Tag Archives: OWS

An Open Letter To Occupy Raleigh

I want to be very clear; I openly mock the Occupy movement.

There isn’t one single characteristic about #OWS that distinguishes it from any other leftist movement.  Listening to the rhetoric coming from Occupy you would not be able to identify whether or not your are listening to:

  1. A Greenpeace protest to save seals in Greenland.
  2. A university protest to bring attention to the wages of house keepers on campus.
  3. NAACP protests concerned about the treatment of an individual.
  4. A communist party meeting discussing the evils of profits.

There is nothing that distinguishes you from anything that we’ve already seen.

It’s anger unleashed on the world with no discernible focus.  There is no clear indication that you have a point.

You are open to mockery.

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Occupy Raleigh Continues To Struggle: Theft And Rent

Occupy in general and Occupy Raleigh continues to struggle.  The message has been lost, the momentum has been dramatically reduced.  The reasonable folks making up the movement have left; we’re left with the rest.

Across the nation we hear of vandalism, rape, murder, trespassing and theft.  The movement is dead.

And here in Raleigh, there are two examples:

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Occupy Wall Street: Seattle Style

I’ve often referred to the Occupy crowd as a bunch of stinky hippies.  Not really ’cause I think that they are hippies or even stink; mostly because I’m a hippie of sorts and I enjoy poking fun at myself.  But I do think the movement is largely made up of folks who find themselves in a condition that is largely of their own doing.  And then they’re mad at that condition.

I stumbled across this video from Seattle where a gaggle of the gentle Occupy movement took over a house that was under renovation and made it their own.  And by “made it their own” I mean they destroyed it.  To the point that the city began to cite the real owner and he had to call in the SWAT team to remove them.

These people and this movement are not serious.  They are not concerned about making positive change in society or creating opportunities that would better allow decent hardworking people to better themselves.  Rather, these people are interested in forwarding an agenda that allows them to live off the labor of others while they recline in ease and contemplate life.

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 College Campuses

Unbelievable.

If the Occupy crowd wants to know why they are graduating with mountains of debt and no viable job options to pay it down, they have to look no further than their own existence:

Occupy Wall Street is becoming a teachable moment for New York City college students.

New York University plans to offer two classes next semester on the protest movement, whose participants frequently marched and rallied around the school’s Greenwich Village campus this fall.

The for-credit undergraduate class, offered through the university’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, examines economy and culture. The class has a rotating focus, and for the coming semester, it will be called “Why Occupy Wall Street? The History and Politics of Debt and Finance.”

I bet employers all over the nation are looking to hire kids with THAT on their resume.

Occupy Wall Street Does Something Right

I have been harsh in my critique of the Occupy crowd.  In reality, the majority of the protesters are unemployed kids who’ve been coddled through life and feel that the world owes them …. something.  They don’t even know what.

Whatever.

I was very surprised today to read something that shocked me.  An idea generated from the 99% that could get even me to join in.  They wanna start a bank:

Members of Occupy SF announced their ambitious plans to turn protesters into bankers by creating the People’s Reserve Credit Union. According to Occupy SF’s Facebook page:

The goal of this project is to encourage San Francisco residents, businesses, as well as nonprofit and city agencies to keep their money out of the big banks and to redistribute that money locally. Initial services will include micro-loans for the working poor and homeless, and subsidized student loans at low interest rates.


This is EXCELLENT news.  And not only because I think that young energetic people who have nothing better to do with their time should get a job, but because I have long LONG begged for the Leftists of the world to unite and build a company, a non-profit, that would put their beliefs into action.

Wanna get food to poor people cheaper?  Open a not for profit grocery store.

Wanna make gasoline affordable?  Open a not for profit gas station.

Cars too expensive?  Open a car dealership?

Jobs for everyone and cheap shit too!

Even more impressive, in my mind, is the actual definition of a plan.  Something that the Left can’t do.  EVER.

Tax the rich, make them pay their fair share!

More money for education; you hate kids!

More money for homeless kids; you hate the poor!

But when asked how much that would be?  When would enough be enough?

Gotz.  Nada.  Nothing.  Blank “I went to Yale and learned bullshit” looks.

But these kids, they got game:

  • Accumulate capital assets of $7 million or more, through investments by different organizations, members, et al.
  • Open two credit union branches within the city of San Francisco. The first branch location in the mid-Market Street corridor , in the former Social Security Administration storefront (MOCD) , with the assistance of other local nonprofits. Each branch will have a cafe within it and a commercial kitchen available to rent.
  • The credit union will employ students and homeless, creating 60 part-time jobs.
  • Issue 300 to 500 micro-enterprise loans (max. $5,000).
  • Add 1,000 people overall to the city employment payroll.
  • Finance and start a food co-op large enough to support a neighborhood.

If THIS is what the 99% is talking about, count me in!

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.

Jon Stewart: Occupy Wall Street

It doesn’t matter the organization.  Or the society.  Or the group.

People stratify.

It is the nature of man to maximize self interest.  It’s bred into us through 1000’s of years of evolution.  We look out for ourselves.  And when ourselves are looked out for, we look out for “the us”.  We are tribal individuals.  We just are.

If you can find a system that changes humans from the selfish creatures we are to ones that live in “peace” and “harmony”, then we can talk about how better to arrange human society.  But until then, free and open markets are the single best way to organize ourselves.  If you don’t like human greed and our focus on the material thing, open a church or a synagogue or a mosque.  Something that speaks to improving a man’s character.  His inner self.

But don’t legislate it.

Which brings me to Jon Stewart.  And Occupy Wall Street.

Jon continues to be my 2nd source of comedy; Modern Family is hands down #1.  And in this episode he actually takes down the Occupy crowd.  To his credit.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-november-16-2011/occupy-wall-street-divided

I love the fact that the park has segmented into two classes.  And my favorite part is when the protester dweeb is rambling about “access to the goods of life”.  You know, the guy who is worried about “personal property” as opposed to “private property”.

Props to Jon for a humorous sketch on OWS.  Good stuff.

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.