It is supposed to correct the past injustice such as redlining, but i generally agreed with you that this policy is absurd.Originally Posted by gunnut
gunnut,
The concept of equal opportunity sounds great. Who do not want open and fair competition and have equal chances to achieve something great. However, in the world it is never fair to begin with.
Even the clouds were a little fluffier today.Let us mark this day in history, when consensus ruled WAB. Birds sang; sun shone; deers pranced; angels danced. Nature was in harmony. All was well. Let us rejoice!
Lol. I don't know what the answer is. Get the money out of politics, get the politics out of the money. Something.
"We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008
I agree with you. The original intention was good. Then again, all government intentions were "good" before humans got involved.
The "market" is made up of billions of micro transactions and decisions every single day. A government bureaucrat or an entire bureacracy can't possibly foresee all the consequences that result from a single legislation. The world is never fair. Some are born with birth defect. It is not our job to make this world work for them. We can help them along. But it's still up to them to make the most of it.
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.
That's what I think. The federal government has way too much money and way too much power. The government is not made up of some saintly super beings that look out for us. The government is made up of greedy and corrupt scum bags like the rest of the socieity, us included, who are looking out for number one. That's why we can't let them have too much money or too much power.Even the clouds were a little fluffier today.
Lol. I don't know what the answer is. Get the money out of politics, get the politics out of the money. Something.
Liberals hate large corporations and monopolistic power, yet they want bigger government and total power for the government made up of the same greedy bastards who run the evil corporations. As if somehow a person magically transforms from an imperfect human being to something that is divine just by working for the government.
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.
A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
-Gerald Ford
"We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way." -President Barack Obama 11/25/2008
Nothing wrong with not letting him speak but these fuckers are just weird... Dems touch them at their own risk....
Silencing John Lewis Is What Democracy Looks Like
Silencing John Lewis Is What Democracy Looks Like - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine
Tim Cavanaugh | October 10, 2011
Not clear if John Lewis' thumb-up gesture was legal under Occupy Atlanta procedural rules. Video of an Occupy Atlanta “general assembly” not allowing Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia) to speak has been going virological on the interwebs.
But Occupy Atlanta’s “consensus” against giving speaking time to the 13-term member of Congress and one-time chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee isn’t as striking as the self-parodic and smilingly Maoist process by which consensus was reached (or not).
When Lewis showed up last week to address Occupy Atlanta, he was initially greeted with applause (disallowed, as it turns out, by event organizers who prefer that the collective show its approval through less disruptive finger-wiggling gestures). But Fox News, which is one of many conservative outlets picking up on the Lewis event, describes the epic fail that followed:
Instead of giving the floor to a man who is not just a longtime U.S. representative but a revered civil rights icon, the protesters employed a tangle of parliamentary procedures to ultimately prevent him from speaking.
A stunned Lewis could be seen watching the whole thing unfold before ambling away.
The procedures they used -- rather, invented -- would make the Senate blush. Imagine some combination of Model U.N., Lord of the Flies and a Phish concert.
Here’s Lewis doing the slow burn as a mob of apparatchiks without portfolio debate whether to risk their “agenda” in order to let him speak. If you want evidence for the case against pure democracy, this is it:
Lewis is downplaying the incident, and Occupy Atlanta has issued a statement:
Occupy groups are governed by procedural rules that allow them to function in chaotic circumstances and to exercise participatory democracy in a large group. These rules are based on the principle of absolute equality and each voice being heard.
Anyone may come and speak to or participate in a General Assembly. There is a set order which includes a point where the floor is opened for comments. Anyone present may put their name on the “stack” as it is called and speak. It might seem a simple thing to break the order, but in a large crowd where everyone is supposed to get a chance to be heard, deviating from it quickly causes chaos. Each deviation encourages the next until no conversation can be maintained.
All of the speakers who have attended a General Assembly in New York have followed this process. Occupy Atlanta is unaware of any exceptions. Congressman Lewis, who attended Occupy Atlanta’s 5th General Assembly on October 7, is familiar with consensus from his days as a civil rights leader but was unable to stay long enough to allow the process to unfold due to prior commitments.
One important characteristic of mob rule is that it tends to get the outcomes the ruler wants, not the outcomes the mob wants. In this case, the group clearly voted to let Lewis talk, even if that meant risking a slight breach of the day’s agenda. But the point here was not to get a voting result but hive-mind unanimity. Of course unanimity can’t exist among human beings, so the real purpose of the exercise is to keep checking the crowd’s “temperature” until you get the result you want. And what apparatchiks want, always and everywhere, is to put process above product. You can hear that in the iron-in-velvet tones of the Occupiers’ touchy-feely vocabulary:
Peng Dehuai, another politician who couldn't achieve consensus in his favor. "How do we feel about Congressman John Lewis addressing the assembly at this time?"
“The purpose is to kick-start a democratic process in which no human being is more valuable than any other human being.
“This is not a vote, this is just how you feel.”
"Allowing Senator [sic] Lewis to speak does not make him a better human being. It's just that we respect the work that John Lewis has done and that we respect the position he holds in the government we want to change.”
“This is a democratic process. There is a time on the agenda for other business. I propose we let John Lewis speak after we've gotten through the rest of the agenda.”
“Mic check! Mic Check! Mic check! This assembly just voted by consensus to follow the process that we're using. Therefore we will continue with the agenda. Mic check! Mic check! This group makes its decision by consensus!”
Most dismaying of all, nobody in the crowd seems aware that they’re enacting a joke from Life of Brian – and if you can’t trust a bunch of miseducated white people to know Monty Python bits, the movement is in serious trouble:
The Occupiers have every right to run their own program of events, and not giving another platform to a politician is, in and of itself, laudable. But to pretend that the program of events is the work of a leaderless consensus rather than of interested parties is wimpy and disingenuous.
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Intelligent Investing
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10/10/2011 @ 6:27PM |1,851 views
Blink And You Missed It: Anonymous Attacks NYSE
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisbar...-attacks-nyse/
Last week, I wrote about Anonymous’s proclamation of a Wall Street invasion in support of the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protest, promising a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the New York Stock Exchange. “We choose to declare our war against the New York Stock Exchange,” said a message from the shadowy activist group’s unofficial messenger. “On October 10th, NYSE shall be erased from the Internet. On October 10th, expect a day that will never, ever, be forgotten.”
Unanimous, Anonymous was not. The rallying cry drew out criticism from supporters and detractors alike, with most decrying the effort. At best, the detractors said, it was a poorly planned attempt by juvenile members of the group. At worst, it was a covert attempt on behalf of the government to draw out Anonymous members and undermine the validity of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Some Anonymous members even took it upon themselves to issue a retraction of sorts – a warning to those who would take the message seriously.
15 images Gallery: Occupy Wall Street
“Recently something very disturbing has come to our attention. You must take all notices and information claiming to be ‘Anonymous’ with a grain of salt. Consider EVERYTHING,” said the message, posted in online forums and on my post. “Operation Invade Wall Street is…a fake planted operation by law enforcement and cyber crime agencies in order to get you to undermine the Occupy Wall Street movement.”
The response shed light on the difficulty of presenting a united front while maintaining a dispersed and pseudonymous hierarchy. It’s tough to get people to take you seriously — despite repeated successful operations carried out under the Anonymous name — when the prevailing advice is to approach every announcement with doubt. The ensuing confusion did little to alleviate those worries.
AnonMessage, the YouTube account on which the initial threats were aired, issued a follow-up video on Saturday October 8th, announcing the cancelation of the attacks. The video took responsibility for falsely promoting a fake operation, pointing out obvious flaws in the plan. Among those flaws? The fact that, as I pointed out in my post, “Anonymous would find it completely unnecessary to use a Distributed Denial Of Service attack on NYSE.com as it does not control or contribute to any stock trade or exchange of bonds within ‘the 1%.’”
Seemingly put to bed, the issue was then reawakened by a further follow-up, posted later on Saturday. The last video revealed further divisions within the hacktivist group, announcing that some members of the group still planned to carry out a DDoS attack on NYSE.com. “I am the messenger. As the messenger, I cannot take sides. I am not supporting or opposing Invade Wall Street, and it was wrong of me to say that the operation has been terminated,” said the video. “I am here to clarify that factions of Anonymous are going with the operation. Other factions are opposing it.”
The outcome, predictably, was not a bang, but a whimper. As the Chicago Tribune reports NYSE.com was taken down for 1-2 minutes from 3:35 p.m. to 3:37 p.m. A spokesman confirmed that trading was not affected. By the standards set by the group, it would be difficult to classify the so called Operation Invade Wall Street as anything but a disappointment.
In the end, though, this is not a big blow to Anonymous; it will likely be forgotten, dismissed as the work of inexperienced rogue members with a poor grasp of NYSE.com’s function within the stock market. The Occupy Wall Street movement has seen increasing publicity and Anonymous will likely continue to demonstrate its support in heretofore unannounced ways. But today, NYSE was not erased from the Internet.
Last edited by troung; 11 Oct 11, at 05:53.
To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway
This particular group of protestors is as diverse as they come, way too mixed up to generalize into one solid ideology. However, there is a huge chunk of people with legitimate grievances (unemployed college graduates, laid off workers, struggling middle class), yet others that are there really just for the "lulz" if you will. If the legitimate protestors start coordinating their demands in a more coherent way, and strongly unite under one banner which truly represents the 99%, they could very much have a very substantial effect on the bickering and feuding in Congress...perhaps the wakeup call everyone's looking for? Hope I'm not being too optimistic...
a pretty good description of how i feel the movement. it is pretty much the left's answer to the Tea Party, and i don't mean that in a good way.
EDIT: BTW, this piece isn't perfect. note the misleading use of one year's tax take comparison vice the total outstanding debt.
---
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/op...radicals.html?
The Milquetoast Radicals
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: October 10, 2011
The U.S. economy is probably going to stink for a few more years. It is beset by short-term problems (low consumer demand, uncertain housing prices, too much debt) and long-term problems (wage stagnation, rising health care costs, eroding human capital).
Realistically, not much is going to be done to address the short-term problems, but we can at least use this winter of recuperation to address the country’s underlying structural ones. Do tax reform, fiscal reform, education reform and political reform so that when the economy finally does recover the prosperity is deep, broad and strong.
Unfortunately, the country has been wasting this winter of recuperation. Nothing of consequence has been achieved over the past two years. Instead, there have been a series of trivial sideshows. It’s as if people can’t keep their minds focused on the big things. They get diverted by scuffles that are small, contentious and symbolic.
Take the Occupy Wall Street movement. This uprising was sparked by the magazine Adbusters, previously best known for the 2004 essay, “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?” — an investigative report that identified some of the most influential Jews in America and their nefarious grip on policy.
If there is a core theme to the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is that the virtuous 99 percent of society is being cheated by the richest and greediest 1 percent.
This is a theme that allows the people in the 99 percent to think very highly of themselves. All their problems are caused by the nefarious elite.
Unfortunately, almost no problem can be productively conceived in this way. A group that divides the world between the pure 99 percent and the evil 1 percent will have nothing to say about education reform, Medicare reform, tax reform, wage stagnation or polarization. They will have nothing to say about the way Americans have overconsumed and overborrowed. These are problems that implicate a much broader swath of society than the top 1 percent.
They will have no realistic proposal to reduce the debt or sustain the welfare state. Even if you tax away 50 percent of the income of those making between $1 million and $10 million, you only reduce the national debt by 1 percent, according to the Tax Foundation. If you confiscate all the income of those making more than $10 million, you reduce the debt by 2 percent. You would still be nibbling only meekly around the edges.
The 99-versus-1 frame is also extremely self-limiting. If you think all problems flow from a small sliver of American society, then all your solutions are going to be small, too. The policy proposals that have been floating around the Occupy Wall Street movement — a financial transfer tax, forgiveness for student loans — are marginal.
The Occupy Wall Street movement may look radical, but its members’ ideas are less radical than those you might hear at your average Rotary Club. Its members may hate capitalism. A third believe the U.S. is no better than Al Qaeda, according to a New York magazine survey, but since the left no longer believes in the nationalization of industry, these “radicals” really have no systemic reforms to fall back on.
They are not the only small thinkers. President Obama promises not to raise taxes on the bottom 98 percent. The Occupy-types celebrate the bottom 99 percent. Republicans promise not to raise taxes on the bottom 100 percent. Through these and other pledges, leaders of all three movements are hedging themselves in. They are severely limiting the scope of their proposed solutions.
The thing about the current moment is that the moderates in suits are much more radical than the pierced anarchists camping out on Wall Street or the Tea Party-types.
Look, for example, at a piece Matt Miller wrote for The Washington Post called “The Third Party Stump Speech We Need.” Miller is a former McKinsey consultant and Clinton staffer. But his ideas are much bigger than anything you hear from the protesters: slash corporate taxes and raise energy taxes, aggressively use market forces and public provisions to bring down health care costs; raise capital requirements for banks; require national service; balance the budget by 2018.
Other economists, for example, have revived the USA Tax, first introduced in 1995 by Senators Sam Nunn and Pete Domenici. This would replace the personal income and business tax regime with a code that allows unlimited deduction for personal savings and business investment. It’s a consumption tax through the back door, which would clean out loopholes and weaken lobbyists.
Don’t be fooled by the clichés of protest movements past. The most radical people today are the ones that look the most boring. It’s not about declaring war on some nefarious elite. It’s about changing behavior from top to bottom. Let’s occupy ourselves.
Last edited by astralis; 11 Oct 11, at 17:49.
The human mind cannot grasp the causes of phenomena in the aggregate. But the need to find these causes is inherent in man’s soul. And the human intellect, without investigating the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions of phenomena, any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, snatches at the first, the most intelligible approximation to a cause, and says: “This is the cause!"
-Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
I guess I'll just keep saying this
THE NATIONAL DEBT IS NOT THE SOURCE OF OUR CURRENT MARCOECONOMIC PROBLEMS.
No Federal law forced banksters to lend to people who they knew perfectly well would not be able to pay their mortgages once the rates adjusted.
Banksters and their minions went nuts lending because they KNEW they were not going to be holding those mortgages in their portfolios when the rates adjusted and people could not longer pay them.
They KNEW that those problems would fall upon those buyers of bonds created with bundled mortgages.
You can blame our government for ALLOWING this to happen, (and I will agree with you 100%) but you cannot tell me that the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT forced the banks to do this.
I'm still trying to understand why the hell student loans should be forgiven. What is the rational, the logic and the reasoning behind this? Is there even any?
Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.
Are you saying then, to let the giant corporations, and the banks do exactly what they want? And if that leads to bubbles and busts, and maybe even economic depressions, which were a somewhat regular occurrence in the 19th century (I assume that you are against bailouts as well), just accept it as a part of a free market system, since any intervention is just much worse?Liberals hate large corporations and monopolistic power, yet they want bigger government and total power for the government made up of the same greedy bastards who run the evil corporations. As if somehow a person magically transforms from an imperfect human being to something that is divine just by working for the government.
Yeah. Don't trust the banks, don't put your money in the banks. They'll have less money to play with and will be able to cause less damage. And if a couple of them go belly-up, too bad. They gambled and lost. I firmly believe that over the long term, the Invisible Hand does actually make sure that things more or less reach an equilibrium. No one can predict the market one way or the other, playing the market is another form of gambling. If you gamble you should be prepared to lose
Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.
BR,
from the students' perspective, self-interest. dressed up as stimulus (although its stimulative value is very low-- if you forgive $50K in loans, i highly doubt it will stimulate $50K in spending otherwise...).
like i said, this is the left's version of the Tea Party, with its most fervent demographic of young, relatively well-off college-educated urban-dwellers vice the Tea Party's relatively well-off retirees.
The human mind cannot grasp the causes of phenomena in the aggregate. But the need to find these causes is inherent in man’s soul. And the human intellect, without investigating the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions of phenomena, any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, snatches at the first, the most intelligible approximation to a cause, and says: “This is the cause!"
-Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
It pisses me off, especially as someone paying their own way through college. Bunch of stuck up, whingeing, whining, sniveling crybabies. You wanna go to Columbia or Harvard, be prepared to pay >$50K a year. Can't hack it, go to community or state college. I go to a state sponsored university and have one of the best (definitely in the top 5) communications experts in the world as a lecturer.
Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.
BR,
hey, i agree with you.It pisses me off, especially as someone paying their own way through college. Bunch of stuck up, whingeing, whining, sniveling crybabies.
OTOH, you should be showing the same anger at well-off retirees demanding the rest of the electorate kowtow towards its pet demands as well...
The human mind cannot grasp the causes of phenomena in the aggregate. But the need to find these causes is inherent in man’s soul. And the human intellect, without investigating the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions of phenomena, any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, snatches at the first, the most intelligible approximation to a cause, and says: “This is the cause!"
-Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
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