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Occupy Wall St - Occupy Everywhere, Occupy Together!

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J

Jenga

Banned
Manos: The Hans of Fate said:
It's a shame you can't make an argument and often have to apologize to other posters for freaking out.
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*audience explodes into treats*

on the next episode of "the odd gaf couple" crazy shenanigans occur when the OWS movement moves into a local park and manos decides to stage a counter-protest! can dude abides deal with this without going insane AND washing the dashes this week?

find out next week!
 
R

Rocket Scientist

Member
Manos: The Hans of Fate said:
So it's just a circular flow of money that helps no one but junkies?
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It's been explained to you on this very same page that helping people with addictions eventually benefits society as a whole. The flow of tax money is also not as simplistic as you're trying to make it out to be.
Manos: The Hans of Fate said:
So you're fine with a crackhead or meth freak next door?
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I meant against making them legal. Typo.
 
J

Jenga

Banned
Rocket Scientist said:
It's been explained to you on this very same page that helping people with addictions eventually benefits society as a whole. The flow of tax money is also not as simplistic as you're trying to make it out to be.

I meant against making them legal. Typo.
Click to expand...

sounds like another plot against poor people

stuff em with drugs, move them into a rehab center, they come out and some relapse + repeat forever

all the while the government profits


you guys are evil as fuck
 
M

Manos: The Hans of Fate

Banned
CHEEZMO™;33073890 said:
Manos would bring his new shotgun.
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I'm partial to the 1911 though. Shotgun isn't really a dueling weapon. ;P

In other, actual news: protestors from OLSX took over a office building in london about 30 minutes ago. They have now been removed by police.
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So trying criminally seize other people's property is going to be the new mo?
 
T

Terrell

Member
As an aside from the pissing match...

maharg said:
If I say it's useless to try to sell ice cubes to eskimos it doesn't mean it's useless for an eskimo to buy an ice cube, it's just a really poor business model.

Third party votes, whether for protest or for intent to change, matter. They're important. But in a system that is deliberately and systematically designed to marginalize third parties at every level (and I mean above and beyond the usual Westminster problem of first past the post marginalizing people's votes at a local level), resting your attempt to change on the election of or even protest votes for a third party is just boneheaded. To put this into perspective, Ross Perot spent tens of millions or more on his bids for president in the 90s and never won a single electoral college vote despite winning in the tens of percentage points of the popular vote. Occupy has no hope of even mounting a bid at this level that could even achieve that, so their energy is best spent elsewhere.

You keep saying that the problem is people promoting the system through their participation in it, but in this case participation in the system includes attempts to wrest power from the established and very old power base through the virtually impossible election of a third party.

I think from your posts that you are Canadian, and that's great, because so am I and that means I can use a comparison with the US to demonstrate how your experience with the Canadian system is not useful to this discussion:

In Canada, there has not been a single federal election in the last 50 years in which a third party has not won at least a decent margin of seats in the federal legislature (which, in American terms, is like if they voted for both the Electoral College and the House of Representatives at the same time). In the last 50 years only a handful of presidential elections have produced even a small minority of third party electoral votes (again, Ross Perot got none in his). In the ones where they managed to, it was either because of the two states where college votes are allocated proportionately to vote count or to extremely regional candidates.

I don't have data for the House or the Senate on hand, but it's a pretty similarly bleak picture for third parties as far as I know. Independents stand a better chance, and even have an easier time getting on the ballot than third parties, but even so a lot of independents are formerly of one of the other parties and have simply drifted from the core base of their party (something that can't happen as easily in Canada because of party discipline).
Click to expand...

It's this attitude of defeatism, though, that perpetuates the IDEA that the system can't be changed and that the way things are can't be changed without anarchistic upheaval as proposed by some in Occupy, which is simply untrue. The vote counts, but the vote won't happen unless we all act upon our actual ideals instead of playing up being victims of it and taking the easy way out by fitting ourselves into the ideals of the current political structure. Society changes when people follow an example (more on this later). Things become entrenched based on the will of the people. The way the system works didn't happen overnight, it creeped up on us because we didn't give enough of a shit to say anything about it in the way of exercising our right to vote the way it was legitimately intended. Forcing the system to change is just as doomed to failure until people start showing up and saying "no, I don't have JUST 2 options". And in places that do, perhaps it's time to consider CREATING a 3rd option.


empty vessel said:
While I think these are good personal ideals to strive for, this kind of discrete, individual action can never affect any kind of fundamental change. The problems that we have require political solutions. That means people acting in coordination to affect fundamental policy changes in government--the place that lays down and enforces the rules for all to follow--that will benefit the society as a whole.

If I want to end corporate pollution or to end the practice of corporate sweatshops, I cannot do it by merely changing my buying habits and advocating that others do the same. It will not work, ever. And any other corporation to which you turn to try to secure your needs and wants will be exceedingly unlikely to be complying with all of your ethical requirements, even if that company has a "green" image. Nor can changes in my personal consumer behavior alter the gross imbalance of power between the laboring class and investor class that has resulted in huge shifts in the distribution of income in American society over the last three decades. These problems require systemic solutions using the very tool society created for the purpose: government.

It may make you personally feel good to alter your consuming behavior, and I certainly don't discourage trying as best you can to align your moral convictions with your economic activity (as impossible as I think that is in reality), but don't mistake what you are doing for a means of effecting social change.
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Discrete individual action is actually EXACTLY what changes the world. You think that civil rights set in just because people stood up and protested a bunch of times? NO. It was something people accepted when seen in ACTUAL PRACTICE and said "actually, I dunno why I acted this way, maybe I should think about what I believe." Words alone hold NO power unless accompanied by actual action that holds true to the beliefs of those words.

It's not about just doing it to be "disobedient", it's about acting upon what you actually believe in. WORDS don't mean shit if you aren't willing to change yourself to match up with them. Because if you can't, then your words don't mean shit, cuz people will look around and see that everything's the same, no one has done anything to change, including the person who uttered those calls to change, and go "OK, guess it was just a lot of bluster, whatever." That does NOTHING.

And this is the same as I was saying to maharg... you affect corporate behavior by where your money goes. Money is what a corporation lives and breathes on. To say "what I buy does nothing" is a defeatist attitude. Which is what keeps them doing exactly what they're doing.
Even if your ONE act of change in your spending and borrowing and saving habits won't bring the system down, doing NOTHING keeps it right on going full speed ahead and sets an example of compliance to the status quo to everyone around you.

This is what I meant by human beings perpetuating society as it is. Do nothing, nothing changes. Do something, and it does, even if it only means something to you. At least you know that you PERSONALLY act in good faith toward your own ideals. And by doing that, you encourage others to do the same. THAT is how change is brought about in society. We make big deals about protesting and marching, but change doesn't happen until each individual acts upon it. What you advocate is to do nothing because it has no effect. And that's what keeps everything exactly as it is.
 
R

Rocket Scientist

Member
Maybe I just don't remember your previous posts very well, but what's the main point of your argument basically? Because when it comes to discrete individual action we've seen people switching from banks, going to credit unions, we've seen the backlash against the banks that wanted to impose some kind of new fees (and from what I read the retracted it?). I'm fairly certain that this movement and the attention it has gotten has played an important role in making some people finally think ''fuck it, credit union here I come'' and the message it has been hammering about the banks being a problem and the mention of credit unions has definitely opened some eyes.

Is your point that this movement needs to continue get people to make whatever small individual actions they can or are you saying the whole movement is useless because it doesn't lead to these individual acts? Because it has and it will, and those acts would not occur without the constant being in the news of these issues and movements. The media is never going to open peoples eyes on their own. Protesting and marching are a big deal. The line about civil rights protests is silly too man.
 
A

akira28

Member
CHEEZMO™;33073050 said:
I still kinda want him to have "prosaic" as a tag.

Edit: or "platitudinous".
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I'd prefer 'swings a mean axe' but I'll take what I can get. :p

You hurt me to my so-oul...ohohhwoah.
 
M

maharg

idspispopd
Terrell said:
It's this attitude of defeatism...
Click to expand...

Believing that the only means to changing a system is to act within it is, to me, defeatism. Especially in a system as firmly entrenched as the American political system. In systems that bias towards two parties (first past the post), third parties are in themselves an exertion of force from outside the establishment system. In Canada, the NDP has been that force under one name or another for decades. The Bloc has as well. And Reform before they took over the PC party. That the Canadian system allows external input to the dominant political establishment is a great feature of it, but make no mistake, third parties are disruption, not participation, even in systems that allow for them.

In the US, third parties are not an option for this kind of disruption and haven't been for a very long time. Other avenues must be found to disrupt the system without being co-opted by it. It's not defeatism to say this, and it's not defeatism that Occupy is recognizing that reality and attempting to find other avenues.

I have to ask, where is Occupy (a broad movement with only a few key agreement points) supposed to get the hundreds of millions of dollars it will likely take to mount an electoral challenge? What they're doing now is getting more success and more bang for their buck than trying to come up with a full campaign that they could all agree on outside the core issues of campaign financing and then mounting an electoral challenge. They'd be exposed to massive amounts of ridicule that would make what they experience now look like a friendly ribbing.

Again, this isn't defeatism. I don't think change is impossible. I think change is entirely possible. I think that fundamental change, however, requires disruption. Where possible, a third party is an excellent means of achieving that. Where it's not possible, something else has to be figured out.
 
empty vessel

empty vessel

Member
A Banker Speaks, With Regret
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
New York Times

If you want to understand why the Occupy movement has found such traction, it helps to listen to a former banker like James Theckston. He fully acknowledges that he and other bankers are mostly responsible for the country’s housing mess.

As a regional vice president for Chase Home Finance in southern Florida, Theckston shoveled money at home borrowers. In 2007, his team wrote $2 billion in mortgages, he says. Sometimes those were “no documentation” mortgages.

“On the application, you don’t put down a job; you don’t show income; you don’t show assets,” he said. “But you still got a nod.”

“If you had some old bag lady walking down the street and she had a decent credit score, she got a loan,” he added.

Theckston says that borrowers made harebrained decisions and exaggerated their resources but that bankers were far more culpable — and that all this was driven by pressure from the top.

“You’ve got somebody making $20,000 buying a $500,000 home, thinking that she’d flip it,” he said. “That was crazy, but the banks put programs together to make those kinds of loans.”

Especially when mortgages were securitized and sold off to investors, he said, senior bankers turned a blind eye to shortcuts.

“The bigwigs of the corporations knew this, but they figured we’re going to make billions out of it, so who cares? The government is going to bail us out. And the problem loans will be out of here, maybe even overseas.”

One memory particularly troubles Theckston. He says that some account executives earned a commission seven times higher from subprime loans, rather than prime mortgages. So they looked for less savvy borrowers — those with less education, without previous mortgage experience, or without fluent English — and nudged them toward subprime loans.

These less savvy borrowers were disproportionately blacks and Latinos, he said, and they ended up paying a higher rate so that they were more likely to lose their homes. Senior executives seemed aware of this racial mismatch, he recalled, and frantically tried to cover it up.

Theckston, who has a shelf full of awards that he won from Chase, such as “sales manager of the year,” showed me his 2006 performance review. It indicates that 60 percent of his evaluation depended on him increasing high-risk loans. ...

All this came into sharper focus this week as Bloomberg Markets magazine published a terrific exposé based on lending records it pried out of the Federal Reserve in a lawsuit. It turns out that the Fed provided an astonishing sum to keep banks afloat — $7.8 trillion, equivalent to more than $25,000 per American.

The article estimated that banks earned up to $13 billion in profits by relending that money to businesses and consumers at higher rates.

The Federal Reserve action isn’t a scandal, and arguably it’s a triumph. The Fed did everything imaginable to avert a financial catastrophe — and succeeded. The money was repaid.

Yet what is scandalous is the basic unfairness of what has transpired. The federal government rescued highly paid bankers from their reckless decisions. It protected bank shareholders and creditors. But it mostly turned a cold shoulder to some of the most vulnerable and least sophisticated people in America. Last year alone, banks seized more than one million homes. ...

My daughter and I are reading Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” aloud to each other, and those Depression-era injustices seem so familiar today. That’s why the Occupy movement resonates so deeply: When the federal government goes all-out to rescue errant bankers, and stiffs homeowners, that’s not just bad economics. It’s also wrong.​

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/opinion/kristof-a-banker-speaks-with-regret.html
 
C

CrocMother

Banned
empty vessel said:
A Banker Speaks, With Regret
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
New York Times

One memory particularly troubles Theckston. He says that some account executives earned a commission seven times higher from subprime loans, rather than prime mortgages. So they looked for less savvy borrowers — those with less education, without previous mortgage experience, or without fluent English — and nudged them toward subprime loans.

These less savvy borrowers were disproportionately blacks and Latinos, he said, and they ended up paying a higher rate so that they were more likely to lose their homes. Senior executives seemed aware of this racial mismatch, he recalled, and frantically tried to cover it up.



http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/opinion/kristof-a-banker-speaks-with-regret.html
Click to expand...

Remember when people were mad that banks weren't giving enough loans to minorities?
 
J

jorma

is now taking requests
“If you had some old bag lady walking down the street and she had a decent credit score, she got a loan,” he added.
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I dont see a problem with this.

The problem i see is - how the hell do you even get a "decent credit score" with no income and no assets? Crazy.
 
A

alstein

Member
maharg said:
Believing that the only means to changing a system is to act within it is, to me, defeatism. Especially in a system as firmly entrenched as the American political system. In systems that bias towards two parties (first past the post), third parties are in themselves an exertion of force from outside the establishment system. In Canada, the NDP has been that force under one name or another for decades. The Bloc has as well. And Reform before they took over the PC party. That the Canadian system allows external input to the dominant political establishment is a great feature of it, but make no mistake, third parties are disruption, not participation, even in systems that allow for them.

In the US, third parties are not an option for this kind of disruption and haven't been for a very long time. Other avenues must be found to disrupt the system without being co-opted by it. It's not defeatism to say this, and it's not defeatism that Occupy is recognizing that reality and attempting to find other avenues.

I have to ask, where is Occupy (a broad movement with only a few key agreement points) supposed to get the hundreds of millions of dollars it will likely take to mount an electoral challenge? What they're doing now is getting more success and more bang for their buck than trying to come up with a full campaign that they could all agree on outside the core issues of campaign financing and then mounting an electoral challenge. They'd be exposed to massive amounts of ridicule that would make what they experience now look like a friendly ribbing.

Again, this isn't defeatism. I don't think change is impossible. I think change is entirely possible. I think that fundamental change, however, requires disruption. Where possible, a third party is an excellent means of achieving that. Where it's not possible, something else has to be figured out.
Click to expand...

With the internet and sufficient anger, you don't need hundreds of millions to compete. You'll be at a disadvantage, but I think a legit presidential campaign that's largely internet-based (and let's face it, if you support OWS, you likely don't care about TV and political ads anyways) could work at least as a spoiler. Be a spoiler for long enough, the support will increase- it would take about 8-12 years for an OWS party to become a legitimate threat.

I think a proper first step would be to run as a Congressional party.
 
M

maharg

idspispopd
Yes, because internet advertising and marketing is free. And so easy. Everyone on this forum is a millionaire because it's just so easy. (hint: Internet != Free)

But that's beside the point. Again, the barriers to entry aren't merely in terms of advertising, but into systematic disadvantaging of third party candidates. In order to even get onto the BALLOT in all 50 states you have to run petitions and meet stringent requirements in every single one individually. Ross Perot ran as an independent in many states even after the creation of the Green party because of the way states essentially discriminate against parties that aren't represented by a donkey or an elephant. And that's for the president.

For congress you have to find credible candidates willing to smash their heads against the wall over and over again while you gain credibility. And then you have to make sure they can run without running out of living expenses, which is a time consuming task.

This is not chicken vs. egg problem. There is a clear need to reform the system BEFORE attempting to gain electoral credibility. As the system stands now, Occupy stands only to LOSE credibility by attempting it. As would, by the way, the Tea Party movement. Which is why it's subverting the Republican Party from the inside. But in the process, it's being heavily co-opted, which is something Occupy should strive to avoid.

Look, what I feel like I'm smashing my head against the wall explaining here is that the US is not a multiparty system. It may have been briefly in its earliest days, but at this point it is a Two Party System (note the caps). The system is designed to completely disenfranchise and eliminate third parties from electoral consideration, and that bias lies at the very root of the system -- the local and state electoral laws and systems.

Saying they should run candidates and give up the subversive process they've started is like saying that the kids in Tahrir should have gone home and started a party to compete with Mubarak in the elections. Never mind that there were other systematically marginalized parties vying to do just that for the entire life of his reign and that they made no traction against a quasi-democratic system designed to ensure a single party always won. The situation is very different in degrees as well as in outcomes (I would never argue a two party system is worse than a one party system), but the goals are much the same -- to ensure the stability of the established power base against rapid change through marginally possible but futile electoral challenges.

Also, 10 years is ridiculously optimistic. In countries where third parties stand a chance at all but still use the first past the post, electoral credibility is more likely to take 50 years than 10. In the US, where barriers are much more significant, by the time an Occupy Party could gain any credibility, the people who started it would be old and probably largely voting more conservatively, just like their parents did.

For Occupy to succeed, it has to do things *differently*. And that means not becoming another Green Party, garnering 20% of the popular vote for 0% representation in even the token electoral college for the president after spending millions of dollars.
 
A

alstein

Member
You're right, there are huge barriers.

It doesn't mean that you give up, you just gotta prepare for a long slog. OWS is something that will be generational, you're not going to change an empire in 1 year.

You're not going to get the reform as long as the two big parties see no need for reform, and if you take over one of the two big parties, you'll become part of the problem quickly as you get co-opted or addicted to the advantages.

You're right in saying the obstacles are huge. They're not impossible though given enough time and increasing anger over time.
 
M

maharg

idspispopd
It's about as possible to nominate a credible third party candidate to the US presidency as it is likely that the earth will be hit by an asteroid in the next year.

Seriously, check out the state requirements for ballot access that wikipedia lists and tell me that internet rage is enough to mount a national and unified campaign. I'll note, both glibly and seriously, that internet rage couldn't even make Snakes On A Plane anything but a bomb.

Again, the US is not like countries where two dominant parties come about because of the nature of the voting system. Third parties are legislated into oblivion, given only a tiny thread of a chance so that the laws aren't struck down as being blatantly unconstitutional.

Pressure has to be put on BOTH parties as well as the courts to change this and give any hope of real electoral change. The system is designed to marginalize third parties, so trying to mount a third party challenge is literally asking to be marginalized. And the two dominant parties hold all the legal keys to deepen that marginalization as well. Don't think they wouldn't if a credible challenger came on the scene. They'd band together so quickly to save the sanctity of the two party system it'd make your head spin.

In the 50s-70s, where was the Civil Rights Party? How many electoral college votes did it get? I'll tell you: None. In fact, Strom Thurmond managed to win a handful of electoral college votes on the opposite end of that spectrum, but that's because he was basically a favoured son of his state (the second last, no less). That particular movement achieved its goals by pushing from outside the system until the system cracked and one of the two dominant parties co-opted their position and the legislative balance shifted permanently because of it. If they'd given up the protests and poured money into electoral challenges things would have been very very different and they would have been horribly marginalized.

Occupy's goal should be to do the same. To push from outside the system. Because otherwise they'll be marginalized like every other third party in the last hundred years in the US. The Internet isn't enough to surmount that.

Also, I'm going to point out again that just because people get their news on the internet doesn't mean they aren't getting it from establishment sources. CNN.com isn't magically different from CNN on channel 50 or whatever.
 
M

maharg

idspispopd
Also, as one last little addendum:

A movement that is founded on principles of equality in voice and consensus politics choosing a leader or even a party apparatus to elect to republican office would bring a credibility gap I don't think it could survive in its own membership, let alone with the public at large. It would destroy this movement.
 
A

alstein

Member
maharg said:
Also, as one last little addendum:

A movement that is founded on principles of equality in voice and consensus politics choosing a leader or even a party apparatus to elect to republican office would bring a credibility gap I don't think it could survive in its own membership, let alone with the public at large. It would destroy this movement.
Click to expand...

That I do believe. I'm not saying that OWS could register a candidate in 2012 and win more then say 4% of the vote, or get on the ballot.

One thing they could do is try to hijack the Libertarians, who get ballot access, and become the Libertarian party.
 
T

ToxicAdam

Member
The other problem is you will not find a leader credible enough (or willing enough) that hasn't had some previous ties to other organizations in their past.

For someone to have that much passion and knowledge about America, they would have certainly expressed that passion in a certain way in the past.

One could grow organically through this organization, but it would take years for them to become fully realized.
 
M

Manos: The Hans of Fate

Banned
jorma said:
does it really matter when he is only shooting blanks?
Click to expand...
Jorma, unless I'm mixing you up with jaxwood, you the last call person to be commenting on the proper maintenance of such objects. Especially with the issue of simply using a cleaning agent vs chopping down the barrel seemed to be a hard decision for you.
 
J

jorma

is now taking requests
Manos: The Hans of Fate said:
Jorma, unless I'm mixing you up with jaxwood, you the last call person to be commenting on the proper maintenance of such objects. Especially with the issue of simply using a cleaning agent vs chopping down the barrel seemed to be a hard decision for you.
Click to expand...

Sorry, i have no idea what you are on about.
 
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