Will anyone please post a list of goals that can be scored? Otherwise it will be considered an 0-24 loss.

As for the Norquist/Paul comment... You do not know much about what you speak. Please show me a link where they support anarchy. They support government residing within the limits of the Constitution and taxation being equal. Neither of those items are anarchy.

bbauska wrote:As I said to RickyP, please post a list yourself, and we can grade it as well. The movement is nothing but anarchy.

It's not anarchy, but at the same time it is not a single-track movement, and so does not have a 'list' of aims that can be graded. Which is, to me, a drawback for them, but just finding a list by an anonymous internet commenter is hardly going to be definitively representative.

From the wikipedia page on OWS, section 'Goals':

While the Demands Working Group favored a fairly concrete set of national policy proposals, others within the movement prefer a looser, more localized set of goals and they have put together a competing document, the Liberty Square Blueprint,[53] a wiki page edited by some 250 occupiers and still undergoing changes. The introduction to the draft document read: "Demands cannot reflect inevitable success. Demands imply condition, and we will never stop. Demands cannot reflect the time scale that we are working with."[45]

Journalists such as Shannon Bond for the Financial Times have said it was hard to discern a unified aim for the movement. However, other commentators have said that although the movement is not in complete agreement on its message and goals, it does have a message which is fairly coherent. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, protesters want more and better jobs, more equal distribution of income, bank reform, and a reduction of the influence of corporations on politics.[54] Adbusters co-founder Kalle Lasn has compared the protests to the Situationists and the Protests of 1968 movements.[55][56]

but if you are intersted in what they want to achieve, there are documents out there, such as:

99 Percent Declaration

Liberty Square Blueprint

archduke

The problem ricky with the above is it doesn't ask what was the underlying cause? Absent the Government requiring banks to lend to low income families that wouldn't have otherwise gotten loans, would the rest of it have happened?
without Government encouraged lending would there be lessen regulations to allow said lending
Without the lessend regulations would the banks have been able to do the other questionable lending.
Without the other questionable lending would the CDS's have happened and spread around the globe as investment vehicles?
Without the CDS's would there have been the overall global collapse?

Its pretty clear from the analysis from the WP that the govenrment encouraged lending in CRAs was not a major factor. It its your premise that that was the first step and nothing could have happened without, why?
The problem began in 2001 when non-bank mortgge writing exploded. Free of regulation these institutions took risks and used CSDs to suppossedly hand those risks down the line.
There's no reason to think that the previous CRA activity would have been required for this to happen. The only thing that had to happen is the the regulations that prevented this risky behviour and prevented the creation of CSDs cease to exist.
Even if the CRA activity hadn't ocurred, let loose upon the marketplace with the tools they were handed, the geniuses would still have crashed in 7 years...

Thank you Danivon for the links. From what I have seen, none of their goals have been achieved in either link you provided. That being said, do you think the OWS movement has been effective?

rickyp wrote:Its pretty clear from the analysis from the WP that the govenrment encouraged lending in CRAs was not a major factor. It its your premise that that was the first step and nothing could have happened without, why?

Because the argument isn't that the specific CRA based loans caused the problems. Rather that the Gov't threat to private banks of make loans to low income borrowers or face criminal charges required a change in regulations to allow looser lending standards. Of course, the problem is in the unintended consequences of gov't action. Because once these looser lending standards were implementd, the use of them was not limited to low income borrowers but rather to everybody. This led to borrowers having access to amounts they would never have access to under the old regulations.

rickyp wrote:There's no reason to think that the previous CRA activity would have been required for this to happen. The only thing that had to happen is the the regulations that prevented this risky behviour and prevented the creation of CSDs cease to exist.
Even if the CRA activity hadn't ocurred, let loose upon the marketplace with the tools they were handed, the geniuses would still have crashed in 7 years...

The problem here is you are assuming the change in regs would have happened w/o the CRA threat. Those arguing the CRA is the underlying cause, say without the CRA threat, the regulations wouldn't have changed, or wouldn't have changed so drastically. Therefore, those geniuses you reference wouldn't have had the tools that led to the crash.

bbauska wrote:Thank you Danivon for the links. From what I have seen, none of their goals have been achieved in either link you provided. That being said, do you think the OWS movement has been effective?

most of those goals look nebulous or long term, so after a couple of months I'm not surprised they have not 'succeeded' on your measure.

Still, if you look at the goals of the Tea Party, what have they actually achieved after a couple of years? The deficiit is higher, taxes are no lower, the Healthcare Act was passed... Yat they are not regarded as a failure because they have had an impact and may have helped move the climate in a way that makes their aims easier.

On that basis, on mobilising people with a purpose, on creating publicity and on highlighting the concerns they have, I'd say OWS was fairly successful so far. Their aims are, however, at the same time more nebulous and mor far-reaching than the Tea Party's and so are less likely to be achieved.

archduke. The CRA had been around since 1977. The housing crash started when?
As for the "regulations wouldn't have changed with out CRA." Really?
Please show a causative link. If the CRA existed since 1977 without the wheels falling off, how was that the cauuse? I mean thats one long fuse....
The cause, may have been a fixation on home ownership, becoming more difficult as wealth inequality rose, but until deregulation took place ... Nothing really cahnged.
Deregulation was entirely seperate from CRA. Regulations that existed since 1977 weren't changed suddenly because someone suddenly noticed the CRA...They happened as an act of political will, and because of an illogical faith in the ability of the financial sector to police their own investment decisions without regulatory mechanisms . .

But for much of Mr. Bush’s tenure, government statistics show, incomes for most families remained relatively stagnant while housing prices skyrocketed. That put homeownership increasingly out of reach for first-time buyers like Mr. West.
So Mr. Bush had to, in his words, “use the mighty muscle of the federal government” to meet his goal. He proposed affordable housing tax incentives. He insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meet ambitious new goals for low-income lending.
Concerned that down payments were a barrier, Mr. Bush persuaded Congress to spend up to $200 million a year to help first-time buyers with down payments and closing costs
And he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for federally insured mortgages with no money down. Republican Congressional leaders and some housing advocates balked, arguing that homeowners with no stake in their investments would be more prone to walk away, as Mr. West did. Many economic experts, including some in the White House, now share that view.
The president also leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations. “Corporate America,” he said, “has a responsibility to work to make America a compassionate place.”And corporate America, eyeing a lucrative market, delivered in ways Mr. Bush might not have expected, with a proliferation of too-good-to-be-true teaser rates and interest-only loans that were sold to investors in a loosely regulated environment. “This administration made decisions that allowed the free market to operate as a barroom brawl instead of a prize fight,” said L. William Seidman, who advised Republican presidents and led the savings and loan bailout in the 1990s. “To make the market work well, you have to have a lot of rules.”But Mr. Bush populated the financial system’s alphabet soup of oversight agencies with people who, like him, wanted fewer rules, not more.
The president’s first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission promised a “kinder, gentler” agency. The second was pushed out amid industry complaints that he was too aggressive. Under its current leader, the agency failed to police the catastrophic decisions that toppled the investment bank Bear Stearns and contributed to the current crisis, according to a recent inspector general’s report.
As for Mr. Bush’s banking regulators, they once brandished a chain saw over a 9,000-page pile of regulations as they promised to ease burdens on the industry. When states tried to use consumer protection laws to crack down on predatory lending, the comptroller of the currency blocked the effort, asserting that states had no authority over national banks. The administration won that fight at the Supreme Court. But Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s attorney general, said, “They took 50 sheriffs off the beat at a time when lending was becoming the Wild West

.”

It wasn't the CRA that "caused looser regulation", and no one forced companies to make ridiculous mortgage loans. They were allowed to do so, and rushed right in... The invention of CSD's was only possible when regulation and the resultant transparency were eliminated. With CSD's companies found a way to sell the mortgages, making money from the transaction, then resell them eliminating their risk. Except all they were doing was handing off that unreasonable risk to heavily leveraged outfits like themselves... In the end, loans that aren't repaid toppled heavily leveeraged lenders...no matter how much you package the crap its still crap.

But what was really at the bottom of the mess? What really caused the end to sensible regulation? You say it was the CRA, even though it had a quarter century in existence without problem.
Maybe it was politcal donations and lobbying.

The president did push rules aimed at forcing lenders to more clearly explain loan terms. But the White House shelved them in 2004, after industry-friendly members of Congress threatened to block confirmation of his new housing secretary.
In the 2004 election cycle, mortgage bankers and brokers poured nearly $847,000 into Mr. Bush’s re-election campaign, more than triple their contributions in 2000, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The administration did not finalize the new rules until last month.
Among the Republican Party’s top 10 donors in 2004 was Roland Arnall. He founded Ameriquest, then the nation’s largest lender in the subprime market, which focuses on less creditworthy borrowers. In July 2005, the company agreed to set aside $325 million to settle allegations in 30 states that it had preyed on borrowers with hidden fees and ballooning payments. It was an early signal that deceptive lending practices, which would later set off a wave of foreclosures, were widespread

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/busin ... gewanted=1

danivon

Their aims are, however, at the same time more nebulous and mor far-reaching than the Tea Party's and so are less likely to be achieved.

If tax reform in the US changes the structure so that well off Americans pay more would that be a win for OWS? (And all they'd have to do is return to their shape in 2001...)
If bank reform and financial industry regulations are improved to ensure no repeat of the crash, would that be a win?
If capital gains were taxed at the same level as salarly income would that be a win?
I don't know if they were listed in the goals of the two indiviudals quoted. But I'd think that these things would be supported by most OWS types and would be seen as wins...
I don't think that you can guage long term attitudinal shifts by short term changes in policy that count as "incremental wins". The attitude that lead to the widening income inequality that really crystalized OWS, began over 30 years ago. You don't change that over night with a few weeks demonstrations. But the conversation is a little louder and perhaps clearer.
The Tea Party movement started out as an amorphous group with no centralized leadership. I don't see OWS being taken over by any political arm, and as such I doubt the OWS movement will ever be identified as anything but an event that changed the conversation and perhaps the direction... But that remains to be seen and will probably take years...
(And I'm talking about the US here. I think outside the US the OWS movement was an echo, usually in places where the disparities weren't as large, and away from the central place where the crash occurred..So in their case neither was the event so important, nor was the percieved need for cognitive reorientation so important.

B, okay so Grover ain't an anarchist. He wants the federal govnerment to be essentially what it was in 1900. Thats a big devolution. Not a complete devolution. But its big enough that he could sympathize with the direction they want to go.

rickyp wrote:If the movement was about anarchy then rand paul and grover Norquist would be huge fans... they of the limited to no government philosophy.

You are both right and wrong. That list is not anarchy. It is extreme socialism that would lead to the collapse of the US, and thus anarchy.

Rand Paul and Norquist: there is a HUGE difference between limited government and NO government, so get a clue. I would argue that if you listened to Rand once in a while you would realize he is more mainstream than his father. I would also argue that his ability to engage in retail politics (that is connect with small groups and individuals) far exceeds Ron's. If the country continues to drift for the next 4 to 8 years, I would see Rand as a serious candidate for President if he were to choose that direction.

It is one thing to talk in ignorance about Senator Paul and I believe you likely are. Have you ever watched an extended discussion with him? He is not as isolationist as his father and speaks in a language that connects with voters. It's no accident he's in the Senate over the GOP machine's pick and the Democrat who was supposed to crush him. He's good. I'm not talking about his positions but his ability to make his case with voters.

The movement is called occupy wall street. Wall street is the major target for a reason. The protestors want to focus the blame for the 08 financial disaster squarely on the major culprits.

Says you. First, they are punishing a LOT of people not connected to Wall Street. Anyone who pays taxes is having to pay the bill for the damage and havoc these people are creating. Second, they are destroying businesses and jobs near their encampments. Third, they are having zero effect on Wall Street or on regulating Wall Street. Fourth, one could easily argue there anger should be directed at the Federal government.

and they want to focus political discsuion on inequality.

Which is absolutely pointless. The solution for "inequality" is what? If you say "higher taxes," what will that get for the working classes? Be specific.

"Income inequality" beats the alternative: everyone gets the same income, regardless of work done, work quality, innovation, etc.

News bulletin to OWS and any liberals here: life is not fair. If you don't like your life or your income, work harder, come up with a better idea, change careers, do something other than lay on a mattress, dump on other people's property, and whine about the 1%. This country offers vertical movement that is unparallelled in human history. But, no one has ever become rich by kvetching about the wealth of others--except Jesse Jackson, All Sharpton and liberals in Congress.

How many examples of rags-to-riches do we need to see before we realize "the game is fixed" is a load of Sharpton? Clinton, born rich? Obama, born rich? Steve Jobs? Bill Gates?

The fact that some people either don't have the talent, are unlucky, or stupidly get Master's degrees in Latino Lesbian History is not the fault of the system. This is a country in which if you work hard you can have a better life than your parents, sometimes much better.

These protests are a repeat of the unrest that has ocurred every time wealth inequality reached the current levels. its not a new phenomenon. What's new is the media and comunications enviroment its happening within. By the way, a great movie to see about the crash "Margin Call".Saw it last night, and although I know few of you actually make it down to the cineplex I highly recommend it just for the story and acting...
It may be getting smallish viewing in theatres right now, but it has an 87% positive Rotten Tomatoe Index and will be a shoe in for Oscar nods to Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons. "Speak to me like I'm a small child or a golden retreiver".
With Oscar acclaim it'll get all kinds of at home viewing... The point is as we were leaving we overheard "Now I feel like joining the Occupy portestors...' from 3 different viewers.

If Michael Moore could, he'd be kicking himself in the butt for not making this piece of propaganda himself. If it wins an Oscar, so what? How many people will see it? Even Moore's movies had very little impact (as dishonest as they were).

Many of the hard core protestors might not be genuinely sympathetic characters... But the rage creating events behind their cause is deeply emotive.

Uh-huh. How is OWS polling these days? How will it's poll numbers go as the protests continue to cost millions and get more violent?

I consider the Tea Party a failure, Danivon. They did not stick to their ideals enough to make serious change in the party. With a few exceptions they have been co-opted by the main party. I see the OWS in the same way. It has gone off message and become more of a liability.

rickyp wrote:archduke. The CRA had been around since 1977. The housing crash started when?
As for the "regulations wouldn't have changed with out CRA." Really?

You are absolutely correct. However, banks didn't really follow the CRA. It wasn't until the Clinton adminstration that threats of criminal charges for not following CRA happened.

rickyp wrote:Please show a causative link. If the CRA existed since 1977 without the wheels falling off, how was that the cauuse? I mean thats one long fuse....

That's easy. I think we can both agree the repeal of Glass-Steagall (G-S). The G-S repeal effectuated by the passing of Gramm-Leach-Biley Act (GLB) which was signed into law by Clinton. According to Wikipedia here Democrats agreed to support GLB in exchange for "strengthen provisions of the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act". Therefore, without the desire to force banks into more low income lending, the G-S repeal would never have happened.

rickyp wrote:Deregulation was entirely seperate from CRA. Regulations that existed since 1977 weren't changed suddenly because someone suddenly noticed the CRA...They happened as an act of political will, and because of an illogical faith in the ability of the financial sector to police their own investment decisions without regulatory mechanisms.

Really? Do you think Democrats would not have blocked G-S repeal without the CRA enhancements? I highly doubt. All it would have taken is 1 Democratic Senator such as Bernie Saunders or Russ Feingold wouldn't have placed a hold on the bill. Republicans never had enough votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster

rickyp wrote:archduke. The CRA had been around since 1977. The housing crash started when?
As for the "regulations wouldn't have changed with out CRA." Really?

You are absolutely correct. However, banks didn't really follow the CRA. It wasn't until the Clinton adminstration that threats of criminal charges for not following CRA happened.

rickyp wrote:Please show a causative link. If the CRA existed since 1977 without the wheels falling off, how was that the cauuse? I mean thats one long fuse....

That's easy. I think we can both agree the repeal of Glass-Steagall (G-S). The G-S repeal effectuated by the passing of Gramm-Leach-Biley Act (GLB) which was signed into law by Clinton. According to Wikipedia here Democrats agreed to support GLB in exchange for "strengthen provisions of the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act". Therefore, without the desire to force banks into more low income lending, the G-S repeal would never have happened.

rickyp wrote:Deregulation was entirely seperate from CRA. Regulations that existed since 1977 weren't changed suddenly because someone suddenly noticed the CRA...They happened as an act of political will, and because of an illogical faith in the ability of the financial sector to police their own investment decisions without regulatory mechanisms.

Really? Do you think Democrats would not have blocked G-S repeal without the CRA enhancements? I highly doubt. All it would have taken is 1 Democratic Senator such as Bernie Saunders or Russ Feingold wouldn't have placed a hold on the bill. Republicans never had enough votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster

bbauska wrote:I consider the Tea Party a failure, Danivon. They did not stick to their ideals enough to make serious change in the party. With a few exceptions they have been co-opted by the main party. I see the OWS in the same way. It has gone off message and become more of a liability.

I see your point, but realistically the Tea Party were unlikely to succeed in a short space of time. In order to get any traction, they needed the GOP hijack as much as the GOP did. It was a nice quid pro quo in that the Party was able to take on a populist image and gain votes last November, in return the TP got some reps into the House even if there were also some carpetbaggers too. It's too early to tell whether the TP will slowly recede or if it will become a resident faction. I think if Romney is the candidate and loses, there could well be a resurgence. If he is and wins, the TP might be neutralised.

But few radical movements succeed in the early days. It took decades for committed abolitionists to get their way. The Chartists in the UK 'failed' but their aims are all in place today (with the exception of annual parliaments). I suppose it depends on how patient you are.

I still think that Occupy's problem is mainly their methods, which obscure their message and also do more to alienate some potential sympathisers that the mote conventional tactics of the Tea Party. That may do more to undermine the long term side of things.

The reality is that in a democratic system it is not possible for a minority pressure group to achieve all of it's goals by protest. At some stage they will need to engage with the political process, as that is the way to get laws changed or to get politicians to act. That does not mean co-option into a particular party (and I expect that Occupy are not actually likely to become as closely linked to the Democrats as the TP have to the Republicans), although it can do.

bbauska wrote:I consider the Tea Party a failure, Danivon. They did not stick to their ideals enough to make serious change in the party. With a few exceptions they have been co-opted by the main party. I see the OWS in the same way. It has gone off message and become more of a liability.

I disagree. The Tea Party has fundamentally changed the discussion in Washington DC. Neither Republicans nor Democrats had the national debt on their radar as an issue until the Tea Party put it there.

Now, it has not transformed the country. If that's what you thought it would do, then you do not understand the power of liberalism: promising people something for nothing is very powerful. It has worked for centuries--one snake oil salesman at a time. Democrats have stitched together a constituency of those who believe someone else should do something for them. That has had its ultimate culmination in the OWS movement. At its core, the OWS movement is a repudiation of capitalism and it is anti-American.

At Tea Party rallies, people sing the national anthem and cheer as Ted Nugent plays it on the guitar. At OWS rallies, the nation is seen as fundamentally unfair and I don't remember seeing much in the way of pro-America signs. It embodies the very opposite of what JFK said at his inauguration in 1961. If he was part of the OWS movement, he would say, "Ask not what you can give to your country, but ask what it can give to you." He might also say, "we shall pay no price, bear no burden, meet no hardship, support no friend, oppose no foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty. In fact, if everything is not on a silver platter, we don't want it."

The OWS is the antithesis of the American ideal of rugged individualism. It is, essentially, soft collectivism.

Some say OWS has "changed the conversation." Well, maybe, but only to the extent that it has shifted the spotlight away from the pathetic non-leadership of the President to the violence and incoherence of the OWS movement.

The Tea Party is here to stay. The OWS will soon fade back into the socialist woodwork from which it sprang.

Schoen on the two. NB: The Tea Party has been dragged through the mud by the liberal media since its inception while OWS was lionized--until all the crime and violence broke out.

In order to try to answer with specificity and precision questions that have been raised about the relative influence of the OWS and Tea Party movements, my polling firm Douglas E. Schoen LLC. conducted a survey with a national sample of 400 likely voters. The fieldwork was done from Nov. 4-7, 2011.

What we found is that the Tea Party movement -- despite having lost support since last year -- has more influence, more credibility, and more effect.

Indeed, an in-depth look at the data suggests that on balance, the Tea Party is more representative of a broader constituency of the American electorate.

Overall, 31 percent of likely voters say the Tea Party movement comes closer to their views, while only 19 percent are more in line with the position of the OWS movement.

Voters are favorable to the Tea Party movement by a narrow plurality (42-39 percent) while they have an unfavorable impression of the Occupy Wall Street movement (43-35 percent).

And while one-third (32 percent) of likely voters are supporters of the Tea Party movement, they oppose OWS by a narrow (33 percent) plurality.

In terms of effect, the Tea Party movement is more likely to have a greater lasting effect on the political system. . .

Unlike the Tea Party movement, the OWS movement has been marked by violence, clashes with the police, and numerous arrests -- beginning with the movement's inception on Sept. 17 and culminating this Tuesday when 200 protesters were arrested in or around Zuccotti Park.

However, whenever the Tea Party was alleged to have done something -- be it spitting at a congressman, or using racist rhetoric -- these allegations received prominent coverage in the media, notwithstanding the level of proof, or lack thereof.

With only 9 percent of all voters saying that the OWS protests are helping President Obama's chances of re-election -- while 30 percent say they are hurting his chances -- Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the OWS movement.

And this error may cost them the 2012 election.

Only 11 percent of likely voters consider themselves to be part of the OWS movement.

This is because the OWS movement reflects values that are out of touch with the broad mass of the American people--and particularly with swing voters who are largely independent and have been trending away from the president since the debate over health care reform.

And, I think things will get worse for OWS and better for the Tea Party. As the OWS protests devolve into more and more of a freak show, their ratings will decline. As the budget and spending continue to spiral out of control, the Tea Party will seem . . . prescient.

I wish I had your optimism, Doc. I am completely frustrated with the continued talk of raising taxes and not curbing spending entitlements. I would vote NO to any tax raise or removal of tax break at this point. The government gets enough money to handle the truly needy. I think the problem has always been what is the government's responsibility. It reaches beyond it's scope, and then we have this problem of debt.