Like a bad case of the flu, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and its nationwide spawn won’t go away. Predictably, mainstream media and their political cronies (including the leftist-in-chief) have tried to spin these demonstrations as progressive versions of the influential Tea Party rallies—judgments akin to dramatic comparisons that put Paris Hilton in the same league as Katharine Hepburn.
I was present at Oceanside Municipal Pier on April 15, 2009, when more than 3000 working folks gathered to peacefully protest the huge deficits that were being racked up in the first months of the Obama Administration. “Thousands” also reportedly showed up at Temecula’s Duck Pond. At least one protestor carried a prophetic sign that perfectly fit the half-billion dollar Solyndra scandal then being hatched: “It’s not stimulus. It’s payback.”
The primary protest message was as focused as one could expect from a largely spontaneous event: 1. The government is spending too much and should not increase taxes. 2. The unprecedented growth in government is a danger to liberty.
At the Oceanside Tea Party (as at all such gatherings) there was no attempt to provoke confrontations with police or shut down public facilities. Many parents with kids were present, and American flags were abundant and waved with pride.
By contrast, OWS protestors have shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, ignored trespassing and health ordinances, drained municipal resources, and had a negative impact on nearby small businesses.
Moreover, a New York Times numbers guy used credible crowd estimates in 150 cities to come up with a nationwide figure of only 70,000 for the movement’s October 15 protest. The largest gathering, in the Big Apple, was put around 7,000. Figures for Chicago, Denver, and Oakland were each south of the conservative estimate for Oceanside’s April 15 event in 2009.
When it comes to the make-up and message of this group, Democratic pollster Doug Schoen finds what a perusal of video evidence suggests—that the OWS crowd is mostly young (about half under 30) and overwhelmingly leftist in orientation (74% voted for Obama). Significantly, almost a third believe violence may be employed to achieve their collectivist goals.
This finding dovetails with the much larger violent demonstrations in Europe onto which OWS, October 15, piggybacked. After all, the socialist left is a worldwide, reason-resistant virus that didn’t disappear with the collapse of the Soviet Union—a movement composed of power-hungry ideologues and useful idiots who employ utopian demands and violence (when expedient) to achieve totalitarian ends.
In sum, the dubious character of OWS is best epitomized by the picture of a protestor apparently defecating on a New York City police car.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
OCCUPY THE NANNY STATE
“Occupy Wall Street” has come to L.A. and San Diego. Fortunately, the small contingent of youngsters holding anti-capitalist signs at Ynez and Rancho California in Temecula last Saturday would have had a hard time occupying the nearby Pat & Oscar’s—a corporate enterprise that has filed for bankruptcy and shuttered two Carlsbad outlets thanks to an economy that’s been run for years by the protestors’ ideological soulmates in Sacramento.
After perusing the major “Occupy” web sites, especially “Occupy L.A.,” I feel safe in saying that most protestors would qualify for confinement within a hypothetical home for the criminally naïve. These folks generally display all the intellectual depth of those infatuated voters who elected our inexperienced, teleprompter-dependent president based on a vacuous “Hope and Change” platform.
Callow sign-holders calling for an end to capitalism are apparently unaware of the profound financial crises in Europe’s Grecian-formula economies or the utter lunacy of simply erasing all debts. These adolescent activists also seem oblivious to the implications of the four-trillion dollar deficit their transformational president has piled up in only three years—thanks in no small measure to socialist policies most non-taxpaying protestors apparently favor.
The thunderous, prolonged applause that last year greeted President Obama’s collegiate announcement that kids can stay on their parents’ insurance policies till age twenty-six typifies this entitlement mindset.
The following web-page comment by an “occupier” puts that applause into halting words: "We have been kind of screwed over by our government, which should be taking care of us and instead is taking advantage of us."
Patrick Henry and company must be spinning in their graves. Instead of protecting individual liberties and property, government for this and other protestors has become a lifelong nanny.
Unsurprisingly, many Democrats, labor unions, and public service workers that have sapped tax-paying Americans for fat pensions for decades have thrown in with these would-be waifs who prefer the multi-syllabic drivel of pseudo-professor Cornel West to any real knowledge about economics achieved by intellectual effort.
Reading a book or two by legitimate scholars like Thomas Sowell or Milton Friedman would be sufficient to enlighten all those who aren’t irredeemably committed to massaging their belly buttons. The reason Washington D.C. and corporations (like Solyndra) massage each other is because America’s government has become a giant 3.7 trillion-dollar slush fund. That’s why Wall Street’s Goldman-Sachs gave much more money to Obama than to McCain in 2008.
The best way to “get money out of politics” is to shrink government and let consumers, not Obama’s czars, determine winners and losers. But mobs, as opposed to most Tea Partiers, love mindless chants, power, simplistic schemes and especially imposing themselves on others.
After perusing the major “Occupy” web sites, especially “Occupy L.A.,” I feel safe in saying that most protestors would qualify for confinement within a hypothetical home for the criminally naïve. These folks generally display all the intellectual depth of those infatuated voters who elected our inexperienced, teleprompter-dependent president based on a vacuous “Hope and Change” platform.
Callow sign-holders calling for an end to capitalism are apparently unaware of the profound financial crises in Europe’s Grecian-formula economies or the utter lunacy of simply erasing all debts. These adolescent activists also seem oblivious to the implications of the four-trillion dollar deficit their transformational president has piled up in only three years—thanks in no small measure to socialist policies most non-taxpaying protestors apparently favor.
The thunderous, prolonged applause that last year greeted President Obama’s collegiate announcement that kids can stay on their parents’ insurance policies till age twenty-six typifies this entitlement mindset.
The following web-page comment by an “occupier” puts that applause into halting words: "We have been kind of screwed over by our government, which should be taking care of us and instead is taking advantage of us."
Patrick Henry and company must be spinning in their graves. Instead of protecting individual liberties and property, government for this and other protestors has become a lifelong nanny.
Unsurprisingly, many Democrats, labor unions, and public service workers that have sapped tax-paying Americans for fat pensions for decades have thrown in with these would-be waifs who prefer the multi-syllabic drivel of pseudo-professor Cornel West to any real knowledge about economics achieved by intellectual effort.
Reading a book or two by legitimate scholars like Thomas Sowell or Milton Friedman would be sufficient to enlighten all those who aren’t irredeemably committed to massaging their belly buttons. The reason Washington D.C. and corporations (like Solyndra) massage each other is because America’s government has become a giant 3.7 trillion-dollar slush fund. That’s why Wall Street’s Goldman-Sachs gave much more money to Obama than to McCain in 2008.
The best way to “get money out of politics” is to shrink government and let consumers, not Obama’s czars, determine winners and losers. But mobs, as opposed to most Tea Partiers, love mindless chants, power, simplistic schemes and especially imposing themselves on others.
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