Index

What's it Like at an Occupy Encampment?

There is so much happening at Occupy that you won’t find in the big papers and won’t see on TV. How does it function on a day to day basis, who attends, what kind of work needs to be done, does anyone want to do that work? There are similarities across the various sites; in fact we now know that many of the occupiers travel from one site to the other, and they definitely share information via conference call and by internet.

Here at Lollipops we’ve got numerous pages giving the low-down on several occupy cities. In fact there is so much information right here on this one blog, its hard to find what you are looking for. To that end, today’s post is a recap, with all the links you need, to navigate to the city/issue you want to read about first. 

And why, you may ask, would this blog cover Occupy at all? As our tagline denotes we are ever
QUESTIONING OUR PRESIDENT'S PROMISE TO GIVE THE MIDDLE CLASS ALL THE GOODIES THEY COULD POSSIBLY DESIRE, YET NEVER ASK THEM TO PAY. 

The entire Occupy movement has come into being because of that empty promise. The president swept into office on the oath that he would provide health care, education, higher wages,  and a carbon free environment, and a host of other enticing things, at no cost to the middle class voter. We'll get the rich to pay,  he promised. And now the occupiers want that promise kept and are mobilizing to demand the heads of the so-called rich.

DC Occupy
There are many tents at Occupy DC, but who is living there and how do they think? And how are they going to know when to stop the occupation? They are constantly talking peace, but they plan and carry out actions that almost dictate that violence will result. They are making plans to insert themselves in the area community for months to come.

Who is hanging out at the DC occupation?

Roadmap for Violence

Logic Difficulties

The Goal of Occupy

Working Groups at Occupy  

Boston Occupy

The vast majority of people at Occupy events are not enamored of the founding documents of the United States. In Boston they have been jotting down some ideas for a substitute constitution. On the other hand, occupy events sometimes attract a handful of Ron Paul supporters and Tea Partiers. Some people in Boston know that the 99% definition is pretty fuzzy. Do all the ninety-nine percent wish to help do the work, or to wait patiently for the redistribution of Occupy Wealth?

Not me--Let some eager beaver pick up that trash

Gimme mine

Co-opting the language of Occupy

The new Boston Tea Party?

Boston's new constitution. 

Chapel Hill Occupy 

Here is how things all started at Chapel Hill in October 2011. From the first day, Chapel Hill Occupy offered a table spread thickly with literature from causes and perspectives they clearly hold near and dear.  

And who is living in the occupation? Perhaps not the poor, who seem to lack the motivation to join up. And where do they use the bathroom and what are the arrangements for rain in Chapel Hill? Which nearby organizations offer their support to Occupy Chapel Hill? Here are all the posts we have so far from Chapel Hill. And there's a video of that first day  as well.

First Day in Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill Literature Table

Not appealing to the poor

Churches provide bathrooms

Don't Be Expecting the Poor

The poor won't rise up and swell the ranks of the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Why? Part of the reason is because they are not really all that poor. Yes, when you compare the poor in this country to the rich, they have a lot less. But most of the time they are sheltered and eating, which makes our "poor" very different from the desperate people in say, Tunisia, where the Arab riots began in December 2010 when Mohammed Bouazizi who had spent most of his life trying to make money by selling fruits and veggies refused to pay a bribe to  police.  He failed to produce any "permit". They confiscated his produce cart. He resisted. They beat him up. People have to eat, and when corruption and a general lack of plenty,  interferes with someone's ability to do that, they are going to summon up the energy to fight.

The fact that our poor are not even near destitute is due to our vast social programs. Today I stopped by the Occupy Chapel Hill encampment, and as is my habit I spoke with one of the passersby. She was ambling toward a bench, trying to read the sidewalk drawings, muttering under her breath "as long as they don't get violent." So I sat down with her to find out what she thinks about Occupy Chapel Hill and we talked for a long time. She had been a protester in the sixties, and was very proud of that. She even showed me a bracelet she was wearing reminiscent of that time. She said she has since grown up and learned that kind of protesting won't work. She voted for Obama, and is not sure if she'll do that again. She's a huge believer in capitalism and thinks the reason the OWS people are willing to sleep in tents to protest the injustice they see in the world is "because they are 18". She  knows "for sure" you can't change anything by screaming and fussing in the streets, you have to change things from within. 


Burdened with diabetes, this sweet and intelligent lady has been disabled for six years and  lives in an assisted living center; her net worth less than a dollar today. She opened her purse and showed me a bank receipt from this morning.  She had just been by the bank to take out 49 cents out of the 50 she had on deposit. (She left a penny to keep the account open.) To buy one stamp she had to make that withdrawal. After mailing an important letter, she now has the one penny in the bank, and another 30 cents in her purse. 

But she is not going to join the protest. No way. No how. Not only does she feel strongly that it won't change anything, but she has a place to sleep tonight. She's well enough clothed to deal with the weather, and she is going to keep getting her meals at the facility where she lives. This is all funded, no doubt,  through the largesse of the taxpayers of NC and the US. She'll be getting another check soon. She said the jobs plan may not work and parts of the stimulus were a little silly.  She was glad to get the $200.00 check Obama sent her; spent the money right away. That was supposed to help get the economy going, but in her opinion, most of the people who got that check wasted the money on stuff they did not really need.


She is not resentful that her next government check won't be a lot bigger.  She is glad she lives in the United States of America where people are tolerated when they set up tents in protest. I asked her if she is worried that the people of Occupy Chapel Hill are going to turn violent. She says if they do, it will only continue "if their daddies come and bail them out of jail".


When I told the lady I am a photojournalist for the MIddle Class Power website she sported a huge smile and held out an open hand. She told me I ought to take a picture of the Northface logo on one of the tents. Poor people have nowhere near enough money to buy Northface products, she noted, and therefore, she is pretty sure the person who brought that tent and is camped out at Peace and Justice Plaza on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, NC, is not living in poverty. 

The woman senses most of the participants are doing pretty well in life. And maybe she is right. And where, then, are the poor? In some cases, they're not joining in to OWS, because they, like this lady, are not living in anything close to a state of desperation. I guess the lesson for the OWS crowd is this: its fine to demand the dismantling of the world as we know it in order to help the poor. But as you are moving on your goal, take a look behind you and see if life's most desperate characters are in such bad straits that they have decided to follow you.




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Occupy Chapel Hill-The Occupation Begins

Couldn't resist. I hauled out the camera and went down to check out the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street protest in Chapel Hill on October 15th.


Not being in the mood to talk to the attendees right away, I sat on the wall of McCorkle Place across the street and just watched for a little while.  Others sitting on the wall were trying to figure out what one of the signs said. It said "Top 1% Y U no pay taxes??"  That sign was just a little ironic, and I said so. The top one percent pays very close to forty percent of the federal taxes. 

One of the young men sitting with me looking at the gathering crowd  was shocked by this idea and told me that I had it all wrong. He went on to explain that "the rich" get capital gains, and pay a very low rate on capital gains. And capital gains are not included in those figures, he said. But capital gains taxes are reported on the income tax return, and the IRS analyzes actual tax returns and tells us that the top one percent pay a full 38.02 percent of the federal income tax--including capital gains taxes. The same table shows that 69.94% of the federal income tax is attributable to the top ten percent of returns filed.  On the other hand, some 47 percent of people pay no federal income tax at all.


There is no denying that there is a "fair share" issue underlying the payment of  federal income tax. But to say the rich are not paying their fair share is disingenuous. 


The young man went on to speak of other "unfairness".  He works for National Geographic and is doing pretty well, but wants to go back to school and can't afford to do so. This, he explained is because our invasion of Iraq drove up the cost of college. Yes, I see your jaw dragging down. I could not figure that one out either.  People are making all kinds of very odd associations lately, as the left throws out ridiculous figures and tries to convince us that we need to be taken care of by their growing and lucrative government structure.


It was Game Day in Chapel Hill so the place was bustling so I got up and followed various groups who were talking about the protest. They all struggled to remember the name of the thing. One lady was telling her daughter that these are the same people who poop on the cop cars on Wall Street. Another man was disgusted with the entire thing.....said the protesters will only drive voters to the Republicans in November.


There were some pretty sophisticated posters plastered all over Franklin Street, on phone polls and on vacant store fronts. Some were in Spanish. When I finally got to the protest area and started to mingle, I saw a huge table of literature. All leftist stuff, would you believe? 


There was a general feeling that the people in the top one percent each got there through cheating, stealing, exploitation  and general unfairness. I listened to a self-described anarchist being interviewed. He said he doesn't guess that these people are going to willingly give up that money; therefore, the protesters are going to need to forcibly remove the assets from the top one percent. For some reason, the reporter did not ask the salient question: HOW?


It seemed like a nice bunch of people, but some of the signs were just incorrect and misleading, and the literature was pretty scary. Hearing the anarchist speak made me understand why they thought it necessary to post a phone number for legal help on their agenda.

I did not see any tents when I was there during the preliminaries. But the next day when I happened to drive by, I did spot about a dozen tents set up, and a group of people sitting in a circle. So this could go on for awhile. If so, I will try to post some more information about the OWS at the post office on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, NC. 



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No More Free Lunch

Our First Lady makes an excellent case against free lunch. She tells us that things have flipped. A few years ago, five percent of our children were unable to enlist in the military because they were malnourished. Michelle Obama says that is why we started the national school lunch program. Now, twenty-six percent of people who try to enlist are denied on the basis of being obese, she says. That's a problem for national defense, according to her view. So she has taken on childhood obesity as her cause célèbre.

This all came to light as Huckabee interviewed Obama about her Let's Move initiative to cure childhood obesity. The answer is in the lady's hands. Why can't she see it? One of the most shocking stats she gave us is that "Most of our children consume the majority of their calories at school."

We had a few malnourished children......the government intervened to solve the problem, and is now supplying the majority of calories to our children. Problem solved? Well no.........now the kids have become fat, in numbers dwarfing those few who had been suffering from malnutrition. Obviously the answer is to cancel the school lunch program. Let's get on with it, Michelle. That is an easy fix.


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Astroturf. Now there is Proof.

Sorry to burst your bubble. There is now confirmed proof that the grass roots you have been part of is nothing but astroturf.

The display of outrage made recently by a thousands of Americans (or as Pelosi might call them, "un-Americans") is just a setup after all. There is nothing genuine about it. We have all been hearing nasty reports (rumors) from MSNBC for some time now, postulating that the angry mob is just a front. The whole charade has supposedly been financed by insurance companies which provide posterboard and crayons



with which thousands upon thousands of angry people are making signs. These hapless automatons are connecting with neighbors, leaving their grandbabies for the afternoon, and/or taking time off of PTA meetings or whatever, or work, to go to town halls. It is all about doing the bidding of lobbyists who want to protect the income stream of the very rich. When these innocent shills get to the meetings, they sometimes yell, mostly when being lied to. One might think this is because these Great Americans are angry about what is being done to their country. But no. Chris Matthews, that crackerjack anchor over at MSNBC assures us that all of these thousands of concerned patriots are acting as part of a coordinated effort in response to The McGuffie Memo.

The main point of the plan, we are told, is to bring down Obama. We don't even know WHY anyone would want to bring down Obama, because he is a very affable guy and he is leading the country we live in. After all, we need for our country to succeed. Many of us don't entirely like Obama's dreams of the world as it "should be", and even more of us just don't think it is practical for him to try and create a utopia on Earth. With our money. For silly reasons like that, we don't support Obama policies. But most people have no interest in bringing Obama down. They just want him to keep his big fat hands off our liberties.

But Mort Zuckerman and some pretty-man anchor from what many insist ought to be called the MS-LSD network, has given us a clue. It has something to do with the word Socialism being spelled wrong, lo these many years. Turns out Socialism should always have been spelled beginning with the letter N! Confused? Let pretty-man anchor explain:




And now we find that this scheme, this conspiracy to bring down Obama, goes back many years, further than that McGuffie Memo and further than the involvement of the insurance industry. (Did we mention that Matthews seems to think the insurance industry is pouring out millions to buy those crayons for the tea partiers, despite the fact that they are at the very same time, spending big money to buy ads to support Obamacare? (The logic dispenser over at MS-LSD must be on the fritz)."

It was really all just rumor, until now. Just today, a reporter has caught it on tape. And now we can conclusively prove the whole thing is in fact, astroturf, carefully laid by a gang of men who pranced about in fancy clothes. The scheme to incite Americans to stand up against tyranny did not start during the week in which Obama ordered the House to pass HR 3200. No, and it did not begin when tea parties were held across the land on April 15th in response to the 787 Billion dollar stimulus plan and other run away spending. The conspiracy did not even begin when Rick Santelli got mad on CNBC's air and bellowed out the famous rant which is famous for having given Americans the idea to have tea parties.

No.

Here is the proof of where all this dissent comes from . Look at this video. One Katy Abram spoke at the Arlen Spector town hall today and she SPILLED THE BEANS!




Did you hear what Abrams said? She is caught red-handed for all the world to see. There is no denying it now. She must not have been very well trained, because she lets the secret slip, at 1:25 in this video. Apparently a group of several dozen schemers were determined to bring down Obama, before he even got elected. Yes, it was some guys you may have heard of, acting in concert with a gang of lesser knowns. In a very sinister manner, they assembled and decided to make life a living hell for today's proponents of a health care plan of the unaffordable lollipop variety. It was THEY who decided to make people rise up against Obama and his nocialist dream.



Amazing when you stop to think that this happened almost twenty decades before Obama even enrolled in that fancy private school in Hawaii. Also involved in the plot were men by the names of a Mr. Adams and a Thomas-something-or-other, though each was out of the country at the time of the dastardly deed and thus unavailable to sign some kind of a memo to mark the occasion. There was a memo, though. And it, (NOT the McGuffie Memo) is the memo which Katy Abrams read, the one which propelled her on her mission to stand up and speak her mind and defend what is rightfully hers. And THAT is the memo which got so many Americans (real ones, thank you, Ms. Pelosi) all hot and bothered and ready to strike out and attend a bunch of boring old meetings with sourpuss congressmen and senators. So you see, it was all contrived, all planned, and all brought about by that little four-page memo written by a bunch of guys in fancy clothes harboring delusions of grandeur. Somehow they thought that simply by writing some flowy-looking words in cursive on four pieces of paper, they could reach right ahead through the centuries and give people courage and strength to stand up to Obama and others like him. And thus the plot began. Thousands answered the call of the memo. And thus the crowds were manufactured. Astoturf!

Check it out. It is a good memo. It is all the rage right now, and roaring right back into fashion. But be careful and read this document at your own risk. If you succumb to the temptation and actually read it right through, you yourself just might be incited to start shouting at town hall meetings too.
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MSNBC Promotes Socialism under a Friendly Sounding Name

All systems are capitalist. It's just a matter of who owns and controls the capital -- ancient king, dictator, or private individual. We should properly be looking at the contrast between a free market system where individuals have the right to live like kings if they have the ability to earn that right -------and government control of the market system such as we find today in socialist nations." ---Ronald Reagan

I have just finished watching a segment on MSNBC's The Morning Meeting centered around Spitzer’s article of the title Green Shoots, Red Ink, and a Black Hole. The host, Dylan Ratigan, invited three guests……and they all were speaking from a perspective that the government needs to take taxpayer money and “invest” it into new industries. Spitzer seemed to think we should just do a better job of spending what we already took from the tax payers, and the others wanted to take more.

Where is the BALANCE on MSNBC? Not one conservative guest appeared, not one person discussed the conservative perspective, not one stated the correctly the reasons that people are not investing in this economy. Not a single guest mentioned the thought that perhaps people are not hiring because they know that business-dampening regulation is steamrolling towards them and it will be very expensive. More expenditure by any business means less money available for hiring. One guest was saying we need to take more money from the people who earned it and have another stimulus. Which is pretty rich now that the first stimulus has failed so miserably. Every guest was talking about how we all want to protect capitalism, and every guest was giving solutions which involve the government taking money from the people and using it to bolster industry and energy solutions. No wonder people in this country have no idea what is going on and are losing their way. Organizations such as MSNBC are deeply polluted with misguided, liberal thinking and don’t even acknowledge true free market principles. And at the same time, they are claiming to be fighting for the free market. LOL. LOL. LOL! Are we paying attention and reading between the lines here?

All of MSNBC’s guests and the host on that segment were adeptly co-opting words they know resonate with the American people, such as “free market”, “capitalism”, “American ingenuity” and “creativity”. And all panelists blatantly ignored what it is about America that makes ingenuity, creativity, and wealth flourish here. All say we need for the government to step in and guide where the capital goes. GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF CAPITAL IS THE ANTITHESIS OF THE FREE MARKET, INGENUITY, CREATIVITY AND CAPITALISM.

This slanted, disingenuous host ---Dylan Ratigan----even went so far as to say that non-rules based capitalism is stealing and therefore we need something he calls "rules based capitalism". Ratigan failed to mention that the beauty of the free market is that it allows players to accumulate wealth and to stand up for themselves, which reduces the ability of others to "steal".

“Rules based capitalism” is just the new euphemism for government control of as much money as congress and the President can get their hands on, through industry, banking, energy, and health care. Government control of the capital of a country is socialism. The libs poo-poo the use of the word "socialism" and many of them say they don’t want socialism. And yet they vote for it every step of the way!