'Occupy' types

[hooskins]

The tone of this whole thread is just representative of the state of our nation. Polarization, generalization and overall negativity reign supreme over actual intelligent debate.

[Chico23231]

Originally Posted by Lotus

Profile much?

lol

[JoeRedskin]

Originally Posted by NC_Skins

You mean fraud isn't breaking the law? Let me quote you what friend of mine said who is in the financial industry.

...

Sounds like fraud to me. Nothing different from this and a Ponzi scheme.

“Sounds like fraud” to you? That’s good enough for me!! Let’s just skip the whole charges, trial, judge & jury thing – lock’em up! Better yet, let's get a posse together and just go door to door shooting people. You make the list, I'll get the guns. No need to involve any government, lawyers or police. They'd just get in the way!

Sorry, but both examples cited by your "friend" (sub-prime loans, neg-am loans) were legal but risky loans for the banks to make and for consumers to take. Risky for the consumer and, as evidenced by the economic collapse, risky for the bank.

I am simply not going to dig it up, but there were plenty of individuals, both corporate and consumer, who went were criminally prosecuted for knowingly falsifying info (oh, wait, you cited one – see below). That’s fraud. On the other hand, selling pie-in-the-sky money to gullible people is not, never has been and never will be, illegal.

Nothing in either example required an economics degree to understand – people were told what they wanted to hear and they ate it up. For a while, everybody profited – not just the banks. Subsequently, everyone had to pay the piper – even the banks.

Originally Posted by NC_Skins

Nope. Nothing wrong with this. /facepalm

Actually, I agree - the disconnect between white collar crime & penalties and traditional “blue collar” crime penalties is something that needs to be addressed and corrected.

Following the OWS model for change, I’ll meet you in front of the Capital, you bring the bull-horn, I’ll bring the sign. I bet that will be much more effective than organizing an actual national grass-roots political movement, electing like minded people to enact practical and responsive legislation. Regardless of it's effectiveness, I'm sure our bull horn and sign will be easier. Can you remember to bring the Starbucks? Vente Latte please.

[Alvin Walton]

Originally Posted by hooskins

AW, so based on a few pictures and image the media wants to portray you will generalize on an entire movement? Nice. Ever heard of a significant statistical sample?

Its hardly a few pictures

This whole movement is so absurd it just begs to be mocked.

[hooskins]

AW, I see where you are coming from but I wouldn't dismiss the entire movement based on that. Just like the Tea Party movement shouldn't be dismissed based on some of their racist and religious nutjob followers. Again, see my previous post about the nature of this debate.

[Alvin Walton]

Originally Posted by hooskins

AW, I see where you are coming from but I wouldn't dismiss the entire movement based on that. Just like the Tea Party movement shouldn't be dismissed based on some of their racist and religious nutjob followers. Again, see my previous post about the nature of this debate.

Fair enough.

[NC_Skins]

Originally Posted by SirClintonPortis

Lol, NC_Skins. First things first, just what in the code did they violate? You can't charge someone with a crime without identifying the crime first.

Originally Posted by JoeRedskin

(1) Cite me the specific criminal statutes violated by specific individuals. Not some generic bull sh**. Facts & laws - specifics. When, where and how? Who, specifically, committed what specific crimes? Before you start depriving individuals of their liberty, I would suggest they are entitled to a little due process of the law.

I've got nothing on the above. What you both said is 100% true. I guess I'm more pissed there aren't laws and regulations just for this very thing. I do in fact believe many of these guys that got away (with millions and millions) did perpetrate fraud. Were there any investigations? I mean Congress sure went after MLB and steroid testing, but let those jackasses in Wall Street get a pass?

Originally Posted by JoeRedskin

And it was allllll "the corporations" fault - not all those taking advantage of easy money, applying for loans with inflated home values and false income information or purchasing homes on speculation.

Not so much corporations as it was the banking industry. Not all corporations abuses it's wealth and power to influence government to do their bidding. It's just the major ones. They were giving out loans to people they knew they couldn't afford them and even talking them into these loans. I stated you information from a friend of mine in the industry. However, his professional opinion was passed off as it weren't correct, yet nobody can refute anything he said. This is the key here.

It's important to remember that these bankers knew these were bad loans and that at some point it would all collapse. They didn't care. They saw it as a way to makes gobs of money...and they did.

If I go into a bank and make $60,000, and apply for a loan of 5 million dollars, why on earth would they give me that loan knowing good and damn well I'm going to default? Same thing they did here. Not only did they give out the bad loans, they enticed people by offering them low payments. It is ALL of their fault.

Why are we having to bail these asshats out? To big to fail my ass. The thing about "free market" and capitalism is that with the fail of one business, another will rise from the ashes.

Originally Posted by JoeRedskin

I get it. You hate corporations and rich people.

You keep saying this, but it doesn't make it true no matter how many times you repeat it. It's almost to the point that Slinging Sammy keeps wanting to refer to me as the Libs/Dem side of the fence. I talk about corporate corruption a lot because it's widespread and they are embedded within our government. I have a HUGE problem with that, much like I do with religion and our government.

I'll say this again. I have 0 problems with corporations as long as they aren't influencing our government/news media, abiding by regulations, and paying their fair share of taxes. Do I need to make this a sig?

Originally Posted by JoeRedskin

BTW - Is the same govt in which you have no faith that you would have collecting and performing the wealth distribution?

Not in the current set of assholes residing in DC. No.

Originally Posted by JoeRedskin

If those "who ran the economy/banking industry into the ground" did so out of epically bad judgment rather than through specific criminal actions - does the OWS still support criminal sanctions?

I don't believe it was done on "bad judgment". Those guys knew exactly what they were doing. No, I do not support punishment retroactive on crimes committed.

Originally Posted by JoeRedskin

(2, 3) So tax corporations and take property from their investors but don't let those self-same investors have a voice in government through the corporate entity. More simply, tax but allow no representation - seems to me that was the underlying theme of some other revolution in history.

Corporations are NOT people, no matter what idiot law might say they are. They are a business and should be treated as such. I think corporations should pay their fair share of tax, just like everybody else. This GE making 14 billion dollars, but paying 0 tax dollars is absurd.

Originally Posted by JoeRedskin

I suggest to you that the devil is in the details and that screaming "Corporations are bad" is ineffective, counter-productive and, mostly, just plain stupid.

I think you are reading what you want to. I've stated my thoughts on this and you continue to ignore what I've said and focus on the negative issues I bring up with corporations.

[NC_Skins]

Also, there are various reasons why people are protesting.


Seriously... You Don't Know Why We're Here? | Occupy Dallas

[SirClintonPortis]

The reason banks went and gave out subprime mortgages like crazy was that they could pass off the risk on those mortgages to investors who bought mortgage-backed securities. They were protected from the risk those mortgages had and thus didn't give a damn about whether the mortgages would get paid off. Hence, it is a matter of incentives leading the banks to do what they did. It was, as an economics guy would call it, an agency problem, and specifically "moral hazard".
Moral hazard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And I wouldn't call the consumer blameless. Not many will sympathize with falling for advanced-fee fraud(i.e Nigerian scam) schemes, so why should those "hoodwinked" by banks get a pass. Not to mention that low credit score people usually have no inhibitions about lying their asses off or deliberately ****ing around with you into giving them money to spend(or in the case of renting, "ethical" leverage into not filing for an eviction or not paying rent).

[SmootSmack]

Only one man can resolve this conflict...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/ny...imes&seid=auto

[Chico23231]

Originally Posted by SmootSmack

Only one man can resolve this conflict...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/ny...imes&seid=auto

thats pretty funny and the added element should give a little life to keep this thing going.

[saden1]

This stuff is all amusing and these hippies sure do know how to make people laugh. At the end of the day though the wall st crooks are still crooking and so are the lobbyists who have weekly scheduled meetings with our leaders.

Jon comes through again:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/290660/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-scorn-in-the-usa

[mlmpetert]

This is fascinating/hilarious to me:

So OWS has raised about 500k which is great for their cause, but since OWS doesn’t really have a uniform message its causing some angst inside the movement. OWS, as a microcosm of a socialist society, appears to be sharing the same issues of any socialistic style of government.

Apparently there are different groups within the movement like the Kitchen Group, Sanitation Group, Finance Working Group, Comfort Working Group and of course Pulse Working Group (the bongo guys). All recognized groups are funded with money by the OWS’s General Assembly. Guess what???? Some groups don’t think they are getting enough or don’t like rules the OWS GA imposes on them, Imagine that!

Several days ago the Pulse Working Group had some of its drums vandalized, stolen, or messed up from rain. So they wanted $8,000 to get new drums but were turned down by their own General Assembly! The drummers are a major revenue raiser since people leave tips for their performances and while the drummers get to keep some of that money the GA has been accused of “taxing” the drummers at around 50% of their earnings. Then, to the drummer’s displeasure, the GA voted that the drummers can only play 2 hours a day (apparently nonstop drumming all day and night can get annoying), which was later revised to 4 hours a day. There is even speculation that the vandalism to the drummer’s drums was a inside job as the vandalism happened after the drummers didn’t abide by the rules the GA enforced upon them.

As you can imagine the Pulse Working Group is PISSED! But a lot of the working groups are pissed so a new SpokesCouncil model was created to streamline things. This allows each working group to act independently without securing the will of the collective…. Kind of like a democracy with special interest groups. This was in response because the “GA is unwieldy, cumbersome, and redundant.”, much like any overbearing socialist government we have seen throughout history no matter how well intentioned…..

Imagine if the drummers were free to do what they wanted to do with all the money they raised? So instead of surrendering their money for the collective good they could use their own money to provide for themselves. I mean some of the drummers have to be thinking this right? 18 year old Seth Harper eloquently said in reference to the OWS GA “They’re imposing a structure on the natural flow of music”. I couldn’t say it better myself…..

Sweet quotes:

“And we’ve had issues with the drummers too. They drum incessantly all day, and really loud.” Facilitators spearheaded a General Assembly proposal to limit the drumming to two hours a day.

To Shane Engelerdt, a 19-year-old from Jersey City and self-described former “head drummer,” this amounted to a Jacobinic betrayal. “They are becoming the government we’re trying to protest," he said. "They didn’t even give the drummers a say ... Drumming is the heartbeat of this movement. Look around: This is dead, you need a pulse to keep something alive.”

The drummers claim that the finance working group even levied a percussion tax of sorts, taking up to half of the $150-300 a day that the drum circle was receiving in tips. “Now they have over $500,000 from all sorts of places,” said Engelerdt. “We’re like, what’s going on here? They’re like the banks we’re protesting."

Daniel Zetah, a 35-year-old lead facilitator from Minnesota, mounted a bench. “We need to clear this out. There are a bunch of kids coming to stay here.” One of the hoodied men fought back: “I’m not giving up my space for ****ing kids. They have parents and homes. My parents are dead. This is my space.”

“The sunshine protestors will leave,” said “Zonkers,” a 20-year-old cleaner and longtime occupier from Tennessee. (He asked that his name not be used due to a felony marijuana conviction.) “The people who remain are the people who care. You get a lot of crust punks, silly kids, people who want to panhandle ... It disgusts me. These people are here for a block party.”

A man named Sage Roberts desperately rifled through the pile, looking for a sleeping bag. “They’ve taken my stuff,” he muttered. Lauren Digion, the sanitation group leader, broke in: “This isn’t your stuff. You got all this stuff from comfort [the working group]. It belongs to comfort.”

“When cleanups happen, people get mad,” Glaser said. “This is its own city. Within every city there are people who freeload, who make people’s lives miserable. We just deal with it. We can’t kick them out.”

In response to dissatisfaction with the consensus General Assembly, many facilitators have adopted a new “spokescouncil” model, which allows each working group to act independently without securing the will of the collective. “This streamlines it,” argued Zonkers. “The GA is unwieldy, cumbersome, and redundant."

As the communal sleeping bag argument between Lauren Digion and Sage Roberts threatened to get out of hand, a facilitator in a red hat walked by, brow furrowed. “Remember? You’re not allowed to do any more interviews,” he said to Digion. She nodded and went back to work. But when Roberts shouted, “Don’t tell me what to do!” Digion couldn't hold back.

“Someone has to be told what to do," she said. "Someone needs to give orders. There’s no sense of order in this ****ing place.”

The Organizers vs. the Organized in Zuccotti Park -- Daily Intel

[firstdown]

I know its been a few years sense i purchased any drums (ok its probably been 25 years) but $8,000 for new drums seems a little high.

[firstdown]

Ok so I went to you tube to look and I guess if you get enough people together with POS drums they can add up to $8000 over paying for new equipment. They should not call them self drummers because this is just a bunch of stoned guys betting on drums.

Occupy Wall street drummers-10/09/11 - YouTube