This is Hilarious. When the going gets tough, the occupiers get going! Wild eyed climate svengali Bill McKibben claims the “atmosphere is occupied”, and that’s why we have global warming.
Only one problem, when the atmosphere gets too cold, people bail from the tents and head home. The Infrared camera video footage shot by the Telegraph reveals a lot of tents are missing bodies at night.
What a bunch of wimps! Why, in the 60’s their parents protested in waist deep snow, carrying signs, and the protest march was uphill both ways!
Or maybe they brought in some polar bears to help them “experience and be one with nature” more fully and that’s why people are missing?
Here’s the story from the Telegraph:
Only one in 10 St Paul’s protesters stay overnight
Just one in 10 of the tents at the Occupy London Stock Exchange camp which has closed St Paul’s Cathedral are occupied at night, it can be revealed.
The camp forced St Paul’s to close for the first time since the Blitz and is costing local businesses thousands of pounds a day.
But most of the protesters are heading home to sleep in their own beds at night.
Infra red images taken by a police helicopter during the early hours show that only around 20 of the 200 tents on the encampment actually have people staying in them.
The Daily Telegraph has shot its own video of the St Paul’s camp using thermal imaging equipment which appears to confirm these claims.
…
On Monday the revelation was described as a “charade” and pressure was growing on the church and other authorities to evict the camp.
“It is like a phantom camp – a big charade,” said Matthew Richardson, a Corporation of London councillor, who is calling for action to be taken.
“It just shows that most of the people don’t have the courage of their convictions and are here just to make trouble and leaving your tent here overnight is a good way to do that.”
Full story and the video here
They don’t even know why they are protesting. Other than being anti capitalist stupids [what would have happened if the extreme left had been ruling for decades? No protests of any sort for a start. Queues for everything. No freedom – period.
The Church officials are wimps as well.
Come on Great Britain – wake up! Enough Brits to get this country back on its feet. Not enough politicians with balls [not Balls!] to stand up to Political Correctness at the moment but they are emerging……..
The correct British approach to such ignorant, mindless behaviour is always to ignore it.
I hope WUWT will now take the same approach.
As might be expected.
the BBC of course, spun it slightly differently and had a (American/Canuckian) “Occupier” state on camera that at 00:30 hrs ZULU when the Telegraph purportedly looked witht he IR camera, there were “loads of us around, not necessarily in our tents but , doin (sic), stuff.” and that “the Telegraph hacks probably had an iphone app that hides IR signatures”
The Cathedral of St Paul’s is losing £20-30K per day in revenue and the sit in is casting doubt on whether the church will be able to celebrate a) the solemn Day of Remembrance in November and b) Christmas.
HoHoHo /sarc
I really like this site. I appreciate the fact that you know the difference between moderation and censorship. It saddens me when it becomes over focussed on supporting right wing politics. Over enthusiasm in one type of politics can be just as damaging to the well being of a country as bias in climate science or in ant other field of human endeavour. I’m aware that there is a great deal of support for the right wing of politics on this site but I really feel you are becoming a little to focussed on a bunch of people who may be muddled headed, are at least out there doing something to protest about how everyday hardworking people have been treated by big business over the last few years..
If more individuals had the commitment to make their concerns known earlier it’s possible we may not have been in this mess with regard to our economies or climate science. A useful strategy also may be to stick to role descriptor of the site and stay out of political commentary, either that or start up a political debating site.
Why don’t the police just remove the unoccupied tents and send them off for the Turkish earthquake survivors to use? Better still, send the handfull of protesters to Turkey to help out and do something usefull with their lives.
Someone needs to confiscate all the empty tents litering the public area.
All unattended tents should be packed and taken to the lost property depot, as it would be case with any property found by street sweepers.
What’s even funnier is that when the protesters first arrived from the Stock Exchange area, they found riot police already waiting on the steps of the Cathedral. The Dean of St Pauls then responded by (a) inviting the protesters into the Cathedral for a service (including a blessing of course) and (b) ordering the police to leave the cathedral precincts. Bad decision!
Never mind – up here at 51.5°N the weather will soon be gales and freezing rain. It won’t last long.
Wonderful deconstruction of the Wall Street bunch here:
http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/lord-of-the-flies-beds-down-in-animal-farm/
They hate the corporations yet get their coffee from Starbucks, a large corporation, thus helping profit growth.
The empty tents should be treated as rubbish left on the street and removed at night by the local authourities just as the black bags of rubbish are removed each night.
But But But because there are so many sharing every tent, the CO2 levels have become so high that they are masking any temperature rise to thermal cameras and sending the interior in to a new ice age. /sarc
So unless these people die in the shilling night, you will declare them chickenshits?
This is a new low for you mr Watts. I know you detest these people (where were you when the also ignoramuses of the “tea party” were fighting for god knows what?), and the “ideologies” that they endorse, but they do have a point. The wealth in the developed world is being hoarded by a very few, while the rest of us get the bad end. Is capitalism to blame? Why yes, for sure. Problem is obvious for anyone with half a neuron to see, the real burden is we have no remedy for it, since no one sincerely believes in an “alternative” to capitalism.
This does not mean the problem does not exist. I’m sure you are not one of us that feel the bad end of the stick, mr Watts, and thus your sarcasm will only sound worse and worse.
Vaguely on topic.
The 1% fight back!
Smash capitalism! But make sure the competition exists to incentivise apple to make me a cooler iphone!
Morons.
The phrase you’re looking for is “Potemkin Village.”
Other eyewitnesses tell a very different story.
“First, then, some myth-busting. I camped at the occupation last week. The idea that occupiers only use one in 10 tents is laughable. I couldn’t put an exact number on it, but I reckon that the nights I was down there, more than three quarters were full. The camp operates a sign in/sign out procedure to keep track of vacant tents. What’s more, I can’t find anyone who will independently confirm where this 90% figure came from. Cllr Richardson says it was determined by police thermal imaging. But a spokesman for the Corporation of London police said he couldn’t comment on operational procedure, and that the statistic hadn’t come from the police. In fact, the only person who has spoken about it is Cllr Richardson himself, who later told the Guardian he hadn’t heard it from official sources. The Daily Telegraph claimed their own thermal imagists had verified the rumour. Yet their video was not only shot at 12:30am (an hour before most occupiers tend to hit the sack): it also shows three separate protesters evaporating from sight when standing behind their tents – casting doubt on the accuracy of thermal imaging technology in the first place.”
Occupy London activists deny claims that few tents are occupied at night
“”This 10% figure is b******,” said one camper, who did not wish to be named but said he was from Birmingham. “It’s closer to 70% occupancy. People who live locally are going to their homes to sleep, but the rest of us generally sleep in our tents.”
Another camper, from Bristol, said many of his fellow demonstrators were working people, rather than students or professional protesters, who were trying to balance their jobs with their activism. That meant, he said, that they sometimes had to leave the camp.
“People have to juggle between days when they’re working and days when we’re here,” he said. “I’m self-employed. Most of the people are here because they’re choosing to be here. Most of the tents are left open for other people to use.””
Gareth Phillips: I think your complaint is unnecessary. First, it’s Anthony’s house and his rules. If he thinks the mix is wrong or there is too much O/T discussion, he can throw a flag. Second, he (almost) never does, because people on the thread figure out –wisdom of crowds?– what’s relevant, courteous, smart and funny. A good thread is like jazz, it can’t be predicted or managed.
Third, the excursions into politics are mostly a response to the politicization of the science. And that was not the skeptics’ doing. Science IS skepticism. Politics is the antithesis: the struggle to control resources based upon a defined interest, where that definition is too often based on cupidity or delusion, but is in any case already settled.
They hate the corporations yet get their coffee from Starbucks, a large corporation, thus helping profit growth.
You hate the government yet get from A to B using public built roads.
PC Reyne has long been responsible for clearing up many protests. Failing that, Inspector Frost takes care of the rest.
@jeez:
Hey look, a bunch of rich bankers who feel fine about their own wealth! How surprising!
jeez says….
Love it Jeez!
Day 1 – Investment types approach Joe in the street and claim they’re “gonna take back Wall St and all that’s rightfully theirs” Joe ask “what’s yours?” – Investment types – “Oh all the money, most of the United States, pretty much everything”
Love it!
Gareth:
Anthony: site owner
You: leftie Warmist visitor
See the difference?
The correct
BritishAmerican approach to such ignorant, mindless behaviour is to turn on the sprinklers at night.Oman,
you are so right, why would these morons occupy and protest when the ruling elites in the western world are doing such a good job. Hide the decline is such a good hit here it amazes me that hide the substandard mortgage loans,,,etc, and the consequences of same are of no concern to you. Too far east is west, too far right is ?.
Tom
One of the ‘protesters’ was on the radio yesterday (I put ‘protesters’ in inverted commas because I don’t think even they know what they are protesting about, other than being anti everything), and wa saying it was perfectly reasonable to go home overnight to take a shower and recharge the phone.
Oh, and a colleague of mnie happened to be in London last weekend, and his main observation about the protest was how they were all eating their Pret a Mange sandwiches and drinking their Starbucks or Costa coffee.
Based on this, it is obvious that a large proportion of the protestors are just the usual assortment of wealthy middle-class kids looking for an opportunity to rebel safely against their comfortable lifestyle. It’s very rarely (if ever) those who do have a genuine grievance that get involved in this sort of thing because they can’t afford the time and potential loss of earnings.
Why can’t McKibben and his idiotic followers see that Wall Street and the Square Mile in London
provide the capital to finance companies which in turn provides employment for those that wish to work as opposed to those that wish to sit on their backsides and protest. Has McKibben outlined how he would control capital if gets rid of the system that has been the backbone for the worlds economic development since the start of the industrial revolution? What does his protest set out to achieve. Does he feel that, with the support of so many idle drop-outs soiling the walkways of our cities, he is likely to create even the slightest glimmer of the irrational changes that he advocates? Yes the world economies are in a serious state at the present time, but in spite of the many past predictions of western governments that they intend to eliminate boom and bust, this will never ever be possible as the greatest economic brains in the world have no control whatsoever over world economic trends. If they did then boom and bust would have been eliminated years ago. McKibben, like Hansen, must be yet another great embarrasment to the AGW cult.
When the occupy movement first started I supported their opposition to corporate corruption, corporatism and banking crimes. I supported the hard working business people who were moved to protest because banks had committed many provable cases of fraud and with the overt support of both right and left wing governments over the past decade, had wrecked the economy and had been rewarded with hundreds of billions of tax-payers hard earned dollars, whilst main street was left to rot and they lost their ‘mom and pop’ businesses. I am opposed to very large corporations ‘merging’ with the state to extract billions from tax payers without a thought for fair competition and indeed, in spite of fair competition.
However as these protests have been spread, the message of “bring back capitalism to replace the corrupt corporatism” has been lost. As more and more lefties and “anti-capitalists” take part with banners helpfully giving a clear left wing anti-capitalist message for the left wing media to embrace and the right wing media to criticise and mock, then the original message has been lost.
These lefties have given the corporate media the message they need to keep society divided along left/right wing axis, to keep them fighting each other instead of the corrupt and greedy criminals, which fund both sides, at the top.
If you look at the top left corner, you can see a heat signature partially obscured by a tent. This suggests that the tents aren’t very transparent to the IR wavelengths being used by the camera. You can also see in this picture that about half the tents are glowing faintly. This would be expected if they are occupied. An energy balance would imply that the tent radiates as much energy as the people inside generate; however, a tent usually has a greater surface area and so a lower temperature is required to radiate the same amount of heat energy. So tents should be dimmer than the bodies inside them.
I think it’s unrealistic to expect to see distinct bodies inside tents with this kind of technology. It’s a shame that a site which is so good at the details of measurement decided to ignore them this time for a cheap laugh at a group of people who haven’t yet worked out their politics properly.
In any case, even if the tent city were empty at night the tents would still be useful; London is not a sunny place, and a shelter from the wind and rain during the day would be necessary from time to time.
Anyway, apart from this lapse, keep up the good work.
Gareth Phillips – “It saddens me when [this site] becomes over focussed on supporting right wing politics. … a bunch of people who may be muddled headed, are at least out there doing something to protest about how everyday hardworking people have been treated by big business over the last few years..”
These protests and the comments on them have opened up all sorts of interesting lines of thought. I recognise that I’m right-wing on most things, but I actually do have some sympathy for the sitters-ins’ view. The robber barons have been getting exponentially worse (I blame GWB most), and we have all suffered from them, and still are. Whether sit-ins etc are the right way to go about dealing with the problem is another matter.
St Paul’s losing £20,000 a day? Wow that’s ….. big business. What do they sell in there? Indulgences? (aka carbon credits)
Parking an empty tent outside St Paul’s? Security must have got very slack. When I was working in London, there were no WPB’s and no litter bins, and if you left a bag or briefcase anywhere it got taken away and blown up. A tent is heaps bigger. Maybe that’s why the police are using infrared but then if the infrared is showing that no-one’s in the tent, shouldn’t they be taking it away and blowing it up?
As a self-funded retiree, I rely on sharemarket investments – not a very comfortable existence at present – and opined a whlle ago that shareholders should be able to limit their own robber barons’ incomes. I was reminded by the opinee that the majority of shares of most companies are controlled by the robber baron fraternity so it wouldn’t work. (That in turn reminded me of the mafia boss’s comment after being shown round Wall Street – “I’m in the wrong business”).
So yes, the sitters-in have identified a genuine problem. We all need someone to find a solution. Ideally, that someone would be the next Potus.
These protesters are missing a great chance to reduce their carbon-footprint: Shivering all night in a fart sack is the righteous thing to do. Occupy the Church to send a message to the Banks? Oh for the days when the King’s men would read aloud the riot act and then, if you cared to hang around, they would disperse the rioters.
They are a bunch of deluded fools, barking up the wrong tree. but still: 10 years after 9/11 the West has been reduced to such bumbling, pathetic, whining … (“idiots” is the only word that comes readily to mind), when it comes to taking action and moving your feet on the part of the normal citizen? Does not bode well…
“They hate the corporations yet get their coffee from Starbucks, a large corporation, thus helping profit growth.
You hate the government yet get from A to B using public built roads.”
Good point, however if you could point me to private roads I could use instead AND allow me to chose to do so without paying for the public roads, then I would choose the private roads instead.
If I wish to travel, then I have no choice but to use public roads which I have also had no choice in paying for. I can choose to use private transport over public transport though and given that choice I always choose to use private transport.
Time to identify the ” campers” and find out how many are in reciept of benefits from the poor
British taxpayer!
@luismanueldias says:
October 26, 2011 at 3:09 am
You may want to stop now.
Oh and I believe the camera over word of mouth.
I fail to see how people standing behind tents have anything to do with the tents actually being occupied. It’s like saying ground-penetrating radar is completely worthless because it doesn’t allow you to image what’s on the other side of the planet.
Yes, the dean allowed protesters to enter early-on, then stopped them and closed on “health and safety” grounds.
Have a look at the trustees of St Pauls.
Chairman
Sir John Stuttard PWC partner, Former Lord Mayor of London.
Trustees
The Right Reverend Graeme Knowles, Dean of St Paul’s
Dame Helen Alexander DBE Deputy chair of the CBI, director of Centrica plc
Lord Blair of Boughton Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner
Roger Gifford Investment banker, big in City of London
John Harvey – Not clearly identified
Joyce Hytner OBE – Theatre director
Gavin Ralston Global Head of Product and leading international asset manager at Schroder Investment Management
Carol Sergeant CBE – Chief Risk Director at Lloyds TSB, formerly Managing Director for Regulatory Process and Risk at the FSA
John Spence OBE – Former Managing Director, Business Banking, LloydsTSB
Not surprising that those protesting are denied entry by those they are protesting against.
The area occupied by tents is used for public protest anyway, and some of it is “ownerless”, literally.
The right to protest, publicly, still operates in most of the country. Even if police and council permission has to be sought.
As for the press slant…..hmmmm….do not the press constantly rail against “deniers” ?
Nice to see that even people on here believe what they are fed by the MSM
Not much hope for climate skepticism is there ?
I knew it, and I can see the headline already: The Eco-bafoons Are A Cold Blooded Creature With No Light On Upstairs For Good Measure To Hide From The Fabled “Black Helicopters”!
:-()
Gareth Phillips says:
October 26, 2011 at 1:05 am
“If more individuals had the commitment to make their concerns known earlier it’s possible we may not have been in this mess with regard to our economies or climate science. A useful strategy also may be to stick to role descriptor of the site and stay out of political commentary, either that or start up a political debating site.”
Modern climate science (the perverted branch of geosciences) and politics are inseparatable from the start.
1975 `Endangered Atmosphere’
Conference: Where the Global Warming Hoax Was Born
Mead, Schneider, Holdren and Lovelock
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/highlights/Fall_2007.html
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/GWHoaxBorn.pdf
So, Gareth, you say that enough people had been there in 1975 holding up protest signs against the perversion of science we wouldn’t be in this CAGW fantasy mess now? Nice suggestion!
What the OWS protest signs really say: “I don’t know what I want, but I want it NOW!”
Let’s see. People crapping in public. Dealing smack. Assaulting other people (including rape). Causing huge financial loss to businesses and cities.
The proper approach to this behavior is the following:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/26/us/occupy-wall-steet/index.html?
I love how they prevent the Telegraph camera man from leaving, saying, if someone would stalk around your house at night, you would be suspicious as well, wouldn’t you – say, do they see their tents as “their houses”, i.e. private property? I thought they were against capitalism! Kids, take care, once the concept of private property has taken hold in your minds, you’re on the way to the Dark Side! 🙂
Gareth Phillips says:
October 26, 2011 at 1:05 am
“you are becoming a little to focussed on a bunch of people who may be muddled headed, are at least out there doing something to protest”
The point is Gareth, they are not out there doing something to protest, they are leaving tents as a proxy. It should be noted that no-one has yet proven those empty tents are occupied during the day. That is simply an assumption we make.
Thats really stupid, the IR image was taken just after midnight and used as evidence that no one is sleeping in them!!!??!
Come on, how ridiculous, this is almost as bad as the hockey stick manipulations of Mann.
Horror of horrors that these protesters are not tucked up in bed by 10pm!
I Like WUWT a lot and have been following it for years now, but this bashing for the sake of bashing is ugly. You might not agree with them, but so what, WUWT?
Stick to bashing the alarmists and their bad scientific practice.
Er — How do we know what time the picture was taken? Or perhaps they were all up and about talking to each other, or a number of other reasons.
I don’t care a hoot for this occupy this or another but just as easily as a picture can tell one thousand stories, it can also tell one thousand lies …. and it is well know that news organisations will take any picture and make what they want out of it in order to make a story and provide themselves with profits.
@luismanueldias – He’s not declaring them chickens#@t. It’s more like dishonest. Don’t pretend that you’re occupying the park at night by erecting empty tents, which make your movement’s members seem far more convicted than they actually are. If an actual person is “braving” the elements regardless of severity, it means much more than someone letting their tent brave the elements while they sleep at home in a warm bed. If you want to call your group Occupy ______, then you better be occupying, and not just protesting when convenient.
As far as the veracity of the 10% claim, I’m not sure what to make of it, but the IR blocking iPhone app just makes the protester sound like a nut job.
Here’s another funny way at looking at this.
“FOOTAGE from a thermal imaging camera has proved that capitalism is not actually working.
When the camera was pointed at offices and factories across Britain it showed they were completely deserted.
And thermal images of millions of homes proved that while they may contain dozens of electrical gadgets no-one can now afford to switch them on.”
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/thermal-imaging-proves-capitalism-doesn%27t-work-201110264466/
Please don’t publish this comment.
One of my bloggers has asked me to publish an open letter addressed to you, I believe in freedom of speech so I did but …
I also believe that you have the right of reply and also that you should know this open letter is there … if you should choose to comment on it on my site I assure you I will publish your comment unedited (if you wish)
Although ….. my site is not that popular, I guess you can ignore it if you wish 🙂
http://wisdomblogs.com/2011/10/25/an-open-letter-for-anthony-watts-from-martin-lack/
The problem most have with these people is that they are totally unaware of the irony of their protest when they “broadcast the revolution” from the iPads, iPhones, Dells, wearing their trendy clothes, no doubt camping in North Face or Eddie Bauer tents, walking around in Nike’s. In NYC the protesters are praising McDonalds because they let them use the bathrooms. These kids just don’t get that Wall St., with all of its flaws (and it has many) provides us with economies of scale that allow the world to have so much stuff so cheap that it boggles the mind. An iPhone costs $200, think about that. My Apple IIe cost over $2000 in 1985, a 21″, 100 lb+, color TV was more than 2 months salary for most households in the 60s. You can get a 21″ flat screen and a DVD player for less than $150 now. Less than a days pay for most middle class people. You can be in poverty and be morbidly obese because food is so cheap.
We have access to SO MUCH STUFF in 2011 becuase public finanancing of companies allows them to expand to meet demand and lower prices. Globalization allows these companies to provide third world workers with income they could not dream of 20 years ago. These kids need to stop majoring in useless fields and go into engineering, science, iT, education, business and medicine where there are plenty of unfilled jobs in the US.
And as far as London goes, isn’t living off the dole an actual career path? What are they complaining about?
“They hate the corporations yet get their coffee from Starbucks, a large corporation, thus helping profit growth.”
Now look, climate skeptics are supposed to be sticklers for details. What about the above quote can’t be right? Its pretty obvious isn’t it? Even feral protesters wouldn’t get coffee from Starbucks.
A few years ago, when in Heathrow in London I decided that Starbucks couldn’t be as bad as everyone said, and bought a coffee there. I was wrong. It was that bad.
Incidentally, I was in the same position at Tullamarine airport in Melbourne, and opted for a coffee from a non-descript vendor. The coffee was brilliant.
Why does it take a multinational to stuff up something that just about any coffee shop in Melbourne can get right?
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/thermal-imaging-proves-capitalism-doesn%27t-work-201110264466/
John Marshall says:
October 26, 2011 at 1:47 am
“They hate the corporations yet get their coffee from Starbucks, a large corporation, thus helping profit growth.”
Ah yes, but Starbucks is a big supporter of Cap and Tax, so it is OK to buy overpriced coffee.
Think about Netflix which is losing 100K+ customers becuase paying $20 a month is too much money to have access to thousands of movies and TV shows instantly, and tens of thousands more delivered to your door within two-three days. Why, because many younger people are pefectly happy watching movies and TV for free over their laptop computers or on their phone. Go back 10 years and try to imagine that. I remember 10 years ago getting crap for using Flash for a website becuase it requried too much time to download becuase we were still forced to design sites based on the premise that most of our patrons were on dial up.
It is rather disappointing to note that so many on this site are keen to engage in an arms-length critique of insignificant detail surrounding a legitimate protest. I suspect the comments originate from the privileged few, keen to label all protesters as bums and thus discredit their message. This, together with the regurgitation of biased media reports adds no value whatsoever and serves only to illustrate the very behaviour which prevents the open debate of important issues, including climate change.
T.Hill
UK
luismanueldias says:
October 26, 2011 at 2:16 am
“…This is a new low for you mr Watts. I know you detest these people (where were you when the also ignoramuses of the “tea party” were fighting for god knows what?),…”
The goals and objectives of the 912Project/Tea Party were and remain very specific. To list some of the main goals:
* a return to limited, constitutional government
* ending wasteful government massive deficit spending
* rational tax policies that encourage economic growth in the private sector, the only source of the money that government steals and redistributes
* personal responsibility
The same protest happened here in Melbourne (Australia) and the police finally forced them to leave. They were protesting about companies that make too much money as they talked on their iphones, listened to their ipods and sent emails on their ipads while eating Mcdonalds. Its simple, if you don’t want the big greedy company to have your money don’t buy their products.
Take the tents, put them in the police abandoned property locker and be done with it. This should be done on Wall St too.
It’s being dubbed the FLEA flops ’round the net.
Freaks, Liberals Enabling Anarchy.
Considering the nickname they put on the TEA Party members – spouting on and laughing about the nic name they gave them (baggers) on the alphabet networks in the USA during prime time, I think this one’s much kinder in that regard.
The ignorance these people display is astounding.
What’s their goal? I know their of gripes – sort of …. but there’s nothing that a protest – even world wide will change…not one thing as they’ve no merit.
Here in Canada they have no legitimate cause enough to do pull this stunt, so glad winters coming – they won’t last long. Free health care, ample welfare, shelter’s provided…no one is dying on the streets here from hunger, sickness or exposure – unless they chose to.
Bravo T.Hill, brilliantly put and spot on
+1
especially this:
“This, together with the regurgitation of biased media reports adds no value whatsoever and serves only to illustrate the very behaviour which prevents the open debate of important issues, including climate change.”
This is what thought WUWT was all about…
luismanueldias says:
“You hate the government yet get from A to B using public built roads.”
Your analogy is poor. Lack of sympathy for the OWS “movement” does not necessarily correlate with “hatred” for the government. Most sensible people understand that a government is necessary for certain well defined purposes, roads, law enforcement, and national defense would be good examples.
Also actually if the government did not maitain the roadway system in an essential monopoly. There could be a private or semi-private road system. I’m not advocating it just pointing it out there.
I got a better idea: “Liberate the Free Market.”
It is the Government regulations trying to pick the Crony winners that causes the problems
Abd yes, that includes the Government picking The International Religion of Climate Change as a Crony winner.
I remain sceptical of government regulation and intervention.
I think the backlash for Netflix was more about the pre-loading of fees than anything else. You were doubling the cost of an item without a commensurate increase in service or utility. I understand why they needed to do it, and at $20/month it is still a bargain, but to think that people would “understand” they were still getting a great deal was just ignorant. People would have been willing to pay more, as long as they were getting more right away.
This situation is similar to 2000/2001 time frame when gas went up what now seems a laughable $0.20/gallon. A hefty 20% increase over the current price at that time. People were outraged. There were public calls for politicians to do something. In Indiana, where I lived, they actually suspended the state gas tax. Of course the absolute impact for people, on average, was something like $0.30/day, which was not exactly a budget buster for the vast majority of people. The outrage was over the relative move, not the absolute one.
Gareth Phillips says:
October 26, 2011 at 1:05 am
…………..are at least out there doing something to protest about how everyday hardworking people have been treated by big business over the last few years..
———————————-
I doubt these are ‘everyday hard working people’…………..’everyday hard working people don’t have the time to protest because they are too busy working hard every day. I don’t see this in the OWS or OL or any other protest. Nope, no hard working people.
T.Hill “keen to label all protesters as bums and thus discredit their message.”
What is their message? Is it that it is unfair that people without tattoos and piercings in every part of their bodies including huge earrings that make 3-5 inch holes in their ears, and who instead have MBAs somehow managed to get rich by working hard, while the people with those tattoos and holes in their bodies amazingly failed to get a job? Is that the message?
No, we don’t think that all protesters are bums. We like the tea party. The tea party managed to pack up and go home and cleaned up after themselves. So yes if these people choose to look and act like bums, while the tea party looks and act like people with jobs and a life, then forgive us for pointing out the differences.
FWIW, I agree with the sentiments behind the occupy movement. Just because AGW is a fantasy, it doesn’t say anything about our economic system. The irony is the capitalists as well as the reds have seized upon AGW for their own twisted agendas. The real harm done to the environment is because of rampant consumerism (not CO2 BTW). Consumerism that is utterly unsustainable. Economically, we can’t carry on as we are. Just because some people realise this, it doesn’t make them Red or Pink. New interesting solutions are required!
Are the people who occupy the tents at night actual protesters or people who have missed the last bus following a night on the hoy? Seems a great way to save on taxi fares.
I wonder if they do that Arctic thing before they leave!
Capitalism is a broad church. Some of it is of great benefit and some of it stinks. The protesters should stick to specific issues.
As much as I could care less about the occupy movement. I think this is a sersiously flawed analysis. You can tell that the tents do obscure the thermal images of people when are behind them, and with about 10 seconds left (you can’t get a time off the slider) that someone sticks a hand out of a tent and its the only real “signature” of their presence. If this is taken late enough, people would be in their thermally insulating sleeping bags. I disappointed that this unscientific, biased political post was put up here and I am a very conservative individual. truth is truth. this is not a truthful representation, we just can’t tell what the occupancy is of those tents
Why is an opinion on OWS capable of being classified as right-wing or left-wing? I think you bring too much prejudice to criticism.
I agree, but there was increased value, the selection on Netflix streaming service is much better than it was two years ago, especially for TV series. But yes, it was a terrible PR move and the whole Qwikster thing was just stupid. Luckily Hastings listened to his customers.
But my point was for 2 hours of labor per month a working class person can instantly watch tens of thousands of movies with little to no hardware cost as netflix is standard issue on most new TVs or DVDs or game consoles. We as a society are missing the forest for the trees. Yes, there are some people in this nation and world with vast, and sometimes unwarranted ,wealth and they spend money on ridiculous bobbles that do nothing more than flaunt their wealth, but the average and below average American has access to leisure items and technology that was unthinkable to even the wealthiest people 15 years ago.
I don’t know, there are problems in our society, but overall I wouldn’t want to be living anywhere else at any other time.
On the other hand I do think most US companies would be much better served by building employee loyalty by taking those tens of millions earned by mercenary CEOs by providing health insurance, raises, and educational opportunites BEFORE the unions come in. An awful lot of money and time is wasted hiring and training employees at places like Wal Mart or McDonalds, or fighting unions. Wal Mart would be better off invensting in human capital than expanding as rapidly as they have and the failed rebranding they attempted in order to take business form Kohl’s and Target. I think the real sin of Wall St is that everyone is taught in their MBA classes that capitalism is a Zero Sum game and if your not winning you’re losing. Over expansion is the #1 reason for chain failures at the national level. If a Home Depot is in a town Lowes want to expand to, they won’t build the Lowes across town, they will build it right next to the Home Depot in an attempt to drive it out of business. Almost always one will fail leaving a hulking structure with acres of impermiable and usless asphalt. Does a town with 40,000 population need two Super Wal Marts and a Sams Club? Evidently the answer is yes.
Astroturf has roots like grass?
Hi there , folks, it’s only me. I was just wondering which government form I have to sign to get loads of dosh doled out to me so that I do not have to worry about paying my taxes, household bills, etc, & spend weeks protesting about whatever you want me to protest about. I really fancy a trip to South Africa in the next few weeks so that I can stand in the glorious sunshine waving a placard saying “Down with Capitalism, Stop Climate Change Now” or some such nonsense! 🙂 Sarc off!
They may have all moved into the 20 tents to keep warm ;>)
Funny how some here support OWS but fail to accept that perhaps a post like this might also be a protest in its own right.
“get Britain back on its feet”
Yep. Do that while watching your Chinese-made TV, chatting to your mates on your (Chinese-made) iphone.
Driving your foreign made, or foreign-owned car.
Say it while your home steel producers are bought by foreign business and then closed to claim carbon permits.
Still, as the Chinese are getting more affluent, while we are getting more effluent, maybe their wages will rise to a level where we can get the sweatshop work they do at the moment ?
Maybe you will also send more letters to your MP to stop shale oil/gas being exploited so your Russian oil shares do not suffer ?
Capitalism: Gotta love it.
Shame there is nothing much else that enables you to buy so much you don’t need, with money you don’t have.
Perhaps the following will ‘speak for itself’ :
In Dallas a few days ago (the 24th, Monday) now.
Note particularly 0:20 and 0:42 points; where was the rational urging, the dialogue about ‘withdrawing bank funds and putting then into a credit union’?
I wonder if this ‘action’ was discussed coolly and calmly in a GA (General Assembly) previously (GA discussions can get quite involved at times. I also note that the Dallas OWS group has ceased both live streaming video or posting video of GAs entirely …)
.
So, some fat ass gas bag who can’t even get tomorrow’s forecast right is now some sort of expert on economic injustice?
Anthony should stick to something he knows–nothing!
STFU Anthony.
REPLY: This comes courtesy of a local occupier who personifies everything this movement is all about in the comment. above. Terry, it got down to 36F last night in Chico. Did you sleep at City Plaza or did you go home to a nice warm bed? Inquiring minds want to know. BTW I have an IR camera, so I’ll be doing spot checks thanks to your kind encouragement – Anthony
luismanueldias says:
October 26, 2011 at 3:06 am
You hate the government yet get from A to B using public built roads.
The public built the roads by supplying the $$. Politicians spending hundreds of millions of dollars to win a job that pays hundreds of thousands. Have you ever asked yourself why?
The friends of the government get inside information of where the money will be spent, so that they can invest ahead of time for maximum advantage. The real money to be made is not from what a politician is paid, but from controlling how the public $$ is spent.
Alan the Brit says @ 7:33 am
“ Hi there , folks, it’s only me. I was just wondering which government form I have to sign to get loads of dosh doled out to me … “
I don’t know of government forms but wind-farm developers are paying good money for activists:
http://www.windbyte.co.uk/tricks.html
From the link:
” Suspicions were further raised by reports of Yorkshire activists overheard discussing computer hacking and sabotage on a train to Berwick and the same group being spotted at a hotel in the town.
The role of the bald man in the beanie was soon revealed by the gossip of a naive member of the secretive ‘Moorsyde’ support group, after the meeting. He was revealed to be a former Greenpeace organiser from East Yorkshire called Richard Claxton, working under cover for Your Energy. “
luismanueldias says:
October 26, 2011 at 2:16 am
So unless these people die in the shilling night, you will declare them chickenshits?
At 53.8 degrees f (12c) one would have to be very unhealthy to die, which is Anthony’s point on this. In the Telegraph article, the protesters admit that “But most of the protesters are heading home to sleep in their own beds at night.” and “The protesters are aware of the vacancies and allocate empty tents to newcomers and anyone staying for the day. ”
“A sign on one of the tents said: “All day, all week, we’ll sleep on London’s freezing streets. Solidarity.” Unfortunately, it would appear that 53.8 degrees.
“St Paul’s losing £20,000 a day? Wow that’s ….. big business.”
The OL protesters contacted Health & Safety to find out what they were doing to cause St. Paul’s to close. H&S said they had done nothing to have caused St. Paul’s to close. Meanwhile, tourists are happily mingling with the protesters, many sympathising with their grievances.
“I was just wondering which government form I have to sign to get loads of dosh doled out to me so that I do not have to worry about paying my taxes, household bills, etc, & spend weeks protesting about whatever you want me to protest about.”
You should ask the One-Percenter Occupy Occupy London guys to find out how their accountants about it with tax loopholes and get to pay less tax than their house cleaners.
As Margie in “Fargo” would say (and as doug s alluded to at 7:08am),
“I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou”
You cannot compare the heat signature of someone standing outside to the heat signature of someone inside a tent nestled in a sleeping bag or under covers. Recall Arnold in “Predator”…
Not saying for sure there are folks inside, but it would be good to see what a heat signature of someone bundled up in a tent looks like before stating they are empty as fact.
Presenting raw and uncut, events, data, ‘things’ in their original form for all to see and evaluate for themselves?
Alrighty then:
Video of event from the same day as the video above (Oct 24th, Monday, as “Dallas Occupy” blocked the Chase bank entrance), but a little earlier before ‘protesters’ sat down and locked arms, precipitating a call to the local gendarmes for relief.
Note the calm, rational demeanor of the protesters as they carefully laid out the reasons why depositors should withdraw their funds from that institution (Chase) and instead make use of the services offered by a local credit union.
Or maybe not …
.
When ever I see articles, news clips on these guys all I can think of is the scene in Taladaga Nights where the little kids are running around with a hose screaming ” Anarchy, Anarchy ” . Makes me laugh 🙂
How to strike a sensitive nerve of the left, Watts just did.
St Paul’s Cathedral was still covered with black soot from adjacent burning buildings and all that was visible of the buildings across the street was the holes that used to be the basements and some walls only partially standing ten years after WWII. The average person in the UK had very little in income or luxury items. The population was recovering from the hardships of a devastating war to preserve their freedom from socialism and after the war they had survived the attempts of communism to dominate their lives. Now these protesters would throw away their freedom for socialism based on political propaganda.
These malcontents should think about what life was like before the corporations which would be before the typewriter and carbon paper that made it possible for small companies to become corporations and to grow and produce the jobs and items they desire so much including the tents they use as props. That would of course be in the late 1800s when life was shorter and very hard and when it was wise to watch that you don’t step into horse manure.
It is easy to believe these protestors have no idea of what they are supporting and the consequences they will face if they succeed.
And of course in the States, ACORN is involved up to their eyeballs.
The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed “leaderless” Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing “guerrilla” protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities, sources tell FoxNews.com.
The former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change (NYCC). That organization was created in late 2009 when some ACORN offices disbanded and reorganized under new names after undercover video exposes prompted Congress to cut off federal funds.
NYCC’s connection to ACORN isn’t a tenuous one: It works from the former ACORN offices in Brooklyn, uses old ACORN office stationery, employs much of the old ACORN staff and, according to several sources, engages in some of the old organization’s controversial techniques to raise money, interest and awareness for the protests.
Sources said NYCC has hired about 100 former ACORN-affiliated staff members from other cities – paying some of them $100 a day – to attend and support Occupy Wall Street. Dozens of New York homeless people recruited from shelters are also being paid to support the protests, at the rate of $10 an hour, the sources said.
At least some of those hired are being used as door-to-door canvassers to collect money that’s used to support the protests.
Sources said cash donations collected by NYCC on behalf of some unions and various causes are being pooled and spent on Occupy Wall Street. The money is used to buy supplies, pay staff and cover travel expenses for the ex-ACORN members brought to New York for the protests.
In one such case, sources said, NYCC staff members collected cash donations for what they were told was a United Federation of Teachers fundraising drive, but the money was diverted to the protests.
Sources who participated in the teachers union campaign said NYCC supervisors gave them the addresses of union members and told them to go knock on their doors and ask for contributions—and did not mention that the money would go toward Occupy Wall Street expenses. One source said the campaign raked in about $5,000.
Current staff members at NYCC told FoxNews.com the union fundraising drive was called off abruptly last week, and they were told NYCC should not have been raising money for the union at all.
Sources said staff members also collected door-to-door for NYCC’s PCB campaign — which aims to test schools for deadly toxins —but then pooled that money together with cash raised for the teachers union and other campaigns to fund Occupy Wall Street.
“We go to Freeport, Central Islip, Park Slope, everywhere, and we say we’re collecting money for PCBs testing in schools. But the money isn’t going to the campaign,” one source said.
“It’s going to Occupy Wall Street, and we’re not using that money to get schools tested for deadly chemicals or to make their kids safer. It’s just going to the protests, and that’s just so terrible.”
A spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers told FoxNews.com, “The UFT is not involved in any NYCC fundraising on the PCB issue.”
Multiple sources said NYCC is also using cash donations through canvassing efforts in New York’s Harlem and Washington Heights neighborhoods for union-backed campaigns to fund the Wall Street protests.
“All the money collected from canvasses is pooled together back at the office, and everything we’ve been working on for the last year is going to the protests, against big banks and to pay people’s salaries—and those people on salary are, of course, being paid to go to the protests every day,” one NYCC staff member told FoxNews.com.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/10/26/exclusive-acorn-playing-behind-scenes-role-in-occupy-movement/#ixzz1btzr3VLq
Gareth:
Anthony: site owner
You: leftie Warmist visitor
See the difference?
Garethman
Thank you Brian for your accurate observation.
Anthony as you say owns the site, and can do as he wishes. But he has a history of being somewhat fairer in moderating debates ( hence my comments) when reviewing comments from both the left and right. On this site, you are correct, I am seen as a a lefty warmist. On other sites I am a seen as a right wing denier of the holy truth. As a result I suspect I may have beliefs which fit in with many others who do not belong to either fringe. My philosophy is that in blaming the inaccuracies in climate change on left wing politics we are missing a major factor. And that is while there is money to be made from radical and inaccurate theories and models, it is the financiers and bankers who will win as usual leaving the rest of us out in the cold. While we howl about left wing politics driving poor science we are missing the plot, it’s not the old hippies, lefties and greenies who benefit, it is politicians like those in the Maldives and the financiers who trouser the cash. They are the ones with the fingers in the pie, they are the ones who have most to gain.
I know my points will not make any difference to the tea party gun totin’ right wing enthusiasts on this site. But until we recognise that the climate change scam is a classic capitalist initiative, we are doomed to chase wild geese and devour red herrings. In Capitalist terms. “We made a fortune from trashing their environment, we can make another fortune from telling them to clear it up! Big drinks all round! ( possibly an Old Pultney)
OCCUPIER says:
October 26, 2011 at 7:50 am
Nice comeback! That Anthony one, he’s a real “…some fat ass gas bag who can’t even get tomorrow’s forecast right is now some sort of expert on economic injustice?
Anthony should stick to something”
LET’S GET HIM (we shall start by …) /jk
“This comes courtesy of a local occupier who personifies everything this movement is all about in the comment”
Hows that? Is this poster: a) Confirmed as one of the OWS movement b)an official spokesperson representing every participants attitude
If the IR photography turns out to be misleading, will WUWT be following the spirit of honesty and openness in making an update confirming the truth.
WUWT is very much a protest site, you should embrace your fellow protesters 🙂
Too much “Kill the messenger, ignore the message” here. I think there’s plenty of blame to go around for our current economic distress, including Americans’ “I want it right now” attitudes of the last decade or so. I love capitalism as much as the next American, and all the trappings that go with it. But I also respect responsibility, a level playing field, and ethical behavior, and you have to have your head in the sand not to recognize the trashing of those three tenants by Wall Street honchos. Who cares if a good number of the protesters are hippies, unemployed, professional protesters, etc.? I’m pretty confident there’s a decent number of protesters who feel very strongly about the lack of ethics within the banking community (and I’m not just talking about loose requirements for home loans). The message is getting out: banking reform is necessary in order for capitalism to thrive for as many people as possible and not just a few manipulative, soulless operatives. I’m not for “spreading the wealth” by governmental edict – I just want equitable practices and practitioners. As for ripping “truths” (for lack of a better word) based on lifestyle, political bent, height, lack of humor: WHO CARES?!!! That’s for other websites. Does it matter what Anthony Watts’ mustache looks like? Does it matter how tall Gavin Schmidt is? Does Sir Monckton’s bulging eyes or title matter at all? Stick to the message. It’s beneath the science of this website and subsequent replies to focus on the personal hygiene of the left and the self-righteous indignation of the right: both have their faults so let’s just stick to the facts, or as close to facts as we can get.
Ask why is it so? says:
October 26, 2011 at 6:15 am
The same protest happened here in Melbourne (Australia) and the police finally forced them to leave. They were protesting about companies that make too much money as they talked on their iphones, listened to their ipods and sent emails on their ipads while eating Mcdonalds. Its simple,
if you don’t want the big greedy company to have your money don’t buy their products.
—————————————————————————————————————-
Those were probably handouts from the government that they got from scientific grants etc… Or Welfare because its their right to take what they have not toiled for…. the irony of these liberals is astounding…
Unions backing and organizing….
ACORN helping….
Obama funding….
Obama is the biggest danger to this country right next to people’s ignorance of our Constitution.. the fact that our founding father knew when a populace figures out they could vote themselves a raise on the backs of others would be the countries undoing speaks volumes about their ability to see the future… Democrats and Obama are using Class envy and greed to divide us an destroy america… Occupy is another word for dictatorship…. Useful idiots are disposed of at the very first once their usefulness is done… Stalin, Mao, and Hitler are historical proof..
Jim et al:
I think you will find that many of the protesters are well educated and currently in work. It is a convenient and lazy approach to focus on those with piercings and tattoos and dismiss them as the drop outs. Most sensible reporting is based on fact, not generalisations. Judging books by their covers? I’m sure as with any group, there are those who tag a long. Select media clippings are hardly representative of the broader activities going on within these protests. You may be familiar with the saying” A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”.
Maybe you do not understand what is being depicted in these videos, or maybe you do not understand how thermal (camera) imagery works, or maybe you do not understand the ‘thermal environment’ * of a tent when it is ‘occupied’ versus not occupied (interior temperature), or maybe you do not understand that the ‘source’ of heat energy which illuminates these tents from inside is a live human being possessing a normal core temperature of 37.0 deg C and a typical skin temperature of 32 to 34 deg C, or maybe you do not understand the human exhalation process, particularly the thermal energy content of same, and how that may serve to raise the temperature of a tent, such that the temperature rise might be noted by a suitable thermal imaging camera?
Can you come forth with more detail as to where the confusion lay?
.
* Tent temperatures
.
T.Hill says:
October 26, 2011 at 8:59 am
Are you saying that these people are astro turff and just looking out for their own self interests?
Pull My Finger, you’re not quite right on a few details there…
First, I spent several years working for Best Buy/Future Shop doing new stores and store maintenance, traveling all over the country. I’m the guy that installed and wired the car audio displays and put the HDTV wiring through the store, etc.
Lowes and Home Depot don’t open stores next to each other in an attempt to “put the other out of business”, not even close. Ever wonder why every city and town has clusters of the exact same stores? Pier 1, Bed/Bath/Beyond, Michaels, Best Buy, Home Depot, etc? If they were all trying to compete, why would they keep building in clusters?
Before I actually watched this stuff in action I used to think the same way. But the reality is, if you have a Best Buy sitting there doing business and open a Future Shop a block away, the Best Buy actually GAINS business! The same works for a Home Depot and a Lowes, or a McDonalds/Wendys/Burger King/A&W grouping. The more the merrier, and we don’t need to know all of the reasons why… It just works!
And about building human capital: measure the quality of an employer by staff turnover rates. WalMart has very low turnover, which indicates that people working there are actually happier with their situation. It’s relative. I wouldn’t do it because I’ve gotten used to a responsible IT position with great benefits, but if my choice was to go back to retail or live in the street, I’d be looking for something like WalMart or Costco. I’d rather see an employer give more people their chance than choose a tiny few and give them all the benefits and frills that most of them will never actually appreciate.
By the way, how many “hulking structures with acres of impermiable and usless asphalt” are really out there? More likely where there are any, it’s the city/town/state that has failed miserably, not the retailers.
No.
I have already spent waaaaaaay too much time on the various OWS boards (wanna see the chat logs I captured?) and the various livestream and Ustream feeds to take your ‘word’ on it. What you find, is, these ppl have been indoctrinated by the ‘schools’ and universities they have ‘attended’ in primarily the ‘liberal arts’ vein …
Remember: Indoctrination =/= education.
Classical mistake, Hill.
BTW, the name is “_Jim” as there is ambiguity to that moniker w/o the underscore …
.
Okay, when I first saw the pictures my thought was that the tents were blocking the IR from the camera, but after watching the video, even though two layers, you can still faintly see people’s limbs when they walk behind the tent.
The overall view shows most of the tents being absolutely cold, while a few are dimly radiating heat to indicate their occupancy or recent occupancy.
Everyone should read and reflect on Jeff Fujita’s post above, which I believe offers a balanced view and one that I certainly agree with. It amuses me how quickly people label each other as either “left” or “right” wing. It’s quite sad really.
Is it possible the people inside the tents are bundled up enough so they aren’t being picked up by the IR camera?
Okay, I’ll bite.
_Jim says:
“I have already spent waaaaaaay too much time on the various OWS boards (wanna see the chat logs I captured?) and the various livestream and Ustream feeds to take your ‘word’ on it. What you find, is, these ppl have been indoctrinated by the ‘schools’ and universities they have ‘attended’ in primarily the ‘liberal arts’ vein …
Remember: Indoctrination =/= education.
Classical mistake, Hill.”
So what are you sayin’ _Jim? Indoctrination only occurs in our schools and universities? Really? C’mon, indoctrination happens in households, churches (I’m a Christian by the way), political parties, communities. Are you saying a college education is worthless or harmful? The easiest way to cut off dialogue is by attacking people as “elitist” or “liberal” or “christian” or “conservative”. Sometimes those labels are useful as shorthand but to dismiss entire institutions based on a doctrine that you don’t agree with is just close-minded. Wanna win this war of science? Let’s stop the ad hominem attacks and assumptions, and just stick with good science.
oh _Jim…
I’m unsure as to what mistake you are referring to. I am not offering any form of denial with regard to claims that there are a number of mindless morons involved – it would appear that they all are photographed/filmed. I’m sure you will accept that within any group you will find a percentage. Many of these protestors offer a confused and inadequate account of why they are threes Some I’m sure are also incapable of speech. That said, we must accept that there are reasonable, sound, educated & employed people protesting. It is easy to become distracted by the highlights. We simply can’t apply a broad brush, declaring all involved as out of work and reliant on benefits as one user posted. It’s just unfair. We’re all fair people are we not?
Jeff Fujita – another eloquent post. I personally think we should end the discussion on that note.
This hurts the creditability of this blog. I’m willing to bet money that when The Tea Party was having it’s 15 minutes that people were not posting video’s of all the rednecks carrying ignorant and hateful signs. When I first came on this site I suspected that this was a republican propaganda site in disguise… I was assured that it was not. But stuff like this leads me to wonder if I wasn’t right the first time.
Code Tech, you are correct that many business group because they are complimentary businesses or simply locate there because there is heavy traffic. However Home Depot and Lowes do not compliment each other, they compete directly against each other, it is a zero sum game. Same with Best Buy and Circuit City. They coexist for a while but ultimately one always wins out in the long run. These people are not dumb, they realize most of these towns can only support one type of these stores, and if they can support more, they will drive out the weak business by building the first store near the existing store and then build additional stores.
Wal Mart tried to drive out Target but lost that battle since Wal marts brand name is synonomis with cheap and red neck even if they are selling Cartier watches and Ralph Laruen clothes inside the doors. Wal Mart definately aims to eliminate competition by any means necessary, and is totally unapologetic about it.
Back in the day when malls were big business they usually had a number of allocated stores for shoes, cardstores, book store etc. In many cases one franchise would buy out all the allocated properties even when it was unprofitable simply to deny competition. If your franchise is big enough you can take these losses in order to starve out competition.
I live in a very wealthy town and we have had several chain stores fold, usually when two competitors are located right next to each other. Luckily enough companies move into the area that eventually the abandoned hulks are torn down and turned into something productive. There are several abandoned strip mall fronts.
Wal Mart also deliberately employs people at less than full time hours so they don’t have to offer health insurance, and they are doing so even more these days. It is no secret, they openly admit they are doing this to save costs. Let’s be honest, people working at WalMart at entry level jobs do not have much choice, BUT, they are making the effort and I think they should be treated as bona fide full time employees. These companies are compelled by training and pedgogy to always, always, always, look to the bottom line, not to necessarily do the ethical thing. I’m a true blooded capitalist and free market guy, but let’s not pretend that companies have employees at the top of their priority list most of the time.
John Brookes says:
October 26, 2011 at 5:52 am
“I decided that Starbucks couldn’t be as bad as everyone said, and bought a coffee there. I was wrong. It was that bad.”
I thought the same and having tried Starbuck coffee in Sydney I will declare you wrong, it was worse than everybody said.
Having said that, when overseas, you can tell a Melburnian by the phrase “the coffee isn’t very good is it”
Re: the discussion at hand: off-base, inapplicable, and erection of straw-man argument ad infinitum.
Thanks for playing (BTW, did you notice how persuasive the protesters arguments were for pulling money out of Chase and putting it into a credit union as voiced by Veronica Navarro in the first vid? I thought you did … so, ‘thanks much for playing’; now back to peeling potatoes in the Liberty park protester ‘kitchen’ …)
.
LKMiller says:
October 26, 2011 at 6:14 am
The goals and objectives of the 912Project/Tea Party were and remain very specific. To list some of the main goals:
* a return to limited, constitutional government
* ending wasteful government massive deficit spending
* rational tax policies that encourage economic growth in the private sector, the only source of the money that government steals and redistributes
* personal responsibility
Thank you, LKMiller.
I am sick and tired of “I wanna something for nothing” pot-smoking hitchhikers on the life’s side wayside comparing themselves with the Tea Party, the only more or less sensible grass-roots movement in the modern America.
Pull My Finger,
I’ve worked for 30+ years 12 (sometimes 15) hours per day, often on weekends, and nobody offers me any health insurance, because I am self-employed. I don’t have money to purchase it, and I am not old enough to get it “for free” (read: hitchhiking at other people’s account).
WalMart employees sign their contracts when they get employed, they know conditions of their employment beforehand. If they don’t like their job, they should learn to do something else, better than on the “entry level” — it’s not that hard.
I’m still not sure what the protesters want, expect or have to offer.
They want to end capitalism? And replace it with what?
A capitalistic republic allows everybody the chance to gain from their own efforts.
People working toward their own self interest. That’s what works.
I’m seeing allot of support here for the Corporate Socialism that bailed out the grossly miss-managed banks and American corporations that took down the economy. Wake up you still have grossly miss-managed banks and corporations still doing the same shtick, I see Greece USA style in your future.
Brian says:
“This hurts the creditability of this blog.”
Actually, it doesn’t. But Brian’s credibility is non-existent when he writes about “posting video’s (sic) of all the rednecks carrying ignorant and hateful signs” at Tea Party gatherings.
I am not a Tea Party member, but I notice that when they leave their rallies they always pick up their trash and leave the place clean. They don’t cause trouble like the Teat Party “occupier” bums and Soros stooges, who always leave the place a real pigsty. Tea Partiers are ‘rednecks’ only in Brian’s fevered imagination; in real life they come from mostly the middle class: the 99% of overtaxed, over regulated Americans. They don’t carry hateful signs, and they want more African-Americans to join them [although ACORN infiltrators have been caught red-handed trying to stir up trouble by pretending to be tea partiers].
Brian also doesn’t get the fact that plenty of WUWT readers and commentators are from the Left, but they’re more interested in scientific truth, and therefore they reject the CAGW scam. Really, Brian doesn’t get much of anything. I suspect he’s still a youngster.
“I’m still not sure what the protesters want, expect or have to offer.
They want to end capitalism.”
They say they are protesting against Capitalism. They believe they are protesting against Capitalism. But from everything they have said to date, from every object of their anger, it is clear that these misguided unfortunates are NOT campaigning against Capitalism. The only way you can even use the word Capitalism to describe what they are protesting against, is to qualify it with the word “Crony”. Crony Capitalsim is the actual object that has aroused their anger. Another term could be Corporatism or Statism or even Fascism.
Actual Capitalism – free markets with suppliers and demanders competing on equal terms – hardly exists at all, and where it does exist, it is almost entirely confined to small businesses. Crony Capitalism, on the other hand, is the system we have today, where policy makers and corporations conspire to rig the game in their favour, or where policy makers interfere in the free market with regulations to acheive some imagined good.
In the early part of the first decade of the millenium, it was GW Bush who signed a little piece of legislation that required mortgage lenders to lend to home buyers regardless of their credit worthiness – or unworthiness. The aim was to make homes affordable to all, and we all know the end of that story. Bush and Greenspan then proceeded to pump up asset prices with years of cheap money, leading to bankers enriching themselves beyond their wildest dreams. And we all know how that ended.
Other business leaders have enriched themselves with tax payer subsidies to provide renewable energy. Another clear example of Government with its boot on the free market, which is why Fascism is an appropriate term (before anyone takes offence, Fascism isn’t just what the Nazis did. It is when the country is run like a corporation, where the government dictates and directs economic activity).
So in that sense, I support the protesters. Unfortunately, people of a certain age remember all that sort of thing from the sixties and seventies, and nothing much changed – except the hippies grew old. Nothing new under the sun.
Sun Spot says:
October 26, 2011 at 11:46 am
“I’m seeing allot of support here for the Corporate Socialism that bailed out the grossly miss-managed banks and American corporations that took down the economy.”
Visit the doctor. Your eyes are failing you.
I guess people have to get their politics involved on this web page but unfortunately, the politics probably drive away the people who really need to be reached, i.e., the well meaning people who have been duped by the snake oil salesmen promoting global warming. I understand that the wall street occupiers are a diverse group, but one of their major concerns is the growing separation in wealth in the US (already one of worst places in the world in this regard) (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66877.html). Overexploitation of the productive class really has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism, but has to do with how much destructive behavior (in this case unmitigated greed) that a society can tolerate/ withstand. I believe the excessive bleeding of the productive class was one of the major reasons for the U.S. war of independence, though clearly the conflict wasn’t described in these terms. Couldn’t we lay off bashing the well meaning (call them left or liberal or whatever you want) and focus on showing them how they are being manipulated to create another means of parasitizing the productive class, e.g., carbon credits, useless technology (windmills, CFLs etc). We have a common enemy, pseudo science used to justify irrational and destructive behavior. There is so much common ground for cooperation in just trying to get the truth out.
Alexander, that’s a choice you make. Health Insurance is expensive, even if you get it through your employer. It certainly isn’t free. But Wal Mart doesn’t even give their employees an option to buy in under a certain number of hours a week even though they have access. If the employees are willing to pay for insurance why not give them the option? All these politicians talk about pay as you go and saving schemes, but the truth is if you have a serious medical condition, no insurance, and no Gates like wealth, you ain’t got enough money,
Of coures the problem is that the uninsured tax the system but do not pay in. If everyone paid in then there would be more money in the system. You can call it socialism or welfare but no more so than public transportation, libraries, or national defense. Everyone needs medical care at some point in their life. We already pay for the poor as it is, why not just get more money up front or more people insured by companies? Companies see low level employees as widgets that are easily replaced so they don’t feel the need to offer more than is necessary to keep them.
The governement mandates car insurance, for good reason, why not health insurance? It’s not like you are the sole arbiter of you health. The health care system is FUBAR, I’m not advocating a “National Health”, but it needs streamlined. Maybe some of these tax credits that get doled out to head of household or children should have to go towards health insurance if the families don’t have it. I mean it’s not really their money to begin with, it’s taxpayer money.
It may not be hard for you and I, but remember, 100 is the average IQ, there are people out there who are unable to do higher level jobs, or didn’t have an opportunity for higher education, or are disabled in some way, or don’t have the money to go to college, or have any number of mental, physical or emotional issues that prohibit them from doing anything more than a low level job. But a lot of these people have great work ethics and are fine human beings. For many people it’s Wal Mart or Welfare. Why degrade them for picking Wal Mart? Wal Mart can EASILY afford to give them the option to pay for their own insurance.
—-
WalMart employees sign their contracts when they get employed, they know conditions of their employment beforehand. If they don’t like their job, they should learn to do something else, better than on the “entry level” — it’s not that hard.
‘Actually, it doesn’t. But Brian’s credibility is non-existent when he writes about “posting video’s (sic) of all the rednecks carrying ignorant and hateful signs” at Tea Party gatherings.”
Tea Party has a lot of redneck supporters and they’re actually owned by The Koch Brothers so… Yeah, they have SOOO much creditability.
“I am not a Tea Party member, but I notice that when they leave their rallies they always pick up their trash and leave the place clean.”
awwww…. Such wonderful people.
Too bad the people backing them don’t feel that being clean is so honorable.
http://www.forbes.com/2001/01/04/0104faces.html
“They don’t carry hateful signs, and they want more African-Americans to join them”
Sure they don’t. They’re basically gods themselves.
“Really, Brian doesn’t get much of anything. I suspect he’s still a youngster.”
Yeah… Watching the GOP debates I got a first hand look at how old people do it.
http://articles.cnn.com/2003-10-10/entertainment/rush.limbaugh_1_wilma-cline-rush-limbaugh-inaccuracies-and-distortions?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/20/entertainment/main650282.shtml
Good thing the right wing folks are so clean and innocent.
BCBill says:
October 26, 2011 at 12:16 pm
“I understand that the wall street occupiers are a diverse group, but one of their major concerns is the growing separation in wealth in the US (already one of worst places in the world in this regard) ”
I was thinking about this for quite some time; there’s the Gini index, and the assertion that a nation with a lower Gini index (less income inequality) has a higher economic growth than a comparable nation with a higher Gini index. I’m German and through our welfare state system we have a pretty low Gini index, so that’s probably Obama’s wet dream.
But there’s a strange conundrum. The US has a higher GDP/capita than we, about 130% of ours, in PPP terms. Shouldn’t we slowly catch up? Yet we don’t. It has been the same ratio for at least 10 years or so; I’ve been tracking that since I found the CIA factbook.
I have the hunch that our high tax system here in Germany just encourages politicians to squander more money on renewable subsidies, enormous funding for AGW scientists and other pet projects, buy themselves more influence on a European level by giving billions and billions to the EU etc. etc.
Cuba, BTW, is one of the countries with the lowest level of inequality. Somehow the Gini-index induced super growth doesn’t materialize for them as well. And I wonder, how much inequality is there in North Korea? Do they have a thriving economy? Not really.
I’m still scratching my head about this. Are there any data points that support the “more equality = more wealth” thesis? If you have some, please bring them up; I won’t deride you.
Wal Mart employees, if it like any of the service industry jobs I’ve held or supervised, don’t have contracts. Their hours are likely sealed by little more than a handshake and change on the whim of the manager or the needs of other employees. Usually they will become insurance eligible by averaging 37.5+ hours per week over a certain amount of time (varies by state) and if it falls below that, bye bye insurance.
Pull My Finger says:
October 26, 2011 at 10:24 am
About your “redneck” comment. Screw you. You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
Brian,
How can I get the five minutes of my life back that I wasted on that drivel? The obnoxious host’s first words are “The Tea Baggers…” Thanx for posting your lunatic propaganda… NOT.
The most the tea party signs can be accused of is hyperbole. OTOH, the TEAT PARTY bums are busily stealing from each other while demanding the right to steal from working folks, raping, defecating on the open ground, and generally acting like the disreputable bums they are. They have no coherent message, they are simply a mob on the dole. Why would you support them, and why are you so obviously afraid of law-abiding Americans assembling peacefully? The Soviets used to label your kind “useful idiots”. What are you getting out of that mindless mob rule?
Thinking of it a bit, I’ve never seen a tent that didn’t have an opening, be it mesh or open slit, built into the top to allow heat exchange and prevent moisture from condensing on the interior surface.
They’re designed to keep the rain and wind off. And that’s about it.
They don’t trap heat. They don’t insulate the interior. As soon as the tent is vacated it quickly assumes ambient temp.
I agree with others – take the unoccupied tents away. These places are not wilderness areas or designated camping grounds. (Find me this Constitutional Amendment, “Right to pitch a tent wherever you damn please”?)
Every item of personal property left unattended should be deemed abandoned. Pile it all up at the nearest lost-and-found, charge a $20 service fee and require a positive ID proof of ownership to get it back. (Publish all those names so the rest if us know who NOT to hire.)
Dirk H,
I always enjoy your comments. To answer your question re: the Gini index, there is a trade-off between equality of opportunity and a nation’s wealth. With equal opportunity [not to be confused with equality of results], there is a wide disparity between those with a little wealth and those with a lot of wealth. Those with the drive, ambition, intelligence, persistence, etc., will in the long run amass more wealth than those with lesser qualities. But over all, in a free market economy everyone benefits more financially, even though the benefits can be plotted along a Bell curve with the rich at on end, the poor at the other end, and a large middle class in the three middle quintile cohorts.
The problem occurrs when society tries to forcibly make outcomes equal [“From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs.”] When the trade-off tilts toward a lightly regulated free market, with relatively low taxation, the entire society becomes very wealthy and everyone benefits. But the wealth is not shared equally; that’s the trade-off. Your success is up to you. When the trade-off leans toward forcibly confiscating and redistributing wealth from the wealth producers to the wealth consumers, there is a more equal economic result. But as you pointed out, the entire society is very poor, like Cuba and North Korea. But hey, the citizens are equal; equally destitute.
I prefer freedom over collectivism, and a much richer country over a dirt poor third world hellhole like the ones you mentioned. But other folks’ mileage may vary, and they’re usually the ones who haven’t been very successful in life.
“How can I get the five minutes of my life back that I wasted on that drivel? The obnoxious host’s first words are “The Tea Baggers…” Thanx for posting your lunatic propaganda… NOT.”
Thanks for the cliche line there. Awesome. Awesome stuff.
You don’t mind calling all the people at Wallstreet bums, losers etc…. But we shouldn’t attack any Tea Party folks. Lunatics… You mean like Michelle Bachmann who wants to pray the gay away (even though she actually has a gay husband), throw out minimum wage.. etc…
Or like this lunatic?
Things are going to get worse Smokey… None of these clowns running for the right wing party are going to fix anything. The GOP can’t even decide who to run against Obama because they’re so inept.
Brian says:
“The GOP can’t even decide who to run against Obama because they’re so inept.”
IANAR [nor a Dem], but you don’t even understand how the party nomination winnowing process works. How can you credibly comment on the political process? Opinions based on ignorance [and worse, on YouTube videos] mean nothing.
Next, you state that Bachmann’s husband is gay. I don’t know that… how would you know?
Finally, I am 100% in favor of getting rid of the miniimum wage. It may surprise you, but some workers are not worth $9/hr [depending on your state]. Some may be worth only $7.50 an hour. But with an artificially high minimum wage, you automatically get more unemployment. Econ 101 [my minor, and I always made the Dean’s List].
Some folks have no understanding of human nature, or freedom, or the economy, or how the world really works. They include the large majority of the bums “occupying” their pigsty parks.
Why is it that no matter what colored tent the socialists hides under they’re always the most violent people on this planet? Why do they always have to retort to violence or ask that others take care of what not according to their whims and wishes disregarding all things sane and rational.
So if they lack authority, power, money, fame, women, and their occasionally preferred dildo to boost their ego, why do everyone else have to suffer for them to gain their beloved petrochemical supported wind powered utopia?
Pull My Finger says:
October 26, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Alexander, that’s a choice you make.
I must emphatically disagree with you. I cannot afford any real, meaningful health insurance. I am 50, I am overweight, and I like my pipe; the only health insurance I can afford is a meaningless scam (being a naive fool, I paid for it for 20+ years, and in the end it won’t pay for anything more or less serious). American health care is a huge pitiless scam exploiting to the hilt the government’s Ponzi scheme called “Social Security.”
Yes, WalMart employees do sign a contract, even if they work part-time (otherwise their employment would be illegal). Many years ago, my wife worked in the supermarket for $4.25 per hour, and I worked as a gas station attendant for $5 per hour. We both had to sign off the contract stipulating conditions of our employment, and my wife even had to pay useless union fees out of her miserly $4.25 per hour! We survived, and I bought my first car (used Chrysler Horizon hatchback) for $700 after just a few months of working, while we barely could speak a few words in English, and had absolutely no relatives or friends to help us. On the contrary, we had a little son, and were forced by the circumstances and self-respect to support some other, elderly people (talk about “some Americans cannot afford a car” nonsense). It doesn’t take a high IQ to cut cheese or to fill up cars.
No, health insurance is NOT similar to car insurance in any way or form. Mandatory car insurance protects other people from accidental damages that you may cause them. My untimely death without any medical care would not cause anybody any damage. Until I reach an eligible age, I will pay for any necessary medical care out of pocket, and will refuse any services I cannot afford. Since I pay more than 45% of my earned income in taxes, I will not refuse whatever medical services Uncle Sam would condescend to pay for when I turn 67 or 70 or whatever would be the eligible age if I ever live that long — but it will be my money, not other people’s, that would pay for these services.
The only case where I could be accused of taking a penny from Uncle Sam was when I drove my demented mother to the local nursing home after living in hell, keeping her in the house, for 15 years. However, I firmly maintain 1) that I paid much more in wasted taxes then it cost a government to keep her until her death (she received virtually no medical care, and very bad food there — I had to supply her with TV, refrigerator and magazines, and to regularly deliver better food), and 2) that, if Medicare system would not exist, I would be able to afford a private nursing home for my mother — the astronomical costs of today’s health care in America is largely due to the socialist “safety net” that keeps everybody but rich equally miserable, and punishes hard-working people.
Having an average IQ is not an excuse for not learning professional skills. I’ve met hundreds of people with an average IQ who earned very decent money after a few months of training.
Those looking for excuses will always find them. Life is hard, and then we die.
One imagines people share tents in order to deepen understanding of ‘Warmist” alarm and economic theory of Mutual Aid.
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2011/10/25/why-occupy-wall-street-makes-sense-lessons-economists-could-learn-from-the-99-4/
M.Kelly says:
October 26, 2011 at 2:47 pm
” http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2011/10/25/why-occupy-wall-street-makes-sense-lessons-economists-could-learn-from-the-99-4/ ”
A guy equates riots in Egypt (they always had riots when food prices shot up) to the problems of homeowners in America (who used their mortgage as an ATM, expecting house prices to rise). Also, he calls the protesters “the 99%” – oh, it looks like that was a smart marketing move, like calling oneselves the “Bolsheviks”…. so the term comes into use… no matter how few they really are. Reminds me of “97% of all climate scientists”…
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/01/03/lawrence-solomon-97-cooked-stats/#ixzz1A5px63Ax
“IANAR [nor a Dem], but you don’t even understand how the party nomination process works. How can you credibly comment on the political process?”
None of these people are creditable. Perry is a redneck with immigration issues possibly. (Ironically enough I’m against illegal immigration).
Bachmann is nuts. Even some of the Tea Party people aren’t keen on her and she’s doing so horrible in the polls for a reason.
Just a little look at her thought process.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/10/24/351147/bachmann-americans-can-rely-on-charitable-organizations-if-they-cant-afford-health-care/
Cain can’t even recent run a decent campaign ad and he isn’t even really clear on his abortion views. Even the Foxnews interviewers couldn’t even make sense of him.
These candidates rise in the polls and then drop like a stone. There is a reason why
“Even worse, you state that Bachmann’s husband is gay. I don’t know that… how would you know?”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/24/michele-bachmann-marcus-bachmann-gay_n_1028141.html
These two are crazy. Moreover, listen to the guys voice and watch how he carries himself. If I had 1,000 dollars I’d bet my money on it (Him being gay). Not that there is anything wrong with being gay, but when you pull the shenanigans that these people pull… It makes you look like a hypocritical fool.
“Finally, I am 100% in favor of getting rid of the miniimum wage. It may surprise you, but a few workers are not worth $9/hr [depending on your state].”
That’s not surprising… That you feel that way. We wouldn’t want that McDonald’s employee who has to work long hours and annoying people to get that extra dollar an hour. Now would we?
“Some folks have no understanding of human nature, or freedom, or the economy, or how the world really works.”
I agree…. Some people have no understanding. Including republicans who think people just choose to be gay.
William McIlhagga says:
October 26, 2011 at 4:14 am
If you look at the top left corner, you can see a heat signature partially obscured by a tent. This suggests that the tents aren’t very transparent to the IR wavelengths being used by the camera. You can also see in this picture that about half the tents are glowing faintly.
Indeed, as a camper since youth, this was my first question (the second being news interest and the usual half way in which journos get their stories). I wouldn’t consider as half decent a tent and a sleeping bag and whatever else that didn’t keep my own radiated heat in during the night (with the optiional ventilation for warmer weather, if we get finicky).
Pull My Finger says:
October 26, 2011 at 12:20 pm
“Alexander, that’s a choice you make.”
Mr Fart? :p
Have you had not having the choice?
I pay some of the highest taxes on this planet, still I have choices, after I have paid the taxes that is, still they amount next to nothing for me or my elders. My in laws has worked for a full 45 years full time but still receives less in pension funds than dope fiends who has been on well fare for that same amount of time. And that’s including the extra insurances my in laws paid for. How exactly is that computed to be a choice since they only had the choice of one, in the end.
TheGoodLocust says:
October 26, 2011 at 9:29 am
Okay, when I first saw the pictures my thought was that the tents were blocking the IR from the camera, but after watching the video, even though two layers, you can still faintly see people’s limbs when they walk behind the tent.
Ah, ok. Who would say. Thanks.
Where does one start and where does one stop, at least in a democracy (for those lucky to live in one,but dissatisfied for whatever reason) protesting is an outlet to express frustration, to meet with others and see if your badge of frustration matches the others badge of frustration, have a good gripe and perhaps a swipe at what you feel is responsible for causing that feeling of frustration, then you meet those that are trying to get you to latch on to their extremist view or politico plumbers doing their best to recruit you to serve their own interests. At that point you are becoming an observable lab rat, a social experiment and where you choose, or what you do will be closely observed, commented on, gravely postulated, and cited as an observable sample of crowd phenomena, misguided youth, twisted thinking or malleable personality or just for the individual and experience that you will either grow into or out of.
Its nice to have the right to protest, the right to have your views aired, but then at some time your expression of your individual right will impinge on the rights of others, at that stage it is right to consider the democratic rights and freedoms that you enjoy, and step back to allow those other individuals that do not choose to demonstrate (at that particular time) If you choose not to recognise other competing rights, then expect “your” society to react. (and begin yet another observable social lab experiment as society passes judgment on the process)
Forgive my musing, but also beware when the experimenters drop crumbs to entice, or meld the process!!
Gareth Phillips says:
October 26, 2011 at 8:34 am
….As a result I suspect I may have beliefs which fit in with many others who do not belong to either fringe. My philosophy is that in blaming the inaccuracies in climate change on left wing politics we are missing a major factor. And that is while there is money to be made from radical and inaccurate theories and models, it is the financiers and bankers who will win as usual leaving the rest of us out in the cold. While we howl about left wing politics driving poor science we are missing the plot, it’s not the old hippies, lefties and greenies who benefit, it is politicians like those in the Maldives and the financiers who trouser the cash. They are the ones with the fingers in the pie, they are the ones who have most to gain…..
_______________________________________________
Very nicely put.
From a used to be very right wing conservative… now centralist. (To Willis, as a Republican I picked up Hitchhikers and was a member of Greenpeace, WWF, and Sierra Club in the early seventies)
Brian says:
October 26, 2011 at 10:09 am
This hurts the creditability of this blog. I’m willing to bet money that when The Tea Party was having it’s 15 minutes that people were not posting video’s of all the rednecks carrying ignorant and hateful signs. When I first came on this site I suspected that this was a republican propaganda site in disguise… I was assured that it was not. But stuff like this leads me to wonder if I wasn’t right the first time.
_______________________________
I suggest you read the comments.
As far as I can tell WUWT has a wide range of people. Some are “Left” some are “Right” and many are “Central” However most are concerned about good science, humanity and the environment.
As far as the protests go, at least here in the USA we have freedom of speech, the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Up holding those rights is much more important to me than the message although I really wish the message was clearer and did not seem so “Organized” (beware Useful Idiots comes to mind)
I may disagree with you but I will fight beside you for your right to freedom of speech and assembly.
“I suggest you read the comments.
As far as I can tell WUWT has a wide range of people. Some are “Left” some are “Right” and many are “Central” However most are concerned about good science, humanity and the environment.
As far as the protests go, at least here in the USA we have freedom of speech, the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Up holding those rights is much more important to me than the message although I really wish the message was clearer and did not seem so “Organized” (beware Useful Idiots comes to mind)
I may disagree with you but I will fight beside you for your right to freedom of speech and assembly.”
I know I didn’t make this clear and I should have…. My problem is mostly with topics like this because it feels…. I don’t know, pointless. Even if it’s true that some of the protesters leave at night, so what? Anthony obviously believes that Extreme Man Made Global Warming isn’t true, but that doesn’t mean he has to sit on this blog all the time. The topic seems sort of petty, outplace and fairly unimportant.
I’m not out there protesting, so obviously I don’t agree with these people 100%. But that doesn’t mean I think they deserve to be trashed. The people here are sensitive to the word “denier” and nobody likes to be called names.
Really!!??
Is it a poor doctor training program?
Not enough nurses or bed pans?
Dirty hospitals … what?
If you mean INSURANCE, well, that’s a horse of a different color (forthesane).
.
Smokey says:
October 26, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Dirk H,
I always enjoy your comments. To answer your question re: the Gini index, there is a trade-off between equality of opportunity and a nation’s wealth…..
________________________
Thank you for a great answer.
I really wish we could return to “Lightly regulated” instead of the “If I can think of it it needs to be regulated” mentality. Only the bureaucrats and very wealthy win in that situation. The USA is close to 25% of the work force being employed by the government or having a job dedicated to dealing with government regulations. NOT a healthy situation for any country and it is headed for much worse.
Many people (Obama) confuse getting a pay check with creating wealth. Writting, enforcing or dealing with regulations spends wealth it noes not create it. (The broken window fallacy)
If you have not read it Facts about the “Industrial Revolution” by Ludwig von Mises, September 1993 is an eye opening look at the industrial revolution from the point of view of an economist. It is certainly not the view we get in school.
For those seething leftists still raging against the machine, let me say there is still ‘hope’ for you in attaining sanity while you still draw breath.
Open up your perspective, put on a few more years toward maturity and come to grips with actual ‘reality’ as it exists in the world … and take a look at the conversion experienced by David Horowitz *, former Marxist and author of “Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey” (See excerpt below). I mean this most sincerely.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz
.
THE SAME Mises who wrote * the below on the subject of opportunity or oppression, the “Free labor” children:
Which ‘side’ are you arguing on today?
.
* Ludwig von Mises, “Human Action”, 1949
Leave it to politicians to convince two different groups who share common ideas about what is wrong that they believe totally different things. This thread is a monument to massive public manipulation. The Tea Party started because people were tired of the government spending money it didn’t have on bailouts and nonsense stimulus. The OWS movement started because the rich of the world were getting bailed out and still profiting just nicely despite everyone else’s struggles. There’s so much overlap it’s scary, and the politicians know this, that’s why the groups were co-opted by the polarized parties.
But, by all means, continue your nonsense flamewar and divisive ad hominem against each group guys. I know I can’t stop you.
Brian says:
October 26, 2011 at 3:26 pm
I agree…. Some people have no understanding. Including republicans who think people just choose to be gay.
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/sex/study-says-most-women-are-bisexual-2584654/
Study Says Most Women are Bisexual
A new study reveals that women’s sexual preferences tend to be a gray area (yep, identity confusion wasn’t just for those college dorm days). In fact, researchers at Boise State University
found that in a group of heterosexual women, 60 percent were physically interested in other women, 45 percent made out with a woman in the past, and 50 percent had fantasies about the same sex.
Experts support this view. “Women are encouraged to be emotionally close to each other,” says psychology professor Elizabeth Morgan. “That provides an opportunity for intimacy and romantic feelings to develop.” From talking about personal issues for hours to calling each other “lovers” (well, maybe that’s just women in my generation), women’s friendships are often barely distinguishable from romantic relationships.
So much for being born that way.
Jeremy says:
October 26, 2011 at 5:45 pm
I dunno, Jeremy… I actually strongly agree with many aspects of both groups–I just wish the world was devoid of those people (usually called politicians) who are in the people manipulation and herding business-for example, when it comes to fads like global warming/cooling/etc., social justice, illegal immigration (that’s apparently a way to re-define someone doing something illegal without using the word “illegal”–if that’s ever possible; maybe those that use the term have no grasp of the English language.)
Looks like a constant battle with little chance of resolution or success. But we keep trying. *sigh*
I won’t personally be going to St Pauls tonight, but others might be happy to get their hands on some second-hand kit for their camping holidays. Finders keepers and all that.
@T.Hill says:
October 26, 2011 at 6:06 am
WELL DONE !
BRAVO !
You have effectively pinpointed an issue that is so rampant at liberal/ultra-elite sites that would make this thread seems likes child’s play.
Try to go to SS or RC or TOM and not only will you not see any debate, you wont see any skeptical comments either.
Why is that you ask..
CENSORSHIP !
Or better yet go to some of these child like blogs like TalkingPointsMemo or MotherJones and if you remotely make a skeptical announcement. please be prepared to be cussed at, laughed at. attacked, threatened and made to look like a fool when you show any civility.
@luismanueldias and the rest of the diatribe that seems to solicit the idea that we should just look away, because their heart is in the right place…..
Really?
To start with, this article only announced the story. It didn’t denounce the movement.
It made FUN of the fact that this ‘protestors’ aren’t even hanging out in the tents to make it look like they are some kind of ‘faithful’ protestor.
Is wimps, phantom camps, and charade such a harsh critique?
Really?
Maybe if we didn’t have Manbearpig and McKibben trying to embrace this ‘which-way-did-he-go-george’ protest, maybe I would even support it.
But when rumors are flying around that it is socialist/communist in nature, or CAGW in nature, or for HEAVENS SAKE, no one can tell what the freaking hell is going on with this rabble, how can any of you point fingers at all and suggest any criticism be unwarranted.
Really?
Blindfolded commentors….. the lot of ya.
Maybe, just maybe, many of these protestors, like me, are lucky enough to still have families to look after even though we have no jobs to support our families.
OK, somebody help me out here. What do the protesters actually want?
They have a website. (http://occupylondon.org.uk/) I went there, and couldn’t find anything. There’s a page that gives a list of facts to do with the financial collapse of the banks, and the subsequent austerity measures. But… what exactly do they want?
I found this page, where a protester is interviewed:
http://www.londonlovesbusiness.com/commentanalysis/occupy-london-stock-exchange-qa-with-protestor/769.article
“What are you protesting about?
It is about people claiming back power and the right to discuss economic and political matters, whereas before they felt a bit disenfranchised. Of course, feeding into that as well is the fact that the financial crash happened in 2008. The ramifications in some ways are only really beginning to be felt now in terms of spending cuts.
Does the movement have any specific demands?
The way these occupations work, and have worked even with what was happening in the Middle East at the turn of the year, is that people organise into committees or general assemblies, which is the main decision making organ of the occupation.
This is what is happening in New York. Every night they have a General Assembly. And if any specific demands are to be emerge out of Occupy London those will be agreed by a General Assembly – so it would be a bit previous of me to give any.”
So… they want the right to discuss economics and politics. I’m pretty sure they have that right already. But, apparently any other specific demands will emerge during the protest. So, the protest starts with no genuine demands at all. They just hope that they can make some up while they’re there.
I have to say, I find the whole thing utterly pathetic. I think some people just like protesting. Nuclear weapons, bypasses, climate change, banks… same people, different banners. Do they actually care what the banners say? Does anything ever get achieved? Or is it all just a chance for a bunch of people to feel righteous, by complaining about what other people are doing?
I do not remember where I read it, it was a long time ago, but it went something like this:
If all the wealth and money in the world were to be collected and equally redistributed among all people on this planet, by day two, there would already be those who would have spent all their money foolishly. Within a month there would be rich people and poor people and within a year the situation would have returned more or less to the time before the equal redistribution of wealth.
The ‘occupy Wall Street’ movement is just a bunch of the that group of people who, no matter how much help they get, their default situation is always ‘poor’, simply due to their attitude to life.
Go get a life and leave the hard workers working for your upkeep. If you destroy the rich, you would all die of hunger.
Very, as in pathetic.
If people seriously think that socialism or capitalism is the root of societies renovation/destruction, then that qualifies as pathetic as well.
The people running the show are neither; show as in “world”
While the front men/women may well be denigrated or castigated as socialists or capitalists, the show is run by people above such descriptions.
Never mind elections, they are there no matter which colour the front men are.
Look at the degree of infiltration of the global catastrophe party by such organisations as wwf and greenpeace.
And while everyones favourite bogey-organisation, the ipcc, is getting shot-at, everyone forgets that the ipcc was established by politicians to provide them with some reason to enact policies that people would otherwise find execrable. End the ipcc and some other organisation and reason will appear. Maybe an eye should be cast over the shoulder to look for it appearing ?
So, carry-on with the argument. At the end you will realise that it was pointless, but another argument will have started by then and people will flock to that.
Meanwhile, the real bogey-men are still there…buried in the fabric of government and society.
Welcome to global control.
Coming to your part of the world soon.
“Did you sleep at City Plaza or did you go home to a nice warm bed? Inquiring minds want to know. BTW I have an IR camera, so I’ll be doing spot checks thanks to your kind encouragement” – Anthony
**************************************************************************************************************
You just posted that you are so overwhelmed with reviewing and publishing, that you will barely have time to post here for a few weeks………but you have time to prowl around people’s tents at night and film what their doing, if anything, inside them with your IR camera? I hope none of them plan on having sex in their tents, with your camera rolling.
Several contributors here have commented how unscientific, lame, partisan, and inaccurate this snooping people’s tents with IR camera’s is. These protesters have a legitimate grievance, no matter what you think of their politics. Why is this so important to you? Even republicans, having read the poll numbers showing most people agree broadly with the protesters views on Wall Street, have started agreeing with th protestors about the problems of vast economic inequality. Eric Cantor and prominent republicans have back tracked and now claim they “understand” the motivations of the protestors.
Brian I am a raging liberal when it comes to love and bedrooms (if the two of “you” want to get married, or the “three” of you want to get married and you are all adult humans, then you should be able to get married). I am a raging liberal when it comes to employment (if you can do the job, you get the same pay even if you are from Mars). Socially, the guvm’nt needs to stay off my land, and out of my womb, my bedroom, my spiritual life, and my desire to marry, or not, whoever the hell I want to.
On the other hand, the day Bush jumpstarted the bailout nonsense was a serious blow to fiscal conservatism. Obama took that ball and is STILL running with it. The day Bush decided to invade Iraq with no clear plan was a serious blow to fiscal conservatism. Each day Obama comes up with yet another plan or regulation that adds to the already fatted calf of government payrolls is a serious blow to fiscal conservatism.
I can clearly and honestly say that this site cannot be described as exclusively a “Republican” mouth piece.
Our team analyzed the raw image data*) and discovered a serious problem with the night thermal imaging of the Occupy London tent city. The primary infrared camera was set to a default and did not pick up “colder” objects. Here is what we’ve obtained when we synchronized with a second set of images taken by a coupled camera set to maximum sensitivity (the colors are shifted and do not represent the same temperatures):
Compare the original image with our Dual Camera Image Overlay.
Some objects are so well insulated that they could not have been detected by the primary thermal camera despite their internal temperature. The enhanced image data provides an alternative explanation for the low count of St. Paul occupiers during cold nights. They may not have left for a warm bed as suggested in Anthony’s post.
—–
*) Our raw data was obtained under a confidentiality agreement and we are not allowed to distribute it. Also, why should we make the data available to anyone whose aim is to try and find something wrong with it?
I’ve studied climate science in depth and found much evidence which contradicts the AGW theory and little to support it. (reported here: http://www.outersite.org). I’ve also been an avid follower of WUWT for the last two and a half years. However, I remain mystified why people assume that man-made climate change is a left/right debate. To me it is an issue of truth versus corrupt politics, media and public institutions. The major corrupting force, responsible for many of the problems we face, is the global debt based monetary system of which many in the financial services industry are ignorant, let alone the broader public at large.
Consider the way in which climate science has been corrupted and it is not a huge logical leap to recognise that many aspects of political debate are similarly afflicted. This is not the place to conduct a debate on our debt based monetary system but it:
finances the military industrial complex (against which Eisenhower warned); perpetual war is a prerequisite for its development – the putative post cold war dividend would have been very inconvenient;
corrupts politics, media and public institutions (think IPCC and environmental NGOs) as they help to enslave the 99% with their lies;
underpins an economic system which relies on extracting ever more resources from the planet at an exponential rate which is unsustainable;
is likely to collapse as we are now in a debt spiral from which there is no escape.
If you are looking for the rationale behind these statements, there are some links at http://www.outersite.org.
The Occupy Wall Street movement and its global cousins, including London, are a manifestation of anger and recognition that our financial system is failing the 99%. Banking interests are the target of their ire. As in climate debate, there is much misinformation in the mainstream media on the occupation at St Paul’s, not helped by the prominent anti-capitalist banner. There are many at St Paul’s (and now Finsbury Square) who are neither anti-capitalist nor pro CAGW. They know that banking interests are well served by the huge sums invested by governments in the climate change industry and that far from a free market capitalist system, we live in an oligarchic, centrally planned kleptocracy.
It you want to know more about what’s happening in these occupations, try visiting and talking to the people themselves, because you ain’t getting the truth from the mainstream media. Now where have I hear that before?
Curiousgeorge, I was talking about the perception of the patrons of Wal Mart, not the actual patrons of Wal Mart. If you don’t think the media and their competitors try to portray Wal Mart as redneck, you haven’t been paying attention.
Alexander and iDandy. I was without insurance for a while when I was young, but did manage to get hospitilization coverage, this was 20+ years ago, it was expensive, but gave me peace of mind. I’m sure it’s alot more now. But my goal was to get a job with good inusrance and I did. I refused to have children until that day too. Smoking is a choice, I smoked for 30 years and loved every damn Camel I smoked, but when mortality starts creepig over the horizon and you still have others depending on you, sometimes you have to give up things you love to do. And boy oh boy did I like to smoke, although I didn’t smoke a lot for the last 10 years or so, maybe a pack a week. Being overweight is tough because some people are just prone to be over weight regardless of what they do or eat.
And health insurance is like car insurance because you are not always the sole arbiter of your own healh, just like you are at the mercy of other drivers when you are on the road. Smoking may give you lung cancer but so might a worksite you were at 30 years ago. You might not want to be forced to have health insurance, but you may also get some horrible disease, say tebeculosis, not get treatment because you don’t or can’t afford, and spread it to dozens of other people.
Heatlh insurance is so expensive for many reasons. Over reliance on preventitive care and diagnostics to avoid malpractice suits, rampant fraud in billing, and covering the millions of poor and elderly, and simply much better… and much more expensive treatments and tools. Insurance works better with more people in the pool.
Alexander, thanks for clearing up the Wal Mart employment misconception. Wal Marts in Pennsylvania are not unionized and I would imagine do not have to offer contracts.
Clive Menzies says:
October 27, 2011 at 8:47 am
“However, I remain mystified why people assume that man-made climate change is a left/right debate.”
Environmentalists/Greens are the ones that cry the loudest for an end to fossil fuels; and at least in my country, the according party has been on the left since early after its founding (they were mixed in the beginning, then threw all non-leftists out).
So I have evidence. I could point to the careers of several Green top dogs – they started in communist groups in the 70ies. Joschka Fischer was a stone-throwing protester.
“Pamela Gray says:
October 27, 2011 at 6:47 am
Brian I am a raging liberal when it comes to love and bedrooms (if the two of “you” want to get married, or the “three” of you want to get married and you are all adult humans, then you should be able to get married). I am a raging liberal when it comes to employment (if you can do the job, you get the same pay even if you are from Mars). Socially, the guvm’nt needs to stay off my land, and out of my womb, my bedroom, my spiritual life, and my desire to marry, or not, whoever the hell I want to.
On the other hand, the day Bush jumpstarted the bailout nonsense was a serious blow to fiscal conservatism. Obama took that ball and is STILL running with it. The day Bush decided to invade Iraq with no clear plan was a serious blow to fiscal conservatism. Each day Obama comes up with yet another plan or regulation that adds to the already fatted calf of government payrolls is a serious blow to fiscal conservatism.
I can clearly and honestly say that this site cannot be described as exclusively a “Republican” mouth piece.”
Pamela… I’ve already explained this. When you start pulling stunts and doing the kind of non sense as seen with this thread, I start to question if you’re to be trusted. I know it’s his site, but it seems to be at it’s best in regards to The Global Warming debate. Just my opinion.
These problems go back before Bush and Obama… They go back to Ronald Reagan.
http://
If you have Netflix or whatever, rent and watch this film Inside Job.
_Jim says:
October 26, 2011 at 5:27 pm
Gail Combs says on October 26, 2011 at 5:09 pm
…
If you have not read it Facts about the “Industrial Revolution” by Ludwig von Mises, September 1993 is an eye opening look at the industrial revolution from the point of view of an economist. It is certainly not the view we get in school.
THE SAME Mises who wrote * the below on the subject of opportunity or oppression, the “Free labor” children:
It is a distortion of facts to say that the factories carried off the housewives from the nurseries and the kitchen and the children from their play. These women had nothing to cook with and to feed their children. These children were destitute and starving. Their only refuge was the factory. It saved them, in the strict sense of the term, from death by starvation.
Which ‘side’ are you arguing on today?
__________________________________________
It is actually fairly easy. I argue FOR property rights, capitalism, honest and fair contracts. I have zero problem with a company making a profit as long as it does not involve using government/corporate collusion or other unethical methods.
As far as Mises goes, on that period he is correct the factories saved people from starvation. Just as they did when the same happened thanks to the Green Revolution in the USA There was a heck of a lot of nasty stuff going on during both time periods. Neither the governments, the banks, the Aristocracy or the factory owners were “Lily White”
You missed the rest of what Mises said by the way.
“In the first decades of the Industrial Revolution the standard of living of the factory workers was shockingly bad when compared with contemporary conditions of the upper classes and with the present conditions of the industrial masses. Hours of work were long, the sanitary conditions in the workshops deplorable. The individual’s capacity to work was used up rapidly. But the fact remains that for the surplus population which the enclosure movement had reduced to dire wretchedness and for which there was literally no room left in the frame of the prevailing system of production, work in the factories was salvation.” http://www.fff.org/freedom/0993e.asp
The Enclosure Movement
THEN
“…Even among the revisionists then, the birth of a productive, commercially viable agricultural sector required the destruction of the traditional rural social structure.
….the consolidation of the intermingled fields, the creation of one farm out of several small holdings, and the loss of access to common wastes and pastures resulted in a reduction in the number of people with direct access to the land. Many of these dispossessed people emigrated from Scotland to foreign lands, or found work in urban centres. Thus, we find that of the 202 parishes in the northeast of Scotland 110 report depopulation between 1755 and the 1790s. Essentially, this phase of enclosure is institutional in nature. In this respect, the enclosure experience of England and Scotland may be similar….” http://www.ehs.org.uk/ehs/conference2004/assets/douglas.doc
“….It has been said that the Clearances are now far enough away from us to be decently forgotten. But the hills are still empty. In all of Britain, only among them can one find real solitude, and if their history is known there is no satisfaction to be got from the experience. ….
Generally, law and justice, religion and humanity, were either totally disregarded, or what was worse, in many cases converted into and applied as instruments of oppression.
Every conceivable means, short of the musket and the sword, were used to drive the natives from the land they loved, and to force them to exchange their crofts and homes — brought originally into cultivation and built by themselves, or by their forefathers — “ http://www.electricscotland.com/history/hclearances.htm
The Enclosure Movement
NOW
“…Billionaires and Mega-Corporations Behind Immense Land Grab in Africa
20+ African countries are selling or leasing land for intensive agriculture on a shocking scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era….” http://www.alternet.org/story/145970/billionaires_and_mega-corporations_behind_immense_land_grab_in_africa
Oakland Institute Report: http://media.oaklandinstitute.org/massive-land-grabs-africa-us-hedge-funds-and-universities-0
World Bank Report Confirms ‘Land Grab’ Fears: http://www.stwr.org/land-energy-water/rising-global-interest-in-farmland-can-it-yield-sustainable-and-equitable-benefits.html
United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism Report:
“…Africa is already experiencing social and environmental upheaval from land grabs motivated by a large-scale rush for biofuel crop production, even as the science shows that the CO2 reductions from biofuels are highly questionable, and the social and environmental consequences, negative. The African continent has also seen disastrous impacts from large-scale plantations of exotic tree species that particularly affect local water resources….”
http://www.africanbiodiversity.org/system/files/PDFs/CDM%20Report_Feb2011_lowres.pdf
http://ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=47599“>FAO Paper On Land Grab Is “Wishy-Washy”
As Mises made very clear the Enclosures during the 1700’s were brutal, cruel and deadly. That is absolutely no excuse for intelligent humans to allow the wealthy to repeat the exercise on third world peasants.
History repeats if we do not bother studying it and Mises gives a glimpse into a history we are now in the process of repeating.
DirkH, I don’t doubt that but the green movement has also been captured by corporate interests to promote the CAGW agenda. WWF is backed by the Rockafeller foundation, among others and has been instrumental in promoting alarmist claims. Furthermore business and establishment interests (Goldman’s etc) are heavily invested in the climate change industry.
These “occupiers” have no coherent explanation for what they want – except for their demand that they want money taken from “the rich.” Here’s an analogy of what would happen if they got their way:
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:
The first four men [the poorest] would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man [the richest] would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers”, he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20”. Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his “fair share?”
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing [100% savings].
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 [33%savings].
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 [28%savings].
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 [25% savings].
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 [22% savings].
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 [16% savings].
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10!” “Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!” “That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!” “Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!” The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
It looks as though the Occupy protesters are learning life lessons the hard way. They’ve had their property stolen, are getting into fights, and in one location kitchen staff shrugged. (The kitchen producers went on strike because there were so many freeloaders, as in the famous novel Atlas Shrugged.)
What is the antidote? Evaluate each person instead of assuming that claimed support for your beliefs means good character, or worse assuming that everyone is the same (a foundation of collectivism). Reject people who do not behave reasonably. Have a system to settle disputes and restrain the violent. Require individual payment for food (which does not preclude charity individual-to-individual).
Oh, never mind – that’s the social system we largely have here, the one so bad the protesters want to tear it down instead of improving it. Obviously they have not been paying attention.
For those interested in facts rather than the knee jerk bashing of something you don’t like, you may be interested in this:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread768193/pg1
Basically, a lot of tents are opaque to infra red, if you watch the video, you can see people disappearing as they walk behind tents, or partially appearing as they leave a tent…