Occupy Wall Street

to bite something retweeted by ows:

99% of the people who work on wall street are part of the 99%

http://www.amny.com/urbanite-1.8120...ousand-job-cuts-by-next-year-report-1.3238500

 

Fucking love that one.

 

I work with a bunch of bond traders. The other night the whole investment team went out to dinner at a fancy ass restaurant. I got to sit next to an impressionable young conservative co-worker as my boss' boss explained to that how for a capitalist system to be morally acceptable it must have a robust social safety net. This was also right around the time he expressed a certain amount of qualified solidarity with the OWS protestors.

You don't have to be suffering from the current state of affairs to see how corrupt and backwards the current state of affairs are.

 

Mortgages, car loans, student loans, credit cards....were any of these debts forced on Americans? No. Rather than pointing the finger at the fat cats on Wall Street, these protesters need to take a look in the mirror and realize that it's their own consumerism and greed that caused this crisis.

I'm tired of this sense of entitlement. A college education isn't a right that our government is obligated to provide. If you sign a student loan...that's on you. If you sign a home loan...that's on you. Auto financing...on you. Every purchase you make with credit is on you and no one else.

Now, I will say this; our government was way, way out of line to give a $1 trillion of taxpayer money to banks and corporations. And for that, I am extremely pissed off. So if you're going to point the finger, point it at those who allowed a mass consolidation of power to take place in the financial sector. Hold the politicians accountable.

But why did these tens of thousands set up camp in Wall Street rather than D.C.? Because they don't want to hold their King, Obama, accountable. See, OWS is a partisan protest. And that means exonerating the Dems. OWS is a leftist movement and I think as it progresses you'll see a lot more socialist propaganda emerge. Redistribution of wealth, government provided healthcare, government provided jobs, government provided everything. Yes...the message from OWS is becoming very clear.

 

uh...nice try. i think the mounting right panic is funny at this point. the bile involved with it, the lack of imagination, the inability to see in the existing order a Problem and---especially---the feeble attempts to somehow cram ows back into a framework that the right can manage by aligning it with the obama administration. it's just laughable. and eddie's post is like something you'd see on the new astroturfed "we are the 53%" page...stuff that makes you go...huh? what?

1) wall st. was an obvious initial target not only because it was the trigger of the financial melt-down that revealed the total inadequacy both of the institutional infrastructure neo-liberalism enabled to not quite happen, but also of the ideology itself---and because of the simple fact that not only have there been no prosecutions for aspects of the derivatives fiasco (fraud, say...) but also there have been no new regulations, not even a reinstatement of glass-steigel. maybe that follows from the amount of campaign contributions that the obama administration took from the financial sector, maybe it doesn't---but the performance of the administration has shown, amply, that it is not different in kind from what preceded it ideologically or practically and so is a version of the Problem. but it's not surprising that the far right--well, what was the far right in more rational times, but what is not just the right---can't get it's collective mind around this because they've boxed themselves in with this absurd rhetoric of obama as socialist. so what's at issue in the right's reaction is that the puppeteers are concerned that ows in itself undercuts the closed system of conservative language. whence the right panic.

2. the movement is now in 75 cities across the united states. it is growing. it is present in dc so far as i know, but i haven't personal connections there. i'm more familiar with boston, nyc, chicago and san francisco--where each version of the movement is quite particular, ranging from philly, where there's been a permit arrangement worked out so that the encampment can happen at city hall (with caveats of course because there's a mayoral election coming in a month) to chicago, where the cops are resisting any permanent encampment at all and forcing the movement to be mobile. and it's getting bigger. coming into dc is inevitable, but at the moment it's left to folk who live in or near particular places to mobilize.

3. the educational system in the united states is largely fucked. i don't have time to outline the many ways in which that's the case, but suffice it to say that right now around 70% of teaching is done by adjuncts, tenure-line positions for faculty are dwindling fast yet tuititions keep going up. why is that? well, partly because of the explosion of administrators that have accompanied a change in university orientation away from teaching as its primary mission and toward self-perpetuation--universities are fund-raising machines, they are real-estate speculators, they are hedge fund investors, etc. meanwhile, the rankings of the american university system are declining internationally. secondary education is a largely a shambles, thanks to all kinds of factors including the past 8 years of conservative morons in power who were opposed to the idea of public education because they viewed the main teacher's union as a political adversary and not because they gave a fuck about the quality of education. the united states spends over 40% of federal outlays on the books on the military, on the national-security state. this doesn't count the pointless, endless wars started by the right, nor does it count the grotesque expenditures on expanding the surveillance apparatus since 9/11/2001. so we can kill people in great number, we can watch them die and we can afford stupid, pointless endless wars but we can't seem to figure out a way to maintain a quality educational system. so the problem is NOT some imaginary sense of "entitlement" whatever the fuck that means. the problems is ridiculous priorities that lead to stupid policy that are resulting in the destruction of one of the more important resources the united states once enjoyed--a high-quality education system. something has to change. massive student debt is a way of punishing presumption in class terms. period. the existing system is not a meritocracy--it's a straight mirror of the glass system that enables a certain degree of mobility through debt that is then inflicted on everyone who takes it afterward, in a profoundly coercive manner--as a result of stupid policy.

i got to go.

 

Better restaurants?

 

Was there something in my above post that you particularly disagree with or did you just glance over it, too anxious to spew forth the same tired partisan rhetoric? Because the fact is, you didn't address any of my points.

To your points:

1. Wall St is only the obvious initial target for people wanting to do nothing more than whine about their situation. A real target would be the place where laws and regulations are made, where there are elected people in power who can actually effect change, the same people who gave our hard-earned tax dollars away to the banks.

And why is Obama accused of being a socialist? Because his policies are in line with socialist ideology as I pointed out above: "Redistribution of wealth, government provided healthcare, emphasis on government provided jobs, government provided stimulus, government provided everything."

2. I never said the movement wasn't in D.C. I simply stated that there's a clear reason why this movement chose Wall St and not D.C. to begin its agenda.

3. I never even mentioned public education. So I don't know where that came from.

Maybe you should spend a little more time reading that to which you are responding.
--- merged: Oct 12, 2011 9:47 PM ---

lol, no doubt.

 

good lord, man, are you listening to yourself?

 

I'm reading what I type. Why do you ask? Was there something I wrote that you disagree with and care to elaborate on? Or did you just want to right something condescending because that's your gig?

 

The symbolic target is Wall Street and the concept of economic justice because that is where the the growing income disparity originates. Wall Stteet - where the focus is on obtaining greater wealth for a few by manipulating the system and creating a speculation economy over one that produces goods and services and creates jobs.

Partisan rhetoric? The notion of Obama as a socialist simply display one's ignorance of socialism. A progressive tax system is not socialism; a health care program that expands the role of private insurers is not government run health care; a stimulus program that has contributed to the creation of 2+ million private sector jobs is hardly socialism but it did help prevent the economy from further collapse where "trickle down" failed because those few at the top are more interested in personal wealth than a growing economy.

Further partisan rhetoric? When one plays the democrats/liberals and the inane notion of "Obama as their proclaimed king or "savior" card.

 

Actually, I disagree with everything you wrote.
Obama is not a socialist.
I am.
Boo.

And I am surprised your head didn't blow off your shoulders from the pressure of acute irony when you wrote the words: tired partisan rhetoric.

 

Once again, if it's the system that needs to be changed, then go to the people who can change it. That's in D.C. not Wall St.

Actually, Obama's proposed healthcare system involves the federal government at every level. It is socialized healthcare. And Obama's stimulus program was a massive disaster. It did nothing but further the rapid, mass consolidation of wealth in the 1%, that's it. Those banks should have been allowed to fail and that stimulus money should've gone right into the pockets of its rightful owners...those who earned it, the taxpayers.

 

Never let the facts get in the way of a good partisan rant.

But please explain how a stimulus program that contributed to 2+ million private sector jobs, primarily in small businesses, led to rapid, mass consolidation of wealth in the top one percent.

Or how a health care system that provides a more competitive environment in which private insurers will have access to 25+ million new customers is socialized health care; a system, btw, that many liberals oppose because of the significant private role.

 

That's a shocker. Let me guess, you voted for Obama and think his policies rule.

 

I have to admit that my eyebrows shot off the top of my head when I read that Obama was a socialist.

I think he is moderate right wing. There is no left wing in the USA. The "right wing" is very radical, to put it politely.

 

I can't imagine any reason other than the fact that the organizers wisely guessed that DC would pay attention to protests on Wall St and that the reverse was not as likely true. And besides, protests at DC haven't been anywhere near as successful nor did they ever garner any real media attention. Despite the location, protesters hold politicians as culpable for the mess we're in, as they do Wall St.

As far as your suggestion (in another post) that the protests are not going on in DC because it would reflect poorly on Obama - well, I think you need to pay more attention to what "liberals" actually think of Obama these days. No raging love affair there.

To the OP. Why don't Tea Partiers get arrested? It's simple really, as long as you call your protest a rally it's not really a protest. Rallies are good and wholesome with potato salad and fried chicken. Nothing threatening about that.

 

I voted for Obama, but no I don't think his policies 'rule.' And if you even bothered to listen to what people in the occupy movements are saying about Obama you would understand that and not be out here saying stuff that makes you look foolish.

 

Socialism: any of various social or political theories or movements in which the common welfare is to be achieved through the establishment of a socialist economic system

Government provided jobs, stimulus and healthcare don't fit into this definition?