So now those great humanitarian activists busy fouling Zuccotti Park are complaining about the poor and needy eating food provided by the relatively wealthy because they are genuinely hungry, needy and homeless. The spoiled whiners can't beat their drums or take a good pee in public if their bellies aren't full so they established a "kitchen" - of dubious hygiene - to provide meals so the whining can go on unabated.
Once the truly disadvantaged, not just the ones with student loans they need to repay(that is just so unfair) or trust funds that are much smaller since the collapse of mortgage lending, got a good wiff of a hot meal came running the spoiled children of American colleges started the litany of complaints formerly reserved for the top 1 percenters.
So ultimately, the whining on wall street, drum line, public pee-ers are angry that the plenty that they enjoy is being taken from them and awarded to someone who really needs it. Sounds like selfishness and greed to me. Maybe it is 99% v. 1%, the genuinely needy, the cold and the hungry who live on the street are not helped or fed by public sex and urination. They are not help by dirty, smelly drummers complaining about "the man." They are not helped by spoiled "children" belly aching about how mean America is.
The genuinely poor are helped by those who make it their personal, individual goal to act - not whine- on their behalf. That action is not the forced redistribution of property but opening and staffing soup kitchens, free clinics, re-training, outreach and psychiatric facilities. The wealthy and - God forbid - the religious in America actually do far more real good on behalf of the truly needy than a bunch of liberal, baby whiners waving signs, stinking, filthy, polluting, littering, truculent, lazy cry babies.
Suck it up and dish out the stew to the homeless Vietnam Vet, smile and offer him a friendly face. That is how one truly changes the world. One person at a time - person to person. After all isn't that what the worlds great religions(especially Christianity) call us to do?
http://occupywallst.org/forum/ows-upset … he-homele/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/2 … 44548.html
You are good at giving this advice. I hope you are not some hypocrite though, running your mouth but doing nothing.
I think it's safe to say the squeaky wheel is usually only motivated to squeak.
Since I am not a liberal or a Democrat you can count on my personal, individual free effort to improve the lives of those around me. If I was a liberal or a Democrat I would want to make others contribute to and do that for me so I could continue to pollute the air while jetting off to a European vacation or my Montana ranch or the next movie shoot.
I think their kitchen should be inspected by the health inspectors. Then have it shut down
perhaps they'll realize the problems that every business has to deal with on a daily basis are a bigger problem than they think.
Considering the filth that is accumulating at all the occupy sites around the country the organization should face EPA fines. The human waste, debris and detritus left behind by liberals when they protest is appalling but the TEA party are supposed to be the big polluter since they are the conservative, white, republicans - you know wastrels. The reality is that liberals want others to do for them. They seek public funding for every aspect of their personal, individual desires rather than take charge of and responsibility for their own lives.
Liberalism cripples individuals and societies. This is just the current manifestation of the anger a child usually displays when told he must fend for himself after being coddled and babied. Liberalism crippled the market forces that would have effectively governed the economy killing jobs, reducing national wealth. The drummers and trustafarians are angry because their comfort is threatened and rather than seek an adult world they seek a bigger more powerful nanny state.
Liberalism rewards infantile conduct.
The filth is in the CEO offices of Goldman, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and the other banksters.
The REAL filth is the government stealing our money to bail out these crooks.
Demand an end to bailouts: Vote for Ron Paul.
actually the members of Occupywallstreet have been very organized about keeping the parks clean. For one they have been threaten to be kicked out if the park isn't kept clean this resulted in mass cleanups every day. On top of that they have been oraganized in how they dispose waste, to go along with many of their values they even have organized trash into recyclables and compost.
True from what I've read. Thanks for correcting Uncorrected. He has a habit of exaggerating in an attempt to prove his over-generalizations. Anyway, so what if there is a little extra trash as a result of the OWS groups?
That would be ironic if it were true, but the NYCGA says they're cutting back food services for three days to regroup and make the kitchens more efficient.
http://www.nycga.net/groups/kitchen/doc … king-group
It comes down to "he said, she said" and given that the original report claiming the protesters didn't want to feed the homeless came from the Murdoch-owned NY Post, I know which I'm more inclined to believe.
I don't believe kids should go to bed hungry in the richest country in the world. I don't believe that is whining.
So what are you personally doing about it. Volunteering or contributing to the local food pantry or kitchen? Welcoming hungry children into your own home and feeding them? Delivering food to someone from your local church or community that is known to need help?
OR
Demanding that the state confiscate property from your fellow citizens, take a giant slice from it to run a top heavy and inefficient bureaucracy filled with people who believe their work is a sufficient public good that they are more highly paid, protected and coddled than their private sector peers?
For every charity dollar that goes to organizations like Catholic Charities over 90% goes out in the form of aid. For every dollar taxed away for the welfare state less than 30% goes out in the form of aid.
Government is more about control and assuaging the guilty conscience of liberals than it is about anything else. That is why, after over 40 years of the welfare state, the same percentage of Americans continues in poverty. Poverty is due to a lack of money but due to poor decisions and flawed character.
You miss the point. America should take the high road not just preach it. When was the last time you heard someone in Washington talk about childhood hunger? We pretend to be a christian nation while selling goods in the temple. We let people die under bridges while the house they lived in sits empty. We let a house burn to the ground because a fifty dollar fee wasn't paid. We allow American companies to move jobs overseas and not pay any taxes. We cut education budgets and blame the teachers for making too much money. Then we blame the people who don't have a job or a house or an education for causing all our problems. You know ALL those people on unemployment are lazy, don't you? We are quick to bail out wall street because they are too big too fail and very slow to bail out homeowners because they should have known better. Corporate welfare is good, individual welfare is not affordable.
If all this makes sense to you, good for you. I think the American taxpayer is getting screwed.
No, I think it is you that has missed the point.
You insist that Amerian take the high road and not just preach it, but..
How many homeless have you taken into your own home? How many fire dept. fees have you paid when the owner refused to? How many employees do you have in the country? How much time and supplies have you donated to schools? How many mortgages have you paid for other people because the owners signed up for more than they could ever pay or have lost their jobs and cannot make their payments?
None of those things, you say? Yet you demand that everyone else do it through increased taxes - how does that work?
Uncorrected vision is simply saying to put your wallet where your mouth leads, but no one seems to do that. They just require that someone else provide the funding, time and work.
If Americans wanted to pay off mortgages for someone else they would do so. If they wanted to house the homeless they would do so. If they wanted free fire protection for someone they would provide it.
But they don't. Obviously your comment that America should do these things is falling on deaf ears or empty wallets. Just like you, no one else wants to do these things, or they would already be doing them.
"Uncorrected vision is simply saying to put your wallet where your mouth leads, but no one seems to do that. "
That's why civilized countries have social insurance programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps and the like. Otherwise we would be tripping over beggars on every sidewalk.
And very little of it is done by personal choice. Rather a few "civilized" people declare that they will rob from everybody else to pay for the poor.
Right or wrong, like or not, that's what has happened. Very few Americans would voluntarily put the same amount into helping the poor as what comes out of what they pay in taxes to do it.
What is it now goes into supporting the poor? 20% of the tax income? If you have a $5,000 tax bill and got $1,000 back, how many would turn around and donate that $1,000 to charity? 5%? 1%? I doubt it would be even that many. Even those demanding that everybody do it won't actually take the money from their own pocket when given a choice.
"Taxes are the price of living in a civilized society." Oliver Wendell Holmes
And I actually agree. My biggest problem is that the rich liberals wanting everyone to support the poor have so much more than I do that I don't think they truly understand the sacrifices they are requiring others to make in order that the poor have luxuries. While 20% of the total income of someone making 6 figures isn't much it can be a disaster to someone making just enough to pay taxes at all. Bring them down to my level of income and ask how much they would like to contribute and the answer will be zero. Yet they still require that I pay enough in taxes to contribute.
Nor do I mind helping the poor when I can. I have taken homeless into my own home and supported them for months. I have paid grocery bills for a stranger when they were short. I've paid an electric bill for someone that couldn't pay it and faced being shut off. I just draw the line at being forced to buy such things as cell phones, steak and ER visits for a cold. It chaps my *ss that I went for years without a cell phone of my own (couldn't afford one) while my taxes were being used to buy them for others.
I am saying far more than that. I am saying that we have become a nation of passive people. We are helpless and want government to do everything that we should be doing for ourselves. We want the government to feed us, house us, clothe us, educate us. We want the government to tend to our ills - all of them. We want to be pampered and kept as if we were pets with government relieving all of our complaints from commercials on television that are too loud to whether our coffee is too hot.
We used to be capable of tending to ourselves now we must be tended to like children. Instead of languishing on unemployment for 99 weeks we would get on our feet, reduce our expectations and work as many jobs as necessary or create our own jobs. If our streets would be littered with beggars it is because our character has been eroded by the Zoo Keeper state enabling our helplessness.
We expect that government be Mother and Father to a nation of infants. Instead of being our own adult selves and act we expect to be given.
and again...You say "This is wrong"..."This is the Problem"... "This it what has to be changed"..."This must stop!"
But You never give any kind of solution at all to the problems you say exist? Further more you shoot down any and every solution anyone else gives...so my question remains...
How Do We Fix It?
You don't want anything to change but you want the problems to go away...
Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black to me.
Yea, bail out wall street and let the taxpayer take care of themselves. Good thinking!!
...Poor decisions and flawed character
So since my competition for employment, and the cause for my subsequent poverty, are the 10+ million criminals the 1%ers have imported illegally into my country. An army of saboteurs that I am powerless to compete against, because the 1%ers have made these criminals above the law and untouchable by the law... therefore I have a flawed character and I made bad decisions.
Decisions like... Break the law or follow the law... Combat crime and criminals or become a criminal... Act with honesty and integrity or with criminality and deceit... Trust that my betters will do what they are suppose to or join the revolution and reset the balance...
You really are something else, if you'll do anything to keep your 'fluff' including the destruction of the social system that allowed you to amass it, then you deserve what is coming. And that is sad, very sad.
Nicely Stated.
Hypocrites though they may be, these 98%'ers (subtracting the top and bottom 1%)
Thier cause is just. The hoarding of all the world's resources by the top 1%'ers is the only logical outcome possible if we continue along the path we are currently on.
Historically every time a nation got to this point. That nation had a revolution, the resources the top 1%'ers had was taken, they were killed, and the balance was reset and the system started all over again.
We have to be able to find a better way.
It is a particular problem in a democracy; eventually the unwashed masses find that they can vote themselves bread and circuses (and cell phones and food stamps and education and health care and everything else they want) all on the backs of someone else.
They then figure out that there are still people that have more than they do and revolt, taking the country back to third world status.
While that may be a little unfair, we are in the first stage; people have found that they can vote themselves all kinds of luxuries they can't pay for. Has the revolt started with the OWS demonstrators? Maybe.
The ultimate outcome of eliminating the top 1% is that 1% gets ever redefined at lower and lower levels of property and income until all that is left are those who created nothing, can barely manage themselves let alone a complex society and economy. Hunger, violence, war, oppression flow not from the original 1% but from the remaining 1% that eventually form the Communist Party or the Committee for Public Safety.
And the society turns into another third world country that can't support itself. That's what I said - you just said it much better.
No one earning $20,000 likes to see someone else (football star?) earning millions, and maybe it is somehow morally wrong, but it is what keeps us going and growing. Not taking those millions and giving it to those that can't make their way through life or simply want more luxuries than they can pay for.
I have never cared how much someone else makes. In fact, I avoid knowing because it leads to deriding one's self or envy of some one else. It is a harmful habit. If I want more it is incumbent upon me to make more or become happy with less. Envy, jealousy, avarice, greed are not restricted by income level. Envy is encouraged by liberalism. It just isn't fair that someone else has more than you. Once that game starts to be played out with an the endorsement of the President it becomes a spiral that ends with "it isn't fair that my neighbor has one more mouthful of beans than I do. I will report them to the committee on fair distribution of beans."
We are always a hairs breathe from tyranny, one generation away from collapse.
I personally have never worried about what someone else made, I doubt very many people with sense do. If one cannot afford steak every night then learn to do without. Life is hard and being concerned with what others earn just makes it harder.
If that is true, then what is all the hullaboo about when CEO's earn millions? Why are we always so concerned that those at the top make too much?
Telling everyone to shut up and eat their turkey hamburger doesn't seem to make it, because they DO care. They want a part of that.
Your way is smarter, but people don't seem particularly smart.
There isn't really a lot of protesters compared to what there could be if what you say is true, a small minority worry about what others earn they just seem to get a lot of attention on this site.
Though your jump to the conclusion that eliminating the top 1% will certainly result in us reverting to a communist state...is very, very far fetched.
The cycle you describe is the one I commented on earlier. The Fall of Rome and any number of other societies are the proof of the validity of the situation we are in.
The top 1% has too much and are only going to continue taking more and more, until the bottom 99% are left as absolute slaves with absolutely nothing. Before that happens the bottom 99% will stage a revolution and kill off the top 1% and take the needed resources.
Is it fair that the top 1% must relinquish some of the 'fluff' that they have acquired? No, but neither is the alternative.
Somethings gotta give, the system is flawed and always has been, the cycle of hoarding and revolting is the result.
The new system must have a safety mechanism that sets limits at the top end as well as the bottom. Preventing anyone from ever being able to acquire too much money or power.
The only other option is finding unlimited resources somewhere else, perhaps in space?
Who will define what is too much? The hermit living in a shack in the woods or Bill Gates?
Same question for too little - the Amish man living on his farm or the one in NYC with a penthouse and a yacht?
I outlined a tax strategy in one of my hubs. With it we could stop the cycle the current system creates and allow the top 1%'ers to do what they do best.
Those that get more from the system would be required to give more to the system. My plan would make it so those extremely successful 1%'ers would hit an unbreachable top limit(ceiling) by cyphoning off the exhorbatent excess wealth the top 1%'ers create by nature. Knowing that we would be changing the top limit from everything on the planet to a top limit of 'something sustainable' by the system.
What ever the actual numbers and percentages work out to be.
This tax system would slow and possibly stop(if we get the numbers just right) the cycle we have previously been unable to prevent.
The top 1%'ers would have to know and understand that breaching the top limit would revert us back to the cycle of hoarding and revolutions where we now find ourselves.
In other words they would have to respect that ceiling, because with the amazing talent they possess, it would be impossible to stop them from breaching it, if that is truly what they set thier selves to do.
The consequences to breaching that top limit would be either revolution and death or the total enslavement of the 99%ers. Neither option seems particularly appealing, unless you get to be that one person in all of humanity that is the dictator and slave master.
If I understand correctly, you would encourage anyone with a net worth of more than (for instance) 1 billion dollars to take the excess to Nigeria or China and invest the capital there, putting any income into a Swiss bank. If they failed to take their money out of the country you would declare that they have more than their share, confiscate (steal) it and use it to reduce taxes on someone else.
I think you would be very effective in removing a great deal of investment capital from the country, but not in reducing taxes or redistributing any wealth within our own country.
You will never successfully encourage anyone to risk any capital or do any work if there is nothing in it for them.
The excess would be funding the 'system' (I hesitate to use the term government). The infra-structure of the nation. finance schools, roads all the things we use tax monies for now, only hopefully the puppets will go away and be replaced by people that truly have the nation's well-being at heart.
and each nation can use this tax model to fix thier own countries.
***as previously mentioned what is in it for them is the avoidance of the revolution and death at the hand of the 99%ers that usually accompanies this situation.
That's what I said - you will take their belongings and use it to reduce taxes (used to provide infrastructure) on everyone else.
The idea that you can convince a dictator to follow your plan is, unfortunately, ludicrous.
If they simply remove their money from the reach of your grasp and hide it in Nigeria they have no need to fear either you or death from murderers.
Whether they take it out of the country or you grab it, however, it is no longer available as capital to provide businesses startup or operating monies. That's a problem.
we won't 'take thier belongings' we'll tax thier income. (it sounds better)
The thing is if the 'Dictators' don't go for it, then we can expect history to repeat itself, yet again, and we will have a Revolution, kill them and the new Government hopefully can adopt the new tax system and maybe we can prevent the cycle the next time...
Taxation is the taking of belongings. Money is property. If you want income to become more equitably distributed insist on a price regulated free market economy. The only reason so many financial institutions have survived this long is because government introduced perversions into the market place. Bad practices and bad decisions result in collapse unless the government rushes in to bolster the stupid business at the expense of the wise.
It is government picking winners and losers in the economy that distorts it and encourages the concentration of money in the hands of those who seek to keep government involved in the economy instead of wanting to push government out of the economy. It is a total and complete misconception that business doesn't want government manipulating the economy. They just want government manipulating it to their favor. A business would prefer no competition to rigorous competition.
What government, business and, especially, liberals don't want is a free market where there is no power to manipulate, cajole, distort or cheat.
"History is that which we are doomed to repeat"
me, 2006
It is the conceit of the contemporary and the liberal, we are morally superior to all who came before us so ripping down the deeply flawed edifice they constructed will allow us to build a utopia. They were Lilliputians and we are giants. When we have it exactly wrong. They did not construct an edifice out of nothing but rather understood, retained and refined rather than demolish. It is only the arrogance and ambition of liberals that is Brobdingnagian, not their intellect or accomplishment.
One need only to have witnessed the collapse of the Soviet state to understand that revolutions that strip away the past are the ones most likely to repeat the brutality and foolishness of that past.
Which is what I am trying desperately to avoid. Business as usaual leads us down that road.
The taking of the ultra-rich 1%'er's belongings(taxing thier income more heavily than any other group) may seem harsh. But we are talking about the survival of our Society. Against that back drop what we would be taking from them is infinitely less than that which the 99%ers put into the survival of our society. The very system that allows the 1%ers to be Ultra-Rich.
The poor can't give resources they don't have, so what we take from them is thier very lives. We call this particular group of 99%ers by special names: Marines...Airmen...Soldiers...and Sailors...
Do the 1%ers want to pretend these men and women are giving less?
So when the rest of the world says, "You Americans are the rich of the world, give it up or pay the consequences, you recommend capitulation and impoverishment for the United States? When you empower government to seize the property of one man because you don't like how much he owns or you don't respect how he legally obtained it don't you empower the government to seize all property?
Once you award these extra ordinary powers what limit is there on the caprice of government? It is government that precipitates revolution. Once you empower government to take from one man the property for which he has worked and give it to another who has done nothing for it but belong to a preferred constituency you end liberty.
The cupidity of the state unleashed knows no limits. One arbitrary limit set will produce new and wider limits until all belongs to the state. At what income level do you think the 1% begins? Why does it matter?
If we want to be a part of the same mutually beneficial social system as them then yes, compromise for the survival of the social system is a requirement.
If they are outside of our mutually beneficial social system then no absolutely not.
I could just as easily argue once you allow one man to rise to the level where his say/opinion wealth/power is equal to or greater than the majority of the rest of the population you have ended Liberty. By allowing him to become a Financial Dictator.
Drafting a man, forcing him to go to war, a war he dies in, is taking not only all of that man's belongings but everything he could have ever gotten. Is that asking less of that man? But you and the 1%ers are ok with that man sacrificing everything for your benefit. Why is it asking to much to ask you to give up only a fraction of what is yours for that man's benefit?? If all these men and women that have "Done Nothing" stopped doing the "Nothing" they do everyday you and your 1%ers would have "NOTHING". Support the system that enables you to have what it is you have aquired.
"All Give Some-Some Give All."
The 1%ers wouldn't be supporting beggars without a single good quality amongst them. They would be supporting the HEROS that allow them the Life and Liberty they enjoy.
In fact if the 1%ers were forced to give up all but 1% of thier wealth they would still be giving a million times less than what just one of those Heros gives.
So all must be made, by force, to sacrifice for the good of the state?
All must be made 'by force' if necessary, to follow the law of the society. absolutely even if they disagree with the 'law' absolutely
even if they feel the justly made law targets them unfairly... absolutely
without the law we end up with 10 million foreign criminal invaders sabotaging our country at the direction of financial dictators that are above the law and that only care about themselves. (I also specify in that hub that we should grant VETO power to the people over every tax and law in existence by majority vote and I believe this to be crucial if we are to maintain control over the Government.)
On a lighter note...
In the Hub I lay out the outline I am proposing. But the more money you make over a set amount, the more money you pay in Taxes, until it reaches a point ridiculously high where it should all go to the system.
So your recommendation is the dictatorship of the mob/democracy.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
Benjamin Franklin (remember him - he was a revolutionary.)
Uh...No. My recommendation was:
The rest of our interaction has been my attempt to describe to you a possible solution to the problem we are in. You seem to be convinced however that there is no solution and we should just accept that the viscious cycles must continue...
Democracy is two 1%ers and a 99%er voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed 99%er contesting the vote.
"When the 1%ers find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
Too Late...
You neatly sum up how all the 'developed' countries got rich in the first place, America just the last in a long line of taking it and calling it trade.
All the warnings you are toting are too late and you have the thing @ss backwards. The US economy is sliding and is already over the edge of the steep drop, it is just the money printing and loans that are keeping the face on it. Drastic action is required and partisan politics by your side are in the business of pushing the whole mess over. You can whine about dirty food kitchens while the 1% stash their loot overseas cos food kitchens in all the downtown areas are likely to be the end result.
Are you aware of the progression of events in every liberal revolution. Ultimately revolutions begin to eat themselves until a strong man/dictator emerges to restore order. It has been that way time and again with every liberal revolution. Conservative Revolutions are very different. Not seeking the nebulous but the concrete. We have seen Conservative revolutions here and in Eastern Europe, where the revolution was to establish the rule of law not to supplant the rule of one man(or group of men) with the rule of another.
The whiners on Wall Street will go home soon as they become bored, cold and ignored because they are silly and irrelevant.
You may be right.
If that happens then we will continue on for a while. The 1%'ers will continue to hoarde more and more. The poor will continue to have less and less.
Sooner or later we will reach a boiling point. Some spark will set it a fire and... Yep, You guessed it. Revolution.
A Year, 5 Years, 10 Years who knows... but history has shown us again and again what happens every single time things go as they are going Right now, Right here.
Mark my words.
Apparently you are not getting the reports from Obama's Patriot Act Homeland Security Committee for Public Safety.
I can't remember the last time I watched more than five minutes of FoxNewsChannel.
You mean the French Revolution precipitated by the massive GOVERNMENT that impoverished, abused and imprisoned? The government that lounged in luxury while the taxed muddled on in an economy wrecked by the government?
You mean the Russian Revolution precipitated by a distant and ineffectual GOVERNMENT that impoverished, abused and imprisoned? One that lounged in lusxury while the taxed muddled along in an economy wrecked by the government?
The fastest growing sector of the economy is the federal government. Federal government wages are way up. The wealthiest part of the country is the D.C. metro area. The only stable housing market is the D.C. metro area. The protesters are urinating in the wrong cities.
and in all these cases you have listed... Who was in control of those huge GOVERNMENTS? the poor? NO the top 1%'ers. The Financial Dictators.
The same people in control of ours today.
At age 91, Pete Seeger sings to occupy Wall Street.
http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/10/pete … dium=email
So what has Pete Seeger actually done? Singing is nice but not that much different than whining or drumming.
So...NYC, the capital of liberalism, doesn't want to feed the hungry, while southern cities like Atlanta and Austin do. hmmmmm...And that's according to the Huff Post.
It is a function of how one perceives his own personal connection one to the other. The south is more religious, more generous, more personable and more individual. NYC tends toward greater dependence on the mechanisms of the state for everything. It is less religious and less personal. Also New Yorkers, in their liberalism, see poverty as a failure of government to get those dirty people into shelters and out of the street so my limousine has room. Liberalism is a illusion of rescue among the poor, and illusion of justice among the middle and an illusion of utopian perfection and control among the wealthy.
It is, above everything else, an illusion of a utopian world. It is the belief that a powerful enough government peopled with the right elite can create a worldly paradise. If that isn't delusional, what is?
A better link
"This is what the 99% are talking about"
http://digg.com/news/politics/this_is_w … king_about
Proof the 'Justice' system is based on your income.
Check this one out folks...
"Google Stands Firm in the Face of Police Brutality"
http://www.minyanville.com/dailyfeed/20 … from=yahoo
And this one...
"Google: US law enforcement tried to get videos removed from YouTube. The technology giant's biannual transparency report reveals a 70% rise in takedown requests from US government or police."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 … t-released
Very interesting. I wonder what legal basis the police think they have to support a YouTube take down request??? I once had a confrontation with a police officer over taking pictures of a serious car accident in my neighborhood even though I was standing 50-100 feet away and not interfering with the rescue in any way. I asked why he told me to stop taking pictures, and he replied, "Because I said so." I replied "That's not good enough."
Thanks for linking the article.
"But Ralph, the government is good. They just need more power. Keep giving them power and funding."
Google is also giving up individuals search history to the Feds with no warrants.
The Patriot Act began this proggression to tyranny.
The only Presidential Candidate to openly speak out against the Patriot Act -- and has been against it even before it was written -- is Ron Paul.
He was the only Presidential candidate to have voted against it in 2001 and 2006
An empty wallet equates to powerlessness to do anything to help. Which is obviously my point, you can only get blood from a being that has blood. Rocks don't have any so they can't give any.
Blood banks are filled with blood so naturely that is a better place to get it from.
The same goes with money. The people 'with all the money' want those that don't have any to foot the bill, because that way those 'with all the money' get to remain those 'with all the money'.
Detroit OWS report:
Ties with police
In other cities, such encampments have caused tensions, with police arresting Occupy protesters and ending their camp-outs.
But at Occupy Detroit, there hasn't been a single arrest, and relations with the police are excellent, protesters said. On most days, a police car or two sits on the edge of the park, monitoring the crowd.
One night, after a homeless man needed medical attention, a police officer came into the encampment. But after some expressed concern, the officer left, saying he didn't want to offend anyone.
The dilemma is that although the protesters need security, some are wary of a police presence.
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and police have both said they support the group's right to peacefully assemble. The protesters say they will be there indefinitely.
At the last general assembly meeting, there was even talk about how to prepare for winter.
Unacceptable.
The system at worse case resets through war, revolution.
Really, war yields progress is another of the great myths. Revolution typically results in a new tyrant. We are finished and it is fine. The mass of human history has been one of tyrants and subjects. The exceptions began with the American Revolution and ends was sown with the Russian Revolution. It is the centralization of authority that ends liberty. The fantasies the occupy crowd and liberals in general have so come to dominate world wide that the liberty sought during the Revolution is passe. It is a quaint notion. Liberty has been supplanted with Marxist material equality.
The desire to empower the state to confiscate and redistribute wealth is capricious and arbitrary - yet a hallmark of modern populist liberalism.
We are finished because the same force some would empower to take from die neuen Juden is the force others have empowered to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of ever larger corporations. It is in the interest of the state for economic capacity to be concentrated in a few key businesses. So much easier to conceal the cost of regulation in a massive bureaucracy and compel cooperation. It is the power of the state that liberals and the occupy people would increase that is precisely the problem.
That is why we are finished. The cage is far more comfortable than the jungle. Maybe you will get a little fresh bedding for your compliance.
You do bring defeatism to a new level of eloquence.
"Every Revolution in History resulted in the birth of a new Dictator".
Um.. actually no. There was this one Revolution, this one time...
If it happened once, it CAN happen twice. Welcome to the United States.
You do remember that Revolution was lead by the villains of the current drama - rich, white men. The "hero" of the current epic is vast, distant, wealthy, impersonal government. The revolution fostered by liberals is the variety that executes those not sufficiently dedicated to "the cause." It is the French/Russian/Cuban variety with envy and sloth at its core that produces the tyrant.
Given the current actions and opinions of the occupy crowd and their liberal fellow travelers this "revolution" is of that variety. Perhaps it will become clear after Kristallnacht.
Rich white men are not all Financial Dictators, or Tyrants and the Founding Fathers prove that.
Repeating that it isn't the people that control the Government(1%ers) that are at fault, it is just the poor management skills of the people(1%er's puppets) placed in office by poorly casted votes of a stupid population, isn't ever going to make it a true statement.
Our current Government is NOT in control. They are NOT making the decisions, the 1%ers are. They are the problem. 1%ers have too much power and way too much money.
Well I am glad you are at the meetings. I will just make sure your name is on the list for the next Bohemian Grove/Bilderberger/Rothchildes/CFR/TLC/Skull and Bones meeting.
Who are these 1%ers? Are they Jews? Or are they just the latest "Jews" necessary to rally the ignorant to march and chant?
They are the people that have the most money in our nation, the wealthiest 1% of the nation.
What are thier names and addresses? What ethnic group do they belong to? Where do they go to church? I don't know. and I don't care.
Bogeymen, excuses for our own failings.
OOh they don't exist, unless I can give you thier SSN and birthdate, address... Gotcha
THEY
THEY
THEY
There is always an external cause to which those who cannot accept that where they are is where they lead themselves can point. It starts with they, instead of I.
If the greed trend continues, enough people will eventually lose faith in our system, and they will bring about a revolution.
We don't. I plan on learning how to live like the people in Communist countries lived. Be quiet. Stay out of the way. Learn to live on far less. Because you can be assured that a liberal revolution will produce a state of suffering heretofore unknown in the United States.
So far its the conservative revolution started by Reagan that's brought about the dramatic increase in inequality of wealth and income and current dystopia that's upsetting the Tea Partiers and 99 Percenters alike. We have become a corporate oligarchy in which our government is dominated by corporations and extremely wealthy Americans. Increasing numbers of people are becoming aware that they are being fxxked by the 1% with the help of political leeches like Karl Rove and the lobbyists who make a living helping them retain control of us all.
Reagan has been dead for how long? What Reagan policy survives. We had a 500 ship Navy under Reagan. Barry wants to cut the Navy to its smallest size since before WWl - WWl!!!!!
Liberalism is crashing into a flaming pile in Europe and we are right behind it. You can delude yourself all you want - civilization as we have known it for 225 years is finished. See you in the potato line comrade.
If you really want to see the 1%ers in a great liberal utopia just take a look at North Korea or the old Soviet Union. It is ok, humanity survived thousands of years when the normal state of things was tyrant and subject. I am sure you will be comfortable in that arrangement since it is the dream of liberals to be pets of the state.
You say that as if it's a bad thing! We spend nearly half our budget on military and military-related expenditures at a time when American families are struggling to get by. Don't you think it's time we stopped policing the world and started using the money to help our own people?
An opinion regarding the nature of naval power that comes from ignorance is worth what all opinions are worth. The history of the world is replete with examples of how necessary naval power is. Why do you think China is on a major naval build up as is Russia and Iran?
Read Mahan.
Don't forget that the only major naval conflict since the second world war did not even involve the US!
It did, however, involve the third largest navy in the world traveling thousands of miles. ICBMs were supposed to make all armies, navies air forces obsolete long ago, didn't/won't happen.
Our navy is larger than the next 13 largest navies combined. Cutting it down so it's only larger than the next 10 is not likely to make that big a difference.
Regardless, I was referring to the Pentagon's budget as a whole, not to the navy specifically. Congressional (and presidential) pet projects contribute more to the Pentagon budget's excesses than reasonable deployment of proven existing technology, as do the issues of waste, such as the tens of billions of dollars handed out to defense contractors in the early days of the Iraq War that simply disappeared, and our general tendency to stick our nose in other countries' business. We spent $600 million for our first week in Libya alone, just to name the most recent example. Much of that money we literally set fire to, and what benefit did it give the American people?
We could have spent it instead on:
15,000 new police officers, fire fighters and/or teachers based on ($40k/yr)
or..
$250 standard of living increase check for 2.4 Million elderly and disabled people on Social Security who got no cost of living increase for 2010 or 2011
or..
$275/mo is the average food stamps for family of four-- $600 million would feed about 2.2 Million families of four for a month (8.8 Million people)
or..
$100 tax credit for 6 million workers
or..
30 Million books for public libraries across nation based on $20/book.
I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture. I don't even want to think about what we could have gotten with the estimated $3-4 trillion (counting interest on debt and other factors not included in official calculations) we've spent in Iraq and Afghanistan...
What purpose does a Navy fulfil that can't be done by better methods apart from shifting troops and equipment?
The question is whether it is better to be a pet of the state or a slave of the state as the 1% ers would have us all. Oh and that state would resemble nothing that you would recognise as a state.
Perhaps the question regarding the usefulness of navies - both merchant and military - would best be answered by a little study.
Merchant navies, fine but military Navies, no, of very limited use as very few other countries have much in the way of navies and future wars are much less likely to be fought on the high seas and much more likely to involve intercontinental missiles.
Pet presupposes the availability of sufficient surplus. Ultimately the pet must become the serf just to eat.
What you keep saying will happen has already happened.
We are already slaves to the governemnt. That government is the 1%ers, the Financial Dictators. The people that own us, everything we rent from them, and they rule us absolutely through thier puppets, the politicians.
It has already happened, we just didn't see it until now.
"Rich white men are not all Financial Dictators, or Tyrants and the Founding Fathers prove that."
Do they? I mean, they had some great ideas that were easily adapted into universal principles, but originally only white male property owners were allowed to vote - something like 10-15% of the total population. It was not exactly government by the 1% for the 1%, but it was certainly biased towards the wealthier members of society.
Looks like the OWS people are learning that capitalism really IS the best way to make a living!!!
http://www.unionleader.com/article/2011 … /710289961
LATEST PROTEST IN OCCUPY WALL STREET WAVE
On Saturday over 1000 Americans laid their bodies down on a San Francisco beach to spell out “TAX THE 1%.” This protest was just the latest, and possibly most spectacular yet, in the wave of protests that have swept the nation since protesters occupied Wall Street, launching the “We are the 99%” movement.
http://www.humanbannersf.com/tax-the-1-percent/
The American Dream - steal what you want from someone else. You just gotta love it!
I just saw this and I have to share it . I have written back a couple of times using the pre- approved envelopes but I never knew this,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl … lxbKtBkGM.
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