Judge fines protester who got a mouthful of pepper spray

 @HarryJuku  @Fed up Fed  She was screaming in pain when it hit her eyes and face.  What you think isn't in touch with reality.

 @Ben Franklin Whoa dude, chill out. You sound like Ted Kidinski, the fella who lived in that shack in Montana. Believe it or not, your point of view is held by about 5% of the population and we're not following. Lay off the hate, its Christmas.

So what caused the mortgage meltdown?  It wasn't the "greedy" bankers.  They are just as greedy as they always were.  They didn't wake up one day and get greedier.  The government wanted everyone to have a house whether they could afford it or not so they passed the CRA where they both punished and rewarded banks for making bad loans.  Fannie and Freddie backed whatever bad loans the bankers made and the government even sued them if they did not make enough bad loans.  That was one of the rackets Obama was running before he was elected to office and Clinton admitted the changes he made to the CRA lead to the moral hazard which caused the meltdown.

 

None of that had anything to do with a free market or with greedy bankers. It has everything to do with socialism and an out of control federal government which is no longer bound by any Constitutional limitations. Everyone did exactly what the government wanted and forced them to do.  Essentially Uncle Sam walked into a casino and told everyone that they would make good any losses they had while they would be punished if they did not bet big enough and often enough!  It was madness and the much maligned George Bush warned Congress no less than 17 times it would all end in tears to which we got Barney Frank's famed riposte "I am willing to roll the dice."  Occupiers are completely ignorant of all of this and just emote about how they want more of what got us here.

 

It was also the much maligned Sarah Palin that pointed out that all of this was corporatism of the same sort that always gets socialist and fascist countries in trouble and it obviously has no place in a civilized society.  This is of course information that the media does not want anyone to know and it has been completely embargoed. 

 

In a free market there are no authorities to step in and make good losses so companies have to be responsible in how they plan and in the policies they pursue. There is no moral hazard of the sort the government created in the housing market.  If companies choose poorly then they go bankrupt and a company that is better managed buys their assets.  There is not a government entity guaranteeing them against any losses.  In short, meltdowns of the sort we just had do not happen.  Bubbles are not artificially created and pumped up beyond belief because companies fail well before then.

 

So faced with all of this what do these completely ignorant people who make up the Occupy movement do?  They run out and demand MORE government and MORE interference in the market.  It is not that all of them are bad people.  They are just completely clueless and unwilling to learn.  They also are extremely self-entitled and think that if the government just uses MORE force against the RIGHT people and provide MORE free stuff by robbing the occupiers neighbors then everything will work out.  This is of course ridiculous on its face.

 

When socialist countries fail they always scapegoat "the rich."  Well, let's just take everything they make... the top 1% or so already pays 40% of the taxes but let's say we take everything they make.  We still don't balance the budget or pay down the debt.  We destroy the economy but even so the numbers still don't add up.  So who does the government scapegoat next?  Tyranny always trickles down.

 

Socialist countries ALWAYS get poorer with a greater divide between the top and bottom and they ALWAYS go broke because power is centralized in the hands of a few and there is no discipline from competition.  If you beg for more government then you are begging for more of what got us here.  It is complete and utter madness and we used to inoculate our kids from such magical thinking in our civics and economic courses.

 

The Tea Partiers understand all of this.  They are the only fiscally sane movement in the country so it is not an accident that the media has tried to demonize them.  If you go to a Tea Party rally you will get a cogent and coherent explanation of what happened and what we can do to fix it.  If you go to an Occupy Rally you will get just the opposite... but the media will love you.  You are a useful tool to them and that is all you are.

 

The higher education bubble is the next thing to burst.  The government is spending more than it has ever spent on our universities and the product is less and less useful because universities see their mission as turning out brain dead Marxists like Obama.  Something that can't go on forever won't.  Just like the government could not underwrite and create a market for loans regardless of ability to pay they can't keep pumping money into academia in return for the academics steering impressionable kids to voting for tyranny.  There is no way forward there and even the people promoting such policies do it with complete cynicism while safe in the knowledge that the press will cover for them and vilify anyone who tries to stop them.

 

The occupiers are getting used.  It is time for them to wake up and throw the blinders off their eye because we can't afford to humor them anymore.  They have to face reality.  The government is not going to sweep in an kiss their boo boos and everything better.  The government is going to cause more dislocation and poverty because that is what makes them more powerful and richer.  If you get in bed with them they will reward you like the bankers but it you cross them you will be destroyed.  That is what fascism is and the Occupy movement, to the extent it is anything at all, is a fascist movement.

 

 

 @Fed up Fed  @JTesla  @Fed Thx for posting quite elegantly my sentiments exactly.

 @Fed up Fed  @JTesla  @Fed 

The Occupiers get to camp out for months and create public health hazards and dislocation for everyone... all without permits in most cases.  The Tea Party has to get permits and they leave the areas they gather in cleaner than when they arrived.  They don't destroy property or provoke anyone and they police themselves to throw out any elements that might want to use them as a shield to try such things.  Look up what happened in Asheville NC and you will see the difference in how the two groups are treated by the government.  This is because the Occupiers, despite the rhetoric, are useful to those in power and the Tea Partiers are a threat... even despite their peacefulness. 

 

If the Occupiers don't like how the government infringes their rights they should argue for less government.  When they take positions at odds with their goals it attracts people who want to use them because it is clear they are gullible and easily manipulated... hate the bankers, hate the Jews, just don't weaken the government's hold over the economy... that is what will get you in trouble.  That is when you are speaking truth to power and are a threat.  Unless the government intervenes on their behalf these other groups like the bankers cannot use force to get what they want.  The government has a monopoly on that commodity.  So when the politicians  can use it to reward and punish certain groups, as the occupiers desperately wants the government to do on their behalf, then you end up with tyranny.  If the government did not have this power, as was the intention of the Constitution, then there is no need beg the politicians to use force on your behalf or to not use it against you.

 

There are hardcore groups who get these silly, self-entitled and unsophisticated kids fired up and then infiltrate the rallies and provoke the police to get good optics for their cause.  They use the kids for screens just as the government uses them to cover the fact that government interference in the market caused the financial meltdown and our flirtations with socialism have caused us to go broke.

 @WebTraveker  @Jim Jones  @boomer people tend to do that during acts of civil disobedience where the authorities are whom they are protesting in the first place.

 @sargerator It is not the same situation.  This is the year 2012 and there was a lawful police order and a chance to be respected.   When the order is given over and over and a person ignores it, it puts police in an untenable situation, and thus the result. 

 

If everyone acted like this we'd have anarchy.