The Trashing of Lower Manhattan
Saturday evening was an occasion for visiting some old friends who live in lower Manhattan, just a couple of garbage bag throws from Zuccotti Park, ground zero of the “Occupy Wall Street” squatter encampment. So, late in the evening, we lingered briefly on Liberty Street for a look at these folks who have laid claim to turf not their own. There was a guy waving a Chinese flag, another guy toting a guitar; people sitting at folding tables, people milling around, others sitting cross-legged on the ground. There were placards about greed and corruption. It was pretty much what we’d already inferred from the out-sized press coverage devoted to this scene. A camping project, mixing social adventure with witless protest and an angry sense of entitlement. Any great city attracts cranks, but there is a hooligan edge to this “occupation.”
It left me sad for a lot of reasons, but the one I’ll mention here is the long trashing of lower Manhattan. Which, over the past decade, has already been through quite enough. On this date, 10 years ago, smoke was still rising from the massive wreck of the World Trade Center. What was once a vibrant hub of commerce, offices, shops, restaurants, had become a scene of grief and ruin. By stages, the wreckage was cleared away. But for years, the crater remained. In the summer of 2010, as something new finally began to take real shape, along came Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan. In the name of bridging divides, they spawned a season of furious controversy, ripping open emotional wounds with their plans for a “Cordoba House” Islamic community center and mosque right down the block from the site of the Sept. 11 Islamist attacks.
This year, during Hurricane Irene, lower Manhattan was evacuated — needlessly, as it turned out — by a mayor who went overboard in his nanny-state zeal to protect the local citizenry from harm, regardless of their individual preferences. Now that same mayor hesitates to protect lower Manhattan from being appropriated as a squatter base for a crowd that seems to have borrowed parts of its creed from China’s ruinous Cultural Revolution.
On the site of the World Trade Center, the new Freedom Tower is now going up. But the area around it remains a maze of construction walls, barriers, blocked passages and pedestrian detours. Zucotti Park, formerly called Liberty Plaza Park, abuts on this mess, and used to be one of the more pleasant plazas to stroll, sit, have a cup of coffee and contemplate a part of Manhattan which — contrary to current cant — has been one of the great engines of American markets and resulting prosperity. If the aim of the “Occupy” crowd is to protest the enfeebled American economy, then the place to go is Washington, and the thing to demand is more capitalism, not less. If the aim is to pound drums, strum guitars, trash thoroughfares and feel like comrades in arms for thumbing noses at the system, then any trace of basic human decency would suggest choosing a spot less battered already. When does lower Manhattan get a break?
Also read Roger L. Simon: “Latest Wall Street Demonstrations Puny“
Have no fear, Claudia. I understand that last night the vermin migrated uptown to infect Times Square.
When an outbreak of TB or Hepatitis occurs, the occupiers will no doubt sue the city for not closing them in order to clean.
When does lower Manhattan get a break? When it shows some self respect and cleans up its act. That’s when.
Bravo!
And I would like to know: is there a real Republican in New York who could challenge that ass Bloomberg in 2013? Or did that amendment he pushed through in 2009 make him Mayor For Life?
There was a time when it was understood that police should deal with such loiterers in an effective manner.
In those times, the mayor of the city would support the police.
Indeed — and if the police should prove absent or insufficient, the non-uniformed population would take up the slack. But then, we had men in those days.
They should remain right where they are, with the National Media excusing their blight, right up to November 2012.
Shame on Mayor Bloomberg for letting this go on as long as it has. Seems to me, most protests last about ONE DAY. This one has been going on for about a month. And what is the end-game here? Are these “protesters” (or vagrants) planning on staying there forever? And what about the businesses that are located near the park. I’ve heard heartbreaking stories of people who own delis and small shops around there that are going out of business because of these filthy punks. These businesspeople actually PAY TAXES and deserve to be protected by the mayor, not ignored. These jerks should have been thrown out weeks ago. Now it’s only going to make a final showdown between them and the police inevitable. This never, EVER, would have happened under Mayor Giuliani. Never. Bloomberg had better move fast, before some real violence (like the one seen recently in London) takes place.
I blame Bloomberg AND Jerrold Nadler. He strong-armed the Zucotti Park management as well as the merchants and residents of the area to essentially STFU and deal with it.
I recall that Bob Turner said that if his district disappears, he would run against Nadler. I suspect that he would get a lot of support from residents and business people in lower Manhattan. Nadler is a commie leftist Quisling that needs to go the way of Weiner. If we can only remove Gary Ackerman, Charlie Rangel and Schmuck Schumer as well.
Oh well, maybe a tide is turning.
Bloomberg’s responsible for the still empty hole where the Twin Towers were, too. A mayor can green-light things, cut through bureaucracy if he wants. He’d have had lots of public support to get the EPA and preservation councils and fire-regs people to stand aside, too.
He didn’t.
In fact, he supported the Ground Zero Mosque, calling those against it bigots. Just like he supports these whiners in Zucotti.
Bloomberg’s been reelected in spite of these things – New Yorkers have the leadership they deserve.
You’ll never see it in the media, but Cordova is the city in Spain which was the Western Capital of the Second Caliphate before 1492 and the grand retreat of Islam.
They called the Ground Zero Mosque the “Cordova Project” and “Cordova House” because it plants the flag of the 3rd Caliphate in their new western capital, NYC.
It’s a done deal, and bumble-burger let it happen.
“When does lower Manhattan get a break?”
It’s hard to feel a lot of sympathy towards an area where rents and real estate prices are so astronomical as to be out of the reach of ordinary Americans, unless said AMericans live in Beverly Hills or South Beach.
It’s also hard to feel a lot of sympathy towards inhabitants of a city who keep re-electing a doofus like Bloomberg.
You gets what you pays for. I’m astonished that residents of this part of New York evidently haven’t found the proper button to buy yet, to evict this swarm of vermin.
Yep, New Yorkers are losers.
Instapundit repeated a rumor on his site the other day – that the financial services industry is considering transfering its base from Wall Street to Dallas. They’d save a bunch on taxes, wouldn’t they?
But why would Texas want such a big influx of idiot voters?
Equities in Dallas, hmmm?
Maybe when NYC allows THIS to be rebuilt.
It’s also hard to feel a lot of sympathy towards a city that did and does gleefully pile on to the superior-to-thou Bush/Palin-are-idiots bandwagon.
AND that rushed en masse to donate their wealth to buy the current White House interloper his Presidency.
President Obama has been wrong about many things but one of his most spectacular mistakes was his misidentification of the nation’s bitter clingers. He said it was people in small towns in Pennsylvania and the Midwest, who have suffered continued unemployment in spite of the promises of a succession of Presidents to remedy it. Hence, he claimed, they cling to guns, religion, xenophobia, resentment of immigrants and anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain and assuage their frustrations. Actually, the biggest concentration of economic bitterness and resentment is in Zucotti Park. They don’t cling to guns or religion. They hate Christians, Jews, and gun owners. But, they cling like barnacles to anti-trade sentiment and people different from themselves.
Ding! Perfect ten.
There is a Sukkot for observant Jewish activists in the middle of the Occupation Site. Its next to the Media Hub. Honestly, try to have just a little bit of an idea of what your talking about.
I’ve been fighting off a bad cold and have had time to ponder the “Occupy” movement while sitting in my chair fully blanketed and alternately sweating and shivering. Regular ministrations of blackberry brandy or hot whiskey-and-water sure help.) Out of all the impressions the one that seems most relevant is this:
We aren’t dealing with fully-formed human beings here, at least not in the traditional sense. These protestors in their late teens and twenties have all had their perceptions formed through the filter of a life spent with electronic devices. Most have never moved outside the “cocoon” created by the instant availability of of personal media. They have grown up (consider that loosely said) with their i-Pods, cell phones, Droids, blackberries, laptops, i-Pads etc. In actuality this is all that they know. They undoubtedly decided to “Occupy Wall Street” after a sophisticated internet campaign and they receive their marching orders (such as they are) through the people who orchestrated it. When the protestors surrounded the home of one of the Koch Brothers and other wealthy Manhattanites they ignored the homes of equally affluent “plutocrats” nearby. Undoubtedly this was because they had received instructions on which plutocrat was “good” (George Soros) and which was not.
Nearly all of these individuals do not communicate with other human beings as human beings. They communicate with other media recipients inside their cocoons. When it comes to a “message” they are remarkably incoherent because a detailed plan has not been broadcast to them (yet) and they are incapable of thinking for themselves. They are only capable of receiving and manipulating images from their personal media.
My own belief is that this whole thing is really just a trial run – A prelude to what will be the real thing next spring. The folks behind this are just perfecting their channels of communication and gauging just how malleable and gullible these cocoons are. They will shut down with the advent of cold weather and maintain a minimal presence in other cities. The winter will be spent receiving instructions. It should be an interesting spring.
Yours is the best terse description of these opportunists at group-think in the whole of the media. Thank you for posting it here and I will take the liberty of repeating it….
…”We aren’t dealing with fully-formed human beings here, at least not in the traditional sense. These protestors in their late teens and twenties have all had their perceptions formed through the filter of a life spent with electronic devices.”
The alarming thought is that this is all they know, and we’re growing a whole generation of these electro-humanoids who’re developing thumbs over common sense. They’re the current day hippies with wasted, stunted brains.
I feel sorry for them, while at the same time feeling disgusted.
It’s not just their electronic cocoons. They’ve been subjected to anti-capitalist, anti-freedom indoctrination in their schools from age 6 on. They’ve been taught to hate the country they live in.
This becomes an important issue. How can a society continue of the coming generation has been brainwashed into hating it?
You’re right Joe. One reason it’s so easy to teach kids to hate America is because the History classes omit all the good things about America. As one historian lamented, a child will not be willing to defend a country he knows nothing about.
But it’s worse than that Joe. Many of the good things about America are portrayed as evil: individual rights, political freedom, property rights, the trader principle, et al are portrayed as self interested and condemned as selfish therefore evil. It’s what Rand called hatred of the good for being the good. The Occupiers are just the latest manifestations of the success of the government run school system’s emphasis on socialization instead of cognitive development.
When Lower Manhattan freezes over. Then back to their basements.
These nincompoop protestors are as persuasive as religious zealots, but have less direction. They are no better. I believe idealy – to take their ranting at face value, to try to strain out any grain of truth – their real problem is with Greed, or some notion of such. Fine. But I doubt that the liberal-ass media would give as much time and benevolence to a bunch of people protesting, say, adultery, in say, Hollywood, even if it was politicized.
I do not believe they are really against capitalism. They practice it still. (I am less a capitalist then most of them, having never taken a loan of any kind, and I support the free-market capitalistic way. What gives?) They are against a greedy heartless bogeyman (they are in the midst of pin-pointing this foe: zionist jew bankers, illuminatti, bilderberg group, oil-barons, what have you) that allegedly controls something about how the system will flow, or something. Have they even really addressed a main contention? Besides “GREEEED” and secret, private groups? This is silly.
They are 99 percent misdirected, ignorant, know-it-all, inexperienced, ungrateful, majoritively drug-using, lazy, self-absorbed little jerks. (The other 1 percent: probably not jerks.) But I don’t hate them all – there is that 1 percent. I hate the frickin media, and the liberal politicians who are treating them like a legitimate voice. And what is a legitimate voice? Well, right off we can say it is one that doesn’t contradict itself.
The press doesn’t care though, because these misfits are simply a mass, a cyst, a gestation against Conservatism really, whether they intend that or not; and for increasing the nanny-state status of America. (An example of, “Whoever is not against me is for me” in action. – not to slander that principle, but it is what it is.) All that matters for these so-called protestors is what the enablers – liberal media and politicians – are after, and in this case it has less to do with banks than it does with maintaining power, pushing some vision that nobody fully knows.
And as far as the White House’s point-of-view, it is ground and pound for this country until election day.
For many people they only learn through pain. I hope these protests are a great discomfort to those people who vote for Jerrold Nadler, Bloomberg and Schumer election after election.
The only thing standing between America as we knew it and the USSA is great pain inflicted as swiftly as possible so that Americans don’t vote the same people back into office whose intention is to take us to our defeat.
According to the Daily Rash, Ron Paul made an appearance at Occupy Wall Street and spent several hours passing out LSD to the protesters. Might explain some of the confusion down there. http://www.thedailyrash.com/ron-paul-hands-out-lsd-to-occupy-wall-street-protesters
The Daily Rash is a satire website. http://www.thedailyrash.com/about/
There are two main culprits here at least.
First, there is the mob of parasitic, clueless. self-absorbed, dopers, nut jobs, professional ideologues/agitators/protestors, very, very “educated” college grads, trust fund babies, and the not mutually exclusive group of those who figure that the “demo” is the best place to score, to hook up, and to get to destroy something without penalty–“useful idiots” all—best summed up as wunnabe “Red Guards,” Dumb and Dumber, and Marx and Engels meet Cheech and Chong—a mob called into being by Soros funded far left organizations—cutouts for Obama & Co.
Then, there is gutless, squishy Mayor Bloomberg.
In this situation, I blame Bloomberg the most. What is his first duty as Mayor? To protect the people of New York by preserving public order. Is he doing this? No.
Who ultimately pays for this “occupation”? The people of New York.
Who will be the first to disclaim any responsibility if things turn ugly, and we see a copy of the violent and deadly riots in Athens in the city of New York? Bloomberg.
Bloomberg basically used his wealth to “buy” his office. He “owns’ the city. If he breaks it, he should pay for it.
Next in line for blame, though, are the New Yorkers who voted for him, and keep him in office. They basically asked for something like this to happen.
Now that they are singing “F### the USA” in Portland, reminds me of a certain pastor that Obama didn’t listen to for 20 years.
Its a strange thing to see foreign born people who have come over here with very little making a success of themselves. These “foreigners” love this country and the opportunities it provides. I think that these demonstrators should be shipped overseas where they can enjoy another life style. Nothing will be given to them for free.
Wall Street Occupiers Bare Their Fangs
I was roundly chastised on October 8th by an indignant critic who took great umbrage at my early criticism of the self-proclaimed Wall Street Occupiers.
I must admit that my preliminary observations on the WSO were premature and only semi-accurate. I had suggested they were out of touch with reality whereas the truth could be that they are in close touch although their view of reality doesn’t approximate the beliefs of the 99% of Americans they claim to represent.
Kheaven1942 acerbically commented on my article, “Wall Street, the Numbnuts not the Movie” (http://tiny.cc/x2pnt) by saying, “Congratulations, this is the most delicately fabricated story I have ever read. It’s amazing to what lengths you went to make sure you capture only the very, very few in this movement who make it look uneducated and stupid. You, and everyone else following this story know very well how much more organized this is than what you are trying to portray in this sad excuse for journalism.”
In rebuttal, I would like to thank Kheaven for calling my writing “delicately fabricated” since I’m rarely delicate about anything but I have to correct him on his fabricated fabrication.
Kheaven went on to explain, “The movement is only a few weeks old. It is completely normal that it is still growing with no concise and clear direction and motivation–that would be asking too much. Give it a few more weeks, months, maybe even years, and this could be the new face of democracy.”
On that, I would have to agree and disagree. The demonstrations on Wall Street and yesterday in Times Square and across the nation may be growing without clarity of purpose but are “normal” only if normality is now defined by gross abnormality despite efforts by the mainstream media to depict them as a grassroots movement akin to the Tea Party.
For one important thing, Tea Partiers are law abiding people who respect the law, the rights of others, and common decency.
Sorry, Kheaven, but thousands of people exhibiting placards declaring hatred for and supporting the violent overthrow of my country, copulating in a public park, trampling on American flags, disrupting commerce and civil order, defying and intimidating legal authority, endorsing Nazism, Marxism, and anti-Semitism, and defecating on patrol cars among other outrages do not constitute the norm in any normal context.
Did I focus on the ”very, very few in this movement who make it look uneducated and stupid”? Hardly. The vast majority seem relatively educated but educated in public schools . . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5729.)
I lived and worked in New York City for sixteen years. I left only to accept a job in California, but have returned to the city two or three times since then. Each time I was appalled at the changes, changes for the worst. And I get reports on the decline of especially Manhattan from a friend who still lives there. Bloomberg is the most destructive mayor the city has ever endured, and how much longer the borough and the city can survive him, I cannot guess. When I lived in NYC, I could smoke wherever I wanted, go to a restaurant and pour as much salt on my burger and pour as much sugar into my coffee as I pleased. I did not need to worry about being injured by mad bikers. There were no bike lanes, which apparently bikers do not use now anyway. I could afford to take a subway to any part of the city without checking my bank account. One gripe I had against the city was the continuation of rent controls from WWII, controls which created a special, protected class of people who could afford to live in spacious apartments while those not so privileged to live in hand-me-down apartments had to settle for paying sky-high rents in what amounted to converted walk-in clothes closets. The people who made the city vibrant usually had to commute into the city from afar, because the middle class had been priced out of the city by rent controls and other regulations. There were countless bookstores, retail and used. They’re gone. There were countless Greek-run coffee shops and diners, but no yuppy-friendly Starbucks (the brew is over-rated). In short, the city I knew is gone. Now it’s “occupied” by hippies and yippies and clueless zombies and professional vagrants who can’t even decide what they’re protesting (their promoters do, and these are the socialists and communists and unionists). Bloomberg is destroying Manhattan with bike lanes, pedestrian malls that simply cause traffic jams elsewhere, so-called plazas arbitrarily created wherever his “planners” wish, with his anti-smoking, anti-salt, anti-everything campaigns. Bloomberg is also pro-Muslim, backing the GZ mosque. In short, you couldn’t pay me to live in NYC now. I don’t’ wish to see it die. I don’t even want to visit it.
“…then the place to go is Washington, and the thing to demand is more capitalism..”
-says the author, but isn’t un-regulated Wall St. the cause of our economic problem? YES!
So we 99% will continue to voice this truth.
No, the problem is ObamAA+’s thug puppeteers giving away hundreds of billions in taxpayer money to their fat-cat buddies everywhere from Goldman Sachs to Solyndra.
You seem to be much more interested in voicing it than you are in whether it is the truth.
Read this essay more carefully, and read more of Mr. Fernandez. You will find much evidence against, and many fine arguments that destroy, your weak assertion here.
Pardon me, I was lost for a moment.
Read more of Ms. Rosett and you will learn where you are mistaken, with much evidence and many fine arguments.
Richard Fernandez is another source of wisdom I suggest you avail yourself of.
If indeed truth is something you are interested in.
These gatherings are a trial run and financed by the same people who will use what they learn here to try and disrupt the 2012 elections. If Holder is still AG, we could have New Black Panthers at many polling place. Squatters appear to be a new group with greater rights than the rest, to take up residence in urban settings and disrupt communities not their own in the name of bad hygience and marginal thinking.
So this is what we get when the “self esteem generation” meets the hippies in power, who think law and order is just a long-running TV series. Well, Mayor B, can someone from your office make up certificates for the self-esteemers so those who are waiting around for their participation award get it and leave the stage? The rest can probably be lured away with a promise of free tattoos in Philly.
With such a weak response to the occupiers, who would vacation or schedule a meeting in NYC?
Bloomberg’s hypocrisy stinks as much as the vermin occupying the Zucotti Park. This is the same mayor that turned Central Park into a museum w/ fences surrounding the grassy mounds to keep the pedestrians off the grass & on the concrete. Usually you have to jump thru hoops to get a permit in the exact location & for the time you want it to gather to protest in the City. So where is the legal permit of these squatting protestors? Suddenly, Bloomberg is such a big advocate of freedom of speech that looks like incitement that he says the loons can stay there “indefinitely.’ So why not just let all the homeless take over Central Park, set-up tents & just carry any hate the rich sign to legitimize their pseudo-protest?
A little gratitude is owed to the top 10% of the New Yorkers who subsidize the pensions of all the boroughs 8 million residents…no surprise if they up & leave while the City goes bankrupt.
Instead of kowtowing to Obama, w/ the Ground Zero Mosque & the OCW crowd, Bloomberg should start focusing on being a damn Mayor…murder rates are up all over the city while the police are preoccupied w/ smokers in the park, salt in the restaurants & now, spending overtime at a cost of $3million taxpayer dollars to watch the Zucotti Park squatters. I’m a NY taxpayer & I’m fed-up.
Hizzoner predicted mass demonstrations, and now we have them, made to order.
People don’t bring that up here or anywhere else.
Perhaps if we just took all their names, and then billed them individually for the police overtime, the sanitation workers’ overtime and the costs the city has incurred, it might bring some rationalization to their feeble little brains that they are an expensive blight on society. Doubt. Seriously.
These protestors should move to parade in front of the White House that passed stimulus bills to resecue Wall St., Banks, GE (who pays no US taxes , yet is job czar), GM, Solandra, and other companies that received handouts fronm the president and Timothy Geitner, Larry Summers.These are where the outbursts should be, not on Wall St. Wall St. only took what was give to them by the corrupt people in the federal government. They should also be parading in front of Congress whole Congress who passed Obamacare, an extraordinary expensive health plan that drove up all premiums, Dodd-Frank, that hardly controlled the banks and could charge anything they wanted for their credit cards. This is where the protesters should be-in front of Obama, Congress, The Supreme Court (that approved flowing money into Pacs without any divulgence of names). Wall St. and the Banks and the other companies as Solydra gladly took stimulus money handed out by the crooks in the White House, The Treasury Dept, the congress and the Supreme Court. Parade baby parade in Washington, D.C. to the corruption that goes on in Washington as politicians are allowed to accept bribes from corporations.Washington is City of Corruption. New York is only the beneficiary of corrution from Washington. Move your “occupy” to Washington, DC.
Fear not!
There is no need to concern oneself over these less than “…fully-formed human beings”, Mr. Obama has a plan to fix all our ills.
His newest adventure into Africa is reminiscent of Kennedy circa 1961, when he sent a team to Vietnam to report on conditions in the South and to assess future American aid requirements. The report, now known as the ‘December 1961 White Paper,’ was the springboard for an long, costly and embarrassing war, however it required one element that Mr. Obama will have to face, it required the draft.
Thus, Mr. Obama will provide a solution to two of our problems:
1.He will get this vacuous generation off the streets.
2.He will start to lower the unemployment numbers since these less than stellar 20 to 30 year olds are all unemployed because they are essentially unemployable. Basic training will cure the latter and axiomatically cure the former.
David Horowitz in his autobiography Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey very persuasively demonstrated that communists started the Vietnam war protests which then acquired a life of their own.
I see a parallel today. President Obama cannot run for president in 2012 on his record. So he has to demonize the Republican party; specifically he must draw attention away from the federal government’s part in the 2008 financial crisis which was so well explained in the Wednesday, October 12 Wall Street Journal article by Peter Wallison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
My hunch is Bill Ayres, someone he knows or someone like him has had a hand in starting the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations and then stood back to enjoy the fun.
The left is looking for ways to capitalize on the demonstrations; it is just starting.
Zbigniew Brzezinski today on Morning Joe, commenting about Occupy Wall Street, said the media should identify those who are part of the one percent, not to demonize them he said, but of course that is exactly the point.
Donny Deutsch also on Morning Joe the other day said Occupy Wall Street “needs Kent State like imagery.” He said he didn’t want a replay of Kent State but why else would he have used those words. His comments are easily found on the internet.
This is what the presidential campaign will be all about; if the demonstrations catch fire as did the Vietnam war protests, it is going to get very ugly.
“So, late in the evening, we lingered briefly on Liberty Street for a look at these folks who have laid claim to turf not their own.”
Really? Well, according to the New York Times story that was called “Privately Owned Park, Open to Public, Has Its Own Rules”
“Zuccotti Park, the half-acre plaza in Lower Manhattan now synonymous with Occupy Wall Street, exists in a strange category of New York parkland, identified by a seeming oxymoron: a privately owned public space.
“The park was established in a wave of development that spurred corporate plazas after changes were made to the city’s zoning laws in the early 1960s. The laws generally give real estate developers zoning concessions in exchange for public space. There are now at least 520 such parks, arcades and plazas in New York City, both indoors and out, [providing] a total of 3.5 million square feet of space.
“Zuccotti is unusual in that it does not adjoin the 54-story office tower, 1 Liberty Plaza, that spawned it. Rather, it is bounded on all four sides by streets: Broadway, Trinity Place, and Cedar and Liberty Streets.
“And while the developer (Broofield Properties Management) did not win the right to build a larger structure in exchange for the park, it was given leeway on certain height and setback restrictions, according to Jerold S. Kayden, a lawyer and professor of urban planning and design at Harvard University.”
So Pajama People, its not quite a good argument that Brookfield somehow owns this park. Brookfield got the right to do certain things to its buildings, so that the public could have access and use this park. So the idea that Brookfield, a private developer, can start issuing all kinds of regulations on a park that really belongs to the public (everyone) and the rest of the people here in Liberty Park is really misguided. Read a Property Law hornbook before you embarrass yourself, next time.
Interesting post ‘World Music’ but when lifting material from a published article, (In this case the NY Times October 13, 2011) it is appropriate to provide attribution and it is inappropriate to edit out material that does not fit your agenda.
So I’ll help you out
Author: LISA W. FODERARO
Omitted paragraphs:
Brookfield Office Properties, the owner of Zuccotti Park, recently posted new rules against camping, lying on the ground or benches, and using sleeping bags, but up until now those rules have not been enforced.
Enforcement would fall to the building’s management company, Professor Kayden, (Jerold S. Kayden, a lawyer and professor of urban planning and design at Harvard University) said, but if park users refuse to comply, the management may call on the Police Department for help, as it has in an effort to clean out the park.
I just happened on this web site and found an echo chamber of right wing dogma and prejudice — call me naive, but the level of dehumanization, dismissive stereotyping, and downright mean-spirited cruelty toward what I see as a largely earnest and very diverse group of Americans finding their voice and speaking their minds in Zuccotti Park and across the nation is shocking to me. Sure there are some rough edges to what’s going on there, but no less than in your beloved Tea Party where early on folks were packing rifles to political rallies and recently cheering executions and the death of uninsured sick people on prime time TV.
We all need to look at the data and understand that there is something fundamentally broken in our social contract when one family can increase their new worth by $15 billion in 18 months while the child poverty rate in my hometown of New Haven, home to Yale University – spawning ground for Wall Street, hits 43% for 2010 according to the latest Census survey. This is ultimately dysfunctional not just for the poor, but for those making out well who depend on an educated, compliant and motivated citizenry. Owners in the fifties understood that a working class able to buy homes and boats and send their kids to college stimulated the economy for all to win. Somewhere in the rush to accumulate ever more, the owners lost that understanding of basic economics and politics.
The level of venom expressed here makes me sad for America, for you, and for the children that must be hearing and internalizing your twisted anger.
Please feel free to unoccupy PJM…
Listen Jim. I can call you Jim, can’t I?
I applaud your complete internalization of Leftist talking points, I really do but, I offer, herewith, a little contact with reality.
The “rough edges” in the occupy mob that you speak so dismissively of apparently comprises the bulk of the mob, and includes representatives of just about every far Left and Communist group in the country, and a whole bunch of professional agitators, all orchestrated and supported logistically and tactically by Soros funded outfits like the “Working Families Party,” a creature of ACORN; so much for your “just ordinary hurtin’ people speaking truth to power.”
And, by the way, those mean, racist, gun-toting Tea Party folks are a creation of the MSM—I particularly liked that “gun toting” picture that was all over the MSM several months ago—so emblematic of the racist Tea Party until you pulled back from the cropped image I saw presented on my TV to see that this gun-toter was, in fact, black, and found out that he was not at a Tea Party rally, but in the crowd at an Obama rally in Arizona, a state where such open carry is legal. P.S. despite the fact that reportedly there were several people openly carrying weapons at this rally, there were no arrests and no violence.
You cite the “poverty rate.” Funny how despite our government pouring literally trillions of dollars into various programs of “The War on Poverty”–over a couple of generations so far now–the poverty rate never really declines by much. Maybe you ought to actually investigate how the government determines “poverty,” and look at the dollar amounts for income which determine if one is officially “poor” i.e. the “poverty line,” that are published in the Federal Register each year. If you do, you will see that this poverty line, this dollar amount—indexed for inflation–automatically advances higher almost every year. The result, the definition of what “poverty” is constantly changes, the goal posts are moved each year, as more and more people each year in a increasingly populous America are “officially” poor, and qualify for a whole host of benefits.
This year such “mandatory” entitlement benefits consume 63% of our entire Federal Budget, and many of our “poor” actually live better lives–and have better overall living conditions and more material possessions—cars (sometimes several) a roof over their heads, air conditioning, computers, cell phones, TVs—often multiple TVs and many of them flat screen, cable, and subsidized housing, food, clothing, medical care, education and other services such as child care—than do members of the middle class in many parts of Europe.
In diagnosing “poverty” you say that “something is broke in our system,” as if it was the government’s role to eliminate poverty. I do not believe that the Founding Fathers thought that this was, in any way, something that government should do. Instead, they thought that it was the government’s function to protect our country from attack, to insure a sound and stable currency, encourage commerce and free enterprise, protect private property, and insure the rule of law—all to enable you to have a good chance to earn a living, so that whatever you earned would be yours to do with as you pleased, and so that others could not take your earnings and property from you—for without private property and the rule of law there is no Freedom.
All of this premised on each individual’s responsibility for himself and his actions, and on his responsibility and duty to earn a living for himself and his family, and to not just sit back expecting a handout; a philosophy obviously totally alien to whining “occupy” mob, whose members have somehow got the notion that “the world owes them a living,” and a good one at that.
Did you quit high school or college, or did you rack up tens of thousands of dollars in college loans “finding yourself,” and studying Feminist Deconstructionism, Medieval Art History, or Greek literature, and now can’t find a job? You made a bad decision and have to live with the consequences, and now–instead of sitting back and waiting for your 99 weeks of unemployment benefits–damn near two years of money taken from the pockets of productive tax paying citizens, or worse yet, largely borrowed from the Chinese–to come to an end–you have to go out and look for a job, any kind of job, even if it is not your ideal job, in hyour ideal place, or a job in Feminist Deconstructionism, Greek literature, or Medieval Art History, not ask for a “do over” and a handout.
Life is just not fair, something the members of the occupy mob just can’t seem to absorb or deal with constructively, except to say to all those who have played the cards they were dealt successfully, who have worked steadily and hard, and managed to earn a living and to accumulate some assets—“I want those assets of yours, because I, being who I am and as I am, have a superior claim to them, give them to me or I will take them from you”
Nice try Jim!You got the self-righteous sanctimony right,too bad it doesn’t resonate . Try to lie better,or Soros will stop funding your pot.Also, try moving to manhattan:you’ll feel much better among your fellow leftard zombies.(SEECOMMENT#30)
Couldn’t happen to a “nicer” place. Manhattan-whether upper,lower,whatever is a suppurating chancre of bureaucratic opression, leftwing plutocracy, real estate profiteering,wrecked infrastructure,toxic subways, welfare degeneracy, and refuge for every village idiot from the rest of the US, who wants to pose as an artist. It attracts lumpenproletarian scum the way excrement attracts flies. Let’s hope the occupiers go on welfare, stay permanently,and add yet one more layer of social degeneracy to this odious s#$%hole,causing it to implode.