Funny, I don’t remember them ever attempting to explain the TEA Party point of view
(LA Times) How do you know when a protest movement is starting to scare the pants off the establishment?
One clue is when the protesters are casually dismissed as hippies or rabble, or their principles redefined as class envy or as (that all-purpose insult) “un-American.”
By that same notion, we could say that the Tea Party scared the panty shields off of Democrats. However, we aren’t scared of the Occupy movement: we are amused by it. We denigrate it because it is incoherent and lives in a fantasy world of typical left wing gripes. Consider their manifesto, comrades, which is the same old same old in wanting to punish people they do not like and making government bigger. Oh, and free money. Well, it’s not really an official list of demands, it’s just a nebulous possible list of demands, which includes….yes, Trutherism! Oh, and single payer healthcare. Legalize drugs. Something about Bush and Cheney creating a system whereby they can institute martial law…….? And tons more government. I do agree with #7, stopping government officials from going to work for private companies they once regulated, using their government position to hook those companies up then going to work for them.
We denigrate it because sooner or later it’s going to become violent
Progressives plainly hope that Occupy Wall Street will help give concrete form to a political narrative that so far has remained abstract in the public mind: That the financial industry has so far gotten a pass on its responsibility for the 2008 crash and escaped sufficiently stringent regulation, while government assistance to banks and Wall Street firms has left consumers in the dust.
Hey, I wonder which political Party controlled both sides of Congress in 2008 and passed TARP, and then bailed out more banks in 2009? Anybody know?
But moving from protest to policy is the hardest leap that grass-roots organizations face, akin to turning a promising patent into a billion-dollar business. Occupy Wall Street is just now entering that very difficult, and very interesting, phase.
Anyone get the feeling that the article writer, Michael Hiltzik. is getting a thrilling up his leg as he writes an editorial disguised as a straight business piece?
The principal rap against the protests is that they’re inchoate — both in their ends (Are they articulating much more than an undifferentiated rage at banks and wealth?) and their organization (Are they more than idle hippies camping out in a downtown park?). Yet both points are erroneous.
For one thing, the concerns of the protesters are considerably more focused than their critics acknowledge. They involve the extreme inequality of wealth and income that has hobbled the U.S. economy over the last few decades, the imbalance between the government assistance given big banking institutions and that offered the homeowners who are their customers, and the failure to implement meaningful reform on elaborate financial strategies and instruments.
So, basically typical left wing class warfare discourse? And, regarding “meaningful reform”, they’re upset about…..Dodd/Frank, passed when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House? So, why are they protesting at Wall Street? They need to be protesting at the Congressional Building and in the halls of the congressional office buildings, as well as in front of the White House.
Now, the #OWS folks have a slight point, but their solutions, ie, more government, is not the answer. Government is the problem. It’s not the lobbyists who are the problem, it’s those who work for government, including elected officials, who take/solicit the bribes. It’s foolish and restrictive government regulations that stifle job creation. There is nothing wrong with government: it’s a matter of what government is tasked to do. If the watchdogs, the regulators, have too many things to attempt to regulate, and they cannot focus on the big issues, the ones such as, say, giving loans to people who cannot afford them because government mandates it, the regulators will miss the signs as they make sure that people don’t smoke in their own offices.
Instead of tearing people who have succeed and made lots of money down, people like Barack Obama, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, the #OWS folks should take a page from Conservatives, and look towards empowering people to lift themselves up.
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU. Please sign the drill now petition.
