Occupy Wall St (Locke, Hope, Worth: inspections, compensation, authority)

[goldengrain]

Originally Posted by REM

And what just have public services turned to the free market? If my house gets robbed I have to pay to call the police? If my house is on fire I can only get help if I can pay a private company? Sound more like fascism to me.

As I recollect, this was one huge concern about Ayn Rand and her Libertarian Party while she was alive.

[goldengrain]

Originally Posted by CaptainNJ

are you using goldengrain's post as if its the platform of the libertarian party? he has no idea what he is talking about and neither do you. firstly, you already pay for police and fire. secondly, nobody is saying that your scenario is how it would ever play out. thirdly, how does it sound like fascism to you???? you are just saying silly garbage to sound dramatic, even you know that what you are saying is ridiculous.

I was an avid reader of Rand in my youth. I hung around with Libertarians and was a misguided Conservative then. Those were the days in which I perceived business to be pro American. It is only fairly recently that I woke up with the middle class diminishing because of collusion between fat cat politicians and their corporate bosses.

I think the healthiest societies have thriving middle classes. We are self destructing through the greed of those in power and the system is now rigged to make it legal for them to do it.

No, Libertarians want to do away with government and taxes entirely and publicly fund nothing except for defending the country. That is the ultimate goal. So only the wealthy will have adequate public services. The rest will rot.

They are very idealistic and sweet, but not terribly practical.

[wawaweewa]

Why does it have to be dems or repubs or libertarians or socialists or any other label?
There are as many opinions as there are individuals and it's misguided to pigeonhole people into a certain label.

The sooner people drop these labels, the quicker we come to finding solutions.

[deecbee]

Originally Posted by wawaweewa

Why does it have to be dems or repubs or libertarians or socialists or any other label?
There are as many opinions as there are individuals and it's misguided to pigeonhole people into a certain label.

The sooner people drop these labels, the quicker we come to finding solutions.

Agreed. But people don't like solutions, people like competition and score-keeping and turning the political process into a Super Bowl rally. Humans love to emphasize their differences for some reason - between race, political parties, sports teams, pc or mac - anything you can think of. It's ridiculous. Slapping on labels and drawing arbitrary lines is dangerous (as evidenced in the complete incompetence in Congress) and counter-productive. But hey, whatever floats their boat, I guess!

[Abe Vigoda]

Hey looks like at least one politician is listening:
FL Democratic Congressman introduces pro-’Occupy’ amendment to Constitution | The Raw Story

[Kefir King]

Originally Posted by deecbee

Agreed. But people don't like solutions, people like competition and score-keeping and turning the political process into a Super Bowl rally. Humans love to emphasize their differences for some reason - between race, political parties, sports teams, pc or mac - anything you can think of. It's ridiculous. Slapping on labels and drawing arbitrary lines is dangerous (as evidenced in the complete incompetence in Congress) and counter-productive. But hey, whatever floats their boat, I guess!

One has to drop the term "PEOPLE" when referring to what we need. There is no "people." We have become a nation of classes growing farther and farther apart. The neeeds of the billionaire are NOTHING like the needs of Mr. Median income.
Perhaps we have always been such, I don't really know what it was like before I was born having only the bullshytte of the rewritten history bookks and all that "melting pot" cheap propaganda.

The goals of the ruling class at the top are VERY different front the goals of those just making a decent life and both are far different from the like of those in the lower economic half who are NOT making it.

Labels and accentuation of differences may not SOUND good but it is more honest than the whitewashing of reality into some silly idea of a classless utopia which does not exist, and probably never DID exist.

The first step in ameliorating the situation MUST be to remove the equation that MONEY = POLITICAL CONTROL that has been increasing in significance by leaps and bounds since 1980. That can only be done by removal of Supreme Court Justices and by significant controls on Corporate Media. Ugly concepts indeed, but if that is the only way to restore Democracy to the United States then it must happpen. Rules that continue the de facto single Capitalist party system in the United States (with it's two almost identical wings) must be abolished.
None of this will be easy...stopping the inevitable march to fascism never is.

But complete political power in the hands of a tiny class of the UBER-rich must be abandoned if democracy is going to be restored. But I am a realist and I think the task is impposible, although I must applaud the naive hopes of those less cynical than I and thus my heart goes out to OWS.

[omigawd]

Originally Posted by StaggerLee22

I was sickened when I saw that on the news yesterday. I can't imagine any reason for this cop to do that to those people. That was totally uneccessary. He was probably enjoying himself and then went home and beat up his wife.

I wonder what (if anything) is going to happen to this cop?

[CaptainNJ]

Originally Posted by goldengrain

I was an avid reader of Rand in my youth. I hung around with Libertarians and was a misguided Conservative then. Those were the days in which I perceived business to be pro American. It is only fairly recently that I woke up with the middle class diminishing because of collusion between fat cat politicians and their corporate bosses.

No, Libertarians want to do away with government and taxes entirely and publicly fund nothing except for defending the country. That is the ultimate goal. So only the wealthy will have adequate public services. The rest will rot.

They are very idealistic and sweet, but not terribly practical.

you can try to qualify yourself all you like, but then when you follow it with your own conjured up bs, you make it apparent you dont know what you are talking about. you are basically taking up your notion of libertarianism and then taking it to an even more extreme level that you couldnt support if you did any research. the goal is to have government as small as is necessary, not to eliminate it completely.

[texan2yankee]

Just like I thought, the protesters were mostly union people. The entitled kids must be getting bored with the protest. I think this thing is winding down.

By MJ LEE | 11/18/11 12:15 PM EST [SIZE=1]Updated: 11/18/11 3:38 PM EST[/SIZE]

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested Friday that unions took over the Occupy Wall Street protest yesterday.
“A vast percentage of the people were union members protesting — some private unions and then some municipal unions — and they had, you know, organized signs and leadership and that sort of thing,” Bloomberg said on WOR radio station Friday. “So it really wasn’t the protesters that have been in Zuccotti Park or that you see around the country.”




Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68687.html#ixzz1eGa1Gzyu

[Dennis Brown]

When the VAST global derivative bubble explodes and the major financial institutions topple (along with your life savings) then you will dream of the days when your biggest headache was being 'inconvenienced' by the OWS as you stand on that 6 hour soup line. Think its not going to happen? Stay tuned...