There is every reason to protest the direction taken by Wall Street. However, credibility matters. Demanding welfare for all, so that no one has to hold a pesky job? This - and most of the other demands - are so unrealistic as to completely discredit the whole movement.

Maybe the Zombie Apocalypse is finally here, because these people clearly have no brains.

My response to minimum wagers has always been, "Why don't we make it a million dollars an hour, and then nobody will be poor?" Oddly, I'm always accused of not being serious.

More of the same, only harder.

It's amazing how much friendlier the press coverage of this group is compared to the tea party. The wall street protesters are openly endorsing totalitarianism and we're told that they're 'passionate'. TP people call for balanced budgets and they're treated like the second coming of the Brown Shirts. Go figure.

I will work hard for my benefit. I won't work as hard for yours. Calling it our benefit won't change my behavior one iota.

Communism failed. Socialism failed. This movement will fail.

Who pays these protesters? They have to eat, and they needed money to get there. I can't believe they are on vacation from their jobs.

So, we have parasites living off the effort of others, complaining about their lot. No sympathy here.

How are these people doing this financially?

When I was involved with political advocacy groups back in the 90's, I came to realize that almost all of the protesters I encountered were either trust funded or on some form of disability. They all had some source of income that they didn't have to work for. Hence the term TrustFundAfarians.

The term "Useful idiots" comes to mind. While the silly, ignorant and deluded gather, the agents in the background run no risks while controlling the mob. When arrests are made, you can be sure that the control agents are not among those detained or injured.

Remember, those who agitate for the socialist revolution to begin always think they will be party members when it's all over.

They never count on being the ones with their backs against the wall.

Useful idiots only get to live for as long as they are useful.

Ugh. They're doing it in Austin, too. Here they've added a "tent city" for transients to the wishlist.
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/police-protesters-hope-to-avoid-clash-as-occupy-1895882.html
You know what I've always wanted? A unicorn. Unfortunately, I have to work today, so I can't go down to city hall to protest and demand one.

I get it, nobody likes hippies. But unless you are a banker, you must have some animosity toward them for compromising the American economy for their short-term profits, and then getting a bailout and bonuses instead of jail time.

The only banker doing jail time is Bernie Madoff. He's only in jail because he made the fatal mistake of ripping off rich people.

The thing that struck me with this list of demands is that no demand had anything to do with Wall Street. Not even remotely.
Give me money, pay me more, off my debt, immigration.

Nothing about financial reform or not bailing out banks, or bonuses if you get tax $.

Why are they protesting Wall Street if these are their demenads?

The proper term is crony capitalism not fascism.

They might have a better case if they weren't selfish, spoiled scum, making life hell for ordinary people trying to make a living in that corner of New Tork:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/279173/occupy-wall-streeters-hurting-main-street-jonah-goldberg

Interesting isn't it how the supposed defenders of the Working Man against the ravages of capitalism treat actual flesh-and-blood working men with utter contempt.

As David Harsanyi commented recently in Reason Magazine, wait until it gets cold and they'll go away.

> unless you are a banker, you must have some
> animosity toward them for compromising the
> American economy for their short-term profits

I hate this kind of thinking... That the problem is "corporations!" or "Wall Street, Man...!" This is exactly the naivete and infantilism for which the protestors deserve our scorn. (And just a whiff of pepper.)

AMERICANS BOUGHT THOSE MOTHERFUCKING MORTGAGES. They bought them because they were stupid. They bought them because they stupidly thought buying them was in their own best interest, and to Hell with the rest of the machine. NOBODY DID THE READING of the documents they were signing. No one did any thinking at all about how all this value could be flowing into their lives, or what the effects would be upstream and downstream when it turned to shit. Everyone in the chain was concern only for themselves, and imagined themselves isolated from the consequences on each side.

> and then getting a bailout and bonuses instead
> of jail time.

Yes, this was inexcusable. Bush first, and now Obama more aggressively, have basically frozen the health of the cancer patient at the moment of arrival at the hospital. No chemo, no surgery, and no improvement.

The list of demands is ridiculous. Adults wrote this?

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Regardless of employment? How about lack of employment?

Fantasy.

If the company is forced to pay its lowest-level employees more, it will have two ways of getting that money: lower wages for the higher-level employees or raising prices. Both have negative consequences.

If a company raises prices on its products, it will take more money to purchase the products. The "living wage" will then no longer be a living wage and activists will demand a new increase in wages to a "living wage" level. Vicious cycle.

On the other hand, reducing the wages of higher-level employees to pay for increases for the lower-level employees will result in fewer people entering challenging and highly technical high-pay fields and fewer people working the demanding hours and positions that lead to higher-paying senior positions. We'll have fewer doctors, engineers, technicians, scientists, etc.

We'll also have fewer lawyers, but that may not be a bad thing.

And if the unemployed receive a "living wage" from the rest of us and don't have to work for it, look for the unemployment rate to rise significantly. Who'd be a street sweeper if you can make good money sitting on your ass?

Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

This is a fantasy.

You can't change physics. Solar and wind simply cannot provide a steady enough or large enough supply of electricity with today's technology.

Perhaps some day, as the technology gets better, but not today.

And you can fast track it all you want, but you still can't get a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now!

Wow. Beyond Fantasy.

Money tied up in those loans actually belongs to depositors, not the banks or the borrowers.

Universal debt forgiveness means universal impoverishment as people's cash reserves are wiped out when banks no longer have enough money on hand to give people their own money on demand.

Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

Why not?

No one will mind a 10-15% risk-premium on their interest rates because lenders have no way to tell is someone regularly pays their debts, makes payments on time, or is over-extended with credit.

Credit reporting agencies provide a service and help lenders evaulate and mitigate risk in lending money to people they don't know.

Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

Because unions would never send thugs down to the production floor to intimidate reluctant workers into signing the ballot. Right?

You want the solution?

I'll tell you the solution.

Make the government stop telling banks who to loan money to.

When you tell a banker that 25% (made up number, work with me) of their loans must be made to people who won't pay them back under pain of having their FDIC certification revoked, you're going to get a suboptimal outcome.

In this case, the suboptimal outcome involved creating investment-grade articles out of a mish-mash of mortgages and forcing the government to backstop the losses through Fannie/Freddie.

Then Fannie/Freddie took those, and shuffled them together some more, and got the government to strong-arm the ratings agencies into rating them AAA and selling them to investment companies like AIG.

The entire thing was based upon the economic model of "And then a miracle happens". This never seems to work.

"Then Fannie/Freddie took those, and shuffled them together some more, and got the government to strong-arm the ratings agencies into rating them AAA and selling them to investment companies like AIG."

Bullshit. That is what Wall Street did. It has nothing to do with Fannie/Freddie.

One thing you cannot deny is that Wall Street made money before and after the crash.

That cannot be possible in free market economy. One group of players are guaranteed a pay out with either in win or lose.

The slot machine is rigged for the Wall Street. That is what they are protesting.

Chang, you ignorant slut.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were quite involved in the whole thing, which is why Barney Frank refused any attempts to audit them or rein them in.

They were integral to the whole fraud.

The only ones who got rich were the politicians that got bought off, or the appointees who ran FMLA (Jamie Gorelick managed to get very wealthy as the CEO)

The beauty of a free society, without an all powerful government handing out favors, is that we would not have to care much about how much credit people are using. Say AnyBank is loaning too much money to Mike. Mike can't pay it back. Who cares, except AnyBank and its stockholders? AnyBank will be out of business soon, and its stockholders will be poorer, but it doesn't affect me much.

I would prefer that AnyBank had made better decisions, but that is its business. Almost all companies like AnyBank will make good decisions, if they lack government backing.

The bug in the soup is that we do have an all powerful government, contrary to our Constitution, that hands out favors. They are willing to bail out AnyBank, and did so before our eyes, using our money. Now, bad decisions are encouraged (moral hazard) by the political guarantees of the government. When AnyBank loses money, the cry goes out that we have to save it (sniff, tears).

Politicians are robbing us blind, under the guise that they are only taking the money of the other guy (the rich guy). Wake up. They are taking the future from us all and stuffing it into their pockets.

Our recession was promoted by collapsing home prices and mortgage losses, after an extended period of government providing easy money and guarantees to support Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the entire banking system. The government is still doing this. The bad housing policy was designed, encouraged, and required by government, mostly by Democrats.

The government's ability to issue guarantees is an unlimited, off-budget, extremely dangerous power. Guarantees were granted to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (among other institutions) above and below the table. They used these guarantees to borrow and lend massive capital resources. Used unwisely, to build houses that could not be paid for, this has caused our financial crisis.

The government guarantees bank deposits. Depositors think that this is good, but this encourages system-wide risk taking. Bank executives benefit from high risk, high return investments, until they hit a bad patch and the government pays back the losses of the depositors (but not the investors). There is a major banking crisis every 20 years.

Here is what the guarantees mean: "Heads I win, tails you lose". Our politicians ("the government") made good on their promises with the bailouts, while saying "We're the Solution".

The recent debt limit negotiations mean nothing when the government can make guarantees off-budget which send us into poverty. The Solyndra failure cost the government nothing until it failed spectacularly. Now, the government guarantee of $535 MILLION has cost the taxpayer real money, just as if the government had spent it up front, on-budget.

We Guarantee It - The Government Caused the Economic Crisis
( easyopinions.blogspot.com/2008/10/we-guarantee-it.html )

"The slot machine is rigged for the Wall Street. That is what they are protesting."

Good analogy. If you want to be successful it best to stay away from slot machines, better yet maybe learn how to build them.

"The only ones who got rich were the politicians that got bought off, or the appointees who ran FMLA (Jamie Gorelick managed to get very wealthy as the CEO)"

WTF.

Does your daddy work for BOA? The Wall Street dined and wined while the Rome was burning down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/business/29bonus.html

Chang, you're ignorant. And I'm not saying that to be flippant, I mean it.

Wall Street was always wining and dining. Government saw a vast pool of money and influence, and got involved. It was a torrid affair.

And everyone else got fucked.

Venture Socialism. Look it up.

Be enlightened.

"...and more power for the unions"
How can people, with a straight face, really make a demand like this, but protest bailouts of companies like GM?
Seriously, though...Where's my f*cking unicorn?

The Wall Street dined and wined while the Rome was burning down.

chang,

Yes. Many Wall Street firms did indeed get rich during this period. Goldman Sachs got rich betting against the mortgage market while selling mortgage instruments to its customers.

Many also collapsed under the weight of bad investment decisions and went bankrupt or were liquidated at fire sale prices.

Wall Street didn't start the fire, but the investment banks happily toasted marshmallows while it burned. That's what Wall Street does, it takes advantage of market conditions to make money. Where the Wall Street firms went corrupt was in making money solely for themselves while leaving investors high and dry.

But...brian's not wrong either.

Politicians and activists pressured banks (using laws passed by vote-buying lawmakers). The CRA, amended under Clinton, gave housing activists a powerful weapon to use against banks to force them to lend to people who would not be able to pay back their loans if real estate values slowed their meteoric rise (a rise fueled by the easy credit the activists were pushing).

Fannie and Freddie executives got rich using fraudulent accounting practices to manipulate the value of their portfolios to trigger bonus provisions. Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines both became multi-millionaires and powerful political figures while running Fannie Mae.

Fannie spent billions buying politicians and political influence in order to protect itself against regulators and a growing movement to privatize and/or rein in the mortgage GSEs.

Banks and Wall Street figured out that since Fannie Mae did have limits (often ignored) to its ability to package and sell loans, they could bypass the GSEs and package the loans themselves.

Rating agencies made money insuring mortgage portfolios and were afraid they'd lose the business if they downgraded an investment instrument. So they handed out AAA ratings like candy. Besides, the historic default rate on mortgages was less than 1%, so no risk ... right?

When interest rates rose, mortgage brokers began pushing neg-am loans, interest-only loans, anything to keep the mortgage frenzy alive. These loans were specialized instruments and almost guaranteed to go bad when deployed on a wide scale to unsophisticated borrowers.

By the end of the real estate bubble, Wall Street (especially Goldman Sachs) were creating CDOs out of junk mortgages just to keep the mortagage security buying frenzy alive - even while many of them were hedging to protect themselves against the inevitable collapse.

The New York Fed (run by Timothy Geithner, currently Obama's Secretary of the Treasury) was the chief enabler, ignoring the warning signs, lowering capital reserve requirements for banks, and helping Wall Street cover up collapsing investment banks and dodgy mortgage portfolios.

Even after that, there's still plenty of blame to go around.

Including mortgage brokers who engaged in wholesale fraud, borrowers who lied on applications, borrowers who treated their houses as ATMs and banked on housing values rising in perpetuity, regulators who ignored the warning signs to avoid rocking the boat, and politicians who took thousands of dollars in exchange for abetting Fannie's fraudulent accounting and no-safety-net high wire act (both Dodd and Frank, authors of the disastrous Dodd-Frank bill, took thousands of dollars from Fannie Mae and its allies).

Suggested Reading:

The Big Short by Michael Lewis
Reckless Endangerment by Gretchen Morgenson et al

What Brisbane said over and over, Chang is an idiot. Congress caused this mess with over regulation, not under. Congress will not bring us out either. Nothing short of armed revolt cans save us now.

"Even after that, there's still plenty of blame to go around."

That is not good enough.

The American Spring Movements is asking for the head of CEOs, who played a major role in very high unemployment rates in especially young population in 2011. This is all connected to 2008 financial melt down.

And I was naive enough to believe that Obama Christ is going to send at least one of them to jail to prevent the peasants from revolting.

The key problem is that Wall Street & Co. is making money at public expense and calls it "free market economy".

The young protesters are calling it bullshit.

Chang, that ain't so. These people have never done anything with their lives except buy stuff at artificially low prices (like education).

Point being, they wouldn't no bullshit if they saw it drop from the beast.

And about those loans: These kids are learning, in a backhanded yet poignant way, how bloat works.

It would be nice if they'd created some value before deciding to squeal this way....

Chang - one more thing: "the rich" get that way because they understand money. It is not CASH, that gray/green thing in your wallet.

I worked for a megayacht yard in Miami for six months. "The rich" surround themselves with people who know how to do things and who produce for them. They don't spend money, they invest it, in all things, down to the cars they drive and houses they own. For every one of them there are a thousand technical guys who want to work for them - on the yacht, the helicopters, the cars - and these people make OK money. Just don't make a mistake with the principal or his/her guests.

You're not finding a megayacht skipper or crew who's lazy or stupid or "entitled", or selected by any measure other than what the owner wants: return on investment.

Irony: measures to "soak the rich" make it tougher, not easier, for the "little people" to get there. Life is not only not fair - "fair" is never what you want it to be.

Crid - Chang is one of those very children.

They bought everything their boomer parents sold them hook, line and sinker.

CEOs aren't responsible for the unemployment rate. Companies don't exist to give you a job. They exist to create value for their customers and shareholders (in that order). If you don't have any way to help them create value (and I mean value in excess of what they pay you), then why should they hire you?

Most of the maggot-infested, hygiene-impaired layabouts presently encroaching upon Manhattan's financial district have never created value for anyone. They simply believe that someone ought to throw money at them because they exist.

After all, they went to college, man. Never mind that their degree is in advanced ass-picking. They think it entitles them to a six figure salary at 22.

Reality is calling Chang. Just because you don't answer the phone doesn't mean it doesn't apply to you.

"Chang, that ain't so. These people have never done anything with their lives except buy stuff at artificially low prices (like education)."

Think about your life. How lucky you are. The grown ups when you were a child, they knew their boundaries. They knew their roles. Your success was important to them. They dodged bullets for civil rights and Vietnam, so you can have better future than they did.

And in return, is this all you can say to young generation?

What did you do for the next generation?

Chang, stfu, you were not even here during Vietnam. I have many veterans past and present HB my family and they know this country is f'ed up and needs an overhaul because of the insanity brought on by leftists like you. Grow a pair and step before the wall.

The grown ups when you were a child, they knew their boundaries. They knew their roles. Your success was important to them. They dodged bullets for civil rights and Vietnam, so you can have better future than they did.

These grown ups you celebrate, chang, are the same grown ups who looted the Social Security fund, leaving it full of IOUs that are coming due now and may leave this generation's retirees with nothing - having essentially been robbed by the government of 6% of their income for nothing but empty promises.

These are the same grown ups who demanded more and more benefits from the government, borrowing money to pay for them and leaving the bills to be paid by the succeeding generations (the ones you claims they cared so much about).

These are the same grown ups who trashed the society and culture that the generations before them had established and maintained over the years, tossing out the good with the bad in fit of generational pique ... and then demanded that the succeeding generations thank them for creating a social and cultural mess.

These are the same grown up who created a divided society in which fewer than half the people shoulder the burdens of responsibility. [In World War II, all social divisions contributed soldier, sailors, and marines. By Vietnam, only the poor did. Today, less than half of American society pays income taxes while more than half lives on some form of government largesse.]

These are the same grown ups who initiated a culture war, insisting that pornography was art, vulgarity was culture, mediocrity was excellence, and violence was peace. Their forebears gave them Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Martin Luther King Jr., and HL Mencken. They gave us Andy Warhol, Larry Flynt, Nora Roberts, and Che Guevara.

These are the same grown ups who shredded the education system, insisting standards were racist, sexist, and hindered a child's development. As a result of their "reforms," we have illiterate and innumerate high school graduates, fewer than half of whom can cite the Declaration of Independence, place World War II in historical context, and find India on a map.

What did you do for the next generation?

With any luck, we'll fix what the last generation did.

I think of Steve Job's capacity for risk, toil and infighting, and I'm triply appalled at these punks. We lose this guy, and the next generation has this for an answer.

> What did you do for the next generation?

I generated the wealth that paid for their educations, buttercup... The repayment of which they now so puckishly disavow.

I suspect your affinity is, as has been suggested, an echo of their inexperience. These people have never been useful anyone, including themselves... What DO they think life on this planet is about?

"The American Spring Movements is asking for the head of CEOs, who played a major role in very high unemployment rates in especially young population in 2011."

Folks, Chang isn't an idiot. He's a Stalinist. He has said here before that he is just fine with what Stalin did in the Soviet Union. Killing a few million people in order to get the world he wants, he has no problem with that.

Note what he's doing here: in his own words, "asking for the head of CEOs." He's not being metaphorical. The current leftist meme, being promoted widely by Hollywood, is that corporation CEOs should be guillotined. Literally. Do you own a small business that has been somewhat successful? Chang wants you dead, executed in brutal fashion so he can hold up your severed head as a trophy. He's not kidding.

I would love to totally blow away the "Occupy Wall Street Losers Release List of Demands" but I would take three pages on Amy's website.

The one I love is Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

I'm a white single male. Are you saying I have more rights than a black male? How would you define equal? What about a white female? What about a black female?

So say I work as a garbage man. I have to load a 70 lb garbage can into the lifter of the garbage truck. Meanwhile a black female is now pregnant. She is limited to 15 lbs for the duration. So it is equal that I have to cover for her for eight months while she is pregnant. Am I equal or being discriminated against. Maybe during that eight months I get to only lift 15 lbs as well?

Lets take all these to the logical conclusions and you see the absurdity. They want equality of outcomes, not equality of opportunity.

They want equality of outcomes, not equality of opportunity.

Posted by: Jim P.

Thats not techincally true, they want equality of outcome only when it benifits them, if the equailty of outcome is detrimental to them they stop clamoring for it.

Just look at how quickly lifetime alimony disapeared after the first couple of women had to pay it

"What DO they think life on this planet is about?"

Wow. That is a biggie.

But let me try. I think the answer is nothing. No one in the solar system will cry if the entire earth were destroyed today. None. Zero.

Life on this blue planet is meaningless to the rest of universe no matter how you slice it. This planet is definitely useless to other planets in the universe. They will just simply go on with or without the third planet from the Sun as if nothing happened.

So, if you argue that I must be "useful" to you to justify my existence, I am asking you why is that?

Do you think that is why I was born? Do you think that is life on this planet is about? To be useful to you or to each other? Are you telling me that useless people are threat to the society you want to live in? What if I told you useful people like you are a threat to the society I want to live in?

My useless life is as important as your useful life as long as that is what I wanted. If I concluded that life on planet earth has no meaning and you are just born, die and repeat, why should I make myself useful to you?

The silly demands of the protesters on Wall Street are as silly as your demand they need to be useful to you.

I don't blame them. They just simply don't know better. But the Wall Street should have known better than that.

> "What DO they think life on this planet is about?"
>
> Wow. That is a biggie.

Not really. This isn't a séance, or a weeks-long spiritual retreat into the forests of the Pacific Northwest. The question of what we're supposed to mean to each other is implicit in the vague idiocies of the precious "occupation". These turdlettes haven't each found their own very special gift yet. I think they should each put maybe 15 or 20 years of toil and sacrifice into something, even something that they love, and then get back to me. Let them demonstrate their 99% wonderfulness in some practical setting. Once they've made an investment in life, they'll (you'll) be less inclined to loiter in business districts with their dicks in their (your) hands, whining about how the world done 'em wrong.

> So, if you argue that I must be "useful" to you
> to justify my existence, I am asking you why is
> that?

Because you're asking me to sustain your "existence", whatever the cost. But I don't like you very much... I don't care if you're fed, clothed, medicated, educated or loved. You don't seem to care about that stuff enough to have earned it for yourself; and I trust your judgment.

Because you're asking me to sustain your "existence", whatever the cost. But I don't like you very much... I don't care if you're fed, clothed, medicated, educated or loved. You don't seem to care about that stuff enough to have earned it for yourself; and I trust your judgment.

Crid, this may be the single most profound thing you've ever written.

Shoulda been "think enough of yourself to have earned" etc.

Ah well, there will always be a next time with these idiots.

"Because you're asking me to sustain your "existence", whatever the cost. But I don't like you very much... I don't care if you're fed, clothed, medicated, educated or loved. You don't seem to care about that stuff enough to have earned it for yourself; and I trust your judgment."

So, did you raise yourself? Did you feed, clothe medicate, educate or love yourself when you were young?

How is your answer any different from "Let them eat cake" during French revolution?

Once you ignore my asking to help me to sustain my existence, I will be no longer asking. I will demand and force it.

It is your best interest to help me, so that someday, I no longer become a burden on your useful life.

The Wall Street and you are the grown ups. And this is what you are telling to the young, confused and horny generation, who will be in charge of your life someday.

"I don't give a shit".

Let's see how that works out for your best interest.

> Did you feed, clothe medicate, educate or love
> yourself when you were young?

See, kitten, that's the thing: These "occupiers" aren't young... They're just infantile.

> How is your answer any different from "Let them
> eat cake" during French revolution?

First, your allusion is bogus, assuredly.

Second, even if it weren't, there's no reason to think these people are meaningfully hobbled or desperate. Quite the opposite: They're heirs to all the genius and courage in history. They've been fed and educated more nutritiously than, essentially, anyone who ever lived. Kings of a fifteen decades ago would have killed for their opportunities, but they'd rather not be bothered with grasping them.

> Let's see how that works out for your best
> interest.

If this is their first adult offering, they were never going to be good for much anyway.

How is your answer any different from "Let them eat cake" during French revolution?

Once you ignore my asking to help me to sustain my existence, I will be no longer asking. I will demand and force it.

It is your best interest to help me, so that someday, I no longer become a burden on your useful life.

chang, you naive socialist. By such are the world destroyed.

These idiots squatting on Wall Street are not working toward becoming self-sufficient. Not really. They're not asking to be taught to fish. They're demanding the whole catch for themselves ... and complaining the fishermen didn't catch enough.

So convinced are they that their cause is just that they feel the rest of society owes them sustenance (and iPhones) while they fight to "better" the world ... for the good of the ignorant proletarians ... really.

They claim to want jobs, but there will always be another "injustice" that needs protesting, another preceived "wrong" to be righted, another bastion of capitalism to be stormed.

There will always be another quest for them to undertake rather than get a job and engage in the mundane struggle to sustain their own existence.

There will always be another reason the rest of us need to support them just a little bit longer while they fight to impose "social justice" on the rest of us.

And chang, the rest of us are supporting you. The stores of knowledge that provided your education, the agricultural and logistical infrastructure that provided your sustenance to this point in your life, the communication infrastrcuture that enables you to coordinate your protests, the medical infrastructure that gave you chance to live beyond your infancy and will keep you alive in your dottage ... all of those were built and maintained by those you threaten with violence if they don't "support" your whims now.

Because you're asking me to sustain your "existence", whatever the cost. But I don't like you very much... I don't care if you're fed, clothed, medicated, educated or loved. You don't seem to care about that stuff enough to have earned it for yourself; and I trust your judgment. - crid

Now thats the type of crid comment I remember

So, did you raise yourself? Did you feed, clothe medicate, educate or love yourself when you were young? -chang

I loved myself sixteen times in a single day once, last one hurt like hell and nothing came out

Gosh. Imagine my delight at your approval.

Well, given your obssesion with every other aspect of my life, I thought you'd enjoy my approval

No, "lujlp", you should withhold all details about your judgments and bodily products from now on: We'll learn to cope without you. Now.

Meanwhile, for the Chang: Let them eat Ipads.

No voters so pathetically servile to such 'public servants' will ever be in a position to "demand" anything.

(That was supposed to be Chang, not "the Chang"... Kinda grandiose for a guy who imagines "being in charge of your life one day".)

". I will demand and force it.

Then you're a fascist and one of the vandals of a democratic society and you disgust me."

Come on, I forgot to finish my sentence. I meant

I will demand and force it with my Wall Street Squatters "when the next election comes around."

No need to apologize. No... really.. O.K. If you insist, apology accepted.

"So say I work as a garbage man. I have to load a 70 lb garbage can into the lifter of the garbage truck. Meanwhile a black female is now pregnant. She is limited to 15 lbs for the duration. So it is equal that I have to cover for her for eight months while she is pregnant. Am I equal or being discriminated against. Maybe during that eight months I get to only lift 15 lbs as well?"

My dad worked for AT&T, starting back when it was still "THE" phone company. He mentioned the period when women first started being treated "equally" included women insisting they be allowed to do field work. Which was fine with everyone, as long as they could do it. Unfortunately the "as long as they could do it" part was deemed sexist so in the end it often meant that a woman would get to a site, need to call in another van with a man who could put the ladder up to the pole so they could get up to where they needed to work as well as hang around to put the ladder back on their van when the woman was done. There were, of course, some women who were perfectly capable of doing the work, but there had to be special exemptions done to get the "proper ratio" in the field.

I'm all for equality in work: I don't care who you are, which sex, religion, etc.. as long as you can actually do the work required. No special exemptions just to make people feel better about themselves.

If the Occupy Wall Street protestors really want to know who the enemy is... they need to look in the mirror. In 2008, they voted for the people who implemented the policies they are protesting. And they will do so again in 2012.

Let's pick another one of the demands to pick apart:

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

What is your definition of a living wage?

Let us unilaterally impose tariffs on all foriegn products. It would only take a few years (7-10) for all the manufacturing companies to build all the infrastructure back in this country to start actually manufacturing the consumer products you want. Take a flat screen TV. To manufacture it you need to use volatile chemicals to make the LCD panel. You need to get the EPA to sign off on it. The electronic boards in the back need volatile chemicals as well. Get the EPA sign of and the neighborhood to sign off. You also need reliable electricity (which is going to conflict with Demand seven).

Then you have the minimum $20 wage. That means you take a typical McDonald's© and have a counter person, a manager, a cook and a fry person. Those four people are going to make a minimum of $80 per hour. Your hamburger, fries and a soda is $5. That means they would have to put out 16 full meals every hour just to cover payroll. Then to actually cover the food costs at a $1 gross profit per meal means about another 16 meals. Then the electricity, WIFI, property taxes, water, etc is about 8-10 meals per hour.

Let's go the low side -- 16 meals for labor, 16 meals for supplies, 8 meals for for overhead. That is 40 meals per hour just to break even and a little profit. What are the odds of having 40 meals sold every hour for 14-16 per hour? So then the McDonald's© franchisee raises the meal to $8 to actually make some money.

What is the living wage now?

Driving home I heard interview with several locals involved with the local version. A couple seemed reasonably intelligent. Some not so at all. Then they had some Prof from some local collage on about why he thought they were gathering. To unite in cause and make a collective voice that is so much louder than an individual. From the interviewers right before this it was clear that the only thing they were on the same page about is that they were unhappy with the current situation. And most of the wanted money given to them though some wanted services. I think some were even contradictory.

For those of you who have used or heard the phrase, "Algebra? When will I EVER use Algebra in my life?" - here you go.

Because people who insist that a "universal wage" "should be" {some amount of money} never seem to recognize that when you add something to both sides of an equation, the relationship doesn't change.