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Occupy Philadelphia costs city $400,000 in police surveillance

Mickey Shane said:
51%-98% still qualifies.

I read an article in the Dallas Morning News about how the OWS protesters in Dallas are praising local law enforcement Officers for their friendly attitudes and help that they have given to the protesters.
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It only qualifies in the make believe sense that the '99%' actually represent the '99%'. They dont.

Sounds like the Dallas police, like MOST police are doing a great job. One would think that since the '99%' love those cops so much they would recognize and respect that cops are the law enforcement arm of the decisions handed down by government and would comply with the orders and rules given.
 
Ikari said:
So those who protested the old wars were fine, civil rights is fine. Protesting the gross mixture of State and Corporate interest, demanding a return to free market capitalism and the end of our corporate capitalism structure....that's no ok? I don't know if assembly and protest should be decided by those hostile to the protest. I'm not certain you get a fair reading of what the protest is about from those folk.
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Is that what they are demanding? Because if so, they need to fine tune that message, because it doesn't sound anything like that right now.

j-mac
 
Mycroft said:
Do you dispute that there are international organizations behind the scenes...calling the shots?
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No, I dispute the intelligence of the argument I had quoted.
 
j-mac said:
Is that what they are demanding? Because if so, they need to fine tune that message, because it doesn't sound anything like that right now.

j-mac
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Parts of them call for exactly that. All of them call for the end of corporate capitalism, which is the main focus of the OWS movement.
 
What if...? said:
I actually think protest permits are similar to poll taxes.

Paying to exercise your rights.

I don't think anybody should be charged to protest.

And I wonder what philadelphia is getting for $10,000 a day in police "surveillance".
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The First Amendment guarantees the right to peaceable assembly and to petition the government for redress of grievances, but since the Occupy people are not petitioning the government to take any specific action, this is only about the right to peaceable assembly, but if they are illegally occupying public or private property or illegally interfering with traffic or other important functions of the community, the assembly can hardly be called peaceable. There is no right to assemble regardless of what laws you are breaking or what harm you are doing to other people.

The anti war movement was so called because it opposed the war, the civil rights movement was so called because it supported greater civil rights, so it is reasonable to assume the Occupy movement gave itself that name because it had no other purpose than to illegally occupy public or private property.
 
toomuchtime_ said:
The First Amendment guarantees the right to peaceable assembly and to petition the government for redress of grievances, but since the Occupy people are not petitioning the government to take any specific action, this is only about the right to peaceable assembly, but if they are illegally occupying public or private property or illegally interfering with traffic or other important functions of the community, the assembly can hardly be called peaceable. There is no right to assemble regardless of what laws you are breaking or what harm you are doing to other people.
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I hope for the sake of freedom and liberty that you never get to set these legal definitions.
 
Ikari said:
Parts of them call for exactly that. All of them call for the end of corporate capitalism, which is the main focus of the OWS movement.
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Personally...I dont think there is any coherence to ANY of the protests. They all want what they want, and most of it is both illogical and infantile. In one of the other threads a man representing himself as the 1% talks to protesters that claim they are ALL FOR capitalism...what they really want is an end to all the influence the banks and markets have on politicians. I GUARANTEE you...every ONE of those people will mindlessly march to the polls and vote democrat, without regard to WHERE all that money from the bankers and markets is going. No different than the '99%' here will vote democrat...completely disregarding that there is a REASON the banks, markets, unions, etc ALL are balls deep in democrat politicians.
 
VanceMack said:
Personally...I dont think there is any coherence to ANY of the protests. They all want what they want, and most of it is both illogical and infantile.
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I don't think it's illogical in the least. They hit on a very true point. The corporate capitalist model we have now benefits large corporations through actions of State, is defended by State, laws set up to protect them, and competition diminished through power of government and tax payer dollar. And in so doing, we have shut down economic mobility to a trickle. It's a true statement, they have a point on that regard.

Now is it "coherent"? Not in terms of solution because, quite honestly, that's not the point of OWS, IMO. From what I see it seems to be a new experiment using social media to call mass protest to demonstrate magnitude of effect. Look at all the people around the US who are pissed off at this. Now because it's a large magnitude showing, you are including several varying groups. Those groups may not agree on the specific solutions; but the all agree on the general problem. And there is a general problem. So the magnitude showing is partly to government to demonstrate just how many people are upset; but it's mainly to the rest of us. It's to serve as an alarm clock. Look around you, see the system we have, look at what we've allowed! To control the Republic, you must pay attention and that is why on that front I want to see way more OWS and other protests. I want people paying attention and participating. It's the only way we can keep this Republic.

OWS & TP.jpg
 
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That's the city's problem. Maybe if they don't want to dish out so much money, they should campaign for economic change instead of towing the status quo.
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What has the city done to support the status quo and what can they do to push for the OWS agenda?

I don't think it's illogical in the least. They hit on a very true point. The corporate capitalist model we have now benefits large corporations through actions of State, is defended by State, laws set up to protect them, and competition diminished through power of government and tax payer dollar. And in so doing, we have shut down economic mobility to a trickle. It's a true statement, they have a point on that regard.
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If this is true and corporations are owned by the people who buy stock and all of our people can buy stock then why shouldn't the government help the corporations? Corporations are more efficient than the government so the return on investment is greater than we get from the government.

A dollar taken from the corporation returns about $.30 to the public good, after we pay to collect and hand out the money, money left in the corporation pays dividends and hires workers and all of that creates real wealth for our country where taking money from them diminishes the wealth that the liberal horde thinks is bad.
 
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Ikari said:
I don't think it's illogical in the least. They hit on a very true point. The corporate capitalist model we have now benefits large corporations through actions of State, is defended by State, laws set up to protect them, and competition diminished through power of government and tax payer dollar. And in so doing, we have shut down economic mobility to a trickle. It's a true statement, they have a point on that regard.

Now is it "coherent"? Not in terms of solution because, quite honestly, that's not the point of OWS, IMO. From what I see it seems to be a new experiment using social media to call mass protest to demonstrate magnitude of effect. Look at all the people around the US who are pissed off at this. Now because it's a large magnitude showing, you are including several varying groups. Those groups may not agree on the specific solutions; but the all agree on the general problem. And there is a general problem. So the magnitude showing is partly to government to demonstrate just how many people are upset; but it's mainly to the rest of us. It's to serve as an alarm clock. Look around you, see the system we have, look at what we've allowed! To control the Republic, you must pay attention and that is why on that front I want to see way more OWS and other protests. I want people paying attention and participating. It's the only way we can keep this Republic.
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If you are protesting the banks because YOU took out student loans (including that little cash stipend and spent that on video games and alcohol) and gave the money you took out to pay the UNIVERSITIES...what kind of an idiot does that make the protester? If you protest Wall Street because of the influence they have on politicians and then ELECT the very politicians they are paying off, what kind of an idiot does that make the protester? If you are protesting the banks and wall street because governments, industry, and labor have driven the job markets overseas, what kind of an idiot does that make the protester? If you protest a bank because you are too stupid to read the contract you signed or because you foolishly convinced yourself that rolling all of your debt including car and credit card payments so that you could spend 30 years paying them off instead of 3-4 and now cant afford to make said home payment because you went ahead and took out a 120% loan AND a second to make it all work...again...what kind of an idiot does that make the protester?

Total idiots.

Oh yes...dood...you are REALLY showing the governments you are upset. Showing them so much you will keep electing the same crop of clowns to keep doing the same thing.
 
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I don't vote for the Republocrats. I hope that with these demonstrations, with people attempting to pay some attention, that they figure out that the status quo is endorsed by the Republocrats in general and that to change the system you have to stop supporting the status quo.

At the same accord, I will defend to the fullest the rights of OWS and any other protest movement their total and unobstructed right to assemble and protest.
 
Ikari said:
So those who protested the old wars were fine, civil rights is fine. Protesting the gross mixture of State and Corporate interest, demanding a return to free market capitalism and the end of our corporate capitalism structure....that's no ok? I don't know if assembly and protest should be decided by those hostile to the protest. I'm not certain you get a fair reading of what the protest is about from those folk.
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It's simply not true that the OWS people are pining for the myth of free market capitalism, which is in no way contradicted by the existence of corporations. Their only consistent message is that they are against corporate greed and wealth inequality which are slogans more suggestive of a call for socialism,government control of marketplaces, rather than for any kind of capitalism. In any case, whatever your ouija board may be telling you about OWS, the fact is that as a group they have no announced purpose beyond illegally occupying public or private property.
 
Ikari said:
I hope for the sake of freedom and liberty that you never get to set these legal definitions.
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I see. You believe you have a Constitutional right to harm anyone or any community whenever you become upset.
 
toomuchtime_ said:
I see. You believe you have a Constitutional right to harm anyone or any community whenever you become upset.
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Well you don't seem to believe in intellectually honest argument.
 
toomuchtime_ said:
It's simply not true that the OWS people are pining for the myth of free market capitalism, which is in no way contradicted by the existence of corporations. Their only consistent message is that they are against corporate greed and wealth inequality which are slogans more suggestive of a call for socialism,government control of marketplaces, rather than for any kind of capitalism. In any case, whatever your ouija board may be telling you about OWS, the fact is that as a group they have no announced purpose beyond illegally occupying public or private property.
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This is nothing but political bias and ignorance. If you pay attention you clearly see that the overall problem is the current corporate capitalist model we now find ourselves under facilitated through the gross mixture of State and corporate interest.
 
What if...? said:
Seems like Buffalo Springfield had a different take;

Buffalo Springfield - Stop Children What's That Sound - YouTube
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Not at all. The song was about the anti war and civil rights protests that were demanding the government take specific actions. As a group, the Occupy people have no other purpose than to illegally occupy public or private property, drain city treasuries and in some cases interfere with important functions of the community for no other reason than to say, as you suggest, "Look at me! Look at me! I'm pretending to be a protester just like the anti war and civil rights protesters of the 1960's."
 
VanceMack said:
If you are protesting the banks because YOU took out student loans (including that little cash stipend and spent that on video games and alcohol) and gave the money you took out to pay the UNIVERSITIES...what kind of an idiot does that make the protester? If you protest Wall Street because of the influence they have on politicians and then ELECT the very politicians they are paying off, what kind of an idiot does that make the protester? If you are protesting the banks and wall street because governments, industry, and labor have driven the job markets overseas, what kind of an idiot does that make the protester? If you protest a bank because you are too stupid to read the contract you signed or because you foolishly convinced yourself that rolling all of your debt including car and credit card payments so that you could spend 30 years paying them off instead of 3-4 and now cant afford to make said home payment because you went ahead and took out a 120% loan AND a second to make it all work...again...what kind of an idiot does that make the protester?

Total idiots.

Oh yes...dood...you are REALLY showing the governments you are upset. Showing them so much you will keep electing the same crop of clowns to keep doing the same thing.
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Actually, it makes them useful idiots...useful to the international, anti-capitalist organizations that started this whole shebang.
 
Ikari said:
This is nothing but political bias and ignorance. If you pay attention you clearly see that the overall problem is the current corporate capitalist model we now find ourselves under facilitated through the gross mixture of State and corporate interest.
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You are using words you don't understand and drawing erroneous conclusions. The alternative to large publicly held corporations are large privately held companies, sole proprietorships or partnerships, and all the complaints about large corporations could be made about large privately held companies. The basic argument against "corporate capitalism" is that the owners of corporations are not held as accountable for the actions of the corporations as the owners of a privately held company. That is technically accurate but misleading. While the owners of a publicly held corporation, the stockholders, are not held accountable for the actions of the corporation, the executives and directors are. In fact, large publicly held corporations are more democratic in nature, and benefit society more than privately held companies because much of their stock is held by pension funds and mutual funds that distribute dividends and capital gains to the greater public, whereas the profits of privately held companies are shared among only one or a few people.

So the people at OWS who are ranting about corporate greed are simply angry and confused and have no idea what they are talking about - would privately held companies pursue profits any less aggressively? As for free market capitalism, it is a theoretical construct that supposes all producers are of about the same size and competition is based only on price, and it has little to no application in the real world. If it did, Bayer would no longer be able to sell its aspirins.
 
Ikari said:
Parts of them call for exactly that. All of them call for the end of corporate capitalism, which is the main focus of the OWS movement.
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And put what in its place?

j-mac
 
j-mac said:
And put what in its place?

j-mac
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That will depend on who you talk to. As I said, this isn't a coherent movement aimed at any particular solution. But rather a magnitude demonstration to demonstrate the scale of problem.
 
toomuchtime_ said:
You are using words you don't understand and drawing erroneous conclusions. The alternative to large publicly held corporations are large privately held companies, sole proprietorships or partnerships, and all the complaints about large corporations could be made about large privately held companies. The basic argument against "corporate capitalism" is that the owners of corporations are not held as accountable for the actions of the corporations as the owners of a privately held company. That is technically accurate but misleading. While the owners of a publicly held corporation, the stockholders, are not held accountable for the actions of the corporation, the executives and directors are. In fact, large publicly held corporations are more democratic in nature, and benefit society more than privately held companies because much of their stock is held by pension funds and mutual funds that distribute dividends and capital gains to the greater public, whereas the profits of privately held companies are shared among only one or a few people.

So the people at OWS who are ranting about corporate greed are simply angry and confused and have no idea what they are talking about - would privately held companies pursue profits any less aggressively? As for free market capitalism, it is a theoretical construct that supposes all producers are of about the same size and competition is based only on price, and it has little to no application in the real world. If it did, Bayer would no longer be able to sell its aspirins.
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Your assumptions are made in order for you to pursue your particular brand of propaganda (particularly your large brush painting of the whole of the OWS movement). With corporate capitalism what you see is a mixing of State and Corporate entities in a way that the Corporations through their power and money endorse the status quo of the government while in return receiving beneficial packages such as tax write offs, subsidies, etc. which unnaturally select from the market the corporations which are entangled with State. As such, the two feed off of each other, competition is destroyed, and economic mobility begins to dry up. Which is the place we are at now. This isn't free market capitalism, this is corporate capitalism. The ideal should be to return to free market through the removal of government and corporate entanglement.
 
Ikari said:
That will depend on who you talk to. As I said, this isn't a coherent movement aimed at any particular solution. But rather a magnitude demonstration to demonstrate the scale of problem.
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What it demonstrates is the scale of their emotional upset and confusion, not the scale of the problem. To demonstrate the scale of the problem, they would have to have some idea of what the problem is, and clearly they don't.
 
toomuchtime_ said:
What it demonstrates is the scale of their emotional upset and confusion, not the scale of the problem. To demonstrate the scale of the problem, they would have to have some idea of what the problem is, and clearly they don't.
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But they have a common rallying call which is firmly set against the entanglement of State and Corporate entities.

I fear that in some people's zeal to politicize this into a nice category for dismissal, they don't actually look at what's being called for. Rather they want to belittle the protest and try to portray it as impotent and lacking common cause. However, anyone who is actually going to look at the data clearly comes across the common theme of OWS; that being the gross entanglement of State and Corporation has led to a stiffing of economic mobility and unfair practices in which corporations most entangled with the State are given preferential treatment.

OWS & TP.jpg
 
Ikari said:
Your assumptions are made in order for you to pursue your particular brand of propaganda (particularly your large brush painting of the whole of the OWS movement). With corporate capitalism what you see is a mixing of State and Corporate entities in a way that the Corporations through their power and money endorse the status quo of the government while in return receiving beneficial packages such as tax write offs, subsidies, etc. which unnaturally select from the market the corporations which are entangled with State. As such, the two feed off of each other, competition is destroyed, and economic mobility begins to dry up. Which is the place we are at now. This isn't free market capitalism, this is corporate capitalism. The ideal should be to return to free market through the removal of government and corporate entanglement.
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What you are arguing against is not corporations but the size of companies. Everything you complain about would be equally true if the large publicly held corporations were privately held, so corporate capitalism is no more than a catchy slogan. Your claim that government "destroys" competition through favoritism is nonsense, at least before the Obama administration. In fact, the government often acts to preserve competition by breaking up monopolies or through other actions as in forcing Microsoft to allow competition from other browsers. The government, especially the present one, does sometimes slow capital investment and economic growth with taxes and regulations, but this has nothing to do with whether large companies are privately owned or publicly held.

Free market capitalism may seem like an attractive ideal, but it can never be a sustainable reality. As companies, regardless of whether they are privately owned or publicly held corporations, compete for market share, often one or a combination of a few will become a monopoly or trust and competition will effectively disappear unless the government steps in to break them up. Over regulation can inhibit capital investment with the result of slow economic growth and high unemployment, but too little government regulation can allow the formation of monopolies that will lead to lower efficiency and a higher cost of living.
 
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