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Forums - General Discussion - Occupy Wall Street Protests not working? What do you think?

 

How much of an impact is OWS having?

Can't hear them over the sound of my Ferrari 60 24.10%
 
Just a news story, no visible results 82 32.93%
 
Helping change minds, it's a start 68 27.31%
 
Change is on the horizon, just you wait 27 10.84%
 
I feel the impact already 6 2.41%
 
Can't hear them over the... 6 2.41%
 
Total:249
lordmandeep on 21 November 2011

Well Jeff Sachs is the type of person that should become a leader in the OWS movement as his ideas makes sense and gives clear a message on how we can reform.


Also my friend I have seen the assemblies online, seriously they are incredibly stupid.

 

 

Also OWS camps are now pretty much gone in Canada, Toronto ruled the camps are illegal and only Montreal has them now.



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Jexy on 21 November 2011
Onibaka said:
Of course USA is a Democracy.

USA is a Democratic Republic. Accept it.

It is a contemporaneous concept. A democracy is not necessarely the same as it was in classic greece.

And the Republic part is also not a perfect replica of Roman Republic. I may be wrong but there are probably influences of Enlightenment (the same ideals that culminated in French Revolution) on Constitution and posterior laws.

True democracies have everyone voting on everything, not elected officials, hence the republic part of our country.  True democracies can't run past a few hundred people, because everyone is wanting their own things... oh right, like congress and the senate do now :p  Hence the non-passing and blame-gaming of the current failed bi-partisan effort to reduce the debt.



BOOM!  FACE KICK!

lordmandeep on 21 November 2011

frankly the Problem with American govt is too much democracy...

lol...

That is the opinion here in Canada, the idea that people of the same party as the leader would vote against him on important bills is simply unheard of here.



Kasz216 on 21 November 2011
fordy said:
Kasz216 said:
fordy said:

Tony_Stark said:

Because the US is a republic, not a democracy, mob rule does not apply here

Until the politicians realise that, unless they appeal to a (still growing) mob, their chances of staying in congress may be in jeopardy.

 

Tony_Stark said:

Add to that the fact that there is no coherant message, crime, racism, hate, and hipocracy runs rampant in this small group of eco-terrorist wannabe's.

Mmhm somebody's been listening to the wrong news sources again. do you know what they had the audacity to do? When Mayor bloomberg went to close Zuccotti Park in order to "clean the park", the protestors cleaned it for them. How DARE THEY! Oh and the Yom Kippur sessions they had? Oh, how racist and insensitive of them, appealing to all of those people!!

Tony_Stark said:

 It's not surprising the public for the most part, has rejected them.

A United Technologies/National Journal Congressional poll found that 59 percent of Americans agree with the movement while 31 percent disagree.

An October Quinnipiac University poll of New York City voters found that 67 percent of New Yorkers approved of the movement with 23 percent disapproving.

A NY1-Marist Poll released November 1st showed 44 percent of New York voters supported the Occupy Wall Street movement, while only 21 percent supported the Tea Party.

No, the public supports the movement, even moreso than the Tea Party.

Tony_Stark said:

 

Not Lately they don't.  They support the Tea party more.  Quick tip.  Political protest movements ALWAYS have HUGE popularity when they start off, which then drops off as people learn more about the protesters. 

"The Occupy Wall Street movement is not wearing well with voters across the country. Only 33% now say that they are supportive of its goals, compared to 45% who say they oppose them. That represents an 11 point shift in the wrong direction for the movement's support compared to a month ago when 35% of voters said they supported it and 36% were opposed. Most notably independents have gone from supporting Occupy Wall Street's goals 39/34, to opposing them 34/42.

Voters don't care for the Tea Party either, with 42% saying they support its goals to 45% opposed.  But asked whether they have a higher opinion of the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street movement the Tea Party wins out 43-37,"

 

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/11/occupy-wall-street-favor-fading.html


So at first, you say nobody knows what the occupy movement stands for, now you say they're against it. You do realise that you destroyed your own argument there as this being a legitimate and accurate poll, don't you? How can someone support or oppose something that apparently nobody knows anything about?


Your joking right?  It's very easy to be against a confused muddled group that seems to stand for nothing and everything and really does nothing but mass, not have a clear point and cause tons of things like an increase in sexual assaults.



Kasz216 on 21 November 2011
Final-Fan said:
Kasz216 said:
Final-Fan said:

Please Kasz, your post assumes the people will be just as alert to politicians' actions as the corporations.  "All the corporate money in the world" won't make politicans stand by BP when they caused the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but if it's not making headlines ...

Owning politicians means corporations can do serious damage to our country (for short-term or special interest gain) and all they have to do is keep a majority of people in the dark about it.  Or shit, if they get stupid politicians (not rare), they can just buy off the next one when the first one gets run out on a rail.  (I'm sure you know the big companies spend on both sides.) 

Just as alert?  No.   Still alert enough though to detect anything big... which generally is the stuff that's "Against the people".

Just about anything particularly important that particularly hurts the majority of people is untouchable.  All the little subsidies and things they do I don't think they see as "against the people" nor do most people.  It's justified to most people and most polticians because in general they get won over by the arguement.

For example, you are one of the people who think the 2008 crisis was caused by the repeal of glass steagal right?  If I remember correctly that was done during the "Banking Modernization Act" which received massive bipartisian support and had basically nobody voting against it, and in general people thinking it'd be good for the economy... and banks likely thought that as well.

Everytime there has been an attempt to get lobbying money out of Washington, at best it's failed, and  othertimes it's often made things worse.

Why?  Because you are essentially asking the bribed to stop themselves from being bribed.

The only way to stop bribery from the highest levels of government is to take away their power over the small things that can be influnced. 

A lot of little things get by because they aren't big enough to affect enough people, even when the people who do care mostly think it's bad. 

The banks probably thought it would be good for them, and IMO there's a problem there in terms of taking the long view. 

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd hope that many politicians would prefer to see less lobbying money in politics ... they just don't want to be the one to get less of it than the other guy.  Therefore they wouldn't have a problem with trying to evenhandedly close the floodgates.  Of course, that's a lot easier said than done, and real reform in this area might earn the authors a certain amount of backlash from those groups.  But that's how the bribed could stop themselves from being bribed ... because the bribery is part of a competition with other bribed people.  If they cooperated, I'd think they could fix the problem without disadvantaging theselves. 

See, I think that when politicians see the choice as for companies and against the people, they side for the people everytime.  It's just most legislation doesn't look like that to them.  It looks more like one corporation vs another.

Otherwise they'd be too worried it'd get brought up against them... the smallest stupidist things can kill you in politics.

As for less lobbying money in politics, i'd suggest your wrong for three reasons.

1) A few senators have been trying this since, Clinton, and there seems to have been massive problems/loopholes added to every legislation that tried to tackle this.

2) Incumbents almost always have a funding advantage because incumbents always win.

3) In general the studies done by the freakanomics crew actually tend to show that money doesn't effect your electability that much, and really, you get more money when your more electable.  I mean, if Bill Gates came in and decided to spend his whole fortune to get Hulk Hogan elected as President... it isn't going to work.



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kingwandymion on 21 November 2011

hulkanomics would probably be worse than reaganomics, brother.



Kasz216 on 21 November 2011
kingwandymion said:
hulkanomics would probably be worse than reaganomics, brother.

Really I think we coulda substituted him for George W Bush and got the same results but with far better promos.  I mean speaches.



lordmandeep on 21 November 2011

Ronald Reagan is more praised for raising America's hopes and dream and confidence imo rather then his economic policy.

If you look at how America saw it self in the late 70's compared to the late 80's big change...



Mr Khan on 21 November 2011
Marks said:
These protesters are protesting all the wrong things which is why I'm sick of this occupy wall street thing. It should be occupy the whitehouse/federal reserve/congress...not wall street aka the people that create jobs, wealth, etc.

But they don't create jobs and wealth. They just sit around trading each other funny money and don't do a damn thing to increase actual value. That belongs with entrepreneurs and people who are actually on the ground and, you know, making things or providing services.

These people are like a new aristocracy. Like the gentlemen farmers of old who just sat around and did whatever they pleased off the backs of the peons that served them, these people do nothing but leech off society.

The Middle Class and some of the more productive regions of the upper class are right to desire revolt against Wall Street, to speak nothing of this nation's much-abused underclass. The people who work need to strike at the Finance sector and rapidly curb its excesses



Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.

Onibaka on 21 November 2011
Jexy said:
Onibaka said:
Of course USA is a Democracy.

USA is a Democratic Republic. Accept it.

It is a contemporaneous concept. A democracy is not necessarely the same as it was in classic greece.

And the Republic part is also not a perfect replica of Roman Republic. I may be wrong but there are probably influences of Enlightenment (the same ideals that culminated in French Revolution) on Constitution and posterior laws.

True democracies have everyone voting on everything, not elected officials, hence the republic part of our country.  True democracies can't run past a few hundred people, because everyone is wanting their own things... oh right, like congress and the senate do now :p  Hence the non-passing and blame-gaming of the current failed bi-partisan effort to reduce the debt.


Yes, true democracies are imposible. But we have an "contemporary democracy" which accepts representants. Also the definition of "government" and "citizen" changed over time.