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Post 21 Oct 2011, 6:11 pm

Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, suffers from cognitive dissonance. They say they oppose special favors to Wall Street but their so-called ”progressive” leaders who are waging the same kind of class warfare in Washington, starting with Barack Obama, are the enablers of bad actors on Wall Street. Big banks and investment firms were among Obama’s top donors in 2008, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup, UBS AG and Morgan Stanley.

Tim Geithner, current Treasury Secretary and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, orchestrated the AIG bailout. Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law got a $737 million loan guarantee from the same Department of Energy that gave $535 million to Solyndra. Rep. Maxine Waters helped arrange a bailout for a bank that counts Waters’ husband among its board members. Rep. Barney Frank’s boyfriend was an executive at Fannie Mae as the government lender made it easier for unqualified homebuyers to get loans.

Why would they be out in the streets if their guy was in the White House?
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Post 22 Oct 2011, 9:05 am

Neal Anderth wrote:
Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, suffers from cognitive dissonance. They say they oppose special favors to Wall Street but their so-called ”progressive” leaders who are waging the same kind of class warfare in Washington, starting with Barack Obama, are the enablers of bad actors on Wall Street. Big banks and investment firms were among Obama’s top donors in 2008, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup, UBS AG and Morgan Stanley.

Tim Geithner, current Treasury Secretary and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, orchestrated the AIG bailout. Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law got a $737 million loan guarantee from the same Department of Energy that gave $535 million to Solyndra. Rep. Maxine Waters helped arrange a bailout for a bank that counts Waters’ husband among its board members. Rep. Barney Frank’s boyfriend was an executive at Fannie Mae as the government lender made it easier for unqualified homebuyers to get loans.

Why would they be out in the streets if their guy was in the White House?


Not complicated. They are politically motivated and they want "their guy" to move farther left.
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Post 22 Oct 2011, 10:16 am

Doctor Fate wrote:
Neal Anderth wrote:Why would they be out in the streets if their guy was in the White House?


Not complicated. They are politically motivated and they want "their guy" to move farther left.
Kind of. I think they don't see Obama as being very 'left', and it's not that they are unaware of the links between government (of both parties) and the big financial corporations, it's that they are all too aware of them.

But hey, shock horror! people who are demonstrating are 'politically motivated'. Just like anyone who does anything from writing to their representative to waving placards at a meeting.
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Post 26 Oct 2011, 12:21 pm

The whole thing was crackers in the first place. For example, why did Wall Street get bailed out?

Answer: because the Federal government bailed it out.

So, why "occupy Wall Street?" Why not protest in DC? Isn't that where the "problem" is?

The Tea Party held rallies around the country, but its main focus was always DC. Not so much with OWS. Why?

I think it's because the movement is not about protesting anything. It is an amalgamation of Labor, ACORN, other Leftist concerns, and disaffected losers and anarchists. The end result? Chaos, lots of trash, and a move of independent voters away from Democrats, who voiced support for the movement.

How about this report from CBS:

NEW YORK - Without running water or working toilets, the crowded anti-Wall Street encampments across the country are not the most pleasant-smelling places to live. Nor are they quiet, with drumming and chanting echoing through the air at all hours of the night.

That's why police and neighbors in some cities are starting to lose patience with the protesters, who are preparing to settle in for the winter months.

In Oakland, Calif., police in riot gear fired tear gas and bean bags before daybreak Tuesday to disperse about 170 protesters who had been camping in front of City Hall for the past two weeks, and 75 people were arrested.

The mayor of Providence, R.I., is threatening to go to court within days to evict demonstrators from a park.

And businesses and residents near New York's Zuccotti Park, the unofficial headquarters of the movement that began in mid-September, are demanding something be done to discourage the hundreds of protesters from urinating in the street and making noise at all hours.

"A lot of tourists coming down from hotels are so disgusted and disappointed when they see this," said Stacey Tzortzatos, manager of a sandwich shop near Zuccotti Park. "I hope for the sake of the city the mayor does close this down."

She complained that the protesters who come in by the dozen to use her bathroom dislodged a sink and caused a flood, and that police barricades are preventing her normal lunch crowd from stopping by.

As for the national mood on the protests, a CBS News/New York Times poll released Tuesday found that 43 percent of Americans agree with the views of the Occupy Wall Street movement and found a widespread belief that money and wealth should be distributed more evenly in America.

Twenty-seven percent of Americans said they disagree with the movement, according to the poll. Thirty percent said they were unsure.

The neighborhood board for the area surrounding Zuccotti Park voted Tuesday night to pass a resolution that proposed off-site portable bathrooms funded by local donors, said Julie Menin, head of the board. The resolution also requested that loud noises, like the blast of air horns and group chanting, be limited to two hours during the day.

"Drumming has been going on late at night," she said.

Other residents echoed Menin's complaints, CBS News station WCBS-TV in New York reports.

"There is drumming," resident Ro Sheffe said. "There are trumpets. There are bugles. There are tambourines. There's yelling and shouting and chanting late into the night."

John Tuttle works a few blocks away from the park and said some protesters' behavior has become a health hazard.

"I saw a gentleman who was actually using Tupperware containers to urinate in," Tuttle said. "He actually was dumping it in the street."

The park's owner, Brookfield Office Properties, tried to push the protesters out two weeks ago to clean it but backed off at the last minute after a public outcry.

Menin said the neighborhood does not believe the protesters should be kicked out. "We do not want the city to use force in any way," she said. "And we think it's possible to address quality-of-life issues."

Meanwhile, charges against hundreds of the New York protesters who were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge or at Union Square could be dropped if the protesters accept a deal from the Manhattan district attorney. But a lawyer representing protesters says that many of them will likely reject the deal because it is void if they are arrested again.

In Philadelphia, city officials have been waiting almost two weeks for Occupy Philly to respond to a letter containing a list of health and safety concerns. City Managing Director Richard Negrin said officials can't wait much longer to address hazards such as smoking in tightly packed tents, camp layouts that hinder emergency access, and exposure to human waste.

"They just can't ignore us indefinitely," Negrin said Tuesday. "Every day that they haven't addressed these public safety concerns simply increases the risk."


That poll, btw, was "adults." Just wait until election day, the numbers will run 3:1 or higher against OWS. If the movement cannot really gain steam while protesting in hotbeds of liberalism, where will it gain steam?
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Post 26 Oct 2011, 1:34 pm

Their occupying Wll Street because thats where the criminals are...Or so says a famous Marxist:

Of course, this is a pretty hackneyed scatter-gun indictment by people who haven't really thought it through, but their anger and frustration are largely justified nonetheless: In the past decade, many prominent financial houses joined in the process of issuing consolidated debt obligations (CDOs), consisting of unfathomable patchworks of mortgages on packages of residential real estate, unsupported by any real base of invested equity in the underlying assets by their ostensible owners, and covered by diaphanous figleaves of default insurance. These instruments were made deceptively presentable by certifications from the main rating agencies that they were investment-grade, as if issued by serous entities and secured by unquestionable assets.

The financial system was revealed by the light of the thunderbolt in 2008 in its ghastly infirmity. And a great many people probably are guilty of fraud or of negligence on a massive scale, yet have escaped prosecution, let alone conviction and punishment. The spectacle of Goldman Sachs, which was virtually the junior partner of the U.S. Treasury and the British Exchequer and chief training school for leading financial officials of the governments of both countries for decades, peddling herniating masses of CDOs out their investment window while shortselling them in their house accounts, was disgraceful. And the wrist-slap fine they received for it while their chairman explained that the firm was "doing God's work" made it more so. (Not since Richard Wagner's bumbling Wotan has such an implausible deity strutted the stage before a paying audience


Conrad Black goes on elequently as always. As to why its not Washington...
Assessing blame is complicated. This was not a case where an easily identifiable group committed monstrously illegal acts in the manner of Bernard Madoff. The politicians, starting with Bill Clinton, mandated and sponsored litigation requiring that hundreds of billions of private sector dollars be consecrated to commercially unjustifiable residential mortgages. Clinton et al. took the credit for increasing family home ownership and, more tangibly, reaped campaign donations for services rendered to the building trade unions and the residential land developers and speculators. But these politicians did not intend or foresee disaster, and with few exceptions, did not profit personally.

source:

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/col ... story.html
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Post 26 Oct 2011, 5:20 pm

Oakland PD may have nearly killed an Iraq vet who was protesting.
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Post 26 Oct 2011, 5:57 pm

Hopefully the malcontent learned from his disobedience...
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Post 26 Oct 2011, 10:28 pm

Video of the Oakland incidence http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... kland.html

This video zeros in on the police throwing multiple flash bangs at those trying to rescue the downed Scott Olsen.
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Post 27 Oct 2011, 8:18 am

I think that was payback for the NY veteran who made NYPD run away
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Post 27 Oct 2011, 8:39 am

Neal Anderth wrote:Video of the Oakland incidence http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... kland.html

This video zeros in on the police throwing multiple flash bangs at those trying to rescue the downed Scott Olsen.


According to what I've seen, he did two tours in Iraq. Thank you Mr. Olsen!

Now, why didn't you disperse when ordered to do so?

Let's put it this way: I see protesters with goggles, masks, and all manner of gear, who don't budge when ordered to do so, don't leave when the tear gas starts flying, and I think to myself, "Would I act that way, no matter how agitated I was?"

The answer is: "No!"

These are hooligans and ne'er-do-wells. There may be a few vets sprinkled in. So what? Being a veteran does not give you a free pass to break the law. I pray Mr. Olsen recovers. However, in a city as PC as Oakland, the police are restrained to say the least. If he had done as instructed, he would not have been injured.
Last edited by Doctor Fate on 27 Oct 2011, 9:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post 27 Oct 2011, 9:16 am

Nothing from Barry yet. It's been a busy time for me and I still haven't made it down there. It doesn't help that my older kid has no interest in seeing it and had refused to come with the last couple of weekends.

Brad, they are camping in a privately owned, publically accessible open space, not a private park, like Gramercy Park. The distinction may be uniquely NYC, but it’s a legal distinction. The way it works if a developer wants to make a building bigger than zoning allows they make a “public plaza” and get a plaza bonus, which gives them more floor area and they can make their building bigger. They still own the plaza, but they operate it under very strict rules and they must maintain certain amenities. If this was a public park, people wouldn’t be allowed to camp there because there are rules against that. There are very few rules against anything in these privately owned, publically accessible open spaces, but many requirements to do things, like they must remain open to the public and this one must be open to the public 24 hours a day.

Dan, nomally, that space (which everyone used to call Liberty Plaza, I don't know anyone who called it Zucotti Park) is highly used at lunch time on nice days. Lots of food carts selling hot dogs, fallafale, etc. cater to the office workers who escape to catch some rays at lunch time. It's just a paved plaza with some seating and some tree pits so it's not a place where people go to enjoy like Battery Park or the Promenade along Battery Park City, both of which are close and lovely. Like most of these privately owned publically accessible open spaces, it's just an unprogramed open space where you can sit for a while, not a designed park.

I agree with Steve, the anger of the protesters suggest that they should be in Washington DC. I mean, imagine Neal Andreth gave Steve $700B to watch for him, and I came along and said, Steve, dude, I’ve taken a bath on the market and I’m worse than broke, I really need that money. Can you give it to me? And Steve said sure, if you need it, no problem. Who’s Neal going to be mad at? The protesters should be in Washington DC.
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Post 27 Oct 2011, 9:25 am

Geo,
Thanks for the clarification. I was not aware of the difference between private and public in NY. :no: :no:
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Post 27 Oct 2011, 12:22 pm

I think while DC has reponsibility for bailing out the banks, the protesters have the following ideas:

Firstly, that when it came down to it, the politicians and the Fed had very little choice, seeing as major banks collapsing would have been an utter disaster.

Furthermore, while politicians and bureaucrats had responsibility for setting the rules and regulations and should have been keeping an eye on the banks, it was the banks that got themselves into the position where they were lending each other ever-increasing amounts of money based on the using sub-prime loans as collateral.

And lastly, while Congress, the President (this one and the previous one), and others had not set very strict controls over how banks operate post-bailout despite having the leverage of having helped keep them in business... the banks are still making profits from large differential rates between borrowers and savers, and are paying out large bonuses to the same people who were in charge when the banks nearly killed the financial system, and are now lobbying furiously against stricter rules and having to contribute a little bit more to pay back the debts arising, lobbying the politicians (many of whom get lots of campaign finance from people who have a special interest in the financial system) to stop that happening.

I think they see DC as the monkey to Wall St's organ grinder.
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Post 27 Oct 2011, 1:40 pm

I'm going to repeat myself by again sharing a bit of the Constitution:

First Amendment – "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Any action by the government or its agents to the contrary is invalid.

geojanes, the protesters are in D.C. too. Thanks for your additional comments regarding Liberty Plaza.

If it wasn't for the police interventions this whole thing would likely be over with already. When you tell people they can't do something they believe they should be free to do it gets them riled up.

And there's the Jon Stewart laughter is the best medicine version: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011 ... eo.php?m=1
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Post 28 Oct 2011, 6:35 am

If it wasn't for the police interventions this whole thing would likely be over with already


More likely cold weather will end the constant assembly.