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Author | Topic: Occupy Wall Street | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
I believe mass protests make a difference--not because the government cares about what crowds of young people think or do, but because every protester has friends and, more important, families who already treasure their promise and idealism. Does this apply to the Tea Party, or just to left wing protesters?
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined:
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Coyote writes: Does this apply to the Tea Party, or just to left wing protesters? Why do you think the Occupy Wall Street folks are left wing protesters? Tea Party rallies and spokespeople have condemned the Wall St./bankers bail-out and escape from prosecution--so why is this a left-right issue for you? You must be kidding!
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined:
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It applies to both. Look at the number of TP candidates that turned up in Republican primaries, and some of them won. A progressive wing of the Democratic party could form the same way. Democrats, and especially the far left, has been organized in this fashion since the late '60s. They know the value of organization and grass-roots movements. That's part of why they hate the Tea Party so much. They don't like the competition.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
The closest "the left" had to a Tea Party-esque movement to date has been small groups of "progressives" or the Green Party, none of which has managed to force their representatives to answer to their base in the way the Teabaggers have. Perhaps, although organized, the far left is much smaller than they would have you believe?
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
I don't think there even is a left in the US these days. It depends upon where you are looking from. Someone on the far left would see others on the far left as mainstream.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
I agree with a lot of your points. I too am a fiscal conservative, but that certainly puts me in company with a lot of social conservatives, who I don't believe are conservatives at all.
Rather than being for individual liberty, they want all the rest of us to live under their rules.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
Here's one of those "occupiers" now!
I certainly want nothing to do with that sort of nonsense.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined:
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
Then we should make it legal to come to the US, work here for a season, and then return to Mexico. It's easy to complain about "illegals", but isn't it a problem that there's no legal path for what they want to do? It makes absolutely zero sense to expect someone to spend 10 years and fifteen thousand dollars in order to come here and pick vegetables for six months.
When I was young I worked in the fields three summers, the first with Braceros, who were guest workers as you describe. They were good folks, hard working, and I liked them very much. The next two years were with locals, and they weren't anywhere near as good.
To the extent that illegals are taking permanent residency, it's because we've made crossing the border such an enormous investment that when undocumented workers come here, they feel like they have to stay to make it worth it. If we made the border more porous for temporary workers, they would come, work, and then return to Mexico during the off season.
All true. But for some reason the Bracero program was cancelled. That would seem to be the best case for everybody - best for them, because they can earn a US wage and then spend it in Mexico, where the dollar is stronger; best for racists like Buz, because they're not here year-round, idle during the off-season, and don't have to employ "coyotes" or engage in drug-smuggling as a side job in order to make the border passage possible; best for the US who continues to be able to rely on the cheap labor we so depend on. I have worked (as an archaeologist) with several construction crews in the past few years. Many of the workers were clearly illegal although nobody said a thing. Virtually every one was both a hard worker and a decent person. They will make good citizens, and their children will go to college.
But we should be increasing immigration in general. We have entire cities that are going to shit because nobody lives in them - vacant cities. What use is a vacant city? We should be importing people to live in them. It's better for them and better for us. What on Earth do we think we're running out of in the US that we can't share it with the 80,000 people worldwide who would like to immigrate to the US but aren't allowed to?
80,000 can't be a realistic number. More like 800 million. We have an estimated 10-15% of the population of Mexico here already, and more are coming all the time. What we need is some control over the situation. We're getting criminals along with the good workers, and that should be corrected. But we are getting a lot of the best and most ambitious workers from Mexico and points south, and they are going to make solid contributions to our society in due time. As the old saying goes, "The cowards never started and the weak died along the way." We're getting the cream of the crop. We just need some control over things.Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
Just to address one point:
cities like Detroit are actually plowing under portions of their city because people don't live there anymore. Really? 165 million people want to move to the US and we can't figure out a way to move them to Detroit?
We can't get our own citizens to stay in Detroit, why would you think those moving to the US--who can settle anywhere they want (that is, anywhere there is good work)--would want to settle in Detroit? They're smarter than that. Report from the field: Almost all of the (undocumented) workers I've worked with on a lot of construction projects are hard workers and they are here to stay. We're better off having them here, and they'll get legalized somehow. Nobody knows how, but that's what they are counting on. We need that new blood, and they'll be real assets. And as I said, their children will go to college. Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined:
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Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd, by Douglas Schoen (Wall Street Journal Opinion)
...Yet the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American peopleand particularly with swing voters who are largely independent and have been trending away from the president since the debate over health-care reform.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined:
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The Tea Parties were not "spontaneous", they were created by MSNBC and funded by the Koch brothers. MSNBC? More likely in reaction to MSNBC and it's biased reporting. Really, I'd like to know where you got this MSNBC stuff. They aren't exactly middle of the road, or even slightly left leaning. How do you conclude that they are supporting the tea parties? As for the Koch brothers, please provide evidence that they financed all of those people who gathered for peaceful protests. I was thinking of going to one of their protests, but never got around to it. (I was waiting for my check from the Koch brothers, but it never came. Must have been lost in the mail, eh?) By the way, at least the tea party folks cleaned up after themselves. That's more than the flea baggers are doing. Their protest areas are more likely to need serious fumigation when they're done. (Dons flame suit.)
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
Why can a real democracy not work? The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a "warm body" democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. Once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader. Emphasis added.Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
All of the votes have never been counted. (...hic) And that means? I don't get what you are trying to say here.Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2356 days) Posts: 6117 Joined:
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LITTLE RED HEN
(Courtesy of BigSoph on another website) She asked 99% of her neighbors, 'If we plant this wheat, we shall have bread to eat. Who will help me plant it?''Not I,' said the cow. 'Not I,' said the duck. 'Not I,' said the pig. 'Not I,' said the goose. 'Then I will do it by myself,' said the little red hen, and so she did. The wheat grew very tall and ripened into golden grain. 'Who will help me reap my wheat?' asked the little red hen.'Not I,' said the duck.. 'Out of my classification,' said the pig. 'I'd lose my seniority,' said the cow. 'I'd lose my unemployment compensation,' said the goose. 'Then I will do it by myself,' said the little red hen, and so she did. At last it came time to bake the bread.'Who will help me bake the bread?' asked the little red hen. 'That would be overtime for me,' said the cow. 'I'd lose my welfare benefits,' said the duck. 'I'm a dropout and never learned how,' said the pig. 'If I'm to be the only helper, that's discrimination,' said the goose. 'Then I will do it by myself,' said the little red hen. She baked five loaves and held them up for all of her neighbors to see. They wanted some and, in fact, demanded a share. But the little red hen said, 'No, I shall eat all five loaves.' 'Excess profits!' cried the Screeching cow.'Capitalist leech!' screamed the duck. 'I demand equal rights!' yelled the goose. The pig just grunted in disdain. And they all painted 'Unfair!' picket signs and marched around and around the little red hen, shouting obscenities. Then the Great Leader came. He said to the little red hen, 'You must not be so greedy.' 'But I earned the bread,' said the little red hen. 'Exactly,' said Great Leader. 'That is what makes our free enterprise system so wonderful. Anyone in the barnyard can earn as much as he wants. But under our modern government regulations, the productive workers must divide the fruits of their labour with those who are lazy and idle or who are engaged in community activities.' And they all lived happily ever after, including the little red hen, who smiled and clucked, 'I am grateful, for now I truly understand.' But her neighbors became quite disappointed in her. She never again baked bread because she joined the 'party' and got her bread free. And all the Democrats smiled. 'Fairness' had been established. Individual initiative had died, but nobody noticed; perhaps no one cared...so long as there was free bread that 'the rich' were paying for. Then the bread ran out.
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