Why do we protest - comments to FDL article

Why do we protest - Why did Time Magazine honor the Protestor? Whither Occupy?

original article

All good points, and I’m in full agreement. I would like to add an important intangible that can also spring from the smallest protest. Despite the dangers of acting against the tide especially a BLOOD TIDE.

I was among the earliest protestors against both “Desert Storm ™”, and then the second even more disastrous “Shock and Awe ™” full invasion, or Act II of the MIC’s occupations in South Central Asia.

Standing with a few hearty souls along side the rush hour traffic, on US Highway 1 south of urban Miami, in a very conservative section of town we few stood nearly alone. The few furtive signs of solidarity signalled sometime from only one occupant sprinkled among the majority of Thumbs Down and Middle Finger up signal, or our favorite the “finger drawn across the throat” that we saw quite often.

These surreptitious signs of solidarity convinced us, that many of those who were morally with us, needed a public acknowledgement to comfortably express their opinion. They needed the comfort, the “space” for confirmation of their honest belief, that the war, no matter the Cheerleaders, was bloody murder at its technological peak of efficiency.

SHOCK and AWE … that we dared oppose the status quo.

See you on the Corner opposing the IRAN vendetta

solidarity & peace

Rick@AveryVoice.com
http://www.NewMercuryMedia.com/pnn.html

Jebby resurfaces... the stench remains the same.

Like a burp of ill-smelling undigested fast food, Jebby places his "stink-foot" back in the public discourse. [Surprised? Not this writer]

I will quote excerpts from his WSJ OpEd:

Jebby: "Have we lost faith in the free-market system of entrepreneurial capitalism? Are we no longer willing to place our trust in the creative chaos unleashed by millions of people pursuing their own best economic interests?"

Translation: In defense against another attack by socialists, our profit-seeking free-market cannibals must learn to step over the staving poor, littering the streets.  

JB - "The right to rise does not require a libertarian utopia to exist."

Translation: A robber baron great-grand-daddy will do.

JB - "Rather, it requires fewer, simpler and more outcome-oriented rules." 

Translation: Outcome oriented rules - Rules that allow, river to be poisoned, air to flow freely with dangerous particulates.

JB - Rules for which an honest cost-benefit analysis is done before their imposition. Rules that sunset so they can be eliminated or adjusted as conditions change. Rules that have disputes resolved faster and less expensively through arbitration than litigation."

Translation: Rules that don't encumber THE JOB CREATORS, or if they do... not for very long.

JB - In Washington, D.C., rules are going in the opposite direction. They are exploding in reach and complexity. They are created under a cloud of uncertainty, and years after their passage nobody really knows how they will work. …

Translation: Some rules haven't yet been completely gutted. Not that consumers face any uncertainty.

JB - In short, we must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record of delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we are willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line. And the straight line, it turns out, is a flat line.

Translation: Statists a new pejorative. If we seek to tame the excesses of our Corporate Overlords... we are now STATISTS  - newer than socialists and it reeks of Fully Market Tested Curses. Instead Jebby offers us, the JAGGED DANGEROUS RAZOR SHARP EDGE OF CORPORATE POWER Run-Amuck. Aww, the poor were just savaged by the JAGGED EDGE of the FREE MARKET. It's nobody's fault.... poor dears poisoned by Industrial Runoff - too bad... they were just destroyed by the Jagged Vicious Edge of FREEDOM.

OCCUPY your conscience.

"The group's underlying motivation seems to be rooted in a fundamental concept that if you make a bad decision somebody else will pay for it. ... it's really OK; the taxpayer will simply foot the bill."


Odd that as you try to address the OCCUPY MOVEMENT you state the BANKSTERS position.


They (The Banksters) made bad choices, prioritized "LIAR LOANS" profited on both sides of the deal, which had nothing to do with the American Dream of home ownership, and everything to do with GREED, and gaming the system. 


They paid themselves exorbitant salaries and then when the gush of money ebbed - Got the taxpayers to "bail them out!" And yet refused to help the very taxpayers that bailed them out. They just wave from their Billion Dollar Bonus Parks.


So who's "entitlements" are you defending. When Banksters and Wall Street Traitors (or is that TRADERS?) benefit when they bet against America's Interests? When the tax incentives favor the offshoring of good paying American Jobs - who benefits there? Why do you defend those business men and women who hide their schemes and business practice behind page after page of "fine print"?


When OCCUPY insist that the robbers of Millions and Billions, get the same justice that the villains who steal hundreds and you complain? I got to say, which side are you on?


When OCCUPIERS suggest that medical care, and education should be available to all Americans and you complain 


- Is it your position that your grandmother should die, if she can't afford the thousands of dollars a month that private health insurance costs? 


Which side are you on?   {The Spirit of OCCUPY} asked this question before, and I think I know how you would answer.


OCCUPY your conscience.
ORIGINAL POST

WHY OCCUPY?

If you are among the people, not quite sure, why the OCCUPY MOVEMENT has taken to the public square? 


Here are a couple hints. They are trying to get the attention of their servants in government.
They refuse to die silently. They refuse to have their jobs, their lives, their homes, and the chance of an education stolen away.


They are not being heard. There were more people opposed to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars than even opposed the Viet Nam war debacle.  The response of our representatives in government the public servants? They were rolled, by the deceitful Bu$h Administration. And despite evidence to the contrary sent our military and thousands of mercenaries and billion$ of dollar$ to WAR.  


They presented a deaf ear when the public demanded PEACE. When the Bush Administration hijacked the US Treasury to bail out their pals on Wall Street and over a weekend demanded a blank check to PROTECT THE AMERICAN ECONOMY? Did our public servants act to protect the public, or did they think only of the people who pay the lobbyists decorating the halls of Congress with sheets of thousand dollar bills. They protected only the revolving door boys, they protected Wall Street. 


Did our public servants in Congress demand that there be no PROFIT$ TAKEN from our generous gift of TAX DOLLAR$ to Wall $treet? No, the cash flowed and flowed and flowed and the BONUSES GREW and GREW and GREW! 


When Professor Elizabeth Warren said, we must protect the public, we must have transparency. When she dared to suggest these bankers must pay. Congress and the president served the bankers first, and locked her out! - They locked us out too.


BIG MEDIA ignores the real issues, Our public servants in Congress ignore the real issues. The people guaranteed by our Constitution the right PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, to DEMAND redress of Grievances are doing just that. They have gathered across the country, and across the world to say,"IT ENDS HERE!


These patriots gather because they refuse to be ignored. Unionists, Environmental Activists, Human Rights Activists, Economic Justice Activists, Small Business men and women, students and just plan folks, have gathered in the public square to DEMAND the government protect them. Not just protect the BANKS, the BIG CORPORATIONS, the BIG Insurance Companies. 


The American people's government exists to protect the interests of the people, not just the CORPORATE POWERS and the 1%ers.


Is it fair, that small businesses and families are paying their fair share of taxes, but GE pays nothing and gets a rebate? Is it fair, that companies enjoy tax incentives to steal American jobs and send them overseas. And unlike the "weak-tea" party, they left their guns at home. OCCUPY is about economic justice and FAIR PLAY for the American People.

Oppose workers rights at your peril

Letter to the editor response to an article entitled

(Its the unions destroying the country not the corporations)

(Original Letter)

You have to wonder is the kind of myopia a product of poor education or willful ignorance.

Unions exist because of corporate leadership's inability to understand, that workers must be paid a living wage. Unions and the guild before them gave some bargaining power to workers and craftsman who were at the mercy of the rich and powerful.

Those who would abolish unions and other organizations which protect workers and craftsman's rights would march us into the SLAVE LABOR FACTORIES so "popular" among the oligarchs who rule big business, today.

Factories that demand 18 hour, seven day weeks dorm living (for which they are billed) [remember "I owe my soul to the company store" - Seniors may remember Ernie Ford's rendition]

Union activists achieved the 5 day work week. (You can thank the Unions for the WEEKEND) Unless you consider that an industry destroying Un-American achievement. Companies earned more and more profits. The unions said to management, those workers who make such profits and the high wages of the corporate leadership possible should share in those profits.

Retirement investment and healthcare benefits both spring from the union bargaining for fair wages and fair participation in the profits. Take home checks 270 times greater than the workers salaries is a modern development springing from Reagan's decision to betray unionized federal workers. REMEMBER Reagan the guy that traded missiles with the Iranians just after they held American Embassy workers hostage for a year. That's the guy that opened WARFARE on the American Workers Rights. And while you're thanking Ronnie and Nancy's astrologer for that particular victory for the Corporate Oligarch, don't forget to thank Ollie North, the guy that stuffed secret papers, in his secretaries drawers so they could be smuggled out of the White House. What a hero. 

Think twice before you betray workers families because they want to participate in the benefits that stem from their labors. When you defend a corporations rights to profit from slave labor while polluting the planet, you will definitely reap what you sow.

You don't spin video - ASK google - you just let uncle Sam censor it!

You don't spin video. You don't spin heavily armed riot police, firing tear gas, using sound cannons and billy clubs. Ask the marine in the hospital about NON-LETHAL FORCE.

They didn't attack the angry armed T-partiers. They attacked the peaceful protestors who opposed the banksters. They opposed the deregulation that wiped out their savings. The peaceful protestors were opposed, were attacked by policemen and women, whose pensions are under attack, by the same forces of greed that the OCCUPY Activists denounce.

I don't blame the police, I don't even blame the fearful captains and sergeants. I blame those ignorant of CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEES. I quote the First Amendment:

AMENDMENT I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

                                                   ...

May the officers, who fired at the heads of those peaceful citizens, live to rethink their cavalier abuse of the first amendment. And orders to break the law, are unlawful orders. Even Donald Rumsfeld knows that thats why those criminals, sought to soothe their consciences with bendable lawyers.

solidarity & peace

Rick Spisak - We are the 99%

www.NewMercuryMedia.com

Another Complainer who loves DEREGUALTION (Stuart News Rebuttal)

Constantino
(Original Article)

Do you know why we have regulation because unregulated business have poisoned their employees and killed their customers. If people weren't greedy, we wouldn't need laws. If people drove like they want everyone else to drive we wouldn't need traffic laws.

When American corporations move overseas so they can ignore regulations that keep from poisoning us they poison other communities. Check out the pollution problems in Mexico, and China. Where the UNREGULATED ROAM FREE.

Whether or not, MABELL built her machine is irrelevant to the issue. Yes corporation do wonderful amazing things, but unregulated businesses also do horrific things.


"You don't like safe food. Don't care about safe water. Don't care if there is sewage on the Beaches. No wildlife fine with you? And you obviously don't need safe medicine or appliances. All those nasty regulations that ruin the economy for those who woud poison you? That would be a shame. - RW Spisak"

As for me, I'd like there to still be wildlife. I'd like to know that airlines are safe, and that the medicine my grand children and wife eat is safe.

Good luck with that lifestyle."

Do some reading, look up why the food industry is regulated?

Read Sinclair Lewis who exposed meat packing. Read Rachel Carson "The Silent Spring" if you and your children and grand children weren't protected from the abuses of the Agribusiness excesses - you might be eating corn that has pesticide genetically engineered right into the corn - OOPS you probably are - But don't you worry about it - Eating that pesticide will be easier if you and those who would GUT PROTECTIVE REGULATION get your way.

Look out below! - We are the 99%