31 Replies to “If ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Was a Baseball Game”

  2. What was it that brought this protest out anyway? Does anyone know what it was really about?
    Does anyone care?

  3. I think it was a bunch of kids who couldn’t get jobs with their sociology and media studies degrees.

  6. As has been mentioned here in previous years, the rent-a-mob at various protests around the world have always been economic illiterates.
    Glad to see Lorne Gunter has adopted that accurate description in today’s National Post.
    Keep up the good work, Lorne. We now know you’re visiting here.

  7. I love in the last article how throwing out books is “a sin against God”. ORLY? What religion would that be exactly?

  9. A good delivery Robert is right.
    The batter’s history is quite a listing of what these people really are. Misfits of various calibers.

  13. Bloomberg is being oh so politically correct as usual. Why not declare that they are being kicked out because it is against the law to squat there.
    And does anyone else see the irony of the Trawwna squatters appealing to the ‘courts’, when they are illegally squatting. Are they looking for a precedent? Really?!
    I want to see some backbone, all I’m seeing are jelly-fish.

  14. If ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Was [sic] a Baseball Game
    … they would be playing in extra innings even though they were behind on the scoreboard.

  16. James it isn’t news if it puts the scum in a bad light.(OWS or the big 0)
    Or should I rephrase that? It isn’t news if it doesn’t put a conservative in a bad light.(Dr Paul, Mr Cain just to mention a few.

  17. Hey batta, batta, batta…SCHWING BATTA!!!
    I didn’t know that OWS stands for Occupy Wembley Stadium.
    Or maybe its OWC – Occupy Wharf Canary?
    My mistake, yeh, yeh that’s it OYS – Occupy Yankee Stadium!!
    We’ll see how the management feels about squatters on private property when the new season opens.
    Cheers
    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  18. The problem with much of the media, political and occupiers’ rhetoric about their Occupation is that many totally different issues have been flung onto one stage, so to speak.
    The ideas of the movement have absolutely nothing to do with the occupation of private or public property. To justify privatizing a public park by declaring ‘we are protesting bad things and want good things’…I’m sorry, such a personal agenda can’t trump the law that declares that you can’t trespass on or violate the rights of others.
    If I just refer to the Occupy Toronto movement, there’s the basic protest. It’s muddled, but, it seems to refer to the growing gap beween the rich and poor and, though they don’t say it, the disappearance of the middle class. This loss of economic and fiscal power of a middle class is the basis of the Tea Party movement. The TP, however, has clear solutions.
    From what I can gather, the Occupier’s solution is naive and economically unsound: tax the magical beings, the rich, and expand govt handouts.
    Now – does this complaint merit expression? Of course; free speech and debate is vital.
    BUT – the key concern is that the Occupiers haven’t busied themselves with developing their protest as a clear argument, with clear proposed solutions. They’ve just moved into PUBLIC space, a public park, and set up tents, fires, overnight occupation, food tents, etc…all in complete opposition to the City Bylaws. They’ve merged their illegal occupation to their ideas, saying that SINCE their ideas are good, THEN, their takeover of the park is good. Illogical.
    When reminded of such rules, they have instead, shown their total ignorance of the law and the Charter, and claimed that the Charter’s Freedom of Speech and Assembly trumps any and all laws.
    So – they can continue to park themselves in the park and ..do whatever they want.
    Actually, the Charter’s first sentence is: ‘Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law’. Got that? The law is supreme. Not the Will of an Individual or Group.
    And the ‘fundamental freedoms’ are themselves constrained by..heh..the law, for “the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits presribed by law”…
    So, the Occupiers are totally ignorant of the Charter. In addition, they are ignorant of the results of their setting up such a Rule by Sovereign Will of Individuals…versus Rule of Law.
    If your society operates by individual will, then any bully, physical or emotional, can do what he wants with the weak. The rule of law protects us from such powers of individuals or gangs.
    However, the Toronto Occupiers are claiming, with breathtaking arrogance, that their stay in the park is justified by their noble idea of ‘changing the world’. Nope.
    And they’ve come up with a new reason to stay: they claim that they are supporting many homeless there and the shelters can’t accomodate these people. What? They are now adjuncts to the city’s social services? Who knew? Are they paid? Insured?
    They’ve imported lots of tires into the park today; their reason is to ‘put under the tents to protect themselves against the cold’. Wow; that’s a new use for bumpy old tires. Thankfully, the police and fire dept considered that the tires would be more useful to burn during a riot..and removed them.

  19. It’s not just the Occupiers that are ignorant of the law as you see it, ET, but the politicians and police chiefs and the lawyers that surround them. This is the very reason Calgary won’t/can’t kick them out of Olympic Plaza. The Charter protects them. All they can do is fill their pockets with tickets for their tents and other by-law infractions. I wonder if the Charter would have been interpreted differently if this was a band of, say, neo-nazies. Or heaven forbid a nasty group of pro-lifers.

  20. Well said ET.
    Our democracy was a long time coming, and it mustn’t be short-circuited by people who seem not to have tried to make it work, or people who are aware that their objectives have been rejected many times already, and are trying to make an end run on democracy.
    One good thing about institutions, is that they are institutional, if you tear them down, it’s almost guaranteed that what you will get after, is dangerous. (French revolution, Russian revolution, etc., jury is out on Arab Spring, but doesn’t look good).

  21. ET at November 16, 2011 6:36 PM:
    {bunch of stuff I agree with}
    This loss of economic and fiscal power of a middle class is the basis of the Tea Party movement.
    {more stuff that I agree with}
    I must disagree. The TP was and is mostly concerned with the expansion of government. It was born out of frustration with bailouts, crony capitalism and the passage of the healthcare reform act. The TP has consistently called for reduced government spending and repeal of the HCRA. Class consciousness has nothing to do with the TP except for the distinctions amongst the political class, the productive class and the freeloader class.

  22. sadistic – right, the expansion of government means that more and more economic and political power is being removed from ‘the people’ who are the middle class and confined to an elite: the govt.

  23. Protest is part of the democratic process, even if you don’t agree with it. If you don’t like it there’s always North Korea, they don’t tolerate any protests there I assure you.

  24. ET at November 16, 2011 7:23 PM:
    the expansion of government means that more and more economic and political power is being removed from ‘the people’ who are the middle class and confined to an elite: the govt.

    Funny, I consider the upper classes and the lower classes to also be part of The People. Anyway, the dividing of society into static classes based mostly on economics is a marxist idea. One of the main reasons that the US has historically been a popular choice for immigrants is its economic mobility, that is the non-static nature of its economic classes.
    Statism always leads to a two-tier society – those connected to government and those not connected. Those not connected inevitably end up with economic table scraps. Perhaps dividing society into the “governmental” class and the “non-governmental” class is the best way to talk about it. Even that seems wrong since that taxonomy is itself government-centric.

  25. sadistic – I think you can get trapped in word games. Whether you define a demographic set as a tier or class isn’t relevant..and the notion of ‘class’ is hardly a marxist innovation. You can find Aristotle in his politics discussing class.
    A two class societal/economic structure – or what you call two-tier is ‘two-class’. The basic vital point of a middle class is that membership in it is fluid, is not hereditary so to speak, is not static. It is the dynamic, entrepreneurial, wealth producing sector of an industrial and growth economy. This class must hold political power, i.e., must have governmental power.
    As for an analysis being ‘government-centric’, well, that’s what political theory is all about: how a people govern themselves.

  26. In their coverage of the squatters in Toronto, the consensus media’s coverage has been disappointing to say the least. I’m struck by how many of their reporters have a self-imposed perimeter from which they choose to report, not straying outside the park, not interviewing anyone but the squatters themselves… you’re lucky if 1 in 10 reports feature interviews with local residents and small business owners, each of whom are fed up and want the squatters evicted… I guess it’s a logistal challenge to, you know, cross the street to the other side?
    Having said that, I often wonder how their reports would be different had it been, say, pro-lifers camped out in a public park, stating that they won’t move until their demands that the laws on aborton be changed, and Toronto’s Mao Miller was still in charge… would the consensus media be cheerleading their cause, staying inside the park and doing their best to sell their message and using their microphones as bullhorns as they are with the current occupiers? Hardly.

  27. ET at November 16, 2011 8:48 PM:
    Whether you define a demographic set as a tier or class isn’t relevant
    I used the word “two-tier” because it carries a distinct connotation of two levels, those on the top and those on the bottom. I’m sorry my usage offended you so.
    the notion of ‘class’ is hardly a marxist innovation
    You are misstating what I wrote. The idea that society can be divided into distinct, static classes based on the control of the means of production IS a marxist idea. It is one of the many things about which Marx was wrong yet which is very frequently used to frame modern political debates. Have other philosophers, for thousands of years, categorized societies using different taxonomies? Of course they have. The use of marxist notions of class in political debate in democratic countries is an indication of just how deeply the governments of the West have been poisoned by marxist thought.
    The usual understanding of a middle class is a segment of society of middling wealth. There is nothing about that idea that implies class mobility. In the days of mercantilism, class mobility was severely restricted by hereditary privilege for membership in the uppper classes and guild membership in the merchant classes, which generally controlled less wealth than the nobility, at least in the early days of mercantilism, and more wealth than the peasant class. Guild membership was frequently restricted by birth or ethnicity and the guilds would prevent and destroy competition from individuals trying to engage in commerce in the industries over which the guilds held sway.
    It is the dynamic, entrepreneurial, wealth producing sector of an industrial and growth economy.
    And rich people don’t produce wealth? Bill Gates and Steve Jobs’ ghost might want to talk to you about that.
    This class must hold political power, i.e., must have governmental power.
    No it mustn’t. There are impoverished nations all over the globe in which the wealth producers have no political influence. The reason those countries are impoverished is that those who wield power use that power to pilfer wealth from the producers.
    If what you are saying is that a society that is to become wealthy must allow the wealth producers to have some political influence, then you and I agree.
    As for an analysis being ‘government-centric’, well, that’s what political theory is all about: how a people govern themselves.
    What was that Mussolini quote? Something like “for those of the State, everything, for those not of the State, nothing”. Theories of political economy don’t have to be quite so binary.

  28. Now, boots, why do you say “the Charter protects them”? Of course they say that the Charter protects them, but that hardly makes it so. And indeed, like so much that these turds say, it isn’t so. There is absolutely nothing in the Charter that permits these people to do what they’re doing, or prevents the city from dealing with them. As has been demonstrated quite effectively, lots of other people get dealt with for doing far less.
    Let’s be frank: it’s the NDP that’s protecting them. They own these people, and they own enough of the bureaucracy and the judiciary to let them do whatever they want, and enough media to convince the unsuspecting that it’s really all right.
    At some point the rest of us are going to have to decide whether we actually want an armed, violent Red Guard controlling our streets. Because that’s what we’re seeing built here.

  29. Just drove by the ‘occupy Anchorage’ camp today. All it consisted of was 3 tents and 1 lone protester with a sign. And they have the audacity to say that they represent the 99%. Absolutely pathetic.

  30. Just to be clear ebt, I didn’t say I agree the Charter protects them, I said that’s what the politicians and police are saying. At least here in Calgary. I call BS because tonight on CBC Calgary of all channels they interviewed John Carpay who’s heads the Canadian Constitution Foundation who disagrees saying that they have NO constitutional right. Here he is around the 7:50 mark…
    http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Local_News/Calgary/1317901071/ID=2168193052
    I believe Calgary’s city hall and police don’t want a disturbance that’ll be broadcast across Canada. The protesters will put up a fight and the cops know it so they’re hiding behind the “rights to protest” line. Cowards, straight up!

  31. sadistic – I guess we’ll have to ‘agree to disagree’.
    First, don’t get personal; your terminology doesn’t ‘offend’ me so don’t assume that it does. I’m saying that such terminology isn’t relevant to our discussion.
    I’ll disagree with you about the definition and origin of the term ‘class’. You consider it confined to Marxism; I don’t and consider it an old differentiation from the days of Plato and Aristotle – and, in all cases, refers to control of the means of wealth production.
    I also disagree, totally, with you about your definition of ‘middle class’. I don’t agree that it refers to those of ‘middling wealth’ because such a definition is functionally empty in describing the productive infrastructure of a society and can differ from society to society.
    The definition of middle class that I refer to outlines the freeing of people from hereditary positions in the society, with regard to the production of wealth. This developed, in Europe, during the 15th through 19th c..with the devt of the market economy. (see Braudel, Hayek)
    Gates and Jobs are members of the middle class, that set of people who are free to become rich or poor.
    This middle class, who are the wealth producers and who are free, must hold political power. That is why constitutional democracy developed – to empower them. Your reference oulines what ‘should not be’…not what should be.
    I don’t understand your Mussolini reference.

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