Occupy Wall Street Movement: An American Spring

[Garden guy]

This whole scenario was predicted way way back...remember Al Gore?...Huge tax breaks for the top controlers sparked massive greed as predicted and this is what we have...just another example of how the republicans and thier ideas rules and regulations have fucked up the country...everyone's screaming at Obama yet this damage was set and done years before he came into the picture...we are all fucked...if we think that the wealthy bankers that run this country are going to give up anything...we are all fools...

[FayeforCure]

This whole scenario was predicted way way back...remember Al Gore?...Huge tax breaks for the top controlers sparked massive greed as predicted and this is what we have...just another example of how the republicans and thier ideas rules and regulations have fucked up the country...everyone's screaming at Obama yet this damage was set and done years before he came into the picture...we are all fucked...if we think that the wealthy bankers that run this country are going to give up anything...we are all fools...

The biggest contributors to Obama is Wall Street............he is very much complicit in Bankster friendly weak oversight policies that perpetuate the ripping off of the 99 percenters.

But look at what the people are saying on Wall Street TODAY:



Brings tears to the eyes of all those who believe in restoring Government by the People, of the People and for the People

rather than our current Government by the Corporations, of the Corporations and for the Corporations.

The time of on-line petitions is over!!!

[FayeforCure]

Posted: 1:38 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 9, 2011


Hundreds turn out for Occupy Jacksonville protest



WJXT 

Jacksonville, FL â€"


They protested on Wall Street and Washington, D.C. and on Saturday afternoon, it was Jacksonville’s turn.



Hundreds turned out for a march through Downtown Jacksonville and a rally in Hemming Plaza as part of the growing Occupy Wall Street protests.



They came with a wide range of arguments. Some yelled that this was about saving humanity, another told the media this was about health care, education, helping the unemployed and making the American Dream assessable to all. While others waved signs criticizing House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for referring to them as a mob.



Though the occupy movement may be the umbrella for many of these causes, it’s mostly believed to be primarily about corporate greed and the corrupting relationship it has with government. Several stood up at the rally to share their remarks about helping the bottom 99% who President Obama says will be aided by his plans to address the nation’s deficit.



There were no reported problems from the protest that went on for hours, despite the rain. Though, Councilman Don Redman did show up at the protest and reportedly had some disagreements with those at the rally. He also inquired with Jacksonville Police if the group had a permit to rally. According to the group’s Twitter page, Redman said they had to leave, and they responded: “We pay your salary. You should leave.”



Officers did arrive to make sure the streets were safe for the crowd to cross during the rally, and some of the protestors were heard saying, “Thank you!” as they passed the police. The march route took them past the Wells Fargo building, one of the corporations Occupy Wall Street is targeting.

http://www.wokv.com/news/news/local/hundreds-turn-out-occupy-jacksonville-protest/nD8q9/

[FayeforCure]

Thanks for gathering the informative material FayeforCure.  I am overjoyed with the emerging movement.  Whereas the beginning was awkward, the end will be clear.  There may be hesitations, sidetracked energies, and appearances of failure, but the truth of the absurdities and abuses on the eighty percent is so formidable that a clear picture will finally emerge for all to see; and the pressure of need, of justice, and propriety will force the changes our population deserves and demands.

Many ....  the protesters, the bloggers, the columnists, the posters, are working a large painting, each welding the brush according to ability and inclination; but as colors and details are refined, as truth emerges, as the walls of secrecy are destroyed, and as the painting approaches completion, only the totally blind will avoid seeing the beauty of it.     

Thank you Ron.........very beautifully said!!

Here is how big this is getting in the US: An estimated 1,000 events across the US, and Jax represented one of the first three in FL. Thank you JSO for being so friendly and courteous to the protesters.

Tampa held the very first Occupy event in FL.

Next weekend there will be at least 10-15 Occupy events in FL.

Last Updated: 9:43 p.m.


Occupy Jacksonville began at Hamming Plaza in at about noon today (Saturday, Oct. 8th), despite at times heavy rain. Several people from Palm Coast and Flagler County joined the protest. Between 200 and 300 people gathered at the Plaza at the height of the protest, though more fanned in and out over the course of the afternoon. The event was one of more than 900 so far organized across the country as the original Occupy Wall Street movement ripples outward from Manhattan. Another Occupy Jacksonville protest may be in the works for next Saturday.




Palm Coast resident Geraldine Hochman-Klarenberg and her husband David organized a small group from Flagler Countyâ€"10 people, including Hochman-Klarenberg’s two young childrenâ€"and got to the protest about 1 p.m. “It was really great, really mellow, everybody was there for the same cause,” Hochman-Klarenberg said. Police at first was nowhere, and when deputies appeared, she said, “they actually helped us, they stopped the traffic for us, and everybody wasâ€"thank you officers, they gave us smiles.”

Speakers and messages varied at Hemming Plaza. As in the original and ongoing Occupy Wall Street movement in Manhattan, there were no set leaders or set agendas, but rather shows of solidarity with a general message against inequities, disenfranchisement, incumbency and the often repeated variations on what is turning into one of the movement’s battle cries: “We are the 99 percent.”

The signs tell a story, as they did in Jacksonville. One sign spoke of a young woman’s father who’d held three jobs, had lost them, leaving the woman unable to pay for college. Signs told of unaffordable mortgages, unaffordable health bills, non-existent work. It may be true that an overall, precise message hasn’t yet cohered, Hochman-Klarenberg said, but the themes are clear. “We’re angry, We’re angry, and something needs to change. Bloody hell, that’s why we have politicians,” she said.

And something is broken. What’s broken: “The way things are being valued, the way hard work is being valued, the way ordinary Americans are being valuedâ€"it just seems to be upside down. If you have the money, you get the power. I don’t think that’s the way the United States was founded when they started off.”


The protests, while multiplying exponentially, are themselves turning into a subset of a larger conversation taking place online, through interlinked Facebook and other social media pages. (Ron's point!) Participants not necessarily able to join protests are taking part online and redefining the notion of protest inasmuch as social media have redefined communications and the Arab Spring-like mobilization of large segments of the populationâ€"in this case, large segments of America’s younger adults. “I work 2 jobs nearly every day,” goes one posting. “I live paycheck to paycheck and I am currently falling more and more into debt. I fear for losing my car/home and means to survive. I’m 22 years old.”

“Got my bachelor’s,” goes another. “Got low-paying job. Business went under. Defaulted on 70K student loan debt. I make less than 20K a year. 2 jobs. Not enough to pay debt. No dental/health. 6 cavities. Used car. No savings. No $ in bank. We are the 99%. occupywallstreet.org.”

By most accounts from various sources, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office was somewhere between cooperative with and supportive of the protesters. “JSO was exceptional today! My hat is off to them! They realize that they are the 99% as well,” Geno Burch wrote on one protest-related Facebook page.

http://flaglerlive.com/29261/occupy-jacksonville

[FayeforCure]

Some sensible ideas:

The financial crisis and the jobs crisis have demonstrated to the American people that we now have a government that is of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent and for the 1 percent, as Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz eloquently articulated. The rest of the 99 percent are, more or less, on their own. We now have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major, advanced country on Earth. The top 1 percent earn more income than the bottom 50 percent, and the richest 400 Americans own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

Now that Occupy Wall Street is shining a spotlight on Wall Street greed and the enormous inequalities that exist in America, the question then becomes, how do we change the political, economic and financial system to work for all Americans, not just the top 1 percent?

Here are several proposals that I am working on:

1) If a financial institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. Today, the six largest financial institutions have assets equal to more than 60 percent of GDP. The four largest banks in this country issue two thirds of all credit cards, half of all mortgages, and hold nearly 40 percent of all bank deposits. Incredibly, after we bailed out these big banks because they were "too big to fail," three out of the four largest are now even bigger than they were before the financial crisis began. It is time to take a page from Teddy Roosevelt and break up these behemoths so that their failure will no longer lead to economic catastrophe and to create competition in our financial system.

2) Put a cap on credit card interest rates to end usury. Today, more than a quarter of all credit card holders in this country are paying interest rates above 20 percent and as high as 59 percent. When credit card companies charge 25- or 30-percent interest rates they are not engaged in the business of "making credit available" to their customers. They are involved in extortion and loan-sharking. Citigroup, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase should not be permitted to charge consumers 25- to 30-percent interest on their credit cards, especially while these banks received over $4 trillion in loans from the Federal Reserve.

3) The Federal Reserve needs to provide small businesses in America with the same low-interest loans it gave to foreign banks. During the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve provided hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign banks and corporations including the Arab Banking Corporation, Toyota, Mitsubishi, the Korea Development Bank, and the state-owned Bank of Bavaria. At a time when small businesses can't get the lending they need, it is time for the Fed to create millions of American jobs by providing low-interest loans directly to small businesses.

4) Stop Wall Street oil speculators from artificially increasing gasoline and heating oil prices. Right now, the American people are being gouged at the gas pump by speculators on Wall Street who are buying and selling billions of barrels of oil in the energy futures market with no intention of using a drop for any purpose other than to make a quick buck. Delta Airlines, Exxon Mobil, the American Trucking Association, and other energy experts have estimated that excessive oil speculation is driving up oil prices by as much as 40 percent. We have got to end excessive oil speculation and bring needed relief to American consumers.

5) Demand that Wall Street invest in the job-creating productive economy, instead of gambling on worthless derivatives. The American people have got to make it crystal clear to Wall Street that the era of excessive speculation is over. The "heads, bankers win; tails, everyone else loses" financial system must end. Most important, we need to create a new Wall Street that exists not to reward CEOs and investors for the bets they make on exotic financial instruments nobody understands. Rather, we need a Wall Street that provides financial services to small businesses and manufacturers to create decent-paying jobs and grow the economy by productive means. Think of all of the productive short- and long-term investments that could be made in our country right now if Wall Street used the money it has received from the federal government wisely. Instead of casino-style speculation, Wall Street could invest in high-speed trains; fuel-efficient cars; wind turbines and other alternative energy sources; affordable housing; affordable prescription drugs that save people's lives; and other things that America desperately needs. That is what we have got to demand from Wall Street.

6) Establish a Wall Street speculation fee on credit default swaps, derivatives, stock options and futures. Both the economic crisis and the deficit crisis are a direct result of the greed and recklessness on Wall Street. Establishing a speculation fee would reduce gambling on Wall Street, encourage the financial sector to invest in the productive economy, and significantly reduce the deficit without harming average Americans. There are a number of precedents for this. The U.S had a similar Wall Street speculation fee from 1914 to 1966. The Revenue Act of 1914 levied a 0.2-percent tax on all sales or transfers of stock. In 1932, Congress more than doubled that tax to help finance the government during the Great Depression. And today, England has a financial transaction tax of 0.25 percent, a penny on every $4 invested.

Making these reforms will not be easy. After all, Wall Street is clearly the most powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill. From 1998 through 2008, the financial sector spent over $5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to deregulate Wall Street. More recently, they spent hundreds of millions more to make the Dodd-Frank bill as weak as possible, and after its passage, hundreds of millions more to roll back or diluter the stronger provisions in that legislation.

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are shining a light on one of the most serious problems facing the United States -- the greed and power of Wall Street. Now is the time for the American people to demand that the president and Congress follow that light -- and act. The future of our economy is at stake.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/wall-street-protests_b_1000642.html

[civil42806]

I really shouldn't do this but can't resist. "how is john mica responsible for this"

[FayeforCure]

I really shouldn't do this but can't resist. "how is john mica responsible for this"

I don't think our homeboy John Mica was mentioned here........so what prompted your question?

[FayeforCure]

Jacksonville goes NATIONAL!!!!

Never mind Tampa, Ft Meyers or other FL cities that held OccupyWallStreet rallies over the weekend.............Jacksonville gets top billing in OccupyWallStreet NATIONAL reporting   

Proud, soooooo proud of THE PEOPLE in Jacksonville:

October 10, 2011 8:24 AM PrintText
Occupy Wall St.'s drumbeat grows louder

Occupy Wall Street protests
Feingold on protests: "I'm excited about it" 
"Occupy Wall Street" protests continue to grow 
Political impact of "Occupy Wall Street" 
"Occupy Wall Street" protests spread across U.S. 
Cain: Wall Street protest a "coordinated distraction" 
Complete Coverage »
.
(CBS News)  Last Updated 9:39 a.m. ET

The drumbeat of the Occupy Wall Street protest is growing louder and wider.

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/10/10/WS_DC_tAP111009049938_620x350.jpg


"Wall Street got bailed out, and we all got sold out!"


From the streets of New York ... to the nation's capital ... to the South (Mobile, Ala., Jacksonville, Fla.) and West (Portland, Ore.), Americans are frustrated and making their voices heard.


"Wealthy individuals who own giant corporations have bought off our Congress and bought off our government and, you know, the people no longer have a voice anymore," one protester told CBS News.


The marchers come from all walks of life - young and old, male and female, hoping their lawmakers are listening.


"I think the message is obvious," said Jesse Lagreca, 38. "The wealthiest one percent is taking advantage of working class people. They've been selling us faulty financial products, they've been taking huge bonuses while depending on society to bail them out."


CBSMoneywatch's Jill Schlesinger points out that, according to economists at Northeastern University, corporate profits represented 88 percent of the growth in real national income between the 2Q of 2009 and 4Q of 2010, during the same period aggregate wages and salaries accounted for just over 1 percent.

"The money that companies have earned during the recovery has mostly stayed within corporate America," writes Schlesinger, "and has not trickled down into higher wages, nor has it created enough jobs to put some of the 14 million unemployed Americans back to work."


Moneywatch: Shrinking Incomes Fuel Protester Anger


"Ninety-nine percent of the people need to be prospering, not just the top one percent," said Michael Mulgrew, president of New York City's United Federation of Teachers.


"Every community knows they're hurting, what's going on is wrong, and it's time to stop this and make a difference, and do things that allow all people to prosper."


On "The Early Show" Monday, Former Senator Russell Feingold, D-Wis., said of the protests spreading across the country, "I'm not just pleased about it, I'm excited about it."


He reflected on the pro-labor demonstrations in Wisconsin earlier this year that were sparked by the governor's fight to take away collective bargaining rights from public sector workers in his state. "We did it here, and I think this is going to happen all over the country," Feingold said, "because people have been kicked when they are down, over and over again. You can only kick people so long before they react.


"This is time now for accountability, and this is a good way to show people how strongly we feel. The working people of this country have been treated very brutally and it has to change."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/10/earlyshow/main20118005.shtml

[Ralph W]

Rally! Rally!

I'm going to show those fat cats, who are feeding off my labor. I'm going to quit my job so productivity falls and no money flows to those leaches at the top. I'm going to stop buying anything produced by corporations who overpay those bottom feeders who have titles such as CEO.

NO MORE MONEY to those who are buying OUR government with OUR money for THEIR OWN benefit.

[FayeforCure]

Focusing on OccupyWallStreet's Demands is misguided:

Why Occupy Wall Street isn't about a list of demands

By Julianne Pepitone @CNNMoneyTech October 12, 2011: 9:27 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A lot of lip service has been paid to the idea that Occupy Wall Street lacks focus. The critics ask: What's the goal of these protests? Everyone wants something different.

Which is exactly the point.

See video: http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2011/09/17/n_wall_st_closed_protest.cnnmoney/


It's easy to trivialize Occupy Wall Street -- even as it inspires similar protests around the country -- by saying the movement lacks an end game. The group is trying to crowdsource its list of goals, which all but guarantees that no major ones will be set.

A demand list of sorts has appeared on the official Occupy Wall Street page, serving as an ever-changing document on which people can comment with their own suggestions. It has also served as fodder for critics like Fox News, which posted a version of the list and suggested that readers "try not to laugh."

But no list has been endorsed by the "general assembly" at Occupy Wall Street, says press team member Mark Bray, who added that "making a list of three or four demands would have ended the conversation before it started."

Occupy Wall Street has already achieved what it set out to do.

Like the "Arab Spring" uprisings that inspired its tactics, the word-of-mouth demonstration has tapped into a collective anger. Some protesters are upset about taxation; for others, the big issue is the high unemployment rate. Or corporate greed. Or the distribution of wealth.

How Occupy Wall Street has evolved

For all the individual reasons that draw people to Occupy Wall Street, a similar undercurrent ties the protesters together. They're upset about inequities in their country. (my comment: inequities that are caused by government of the 1%, by the 1%, and for the 1%, which will never change without Public financing of campaigns)

They're angry. They want their voices to be heard.

"The guys in Washington are supposed to be helping me, but they don't get it with their mansions and their millions," says an unemployed nurse at the protest on Wednesday, who declined to give her name. "They don't understand my situation and they don't want to hear me. Well, now they'll have to hear all of us."

Lawmakers including President Obama have weighed in on Occupy Wall Street, with many sympathetic to the emotion behind the protests. Large labor unions, including the AFL-CIO and SEIU, have joined in. Media outlets are at the scene in droves. Even a corporate board has shown support: Ben & Jerry's directors released a statement "to express our deepest admiration."

The mere fact that the protest is still going strong after 25 days is means it has met one of its goals: Organizers said from the start that they hoped to sustain their demonstration for two months. Occupy Wall Street's real goal has always been simple: Draw focus to the concerns -- and anger -- many Americans have about the country's growing economic gap, plant the seed of an organized voice, and let the protest evolve naturally.





As part of that evolution, solidarity protests have popped up in Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Denver and Chicago, among other cities.

"We don't want New York to form its own political agenda and drive the conversation in other cities," Bray says. "I would be unhappy if people in LA or Chicago were waiting on us to do something. That would be politics as usual."

That's why Occupy Wall Street isn't focused on a demand list, Bray says.

"To tell everyone that we have the solution to their specific problems, that would be what the political parties are already doing," Bray says. "That isn't working. And that's the whole point."

Bray and other coordinators say their goal is still to continue the occupation for two months, and then wrap up it up. With the turnout growing each week, that target seems in easy reach.

What happens in mid-November, when the 60-day mark hits?

That's up to the crowd. Occupy Wall Street is a symbolic protest, but with the economy still sputtering and the wealth gap growing, it's a potent symbol.


First Published: October 12, 2011: 6:01 AM ET

http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/12/technology/occupy_wall_street_demands/

[jaxnative]

What Radicalism?
Mises Daily: Wednesday, October 12, 2011 by Jeffrey A. Tucker

ArticleCommentsAlso by Jeffrey A. Tucker.AA

"The slogan on the streets should really be 'Up with the Man!'"The protesters of the "occupy" movement imagine themselves to be in the spirit of history's great radicals â€" speaking truth to power and all that. As many have said, the movement seems blind to the real source of power in society, else they would be protesting government bureaucracies and the Federal Reserve.

Actually, however, it is even worse than that. The protest movement is not just blind to the actual driving force behind impoverishment and injustice. The main ethos of the movement is actively supportive of government and the powerful interests that back the status quo, so much so that this movement doesn't even deserve the name radical.

My exhibit is an opinion piece on the far-left site Alternet.org, a venue that often runs excellent critiques of American foreign policy. But when it comes to economic issues, it offers up the predictable goofiness that has afflicted the leftist mind for at least a century.

In "5 Conservative Economic Myths Occupy Wall Street Is Helping to Bust," author Dave Johnson gives us a peek into the economic worldview at the heart of this movement. Far from fighting power, it is supporting power. Instead of dissing the suits, it is tailoring them. The slogan on the streets should really be "Up with the Man!"

The supposed myths Johnson lists are:

1.Business does everything better than government.
2.Rich people are "job creators."
3.Government and taxes take money out of the economy.
4.Regulations kill jobs.
5.Protectionism hurts the economy.

Yes, these are the supposed myths. I might have phrased some differently but the bottom line is that every one of them is absolutely true. So of course it is enormously amusing to watch the author explain to us what is so obviously false about all these points. In the course of his explanation, he begins to sound like a public-service ad put out by a government bureaucracy.

So we learn from him that

the taxes that government collects are invested in the "public structures" that create the prosperity and lifestyle we enjoy â€" or at least did before taxes were cut. Tax revenue builds the infrastructure of transportation, courts, schools, universities, research facilities and other institutions that enable our businesses to grow and prosper and the consumer protection, safety inspection, water and sewer, health, parks and arts that help us live and enjoy our lives.

"Far from fighting power, it is supporting power. Instead of dissing the suits, it is tailoring them."So says the commissar! Up with the mandarins! Those courts and regulations are so wonderful, aren't they? And yet, isn't it rather strange that this little litany doesn't include anything about the police that are being unleashed on the protesters? The police are making all the rest of these supposed "services" possible. The larger and more expansive the state, the more police it needs to enforce its edicts. By praising all of this and urging its expansion, the protesters are urging an expansion of the police state â€" and yet they seem completely oblivious to this reality.

Now, what about free enterprise? Here is how the writer characterizes the market economy that took humankind from caves to condominiums, from smoke signals to cell phones, from chasing wild animals to ordering from a fast-food window:

[Under competition] businesses are forced to cut every corner, cheapen every product, cut out every service, lay people off, cut people's wages while adding hours, gut benefits … and probably go under anyway because when every business does the same 99 percent of us can't afford to buy or do things anymore.

Leave aside the ridiculous claim that only 1 percent of the public can afford to buy things. Has he never been to Walmart (oh I'm sure he is against that too)? It is indeed true that business cuts jobs and benefits when profit margins are squeezed. Not so when businesses are succeeding. So does this writer favor higher and higher profits so that businesses don't cut back? Of course not. That would be regarded as evil too. So how about bailouts when companies are failing so that they don't have to cut employees and hours? Nope: bailouts are precisely what the protesters are against. Or how about a policy that permits businesses to waste vast resources doing whatever they want? No, that would be contrary to the environmentalist ethic of doing without. There's just no pleasing these people.

What about the idea that production follows investment and this is rooted in savings? The writer completely rejects this:

Anyone with a real business will tell you that people coming in the door and buying things is what creates jobs. In a real economy, people wanting to buy things â€" demand â€" is what causes businesses to form and people to be hired.

It hasn't occurred to this guy that there is no shortage of want in the world. The demand for stuff is infinite. The struggle inherent in the economic way of doing things comes with supplying what is demanded. The writer might respond that people need money to buy stuff. So we are back again to the old canard that printing infinite paper tickets is the path to salvation. We already have that system and it is called the Federal Reserve. Once again, this line of thinking ends up on the side of powerful elites.

Here he is on free trade, in which the whole human race cooperates toward mutual benefit while ignoring the nation-state (sweet liberty!):

What has happened is countries sell to us but do not buy equally from us, causing huge trade deficits that have drained our economy and our jobs and our wages.

"So we are back again to the old canard that printing infinite paper tickets is the path to salvation."This is precisely the claim made by every corporate mercantilist from the late Middle Ages to the present day. They want government protection against foreign goods so that they can charge more to consumers at home. They care nothing for the well-being of anyone else but themselves. They use nationalist rhetoric ("us"?) to whip up a frenzy to back their own corporate private privileges.

And so the "radical Left" says the exact same thing? This is not a challenge to the system; it is the system.

As for government regulations, check out this mind bender:

A business wants to make a profit, and will only care how regulations affect that goal. It makes sense for government to set up regulations because the rest of us are concerned about the larger world of the rest of us, and therefore understand more clearly how the actions of a business will affect the rest of us.

The implied assumptions: government acts on our behalf; government is all knowing about what is needed and what is not; businesses never favor regulations as a means of outcompeting upstarts; in a market, businesses can profit even without serving the public.

None of this is true. Government acts on behalf of itself and the interest groups it represents. Government is not omniscient and is, actually, the dumbest institution in society because it does nothing but take by force and reward its friends.

As for controlling business, there is probably no regulation on the books that wasn't pushed by some fat cat somewhere as a means of clobbering the competition through legal channels. In contrast, in a market economy, there is only one path to profitability: service to others.

These are all truths that libertarians know. For example, the historical documentation is legion on the relationship between more regulation and the lobbying by top players in the corporate pecking order. What's striking is how completely oblivious this writer is to certain basic facts about reality. It's like a kind of insanity where up is down, right is left, and white is black.

However, when it comes to war and foreign policy, suddenly sanity arrives again:

Spending on wars, the "Defense" department (military), intelligence, nuclear weapons, veterans, and related budget items (including interest on money borrowed for past military spending) is a significant portion of the budget, and people instinctively feel that the country is not getting back services that match what they are putting in.

It's all true, but note the nature of his regret. He opposes the warfare state because he thinks that he discredits the government's system of extract-and-spend. He fears that all this squandering money on bombs is making it more difficult to realize the domestic agenda of all-around government planning, spending, and socialism.

Whether backing more spending, more inflation, more regulation, or more protection, it is precisely as Anthony Gregory says: "the true members of the ruling class have nothing to fear from these protests, which on balance strengthen the power elite."

These people are radicals only in the sense that the youth of the Red Guard in Mao's China and the Nazi youth movement in Vienna in the early 1930s were radical: they are only urging the regime to be truer to itself and stop compromising with its enemies. In this sense, these street protests are not benign; they might be a foreshadowing of dark times ahead.

What is desperately needed is a movement of true radicals who do actually speak truth to power, not one that serves as echo chamber for the myths that the powerful have been trying to sell us for hundreds of years.

[FayeforCure]

http://www.youtube.com/v/N8o3peQq79Q?

[FayeforCure]

Excellent:

5 Conservative Economic Myths Occupy Wall Street Is Helping to Bust," author Dave Johnson gives us a peek into the economic worldview at the heart of this movement.
The supposed myths Johnson lists are:

1.Business does everything better than government.
2.Rich people are "job creators."
3.Government and taxes take money out of the economy.
4.Regulations kill jobs.
5.Protectionism hurts the economy.

The rebuttal in the article is such a distortion, that I will only spend time on one example of such gross distortion.

What about the idea that production follows investment and this is rooted in savings? The writer completely rejects this:

Anyone with a real business will tell you that people coming in the door and buying things is what creates jobs. In a real economy, people wanting to buy things â€" demand â€" is what causes businesses to form and people to be hired.

It hasn't occurred to this guy that there is no shortage of want in the world. The demand for stuff is infinite. The struggle inherent in the economic way of doing things comes with supplying what is demanded.

The deliberate distortion is to equate the economic term of DEMAND, with the lay term of "want."

The economic term of Demand relates to: the ability of the consumer to purchase goods and services.

The lay term of "want" is infinitely great, but the economic term of consumer demand is being squeezed by stagnant incomes. Increasing production ( ie SUPPLY in supply-side economic thinking), doesn't help in such situations when consumers are unable to buy. (So Johnson is right: It is Demand that drives economic growth.)

Hence all the vacant houses. Too many were built (supply)..........and though the "want" may be there, the "economic demand" is not keeping up with supply..........our inventory of unsold homes keeps increasing.

The entire rebuttal article is filled with these types of deliberate false equivalencies that for the uninformed lay person may sound plausible ( especially if they spent the last 3 decades being brain-washed by faux news, so they are easily confused).

Lets turn off the corporate owned media, and start listening to our neighbors who are suffering the real indignities of rampant, out of control greed that is brought on by cut-throat corporatism.

So I was wrong that the young generation slowly grew accustomed to the hardship which was "papered over" by distractions such as i-phones and reality shows. Instead, our young generation are very much aware that they have been sold a bill of goods, by the con-porations. The fact that hard work doesn't pay in America is very real to them..........they have seen too many people work their asses off and get nowhere!

[JeffreyS]

I would say I agree with most of that.  Kudos to the people who drafted that statement well done.

[Ajax]

I heard Mayor Bloomberg is going to empty the park for 'cleaning'.  They'll reopen it the next day, but everyone has to agree to follow the rules.  The rules include: no sleeping bags, no tents and no lying down.  Should be interesting...