That'll Show Wall Street!
Occupy L.A. cost Los Angeles (meaning taxpayers) close to $5 million, writes Mark Lacter at LA Observed. He quotes City News Service (via LAist):

City Councilman Mitche Englander thinks that this grim fiscal report should be a warning to his colleagues who were so quick to "approve" of the encampment last October that maybe they should think such endorsements through a little harder. "For every resolution or position the city might take, there's a cost,'' Englander said, citing L.A.'s ongoing fiscal crisis.

...The Los Angeles mayor and the police chief, Charles Beck, held a near-celebratory news conference at Mr. Villaraigosa's office as crews outside -- including workers in white hazmat suits, in response to what officials said was considerable danger of biological infection -- cleaned up the wreckage across City Hall Park. Hundreds of police officers were stationed near the fences, but there was no sign of demonstrators trying to return. Mr. Villaraigosa said he expected that the cost of the protest -- in cleanup, police overtime and lawn replacement -- could exceed $1 million. "Yes, the answer is we're all going to pay for it in these tough economic times," the mayor said. "Because we were peaceful here, we were able to keep our costs down, especially compared with other cites."

There's a Spanish proverb I learned from Nathaniel Branden: "Take what you need, but pay for it."

I love free speech and respect people for speaking out -- even if I disagree with them. But, the big difference, viewpoints aside, between the two recent protest groups (neither of which I belong to), the Tea Party and the Occupiers, seems to be that the Tea Partiers went home at night, didn't cost the rest of us boatloads of money, and didn't leave human waste in their wake.