Occupy Wall Street

[MOOGLE?]

 

 

SNORG?

STLORG

 

STURG?

[shai]

i dont know brother. it just seems fruitless if there isnt a clear objective.

 

And it seems like you think I need to be goal-oriented to have any validity, neither of which have any real bearing on what I'm doing or why I'm doing it.

 

Sometimes it's as simple as seeing something you want to get involved with and finding ways to help out. I don't agree with a lot of things about the occupation but that's not going to hold me back....mainly I'm there to meet people, do some community service and to see what else is going on out there with other activists.

 

I've said it before....the biggest thing to come out of this is communication and learning different ways to do things. If I can add to that, then I feel like I've done my part.

[Soup]

So anarchists are IRL trolls? hahahahah.

[TheoHuxtable..]

Whoever is responsible for shit like that fireboy at the top of the last page really needs to cut it out.

Watch how fast popular support for the protests disappears if this devolves into anarchy. Regular

people can sympathize and morally support this cause because it affects them too but

displays like that will scare them away

Occupy protests also need some realistic goals. Destroy capitalism is not that realistic

 

I agree, it needs more specific goals.

 

I think the "destroy capitalism" retards make up a fringe element of OWS. Most of OWS want capitalism, but want government to reign in the corporations and get rid of this Reagan-esque idea of supply-side economics which has only accelerated the income inequality in America.

 

Also this may sound corny, but where are the American flags? Image is everything. Most of us that are not directly involved in the Occupy Movements, and those on the outside looking in, get a visual synopsis of the Occupy movements based off of pictures and video we see in the media and on the internet. When the Tea Party emerged, American flags were everywhere. The Civil Rights Movement, which was largely successful, were helped because many people involved displayed American flags in the marches. Using the American flag denotes a more mainstream, populist sentiment that "everyone can agree to." You don't really see many US flags in the Occupy protests. And when you do, you sometimes see idiots displaying the flag with angry messages written on it, or some are burning it or laying it down and walking over it. The way to make the movement successful is to make it more populist and all-inclusive, not trying to be a badass and acting like this is a Rage Against The Machine video (like they're doing in Oakland). Malcolm X and the Black Panthers weren't successful. Martin Luther King was.

 

I went to a few Occupy protests. But there's no way I'm going to be camping out there. These people must not have jobs or are already homeless to be doing that shit. I doubt someone with a job and a life is that dedicated that they'll set up a tent there and live there for weeks on end.

 

I support the Occupy movements though, because they've shifted the national political narrative away from the Teabaggers' "Obama & government are to blame for everything" mantra, but it needs a lot of work & polishing. And the fringe element that's muddying the movement need to be weeded out.

[shai]

Speaking for myself I don't support Black Bloc or any violence against anybody. Property damage is a little different and not something I'm involved in but it happens.

 

I don't get why everyone needs there to be a goal spelled out in plain English. People are waking up and doing things differently, that's what counts...if there's no defined goal then maybe that's because one hasn't been chosen yet. All the same, I don't see why that's a sticking point.

[Soup]

Its not a movement. Its a venue.

[Soup]

Occupy Harvard

[MOOGLE?]

wait soo whats going on in OWS and the east coast?

http://www.fox6now.com/news/witi-20111103-chief-photog-arrest,0,735945.story

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Occupy-Milwaukee/145292382232714

http://twitter.com/#!/occupymilwaukee

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/hundreds-of-occupy-protesters-march-on-north-side-132853308.html

 

 

also stlorg image search yields thespians and middle class black people..

[shai]

I heard a good rumor....some guy from Alaska is going to NYC to build igloos for people who plan to camp out this winter.

[Mercer]

[bourgeoisie]

this is great....

 

 

"This political trolling gag is exactly the type of thing I was writing about in this post about how we're constantly made to feel ridiculous for being progressives. Something called The Blaze, which should probably be a lot cooler than it is with a name like that, is giddy about showing these lazy hippies a thing or two. "The news media watchdog Accuracy in Media (AIM) released a video Wednesday that may denounce the notions from some that the Occupy protesters are primarily concerned with jobs."

 

May it? Well, it's hard to argue with pranks designed to discredit the anger of millions of citizens through a few goofy anecdotes. Maybe you just suck at recruiting AIM, did you ever think of that?

 

In it, “head hunters” set up a table full of job applications near the protest and start offering them to protesters. But the reception they get, according to the video, is less than warm. To many, that might seem odd considering the protesters have camped out in our nations capital for over a month following the Occupy Wall Street protest that began on September 17, partly because of no jobs. Accuracy in Media put it this way in a written statement:

“After more than a month of protest demands for better employment opportunities and benefits, Accuracy in Media saw fit to test their desires with…employment applications. Our ‘headhunters’ were treated to every excuse as to why these jobs aren’t good enough for them. We guess middle management opportunities with healthcare and 401k benefits aren’t desirable anymore."

 

 

taken from PTSOTL

[shai]

To me, "Get a job" sounds a lot like "Let them eat cake."

 

My last legit bike shop gig paid $9.16 a hour, didn't offer benefits, and only guaranteed me 20 hours a week. When I was hired I was promised a full-time assistant manager position at a new shop they were going to open....two months go by. I don't hear anything about it. I finally had to ask and was told that they decided against opening a shop in that location. At one point they didn't schedule me at all so I quit...then they told me I had to work one last shift and I told them to fuck off.

 

Do I want to deal with that kind of shit? No. Do I deserve it? No. Is it fair or reasonable to hire people under false pretenses then starve them out? No. But it happens all the time.

[Soup]

I appreciate these guys giving out applications since many americans have given up on the job hunt, but nobody in this video said they didn't want a middle management job with retirement benefits. To be statistically accurate, that's B.S. Plain and simple.

 

And unemployment among college grads in america is only 2%. Nobody with a college education in america is worried about not finding work.

[bourgeoisie]

the video and commentary helped me understand the movement a bit more... people are protesting in Australia but it doesnt really make sense here.

[Soup]

Yeah i worry that most of OWS doesn't translate into Australian that well. e America is one of Australia's biggest trading partners so any economic protest in America is obviously going to be big important news for you guys. Same with Japan.

 

There was a list of demands made at the beginning of the OWS movement. Im somewhat glad nobody references it because the way it was written sucked. Some factual inaccuracies, referenced wallstreet, banks, the government etc as "THEY," which sounds conspiratorial and uninformed. That doesn't make the list of demands invalid, it just means it needs to be rewritten and "Needs better education" should be added to that list.

 

Obviously unemployment is a big issue, because so long as people are getting payed and capable of buying what they want, nobody ever protests. It's only when the quality of life diminishes, even in a first world country, that people begin to protest.

 

Why is it deminishing? I can go into the housing bubble, the credit card crisis, etc, but basically Americans were being idiots. We went from a country that believed it was the American dream to own your own house. As Hoover put it "A car in every garage, a chicken in every pot." Regan, Clinton, Bush 1 and Bush 2 administrations ALL were pushing home ownership. But we being the greedy retards saw everyone buying houses and got into the habit of "Flipping homes." No longer were people buying houses for the practical purpose of living in. People were buying them to stack and trade like baseball cards. Think about how many House Flipping shows were on TV. Nobody understood that the housing market was artificially inflated. Around 2008 was when banks were giving people loans of up to 100% of the house's worth. That means with no down payment nobody had anything to lose by walking away from it, which people did. Why did banks loan all that money? It wasn't their money they were loaning. It was investors. People actually thought these CDO's were too big to fail. So banks were selling these mortgage backed securities out to investors to pay for the loans, the government was all for it because while CDO's did well it made them look like geniuses, Wallstreet was making money on every transaction, AIG and insurance companies were making money on insuring these Mortage backed securities and so on. Then the motherfucker tanked. No more house flipping. Everyone's credit was shot so no more Escalades with 20's and TV's in the headrests (which were so fucking prevalent up until 2008). No more construction workers with 50" plasma tv's. No more College kids running up $7,000 in debt on credit cards buying clothes and stupid shit.

 

So everybody was doing better than they were actually doing. Now that everybody's doing EXACTLY how they're actually doing theres a bit of discontent. That's problem number 1. Mortgage backed securities were by far the most poorly designed investment Wallstreet has ever created. Thats an undisputed fact, so it's VERY easy to pin this whole economic recession on Wallstreet when Presidential administrations, homeowner unions and so on all have a piece of the fault.

 

Now it's still 2008, so Obama just gets into office, conservatives hate him, he needs to do something. Our automakers are considered one of the biggest employers of blue collar jobs. Our financial industry is one of the biggest industries in America. And keep in mind MOST historians and economists look at the Great Depression and say it never would've happened if the government and the Fed bailed out banks. So what did we do this time? We fucking bailed them out. Obama set into motion a 700 BILLION stimulus with the idea in mind that a chunk of it would go building local solar power companies and training high school grads how to install solar panels, other money would go to banks that needed more capital to cover the mortgage backed securities, other money would go to successful banks so that they could GROW and create more jobs. Other money would go to american car makers if they created green electric vehicles.... When that stimulus package first came out it was one of the most exciting things to have ever been done in a very, very long time.

 

But that's not how it played out. SOME banks took that stimulus money and bought a few failed banks, which was a good thing, but the problem with other banks, and especially american auto makers, was that they didn't change their incompetent administration around, they just gave their CEOS bigger salaries. Jobs weren't created. Jobs haven't been created. Jobs continue not to be created. This is problem number 2.

 

 

The next reason stems from America's companies moving their production from manual labor to machines and specialists since the 1970's. Theres a HUGE number of disenfranchised blue-collar families that can't keep up with the times. Before about 1973 blue collar workers made good money, could afford houses and savings and retirement plans. They didn't need a high school or college education. They didn't even need to be hygienic. The problem now is changing all these people's behaviors to being pro-education, pro-hygiene, pro-desk job. It's not going to be easy, especially with our educational system not only failing, but receiving cutbacks and getting worse.

 

The only jobs that have been created in the last twenty years has been TEMP work. The biggest employer for the last twenty years, behind the federal government, has been a temp agency. That's problem number 3. Everybody's promising jobs, but nobody knows how to create them.

 

Problem number four is that the economy is growing slower than the population. Problem number five is that no politician does ANYTHING without some lobbyist paying them first. I mean look at this whole fiasco over Banks charging debit card holder $5 a month. That $5 was enacted to cover debit card transactions because Wallgreens and Target didn't want to pay $0.68 every time a customer used their debit card. Are they dropping their prices by $0.68? Nope. And In 2010, Citizens United v FEC ruled that corporations should be allowed to give unlimited campaign contributions, which really was just legalizing something they were already doing...

 

Its the whole unfair mix of corporations, lobbyists and politicians running the country when what people want are politicians that represent them, corporations that represent them, and the two should never fucking meet.

 

 

Now this union thing.... I dont know if I like how supportive everyone is becoming of labor unions. Granted I dont know that much about unions, but America has a very colorful history with labor unions, and for the most part socialized police forces, teachers and firefighters are great... BUT theres still a lot of corruption within unions. Or i shouldn't say corruption. There's a lot of idiots that run ineffectively run unions, give unqualified people the wrong jobs, over pay some, underpay others.... To me it doesn't seem like Occupy Wallstreeters who are demanding equality and fair wages would WANT to side on the side with unions. Historically it makes sense because labor unions historically fight for fair wages, but even still.... Have they created fair wages amongst union workers, or are union leaders living fat off backs of others?

[shai]

the video and commentary helped me understand the movement a bit more... people are protesting in Australia but it doesnt really make sense here.

 

I think Australia is more evolved when it comes to social responsibility with regards to its citizens, but make no mistake- as a country your fortunes are tied very closely to those of the US, and anything screwed up here can and will eventually affect you.

[angelofdeath]

And unemployment among college grads in america is only 2%. Nobody with a college education in america is worried about not finding work.

 

hahahaahaha, really? really? no unemployed college grads?

maybe if you dont consider that they are just taking jobs that they are WAY over qualified for, 'unemployment' is low.

 

i know someone who has 200K of law school debt, couldnt find a job for 2.5 years years, and ended up working as a secretary somewhere making 20K a year. i guess she is 'employed' but her situation hardly seems like a good place to be.

[angelofdeath]

 

There was a list of demands made at the beginning of the OWS movement. Im somewhat glad nobody references it because the way it was written sucked. Some factual inaccuracies, referenced wallstreet, banks, the government etc as "THEY," which sounds conspiratorial and uninformed. That doesn't make the list of demands invalid, it just means it needs to be rewritten and "Needs better education" should be added to that list.

 

i reference it all the time. to me, it immediately discredited the movement, as if it didnt need it already. all you have to do is talk to the average protester to find out that those demands of 'elimination of debt' and 'free college education' and the like are generally what the OWS is all about.

 

 

 

Regan, Clinton, Bush 1 and Bush 2 administrations ALL were pushing home ownership. But we being the greedy retards saw everyone buying houses and got into the habit of "Flipping homes." No longer were people buying houses for the practical purpose of living in. People were buying them to stack and trade like baseball cards. Think about how many House Flipping shows were on TV. Nobody understood that the housing market was artificially inflated. Around 2008 was when banks were giving people loans of up to 100% of the house's worth. That means with no down payment nobody had anything to lose by walking away from it, which people did.

 

the home ownership society and the policies instituted by government were started WAY before reagan.

you have to ask why people were flipping homes? why were banks giving these crazy loans? because of cheap artificially low credit from the FED, and because of government guarantees on the loans, and because of various laws and regulations that coerced banks to make risky loans. couple with the overall moral hazard of the guarantee that if the gambled, the tax payer would bail everyone out. what a scenario for reckless behavior.

 

the market ALWAYS wanted 20% down and solid income. then came the govt saying banks were to 'stingy' and started forcing them to loan to risky buyers.

 

 

So everybody was doing better than they were actually doing. Now that everybody's doing EXACTLY how they're actually doing theres a bit of discontent. That's problem number 1. Mortgage backed securities were by far the most poorly designed investment Wallstreet has ever created. Thats an undisputed fact, so it's VERY easy to pin this whole economic recession on Wallstreet when Presidential administrations, homeowner unions and so on all have a piece of the fault.

 

if govt didnt create the scenario to allow these mortgage backed securities, they would of never happened. why didnt they happen back in the early 80's when interest rates were 18% and no one could get a lone without 20% down?

 

but you are 100% correct. the housing boom= illusion. the charade is over.

 

And keep in mind MOST historians and economists look at the Great Depression and say it never would've happened if the government and the Fed bailed out banks. So what did we do this time? We fucking bailed them out. Obama set into motion a 700 BILLION stimulus with the idea in mind that a chunk of it would go building local solar power companies and training high school grads how to install solar panels, other money would go to banks that needed more capital to cover the mortgage backed securities, other money would go to successful banks so that they could GROW and create more jobs. Other money would go to american car makers if they created green electric vehicles.... When that stimulus package first came out it was one of the most exciting things to have ever been done in a very, very long time.

 

the stimulus just allowed banks to keep on behaving the same way they would have.

only the economically illiterate would think that the great depression would of never happened if they just bailed out the banks. it would of just stacked the house of cards higher and tried to prop up something that should of failed. all caused by the FED.

 

But that's not how it played out. SOME banks took that stimulus money and bought a few failed banks, which was a good thing, but the problem with other banks, and especially american auto makers, was that they didn't change their incompetent administration around, they just gave their CEOS bigger salaries. Jobs weren't created. Jobs haven't been created. Jobs continue not to be created. This is problem number 2.

 

what do you expect when you give failed companies billions to keep doing what they were doing?

 

 

Problem number four is that the economy is growing slower than the population.

 

thanks to a govt tax and regulatory bureaucracy unlike the world has never seen.

 

Its the whole unfair mix of corporations, lobbyists and politicians running the country when what people want are politicians that represent them, corporations that represent them, and the two should never fucking meet.

 

im in favor of separation of corporation and state for sure. the problem is, as long as govt has the power to issue favors, hand outs, regulations written by the revolving door phenomenon, welfare, and basically does anything other than protecting liberty and liberty, protecting property and prosecuting fraud and invasions of life, liberty and property.....we will have people lobbying government. the problem with the left is that they think they can just take over the ship of state and only dole out these favors to the 'poor.' you must get rid of the principle of government giving favors all together to eliminate corporate control of various aspects of government.

 

There's a lot of idiots that run ineffectively run unions, give unqualified people the wrong jobs, over pay some, underpay others.... To me it doesn't seem like Occupy Wallstreeters who are demanding equality and fair wages would WANT to side on the side with unions. Historically it makes sense because labor unions historically fight for fair wages, but even still.... Have they created fair wages amongst union workers, or are union leaders living fat off backs of others?

 

OWS would do good to start trashing unions. it would lend to their credibility. turning over GM to the unions so they can run it further into the ground isnt going to help their case.

unions, by their very nature are run by idiots, foster inefficiency, protect those that sleep on the job from getting fired, make it impossible to fire horrible teachers, etc. it is what they do. they are a cartel with a legal right to force their will on others. protesters defending unions and their special influence is no different than corporations influencing government for their special favors.

[angelofdeath]

on a side note, why arent we all calling the occupy camps...'obamavilles?'

[shai]

You could just as easily call them "Bushtowns" and probably be more accurate to boot. (Not that I'm sticking up for Obama, but if we're going to point fingers....)

[cuntflaps]

I think Australia is more evolved when it comes to social responsibility with regards to its citizens, but make no mistake- as a country your fortunes are tied very closely to those of the US, and anything screwed up here can and will eventually affect you.

 

And Australia and America are both tied to the UK.

 

The medieval, unaccountable Corporation of London is ripe for protest

 

Working beyond the authority of parliament, the Corporation of London undermines all attempts to curb the excesses of finance

It's the dark heart of Britain, the place where democracy goes to die, immensely powerful, equally unaccountable. But I doubt that one in 10 British people has any idea of what the Corporation of the City of London is and how it works. This could be about to change. Alongside the Church of England, the Corporation is seeking to evict the protesters camped outside St Paul's cathedral. The protesters, in turn, have demanded that it submit to national oversight and control.

 

What is this thing? Ostensibly it's the equivalent of a local council, responsible for a small area of London known as the Square Mile. But, as its website boasts, "among local authorities the City of London is unique". You bet it is. There are 25 electoral wards in the Square Mile. In four of them, the 9,000 people who live within its boundaries are permitted to vote. In the remaining 21, the votes are controlled by corporations, mostly banks and other financial companies. The bigger the business, the bigger the vote: a company with 10 workers gets two votes, the biggest employers, 79. It's not the workers who decide how the votes are cast, but the bosses, who "appoint" the voters. Plutocracy, pure and simple.

 

There are four layers of elected representatives in the Corporation: common councilmen, aldermen, sheriffs and the Lord Mayor. To qualify for any of these offices, you must be a freeman of the City of London. To become a freeman you must be approved by the aldermen. You're most likely to qualify if you belong to one of the City livery companies: medieval guilds such as the worshipful company of costermongers, cutpurses and safecrackers. To become a sheriff, you must be elected from among the aldermen by the Livery. How do you join a livery company? Don't even ask.

 

To become Lord Mayor you must first have served as an alderman and sheriff, and you "must command the support of, and have the endorsement of, the Court of Aldermen and the Livery". You should also be stinking rich, as the Lord Mayor is expected to make a "contribution from his/her private resources towards the costs of the mayoral year." This is, in other words, an official old boys' network. Think of all that Tory huffing and puffing about democratic failings within the trade unions. Then think of their resounding silence about democracy within the City of London.

 

The current Lord Mayor, Michael Bear, came to prominence within the City as chief executive of the Spitalfields development group, which oversaw a controversial business venture in which the Corporation had a major stake, even though the project lies outside the boundaries of its authority. This illustrates another of the Corporation's unique features. It possesses a vast pool of cash, which it can spend as it wishes, without democratic oversight. As well as expanding its enormous property portfolio, it uses this money to lobby on behalf of the banks.

 

The Lord Mayor's role, the Corporation's website tells us, is to "open doors at the highest levels" for business, in the course of which he "expounds the values of liberalisation". Liberalisation is what bankers call deregulation: the process that caused the financial crash. The Corporation boasts that it "handle issues in Parliament of specific interest to the City", such as banking reform and financial services regulation. It also conducts "extensive partnership work with think tanks … vigorously promoting the views and needs of financial services." But this isn't the half of it.

 

As Nicholas Shaxson explains in his fascinating book Treasure Islands, the Corporation exists outside many of the laws and democratic controls which govern the rest of the United Kingdom. The City of London is the only part of Britain over which parliament has no authority. In one respect at least the Corporation acts as the superior body: it imposes on the House of Commons a figure called the remembrancer: an official lobbyist who sits behind the Speaker's chair and ensures that, whatever our elected representatives might think, the City's rights and privileges are protected. The mayor of London's mandate stops at the boundaries of the Square Mile. There are, as if in a novel by China Miéville, two cities, one of which must unsee the other.

 

Several governments have tried to democratise the City of London but all, threatened by its financial might, have failed. As Clement Attlee lamented, "over and over again we have seen that there is in this country another power than that which has its seat at Westminster." The City has exploited this remarkable position to establish itself as a kind of offshore state, a secrecy jurisdiction which controls the network of tax havens housed in the UK's crown dependencies and overseas territories. This autonomous state within our borders is in a position to launder the ill-gotten cash of oligarchs, kleptocrats, gangsters and drug barons. As the French investigating magistrate Eva Joly remarked, it "has never transmitted even the smallest piece of usable evidence to a foreign magistrate". It deprives the United Kingdom and other nations of their rightful tax receipts.

 

It has also made the effective regulation of global finance almost impossible. Shaxson shows how the absence of proper regulation in London allowed American banks to evade the rules set by their own government. AIG's wild trading might have taken place in the US, but the unit responsible was regulated in the City. Lehman Brothers couldn't get legal approval for its off-balance sheet transactions in Wall Street, so it used a London law firm instead. No wonder priests are resigning over the plans to evict the campers. The Church of England is not just working with Mammon; it's colluding with Babylon.

 

If you've ever dithered over the question of whether the UK needs a written constitution, dither no longer. Imagine the clauses required to preserve the status of the Corporation. "The City of London will remain outside the authority of parliament. Domestic and foreign banks will be permitted to vote as if they were human beings, and their votes will outnumber those cast by real people. Its elected officials will be chosen from people deemed acceptable by a group of medieval guilds …".

 

The Corporation's privileges could not withstand such public scrutiny. This, perhaps, is one of the reasons why a written constitution in the United Kingdom remains a distant dream. Its power also helps to explain why regulation of the banks is scarcely better than it was before the crash, why there are no effective curbs on executive pay and bonuses and why successive governments fail to act against the UK's dependent tax havens.

 

But now at last we begin to see it. It happens that the Lord Mayor's Show, in which the Corporation flaunts its ancient wealth and power, takes place on 12 November. If ever there were a pageant that cries out for peaceful protest and dissent, here it is. Expect fireworks – and not just those laid on by the Lord Mayor.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corporation-london-city-medieval?newsfeed=true

[angelofdeath]

You could just as easily call them "Bushtowns" and probably be more accurate to boot. (Not that I'm sticking up for Obama, but if we're going to point fingers....)

 

true, we could also call them 'greenspanvilles' or 'bernankevilles.' but the guy at the helm when the camps start is the guy who they should be named after. ala hoovervilles.

[Soup]

the home ownership society and the policies instituted by government were started WAY before reagan.

you have to ask why people were flipping homes? why were banks giving these crazy loans? because of cheap artificially low credit from the FED, and because of government guarantees on the loans, and because of various laws and regulations that coerced banks to make risky loans. couple with the overall moral hazard of the guarantee that if the gambled, the tax payer would bail everyone out. what a scenario for reckless behavior.

 

Yeah but dont discredit the reason WHY the government was forcing banks to give out loans. It was because of the Greenlining Coalition's Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. Banks were profiling entire neighborhoods and refusing to give out loans to poor and financially risky areas. If you lived in a poor neighborhood you couldn't get a line of credit.

 

I mention the last few presidential administrations because they were ALL trying to win elections on promising home ownership. And yeah this whole ordeal dates back to the great depression with fannie mae and freddie mac, which are given a lot of the blame and too were created in response to home-owner unions... but the housing recession became a housing crisis because they collateralized debt obligations— banks lending many times over the actual capital they had on their books— which was all Wall Street.

 

Another thing to look at is the Glass-Steagall act. The glass-steagall act made sure banks couldn't buy or act as brokerages and do these types of CDO's. But then in the 80's brokerages like Meryll Lynch began to act as banks, offering checkings accounts with higher interest rates than the banks could offer. Banks began to lose money and lobbied to have that stopped but there was no way a law limiting Merill Lynch was going to go through. The idea became if the Glass Steagall Act was repealed then banks would have a more diverse portfolio of investments and be more financially stable... so in 1999 the act was repealed.

 

HAD it not been repealed, the only companies that would've tanked during the subprime housing crisis would've been Wallstreet. The affect of toxic assets would've been more isolated and Banks wouldn't've demonized.

 

 

the stimulus just allowed banks to keep on behaving the same way they would have.

only the economically illiterate would think that the great depression would of never happened if they just bailed out the banks. it would of just stacked the house of cards higher and tried to prop up something that should of failed. all caused by the FED.

 

Regarding bank bailouts in the US during the great depression, this is a goodun:

 

 

Well the stimulus didn't hurt anybody. The government made money, companies made at least enough money to pay it back with interest ahead of schedule... but did it help? REAL Keynesians say the 700B wasn't enough to see economic growth (they wanted more like 10% of the GDP or 1.4 trillion) BUT Its been calculated that the GDP is about 6.8% higher than it would've been had there been no stimulus, but that also created a higher deficit. Then you've got to ask, is the american deficit BAD? Well according to this secret government document, it's not: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/10/21/141510617/what-if-we-paid-off-the-debt-the-secret-government-report The world economy is so reliant on US treasury bonds that if we payed our debt off and removed them from the world economy, there would probably be a serious global recession.

 

 

Also, the issue with subsidies is that they actually benefit that country's market but hurt every other market in the world. GM was failing because Japan subsidizes their car makers. Solyndra failed because china subsidizes their solar companies. Rice markets in the Philippines nearly failed because India subsidized their rice markets.... The unregulated unsubsidized state-free market economy hasn't got a chance in a global state capitalist market.... and there's no fucking way you're going to stop state capitalism in China, India, Brazil etc.

 

IDEALLY subsidies wouldn't exist but if one country does it, every country has to too. IM not for it, just telling it like it is.

 

 

what do you expect when you give failed companies billions to keep doing what they were doing?

Well the administration didn't give them money to keep doing what they were doing. They gave them money so everyone involved in those industries could keep their jobs. Imagine what detroit would look like if GM failed.... Or if our banking industry failed. You really want to rely on Meryll Lynch or Goldman Sachs for your banking?

 

You know, OWS gets a lot of shit for not having any solutions to the problems they're protesting, but neither does anybody else.

 

 

thanks to a govt tax and regulatory bureaucracy unlike the world has never seen.

 

 

 

im in favor of separation of corporation and state for sure. the problem is, as long as govt has the power to issue favors, hand outs, regulations written by the revolving door phenomenon, welfare, and basically does anything other than protecting liberty and liberty, protecting property and prosecuting fraud and invasions of life, liberty and property.....we will have people lobbying government. the problem with the left is that they think they can just take over the ship of state and only dole out these favors to the 'poor.' you must get rid of the principle of government giving favors all together to eliminate corporate control of various aspects of government.

 

It definitely starts with a lot of lobbying and campaign finance reform, so that includes repealing corporate personhood.

 

 

OWS would do good to start trashing unions. it would lend to their credibility. turning over GM to the unions so they can run it further into the ground isnt going to help their case.

unions, by their very nature are run by idiots, foster inefficiency, protect those that sleep on the job from getting fired, make it impossible to fire horrible teachers, etc. it is what they do. they are a cartel with a legal right to force their will on others. protesters defending unions and their special influence is no different than corporations influencing government for their special favors.

 

Unions can stay and be a part of it, but that's it. They need to take orders, not give them.

[angelofdeath]

2 points.

on corporate personhood.

what you actually mean when you say eliminate corporate personhood.

do you literally mean that corporations (groups of people that arrange themselves this way for tax and investing purposes) have no rights?

 

for instance, if corporate 'personhood' is eliminated a news paper or a news organization should then not be able to speak freely or put out news. it also means, that if you are against citizens united, that a corporation that runs a small store that has 1 or 2 shareholders, say a husband and wife, wouldnt be able to hang a sign in their business because they would be 'speaking.'

 

2. unions.

i support unions. i support organizing on a voluntary basis. i support en masse quits. i do not support a group of people who organize and FORCE themselves to associate with employers who dont want to deal with them. if a 'union' has a right to quit en masse, an employer has a right to 'en masse' fire them. the only way to have a real free market union is to separate union and state, just like we should separate corporation and state.

union workers would then have to compete with 'scabs' and see who comes out on top.

[shai]

the only way to have a real free market union is to separate union and state, just like we should separate corporation and state.

 

This is really all that needs to be said, and it also conveniently answers your question as to what's wrong with corporate personhood.

 

I'm listening to the radio as I type this and so far about half of the newscast has been about police actions on various occupations. Sounds like the Man is running scared.

[MOOGLE?]

2011 20:15

Anonymous said...

Well back to the chan to fap and troll I guess...

5 November 2011 20:26

[angelofdeath]

This is really all that needs to be said, and it also conveniently answers your question as to what's wrong with corporate personhood.

 

I'm listening to the radio as I type this and so far about half of the newscast has been about police actions on various occupations. Sounds like the Man is running scared.

 

im still waiting on a definition of what is 'corporate personhood.'

the position of separation of unions and state and separations of corporations and state are not the same as getting rid of 'corporate personhood.' denying that a group of individuals have rights is not really the same as separation of union and state or corp and state.

 

i say unions have a right to pool their resources and protest, put up signs, voluntarily interact, use their money to put out movies about political candidates, etc. i also say corporations have these same rights. to say we need to take away union 'personhood' and corporate 'personhood' is troubling as if it is taken literally, it means people in any group have absolutely no right to act on their natural liberties. now, the taking away the special privileges, liability protections, handouts, favors, favorable regulations, protectionism, etc. is what needs to be done. the problem is, from what i gather many of the OWS mindset just simply want to take over the govt and use it for their ends as opposed to just separating the government and corporation. i mean hell, what if we really held that groups dont have rights. what if the .gov decided to use this to forcibly shut down the OWS protests? arent they a group of individuals, voluntarily interacting and exercising their rights? no different than a group that calls themselves a corporation or union.

 

police actions on the occupations.

seems odd to me though. considering basically what the occupation movement stands for is using the government to solve problems and reign in corporations that the government has propped up, subsidized and protected. seems odd that the government is maiming, caging, bullying, enforcing stupid laws against the protesters. i dont see walmart, whole foods and wells fargo sending cops out there doing it. who is more violent?

[Decyferon]

I dunno to me I don't get why people think a company should have the same rights as a person, it isn't a person. As a individual I can say that the cakes I can bake will cure cancer, it isn't true but I'm allowed to say it, a company shouldn't be allowed to make a claim about their product or service that isn't true, the same as a company shouldnt be subject to the same taxes as an individual.

 

I also don't think that businesses should be allowed to invest money into political parties or political indiviuals.

[angelofdeath]

i think the fundamental point people miss is that it is a group of individuals.

if a company makes a claim about a cake that it will cure cancer, and it doesnt, then that is fraud. a crime.

i think the line of logic that says an individual can make a false claim its ok, but if a group of people do it, its not ok is faulty. what if its not just corporations that make the claim, what if it is a sole proprietor type entrepreneur that is a business or 1 person that is the sole share holder of the corporation that controls the business??

address this point:

if a group of individuals call themselves a corporation, and broadcast the news, how can you allow this to happen? are you in favor of shutting down any company that acts on their rights as an association of individuals to speak freely? shutting down the most anti corporate media company because they are a group of individuals and they dont have rights? seems odd that the same people trying to say that a group of individuals dont retain their individual rights are the people that are trying to tell everyone that other groups (minorities, homosexuals, whoever) have MORE rights than other individuals.

 

if a person who owns a business cannot use income generated from this arrangement to give to political candidates then an employee who makes a profit on his wages shouldnt be able to donate either.

i'll do you one better... govt should be so small and have so little power that no amount of money from anyone could use it to their advantage, nor would they. you dont see goldman sachs trying to buy off ron paul do you? but you sure do see goldman sachs OWNING obama, dont you? see the difference?

[Decyferon]

If an individual wants to make a payment to a politician or political party then they should have to do it from their personal money, it shouldn't come from a business, it should be fully transparent and should always be made public record.

 

I fully understand that a corporation is made up of individuals but that doesn't mean as a business it still holds the same rights as an individual, this also goes for small businesses with maybe only 2 or 3 employees. A business is a completely different entity to an individual. People working within a business do not have the same rights as others working there, a boss can dictate to the workers what they need to do but a worker cannot dictate to the boss, similarly if the business has free speech and can then say whatever it wants, it isn't talking as a collective viewpoint of the individuals it is the company line, the management views, so if the individuals who work for the company arent equal then how can I say that a business has the same rights as an individual.