to fight socialism now I am fighting to stop feudalism. Wake up. 

  • Jim

    I’ve read that the Occupy movement is non-partisan. However, I can’t picture a political candidate that is more the antithesis of the movement than Newt Gingrich. How can a man who takes the equivalent of $30,000 an hour for “consulting” have anything in common with the 99%. I think the movement should back progressive candidates ONE TIME and thewn move to elect their own candidates by 2014 if the Democrats don’t come around.

    Jim in Columbus Ohio

    • Gregg

      “How can a man who takes the equivalent of $30,000 an hour for “consulting” have anything in common with the 99%.”

      Ask Michael Moore.

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

        Actually Michael Moore helped a lot of people. you don’t hear it because You always read or hear about his negativity rarely the positive things Michael Moore did for the American people.

        I never follow the news I research the news. who is right and wrong.

        • Gregg

          That is a great point, thanks for making it. The 1% do a ton of good for a ton of people. 

          • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

            But he is not consider 1% a rugs to richies person is excluded.

            We are talking about people who never ever felt hunger their lives.

          • Modavations

            Excuses,excuses,but nice acrobatics.Are you an escaped colonel from the Marcos regime?

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            in comparison to what? how much evil they have perpetrated upon humanity?
             

          • Gregg

            I was interested in Jim’s notion that Newt could not relate to the OWS movement because he is rich. Michael Moore is given a pass and just as rich. In my view rich does not equal evil or good. Rich people can do good and poor people can do evil. It’s a shallow argument and that was my point to FAX68.

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            true, it is the amassing of wealth in whatever form that is wrong ~ think of all the shelved patents….. 

          • Modavations

            Tom A. makes 350,000 per annum.NPR’s  working stiffs are contractors and get no health insurance,pensions,etc,.Same thing goes for the NYT

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            not surprised, at all ~ I am willing to give all of me

        • Modavations

          The Cuban hospital he shows in his flick ,is for Communiist Party aparatchik only(and med.tourists).Regular Cubans go to friggin Charnel Houses

    • Modavations

      Jamie Gorelick.Frank Raines,et al, took 100million from Fannie for their brilliant consultation

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

    Civil Rights Movement – 1954 – 1968
    Occupy Wall Street – 2011 – ?

  • Anonymous

    The Occupy movement are acting like America’s Founding Fathers rebeling against King George who controlled all the wealth.

  • Leatherstocking

    Hopeful situation?

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/business/judge-rejects-sec-accord-with-citi.html

    “A federal judge in New York on Monday threw out a settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission andCitigroup over a 2007 mortgage derivatives deal, saying that the S.E.C.’s policy of settling cases by allowing a company to neither admit nor deny the agency’s allegations did not satisfy the law.”

    • Michaellong100

      Some good news at last!

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

      OWS has been heard finally

    • Terry Tree Tree

      All RIGHT!   It’s about time!!  MORE real judges, please!

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

      They should put them in JAIL!!!! no excuses no remorse.

      • Modavations

        Mini marcos

  • Marcus Langston

    Does anybody know where the interlude music comes from that On Point’s been using recently?  Kind of an electronic, digital sort of thing…

    • Marcus Langston

      It’s at 28:56 in the online stream…

      • Mkingsboro7

        marcus, this thread is so old but i was also looking for this song and just found it. its called “hayling” by FCKahuna.

    • Zing

      I hear it’s from Calm Radio’s ” boring news ” category….

  • Piper Kruse

    I just want to quickly add that it’s important to cover the occupy movement, and I thank the show for making this choice!  I hope this remains newsworthy and relevant, thus insuring future coverage from the thoughtful wing of journalism.

  • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

    Let’s
    just face Reality for just 1 second, the “OWS” movement started way
    before Egypt (and I don’t mean the recent protests, but rather the
    Pharaohs), it is OUR current reflection within the continuum of the
    evolution of the Meaning of Humanity ~ a place where cause and effect
    have no purpose, only Love ♥ and with it ~ true Understanding

    • Modavations

      i THOUGHT mUBAREK WAS A PHARaoH

      • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

        hehe… either way, cause and effect is mute is this situtaion ~ to say something is over when you cannot put a finger on a starting point is fallacious
         

  • Modavations

    Another 5000 climate papers just released.They show,they deleted pertinent data,frooze out contrarian views and colluded with govt.officials.The Left makes poverty into a racket and science into a laughing stock

    • nj

      Moda-troll deftly swoops in with irrelevant disinformation.

  • OWSinChicago

    I definitely believe in the movement, and am a supporter. I think the movement is just getting started .. the fervor is bleeding off, and now its the time for the movement to get organized and develop a united agenda.

    • Zing

      Z! zzzzz

  • OWSinChicago

    We need an “Occupy the Main Stream Media” component to movement too ! The corporations that run the Media have A LOT to lose when the OWS objectives are realized. Until corporations stop controlling the flow of information, and the spin applied to their message … the public will be mislead, and OWS will be framed in the worst possible way, as slackers, hippies, wack-jobs, and ‘extremists’.

  • Modavations

    Self interest ,or what Terry and Ellen call greed ,has fed more poor then all charity put together

    • Gregg

      My grocer doesn’t care a wit if I go hungry. He wants my money. It works for both of us.

      • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

        if you died in his arms do you think it would be a different story?
         

        • Gregg

          I’m not sure I understand the question.

          • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_C2STBLZJK4VKQBV27DVQX3I6CU FAX68

            What if you don’t have money.

          • Gregg

            The short answer is I won’t get his groceries. But there is charity, church and communities not to mention food stamps, welfare and WIC. The first three probably would discriminate if I had no money because I spent it on crack. The last 3 not so much.

          • Modavations

            Earn some.If you want to be a cry baby all your life,return to the Philipines please.Me and Gregg,et al are tired of pulling the cart,while you ride for free

          • Anonymous

            Who do you think you are? What gives you the right to say this about someone of whom you know nothing about.
            What gives you the right to say this about anyone? Don’t give me any first amendment crap as your use of language is beyond the pale of the responsibilities one has in this regard. You can’t hide behind this anymore.

            This kind of rhetoric is not only banal it is full of hatred.

          • Modavations

            lst amendment,my friend of the Totalitarian persusion.The kid was crying about having to pay back his college loans,expecting me to pay

          • nj

            What a vile, little man.

          • Modavations

            I must be doing something right,you’ver called me vile twice today

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            I guess you have some thinking to do then

          • Gregg

            I get your whole philosophical approach to debate as evidenced by your comments, cool. But I was also making a philosophical point which I stand by.  It seems to me you are interjecting something irrelevant to the discussion, also cool. So unless you want to elaborate, I’m done and really don’t see a purpose in thinking much about it.

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            people can do both evil and good, rich is not a factor ~ not all rich people are evil any more that poor being good ~ the argument is ridiculous and in that I would agree, FAX68 needs to reconsider some things.  It sounded as if you thought that the rich of the world has done more for suffering than the poor, and that is also ridiculous.

          • Gregg

            I not only don’t have the numbers, I don’t know how they could be calculated. But I would say the poor of the world don’t have much resources to relieve suffering. But the rich:

            Here is the top 10 on The Giving Back Fund’s list of most generous celebrities (all figures in US dollars): 1. Oprah Winfrey, $50.2 million. 2. Herb Alpert, $13 million. 3. Barbra Streisand, $11 million. 4. Paul Newman, $10 million. 5. Mel Gibson, $9.9 million. 6. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, $8.4 million. 7. Lance Armstrong, $5 million. 8. Michael Jordan, $5 million. 9. Eric Lindros, $5 million. 10. Rush Limbaugh, $4.2 million.

            Source: The Giving Back Fund

          • Modavations

            John Kerry donated $400

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            the simple fact is they took it in the first place, just because their conscious leaked through enough for them to donate only proves their human, sure if I had all this $ I know I didn’t “deserve” i would try to give it all away as well, wouldn’t you?

          • Gregg

            A person deserves all they can earn in the free market. No one forces anyone to by advertising on Oprah or Rush. They get in line and eagerly pay, thankful for the opportunity. I can’t define that as taking the money.

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            ever heard of brainwashing?  knowledge, art, philosophy and food should flow just as freely as water (no money needed), when it does humanity will travel much faster than the current mode: take as much as someone is dumb enough to give, and if you keep them dumb they keep giving.

          • Modavations

            They had this adventure on Star Trek 30 yrs ago.Captain Kirk had to rescue the niave ones.

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            forgot to laugh~not a “trekie”

          • Gregg

            With all due respect, that sounds a bit elitist. Who is to say? 

            I am an artist (musician) by trade. I own many copyrights both on the CD you can hold in your hand and the intangible sound in the air. It makes me money but I’ve worked very hard for it. If I made not a dime I would still play, I have to. However, I would not have the luxury of a life that promotes my passion and the music would suffer. I’d be stuck in a 9 to 5 rut. So, I disagree completely with your vision. If you want good art then pay for it. We would not have Tchaikovsky’s music if not for the patronage of Nadezhda von Meck (one example of many).

            The irony is your last sentence. Replace the word “someone” with “government’ and I’m with you.

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

             I’ve never charged for my music ~ copyright is a fulfillment of entitlement~riddle me this, where does your creative inspiration come from, and can you safely say you “own” that enough to feel intitled to profit from it?  Try doing the music for the sake of expressing your soul, and you can always garden for your food.  I can’t even begin to express to you how much fantastic art i’ve recieved for no $, nor can I express to you the joy it brought me.

          • Gregg

            Alright Mr. Ravicher, it’s late (just in from the Mon. gig) but you asked a good question and it deserves a proper response that no one else cares about (apologies to those). I don’t know your instrument but you’re a fellow musician who has a real passion. I even clicked “like”. I would not “like” anything about your politics however. Cool.

            “Try doing the music for the sake of expressing your soul, and you can always garden for your food.”

            You make assumptions. I did point out I have to play and would do it for free. Speaking of gardening, I remember being stuck in Nashville in a hotel so seedy there were dead cats floating in the pool. The club gave us a check that bounced. We pilfered gardens to eat then the truck broke down on the way to Auburn. We towed it 200 miles and lost a ton of money but we rocked. Way back when we played 6 nights a week for 3 1/2 months from 9 to 1 then reheasal from 1:30 to at least 5:00 for $40 a week a piece and rooms. We survived eating free or’deurves at happy hour in the hotel bar. We got damn good. It paid off. I’ve seen more heartache and glory than you can imagine or I want to tell. So with all due respect, don’t tell me about expressing my soul, that’s what I do. I garden too.

            Here’s the thing, you can get paid to “express your soul”. That’s the beauty and it’s also precisely what you are being paid to do… but your soul may suck and not be marketable. If that’s the case then get good. Work hard at your craft. Be passionate, professional and meticulous. All in. Gig 200 nights a year while you’re young. Find your inner voice and work it hard. Use your unique perspective, passions, cleverness, beliefs or whatever to define your vision. Take a moment of inspiration and put in the hours of perspiration, knowledge and experience it takes to make it special. More than naval gazing and back patting. And that’s after the years and decades of honing your craft for love. Now you have something that is truly from you or more accurately is you. You own it.

            If someone is happy to pay you big money to play for a hall of fame singer in front of 12,500 screaming happy fans who eagerly paid $20 each to see some soul expressing, what’s the downside?
             

          • Terry Tree Tree

            With your music, you deliver a service that people want and value!  The GREEDY rich use criminal means such as fraud, deception, and lies, to separate people from their money, homes, and valueables!
                Mafioso used to carry tommy guns in violin cases.  Did the ‘music’ they made contribute anything to the common good?

          • Modavations

            They don’t owe anyone,anything.They are in the long line of philanthropists.You must be new,this whole forum is centered on hatred of business

          • Anonymous

            Your like the Edward Gore’ Doubtful Guest, you keep hanging out doing nothing.

          • Constapations

            hawking goods from a cartel, now that’s real business

          • Modavations

            I also am at a loss

          • Constapations

            because you have the empathy of a troll

    • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

      things change all the time
       

    • Brett

      Not unlike the local mafioso who gives to the widows’ and orphans’ fund; they’ve done some good, so why question their business practices?

    • Alan in NH

      Having read entries on this site for some time, I know this is a statement in which you thoroughly believe, and it may well be true, but how could you ever substantiate such a claim? Are there statistics to back this? Would it be naive to assume that self-interest has never starved anyone? Does everyone’s self-interest have the same weight; in other words, is there a free market of self-interests competing on equal terms?

      • Zing

        Having read entries on this site for some time, I might ask you do you have a point, and who should care?

        • Constapations

          modatroll – having read your entries for some time, i ask why bother

        • Anonymous

          Alan is asking a valid question. Unlike you who seems to think crudeness passes for wit.

    • Constapations

      you wouldn’ know the difference between charity and self-interest if it sat on your face

    • Terry Tree Tree

      GREED feeds only the GREEDY, at the EXPENSE of everyone else!

  • Justin

    It seems that even more than being a coalescence of frustrations about current policies and the financial situation of the majority of people in the country, the occupy movement has come to embody that pervasive sentiment that the government is not working for the people, that the democratic process that we are told gives us a say in our government has failed. It hasn’t failed in the since that it is dead and requires some sort of revolution, just that it needs some serious reforming.

    To that end, Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig has recently written a book (that I have not yet read), given a talk, and written an article(links at the bottom) that really gets at the heart of what the problem may be and what we can do about it. That is, how we can revive trust in our government and use it to democratically improve our nation (and world, for those of you who aren’t too given to nationalism….).

    [talk] http://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2011-10-24/lawrence-lessig-republic-lost
    [article] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/opinion/in-campaign-financing-more-money-can-beat-big-money.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=lessig&st=cse

    • Zing

      Snork! Zzzzzz

      • Anonymous

        Your such a small minded person, and not very amusing either.

  • Jeivers

    Core problem is financial:
    The capital gains tax is a joke:

    1. Treat all Capital Gains and Dividend income as regular Income.

    2. Put a small transaction tax on every “Sell” order on Wall Street (will also control volatility)

    3. Go to a VAT Corporate Tax Code so we can Tax Imports

    4. Go to a three-tier tax structure:
        0-100K   =   20%
        100K – 1 Million = 40% (on what you make over 100K)
        1 Million+ = 60% (on what you make over a million)

    5. Cap deductions at 100K.

    • Jeivers

      Could also make the personal deduction 30K and 10K per dependent – that would kick start the economy as pople who spend all their money had more to spend!

    • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

      core problem? how about capitalism = the Economy of Thieves like us…
       

      • Jeivers

        Decrease in Capital Gains Tax is resposible for 80% of the increase in wealth disparity over the last three decades.

        • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

          not here to argue economics~it is the ideals behind them that matter.
           

          • Jeivers

            Yes – I believe we can have a mix of socialism and a free market and I say free market because you have every right to earn more if you work harder or invent cool stuff — ie, capitalism is the earning of money with “capital” not dependent on any actual work or invention.

          • Jeivers

            But I go down to Occupy Boston and have the philosophical conversations all the time, we do have to work within the current system to fix it and improve it going forward and do not believe scrapping the whole thing to attempt the building of an ideal system is going to work because we will always be limited by human weakenesses.

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            I do not believe is self entitlement – how do you think humanity got to this point?  Work hard because you want to, work hard because you love what you do, but if you’re working hard for more $ you are in effect stealing potential energy out of the system… ie the economy of thieves like us….

          • Leatherstocking

            We work because we have to. To eat and stay out of the snow.

            You sow the seeds and tend the patch to reap the food.

            We use $ so we can trade food for other things outside of bartering.

            When we had sound money (backed by gold for ex), such money was real, and reflected value.

            Now it is worthless paper that can be inflated and created by debt out of thin air at astronomical rates.

            We live beyond our means. To pretend otherwise while hiding behind debt, because we are too greedy and materialistic and cowardly to admit it, is simply immoral.

            http://mises.org/daily/1132

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            we do not need money at all~we never did.

          • Modavations

            Utopian Blather.The business of America is business

          • Anonymous

            Which is why we have almost no culture or appreciation for art.
            How many people listen to the only original art form that is popular all over the world. Not many. More people are interested in reality TV than jazz.

          • Constapations

            Blathering is your forte.  Selling a cartel’s crap your business.

          • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=658033938 John Graff

            “In general, contemporary social democrats support:

            - A mixed economy consisting of both private enterprise and publicly owned or subsidized programs of education, universal health care, child care and related social services for all citizens.

            - An extensive system of social security (although usually not to the extent advocated by socialists), with the stated goal of counteracting the effects of poverty and insuring the citizens against loss of income following illness, unemployment or retirement.

            - Government bodies that regulate private enterprise in the interests of workers and consumers by ensuring labor rights (i.e. supporting worker access to trade unions), consumer protections, and fair market competition.

            - Environmentalism and environmental protection laws; for example, funding for alternative energy resources and laws designed to combat global warming.

            - A value-added/progressive taxation system to fund government expenditures.

            - A secular and a socially progressive policy.

            - Immigration and multiculturalism.

            - Fair trade over free trade.

            - A foreign policy supporting the promotion of democracy, the protection of human rights and where possible, effective multilateralism.

            - Advocacy of social justice, human rights, social rights, civil rights and civil liberties.”

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

            Makes a lot of sense to me.

          • Leatherstocking

            What matters is that it works pragmatically. A democratic Republic and  competitive, un-corrupted, free-markets, pricing, and letting people reap the rewards of their efforts/choices, is pragmatically the most successful, peaceful system for dealing with the reality of scarcity.  Anti-trust laws etc to protect against collusion and stifling of competition.

            Centrally-Commanded methods of controlling production and distributing wealth have not worked. Pragmatically failed.

            Delouse our economy and live and let live.

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            what matters is than it works naturally ~ pragmatism has nothing to do with it any more than $ has something to do with your inner moral core ~ how about delousing our limited concept of reality and realizing that the fallacy of human entitlement will be the end of us all?

          • Leatherstocking

            That’s great, you just can’t force your enlightenment on everyone else.

            People prefer the freedom to be misguided, and have a chance to self-correct, and seek their own enlightenment, more than they desire for an “enlightened class” tell them what to do and just trust them.

            That’s the inefficiency of freedom, liberty. Tough luck.

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            in the thunderdome of ideas and ideals there should be no forcing at all, just common sense, and after a while all the rough edges of the rocks in our river will be smoothed by that water.  I cannot “make” you do or believe anything ~ that is all you

          • Leatherstocking
          • Leatherstocking

            Natural?  Freedom to think, act, choose, and suffer/gain the consequences is the definition of natural.  Being managed by an authoritarian group of technocrats couldn’t be more un-natural.

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            I am not managed by them, are you?

          • Leatherstocking

            We could be free in a prison camp, but I’m not going to vote such a reality in during my less transcendent moments of self-governance.

          • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

            and you think for a second that I would?  that my dear leatherstocking 2  that is just common sense .

          • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=658033938 John Graff

            “Fewer debates over economics would be needed if the world spent more time examining what actually works and what does not. Almost everywhere, debate has raged about how to combine market forces and social security. The left calls for an expansion of social protection; the right says that doing so would undermine economic growth and widen fiscal deficits.But the debate can be moved forward by examining the successful economies of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. While no regional experience is directly transferable, the Nordic countries have successfully combined social welfare with high income levels, solid economic growth, and macroeconomic stability. They have also achieved high standards of governance.”http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sachs110/English

        • Jeivers
        • Modavations

          Europe,including Sweden et al,have more disparity then the US.It’s always been there.People flock here from all over so they too can become rich,to become part of the dreaded disparity.

          • Anonymous

            Not from Sweden they don’t nor many of the other European nations.
            The majority are coming from Mexico, Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa. Places where there is no hope. They are under the false illusion that if they work hard they will become millionaires.
            Nothing is father from the truth. Of course you are not interested in the truth or facts. Just keep on with the world according to Modavations.

          • nj

            Moda-troll butt apparently has unlimited storage capacity for bogus information.

            I’ll tell the CIA to call Moda-troll so he can correct their data:https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html

      • Modavations

        How ’bout socialism= monsters such as Stalin,Hitler,Pol Pot,Fidel,Hitler,Hugo,Ceaucesco(?),Tito Hoxha,Honnecker,and on and on

        • http://www.facebook.com/ravicher David Ravicher

          who said socialism, oh, you.

    • ClearThinking

      Exactly, we should be discouraging savings and investment so that more is spent on Chinese TVs. 

    • Zing

      Zzzz

  • Four Elements

    I just heard Matt Schwartz from the NEW YORKER (for goodness sake) say “nucular”!
    Maybe Bush in disguise? 

    • Gregg

      A lot of people say it that way, Jimmy Carter used to drive me nuts with it.

      • Modavations

        I’m guilty general G,commander of the liberated middle states

        • Gregg

          Don’t beat yourself up perfessor.

          • Constapations

            you two should occupy each other

          • Terry Tree Tree

            Sounds like they do!  Moda keeps getting ‘limp-wristed’ at the mention of almost any man’s name!

          • nj

            He doesn’t have to. Others will be glad to step in.

    • Zing

      Maybe you should get off your high horse.

      • Constapations

        maybe you should get under one

    • Gregg

      I hadn’t heard the show yet when I commented (it doesn’t air til 7:00 here), now that I have Mr. Shwartz was correct. The gist was they were talking about the inception of the movement and he listed 3 or 4 main founders.  Regarding the future differences for OWS, he said it will be less nucular. In truth, I don’t know if it’s a word or not but the context had nothing to do with nuclear energy. The root was nucleus, as in less of a nucleus (referring to the aforementioned list). An unfit person would be less muscular than a fit one. “Nuclear” would have made no sense at all.

      Not picking, just interesting. That’s all.

  • Leatherstocking
  • Modavations

    Just got off the phone with Tom A.He wants me to organize “Grief Counselors” for tomorrow’s show

    • Zing

      Don’t stop…you brighten my day.

      • Constapations

        modatroll – how quaint and transparent and schizophrenic – replying to yourself with a different moniker

    • Terry Tree Tree

      Then, Mr. Ashbrook will kindly reveal his conversation with you on the air, to try to convince us that you aren’t just having another Delusion of Grandeur!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=658033938 John Graff

    “Lawrence Lessig has an answer. In his new book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It, he spends 20 pages reviewing the the 30 years of deregulation that led up to the financial crisis and outlining our present circumstances. In fact, this book, published just before Occupy Wall Street began, is perfectly positioned to become the movement’s handbook. While few protesters will need convincing that the government is corrupted by money, the book lays out the case in a such a comprehensive and persuasive manner — and proposes such specific and radical solutions — that it seems tailor-made for the Occupy movement. And it’s ambitious proposal for state-based activism on behalf of a Constitutional Convention could provide the movement with a next organizing step as it nears its two-month anniversary Thursday — and faces such questions as how to ride out the winter and how to respond to police crackdowns.”

    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/has-a-harvard-professor-mapped-out-the-next-step-for-occupy-wall-street/247561/

    • Zing

      Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=658033938 John Graff

        Just stupid and rude. Maybe you should find some bridge to nap under instead of haunting message boards (and liking your own comments)? If you are lucky some hapless goats might come by.   

    • Mia

      Interesting.  Thanks!  Will check it out.

  • Zing

    I love this forum.  Everybody has an answer, but no one has the means.  Occupussy is dead…DOA, in fact. 

    Peace.   

    • nj

      If anything is dead, it’s what has been passing for Zing’s brain.

    • Constapations

      Modatroll – your the occupussy here.

  • Mmaaaxx

    Don’t blame capitalism.
    Don’t blame money.
    Blame corrupt politicians.
    Blame our ‘leaders’ for not following their oaths.
    RP2012

    • at

      My suggestion to you is that you watch the documentary Inside
      Job, you may change your mind about there being a distinction between
      Goldman Sachs and their ilk, and the U.S. treasury.  When you learn the
      facts of their criminal (woops not criminal — they changed the laws so
      that their actions would no longer be criminal)acts, and what they
      have wrought.  You are way behind the curve on realizing the shenanigans
      that went on at the highest levels of both the corporate and government
      spheres. It’s criminal — oops, no it’s not, they are good guys.  But
      really people who don’t yet understand what happened, should just not
      comment on it.

      • Leatherstocking

        Ron Paul understood how the Fed and its pals pull the biggest strings while you were still in diapers.

        Inside Job was great for all congressional/wall st. level bashing, but failed to go up the ladder to the institutions that fund the whole game, blow the whole bubble.

  • Alfredo Triff

    The movement is just beginning. People misconstrue this as a “political” movement. It’s something new! 

  • Mixx1224

    Ya’ll need to trust the process.  OWS has evolved into a movement that
     address issues from a specific pov. We are tired of being used as pawns for politicians, financial institutions, and corporate America.

    Look, I’m 60 yrs old.  Unemployed for 2 years, (unemployment used up)facing eviction and pretty much have decided I have better odds of winning the lottery than I do of getting a job.

    Anarcists?  Back in the day we called them agent provacatours (sp?) we identified them because they advocated violence

    And will someone please tell me why it’s “leftists” to want a job that pays a liveable wage with benefits?

    Michele
    North Carolina
     

    • Anonymous

      I feel your pain cuz I’m walkin in your shoes.

  • Stuart williams

    Occupy Wall Street needs to take the protests to congress! Wall Street couldn’t care less. Also they have nothing to do with legislation.

    • At

      That’s just it, Wall Street has everything to do with legislation, especially the legislation that makes them rich and puts the whole county in the dumper.  But I agree, take it to the vote booth and vote out All incumbents without until they stop acting like the puppets of $.

      • at

        ” . . .without mercy. . .”

  • Richard Heim

    “The ongoing demonstrations of the past weeks are comedic and sad
    at the same time. Of course Wall Street has been demonized because they behaved
    like Las Vegas.

    We had banking regulations called the “Banking Act of 1933,”
    written by Senator Carter Glass(D—Va.)
    and Congressman Henry B. Steagall (D—Ala) who did
    not want bank loans to become a deadly gamble. But, in 1999, some Republicans,
    considered those laws designed to protect the public to be very restrictive, so
    Phil Gramm (R, Texas), Rep. Jim Leach (R, Iowa), and Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R, Virginia).
    wrote some new laws that trashed those protective laws, and they called their
    new laws, the “Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act.”
    This trashing of the 1933 protective regulations allowed Wall Street investment
    banking firms to play like Las Vegas and gamble with their depositors’ money
    that was held in commercial banks owned or created by the investment firms.

    When the Wall Street gamble led to a financial collapse, senators
    Chris Dodd (D, Conn) and Barney Frank, (D, Mass) tried to reestablish those old
    Glass-Steagall laws that had served the country from 1933-2000. Their “Dodd–Frank
    Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” could have helped a great deal,
    but obviously those members of congress who profited from the removal of
    regulations are not being pressured by the demonstrators. Why not? Why are they
    so ignorant of these facts. The demonstrators appear to be on the wrong street.
    Wall Street is in New York, and the real villains live at the end of
    Pennsylvania Ave in Washington, DC, between 17th Street and 14th
    Street NW. Maybe the demonstrators need a map and a current history lesson.”

    Several days ago it was reported that Newt
    Gingrich suggested in a GOP presidential debate that Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), the architects of 2010’s sweeping
    financial overhaul law, ought to be imprisoned. And in the past three days
    Gingrich is pulling ahead of everyone and we hear nothing from the
    demonstrators about it. All of the facts, the dates, the names of the
    congressmen, the amount of their plunder is well documented in a Nov 21 NEWSWEEK  article titled CONGRESS IS GETTING RICH OFF
    WALLSTREET  by Peter Schweizer. The
    demonstrators and those who have discussed the demonstrations on ON POINT also
    seem totally ignorant of these heavily documented facts. Why?

    Dick Heim  
    rheim@uwsuper.edu

    University of WI emeritus

    • Leatherstocking

      Why leave out the Dems?
      In the fall of 1999, Senators Christopher Dodd and Charles E. Schumer prevented another impasse by securing a compromise between Sen. Gramm and the Clinton Administration by agreeing to amend the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (12 U.S.C. ch.16) to allow banks to merge or expand into other types of financial institutions. The new Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act’s FDIC related provisions, along with the addition of sub-section § 2903(c) directly to Title 12, insured any bank holding institution wishing to be re-designated as a financial holding institution by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System would also have to follow Community Reinvestment Act compliance guidelines before any merger or expansion could take effect.[57]

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act#Legislative_changes_1999

    • Terry Tree Tree

      THANK YOU!!

  • GNVDJ

    I see the movement as being independent of physical occupation.  One way I express solidarity is by identifying myself as One of the 99% in my correspondence with my elected representatives.  They need to realize that their jobs are at risk because they’ve been corrupted by money and power.

  • Donna

    I am a Native New Yorker and have been living overseas for the last few years. I found the OWS movement as flawed as the Tea Party movement, even though equating the two may not be very fair. The OWS is another example of my fellow Americans sticking their head in the sand by blaming Wall Street for the ills of the country, when the problem is really the Government and its poor governance. Wall Street did not create our current problems; bad public policies did. OWS reminds me of people who took out mortgages for property they could not afford and then turn around and blame the banks; I guess the banks made them do it? We are citizens and share in the accountability. Until this is recognized, instead of blaming the other, then OWS has no credibility. Further, how dare the OWS believe that they speak for me as part of the 99?

    Donna 

    • LowerOurStandards

      Do our Federal Reserve banksters who gave a $77.7 Trillion secret loan to their 6 Bankster buddies have credibility – even after they made $13 Billion from it?

      http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html

      • Leatherstocking

        More of the Same! 4 more years! More GOP! More DNC! Don’t rock the boat! Keep up the partisan, 2-party bickering! You are right! Your neighbor is wrong! More of the same!

    • at

      My suggestion to you is that you watch the documentary Inside Job, you may change your mind about there being a distinction between Goldman Sachs and their ilk, and the U.S. treasury.  When you learn the facts of their criminal (woops not criminal — they changed the laws so that their actions would no longer be criminal)
      acts, and what they have wrought.  You are way behind the curve on realizing the shenanigans that went on at the highest levels of both the corporate and government spheres. It’s criminal — oops, no it’s not, they are good guys.  But really people who don’t yet understand what happened, should just not comment on it.

  • Constapations

    J.Edgar –

    Almost 10 hours straight of non-stop badgering -

    Must have been a long, lonely weekend for you just cruising around looking for hungry kids to help.

    We had wonderful discussions around here the last couple of days without your childishly, pathetic, anti-social meddling.

    With 130 comments out of 650, you’ve proven your addiction to bullying others by your 20% troll rate, today.

    Once again, your spineless and witless behavior has achieved another low-point for yourself and the ‘On Point’ comment board community.

  • http://twitter.com/mudduckk Malcolm Campbell

    Not buying this OWS. Been too busy working to give it my time. What time I have for research, I spend on ways to make more money.

    • LowerOurStandards

      Above is a prime example of the blind, deluded, narcissistic culture we live in.

      • http://twitter.com/mudduckk Malcolm Campbell

        Nice job on the vilify LOS. You know nothing about me. Erase my name from your list of defects and insert yours. What have we gained? 

        By the way between my last post and now…I put up another $10K proposal.  I have a 20% probability of getting the job.  It’ll provide me with about three weeks of wages if I get it. That and about $2K in gross profits to keep my ops going for about a month.  What value have you contributed?

        Just saying.  This country was built by guys like me.  Men with callouses on their knuckles, two pairs of filthy pants. Made something out of nothing against all odds, because all the while we created something others desired for a cost less than they would pay. I should get to keep whats left over and you should make your own damn job, or move to China…I hear they are hiring.

        • nj

          This is satire, right?

          “This country was built by guys like me.  Men…”

          Men who scratched their balls with a stick and dragged their women to bed by the hair…

          • http://twitter.com/mudduckk Malcolm Campbell

            If it turns you on nj.  All’s good so long as its consensual right?  Wink wink…know what I mean?

          • at

            What are you wasting time here for you should be slinging grout or something, you obviously do not belong in the sphere of life were perception and insight are a valued commodity, so it’s probably a good thing that you think of yourself as a working class hero, so you don’t blow your brains out.

        • Anonymous

          You sure have one huge ego. By the way you have contributed nothing but 2K to keep your ops going. What makes you think you do anything for anyone? You make money, great. Everyone does who has a job. Oh and by the way spare me with the cheap sentiments, like your cheap cologne, they are stinking up the joint. 

          • http://twitter.com/mudduckk Malcolm Campbell

            Wrong. Everyone who does have a job does not necessarily add value.  Example 1: Bankers. Nuff said. Example 2: all the lazy entitled losers I fired. All 40 of them. My Spanish teacher on the other hand. She added value. So did the last three men I hired. Never seen such dedication and commitment. hard work seems to be sport to them. Always one upping each other. Shocking really.

          • Brett

            You didn’t pay attention…jeffe said, “everyone does [makes money] who has a job.” He didn’t say everyone who works adds value. You really just want to rant using some kind of neo-con/neo-libertarian narrative.

        • http://twitter.com/mudduckk Malcolm Campbell

          I am liking all your comments.  I could not make up stuff this good.  You guys should figure out how to bottle this and sell it for money.

          • Brett

            Wow, the first time you post here, you have your guns at your hip?!? You are too young to be one of those reactionaries who talks about the good old days as if you are entitled to something now just because you have calluses on your hands and enjoyed something twenty years ago. 

        • Terry Tree Tree

          And yet you defend the right of the GREEDY rich to do as they darn well please!   While condemning the unions that brought job safety, five day work-weeks, over-time pay, worker dignity, and a HOST of other things that MOST of the citizens of the U.S. benefit from?

        • Brett

          Dude, sorry, but you’ve romanticized your chosen path in life (I particularly liked the …”something out of nothing against all odds” part). In the scheme of things tile setting is not essential to the workings of society…and nobody cares how calloused your hands get. 

        • Fredlinskip

          There is nothing wrong with hard work, specialized knowledge, and striving to achieve.
          ..especially if you can do it by providing a worthwhile good and/or service, and can do it without damging others in the process.

           I have some difficulty with those that can’t seem to understand that not everyone has been granted the same opportunities in life and seem to look at anyone, who for a large myriad of reasons, have not become as successful, with disdain.

      • Anonymous

        You bet, and he will tell you he’s better than you. Woops he already did. Well now what a man.

    • Fredlinskip

      I’m glad there are those with courage enough to stand up for what’s right.
      It can’t be easy out there in the streets- but their efforts are encouraging a conversation that should have been at the fore of public discussion for a LONG time.

  • http://twitter.com/mudduckk Malcolm Campbell

    Have seen the chart showing US Labor as a percent of national income (USGDP), in a decline for the last 30 years. Frightening?! Makes even the most fervent individualist a momentary Marxist. Yet if you were to look at Global labor income as percent of Global GDP (not sure you can get clean data on it tho) I would bet the chart would reveal that globalization + capitalism is doing more to lift individuals out of poverty than ever. The former chart (US) only goes to confirm that the price of labor in the US is still too high. 

    • Anonymous

      Lets just cut the chase and do away with those pesky child labor laws. That cheap enough labor for you? I guess we could always go back to slave labor and indentured servitude.
       

      • http://twitter.com/mudduckk Malcolm Campbell

        Don’t shoot the messenger, El Heffe. That’s boss in Spanish.  BTW how’s yours? Mines coming along nicely.  

        Jeff, price is price.  I don’t set it, the market does. And there is nothing you can nor should do about it.  Let it happen and the price of everything else will follow purchasing power.  Its already happening.  Look at home prices…they’re off by 35%. Getting more affordable every day.  So’s my wages.  Used to get paid $3.50/ft in ’93.  Now getting $2.20. My work/biz is very sensitive to market forces…unlike wages in collective bargaining groups and pensioners.  They’re overpaid for their marginal benefit.  When’s the last time a union worker paid union wages for a home improvement? Never. They couldn’t.  The cost would soon outstrip the value of the home.  That’s a metaphor for what’s F’d up in america.  The cost of state services is worth more than the states ability and willingness to pay.
         
        OWS crowd and Obama, Libs in congress, and quite a few establishment Republicans fight the market. They fix labor prices.  Give in to special interest groups, principally unions and beneficiaries.  They try too hold the line on price.  Beg for more revenue to cover the shortfall. That comes from producers like me.  Cept we’ve already taken a haircut, so how can you get more out of us?  New math I guess.  

        Heres the new math.  Go to Timmy G. and and Ben B. to float loans and buy your funny paper so you can give block grants to citys and states so govt workers don’t have to feel our pain. Bankers stand between Timmy and Ben skimming cream off ZIRP arbitrage (make fees for those of you in Rio Linda) and make fat bonuses.  Govt workers create nothing of value, so the debt has to be worked off by taxing future generations.

        SO IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS.  Who is enslaving our children?

        • Terry Tree Tree

          Who collectively bargains to set the pay and benefits of Congress and the Senate?  The GREEDY rich give themselves raises of multiples of their ‘salary’, and benefits, while calling for the workers that produce whatever they sell, to sacrifice!
              The GREEDY rich get FAR more benefit from the infrastructure, and the taxes paid by the working-class, but keep WHINING about how hard it is for them to make do on a few $Billion!
              The GREEDY rich export the jobs, but DO NOT cut prices, and their OWN pay to what it should be in the outsourced country!
              You don’t call this HYPOCRACY??

        • Brett

          “OWS crowd…fight the market.” Me thinks you’re giving OWS too much credit at this point! 

          As far as “Libs,” union workers, government workers, and other culprits in your rant about whose fault it is that you are not making enough money in the tile setting business (as a platform to extol the virtues of taking all regulation out of labor/business, or whatever it is you’re driving at; it’s kind of glib and relies on characterizations of characterizations, so it’s hard to tell), that’s understandable, given you do not provide a product in your business but a service, one that may become obsolete or at least become left to the semi-skilled. [You are using yourself (your personal example of a small businessperson) as the centerpiece of your post, so it is appropriate to respond about your personal situation.] Maybe, in the scheme of things, tile setters aren’t that important to the ebb and flow of our society? Maybe technology has made the job a lot easier, and the job requires less specialized skill? Maybe the time it takes to, say, retile a bathroom is much less than it was in ’93? Maybe tile setting isn’t such a specialized skill that one should be guaranteed success if one goes into business for himself? Do you think you should make more money now than you did in ’93? Why? By virtue that you work hard? You want the markets free but want guarantees as well; seems a little contradictory.   You chose to start your own business. (I run two small businesses, BTW.) It’s always the disgruntled small business person who wants to paint the union/government worker with a broad brush, that because they have more job security/protection (or so it looks from the other side of the fence where one uses the “grass-is-greener” lens) you, the independent, are getting slighted. There’s enough blame to go around, for sure, but your situation is not unique. One might accuse you of being envious of those who don’t have to hustle as much to get by…sorry, bud, but that’s the way it goes when you run a small company, and it is not new; don’t whine so much, and don’t blame others. You are displaying a dichotomy of spirit in a way. You want markets to be left alone yet you also want some kind of guarantee that you’ll succeed as a small business person just because you do good work and have work. That is naive; it is either foolish or ideological chest-beating (or both) to reduce the problem to the simplistic causes you cite.   

          • Brett

            Sorry about the lack of line breaks…and I didn’t even paste this from somewhere else?!?!? Thanks DISQUS™

        • Anonymous

          I know it’s Spanish for boss. I’m not one however.
          What you’re advocating for is a race to the bottom.
          You produce nothing but hot air, at least it seems so to me.

        • Mia

          Actually, it’s jefe, not heffe.  

        • Fredlinskip

          Speaking of math. Why was it necessary for W to quickly squander the surplus handed over to him by the fiscal sainity of the Dem administraion before him and hand it over in the form of tax cuts to the wealthy? The wealthiest Americans are not creating more jobs. There was less job creation under W than any other administration since WWII. In reality many American companies are not even American anymore. Most of the jobs they create, and even the purchases they make are increasingly overseas. They are stimulating less and less in the American economy.
          They are sitting on trillions that could be being invested in America.

             Government should be stimulating small businesses and new startups not the megacorps who’s execs are so lost in their own little tight cliques of wealthy acquaintances they can not see past their noses.

          • Gregg

            If you really want the answer then get the question right. With the country in recession after the tech bubble bursting it was decided to give the surplus back the people. It was theirs after all. This happened in the form of tax credits not cuts. $300 checks were sent to every tax payer (and then some) in an effort to stimulate. To say, “hand it over in the form of tax cuts to the wealthy?” makes no sense. Hand what over? The wealthy didn’t receive money in the form of tax cuts that’s impossible. They kept more of their own.

            Hope that helps.

          • Drewjkelly

            The wealthy were able to retain $ that would have otherwise been used for such things as paying down the debt, unfunded wars, funding entitlement programs, etc.

            If tax rates were more in line with historical averages over past 12 yrs plus, than the nations fiscal problems would not be as near as deep.
            I don’t believe these concepts are difficult to understand- unless you choose not to.

            Hope that is helpful.

          • Gregg

            It’s their money.

          • at

            That depends on where and how they got it.  I could rob a bank, would that be my money? Or if I had the power, I could corrupt the laws so that  any crime I commit is legal.  Is it then still “my money”.

            That’s the rule of  law of the jungle.

    • Fredlinskip

      Did you ever consider the possibility that corporate profit was too high?
      Corp execs in good times and bad, make hunrdeds of times what the producer of the good or service makes. Does it really have to be that way? It wasn’t always this way. Last 30 years corp profit skyrocketed while wages of employees froze.
      It almost seems someone pulled the rug out from under most of us.
      And it seemed to start with Reagan administration.
      Personally I don’t think this is coincidence.

  • Fred

    Yesterday’s NY Times (Nov. 27) had a detailed and astounding
    article on Ronald Lauder’s tax shelters: A Family’s Billions, Artfully
    Sheltered. It should be required reading for all American.
    Then we might be able to have an intelligent discussion about
    taxation, income redistribution, and social policy before ordinary
    Americans scream socialism.

    • Anonymous

      That was an interesting story. He’s worth billions, he collects a huge art collection. Then he creates this creative tax shelter in which he writes off his art collection to the tune of millions. He then gets more tax breaks from NY City to build his museum and charges the good citizens and anyone else money to see the art he wrote off.
      What a scam, the people of New York pay twice and this guy gets to have his art and his museum. If you ask me the least he could do is open the place up for free. Nice place, the Neue Galerie.

    • http://twitter.com/mudduckk Malcolm Campbell

      So long as it costs mere millions to legally shelter billions, you will never have at the 0.1%’s wealth short of all out violence.  Even then you’ll probably lose.  When will you people ever learn.  You can’t touch them and theirs.  Their people write the rules and their people are way smarter and faster than the govt and their EE’s.

      That leaves the next tier.  The top 10%, docs, lawyers, fortune 500 EE’s, Gov’t admins on the double dip, the most successful small biz owners (most are broke or in neg net worth), and high energy sales pros.  These guys are your neighbors, and their is a limit to their ability to pay.  And the more you take and give to non value producing people the less growth there will be going forward. Less jobs and lower pay. This stuff is quite simple.

      You peeps believe there is soooo much money to be had, but really there isn’t.  Why don’t you all suggest your government live within its means like the rest of us in normal land. Ask your congressman to support a balanced budget.

      • Vtcheflw

        You people? Who do you think you are.  Are you better than the rest of us?  The reality is that centuries of accumulated knowledge is what “makes the world go round”, not some pile of paper we call valuable.  Understanding that, we understand there IS plenty of wealth, it is all a matter of how to us it (the knowledge that is, because a pile of money never has and never will actually get anything done)
        By the way how are the “worthless” people?  The people that clean the bathrooms, pick up the trash, bring the food in from the fields…?  I see the people that move piles of money in circles and call it producing something as the worthless one, and yet they are rich.

        • at

          Good point, the nobility of the working man as opposed to the parasites that speculate.  Hitler made the same point so that means you are a nazi!  Just kidding.  (IRONY ALERT!)  As has been pointed out to us many times here at onPoint, the nazis were not fascists, they were socialists:)

          • Leatherstocking

            Whatever they were, socialists paved the way….

            http://lamar.colostate.edu/~grjan/hayeknaziism.html

          • at

            You are correct. They quite literally paved the way with their bodies  when the reactionary right-wing veterans killed them all in order to put Hitler in power.  Oh, that’s right, Hitler was supported financially by those leftist socialistic Krupp Brothers.

            Communists were possibly the only group more hated by the nazis than Jews.  Fortunately the two often coincided so they could double their hate pleasure for the same price.  On the other hand the Communist Jews were a pretty blood thirsty bunch, more so than even our present day Zionists.  As has been pointed out here a week or so ago, a Jew named Frankel was the first to institute the death camp (so claims Niall Ferguson in The War of the World) and possibly invented it (not to be confused with the concentration camp, which the British had invented earlier in South Africa.)

          • Leatherstocking

            So you didn’t read it.

            The growing Socialist mind set of pre-Hitler Germany opened the door, and provided the power structure, for succumbing to Hitlers propaganda and totalitarian desires.  

            There are political/economic models that prevent that. We have one on paper, to bad we are too lazy and cynical too carry it out.

          • Brett

            Dave, you’ve said before that the neo-con-driven Tea Party movement of today has been co-opted and distorted from its original energy, energy that was generated by good, earnest Libertarians in its inception. So, based on your logic, the neo-con Tea Party of today can be blamed on Libertarianism. You do get the Godwin’s Law award for the day, though, for making socialistic ideas sound like Nazism! Congratulations…  

      • at

        I am way smarter than the 1% and their hired guns.  I just decided to spend my life on things that actually matter.  If I were as stupid as them I would spend my live in vein pursuits.  But what else can be expected of you people and your limited horizons, may as well become wealthy, it’s probably your only possibility of fooling yourself into thinking you are a successful human.

        • http://twitter.com/mudduckk Malcolm Campbell

          Vein? Are you on Heroin? If you are so smart, why am I so confused by what you write?

          • at

            Because you are young and stupid

      • Fredlinskip

        You’re right.
        We should all smile compliantly as the top tiny percent of Americans with majority of nations resources are asked to contribute less and less, while debt climbs out of sight, and our economy tanks. 

            It’s all good- that’s just how capitalism works in the U.S. of A.

        And we can feel patriotic as we sit back and do nothing, because there are penty of corporate sponsored media to tell us that anyone of an opinion any other than the GOP “Feed the Rich” mantrra are obviously comi socialist subversives.

      • at

        I know what you mean, I knew this old “non-value-producing” blind vagabond, all he ever did was sing rap at parties for tips. What a waste of life old Homer was.

  • Same Ole Story

    Here’s Thomas Jefferson’s opinion:

       “The same political parties which now agitate the U.S. have existed thro’ all time. Whether the power of the people, or that of the “aristoi” should prevail, were questions which kept the states of Greece and Rome in eternal convulsions; as they now schismatize every people whose minds and mouths are not shut up by the gag of a despot … To me it appears that there have been … party differences from the first establishment of governments, to the present day … every one takes his side in favor of the many, or the few.”

    Here’s my opinion:

    The real enemy of democracy is concentrated power in any form (e.g. church, king, corporation), not some terrorist in a cave on the other side of the world. One in four children living in poverty in the U.S., now tell me, who’s more dangerous to the American people?

    • at

      The most dangerous thing for the American people are their fat bellies, and the last piece of mud pie in the freezer.

    • Fredlinskip

      I was searching for that exact quote (unsuccessfully) having heard it on a books on CD I heard recently, with the intent of posting it, when I decided to go through the comments page to discover you had beat me to it. 

      • Same Ole Story

        The quote comes from the book “American Sphinx” by Joseph Ellis. The correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, in their old age, is interesting to read. From the very beginning of the U.S., John Adams thought it would only be a matter of time before the aristocrats (in whatever new form) would have all the power  again and democracy would be extinguished.

        • Fredlinskip

          The book I heard it on was “Adams Vs Jefferson” by John Ferling.
          Adams had major bouts of pessimism, especially when it became more clear that his role in the Revolutionary Era would not be as honored as he thought it should have been. It is very interesting and enlightening to study those times and each of the founders roles.

          Another quote relevant to current conversation:
           “The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes…. corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong it’s reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” – Abraham Lincoln

          • Fredlinskip

            I believe democracy is severely threatened these days, but believe that “We the people” still have a chance to turn things around if “We” exercise our rights to think, observe, and educate ourselves in a way that “We” are not lead like lemmings over a cliff. Unfortunately, IMO, corporate media does not serve the interests of ” We the people” very well these days.

            The Occupy movement is a big step in right direction.

            Without an informed electorate, there is no democracy

          • Same Ole Story

            Absolutely! I agree. Great quote from Lincoln; if he had lived he would have seen his prediction come true right after the Civil War when the Gilded Age was ushered in and the predator robber barons had a heyday raping this country for all it was worth. (or should I say exercising their free market rights?)

  • http://twitter.com/mudduckk Malcolm Campbell

    Gotta go to bed ya’ll.  Work comes early if ya got it.  Know what I mean?

  • Terry Tree Tree

    With nearly 700 comments, the LAST place OWS is going, is out of mind!!
        The ‘religious right’, are being made HYPOCRITES by their leaders, and their lack of ‘Christian compassion’.   To bend knee to serve the Corporatocracy, instead of helping to lift their brothers and sisters up with meaningful, living-wage jobs, goes against what they preach!
        The thieves of Wall Street, that ‘sold’ bogus mortgages, created and sold worthless Credit-Default-Swaps, and other FRAUDS, don’t like the attention, and probably hired the thugs that are causing the troubles!
        EVERYONE, that is NOT a GREEDY rich fraudster, or Bankster, should be protesting the crimes they have gotten away with, causing this nation so much financial distress!
        ALL that supported the BOGUS wars, which took most eyes off the TAX CUTS, the Pentagon $Trillion shortage, and the other crimes of the ‘W’ admin., should chip in and pay for those wars, and give the rest of us refunds!

    • Vtcheflw

      Your so right, EVERYONE that is not a banker or fraudster should be with the occupiers, and yet they’re not.  The propaganda machine works well, doesn’t it?

    • at

      Right on brother Terry

  • Diane Peel

    Occupy doesn’t want to be a political party and I hope we can stick to it. I was trying to think what it is like and then it occurred to me. It’s a lobby, only a lobby for the American people. It’s sad that in a representative government it’s come to this, but it has. We don’t have much money but we have lots of voices and a ton of creativity.

    • Anonymous

      You mean Occupy doesn’t want to tell us what to think?  Isn’t that a little (should I use this word? it’s so out of style!) democratic of them? 

      Sorry, Diane.  We have become people who look to specific opinion-makers to tell us what to believe and even how to feel.

      • Vtcheflw

        Maybe we should shed the oppressive limits of someone else’s thinking and do some for ourselves.  Wouldn’t that be novel, people who thought for themselves?

        • Anonymous

          Do what?  How are you supposed to — what is that you call that — “think for yourself”? Do people at NPR, like, think for themselves?

          • Vtcheflw

            No, look at how Tom framed this show.  What do they want?  What next?  Will this stick around?  By shrouding it all with mystery, Tom played his usual, this is the box we think in opinion maker once again.  

            If you go and talk to people you know, the movement is not about being in a place, it’s about a frame of mind.  It’s not going anywhere soon.  It doesn’t take much research to figure that out.  

            The thing that one should know about occupy is that it is not about the same thing for everyone.  It’s about ideas, better ways to do things than we are now and starting new conversations.
            You don’t have to change laws to change the world.  The way we think has more to do with how we act than laws do.  So we fight for new idea and new thinking.  

            My occupy ends when “Glad” stops advertising chemical trash bags that stop the trash from smelling.  You don’t have stinky trash if you don’t put compost in it.  When people realize that, glad wont sell anti-stink trash liners anymore.  A new (old) industry of town compost centers becomes viable.  Jobs are created, there are positive environmental repercussions, and maybe less miracle grow poison someones food.  When does your occupy end?

          • Anonymous

            That’s a great comment from VT — if I understand your “name”!  What has impressed me greatly, at this distance and relying on interviews I’ve heard and read with Occupy members, is the intelligence/education level, the thoughtfulness, the inclusiveness, the willingness to help others in their neighborhood (whether Oakland or in the Zuccotti Park area or beyond).  They may be less than anxious to come up with demands for us, but they respond very humanely to the needs and demands of others.  I’m going to quote from something from the NYRB I posted at my blog the other day.

            Michael Greenberg, another visitor to OWS, writes in the New York Review:
            *The weather wasn’t the only challenge. An organizer involved in protecting the safety of the space told me that police were directing to the park (and in some cases escorting) released prisoners from Rikers Island who had no place to go.
            Not surprisingly, the encampment had become a popular destination for
            the homeless and mentally ill—the roving men and women who are a
            permanent feature of New York street life. One homeless man, digging
            into a plate of steamed vegetables and macaroni and cheese, remarked
            that the food was better than at the soup kitchens and “the people are
            nicer.”

            The response of OWS organizers showed a maturity and responsibility that neither Mayor Bloomberg nor his police force can claim.

            *Rather
            than recoil from these new campers, the protesters did everything they
            could to include them in their tiny, model society. Katie Davison, a
            filmmaker in her early thirties who had been active in the occupation
            since its inception, told me that she had expected people from the
            bottom of society eventually to find their way to Zuccotti Park, even
            without the encouragement of authorities seeking to disrupt the protest.
            She and others had arranged for drug counselors and social workers to
            offer their services on site. “We decided we wouldn’t marginalize these
            people like the rest of society does. I guess, we’ve created our own
            welfare state, and I mean that in the best sense of the term.”

          • Vtcheflw

            That’s fantastic, just in kind of thinking for yourself I mean: forget the paradigm, make your own.  It’s not hand everything to us, it’s don’t enslave us through debt.  People shouldn’t work 40,50,80 hour a week and not get by.  Others make enough to have many, many houses and vacation several times a year.  People who work harder should have more, just not that much more and not while other hard working people say…lose there houses and pensions after 25 or 30 years of service with the same company.

            It’s not hard to see why people are pissed.  As more stories come out of this, big ideas–like not marginalizing people on the fridges and actually helping them–might make it into the mainstream consciousness.  We can do better than we are, that is an undeniable truth in my book. 

            And yeah, I’m in Vermont.  I guess you know what for work to;)

          • Anonymous

            Any good food recommendations for the Burlington-Shelburne area?

            And a tip:

            http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/29/how-to-spend-the-lottery-winnings/

          • Vtcheflw

            The  Farmhouse in downtown Burlington.  Great local foods for veggies and meat-eaters alike.  Prime spread of good and sometime rare beers.  Reasonable price to quality ratio.  No, that’s not where I work, just so you know it’s not a shame less plug.

          • Anonymous

            That sounds excellent. Noted, and belt loosened one notch.

            Local is best.

          • Leatherstocking

            “You don’t have to change laws to change the world.  The way we think has more to do with how we act than laws do.  So we fight for new idea and new thinking.  ”

            You Utopians are really going to give up on the Rule of Law society…..

            The founders understood human history. The mob and the elite. They did their best to set up a system to protect us from both, and the core is equal access and application of the Rule of Law.

            With Rule of Law underpinning our freedom and liberty, you are free to think of and express and realize new ideas and new thinking.

            Just demand Accountability and the Rule of Law again. Really demand it from your Representatives and Candidates and fellow self-governers. 

            We really don’t need to re-invent the wheel, we just need to dust it off and put it back to work.

          • Leatherstocking

            We can and should as individuals avoid no-stink trashbags, without government decree.

            But we need more than that to keep the power pirates of the Washington/Finance nexus at bay, and restrained. We need a mind shift not only against Glad, but against naively handing our power over to people like Rubin, Summers, Geithner, Greenspan, Fannie/Freddie etc, thinking that Central planning by technocrats, instead of the perhaps less efficient grind of the collective trajectory of individual free choices, is going to deliver us anything other than what we have reaped.

          • Vtcheflw

            I couldn’t agree more.  I might even call myself a liberty person if it didn’t seem like that line of thinking is bound to the box of a capitalist economy.  As for rule of law, I’m not against it out right, just don’t think we need laws to say; you must compost or you must recycle or you must turn off the lights at night (all things I do without a law to make me).  That is about public education and understanding.

            We do need laws like; you may not pour cyanide into the earth to try and extract gold as this is a danger to the public safety.  Those who do such things (I would include spilling oil into water ways in this) should be in jail for a long time.

    • Jim

      Nobody said democracy was easy. I’m reading a book published in 1881 that describes some of the schemes to buy huge portions of what is now Ohio to resell it to settlers at a profit. Some of these schemes pre-date the U S Constitution. Google The Nation Moyers for an excellent article by Bill Moyers on how we got to this point. I disagree about OWS being a lobby. I think we can back political candidates who will be mostly Democrats and Independents. I think we can push for change with our votes and we can bypass the  big money backed campaigns by using the internet. Here’s the path I see:
      1) Back liberal candidates with the caveat that to keep our support, they must support our values.
      2) Don’t let the Republicans take the White House. Obama may have bowed to big money but would you rather have him or Gingrich.
      3) Work for a constitutional amendment to take away a corporation’s “personhood”.
      4) Research which corporations do a better job of treating workers fairly. for example, Whole Foods pays better than the Kroger chain and gives employees some decent benefits.
      5) We cannot restrict how much money a person makes but we can pass taxes on excess income. We can also pass minimum wage laws if we back the right people.
      6) We must separate the cost of health care and retirement from being a corporate employee expense. Corporations only create jobs when it improves profit. linking the cost of health care and retirement to an employee, only makes it easier to replace people with machines or ship jobs offshore. We must level the playing field by moving these costs to general corporate taxes not related to employees. This includes employer share Social Security and Medicare.
      7) We must use our power as consumers. &0% of the U S economy is based on the consumer sector. Rich Corporations fail to connect their profitability to our ability to buy the stuff they make. If enough money does not flow into the hands of consumers, then eventually corporate sales suffer. I’m not a tax expert but maybe Value Added Taxes or some other method can encourage less gouging of consumers.

      I have more but 7 is already too many       

      • Leatherstocking

        “I think we can back political candidates who will be mostly Democrats and Independents.”
        You lost me there with “Democrats”. You guys are real masochists aren’t you?

        • Fredlinskip

          Jefferson- “The same political parties which now agitate the U.S. have existed thro’ all time…..To me it appears that there have been … party differences from the first establishment of governments,
          Everyone takes his side in favor of the many,… or the few.”
          Assuming Jefferson was right, which party would you think is more representative of the few?

          Observe the facts. Think.
          It will come to you.

          • Leatherstocking

            We can’t afford the lesser of two evils anymore, when they are both part of the same elite set on driving us into debt-servitude and compliant State Capitalism serfdom.

            Unless your ok with that.

      • at

        You do realize that George Washington was an evil land speculator who liked to buy cheap and used any contacts he had to get special  treatment in his dealings.  He also had the good habit of other people dying and leaving him estates.

      • at

        “2) Don’t let the Republicans take the White House. Obama may have bowed to big money but would you rather have him or Gingrich.”

        It could be said that it is exactly the premise that this line of reasoning is predicated upon that is the major reason that we are in the Repulocrat hell we find ourselves in.
        There’s one thing that is essential in order to keep things exactly as they; you gotta believe.  You gotta believe that there is no possibility of anything but a Repulocrat winning the presidency, and there won’t be. And baby you are one rabid believer, believe it.

  • EFS

    Occupy can return back to naval gazing in their parents basements.

    • Vtcheflw

      You can return to self pleasuring now thanks.

  • GretchenMo

    Fleabaggers will return to normal parasitic activity.

    • Anonymous

      teabaggers return to normal racist fascistic activity.

      • TFRX

        Jeffe, your thinking is flawed: Did the teabaggers ever stop? Perhaps they put down their Obama as Hitler posters and stopped calling him a socliacommumuslikenyan for a minute before the Stuporcommittee gave up. If so, I missed it.

        • Anonymous

          I was making a point on the absurdity of GretchenMo’ comment.I really do not think the tea party is full of racist and fascist although there is plenty of evidence of some of them having these leanings.They are also tied to corporate interest, via the Koch brothers. 

          • Leatherstocking

            Good thing the Democratic party doesn’t have any corporate ties! Phew!

          • TFRX

            Keep linking that Cato stuff. It’s soooo persuasive to people who’re trying to get, say, GE to clean up its PCBs.

          • Leatherstocking

            So Cato is against companies being held to the law?  I missed their paper where they say companies should be free to dump their chemical wastes into waterways.

            Please provide the link, or keep your Red Herrings to yourself.

            You guys love to avoid discussing content, and instead shoot down messengers.

          • Leatherstocking

            Last I checked, GE was Obama’s pal btw.

            Why don’t you spend your time arguing and ensuring GE is held to the Rule of Law, instead trying to just push the age-old smears of implying people advocate pollution etc.

            If people pollute and damage others property, private or public, they should be harshly punished. Why do you disagree?

          • Leatherstocking

            Here’s some more for thought, for the thinking….

            http://www.washingtonpolicy.org/blog/author/tmyers

          • Leatherstocking

            And a bit more for when your on the john. I’m sure you’ll use it when your done reading…

            http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb111/hb111-44.pdf

          • TFRX

            Why bother interrupting this conversation you’re carrying on with yourself when you’re making my point so well?

            You need to get out in the real world where, say, people are interested in paying a bit extra for the privilege of not having to put up with The Other at their lunch counters. The marketplace ain’t gonna solve that.

          • Leatherstocking

            What are you talking about?! Seriously…..

            Why do you couch your arguments against some 0.1% slice of the population who desires your lists of terrible things?

            We have mechanisms for dealing with people who harm other people or limit their constitutional freedoms.

            What is your point?  If you aren’t a card carrying member of the DNC you are an evil person?  Do you think that kind of logic carries any weight in these discussions/debates?

          • JustSayin

            WOW! Ron Paul: “Eliminate the ineffective EPA. Polluters should answer directly to
            property owners in court for the damages they create – not to
            Washington.”

            One person making $15K/year against the non taxpaying multinational corporation GE?

            You and Mr. Paul’s naivete is boundless. The tiniest thread of “rule of law” will protect a powerless landowner against a a giant multinational corporation. How? 

            Just explain HOW the landowner would win that case if Mr. Paul were to remove the rule of law (the EPA).

          • TFRX

            Yeah, I know you were. I was “kidding on the square also”.

      • Leatherstocking

        How can people more toward the liberty position be fascistic, when it’s the group of Washington pols providing cover for the Fed Bankers, Wall St. CEOs and appointed technocratic officials that are ruling us without representation.

        We have corporatism, unaccountable State Capitalism, under Bush/Obama/Fed Reserve/Wall St. That’s about as close to fascism as we have been.

        How hard is this to see?

        Why do you all fear liberty so much?

        I trust my friends and neighbors, and even fellow little guy citizens I don’t know, more than I trust the unaccountable elite that run this country under the radar of the Rule of Law.

        I have no doubt the vast majority of citizen are all for a NEW and STRONG movement to reel in power from this unaccountable elite, and to throw white collar criminals and corrupt politicians in jail, as well as voting the bums out until we have representatives that TRULY REPRESENT our desire for an EVENLY APPLIED AND FIRMLY EXECUTED RULE OF LAW and ending the COZY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BANKING/CORPORATE POWER AND WASHINGTON.

        Washingtons role should be to provide for our defense and as to act  as a viscous watchdog that enforces a level playing field rule of law
        SO THAT WE CAN GET ON WITH ENJOYING AND BENEFITTING FROM THE OPPORTUNITIES OF OUR FREEDOM AND NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT CONTINUALLY TAKING IT IN THE REAR FROM THE GAME RIGGERS.

        Just clarify and enforce the rule of law.  Most of us can agree with that. We will never agree on some intricately planned utopian managed society that we trade our liberty/sovereignty for in exchange for a naive hope it works out.

        • Anonymous

          Well I guess the Koch brothers and Dick Armey of Freedom Works did not get your memo.

          Your use of language in context to the “rule of law” is clearly in stark contrast to the ideals of Liberty as the Founders saw it. I love how the tea party folks use language to suit their agenda. It’s freedom and liberty when it favors their agenda but it’s mob rule when the OWS folks are out protesting the very thing you seem to be putting into caps.

          • Leatherstocking

            What do you mean Rule of Law is in stark contrast to Liberty at founders saw it?

            They were not anarchists.

            The Rule of Law is the foundation of Western Civilization and the linchpin of free societies, as opposed to discretionary rule of despots or arbitrary rule by theocrats.

            “Advocates of limited government are not anti-government per se, as some people would charge. Rather, they are hostile to concentrations of coercive power and to the arbitrary use of power against right. With a deep appreciation for the lessons of history and the dangers of unconstrained government, they are for constitutionally limited government, with the delegated authority and means to protect our rights, but not so powerful as to destroy or negate them.”

            http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb108/hb108-2.pdf

            What possible benefit do you find from always crying “Koch brothers” whenever the word liberty is used?

            Are there no rich and influential people who back the DNC?  What does that have to do with the substance of the ideas we discuss?

          • Vtcheflw

            I do have to ask: Why aren’t the people who don’t want big powerful government to oppress them, not crying fascism about the aggressive policing that was been used against in occupiers and like protests?  Instead they seem to be saying,”Yeah, fumigate those cockroaches!”  What’s up with that?  If some PERSON is a BUG in your eyes, than rights need not apply?

          • Leatherstocking

            Quote me the liberty person saying that.

            You might find some that find the Marxist elements misguided, but they will fight as hard as anyone for the right to assembly.

            If your talking about GOP talking heads, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

          • JJJ

            All the police aren’t stupid thoughtless thugs.  Some of them seem to be almost pensive as they brutalize defenseless citizens.  Somehow they instinctively know that what they are doing is undermining their own future and that of their offspring.  Of course such a tenuous connection to any essential intuitive wisdom they may have is of very little import considering the near total and oceanic extent of their conditioning and the reactionary mileau of their esprit. The ability of the monied to corrupt seems near total, and there is much reason to want to influence if not control the demeanor and even actions of the police. One need only contrast the Tea Party’s treatment by the authorities with the OWS. I believe there were more than one case where government officials came forward and rescinded the police orders to clear the occupiers out. The statements of disorder and danger are questionable, and due to their boorish handling of a spontaneous expression of civil liberty and the exercise of the duties of citizenship, the police in some cities have managed to alienate a whole new generation. I guess it helps keep them in business. They must actually think it is Goldman Sachs that pays their salary. But is isn’t, Goldman Sachs only pays one percent income tax (they save their money for more important things like buying congressmen and ruining the treasury.)

          • John1

            The CATO institute is a right wing funded think tank.

          • Leatherstocking

            OMG! Thanks for giving me the proper label. I was actually reading the stuff and thinking about the ideas on their merit. I didn’t realize I was supposed to label it and discard it.

            Would you please direct me to the rich-funded left-wing think tank so I can be re-educated?

          • John1

            You are typical of a person firmly intrenched in an ism.  You assume everyone is equally as subject to the captuous nature of how your own nervous system operates on polarization, because you have no experience at all that is not based in duality.  Who cares what the left-wing think tanks say, they only have their heads a little less up their own duppies than their equal and opposite partners in the dual delusion they conform to, both are partial and partisan and therefore nothing but mental cacophony to anyone who can reason from a non polarized position.  I know you think you understand this, but you don’t, and yes, I am in a position from which I can tell that about you.

          • Leatherstocking

            Tell us what unprincipled, seat of the pants mechanism, you feel we should self-govern ourselves with?

            Its hilarious how you claim I am entrenched in a polar ism, when your arrogant post puts you at a polar opposite of me, based not on any empirical fact based discussion, but from your desire to simply be against me, because my posting is annoying.

          • Same Ole Story

            “The Rule of Law is the foundation of Western Civilization and the linchpin of free societies…”

              True, but it’s too bad our laws are for sale to the highest bidder with the best lobbyist in Washington and that doesn’t include the majority of Americans.

          • Leatherstocking

            So what are you going to do about? Cry and throw the baby out with the bathwater, or take it back?

    • Vtcheflw

      You do know it’s The bank are the government are the parasites and the “fleabaggers” are standing up against that right.

    • RetchMore

      It appears you have returned to your parasitic activity.

  • Anonymous

    I walked by the Boston camp last night and thought of a new chant for them: “This is what democracy smells like.” 

  • Leatherstocking
  • Leatherstocking
    • GrandTrollingCT

      We get it, formerly Dave in CT, your a libertarian-misesian type of guy.  Like a broken record:

      ‘Rule of law’… blah, blah, blah… ‘Free Market’… blah, blah, blah.

      Last time I checked, Western Civilization has been owned and/or operated by autocrats, despots, dictators, oligarchs, plutocrats, imperialists, royalists, caesars, emperors, generals, etc…

      All have used, ignored, and interpreted the ‘rule of law’ for their own benefit by contorting and obfuscating the ‘rule of law’ for their own dictates, malfeasances or whims.

      You go on and on, ad nauseam, with out ever producing or providing an example of a country or a nation-state throughout history that has ever applied your grandiose, but theoretically naive, utopian ideal of the ‘rule of law’.

      To carry on, ad hoc, for months on end unabated on this comment board confirms you as a grand troll as much as any of the others criticized amongst these confines.

      • Leatherstocking

        “All have used, ignored, and interpreted the ‘rule of law’ for their own benefit by contorting and obfuscating the ‘rule of law’ for their own dictates, malfeasances or whims.” 

        ….and so?

        Don’t bother trying to realize the ideal anymore? Don’t bother trying to have as many people as possible understand the concept so that it is harder to have it perverted by those you reference?

        We are going to thrive on vague good vibes from here on out?

        My point has always been that in the rightful reaction to our crisis, many seem prepared to throw out the baby with the bathwater, falling once again for some utopian ideals that ignore scarcity, debt and human nature.

        Just trying to keep people honest around here regarding keeping a connection to our classically liberal ideals and founding, and as you can see, that’s a full time job.

        • GrandTrollingCT

          And so… are you not falling for ‘some utopian ideals’ yourself?

          And hoping, by spreading it’s ‘good vibes’ around this ‘classically liberal’ comment board, ad nauseam, that the rest of the world will eventually ‘see your light’ and finally ‘catch on’?

          You wish for things for how they should be by not dealing with how they are.

          Obviously, there is no way to enforce the ‘rule of law’ because it subjectively assumes people are ‘really better then they are’.

          In your theoretically blind reality, we don’t succumb to the immoral manifestations of our human nature.

          No law can prevent a psychopath from being dishonest; the death penalty does not deter murder.

          As Harvard law professor and leader of the critical legal studies movement, Morton J. Horwitz, suggested,

          “By promoting procedural justice [the rule of law] enables the shrewd, the calculating, and the wealthy to manipulate its forms to their own advantage.”

          Resign your ‘full time job’ of ‘trying to keep people honest around here’.

          You can’t keep the trolls of the world honest, you can only keep them in-check.

          • Leatherstocking

            Please enlighten us by taking your analysis one step further.

            So your throwing out the Rule of Law…..  for some odd reason ignoring it is the only protection from our worst human nature, as you note.

            You never address the nonsensical claim you make that arguing for maximum freedom, within a framework of law to protect us from our worst tendencies, that allows us to pursue our own choices and ideas, is more utopian than some centralized control of our choices and options toward a predetermined “good”.

            Claiming you have a specific answer, program, Larry Summers economic plan, is FAR more utopian, then letting people choose for themselves as much as possible, allowing bottom-up determination of our future.

            The fact is that many of you are arrogant, know-better types who really at heart believe in the benevolent dictator idea, or a communist ideal.

            Those are far more utopian than the pragmatic reality of people making their own choices as long as they don’t harm others.

            Just because you have good intentions, you think you are superior, and that the MEANS by which you impose your good intentions are justified by the “good” and “enlightened” ENDS you have.

            But such means over time always come back to bite us in the ass, just like our current situation demonstrates, with the collusion between Washington and Wall St. Bankers.

            We handed them the power, and they used it. SURPRISE! They didn’t carry out your dream with the power and money we gave them.

          • GrandTrollingCT

            We have shelves full of books with laws, codes and statutes.

            These have not prevented the dilapidation of our moral fortitude, the weakening of our economic security, the extreme disparity between rich and poor, the rampant inequalities in our court systems, or the damaging destruction affecting the environment.

            These shelves full of books have not enforced the prosecution of criminally corrupt corporate actions deployed by irremissible officers and the fraudulent public officials who have enabled them.

            It should be evident, words on paper don’t hold people accountable.

            People do.

  • Leatherstocking

    Ron Paul labels Newt and Mitt muppetshttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/29/ron-paul-labels-newt-mitt-muppets?newsfeed=true

  • pl

    Thank you for covering this social movement and the investigation of its origins

  • Same Ole Story

    The socialism mantra is ironic to me. Democracies are supposed to do what is best for the majority, but if anyone in our government attempts to do that, it is called socialism. If anyone demands that our government do what is best for the majority, they are called socialist. Who started that mantra and who does it serve any way? hmmm…

    As for the OWS demonstrators, it was nice to see that there’s a few Americans that care about something more meaningful than the next iphone. I was starting to lose hope.

    • Fredlinskip

      “We the people…” is a ‘socialist, sentiment.
      Any government policy with intent to improve the lives of majority of Americans in any way, is ‘socialist’ in the eyes of those who wish to twist the narative in a way to benefit the few. Media outlets have done a pretty good job at supporting this story line. 

      • Leatherstocking

        That’s just baloney.  The collective trajectory of the choices of free individuals, has social value, but is vastly different than a centrally-planned and managed society.

        How do you honestly characterize the former as a “twisted narrative to benefit the few”?

        A “few” will always twist any system we have. Dismissing whole political/economic philosophies and historically empirical experiments by cherry picking bad actors and smearing, is intellectually lazy.

        • Fredlinskip

          IM humble O, there has been ” a “twisted narrative to benefit the few” (as you say), since Reagan after getting shot, was able to garner enough support to make major government policy changes, which in the long run has had disastorous consequences to the health of our nation.
          “The collective trajectory of free individuals” have far less relevance if the individuals live in a society that is inherently corrupt and is increasingly skewed more and more towards the wealthy.

          You believe differently. Fair enough.
          Hopefully enough Americans will keep their minds open or open them if currently closed in time to confront this nations’, and the worlds’ pressing problems before it is too late.

          Meanwhile I need to quit frittering day away and get back to the grindstone.
          Good day. 

    • Leatherstocking

      “Do what is best”?

      How about, protect our liberty from all stripes of tyranny, allowing us to be free as individuals to choose what is “best” for ourselves, and let that collective set of choices take us where it will.

      The dream of predetermination and elimination of all risk, as a trade for freedom, has always failed historically.

      • Same Ole Story

        Why all these extremes?, some of us are just looking for a just, fair balance for the common wealth of all versus the extreme accumulation of wealth for a few. How far does it have to go, how bad does it have to get? How small does the middle class have to shrink before the majority in this country have a right to think something is wrong with the current political system and protest it?

        I know exactly were the “collective set of choices” will take us when the only “set of choices” that has any power in Washington are the wealthy and corporate “set of choices”. Your problem is that you don’t realize that you are already living under a tyranny.

        • notafeminista

          Apologies for being late to the party, but how is allowing people to be free…to make their own choices and not sit idly by and wait for the state to hand whatever suits it an extreme?

  • Elizabeth Coons

    I devoutly hope that the Occupy movement will advance its pursuits and sustain its momentum. I believe that the following combination of writing and restrain would preserve and advance the Movement’s best goals.
    The Occupy movement, vital as it is in so many ways, is in great danger from the global statements that some of its members have made to date.
    Many in the movement, even in its leadership, speak too much and repetitiously of final goals and not enough about the specific changes that are their most likely instruments. In addition, some of these speakers do not well distinguish between their different audiences and the responses that they seek from each. For example, some things that Occupy members seek pertain to Federal banking regulation, laws governing securities trading, Federal tax policy, Federal and state labor laws, and campaign finance laws. I have not heard members mention these things, but without analysis and change on these levels, economically isolating practices such as predatory lending, wage stagnation, inordinate student debt, and unsustainable health-care costs cannot be changed.  It is important to envision, and useful to speak of, parity between goal and source, and here, as often elsewhere, it is necessary to distinguish levels.
    In the near term, if members of the Movement want to preserve the option of asking for expert help, they must direct their angst at conditions rather than at individuals or groups.  For example, the “corporate America” that some of the movement deplore contains some of the most expert organizers of legal and financial transactions that we have.
    I hope that the Movement will draft a statement of its wishes and that to do so it assembles an articulate team that includes a historian, a constitutional lawyer, a tax lawyer, a financial-services specialist, and at least one editor, as well as educators and evangelists as needed to unify the membership behind resulting resolutions.

  • Cime

    Occupy needs to remember one thing! VOTE!! VOTE when the time comes!!

    • Leatherstocking

      Ron Paul 2012

      You can’t mean more of the same can you?

      Paul/Nader even….

      OWSer should be visionary enough to make that happen.

      Take the common positions that focus on the corrupt elite as seen from many perspectives, put aside the rest.

      • Fredlinskip

        Just a suggestion.
        Get out there in the streets with the OWS’ers- they will listen to your suggestions with open minds. Give it a shot. Make a difference.

  • Fredlinskip

    I believe democracy is severely threatened these days, but believe that “We the people” still have a chance to turn things around if “We” exercise our rights to think, observe, and educate ourselves in a way that “We” are not lead like lemmings over a cliff. Unfortunately, IMO, corporate media does not serve the interests of ” We the people” very well these days. IMO, the Occupy movement is a big step in right direction.Without an informed electorate, there is no democracy.

  • Anonymous

    An article posted 12/1/11 pm at Atlantic is a must-read for anyone interested in Occupy:

    http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/12/why-occupy/248727/

    “During the height of clashes between Occupy Oakland and police, I
    watched a livestream of protesters chanting, “Who are you protecting?
    Who are you protecting?” And kept watching as police launched tear gas
    into that crowd. The show of force was shocking. Now, that situation
    will pose a major political problem for Oakland’s mayor going forward. 

    Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa handled the eviction of Occupy LA
    with one thousand police officers. One thousand! There might have been
    less
    violence Tuesday night, but Occupy’s message (which was also
    Villaraigosa’s) still got sent: overwhelming force will be brought
    against political dissent.

    So, why occupy? The point is not to
    hold a city park. The point is to dramatize the struggle of weak against
    strong, which is also the struggle of poor against rich. If the
    dominant theme of the occupations is, as Jay Rosen succinctly put it, “public policy favors the rich,” then having the public police arrest the weak becomes a powerful metaphor for the message of the movement.”

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