Tag Archives: Occupy Raleigh

College Education: Which Majors Pay The Most

So, a little bit of live blogging.  Last week in the comments I posited that the highest paying Majors were not the Majors that graduated the most students.

Let’s look.

According to Time, the top 10 paying Majors are:

Highest-Earning Majors

Thoughts?

7 of the top 7 Majors are engineering.  8 of the top 10.

The other two are very technical majors.

Graduates?

Top 10 Most Popular Majors:

Most Popular Majors

  • Business Management and Administration
  • General Business
  • Accounting
  • Nursing
  • Psychology
  • Elementary Education
  • Marketing and Marketing Research
  •  General Education
  • English Language and Literature
  • Communications

Not one in common.  Not one.

My advice to Occupy?

Go to school and study a discipline that pays.

Occupy Raleigh: Nice Insight

I got this from Occupy Raleigh’s Facebook page.

Very refreshing to see some semblance of non-partisan content.

The Top 1%

Today a friend of mine got a new job.  She didn’t get a promotion, just a new job at the same level she’s been at for the last, oh, 8 years at least. No raise.  No more vacation.  Bonus is the same.

Now, to be sure, she is a VP in her company and is paid well.  But she travels extensively.  She has factories in Asia, Europe and the Americas.  I would estimate that she is gone about 30% of the time.

Her job requires her to work nearly 70 a week minimum; often more than that.  Further, the times of the day that she is working are sporadic; foreign mangers often are not awake in American daylight hours.

The best part?  The was told Friday that she would have to take this new job.  Friday.  And she was told that she would have to move from Seattle to Bismark.  1,200 miles.  This represents the 4th such move, dramatic and required, that she has made in the last 15 years.

She is the 1%.

She deserves it.

Occupy Raleigh Protesters Arrested

Apparently the protesters aren’t aware that private property is, you know, private:

Raleigh, N.C. — Six members of the local anti-Wall Street “Occupy” movement were arrested Friday afternoon after staging a protest at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh.

Mall police arrested the protesters around 2:45 p.m. when the group began to demonstrate in the mall’s food court, Sughrue said.

I can’t help but feel dismayed by this.  Somewhere, at some point, some school failed these people.

This Is How Occupy Raleigh Rolls

Okay, so, I like to engage in debate.  Most especially I enjoy debating people that I tend to disagree with.  I suspect that this has to do with the fact that there is little to gain in debating someone you actually see eye to eye with.  This creates a condition where I only really interact with people who are not necessarily open to my point of view.

However, most of the time, I stress most, I engage with people who “put it out there”.  That is, I’ll engage people through this media.  Blogs, chat rooms or even Facebook.  I typically don’t engage friends, I try not to at least, family, or co-workers. Each to their own in their own daily lives.

So, when I see Occupy Raleigh, a group of people who have banded together to make a point, I might wanna engage them.  I might wanna challenge their facts, their assumptions and their solutions and conclusions.  This becomes more true as they take advantage of public largess and organize in a public manner.

They protest daily.  They have created a blog.  They have a Facebook page.

They encourage dialogue and discourse.

But those are just words.  You see, the Occupy Raleigh movement i n specific, and I suspect the type of individual involved in general, suffers dissent not at all.  They will do everything, EVERYTHING, to suppress your voice, your opinion and your viewpoint unless it conforms to their ideology.  The tolerant Left is a massively repressive regime when it comes to dissent.

They march in protest of CEO speaking at Universities here in Raleigh.  They claim they are denied freedom of expression when they are yanked out of the room.  But when it is THEIR forum, THEIR stage, and anyone tries to speak out against the mob, they shut you down.

I have long avoided confronting the Occupy Raleigh folks.  Some have come here and I try to make my case; I stay away from their forums.  However, the other night I decided to create a Facebook presence for Pino.  I don’t mind these freaks knowing who I am, but I don’t wanna expose my Facebook community to these guys if I can help it.  And I posted a ling on their wall.

It was deleted within 20 minutes.

Then I commented one of their posts.  Nothing untoward, same tone I use here.

I was called a troll.

Later I defended my position and let well enough alone.

Tonight, I got an email telling me that they had replied to my post.  I went to Facebook and they had deleted all of my comments and I’m now unable to post comments.

The left image is from my personal page, the right image from my Pino page.

If you dissent, you will be silenced.

This people, is how the Left rolls.  It’s how they’ve ALWAYS rolled.  They claim tolerance and compassion and understanding, but when those same qualities are demanded of them, they balk and and refuse.  They censor, the repress, the silence and they are brutal in the totality of it.

These people don’t represent the 99%.  They don’t wanna hear open and honest debate.  They aren’t about new ideas.  These people are Marxists.  They are Stateists.  These people are hard core Liberal actors bent on changing the way in which America was created.  They don’t like risk and reward.  They don’t appreciate Individual Liberty.

These organizations are damage.  And reasonable people route around damage.

Occupy Raleigh

The Occupy Movement gathers strength amongst it’s supporters from the fact that they claim to represent the 99%.  That means that they feel 99% of American’s are being fairly depicted by these people’s actions.  That somehow, the words and ideas and thoughts and thesis of this movement is embraced by the 99% of American’s that are not the richest 1%.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Much of us not in the top 1% realize what it means to succeed in America, what it takes to make a life that is better than the one given to you as a child.  It requires risk, sacrifice and hard work.  It means that things we might otherwise hold dear to us will have to be passed by or delayed in order to achieve the goal.

And sometimes that doesn’t work out.  For some, it means that a life is spent in futile frustration agonizing over business ideas that never took hold.  For others it might mean a life of unrealized potential; an otherwise qualified corporate President is relegated to a life of middle management due to circumstances. And, in some cases, it means that decisions that are made are wrong.  Or if not wrong, less right.

But in aggregate, the fact that Americans all, poorest to the richest, have the best life ever afforded any group of people belonging to a nation in the history of the world is proof enough that Capitalism is the greatest anti-poverty program going.

But that isn’t enough.  For some, they have to make the papers, the news, the limelight.  They have to scream out that the world just isn’t fair and that somehow, of course, it’s not their fault.

And that’s where the Occupy Movement comes in:

RALEIGH — Protesters from the occupy movement disrupted a speech at N.C. State University Wednesday afternoon by the head of Wells Fargo Bank, but the program resumed after police escorted about a dozen protesters from the building.

There were no arrests during or following the outburst that occurred about 4:45 p.m..

John G. Stumpf, the president and CEO of Wells Fargo, was on campus as part of an executive lecture series sponsored by NCSU’s Poole College of Management.

His remarks were disrupted when protesters scattered amongst the audience of about 400 stood and started speaking. One woman protester began a speech and the others repeated and amplified her words.

The protesters said, “John Stumpf, we won’t take your home, but we will take a moment of your time. Your leadership has led to the death of the American dream. Wells Fargo is guilty of widespread predatory lending and holds over $5.7 billion in student debt.”

I suspect that John G. Stumpf has created more jobs in his singular life that the number of jobs that will be created in aggregate of the Occupiers escorted from that room.  Further, the benefit to society by having Wells Fargo around is lost on many, if not all, of those Occupiers.

Proof?

They hold it against this man that his bank holds $5.7 billion in student debt.

I ask you, how willing would YOU be to borrow money to some kid to get a degree in Eastern European Social Studies with a focus on Slovakian history?

Occupy Capitalism

A most excellent development in the whole Occupy movement has occurred here in Raleigh.  See, the young socialists had been thinking that they could just camp on public grounds; the capital being public, the idea was they could just stay there.

Well, it turns out that the good people of North Carolina don’t want the Occupy people clogging up and cluttering up the State Capital with their nonsense and noise.  The city and the State has said that they have to move on.

So, they did.  And where did they move to?

Raleigh, N.C. — Protesters with the Occupy Raleigh movement moved into a more permanent base camp last week, thanks to a local business owner who saw his new tenants as a capitalist opportunity.

Rob Baumgart, who owns a Sprint and Nextel sales company called Chatterbox Communications, is leasing a 2,500-square-foot lot near the corner of West and Edenton streets, not far from downtown. He’s charging $400 a month to the group of about 15 people who have braved the cold and rain to camp out for their cause.

It’s what any small businessman who believes in making money would do, he said.

“That’s $400 that I didn’t have last month, and if the city allows me to continue doing it for 12 months, that’s $4,800,” Baumgart said Tuesday. “I don’t know a single American who would turn down $4,800 a year.”

Excellent news!

The young protesters protesting the evils of capitalism are now going to get a first hand look at running something.  See, ow that they pay rent, they are going to expect that members contribute.  See, every month that rent check is gonna come due and they are gonna need their friends to chip in.  Or but out.

We’ve seen how this plays out in other OWS encampments around the country.  We see in NYC that the haves and the have nots don’t always see eye to eye.  In Portland Oregon folks have been angry that people who don’t contribute to the movement are glomming on to the free food and shelter.

The sooner these kids can see that organizations require real leaders, the better they, and we, will be.

OWS and North Carolina

The movement has been active for nearly 2 months now.  We still don’t know what they want, but we know they’re mad.  We know who they’re mad at, but we don’t know what they’d do different if the they were the they.

Some of us resonate with some of the anger:

  • Bank bailouts
  • Auto industry restructure
  • Government involvement in causing the housing crisis

The difference between the 53% and the 99%, however, is that we’re out there gettin’er done day in and day out.  And when we ain’t doin’ what we do, when we DO decide to petition our government, we are clear in our goals, we make those goals known and then we go home.

Anyway, what does North Carolina think of the Occupy movement:

Of those familiar with Occupy Wall Street, 45 percent hold an unfavorable opinion of the movement, and the same number reported a favorable opinion. Thirty-two percent of respondents consider themselves supporters of the movement, and 26 percent consider themselves opponents.

I’d say it’s evenly split.

And for my own prediction?  I’ll go on the record to say that this number will continue to fall.  It’ll fall until the movement collapses and they’ll be no more movement.

OWS: Occupy Raleigh : Disabled Woman Arrested

The big news here in Raleigh in the last few days was the arrest of 8 protesters down at the State Capital grounds.  Apparently they were on the sidewalk in front of the Capital and the Capital Police asked them to leave.  I’m assuming, dangerous I know, that they were occupying the sidewalk and not just using it to go from the actual occupation to the Apple store where they could get more iPads, iPods, iPhones, batteries and a MiFi hot spot so that they could use Facebook and Twitter and WordPress to keep people abreast of their actions.

Anyway, I digress.

The big news wasn’t the arrest of the 8 people.  Everyone expects these guys to get arrested in some number now and then.  In fact, I suspect for some of ’em, it’s a badge of honor to be arrested for protesting and somehow adds to that individual prestige within the movement.  Again, whatever.  The big news was the complain by the Occupy Raleigh folks that the police somehow crossed a line by asking a woman, who is disabled, to disperse as well.  As if!

The whole idea, near as I can tell, of this whole movement is that we should all be treated fairly.  We should all be expected to contribute and we should all be expected to obtain compensation.  There is no special exceptions for anyone.  So it seems strange to me, but not unexpected given the Leftists tendencies and strategies of this movement, that they would call “foul” that one of the 99% be expected to abide by the laws just as the rest of us.

But no, what we get is shock and disbelief.  As if the cop was just such a monster.

And we get it from the paper too:

The arrests of eight people Thursday at an Occupy Raleigh protest did not sit well with Mayor Charles Meeker.

Meeker said it was his understanding that Raleigh police would get involved only “if there were an assault on a Capitol Police Officer or other similar disturbance.”

But a different scenario played out. City officers aided Capitol Police in arresting eight people, including a disabled woman sitting on a chair, after the demonstrators refused to leave a sidewalk in front of the Capitol.

Now we are hearing, from the newspaper mind you, that she was sitting on a chair, not the sidewalk.  More and more spin and perception changing.

But what does the woman herself have to say?

I respect this.  I disagree with her on many levels, but I respect it.

She admitted she purposely acted in such a manner that would result in her arrest.

The police were polite and offered her an “out”.

She wants no special treatment as a result of her disability.

Of course this’ll be ignored by the Occupiers.  They’ll ignore that an individual has the right to rights.  And this brings with it the right to be arrested for unlawful conduct.

This just goes to prove my point.  These people do NOT want a level playing field.  They want a tilted playing field just as surely as anyone else might want the field tilted.  No, trust me, these occupiers just want the tilt to be in their favor.

OWS and Corporations

I’m guessing that the OWS crowd doesn’t like the fact that corporations are viewed as people.  With free speech rights and the ability to donate to campaigns or to purchase advertising.

I wonder if they think those same rules should apply to OWS or not?

I’m guessing they think that the rules they want applied to corporations are not the rules that want applied to themselves.