Occupy Wall Street: What do you think?

[Jaboney]

Better than the Tea Party at identifying a proximate target, but just as inarticulate, and far less effective at making an impact. Unless they can have an impact on the choice of candidates, party platform, or proposed legislation, they're a blip.

[ChewDawg]

A majority of these protestors don't even know what they are protesting. The ones with extreme debt loads and no job opportunities should take a long hard look at why these chose the programs they did.

Instead of blaming Wall Street, they should be blaming that marketing person at the public university that convinced them that a Gender Studies degree would be high in demand!!

[jdsmith]

Better than the Tea Party at identifying a proximate target, but just as inarticulate

I thought the original TP rant about not paying for other people's mortgages was great. What happened later, when the money came in...well, we shall soon see. Got that 2 trillion in cuts yet?

and far less effective at making an impact.

Right. Old people wearing the flag and Colonial costumes vs youngsters sleeping in the park, pooping on cop cars. Not gonna get a whole lot of middle of the roaders there.

Unless they can have an impact on the choice of candidates, party platform, or proposed legislation, they're a blip.

Yup. But we have to wait for the money to come in. Oblahblah is supporting them on the one hand and jerking off bankers with the other. Be interesting to see how this plays out.

[ChewDawg]

Oblahblah is supporting them on the one hand and jerking off bankers with the other.

Maybe Barry learned that from living in Indonesia and reading books on Sukarno

The puppet master is a priest. That's why they call Sukarno the great puppet master. Balancing the left with the right... The right in constant struggle with the left. The forces of light and darkness in endless balance....
http://soulfoodmovies.blogspot.com/2006 ... ously.html

[BigJohn]

A majority of these protestors don't even know what they are protesting.

Do you have a source on that?

The ones with extreme debt loads and no job opportunities should take a long hard look at why these chose the programs they did.
Instead of blaming Wall Street, they should be blaming that marketing person at the public university that convinced them that a Gender Studies degree would be high in demand!!

Really? Is that the cause of the financial crisis and high unemployment? I never knew!

A Canadian perspective:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/10/17/f-rfa-macdonald.html

[ChewDawg]

Do you have a source on that?

Howard Stern. These interviews with protesters are pretty funny!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uM9uQ-6G3o

Really? Is that the cause of the financial crisis and high unemployment? I never knew!

I blame Clinton and the Congressional Black Caucus. In the late 90s, Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall legislation at the behest of the Congressional Black Caucus. This opened up mortgage loans to poor and lower class people---people that probably shouldn't have qualified for any mortgage. But the Democrats wanted every person to own a home. It was this repeal that laid the groundwork for the 2008 crisis.

So yes, whether government or universities, they deserve more of the blame than Wall Street!!!

[Chris]

I blame Clinton and the Black Congressional Caucus. In the late 90s, Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall legislation at the behest of the Congressional Black Caucus. This opened up mortgage loans to poor and lower class people---people that probably shouldn't have qualified for any mortgage. But the Democrats wanted every person to own a home. It was this repeal that laid the groundwork for the 2008 crisis.

Talk about revisionist history!

[Joschka]

Do you have a source on that?

Howard Stern. These interviews with protestors are pretty funny!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uM9uQ-6G3o

Really? Is that the cause of the financial crisis and high unemployment? I never knew!

I blame Clinton and the Black Congressional Caucus. In the late 90s, Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall legislation at the behest of the Congressional Black Caucus. This opened up mortgage loans to poor and lower class people---people that probably shouldn't have qualified for any mortgage. But the Democrats wanted every person to own a home. It was this repeal that laid the groundwork for the 2008 crisis.

So yes, whether government or universities, they deserve more than the blame than Wall Street!!!

To believe that Glass-Steagall was somehow related to getting mortgage loans to unqualified buyers is to have no idea what Glass-Steagall was all about.

The 'banking' activity that Glass-Steagall prohibited was the process of packaging mortgages into securities that could be sold to raise more mortgage money and so on. The effect was to generate very large profits for the banks while transferring the risk to public agencies backing the banks. It also makes it nearly impossible to accurately rate those securities or to even understand just how much risk any holder of those securities was exposed to. The 'securitizing' was done and redone such that banks were selling mortgages with one hand and buying parts of them back again with the other-and not even knowing this. Sometimes it even made it impossible to know who 'owned' the actual mortgage; because only the 'owner' can legally foreclose.

[GuyInTaiwan]

A complete waste of time. Even leaving out the rights or wrongs of whatever they're asking for, no one is going to vote for anyone but one of the two major parties because a vote for a third party is perceived as a wasted vote. This was reinforced after Bush got elected the first time when people on the left actually made the absurd argument that those voting for Nader cost the left the election (while missing that a similar percentage of people on the "right" voted for Harry Browne of the LP). The following election, no one wanted to risk it again. This is going to be more of the same: if these guys were able to really get their shit together and form their own party, their greatest opponents would be the Democrats, not the Republicans. The Democrats would either seek to co-opt or destroy these guys. As such, the major parties know all they really need to do is appear to be pandering to the people, but then it's back to business as usual.

[BigJohn]

But certainly such pandering can lead to changes in legislation? If this turns our to be the case, would the OWS thing still be a waste of time?