Forum Post: Enough Words
Posted 12 years ago on Jan. 13, 2012, noon EST by LloydJHart
(190)
from Vineyard Haven, MA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Enough Words
By Lloyd Hart 01/12/2012
It's time to take action and shut the economy down until the oligarchs surrender to our will and negotiate a civil society in which poverty is abolished by guaranteed income, that pollution is abolished by criminal law and where creative inventors and organizers are rewarded for their efforts in a free market unencumbered by corporate monopolies.
Enough words describing our condition. It is time for action.
It is time to shut down all economic activity through mass non-violent civil disobedient traffic blocking.
The Occupy Wall St. Movement has no leverage to force change and until OWS gets some leverage nothing will change.
If OWS blocks traffic and shuts down business as usual, OWS will have leverage to force change.
The forgotten must block traffic to remind the forgetful of the needs of the forgotten.
Don't follow the leaders. The leaders are corrupt. Block traffic with your friends.
Guidelines For Non-Violent Civil Disobedient Traffic Blocking. http://occupywallst.org/forum/guidelines-for-non-violent-civil-disobedient-traff/
dadapop@dadapop.com 508-687-9153
true, if we all withdraw our money from banks, and stop paying taxes all together we can take this country back.
Yes, both good ideas. When we say stop paying taxes, specifically we should say stop payiing federal taxes. Continuing to pay state taxes seems logical seeing as the states are more in tune to what their own citizens need. And the people this would hurt the most are probably alot of the southern republican states that take back more federal dollars than they pay in. As far as the banks go, if a large majority of people, say even 1/4 of the people who still have jobs moved their money from the "too big to fail banks" to local credit unions, now that starts the crumbling of the oligarhs.
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First, "all" won't do it.
Second, if "all" DID do it, it would hurt the every people who rely on "taxes" to survive FIRST and WORST. Pretty much demonstrating that OWS really doesn't give a rat's rear end about the poor, the old, the injured/sick, or lowest income people.
First of all, you don't need "all" to do it. Since we are now informed by statistical data that half of the US population lives below the poverty level, that leaves the other half who still have jobs, who, if this downward economic spiral continues may not have a job much longer which should create the impetus to do a couple of things. If even 1/10 of the employed move their money from "too big to fail banks" into local credit unions, then the banks are that much closer to insolvency, and keep in mind, through their own greed, they are almost there, just give it another couple of months. Stop paying federal taxes and just pay state taxes, or if so inclined, pay federal and state taxes to your respective states and the elderly and infirm will be taken care of. Just imagine......
Half? I'd love to see your statistical data. it's more like 16% hon. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/14census.html?pagewanted=all)
139,064,000 people were employed in 2010 according to Census Report.
1/10= 13,906,400 almost 14 MILLION people. Good luck with that.
Well, it was all over the MSM last week, can't see how anyone could miss news like that. The REAL unemployment rate is over 15%, not the 8.5% the government is stating and there are more than 30 million unemployed and underemployed according to yet another study. So yeh, 14 million people should be doable.
You said: "Since we are now informed by statistical data that half of the US population lives below the poverty level,"
I said-current statistics-(not just something you think the MSM said last week) show that 16% of the US population lives below the poverty level. NOT 50%.
And just exactly how do you propose to get all 14 million of them to do it?
Reported on Dec 16, 2011
Census Bureau clarifies poverty numbers By Sharon Bernstein, nbclosangeles.com Officials at the U.S. Census Bureau moved Friday to clarify widely reported figures meant to estimate the number of Americans living in poverty. Dueling Census reports – one based on official poverty estimates that was released just last week and another based on an experimental calculus used in November – differed from one another by 20 percentage points regarding the number of people viewed as living in poverty. The widely reported figure showed that one out of two Americans are in poverty or are low-income. Other Census figures put the figure closer to one out of three Americans. advertisement
That’s because the experimental measure, a supplement to the official poverty figures meant to take into account such factors as whether a family is receiving food stamps and how much people pay in taxes, uses a poverty level of $24,343 for a family of four instead of the $21,113 used by the official measure.
The 50% numbers were WRONG. And the MSM corrected it and admitted that the reporters had "misunderstood" and "miscalculated" the data.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Poverty-Figures-May-Be-Wrong-135675163.html
"But while poverty in the United States is certainly an important issue, those figures appear to be wrong, perhaps based on a misunderstanding of the data by journalists who did not go back to the source to doublecheck their figures, said analysts at the U.S. Census Bureau district office in Los Angeles."
"NBCLA worked with three data analysts at the Census Bureau to check the data, and the real figures do indeed appear to be quite different.
According to the latest Census data, about 49.9 million Americans - about 13.8 percent - are living below the poverty line. Another 53.8 million - about 18 percent - are considered low income because they earn less than twice the poverty level."
You also need understand this point-"low income" and "poverty level" are two different measurements. Low income earners are NOT "below" the poverty level, they are ABOVE the poverty level but beneath the "middle income" bracket.
Thus 13.8% of Americans "live below the poverty level", and 18% of Americans live above the poverty level, but are still "low income".
Yes, and you can bet that the 18% that live just above the poverty level will be below the poverty level in short time.
In that same article they also talked about how antiquated and as a result flawed their methods are for collecting this data. So I think I'll go with what I am actually seeing out there in the real world and that's alot of people on the food pantry line along with all the other data being publicized regarding assistance programs that are stretched to the limit by the "new poor".
well that could be debated, who are these who live off of taxes first of all? are they the old people who paid off their homes like 30 years ago for 20k and selling them to us for 200k, and taking social security and medicare taxes out of our pay? the best thing that could happen for the poor would be for the gov to go out of business, immediately the low income would get a pay raise! God forbid a poor working class american should get to keep all the money he earned. God forbid!
Sometimes ridiculous statements beg for responses.
Hello! Social Security and Medicare are not taxes. They are insurance premiums for benefits, the policy holders will collect on in the future, which the government has delayed in recent years.
The financial distress of both systems is certainly not the fault of the premium payers: workers and employers, but of the politicians, which regardless of what they call themselves, have looted the insurance funds and mismanaged them.
Before you make silly posts, you should really research what you're talking about.
The old people, who paid off their homes twenty years ago, probably started paying fifty years ago, when each dollar was worth far more than what the dollar is worth now. More or less, if you actually adjusted the amount they paid for the houses fifty years ago by the inflation rate of the past fifty years, the actual profit for their investment, not counting all the maintenance of home ownership, would be far less than your feeble calculations indicate.
Those old people and their employers paid premiums into the Social Security and Medicare insurance funds for most likely all the working lives of those old people. Don't you believe they should get some type of benefit for all those premiums?
As for the poor getting a pay raise if the government went away, from where? Most poor people don't pay income taxes or pay very little. Understand, that the premiums workers pay into the Social Security and Medicare systems are at least matched by the employer as future security for the worker.
Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements, they're insurance, bought and paid for, and collected on, when beneficiaries meet certain conditions.
again theres the american dream world where most people live in and then there is the real world. About 20 years ago, I was making 200 a week and paying 50 of it to child support, i went to the welfare office in full belief that i would find relief when i had an aching toothache. All I needed was one tooth fixed so I could get back to work. They denied me because (and I quote) "I didnt have any children living with me". Needless to say, the one time that I needed help and have been paying for the help of others my entire life, help set in stone my current and forever attitude against the powers that be.
and who cares about someones profit in a home thru investment fifty years, ago, fact is children are struggling trying to obtain one, and they are the cause selling them at such ridiculous prices. Praise God for the home devauluation, and for foreclosed homes, without which the poor may never own a piece of the earth.
I did say that the Social Security and Medicare systems have been mismanaged and looted by the politicians. The same is true of the welfare system, which actually discriminates against working people and many people of marginal income, who really need the help.
Once you reach the minimum retirement age, which the politicians would like to keep delaying, you should be able to collect on all the premiums that you and your employers have paid into the Social Securtiy and Medicare--that is if the politicians don't rob it all by then.
I certainly don't deny the high cost of housing, but most of that was brought about by the bankers during the free-for-all lending period, "the housing boom," which was nothing but an artificially created surge caused by fraudulent lending practices. The collapse was a realistic reaction caused by the collapse of the major mortgage banks, which we, the Ninety-nine Percent, ended up bailing out (most of them) getting nothing in return except for slogans and empty promises.
A housing investment for most people is almost a lifelong investment taking on average about thirty years to pay off. During that time the homeowner pays taxes, maintenance, insurance, restoration, etc. They should reasonably expect some return on their investment.
Your arguments emphasize exactly why the Ninety-nine Percent have to stand up for what rightfully belongs to them. That's what Occupy is all about: not getting something for nothing, but claiming what we've already bought and paid for.
an alternative viewpoint to the "lifelong investment" would be that people should save for their own retirment instead of getting richer of the poor next family that buys their home, this pyramid scheme theory is really what created the inevitable collapse like any pyramid scheme. The fact that we the people kept inflating home prices trying to get rich off of the backs of others when we should have been trying to lower the cost of living for our countrymen, fulfills the old, whatever bed you make you need to lie in it quote. Let us not return to the old ways and expect a different result, like people like mitt romney and others who say, "we need to raise the prices of homes back up" are you kidding me, i finally got my first home last year, and im having a hard enough time paying for it. Im thinking about selling it and living in a travel trailer, so I can save some of my income for my own retirement. (a real world theorist speaking out against the dream world theorists)
I assume that you expect to at least break even from the sale of your house. Otherwise, you might as well just walk away.
It's not a pyramid scheme. Inflation alone over a fifty-year period would raise the price of a house tens-of-thousands of dollars. Fifty years ago, in 1962, regular gasoline was selling for about 25 cents a gallon. A new car cost less than $4,000. An average suburban house sold for far less than $20,000.
Go buy a gallon of gasoline, a new car, a new house. See what you pay. As a percentage, housing has gone up far less than fuel or vehicles.
Do not blame homeowners for selling their houses at the current market value; examine our economic system, which has devalued the dollar to a fraction of its value fifty years ago.
You're blaming the wrong people. Ask why the dollar is worth so little compared to the dollar of 1962, certainly not because of homeowners selling their houses at the market value.There's something far more insidious at work.
Here's a few actual food prices from the 1960s. Compare these to what you pay now: bananas 10 cents a lb (1963), ground beef 45 cents lb (1963), Gerber's Baby Food 3 for 25 cents (1966), Campbells Soup 6 cans for 89 cents (1965).
A pack of cigarettes in 1962 would have cost about 25 cents.
You see, the 2011 dollar was worth less than 1/4 of the 1962 dollar. You can verify that at http://www.data360.org/dataset.aspx?Data_Set_Id=354
Lowering the cost of living is directly related to the value of the dollar, which relates to real income: what you can buy for the dollar you make, not very much today, and that, obviously, is not the fault of homeowners, who sell their homes at the current market value.
Hold on there, I thought the OWS were broke. They don't have any money in the bank and they don't have jobs. At least that was the "impression" that most had been presenting.
Am I wrong in believing this?
yets its not ows against everyone else, ows is a movement that is trying to gain momentum against the 1 %. The 1% is getting rich off the 99% taking our money we make and leaving nothing for ourselves, if only there was a way to keep the money in our own families, and not put it in the hands of bankers. (who are part of the 1%) as evident by when they gambled they nearly bankrupted our entire nations economy, (dont forget that, it wasnt the people who took out loans that caused the collapse, it was the gambling that bankers took out called cdo's where they thought homes would always go up in value. All these idiot bankers needed to do was ask a poor person if the homes would continue to go up and value and they would have gotten edumacated , cause we would have told them, hell no we cant afford a home, so how the hell was everyone able to continue to pay more for them? but then again, who ever said, going to college and building up the small parts of the brain, makes you smarter than the ones who build up the large part of the brain, (the motor part)
Following CAN be foolish, but we should remember that when we're doing what others suggest we're ALSO following. Let's try and do something that HELPS America.
Anybody can.......BLOCK. It takes special talent to compromise for betterment of ALL people.
You don't need to shut down all economic activity. That would mainly hurt the 99% working for a living. All you need to do is demonstrate to corporations that you have the ability to reduce their profits at will. By choosing one egregious corporation at a time for one week, or even for one day, and refusing to buy from or patronize their business ... the power of large numbers (i.e. 99%) can be quietly and firmly established. They may have control over us for now, but they need us (and our money) and there are more of us than them.
We need to draw attention but not attention at any cost. Our tactics need to be line with our beliefs. But, we absolutely need to react to losing the American Dream and gain attention to it's demise before it's too late.
We need to show our intelligence to follow the truth and broadcast it to the world so Reason can finally take it's place in our history and lead us out of this shit hole of life where genocide can become common.
Our humanity is leading all of us on path of destruction as we destroy the very world that brought us first to life. We consume that which sustains us.
Yes, we take action now or whosoever is left , don't forget to turn off the light when this nightmare ends.
ACTION!
Please see my post, burried here somewhere, "concrete means."
This would only hinder and send the wrong message, do your homework before posting...<tactics= reached goals>...no pissing off those who relate but HAVE too work for a living...Your idea makes as much sense as the guy I saw at the New York protest wearing a <recycle! save mother earth> shirt,throwing his empty can of Pepsi on the ground and walking off, out west 90% of the time "hippie" is a abbreviated word for hypocrite... unfortunately their mentality seems to apply with your post
Fair minded protesters use fair methods of protest. Blocking traffic is tyranny.
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Sure. Because all of that non-violent civil disobedient stuff that OWS did before really increased the numbers of the 99% that supported OWS and their tactics. Not.
The accidental traffic blocking on the Brooklyn bridge caused public support to radically rise. The public responds to reals actions not vanity protests like most of the actions OWS did.
But that is because of a lack of understanding in OWS how the majority of working people respond to activists and their actions. Support for OWS has collapsed because the public could clearly see that most of what OWS was doing was not a goals based strategy but rather was an emotional reaction which most of the public had already gone through and were hoping OWS would do something in the way of a real confrontation of the power that is economically oppressing us.
You read minds too?
The "more" OWS did in ways of "real confrontation" as in purposeful confrontations as opposed to an event viewed as "accidental"- the LOWER the support for them dropped.
Stopping the "economic" activity at ONE port dropped OWS support numbers through the floor. Can't wait to see what happens if you pull off shutting down "all economic activity".
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Is this a joke? Poe's Law. I hope.
But if not, first you need the numbers. Don't have them.
Second, you need those numbers to refuse to leave when they're told to leave. Won't happen because no one wants a baton to the head.
(I do think it amusing that the 'movement' doesn't understand why the grand act and noble sacrifice of 'camping' didn't cause fundamental societal change.)
And third, even if you did have the numbers and refused to leave when told to (and before the police make that happen), how many will stay when the first enraged American whose livelihood you infringe upon by preventing them from making a living just plows into the crowd with their SUV?
You're in a fantasy world.
Really, well I think the person in the SUV is living in a fantasy world.
Be that as it may...5000 pounds at 50 mph will scatter a crowd. Hope it never happens.
"The forgotten must block traffic to remind the forgetful of the needs of the forgotten."
You must be the Editor in Chief at MSLSD. I thought I heard Al Sharpton use that same phrase before (I was one of the 17 viewers that night) it didn't make anymore sense when he said it either.