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Occupy Wall Street: Is It Really The 99%?
By EconMatters
It looks like the initial public support and sympathy for Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is starting to wear thin. From CNBC:
"Occupy Wall Street may claim small-business owners as members of the 99 percent, but from Oakland, Calif., to New York, many local enterprises are asking the protesters to pack up.
....the problem with the movement is that it is not hurting the big banks, but rather, it is hurting the small-business owners that are fighting to survive in a recession, says small-business owner Carol Bloom Stevens."
About a month ago, we already opined in an article that
"While we do not believe the Occupy Wall Street movement is entirely constructive timing-wise with the already troubled U.S. economy, we do understand the elements behind the initiative."
We have pointed out some of the shady market practice going on on Wall Street. However, part of the reason for our "against-the-herd" view regarding the OWS is the observation of a lack of leadership and clear vision and goal(s) of the entire Occupy movement.
When an organized initiative is unable to articulate realistic goals, and solutions related to its cause, it is nothing more than a disorganized idealistic crowd leading to typically nothing constructive. Or worse yet, if the crowd is big enough as in the case of OWS, "mob mentality" would almost guarantee something destructive would take place.
OWS has now escalated into scary violent outbursts in several metro areas with some protesters reportedly carrying weapons such as AK-47, while others resorting to destroying public and private properties and vandalism. Regardless how frustrated the bankster situation (at least that was the original OWS cause) might be, there's hardly any excuse for that kind of bad behavior that could harm innocent bystanders, while not only disrupting day-to-day lives of business and private citizens, but also bringing about a "riot contagion." For example, if not for the OWS, it is doubtful the Penn State students would have resorted to rioting over a football coach who probably deserved to be fired in the first place based on reported accounts.
Another observation: As part of the 99% "worker bees", it is also very difficult for us to fathom how much free time these protesters seem to have to just camp out for days, weeks or even months without any concern in the world about family, work, and most importantly, the next paycheck. So either these people are
- Part of the 14 million unemployed, whose time probably would have been better utilized going back to school or sprucing up job skill and resume for the next gig, or
- Part of the 1% with riches able to subsidize idealism, or
- The term "Professional Protester" may not be that far off.
Some people equivalized OWS to the Arab Spring. America is far from perfect, but it is not Egypt or Libya where an outdated autocratic leader/government had ruled for decades either. The political and fiscal system in the United States most definitely needs an overhaul, and the entire congress probably needs to be replaced, but that's where voting and election comes in and what a democratic system is all about. Overall, USA is still one of the best countries in the free world despite its many problems. That is, name one country in the world that does not have similar or more serious problems....just take a look at Europe.
While the cause behind OWS resonates with many in the nation, OWS is not the path to a better America either. The longer it spread and goes on in a disruptive manner without a clear and definitive mission, and solution, the more likely other parts of the society will start turning against it. Time to regroup before falling flat on its face once the red carpet gets abruptly pulled out.
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If OWS is less than 1%, how is it that they claim to be the 99%. I guess too many bong hits before algebra?
I had high hopes for OWS but they went off the rails early. It's now co-opted by the usual sleazy groups and has morphed into Obamao's reelection campaign. Biggest clue for the cognitively challenged: it's wholeheartedly endorsed by the MSM. They are not the 99%, what is left at OWS is the 5% that are unemployable.
Unions, Workers Family Party, ACORN, media matters, communist party USA, and the Socialist Democrats of America are now the spearhead that is guiding OWS to protest freemarket capitalism and are in support of status quo with more socialism. Obama's Crony Wall Street banks, Soros, and the FED are off limits. Where was OWS when democrat Obama bundler, Jon Corzine and MF Global, when tits up? It was a timely outrage served up on a platter for them, but OWS was silent. They were AWOL because Jon Corzine is one of their own and they got the message to leave that one alone.
Instead, they're using their children to block streets and are throwing 78 yo ladies down stairs, which has nothing to do with banks. Chavez and Ortega do the same thing. They have street thug armies ready to intimidate and suppress opposition voices and voting.
These are dry runs before escalating things for Obama prior to the elections. Read their websites, they're just getting started with the violence. The core is a bunch of nuts who think violence is OK because it's all endorsed by BHO. Blood is in on Obama's hands who is following the Latin marxist playbook and allowing all of this. If he can't win the election legitimately his people can foment a civil crises. If the current openly fascist administration is in charge when the SHTF, martial law and totalitarianism will not be far behind.
(BTW, even 2 cases of TB is a big deal because it's airborne, highly contagious, and everyone who has been around them for the last month now has to be tested.)
(BTW, even 2 cases of TB is a big deal because it's airborne, highly contagious, and everyone who has been around them for the last month now has to be tested.)
It's a good thing that we who are part of the 1% have the best health care that money can buy! I guess for everyone else they are shit-out-of-luck. I guess the OWS people and the other 50 million Americans without health insurance can just craw in a hole and die. Right? America is for rugged individualists who can stand on there own. Survival of the fittest and all that.
No. America is the place where those who produce are obligated to pay for all the whims and fancies of those who don't. Where have you been?
Where have I been? I've been right here reaping the benefits of the 1%. Most of us have inherited money, so we don't have to work for it. We let the "producers" like you earn it for us. And you think the benefits go to the peasants...Ha Ha Ha
Please provide documentation.
Documentation, documentation!! We don't need no stink'en documentation!
O well OK, how about this:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Total_Wall_Street_Bailout_Cost
The biggest theft and swindle in history of the world: 1.54 Trillion dollars transfered from the ordinary citizens/taxpayers of America to the elites. Of course the MSM says it has all been paid back. But of course the MSM is our propaganda arm. Ha Ha
The Wall Street bailout was an act of government regulation of the financial industry. If you are willing to assert that regulation is the problem and real deregulation is the only way to let the taxpayer off the hook then we can be in agreement.
I don't think I'm going to agree on much with you. However, I respect other peoples opinions. I don't want you to die from TB.
Don't fret. I'm not going to die from TB.
"The Wall Street bailout was an act of government regulation of the financial industry. If you are willing to assert that regulation is the problem and real deregulation is the only way to let the taxpayer off the hook then we can be in agreement."
Ahhh, true colours shine through, now I know what you are. The jig is up bub. Because we both know full well that the deregulation of the financial sector that started in the 80's with Reagan is exactly why the world is in the mess it is today...
Hmmm, I too am beginning to think that TB is the least of your worries
Chop Chop
Please show me the documentation which permits free entry into the banking and financial sectors for new entrepreneurs.
There never has been any deregulation of the financial industry. Neither you nor I can open an honest bank. Regulations stop us. You don't really believe that the regulations which protect the financial firms from competition have been rescinded, do you?
The jig is up. You have mistaken regulation for deregulation just as Bush supporters mistook carpet bombing for freedom. If you keep asking to be hit on the head with the same hammer that has concussed you there's little hope.
Wow, that was one painfully false dichotomy you conjured up there.
You just keep digging that hole, some sucker might buy into it eventually.
Just keep believing that you don't own yourself. That ought to work ought real well for you.
I own mine and me's . However, not being under the age of 2 years old, I recognize that there is much more to the world than just myself.
I look around
"...and I shays to myshelf: Myshelf, I shays..."
Of course there's more to life but one can not pursue all that is rich and good in life while being shackled to an unjust system.
Please explain how denying self ownership is advantageous when dealing with others. How does denying self ownership put you in a better position when you seek relief from the vagaries of government and their corporate cronies?
gwar5, fuck you.
You are what is known now as a low information voter.
I'll let you in on a little liberal secret: The more fools that have money, the more oportunity that exists to get them to part ways with it. The republican side: convince the masses to vote against their own self enterest because they're too damn dumb to know how badly they're being fucked.
While Freideman economics endorses your stupid view, You miss one thing: You ain't a member of the group that will ultimately part you with your gold. That means, that unless you have access to the shit that're robbing you today, you friend, are ultimately someone in need of the programs that level the field for those of us that have been fucked out of access to the big gold pile.
The reason that liberal adminstrations lead to more wealth for the many is many fold: but one still holds true. The flow and velocity of wealth is all around you, you won't have to strain that brain of yours to get some.
ACORN? Are you fucking kidding me?
I'm not a bright bulb, but please, come on down here with the rest of us, you sir have been sold a wheelbarrow load of bullshit.
Communism? Jesus Christ I've never seen such a high level of stupid.
What's next, invaders from Mars?
Fuck you.
Nacho Libre, you're the real idiot here. You say ACORN isn't involved? Man you must have a big rectom as someone's been pounding your ass full of libtard cock for a long time. Communism, you think that too is extreme to the OWS crowd? Are you fucking kidding me, they're the closest thing to communism we've seen demonstrated since the late '60's here in the sates.
Know what you're supporting as it's the biggest drug induced sham of an organization I've ever seen. They want violence, trust me, they're going to get what's coming to them!
the Commies again.
Damn, how many miles we've gotten out of those phantoms. If we could put one them in our gas tank, we'd never have to stop for gas again. Where are they, Tater? Let me at'em!
Well, I am assuming you are serious, but you're just being sarcastic right?
Oh, you are a trickster all right, and I bite on each piece of bait you toss out
Thanks for the illumination om
Not to mention that it's been identified as drug-resistent TB. IF that is true, it's even more important to control. The current duration of (observed, meaning supervision to make sure the pills are swallowed) treatment for drug-resistant TB is 6 to 12 months depending on culture and sensitivity results. That's for the actual patient. For close contacts, a 4 month course of antibiotics (and close monitoring) is recommended. For patients with HIV and pregnant women (who shouldn't be on some of these drugs because of the effects on the fetus) and children (same reason), it gets more difficult.
Drug-resistant TB is nothing to screw around with. We have forgotten how devastating some infectious diseases can be because we're so reliant on antibiotics. This one is just waiting to remind us.
(And then there's multi-drug resistant TB and extremely resistant TB.)
http://ethnomed.org/clinical/tuberculosis/cdc-resources/cdc-resistance
http://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/treatment/drugresistanttreatment.htm
Jena, let's hope if we leave them along and out there long enough, the TB will take care of them for us! Long live TB!
Tater Salad, it's never a good idea to rely on a contagious infectious disease to take out anyone you disagree with. Unintended consequences tend to include uncontrolled transmission into the general population. Plus I wouldn't wish dying of respiratory disease on anyone (except maybe the Sandusky predator types).
But I didn't junk you.
"Tater Salad, it's never a good idea to rely on a contagious infectious disease to take out anyone you disagree with."
I'm definitely on the same page there, but I junked you because you didn't junk Mr. Let-the-TB-work-things-out sociopath, Tater Salad. How can you be concerned about infectious diseases used as a vector for murder and not junk a sociopath like Tater?
Yikes!
When I engage in a conversation with someone, I tell them why I agree or disagree with them. Adding an arrow seems superfluous.
I question whether one can actually have a discussion with a person advocating using infectious diseases (particularly ones that are anti-biotic resistant) for the purposes of murdering protestors.
Your comments strike me as someone coming at things as a doctor or public health professional (maybe that assessment is wrong), and it is hard for me to contemplate how someone knowledgable enough to speak on the risks of untreatable TB to give the mildest of reprobations to a manifest psychopath. His comment: "Jena, let's hope if we leave them along and out there long enough, the TB will take care of them for us! Long live TB!" is so obviously psychotic that I wonder why he is not already committed to a psychological institution.
**Jena, let's hope if we leave them along and out there long enough, the TB will take care of them for us! Long live TB!**
I am a licensed Psychiatrist and from your statement I can diagnose you as a raving Psychopath. Before you hurt yourself or anyone else, check yourself into a Psychiatric hospital immediately.
One of the most common methods of removing dissenters from Soviet society was to declare them to be mad. And did they really teach you at the shrinkage academy that hyperbole is synonymous with insanity?
Do you think the elites in this country will shrink from using a very effective method to silence dissent just because "The Soviets" used it. All totalitarian societies are the same at heart. The U.S is quickly becoming very totalitarian
The elites in this country do use psychiatric claptrap as an excuse to silence dissent. Just as you did two posts up. I'm opposed to such behavior in all case.
Totalitarianism thrives in riotous environments. If OWS had a clear goal and a means of achieving it that would be one thing. But wild-eyed masses in the streets inevitably invites a totalitarian response.
Totalitarianism is imposed from the top down. It's imposed when the status quo is threatened. When the few who benefit the most from the system fear they are threatened.
OWS is still in it infancy. Many people in this country know their lives are being destroyed by a system that is out of control. A system they have no control of despite the promises and traditions of this country. Ordinary people are waking up to what is happening to them. Watch out when the majority of Americans catch on.
By the way, wishing that fellow citizens you disagree with die from TB would on the face of it indicate a form of Psychopathy.
Wishing mob rule on your fellow citizens is a form of insanity.
Please review the French Revolution, Bolshevism, National Socialism and China's Cultural Revolution before you discount the use of rabble in order to establish a totalitarian society.
OWS is not "in its infancy." Even an infant develops along a particular path toward an intended goal. OWS is more like a tumor than an embryo.
Americans have been awake for a while now. What they lack is a goal. OWS is not helping them find a goal. But the goal is obvious: each person requires the freedom to live his own life in his own way. When individuals are free to keep their own wages and make their own decisions each of us will be able to set our own goals and have a reasonable chance of attaining them. Some of us may be successful enough to rise to the top 1% of income earners. And there's nothing wrong with that.
But a bunch of angry people looking for scapegoats in the wrong places is not going to turn out well for anyone involved.
"When individuals are free to keep their own wages and make their own decisions each of us will be able to set our own goals and have a reasonable chance of attaining them."
I have no idea where this kind of thinking comes from, but it clearly has no relation to the world we live in. You've been reading too much Rothbard and have confused a belief system with a praxis. Actually, you really strike me more as an ideologue, a true believer, projecting a model onto the world that doesn't exist, and unable to discern the pragmatic steps necessary to get from here to whatever world you think we need to have.
Keep writing all your nasty mean-spirited posts about how OWS is like a tumor, but I think your posts say more about you than they do OWS and the potential it offers us to rid ourselves of the parasitic class once and for all.
If you don't believe that you own your own property then give me all your money.It would be "mean spirited" (not to mention hypocritical) for you to do otherwise.
And have you sent out the invitations for OWS to occupy your place of business yet?
CrockettAlmanac, you are a very mean-spirited fellow. But I'll make your day.
My life is falling apart. I am about to lose my job (in January), my home (probably sooner), and I don't know where I'll go after that. My business plans are on hold due to this upheaval in my life, so I surely hope you can understand that I'm not going to sending out invitations to OWS to occupy my place of business. (although I would welcome them with open arms)
I think you are the meanest person on this site, and I honestly don't know why you come here, other than to look down on others that have been less fortunate than you.
Ever get the impression no one here is buying what you're selling? Uh-ogh, If your 'anarcho-corporatitst' pipedream ever does happen you could be in big trouble.
No one is buying what OWS is selling and that seems to make you so angry that you suggest that people don't even own their own bodies. Angry, confused and forcing yourself on others is no way to go through life.
"Wishing mob rule on your fellow citizens is a form of insanity"
Heh, that from a 48 year old promoting 'Anarchy', you just can't make this shit up.
Sycophants get it too. Chop Chop.
Rather than worrying about making things up why don't you try to learn about the real world instead? Anarchy and mob rule are completely different things. Anarchy can only be sustained through hard work and voluntary interaction. The public school system has really blunted your powers of understanding.
Yeah yeah, and if your reading comprehension is any indicator of how you fared with private tutors your whipping boy was black and blue most of the time.
Irony is such a sweet mistress: I never said 'anarchy and mob rule are the same schmeeee'. Quit trying to stick your hand far enough up my ass to make my tongue wag.
I have a BA in English and completed the GRE in the 97th percentile. How'd you do?
Just fine, thanks for asking. What, are you fishing for compliments now, or simply phishing?
I'm encouraging you to embrace a reality based point of view.
Too bad your BA wasn't in philosophy then, some epistemological skills combined with a basic understanding of how to reason and you might have been able to come up with one.
You want Wall Street and the government to please fix all the big, bad problems created by government and Wall Street and you say that I am unable to reason?
Do you really believe that government is going to suddenly stop screwing you and deny themselves all the power and money they obtain by screwing you? What would be their motivation? Please describe a reasonable course of events whereby standing on a corner shouting at an office building will lessen the desire of politicians to exploit their standing.
Please be specific.
What would you suggest? Are you the "Batman" or something? No, I wouldn't rely on Wall whatever to regulate itself; that is one of a many of points I've already made. Another, is that history has a wide range of samples indicating great success when extraordinarily large numbers of people behaved cohesively, but independently. M00t? Be specific...say, how high can you count, anyway?
That's supposed to be your attempt at reasoning through the economic crisis -- asking what I would suggest even after you've dismissed every point I've made up to this point? Try again: please present a reasonable series of events which begins with OWS and ends with the government and Wall Street standing down and pledging themselves to economic fairness in America.
Yes we learned that this is National Tea Party strategy to disregard OWS. Too bad.
And crowd not same people. People come in and some people leave, it's a growing movement. Scary for status quo.
gwar:
Either co-opted or just not yet more-so publicly revealed (even, possibly to the useful idiots who idealistically joined).
Have you seen "Occupy Hahvhad"? e.g.: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/11/9/occupy-protest-shuts-down-ha... and http://twitter.com/#!/occupy_harvard , etc.
This is piss-your-pants funny; Hahvhad kids protesting the 1%!
- Ned
Actually, yes. The usual suspects are/were the drivers from the beginning. I was just trying to be polite to those who had gotten sucked into all the hopishness of the OWS 100%. Better to let them down easy. Wanting to do something is a natural impulse, but doing the wrong thing can just make things worse.
Obama's groups have been jacking for this for 3 years if they couldn't "transform" America legislatively. That was over in 2010. This street stuff is what communiy organizers do and at the very least it will help TPTB keep the people divided and distracted from the disasterous Euro-socialism collapse.
I had also posted a link to the Harvard Crimson article last week on ZH when they had given column space to a new Communist Manifesto for America. Highlights:
Naturally, extreme violence for the revolution shall be required. Once over, executions will be needed for those who refuse re-education and for those who resisted the revolution. Blacks shall be rewarded (by the white communists in charge, of course) for their part in the cause with homeland of their own in the South with forced mass migrations of the whites and other races. The Hispanics shall be rewarded for their part in the armed struggle with land of the Southwest USA, with similar forced migrations of all the other races.
So, the post-revolution world will be a racist one with forced segregations and migrations of tens of millions of people using genocide, as needed. No doubt all of it shall be accomplished with the same high level of organizational skills and hygiene that OWS has come to be known for.
Gee, OWS, rather than civil war, wouldn't it just be easier for everybody to band together as a nation and demand nationalization of the Federal Reserve, issuance of our own currency, break up the squids into little tiny pieces, and return to a gold standard ?? That would be a grand accomplishment, yet simple and fucused enough for a generation of people to get done. Think about it.
"Fuckshyte! Now, I'm going to get a pint!" -- O'Gwar
The filthy rich against income inequality?