Will "Occupy Wall Street" Stick?

[Michelle.]

JM and Tekla, good points.

About drugs. Unleash 'em. The pot in particular. I believe it was Nixon who said, "a drug smoking student, is a non protesting student." Tricky Dicky, gotta love him.

Though concentration of wealth and/or power will all ways be a problem. The Cuban economy has 90% of the money held by 13% of the population. Even there folks have managed to amass bank accounts of some $200k. The people doing it, small farmers. They where the first to be allowed to sell excess goods.

Your always going to have capitalism, or at least in some form.

The question now is starting to moves towards. Do you want a revolution or a reformation?

Julie, we can agree on one thing. I am not giving up my western lifestyle either. Yes, we should be more accepting of homosexual relationships. Hecks, peeps like us could even adopt the little darlings of those who have no earthly business being around kids.

I though believe in GROWING THE PIE!!!

[Amazon D]

About drugs. Unleash 'em. The pot in particular. I believe it was Nixon who said, "a drug smoking student, is a non protesting student." Tricky Dicky, gotta love him.

Well something we agree on. Yes the leaders have known to relax drug laws or arrest to get the people stoned so they could move on with their rip off the poor agenda.. It happened before and its gonna happen again..

and for Tekla

IT HAPPENED BEFORE IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN

... where will you be when it happens ??

[Julie Marie]

Kat, you said something I really didn't want to hear or believe but I've seen it too - If that's all it is, and all it amount to then enjoy your protests, kids, because it's not happening.  You're right.  And I was in denial.  I keep thinking this thing will escalate.  But I fear it won't.

The last time there was a real protest in this country was 40 years ago.  Kids were dying in a war only the hawks and war corporations believed in.  And for the first time we got to see real war right there in our living rooms.  We were shocked.  Until then the horrors of war were only chronicled in books and stories.  A nation was stunned.  And that fueled the angry fire. 

I don't see the same kind of emotion with OWS as I did with Viet Nam.  So maybe things have to get worse before they get better.  Maybe having little chance at achieving the American Dream isn't as compelling as seeing kids your age on TV get their heads blown off. 

We had Kent State.  And things got even more real.

So what is there now to compare to that?

A recent article talked about the difference of net worth for the under 35 and over 65 and looked at it from 1980 to the present.  In 1980 the net worth of 65 and over was said to be about 10 times that of the 35 and under.  Of course, if you're 65 it's expected you will have a higher net worth.  So 10 times isn't surprising.

Today that multiplier has risen to 47.  Almost 5 times more than what it was 30 years ago. 

Most of the net worth for the 65 and over crowd comes from home ownership.  Today's kids can't even pay their school loans let alone support a mortgage.  What lies for them in the future?

And maybe that's what has to be drilled into our heads.  So many of us are somewhat apathetic to the OWS movement.  The media, et al, has done a great job marginalizing OWS and painting them as hippies, losers and clowns.  But these kids have it right.  You can put away the sunglasses because the future doesn't look so bright.

Forty years ago, we had an advantage, our sheer numbers.  We were the first generation to win the war against our parents because we simply outnumbered them.  Now the baby boomer generation, the ones with the numbers, has forgotten why we fought back then, for our future, and we can't see or don't care about the future of our kids.  That's something I just don't get.

The pie can't grow unless you add more ingredients to it and the ingredients have dried up.  Herman Cain says if you can't find a job it's your fault.  What he won't say is the "job creators" aren't making them like they used to.  And many that do send the jobs overseas or across the boarder.

I got older but I never got old.  You could see me at a Rush concert playing air guitar with Lifeson, pounding on the drums with Peart or singing along with Geddy, totally into it, right there with the youngest of them.  And it's my inability to forget my youth that keeps me young and makes me feel a connection to what the kids today face.

It's real folks.  And I fear for my kids and for the future of this country.  And somewhere in the back of my mind echoes something I've heard many times over the years, no democracy has ever lasted more than 200 years.  But then again, are we really today a democracy... or a plutocracy?

[Michelle.]

Cheer up folks.

Thank God we haven't gotten to the point of a Kent State II. Hopefully their will never again be a '68 DNC. Nor the assassinations of the '60's.

The wealth gap? Our country has gotten that much more prosperous. An under 35 year old is living better and healthier than their parent did in 1980.

College costs? I feel sorry for the chemical engineering grad who is swamped in debt. Not the art history or the dead languages major. Someone needs to force these kids into see a career counselor, before senior year. Preferably before sophomore year.
Social work and teaching are noble professions. But does someone need a small liberal arts school, with that debt load? How about a public school?

How about getting young people into the trades? We need welders, carpenters, mason etc etc over the next twenty years. How about air traffic controllers and nuclear power plant operators.

Those jobs sent overseas? In the next 5-10 years they will come back in a big way. Why? A rising tide lifts all boats. Costs in Asia plus transportation means manufacturing is to begin to return to the US. The car companies, both Asia and Europe are building models here, that sell here.

Immigration. On that the nativist element, partly tea party, can go straight to hell. We need immigrants. From a demographics there's several donut holes ahead. Mostly due to the Boomers retiring.

Are best days are still ahead of us.

[tekla]

Your drinking the Kool Aid

We're getting pretty close to using live rounds at some of these protests.  The last two conventions didn't look like exercises in democracy at all, they looked - because they were - armed camps to keep the demonstrators away.  Where do you think come summer the two big Occupy sites are going to be?  I'll predict the two convention towns.

That prosperity (largely driven by gains in productively) has not been shared, in fact the direct opposite.  Hence the protests.

Those jobs have gone away and are not coming back, it's a long, long way from the couple of buck a day they can pay people elsewhere, besides as the markets expand it only makes sense to make the stuff where it's being sold.

Where is the magic cheap energy that will propel all this expansion?  It ain't.  All energy from here on out will be ever more expensive to create, and will be being sold in a market where many more people will be bidding on it.

The jobs that are being created are not the jobs that create a rising middle class, but one that creates an ever more entrenched poverty cycle.

It's not that we're in a lull, it's that the entire course of the last 30 years went in another direction and that's a lot harder to change.

[Michelle.]

I still don't believe things are as bad as your making them our to be.

The groups at the conventions last time are in a large way the trouble makers at the OWS camps. The same group that for the past 15-20 years has shown up at every g20 type summit.

As far as civil unrest goes, were no where near the riots of the late 60's. Sorry, but society dosent seem to want a revolution, they want reform.

[Julie Marie]

And, (this is critical), they have to get the support of the Trade Union Movement who are the one group of people who actually have the power to pretty much Shut Down Everything.

Real revolution has not started, and from the looks of it as well as from American history, probably won't. I did say probably. But that is still highly unlikely because most Americans remain pretty much incapable of electing anything but another criminal, or in holding accountable any actual responsible party. Or even in agreeing who those responsible parties are.

Yesterday the trade unions were solidly behind voting against Ohio's Issue 2, a law that denied union workers the right of collective bargaining, among other anti-union measures.  Issue 2 died by garnering only 38% of the vote.  It was a huge defeat for Republican governor John Kasich, who has been a champion for anti-union laws in this country.  In his "concession" speech he seemed to be trembling.  I've never seen this normally cocky guy so humble.

 

From what I saw last night, it looks like a few finally realized the power of the vote and how important it is to vote for that which you truly believe in rather than that which you've been told to support.

But on the other front, the vast majority of incumbents up for re-election kept their jobs.  There's still a lot of work to be done.

The groups at the conventions last time are in a large way the trouble makers at the OWS camps. The same group that for the past 15-20 years has shown up at every g20 type summit.

You have to remember, our founding fathers were once considered troublemakers.  Every government of the people, by the people and for the people has to have a revolt once in a while.  People attracted to power have an insatiable appetite.  So when they get too big for their britches, we have to remind them we actually have the power.  And while we will allow them to take a bigger piece of the pie, they have to remember we're gonna get pissed is they take too much.  And, if allowed, they always do.

[Michelle.]

JM, two points.

1. In Ohio the opt out of "Obama Care" initiative passed by a margin similar to that of the union bill.
I think that translates to, all politics are local. That and the GOP really overreached with the union bill. That would have stripped even fire fighters and cops of bargaining rights.

2. I'd like to think that Jefferson wasn't being literal in regards to the "tree of liberty" quote.

[Zaria]

Up here in Canada we have the same movement going on.  Honestly, I don't know what they are protesting.  If they want to enact real political change they should get involved in the political process.  They should vote.  Voter turnout has been abysmal in the last couple decades. 

My problem is that people don't seem to see that there are two kinds of 'right and left'. 

First is social 'left'.   IMO most people are socially left wing.  They believe in minority rights, and other socially left issues.  On the socially right is the religious conservatives.  These people are scary...

Second is the fiscal left and right.  I have lived under a fiscal left wing party and watched the economy go into a recession when the rest of the world was having one of the largest economic booms in history.  Those on the fiscal left are the socialists who believe that government should solve their problems.  On the right is the 'less tax and smaller government' types.  IMO most people lean towards the fiscally right.  I'm not saying total capitalist anarchy... regulations still need to be in place. 

The problem I see in the US is this...

Republicans : fiscally right wing,  socially right wing
Democrats : fiscally left wing, socially left wing.

What the public wants is a party that is
socially left wing, fiscally right wing.   Unfortunately such a party doesn't exist.  The US elections are won/lost on what type of 'right/left' issue is given more prominence.. social or fiscal.

[Julie Marie]

No extreme is good for the people in general.  Balance is what is necessary.  Reasonable.  Common sense.  Practical.  You will find that mostly in Moderates.  Both extremes have criticized Moderates.  Rush Limbaugh says they can't make up their mind, as if being Republican or Democrat is all there is.  Yet neither has all the answers.  And why should they?  They are on the two sides.  It's in the middle you will find most people.

The problem is the extremes is where you will find the highly emotional people.  And they are the ones who scream the loudest.  Too often people need to get passionate about something, emotionally invested, before they will do anything.  And the political puppet masters know this.  And they know which string to pull and when.

Until the stable, reasonable, common sense people get vocal, I think we will continue to see the two sides duking it out and we'll be right there, in the middle, getting stepped on like a mat.

[Joelene9]

  I seen through history of governments that when the extremes get in, human rights get trampled.  These people get into power with a promise of more freedoms and better human rights.  None of those have lived up to their promises.  A few of those dictators were academics or have been advised by those who were academicians.  All in moderation.
Joelene, a moderate

I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.   William F. Buckley Jr

[Michelle.]

RIP, WFBjr.

[tekla]

I'm sure that WFB didn't have the Tea Party in mind.

[Cen]

Heh

[tekla]

I think we will continue to see the two sides duking it out

Which sucks, because no matter who wins, we all lose.  Neither of the old line 'sides' really have any solution to the problems we are now facing.  They are both 19th Century political thought applied (and found wanting) for the 21st Century.

[Julie Marie]

And the voters are an integral part of keeping the two sides strong.  It doesn't take a genius to deduce that the only thing a politician has to do well is get votes.  And anyone paying attention sees that can be easily done with polarizing sound bites, clever slogans and promising everything. 

Wise people learn from their mistakes, geniuses learn from the mistakes of others.  The rest never learn. 

What does that say about the voting public in general?

[tekla]

What's it say when the only person on the Republican Debate the other night who seemed sane and rational is the one in last place?

[Amazon D]

What's it say when the only person on the Republican Debate the other night who seemed sane and rational is the one in last place?

My brother who has been a life long republican said to me the other day that the republican party is now the wacko party whereas it use to be the democrats. He is a college professor in mathmatics and has a law degree.

[tekla]

I think Bill Maher (though it could be any number of others) said that the Democrats moved to the right and became the Republicans, and the Republicans moved into the insane asylum and became the inmates.

[Julie Marie]

I think Bill Maher (though it could be any number of others) said that the Democrats moved to the right and became the Republicans, and the Republicans moved into the insane asylum and became the inmates.

I watch Maher every week (that he's on) but I missed that one.  I'm not prone to sudden outbursts of laughter, but that one got me.  Maybe it's because I watched the Republican debate last night and they all looked like asylum inmates... well...except Huntsman.  He hasn't a chance.  You gotta be the bull goose looney to win the GOP bid.

This is a clip from backstage just before the debate began last night.