OWS: Violence Will Be Necessary

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Maverick74, Oct 12, 2011.

  1. Maverick74

    Maverick74

    +1
     
    #41     Oct 12, 2011
  2. And who finances this fucked up government that keeps the ball rolling? Who really benefits from that? You? Me? The individual? No! It's the pretend capitalists in corporate America that benefit from such a system. We just end up paying for it. The biggest socialists in this country populate the corporate boardrooms.

     
    #42     Oct 12, 2011
  3. Lucrum

    Lucrum

    What he said
     
    #43     Oct 12, 2011
  4. Max E.

    Max E.

    Why dont you blame the government, the one who is corrupt, who we vote in, and the one who has power over us? The fact of the matter is that no corporation in the world can have power over you without the government. If you dont like the way a corporation operates, dont buy from them, and dont support them, its that easy. The same thing can not be said for the government, i have to live by the rules they create regardless, so who is really at fault?

    Tell me something CaptainObvious, do you actually believe that as a whole there are less regulations on businesses today then there was in 1980? You guys on the left keep blaming this mess on lack of regulation, and it is true the BIG banks had a lack of regulation in the last couple decades, but that is not representative of the overall business environment. There is exponentially more regulations in place on businesses today then we had in the 1980's. Yet it did nothing to stop this mess.


     
    #44     Oct 12, 2011
  5. I am blaming the government. And when the corporations own the government they absolutely have all the control.
    There all all kinds of regulations. Millions of regulations. None of them are enforced. Think of it like gun laws. We have plenty of gun laws, most of which aren't enforced. Consequently we have lot's of violent crime with guns.
    So you telling me with all these laws and regulations they can't find one f'n guy to indict for the obvious fraud that was perpetrated? Not a single one? I rest my case.
     
    #45     Oct 12, 2011
  6. Max E.

    Max E.

    You just made my point for me, the only people who these regulations get enforced on are smaller businesses, and the ones which are enforced on bigger businesses the bigger businesses can afford, while the smaller businesses can not, and then what happens?

    Small businesses go out of business and the big businesses continue to get bigger and bigger, and they just buy off the government.

    So what is your solution? You want to create more regulations and further cripple small business, and ensure that all businesses become monopolies who can afford the regulations. Sounds like an awesome plan.

     
    #46     Oct 12, 2011
  7. wjk

    wjk

    From last night, one of my favorite exchanges:

    MS. TUMULTY: So Speaker Gingrich, it sounds like Congresswoman Bachmann does not believe that Wall Street is to blame for the financial mess. You've said that the current protests on Wall Street are, in your words, "the natural product of Obama's class warfare."
    Does this mean that these people who are out there protesting on Wall Street, across the country, have no grievance?

    MR. GINGRICH: No. I -- let me draw a distinction. I think there are -- virtually every American has a reason to be angry. I think virtually every American has a reason to be worried. I think the people who are protesting on Wall Street break into two groups: one is left-wing agitators who would be happy to show up next week on any other topic, and the other is sincere middle-class people who, frankly, are very close to the tea party people in actually caring. You can tell which group is which.

    The people who are decent and responsible citizens pick up after themselves. The people who are just out there as activists trash the place and walk off and are proud of having trashed it. So let's draw that distinction.
     
    #47     Oct 12, 2011
  8. Max E.

    Max E.

    I think that was a good line too, and i liked most of what Newt had to say last night. I agree that there is a certain percent of that crowd who has a legitimate beef, however a large part of it are a bunch of kids out there who are there just for the party, and to trash things.

    Generally you can tell whose who by the number of gadgets they have. When you see a 20 year old out there with 2 I-Phones and a laptop, odds are pretty good he doesnt have a reason to be there but he is just a destructive spoiled little shit out there to break things and party.

     
    #48     Oct 12, 2011
  9. Yes, Keynesian solutions do have moral hazard built in. Everyone, including Minsky, who I quoted from, recognizes that moral hazard allows for stuff like 2008, where everyone involved, homeowners, bankers, legistators paid off by the real estate industry (the largest contributors to campaigns on the local level), and gov't idiocies like Fannie and Freddie, not to mention FHA loans, the FHLB, the mortgage interest and property tax deductions (all backed of course by that same real estate lobby & those same legislators) all contributed to making 2008 what it was.
    But 1932 featured NONE of that stuff. It also featured a gold standard. Bubbles predate the Fed, they happened when gold backed money, they happened after gold stopped backing money, and they will happen no matter how societies choose to do these things in the future, simply because human beings are greedy. So, get over that argument: bubbles happen. Period, the end.
    Now, the moral hazard built in to Keynes is less bad than what would have happened post 1932 if FDR had not been elected. Even with his election, the Communist Party became a potent third party during the thirties. The only thing that stopped it was the non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany perpetrated by Stalin.
    Sustained bad times bring on extremism, and they also bring on a call for strong government. Between WWI and WWII Europe got Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, and a bunch of lesser Communist/Fascist/Nazi regimes in smaller countries. We remained free of all that, and a large part of the reason why is wrapped up in the alphabet soup of programs like the WPA and all the rest that kept people hoping that things would get better.
    You need to give people hope while the debt-deflation cycle works itself out. If you don't, extremely bad things can and will happen. No matter what you think of FDR, he was nowhere near as bad as any of those European despots.
    As for the silly argument that without any of this we'd get a Depression and things would get cleaned out and all would start over and we'd all be fine: last time around, the '29 crash happened six months into Hoover's term. They had three and a half years to show if that argument was valid the last time. By the time FDR got in, the economy was at a dead stop. The only reason you guys can even begin to make any sort of argument for this kind of utter nonsense is that most of the people who went through that three and a half years of hell are dead.
    This time around, Obama passed his first stimulus, and unemployment stopped getting worse after that, and that was about six months after Lehman. Even his timid pass at the banks managed to keep things from getting worse on that front. In large part he was assisted by the stuff put in place in FDR's first 100 days: the FDIC, which quietly wound up lots of banks with little fanfare and <i>no runs on any of them</i>, and the Fed, which was forced, by Glass-Steagall, to meet regularly to consider monetary policy. That latter requirement meant the Fed wouldn't repeat the mistake it made in the early Thirties of basically ignoring the worsening economy.
    Last time, the deterioration didn't stop until FDR walked in, three and a half years later. This time, it stopped six months later, after Obama walked in. That's not evidence that just leaving things alone works, not to any sane and rational person, anyway.
    So here you sit, beneficiaries of FDR's wisdom and Obama's actions, however timid, and claim that if both of them had done nothing, everything would be just fine. History argues otherwise.
     
    #49     Oct 12, 2011
  10. Yannis

    Yannis

    Wingless, Bloodsucking and Parasitic: Meet the Flea Party!
    by Ann Coulter 10/12/2011


    "So far, the only major accomplishment of the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters is that it has finally put an end to their previous initiative, "Occupy Our Mothers' Basements."

    Oddly enough for such a respectable-looking group -- a mixture of adolescents looking for a cause, public sector union members, drug dealers, criminals, teenage runaways, people who have been at every protest since the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, people 95 percent of whose hair is concentrated in their ponytails, Andrea Dworkin&#8203; look-alikes and other average Democrats -- they can't even explain what they're protesting.

    The protesters either treat inquiries about their purpose as a trick question, or -- worse -- instantly rattle off a series of insane causes: "No. 1, abolish capitalism; No. 2, because 9/11 was an inside job; No. 3, because Mumia is innocent ..."

    Curiously, the only point universally agreed upon by the protesters and their admirers in the Democratic Party and the mainstream media is that "Occupy Wall Street" should be compared to the tea party. Yes, that would be the same tea party that has been denounced and slandered by the Democratic Party and the mainstream media for the lastthree years.

    As a refresher: The Democratic National Committee called the tea partiers "angry mobs" and "rabid right-wing extremists." ABC said they were a "mob." CNN accused them of "rabble rousing." Harry Reid called them "evil mongers." Nancy Pelosi&#8203; said they were "un-American." CNN's Anderson Cooper&#8203; and every single host on MSNBC called the tea partiers a name that referred to an obscure gay sex act.

    But apparently liberals couldn't even convince themselves that tea partiers were an extremist group unworthy of emulation.

    At least they're embarrassed about what the OWS protesters really are: wingless, bloodsucking and parasitic. This is the flea party, not the tea party.

    Contrary to all the blather you always hear about how lawless street protests and civil disobedience are part of the American tradition -- "what our troops are fighting for!" -- they are not. We are an orderly people with democratic channels at our disposal to change our government.

    The very reason we have a constitutional republic is because of a mob uprising. Soon after the American Revolution, Shays' Rebellion so terrified and angered Americans that they demanded a federal government capable of crushing such mobs.

    For nearly 200 years, Americans understood that they lived in a country capable of producing bad politicians and bad policies, but that it was subject to change through peaceful, democratic means. There was no need to riot or storm buildings because we didn't have a king. We had a representative government.

    Even when injustice existed, there were constitutional mechanisms to right wrongs.
    For nearly a century after the Civil War, congressional Republicans kept introducing bills that implemented the civil rights amendments -- only to be blocked by segregationist Democrats. But then, attorney Thurgood Marshall&#8203; came along and began winning cases before the Supreme Court, redeeming black Americans' constitutional rights through the judiciary.

    As long as a Republican sat in the White House, those victories were enforced. In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Ark., to walk black children to school in defiance of the segregationist, Democratic governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus -- Bill Clinton's friend.

    This is what our Constitution was designed for: to use the force of the federal government to uphold the law when the states couldn't (Shays' Rebellion) or wouldn't (segregationist Democrats).

    If Richard Nixon had won the 1960 election instead of John F. Kennedy -- as some say he did -- there never would have been a need for Rosa Parks, the Freedom Rides and the rest of the civil disobedience of the civil rights movement.

    But as soon as the Democrats got control of the White House, enforcement of the Supreme Court's civil rights rulings came to a crashing halt. Elected Democrats in the states were free to violate legitimate constitutional rulings without interference from Democratic presidents.

    The ingenious system given to us by our founding fathers faltered on the morally corrupt obstructionism of elected Democrats. They simply refused to abide by the rules -- with glee at the state level, and at the federal level, cowardice.

    Here, finally, was an appropriate case for nonviolent protest. There hasn't been another justification for civil disobedience in this country until the Supreme Court invented a "right" to abortion in Roe v. Wade -- another act of lawlessness by liberals.

    (All this and more is detailed in the smash best-seller, "Demonic: How the Liberal Mobs Are Endangering America"!)

    Now liberals compare their every riot, every traffic blockage, every Starbucks-window-smashing street protest to the civil rights movement –- which was only necessary because of them. These "Occupy Wall Street" ignoramuses seem to imagine they are blacks living in 1963 Alabama under Democratic governor George Wallace&#8203;.

    To the contrary, the Wall Street protesters have no specific objections and no serious policy proposals in a country that is governed, as Abraham Lincoln put it, "by the people." They protest because they enjoy creating mayhem, not because the law is being ignored or their rights violated without penalty by government officials.

    They are not in the tradition of the tea partiers, much less our founding fathers. They are not in the tradition of the civil rights movement or Operation Rescue. They are in the tradition of Shays' Rebellion, the Weathermen and Charles Manson."
     
    #50     Oct 13, 2011