Who are the protesters behind Occupy Wall Street–and what do they want?

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louis91766 said:
Arabs and Chinese are in many cases breaking existing laws which require a permit to demonstrate or hold a parade. They pepper spray Americans in the USA who want a better life for all of America and put people in jail because they are protesting against the fat cats of wall street who have been destroying our country and demanding trillion dollar taxpayer bailouts for the rich as well as million dollar bonuses. When Americans complain about this, they are pepper sprayed and hauled off to jail in some cases.
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What is the better life the peotesters want? Do they realize that the “better life” they seek depends on the large corporations for the jobs they say they want, the stuff they either have or want? Do they realize that pension funds, which provide the “better lives” at retirement they want depend on Wall Street itself?
 
louis91766 said:
Arabs and Chinese are in many cases breaking existing laws which require a permit to demonstrate or hold a parade. They pepper spray Americans in the USA who want a better life for all of America and put people in jail because they are protesting against the fat cats of wall street who have been destroying our country and demanding trillion dollar taxpayer bailouts for the rich as well as million dollar bonuses. When Americans complain about this, they are pepper sprayed and hauled off to jail in some cases.
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Only when they break the law. It isn’t a conspiracy. It is how you handle mobs who have become unruly and are no longer peacefully demonstrating.
 
St_Francis said:
What is the better life the peotesters want?
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They would like to be able to make a decent living so that they can provide food and shelter for their families. They see billions and billions of dollars available for wall street and for the war profiteers. How many billions of dollars have been spent on wars which have resulted in thousands of innocent people and children being hurt or killed? Instead of wasting so much money on these wars, why not spend a few dollars to feed the poor people who are starving to death in America today?
 
rlg94086 said:
Only when they break the law. It isn’t a conspiracy. It is how you handle mobs who have become unruly and are no longer peacefully demonstrating.
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Interesting that people who trust government so much with extremely important things like health care and their retirement…get’s all up in arms when government uses a little pepper spray.
 
louis91766 said:
They would like to be able to make a decent living so that they can provide food and shelter for their families. They see billions and billions of dollars available for wall street and for the war profiteers. How many billions of dollars have been spent on wars which have resulted in thousands of innocent people and children being hurt or killed? Instead of wasting so much money on these wars, why not spend a few dollars to feed the poor people who are starving to death in America today?
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Because that isn’t how governments operate. They have never operated that way. Without following restrictions set in place they will eventually run rampant on someone somewhere. History has taught us this, yet we keep entrusting government with more and more power to do the things we think it might be ok if they just do this or that.

We get what we deserve for not forcing the government to follow it’s rules. We just want to bend them here and there to make life a little better for someone else. Never seems to work out that way though does it.

They can’t even keep themselves in check within confines of the constitution. Wasted money everywhere, yet we promote a government to provide health care and retirement. What did they do with the SS money? Oh yea, they borrowed it…blew it and now have to borrow it from communist China to pay for current retirees.

Keep promoting government to provide for the “general welfare”. See where it get’s you.
 
bbarrick8383 said:
Because that isn’t how governments operate. They have never operated that way. Without following restrictions set in place they will eventually run rampant on someone somewhere. History has taught us this, yet we keep entrusting government with more and more power to do the things we think it might be ok if they just do this or that.

We get what we deserve for not forcing the government to follow it’s rules. We just want to bend them here and there to make life a little better for someone else. Never seems to work out that way though does it.

They can’t even keep themselves in check within confines of the constitution. Wasted money everywhere, yet we promote a government to provide health care and retirement. What did they do with the SS money? Oh yea, they borrowed it…blew it and now have to borrow it from communist China to pay for current retirees.

Keep promoting government to provide for the “general welfare”. See where it get’s you.
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As a loyal American, I follow the constitution of the United States of America and both the Preamble to the Constitution and Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution call upon the federal government to “promote the general welfare.” I don;t know why so many Americans refuse to support the Constitution of the United States and what it provides.
 
louis91766 said:
They would like to be able to make a decent living so that they can provide food and shelter for their families. They see billions and billions of dollars available for wall street and for the war profiteers. How many billions of dollars have been spent on wars which have resulted in thousands of innocent people and children being hurt or killed? Instead of wasting so much money on these wars, why not spend a few dollars to feed the poor people who are starving to death in America today?
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Again, in the USA, the Government makes the laws that all businesses must follow. If you do not like what the government is doing - you protest the White House and Congress.

If the busnesses are unsuccessful, there are no jobs - unless working for the government at taxpayer expense.

Our Federal Government is bloated with employees, and waste , causing a burden on families.

Here are only two examples.
washingtonpost.com/politics/solyndra-e-mails-dept-of-energy-was-poised-to-approve-469-million-for-firm/2011/10/05/gIQA0IvgNL_story.html?hpid=z2
and
youtube.com/user/RealCatholicTV#p/u/0/AVjLhK588TE
 
louis91766 said:
As a loyal American, I follow the constitution of the United States of America and both the Preamble to the Constitution and Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution call upon the federal government to “promote the general welfare.” I don;t know why so many Americans refuse to support the Constitution of the United States and what it provides.
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Promoting the general welfare is not a specific enumerated power. What’s to stop a government from committing murder in the name of general welfare?
 
bellasbane said:
That may look weird to you, but nothing you mention rises to the level of deserving the sort of hostility against these protesters that is running rampant on this forum.

I have the same exact reaction to the way Evangelical Christians talk and behave - but I don’t go around attacking them for their mannerisms. However, I will attack their ideas - especially the ones that are anti-Catholic or conflict with Catholic views of social and economic justice.

Here is an interesting graphic that compares what the OWS protesters to the Tea Party:

https://imgur.com/t1onp
occupywallst.org/forum/what-occupy-wall-street-wants-vs-what-the-tea-part/
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That graphic is a pretty good representation of where the OWS and Tea Party crowd converges. The Tea Party wants to reduce the power of government. The OWS crowd wants to reduce the power and influence of corporation. Both are right. They should stop demonizing each other and realize that corporations AND government are colluding to increase each other’s power. They are BOTH the enemy of liberty and the middle class.
 
bbarrick8383 said:
Promoting the general welfare is not a specific enumerated power. What’s to stop a government from committing murder in the name of general welfare?
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That’s right. Promote the General Welfare is not a specific enumerated power granted in the Constitution, it is part of the preamble…the reason why the Constitution was established in the first place. What about the part that says, “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”? Ignoring this part is as ridiculous as those folk who focus on the “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” to the exclusion of “or prohibit the free practice thereof”. They are one composite thought, they are not separate and distict ideas where one can trump the other.

Promoting the general welfare cannot come at the expense of securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and future generations". Our government has sold our posterity and the blessings of our liberty in vain attempt to promote the general welfare now. It is immoral. We have sold our kids and grandkids into slavery in a pompous effort to establish “social justice”, an amorphous term that has no real meaning and is used by unethical politicians to increase their power and wealth in exchange for our votes.
 
bbarrick8383 said:
Promoting the general welfare is not a specific enumerated power. What’s to stop a government from committing murder in the name of general welfare?
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Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot promoted the general welfare of their nations.
 
_L said:
It’s completely different, In China if you speak out against the government, you get “re-educated” or worse they simply make you disappear. In Syria, Egypt, and other places in the middle east if people don’t like what you say they KILL you. The people in China work for pennies, the people in Egypt and Syria aren’t nearly as developed economically as we are, and yet we have a ton of teenagers and college kids out there who have never had a job voice some incoherent frustrations.

We are so fortunate to live in a country where we are allowed to camp out in a park and live there indefinitely as a form of protest, and people act like they are about to be sent to concentration camps; It’s absurd. We HAVE Freedom, the people in the countries you mentioned have nothing, they can get jailed for even thinking contrary to the will of the state, and yet here we can burn our own flag, or defecated on it (like a protestor did today) without any penal measures from the government. They should thank God for the freedom they have, but we know that is not going to happen, because judging from the views of many of these protestors, they support systems of government (communism) that try to delete God from everything. Who i want jailed are the people who are having sex in public, the people are defecating and urinating on police cars, the people dealing drugs, and inciting hate at these protests, I have seen several anti Semitic tirades recorded on video and its shameful. You would think you were living in Hitler’s germany, people ranting about the Jews. I also can’t stand people waving soviet union flags, while other defecate on american flags. it is outrageous.

The real irony is that these people who are championing the 99% are making the jobs of the sanitation workers, and police officers miserable who compose that very 99% they are championing.
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+1. Excellent post. All this is is a bunch of spoiled upper middle class kids who have no idea of what it means to really suffer, and yet expect everyone around to suffer for their benefit. They don’t even know what they want. This is just an emo concert on steroids with no bad music.
 
louis91766 said:
They would like to be able to make a decent living so that they can provide food and shelter for their families. They see billions and billions of dollars available for wall street and for the war profiteers. How many billions of dollars have been spent on wars which have resulted in thousands of innocent people and children being hurt or killed? Instead of wasting so much money on these wars, why not spend a few dollars to feed the poor people who are starving to death in America today?
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So, is it just a matter of arguing over how to spend borrowed money?

The fact is, the government must borrow money every day simply to keep operating at its current level. The military spends a lot of money. A lot of money was spent on bailouts. Even more is spent daily on entitlement programs which are ongoing and unsustainable.

If the federal government had to start living tomorrow within its means, the nation would face an immediate spending cut of something like 40% across the board.

The debt load is unsustainable. It will cause far more damage than we at present anticipate. Wall Street got bailouts, but Wall Street doesn’t cause the government to borrow billions of dollars each day in excess of national income.

Tax the rich all we want. The problem will continue until the national debt begins to decrease instead of increase. And that inevitably means that everybody cannot get everything they want from the government. That’s what Greece is finding out, and the U.S. has yet to learn, and about which these protesters seem to be clueless.
 
louis91766 said:
They would like to be able to make a decent living so that they can provide food and shelter for their families. They see billions and billions of dollars available for wall street and for the war profiteers. How many billions of dollars have been spent on wars which have resulted in thousands of innocent people and children being hurt or killed? Instead of wasting so much money on these wars, why not spend a few dollars to feed the poor people who are starving to death in America today?
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Why not teach them skills so they can feed themselves? They will appreciate it more if they earn what they need. Gives one more dignity in the process.
 
St_Francis said:
What is the better life the peotesters want? Do they realize that the “better life” they seek depends on the large corporations for the jobs they say they want, the stuff they either have or want? Do they realize that pension funds, which provide the “better lives” at retirement they want depend on Wall Street itself?
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Are you expecting this rent-a-mob to think?🙂 Have you heard some of the replies when they are interviewed?
 
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