Pro-tax Occupation Protests Held Across U.S. (O.W.S. Thread)

[Diemen]

Originally Posted by INDY500

return to sound dollar policies

It would be great if any of the current candidates actually had a plan that did that.

reform the tax system to promote economic growth by rewarding rather than punishing success,

A.k.a - tax cuts for the rich! It solved all our problems before, right?

There is a (naive) beauty to the Republican's position on taxes. Everyone wants to be rich. You there! You only make $33,000 a year? Well, if you work hard enough, then you too could end up making 475 times more than a base-level employee. And if you ever get that rich, you don't want the big bad Government taking more of your money, do you? Why, you'd really be hurting if you had to pay a marginally higher tax rate that would leave you scraping by with only millions of dollars a year. I mean, isn't one of the perks of becoming rich the ability to take advantage of all the loopholes that would allow you to pay less than your share, anyway?

oh, but until you actually do strike it rich, not only will you not get a tax cut, you'll actually end up paying more in taxes while the rich pay less. But you're okay with that, right? Some day your prince will come, amirite?

Or, to put it more briefly: "screw you, I got mine."

(This, coincidentally, fits right in with how a supposedly Christian nation should behave.)

protect our borders

The dirty secret here is that Obama has, without drawing much attention to it (for better or worse), been a tougher defender of our borders than any previous Republican president.

end over-regulation

Because it was the government watching too closely that led us to the current economic mess we're in?

[yolland]

Salon, Nov. 1

Are physical occupations a sustainable tactic for Occupy Wall Street? There are signs in New York and around the country that life in public parks and plazas is presenting unexpected difficulties for the economic justice protesters. Chief among them is security, and particularly the attraction of disruptive people to Occupy sites who have no interest in the movement. “It’s gotten really bad in the last couple weeks, the population of criminals and predators. Fully half the camp down there now don’t have anything to do with the movement. They don’t go on marches. They’re just down there to eat and cause trouble,” says Fetzer Mills, Jr., a 51-year-old from Memphis who has been working on the Occupy security team at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. “We are overwhelmed.”

I ask Mills what the security team can do when there’s some kind of disruption, given that Zuccotti is a public space. “We can’t do anything. We’re totally powerless. All we can do is walk up and talk to them. And the police will not come in there to do things,” he says. Mills’ account broadly matches an observation made by the Daily News on Sunday:

The number of non-participants taking advantage of the resources that the activists have provided--free food, clothing, tarps and sleeping bags, hand-rolled smokes and even books, not to mention a sense of protection from the police, who have increasingly left the park to protect itself--has exploded over the past week, and is threatening to define the occupation itself and overshadow its political and social ambitions. Despite those resources, “spanging” (spare-changing, or panhandling) at Zuccotti has become commonplace, as have fights, near-fights and open-air drug sales.

...The Times, meanwhile, has a story on homeless people--including those with mental disorders and with no interest in Occupy Wall Street--making a home at the occupations:

“There are a lot of them here that have mental problems and that need help. They are in the wrong place,” said Jessica Anderson, 22, who is herself homeless, sitting with friends on a tarp at the Los Angeles site. “They have been creating more problems. There was one guy who showed up last night and he would not shut up: Saying all kinds of crazy stuff all night.”

Many of these homeless people were undoubtedly in plain sight before Occupy. It’s a problem that giant bureaucracies in cities like New York and Los Angeles have failed to address, so it’s hard to see how the occupiers will be able to grapple with these issues over the long term.

[Jeannieco]

Last night on Olbermann on Current TV ( he's been great on OWS coverage, almost wall to wall) he interviewed a protestor ( sorry didn't get his name) and he mentioned that they suspect that the cops are encouraging the homeless and mentally unstable to go to Zuccotti Park. They are working on evidence to prove this claim.

[INDY500]

I watched the 1st segment of Olbermann tonight and the protestor David Schuster (what's wrong with his mouth anyway?) interviewed said, "We know capitalism is the problem, which is why Occupy Oakland is making a call-out to the entire nation-the entire world-to start planning for general strikes. We know that we create the wealth for the 1% through our labor and what we need to do is retract our labor, and the value it creates for the 1%, by general striking."

She then went on to encourage the protesting of "banks and corporations that don't honor the general strike," for teachers and city employees to walk off the job and for citizens to occupy foreclosed homes and properties.

I'm just going to go out on a limb here and predict Nov, 2nd will be the beginning of the end of OWS.

However justified the anger and frustration of the early movement may have been in regards to the Wall St bailouts, student loans and income gaps... more and more of the movement is now being hijacked by radical revolutionaries and anarchists.

Cue the mob.

[Canadiens1131]

Originally Posted by INDY500

I watched the 1st segment of Olbermann tonight

Ugh, why punish yourself like that?

Is he still every bit the blowhard?

Anyway, the Tea Party was quickly co-opted by corporate interests and Republican operatives, and I am just as sure that the OWS movement has already been co-opted by anarchists and people out there wanting to bang a bongo (and the Democrats will latch on and destroy it soon enough).

I still think you grossly over-exaggerate the influence or potential danger to U.S. peace and order from the "radical revolutionaries" out there with scarves over their faces, as well as students preaching socialism or anarchy on college campuses.

These folks will get white-collar jobs as temps and slowly have the liberal tendencies drained out of them as they grow older and become paranoid of losing their small piece of the middle class pie to poor people. They may even die conservatives.

And so the cycle begins again.

[INDY500]

Originally Posted by Canadiens1131

Anyway, the Tea Party was quickly co-opted by corporate interests and Republican operatives

Now how can that be when people here say all the time that, "the GOP is held hostage by the Tea Party extremists"?

Anyway, the point is they engaged the political system. They had their voices heard at the ballot box.

Mobs work to undermine the system. That's were Occupy Oakland is.

These folks will get white-collar jobs as temps and slowly have the liberal tendencies drained out of them as they grow older and become paranoid of losing their small piece of the middle class pie to poor people. They may even die conservatives.

And so the cycle begins again.

Amazing what moving out of your parent's basement and having the responsibility of a family, a car payment, a house mortgage and bills will do a person.

[Irvine511]

INDY, have you nothing to offer but fear mongering?

[Vlad n U 2]

Originally Posted by INDY500

We know capitalism is the problem

more and more of the movement is now being hijacked by radical revolutionaries and anarchists.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

[LJT]

It's becoming harder and harder to see how to make governments better in the western world without some wide sweeping change.

It's nothing to do with being anti-capitalist, but it is worrying that capitalism has gained some sort of moral value when it is just one theory of how economics should work for the betterment of society. Plus surely people can see how money and lobbyists in politics of all sorts hurt democracy and equality for all. I'm starting to believe a fairly radical change in government is needed but I can't see it happening when everything is weighted in favour of how it is now.

[BVS]

Originally Posted by LJT

It's nothing to do with being anti-capitalist, but it is worrying that capitalism has gained some sort of moral value when it is just one theory of how economics should work for the betterment of society.

Excellent post.

It's become a religion for many, they've even shaped their Jesus around it.

[Tiger Edge]

Originally Posted by INDY500

Amazing what moving out of your parent's basement and having the responsibility of a family, a car payment, a house mortgage and bills will do a person.

Yeah it sends some of them right down to occupy wall street.

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Originally Posted by Jeannieco

Last night on Olbermann on Current TV ( he's been great on OWS coverage, almost wall to wall) he interviewed a protestor ( sorry didn't get his name) and he mentioned that they suspect that the cops are encouraging the homeless and mentally unstable to go to Zuccotti Park. They are working on evidence to prove this claim.

Do I believe that officers have told homeless to head down to zuccotti? Yes. Do I think it's an official department tactic? Maybe. Would they have found themselves there anyways? Yes, 100% absolutely. Despite the fact that many homeless are mentally handicapped and/or drug addicts, human survival instincts are incredibly strong in everyone. A place giving away free food, no questions asked? Of course they'll be there.

[anitram]

Originally Posted by INDY500

Amazing what moving out of your parent's basement and having the responsibility of a family, a car payment, a house mortgage and bills will do a person.

Some of us must be a real mystery to you.

[yolland]

Capital New York, Nov. 1

Speaking at a business breakfast in midtown featuring Bloomberg and two former New York City mayors, [NYC mayor Michael] Bloomberg was asked what he thought of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. "I hear your complaints," Bloomberg said. "Some of them are totally unfounded. It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp. Now, I'm not saying I'm sure that was terrible policy, because a lot of those people who got homes still have them and they wouldn't have gotten them without that. But they were the ones who pushed Fannie and Freddie to make a bunch of loans that were imprudent, if you will. They were the ones that pushed the banks to loan to everybody. And now we want to go vilify the banks because it's one target, it's easy to blame them and Congress certainly isn't going to blame themselves."

Pretty disingenuous IMO. I get the argument that the legislation he's presumably referring to (the 1977 CRA) had an unintended side effect of giving banks dangerous incentives to make high-risk loans, but the subprime market was dominated by private lenders to whom the CRA didn't apply, not "Fannie and Freddie" who were insurers not lenders. It winds up sounding like he's absolving the banks of responsibility for treating the CRA as a call to engage in criminally reckless banking practices--"Congress made them do it."

[Jeannieco]

Originally Posted by Headache in a Suitcase

Do I believe that officers have told homeless to head down to zuccotti? Yes. Do I think it's an official department tactic? Maybe. Would they have found themselves there anyways? Yes, 100% absolutely. Despite the fact that many homeless are mentally handicapped and/or drug addicts, human survival instincts are incredibly strong in everyone. A place giving away free food, no questions asked? Of course they'll be there.

Yes, I agree. The issue was the police deliberately navigating and directing the otherwise clueless mentally unstable down there. It became a matter of safety. This is from the guy from OWS, not me.

[Canadiens1131]

Breaking: Urgent: Newsflash: Many NYC cops are corrupt assholes.

In other news, economists unable to agree on economy.

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Occupy Oakland protest feed here: http://www.livestream.com/occupyoakland

It's a mix of decent demonstrators and some anarchists who started stirring things up...Cops are tear gassing everyone, many cops have their names and numbers taped over. I just saw a poor little Korean lady not doing anything get a baton end straight to the chest and then face.

Land of the free!!!

[Jeannieco]

Originally Posted by Canadiens1131

Breaking: Urgent: Newsflash: Many NYC cops are corrupt assholes.

In other news, economists unable to agree on economy.

------

Occupy Oakland protest feed here: occupyoakland - live streaming video powered by Livestream

It's a mix of decent demonstrators and some anarchists who started stirring things up...Cops are tear gassing everyone, many cops have their names and numbers taped over. I just saw a poor little Korean lady not doing anything get a baton end straight to the chest and then face.

Land of the free!!!

That sucks. When will the cops learn that this only fuels the fire? Most cops are on the side of the protestors but as in any group there a-holes that ruin it for everyone. Poor woman.

[MrsSpringsteen]

Originally Posted by anitram

Some of us must be a real mystery to you.

Guess so.

What about all the older people, military veterans, etc who are taking part in OWS or O anywhere else? They're there, you can read about them on the internets.

You shouldn't say that all Tea Party protestors are racist or whatever else you might say, but all of the occupy people are living in their parents' basements with no financial responsibilities and just smoking pot (or doing XYZ drugs) all day. They don't work just cause they don't want to.

I'm not defending all of them and I wouldn't, I'm sure that type of description applies to some of them. But that sure seems like a stereotype to me.

[Canadiens1131]

Conservatives have been taking aim at the (admittedly easy) target of smelly hippies since the Vee-ette-nam days.

It was only a quagmire/human hamburger grinder, after all; glad all the kids were wrong about that one now that history has had some time to pass judgment.

[Tiger Edge]

I'm so glad we won Vietnam and successfully toppled communism.

USA! USA! USA!