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Author Topic: Occupy Wall Street  (Read 37759 times)

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Classic

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #120 on: October 26, 2011, 11:14:54 PM »

Contrary to popular belief, pigs won't eat just anything.
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Brentai

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #121 on: October 26, 2011, 11:41:25 PM »

I was kind of tempted to put up something like that when all this started, because from my current vantage point the best I can do for the movement is to demonize my own caste (even though I'm not really that rich).

Still and all though, as much as you might want to do it, it's a bad idea to portray the opposition as too incompetent to fuck with you when they really are not.  That sort of denial got us... well, here.
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Zaratustra

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #122 on: October 27, 2011, 02:42:37 AM »

Oh hey, apropos of nothing, here's the first video I found of Neil Young playing Ohio.
Neil Young - Ohio - Live at Massey Hall

The funny part is that this video is region locked against Canada, but not only is Neil Young Canadian, Massey Hall is in frickin' Toronto.

well you should have gone and seen it in person instead of being a filthy pirate then

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #123 on: October 27, 2011, 04:45:38 AM »

Hmmmmm... slight update.

1) Apparently it predates the OWS stuff.
2) A friend of mine who is not a trader but is generally pretty economically aware had these quick comments:

Quote
The person who wrote that is obviously not a trader, because he makes several fundamental economically flawed points and totally misstates the trader mindset and lifestyle.

This was written by someone who wanted to make traders look like total dicks.
Quote
It's not just "smart people go to wall street." It's "smart people who are also into a high risk, high-stress non-family compatible lifestyle that exists only in a few select large urban markets with a huge payout over a short period of time go to wall street."

It takes a very very specific person to be able to work that job. I don't think there's a person posting on our forum who would last 6 months on wall street... you know why? Because we're posting on this forum instead of seeking out new ways to make money exploiting market inefficiencies.
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Mongrel

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #124 on: October 27, 2011, 04:48:06 AM »

Oh hey, apropos of nothing, here's the first video I found of Neil Young playing Ohio.
Neil Young - Ohio - Live at Massey Hall

The funny part is that this video is region locked against Canada, but not only is Neil Young Canadian, Massey Hall is in frickin' Toronto.

well you should have gone and seen it in person instead of being a filthy pirate then

Given that this show took place eight years before I was born, can I assume we will be set for some Bill & Ted style time travel hi-jinx?
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Royal☭

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #125 on: October 27, 2011, 05:27:46 AM »

Whoops, backfire!

Oakland last night:

Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #126 on: October 27, 2011, 07:20:03 AM »

The funny part is that this video is region locked against Canada, but not only is Neil Young Canadian, Massey Hall is in frickin' Toronto.

Yes, but OHIO is in AMERICA.

...anyway.  Try this one, though it won't embed.
Neil Young - Ohio [Live At Massey Hall 1971] (Video)

well you should have gone and seen it in person instead of being a filthy pirate then

I'm pretty sure pirates don't region-lock their videos.  That first one appears to be from an official Neil Young account.

...course, the one I just posted is from an official Warner Music account, so maybe it won't work either.

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I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years.

That's because you don't listen to poor people, hypothetical, probably-made-up Wall Street person.

It's great that we had a better economy for the middle class during the Clinton Administration.  I would definitely prefer that to what we've got now.  But the poor were still poor.

Pretty much any time you hear anyone say "I didn't hear you complaining when...", it's because they weren't fucking listening.

(My grandma once forwarded me an E-Mail ranting about these damn Hollywood celebrities who hate the Iraq War, but where were they when Clinton intervened in Kosovo?  I responded by giving her a list of news articles with those specific Hollywood celebrities protesting the intervention in Kosovo.  And by pointing out that she had just forwarded me a lengthy rant about Hollywood celebrities expressing political views that ended -- I shit you not -- with a quote from President Reagan.

Every couple of years she forgets why she doesn't forward me these things and I have to gently remind her.)
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #127 on: October 27, 2011, 01:38:11 PM »

More from Taibbi: Wall Street Isn't Winning – It's Cheating.  (Via Evanier)

Quote
I was at an event on the Upper East Side last Friday night when I got to talking with a salesman in the media business. The subject turned to Zucotti Park and Occupy Wall Street, and he was chuckling about something he'd heard on the news.

"I hear [Occupy Wall Street] has a CFO," he said. "I think that's funny."

"Okay, I'll bite," I said. "Why is that funny?"

"Well, I heard they're trying to decide what bank to put their money in," he said, munching on hors d'oeuvres. "It's just kind of ironic."

Oh, Christ, I thought. He’s saying the protesters are hypocrites because they’re using banks. I sighed.

"Listen," I said, "where else are you going to put three hundred thousand dollars? A shopping bag?"

"Well," he said, "it's just, they're protests are all about... You know..."

"Dude," I said. "These people aren't protesting money. They're not protesting banking. They're protesting corruption on Wall Street."

"Whatever," he said, shrugging.

Back in college I went to a Winona LaDuke rally, and an acquaintance of mine said afterward that she's a hypocrite for criticizing environmental waste via a powered sound system at a lighted, temperature-controlled auditorium that she had arrived at via (presumably gas-powered) automobile.

I told her that no, living in a cave is not in fact a good way to get the message out that people should be less wasteful, and that it is possible to use products and services while simultaneously suggesting they should be improved.

Anyhow, Taibbi goes on to respond to the "Poor people are just jealous" argument by pointing out, over a half-dozen clearly-defined examples, that no, poor people just think rich people should play by the same rules.

Which was my takeaway from his last article, too: that what OWS and the Tea Party have in common is that they both want a fair shake.  Both sides are completely fucking livid that the banks got bailed out and experienced no negative consequences for wrecking the economy, with those consequences being shifted onto the 99% instead.  The rest, as I said, is details.

Both sides agree that the government has removed the free-market mechanism that is supposed to punish companies that do bad business.

The Tea Party response is the simple, gut reaction: let companies fail.

The liberal view is more nuanced: if those companies go down, they take their employees with them; the bailout was justified (at least in this instance) in order to save those lower-level employees, but there should have been more strings attached.

And I think if you ask most people in the Tea Party -- not all, but most -- if it's right for an entry- or mid-level employee to lose everything because of malfeasance at the top, he'll say no.  There ARE folks who take laissez-faire capitalism to its absurd "Let him die!" conclusion, but they're a loud minority.

So we start with the obvious stuff: the bailout should have denied golden parachutes and capped CEO/bonuses for any company that took the money.  I think there are people in the Tea Party who can agree with that, even if they do so grudgingly.  And some high-ranking people probably should have been prosecuted for fraud.

From there, at a minimum, I think both sides can agree there should be increased oversight.

We start talking increased regulation, again, that's going to get Tea Partiers to balk, because to them it's a dirty word.  Indeed, at this point in the conversation they will inevitably blame it all on Fannie and Freddy.  Well, point out that Wall Street made a litany of bad investments that had fuck-all to do with Fannie or Freddy, and start asking why that's allowed.

Ultimately I'm firmly of the mind that these banks need to be broken up; if they're too big to fail they should be smaller.  That's another sacred cow to Tea Partiers, but it might be a good idea to mention at this point that even Adam Smith favored government intervention to break up monopolies.  And ask if it's really a good idea for banks' successes and failures to rely on high-risk investments.

At this point you'll likely find yourself talking in circles and back to the "Yes but the free market would correct that if the banks were allowed to fail" point.  But I still think this conversation is the way to find common ground and seek reform.

Not that the Tea Partiers in Congress are worth two shits, but they're replaceable.
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #128 on: October 27, 2011, 03:05:32 PM »

So, some good news: Scott Olsen's condition has improved from critical to fair.

There are links in the article to vet groups that are accepting donations for his medical expenses.
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Royal☭

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #129 on: October 29, 2011, 02:34:35 PM »

Foreclosure firm hosts party mocking homeless

Quote
The party is the firm’s big annual bash. Employees wear Halloween costumes to the office, where they party until around noon, and then return to work, still in costume. I can’t tell you how people dressed for this year’s party, but I can tell you about last year’s.

That’s because a former employee of Steven J. Baum recently sent me snapshots of last year’s party. In an e-mail, she said that she wanted me to see them because they showed an appalling lack of compassion toward the homeowners — invariably poor and down on their luck — that the Baum firm had brought foreclosure proceedings against.

The firm also has multiple lawsuits against them dealing with their shady, unethical practices in foreclosure.

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #130 on: October 29, 2011, 06:53:37 PM »

So today in Denver the cops raided the main place where protesters were set up at, and then secured the area as they threw all of the protesters' belongings into garbage trucks.
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Bal

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #131 on: October 31, 2011, 04:16:40 AM »

What? No dogs or fire hoses? Pansies. Call the National Guard, they know how to shoot up a peaceful protest right.
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #132 on: October 31, 2011, 10:53:48 AM »

Frank Pasquale: The Conservatism of Occupy Wall Street (via, once again, Mark Evanier, who you really should be reading no matter who you are or what you're into because the guy is just a font of great links)

This is the kind of stuff I've been talking about, and am delighted to see more people focusing on.  Here's a quick sample of Pasquale's headings:

Quote
1) Belief in Free Enterprise
2) Belief in Law & Order
3) Respect for the Military
4) Religious Faith
5) Suspicion of Big Government

Sounds pretty fucking reasonable when you put it like that, which is of course his point.

Brent said something awhile back to the effect of "Ideally, I'm in the center".  I'd say that, ideally, I'm still a little left of center, but that my politics aren't nearly so extreme as the media treats them.

And while I've got sincere disdain for "conservatism" as it's defined in modern American politics, true conservatism sure as hell has its place -- as Taibbi put it, fiscal responsibility and wariness of the government are good fucking ideas, they just have fuck-all to do with what the modern Republican Party actually stands for.

The Venn diagram at the top of the post puts it rather nicely, even if it's obviously oversimplified; the OWS crowd and the Tea Party are the same kind of people who are mad about the same stuff; they may be attacking it from different ideological perspectives but their similarities outnumber their differences, both in where they come from and what they want.

If we can get beyond the media narrative that we're at loggerheads (and our own worst instincts toward Balkanization rather than finding common ground), and actually get our shit together, then there's potential to actually get some shit done.

Ironically, police brutality is a great fucking uniter.  A month ago my grandfather hadn't heard of Occupy Wall Street; this week he knows a Marine is in the hospital after being hit with a teargas canister.  He's a smart, educated guy and a much savvier media consumer than average, but he's still a guy who gets his news from CNN and the local NBC affiliate, so he's probably a good barometer for MSM coverage.
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #133 on: October 31, 2011, 11:51:10 AM »

Oh hey so it turns out the Oakland PD agreed in 2004 that it wasn't going to use projectile weapons on protesters anymore.

Via.

Something tells me there's going to be another class action and this one's not going to be settled for $2 million.
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #134 on: November 01, 2011, 02:29:59 PM »

The The USA Today: Former Marine's injury spurs vets to join Occupy movement

Quote
Interim Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan has said that the events leading up to Olsen's injury would be investigated as vigorously as a fatal police shooting.

Oh.  Well THAT'S a relief.
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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #135 on: November 01, 2011, 02:54:40 PM »

Wait, he could mean that in the sense of a "fatal shooting of a policeman" rather than a "fatal shooting by a policeman". It might be something a bit more difficult to construe as a corrupt thug-force making obviously hollow statements.
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #136 on: November 03, 2011, 07:19:16 AM »

More from Oakland.

Quote
Groggy people in tents could be heard telling police to go deal with troublemakers instead. One protester was hit in the leg with some kind of projectile.

Video showed him running, then standing doubled over, whimpering in pain, as others from the encampment rushed to help him. "You just fired on and injured an unarmed person," one man could be heard yelling.

Just like a Tea Party rally, amirite?
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Bal

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #137 on: November 03, 2011, 07:24:17 AM »

I don't think you're being fair, Thad. The Oakland police are really only trained to deal with black people on PCP. I'm sure they have no idea what a peaceful protest even is.
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Thad

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #138 on: November 03, 2011, 01:52:25 PM »

MSN: 30 companies have paid "less than zero" in taxes over the past three years.

I expect there are some people painting this fact on signs right about now.

(But it was worth it, for all those jobs that the job creators created!)
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Burrito Al Pastor

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Re: Occupy Wall Street
« Reply #139 on: November 03, 2011, 09:57:33 PM »

I don't think you're being fair, Thad. The Oakland police are really only trained to deal with black people on PCP. I'm sure they have no idea what a peaceful protest even is.

This. As Derek Kirk Kim recently said on twitter - "To those who have never lived in Oakland: there is no such thing as a peaceful mass gathering of people. A march about cupcakes would end with the same result."
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