OWS - Occupy Philly on 4th of July

reply to post by beezzer

Socialised Medicine

Yes, it makes the most sense. Medicine by nature is Socialist and should have remained that way, advancement and maximum productivity of our species depends on how healthy we are. It is a human right and in the common interest of the people. It's also cheaper than anything we've had and certainly cheaper than what we have now.

And end to wealth disparity

Yes but before you take that ball and run with it, understand what we mean by that. We do not mean redistribution of wealth, or limiting how rich a person can be.

We mean that people should not be able to obtain wealth by exploiting others and that they need to pay their fair share once they've obtained it. There should not be one set of rules for us and another for them.

End to corruption in business and government

Yes. The government needs to stop having the ability to sell us out, that would be to wealthy people, organizations, unions, big pharma, big biotech, big banks, big whatever...Wall Street.

To educate others in your beliefs.

No. We are not a religion or a cult. To educate others means to share/spread information that exposes corruption.

reply to post by pavil

1. Should we have a bigger government or a smaller government? Should government be more involved in an individual's life or less involved?

Ideally, smaller. Though, in this economic climate it's hard to bark at government jobs. The government should not be involved in individual's lives whatsoever.

What is the best way to hand the Budget situations at the Federal, State and Local levels?

End the wars, end the bailouts, end the extortion of big corporations having negative effective tax rates. In no way shape or form should a company with profits in the billions should receive millions in tax rebate, if they threaten to leave the US, good let them go... make room for someone else.

As far as State and Local... pretty soon we're gonna need to pull permits or apply for licenses to sneeze... easing that could go a long way to local growth.

Since you mentioned student loans..... what do you think should be done with them? How will it be paid for?

It sort of says a lot about a nation that can bailout liars and thieves but not it's youth just stepping out on its' own. It also says a lot that we can be the police of the world but can't educate our own... we value military might over everything.

I don't think everything should be socialized but somethings it just makes sense to. Healthcare and Education should be. It costs taxpayers more when the government pays default loans or medical bills, than it would if we just outright paid for 4 years of college. Insurance companies, hospitals, educational institutes never loose money when people fail to pay, the government pays it with our tax dollars and that includes interest accrued and late fees.

reply to post by FlyersFan


His questions were answered and those questions have been answered over and over in various threads. More pretending that they haven't.

Speaking of not answering did you happen to notice this post (snipped a little):

Originally posted by MyMindIsMyOwn

Bull crap, eh? Ok... from your OWN sourced links:

Philly.com - Police order Occupy Philly to Leave Dilworth Plaza - 52 arrested

Originally published Nov. 30, 2011

Not current, irrelevent to this discussion

9 Occupiers Arrested in big fight at Comcast Center 'Sit in'

Uploaded Nov. 3, 2011. Hardly current to this discussion as your original beef was over 4th of July events.


Occupy Philly in Photos

Most of the pics in this photo gallery are dated November 2011.... not July 2012. Again, irrelevant to this discussion.

So that leaves the only sourced link directly connected to your beef with the current events in Philly, the story about the 26 arrested for disorderly conduct at the Convention Center. And with any protest, especially an OWS protest, authorities are looking for any excuse to arrest. Now disorderly conduct can be a number of things really from the benign to the nefarious. There is no mention other than they held up traffic. Wow, yeah...holding up traffic, which is a form of disorderly conduct, hardly measures up to your original concerns about unsanitary conditions in a place where a large number of families would be present or the fact that holiday plans would be in ruins due to protestors shouting slogans and disrupting a nice family outing.

Nice try to discredit... I'll give you that. Care to try again?

Well at least now we know your ability to gather information is to be questioned, or did you deliberately mislead?

reply to post by Kali74


Very good reply Kali, now we can have discussions on things. We on the conservative side don't often get a person to really have a debate with. For that, I appreciate the effort.

The main problem I have with the occupy movement is that they want to have their cake and eat it too. Programs and policies have to be paid for in one way or the other, either cuts in other programs or revenue increases. For example, student loan debt is over one TRILLION dollars now..... that's a lot of money that if forgiven, has to come from somewhere. Please don't tell me you want the Fed to just print up more money, that's a whole other problem.

Same thing with the real elephant in the room: Social Security and Medicare....... it's not long term viable. We will be paying out far more than we will be taking in, that needs to be addressed. The numbers for this are huge and we have to get it right or else everything else pales in comparison, but politicians lack the will to make the hard decisions. They would rather kick the can down the road and get re-elected.

Occupy seems to think that if they just tax the "rich" enough they can pay for all of their ideas..... the math just doesn't work that way. There isn't enough of "rich" to do that unless you confiscate property as well.

I think we all can agree that there is too much money in politics..... . Real reform is needed, but is that possible in a Congress that 50% of it's members are Millionaires and above? That's where the real reality disparity begins. There needs to be REAL campaign reform, but honestly that will never happen, politicians won't kill the golden goose that ends up making them millionaires and feeding their enormous egos.

The other main issue I have with Occupy is that for example you say you want smaller government and less intrusiveness on the individual, yet you want govt. sponsored medical care and education and others want far more government? Occupy also seems to want a draconian tax of people once they have wealth. Speaking as a taxpayer and small biz owner who actually pays into the system, I really don't want to pay anymore taxes to a very wasteful government. I am a believer in that the bulk of the American Public, the small business owners ect, can do a better job at those than any inefficient government can. I have more faith in individuals than my government to solve our problems overall.

The way you talk about red tape and permits for sneezing...... you almost sound like a conservative to me.....careful there, don't want to to lose your street cred with OWS. I agree, there is sometimes too much paperwork that gets in the way of business.

There needs to be some housecleaning with medicine..... things cost way out of line with reality and preventive medicine needs to be adopted more. I just read a report where 9 out of 10 medical bills have errors in them. Take a guess how many errors are in the consumers favor? I don't think having the government run it will make it more efficient, quite the opposite.

I do agree that something needs to be done with Education, but again Government has done a miserable job with it so far....why give them even more control? I for one, have never figured out why education costs continue to climb at 8%+ a year. Surely it's not all new technology and equipment. Why have we allowed education costs to climb at such a steep rate? When I look at the actual results of our education system vs the amount of money put into to it, something is missing.......

In summation, I think you are focused on good goals, Education Reform and Medical Reform. The approach you would take is not one I would advocate but I agree that the status quo is not acceptable either. It's how you and other Occupiers try to implement your ideas that will be the true test. Words are cheap...actions much harder.

reply to post by FlyersFan


It looks like your fears were unfounded: they could only muster a handfull of people.

OWS‘s ’NAT-GAT’ Wilts In The Philly Heat

You probably wouldn't have smelled them even if you had visited Independence Hall.

reply to post by pavil

Programs and policies have to be paid for in one way or the other, either cuts in other programs or revenue increases.

Yes it does require sacrificing in other areas, these are my ideas alone. The estimated cost of 2-4 year schools for all current students is about 80 Billion dollars per year. A lot of that can come from re-working the current budget, I'm not an economist... I'm not even good with math but there seems to be some common sense things we can do. It is scary to know that student debt is not that far behind the cost of war since 2001.

Our current defense budget is 718.6 Billion dollars which does not include black budget (we have no idea how much that costs) and it's also important to note that the defense budget increases every year. If we could cut that down to 600 Billion which is still monstrous we would have 118 Billion to spend elsewhere.



In 2006 Corporate Welfare outdid Social Welfare 92 Billion to 59 Billion. Now I'm sure that some of that 92 Billion was legitimately needed by small business owners and that is as should be. But Cato broke it down into an actual budget that we can peek at, here (scroll down). Clearly there's a lot of fat that can be trimmed. I couldn't find one for 2011 but I think we can assume that has only grown. Again, I'm not saying that the practice should be entirely scratched but there's a lot of slashing that happen there. We could probably scrape 20 Billion out of there.

Keep in mind also that by keeping students out of debt, the amount of students on other kinds of welfare would drop dramatically and save money elsewhere. Also, our tax dollars wouldn't be on the hook for interest and late fees.

Occupy seems to think that if they just tax the "rich" enough they can pay for all of their ideas.....

Not so. As I just did, there are other options... I'm not alone in my opinion that re-working the budget can go a long way. Others feel that if we lowered the Corporate Tax Rate from 35% while simultaneously eliminating tax loopholes, tax benefits and tax rebates as well as bailouts could remedy many of our economic woes... but Corporations don't want that and their money speaks louder than all else.

The way you talk about red tape and permits for sneezing...... you almost sound like a conservative to me.....careful there, don't want to to lose your street cred with OWS. I agree, there is sometimes too much paperwork that gets in the way of business.

Nope, just a Left Libertarian. Many of recognize that demands made in the 80's and 90's of Big Business such as environmental responsibility, worker and consumer safety can just be bought off by larger businesses and leveraged as a weapon against small guys. Those things should exist but they need to be implemented properly. How to do that, I'm not sure... but I'm sure I have peers that have some ideas.

There needs to be some housecleaning with medicine..... things cost way out of line with reality and preventive medicine needs to be adopted more.

We won't get that with for profit health care and Big Pharma. There's no motivation for curing, healthy people do not bring in profits. Sick and injured people bring in profit, regardless of whether they can pay for it themselves or not.

Thank-you for your kind reply and friendly discussion.

reply to post by Kali74


They underestimate the amount of Chomsky-esque Socio-Libertarians that there are in the Occupy movement.

reply to post by Anonymous404


"They" certainly do. Those "they" though, maybe should be considered victims of propagandist media... maybe willing victims. I guess it's nice to have someone to hate, someone to direct angst and anger toward, sad that it can't be directed where it needs to go. *Shrug*

Not to sound like a hater, but this does look suspiciously like burnout.

It also reminds me of when I was at Mardi Grass in Nimbin, earlier this year. Nimbin in many ways, is one of the most positive, supportive, and nurturing environments I've ever been in; yet at the same time, the parade was an unmitigated March of the Freaks. As such, it triggered my first instance of asking, "What am I doing here?"

That in turn, makes me think of the one Greenpeace meeting that I was brave (or stupid) enough to attend in 2001. It, also, was a freak show in the Vaudevillian sense of the word. I'm not exaggerating, there.



The problem is that positive social change apparently isn't something that mainstream homo sapiens sapiens is interested in persuing; so the freaks presumably feel that they are the only ones left to fill the void.

I've also realised that, rightly or wrongly, I no longer want to associate with freaks. I got tired of the mental illness, the lack of hygiene, and the general feeling that I was associating with the lowest elements of human society, purely because I didn't feel as though I could obtain acceptance from anyone else.

It's a self-respect thing.

Originally posted by Kali74
reply to post by pavil

 

Yes it does require sacrificing in other areas, these are my ideas alone. The estimated cost of 2-4 year schools for all current students is about 80 Billion dollars per year. A lot of that can come from re-working the current budget, I'm not an economist... I'm not even good with math but there seems to be some common sense things we can do. It is scary to know that student debt is not that far behind the cost of war since 2001.

I think we can trim the overall budget by 5 to 10% without crippling any one area. I would rather take an across the board budget cut of 5 % a year along with budget freezes for about 3 years. You could really make a dent in the deficit. Sure there would be pain, but it would hit all parts of government. The problem with our Budget is that we build in automatic increases and don't focus on making our tax dollars being used very effectively. A 5% cut ( I'd rather it be closer to 10%) should hopefully focus all areas of Government to prioritize and trim the fat from an obese Budget. I'd rather have a budget cut that no one likes rather than one that favors either party's agenda. That way it has a much better chance of sticking from election to election.

I would be for some sort of Student loan forgiveness if the major was in an area of acute need for our future economy. We will soon have a shortage in some fields and have to increase visas for foreigners who have these skills. I'd rather we keep it in house with our own citizens. Any real reform of the Student Loan Program will have to address the ever increasing cost of higher education. It's crazy to me how much it has increased. It even makes the increase in healthcare costs look like nothing in comparison.

Take a look..... it's not pretty.

Wow FlyersFan!

I live in Philly and went down to Independence Mall. It wasn't a big deal, except for temperatures. I'm sorry I didn't see you there. But I didn't eat your twinkie, so you can still go get yours.

And it's getting really reliable that I have a heck of an angry rant to read when I see you've posted something new - keep up the good work I love it!!!

Originally posted by pavil
Yes it does require sacrificing in other areas, these are my ideas alone. The estimated cost of 2-4 year schools for all current students is about 80 Billion dollars per year. A lot of that can come from re-working the current budget, I'm not an economist... I'm not even good with math but there seems to be some common sense things we can do. It is scary to know that student debt is not that far behind the cost of war since 2001.

The one thing that will never be cut, no matter what; the one thing that will never even be spoken about for cutting, is the military budget. It is the elephant in the room. It is that which is considered sacrosanct, and entirely non-negotiable.

The problem is that the military industrial complex is run by psychopaths, who fundamentally refuse to accept the fact that there is no legitimate justification for their existence. They refuse to accept the fact that the basis of every single major conflict that has occurred within at least the last 120 years, has been started on the basis of lies, rather than genuine necessity.

The one thing that is central to improving our current social condition; the one thing which we must do, above all else, is put both the troops and the suits back in their box. The military and the corporate world both have a vastly over-inflated sense of their own importance, and the single main reason why they are so hard to fight, is because they are so aggressive. Every other segment of the population is cowed by them. The military-corporate alliance is what was specifically defined by Mussolini as fascism.

All of our creative or artistic industries, and the media industry etc, are completely overrun by bean-counting suits. These are the sorts of individuals who keep churning out sequels to, or remakes of, old films, because they don't want to spend money on new ideas, because they consider them too risky. They create games for systems like the X Box, where our children are indoctrinated to believe that war is a fundamental element of human nature, in order to entice them to enlist when they get older.



This archetype, and this mentality, is our enemy. If said archetype and said mentality are allowed to continue to direct the course of human destiny, it will inevitably result in human extinction. The one thing that we need to be defended from, more than anything else, is belief in the necessity of our so-called defense forces.

Occupy can't change that. Occupy don't have a prayer of doing anything about it. If the Left are confronted with violence, the only thing they know how to do, is scream, "Stop, or I'll scream stop (or shame) again!"

reply to post by petrus4

The problem is that the military industrial complex is run by psychopaths, who fundamentally refuse to accept the fact that there is no legitimate justification for their existence. They refuse to accept the fact that the basis of every single major conflict that has occurred within at least the last 120 years, has been started on the basis of lies, rather than genuine necessity.

I'm sure many people agree.

But, how do "normal" people stop the "psychopaths" ?

Are there two "psychopaths" involved? Like financial and killers? Or are they all the same.

And how would "genuine necessity" be defined and "justified" in an armed conflict?

Originally posted by xuenchen
I'm sure many people agree.

But, how do "normal" people stop the "psychopaths" ?

We make it clear to them that we are no longer going to live according to their societal model. It's literally that simple. They're not yet at the point where they can kill all of us.

We don't need to be violent towards them, at all. Violence is what they want, because violence is their creation. It is their language; what they know how to do.

All we need to do is walk away. We need to stop doing the very thing that any number of people on this forum keep doing, day after day after day; writing apologetics for psychopathic governmental ownership of everyone's lives. We simply need to see what they are doing, and refuse to participate in it any more. It's the single most difficult thing we can do, because it's the one thing they've made very sure to convince us that we can't do.

As one example, I do not own a mobile phone, or any of the hand held junk from Apple. Occupy can talk about change as much as they want, but until the mobile phones are smashed, change will never happen. The mobile phone networks are completely corporate controlled, and thus government controlled, by extension. During the Egyptian revolution, when the government demanded that the national mobile network be turned off, Nokia immediately capitulated.

Occupy can claim what they like. They can say what they like. But until they cease patronage of every single corporation that they claim to be against, they only prove themselves to be gutless hypocrites who are willing to do exclusively what is convenient and comfortable; and as a result, they will predictably fail.

And how would "genuine necessity" be defined and "justified" in an armed conflict?

It never is. There hasn't been a single war in living memory, where American involvement at least, was not coerced under false pretenses, or that also wasn't engineered by the cabal. WW2 was funded under the table by the same source on both sides. It's always the same group of people who start it, and who tell people that it is necessary.

It's what they want, and it is part of a very long term plan to implement a psychopathic Utopia. 90% of the current human population dead, with the remaining non-psychopathic 5%, ruled by the other psychopathic 5%.

Text OK so did Philly become occupied by a bunch of communist loving #tards that have no clue as to what soap and a Job are????reply to post by FlyersFan