One of the chants in the rotunda was "How do we fix the deficit?"/"Tax! Tax! Tax the rich!" And I love the hanging banner: "All shared sacrifice is equal, but some must share the sacrifice more than others." It's an allusion to George Orwell's "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." You're not really supposed to be proud of sounding Orwellian... but there you have it.
I have video, which I'll put up soon, as well as more photographs. Generally, I'd say that Occupy Madison was a small affair. And yet they're claiming to represent 99% of Americans.
It reminded me a bit of the Silent Majority Walk last June. Those folks got quite a few catcalls about the disparity between their name and their number. Of course, the Silent Majority Walk consisted of conservatives, and the Occupy Madison people give off a strongly left-wing vibe. But I keep thinking there's a bridge between these groups. The main point is that they are upset about economic problems. Whether any of them are right about how to solve these problems... who knows?
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OK, that's it - the Koch brothers must be paying for this stuff, it's too good!
One group says we can fix the deficit by tax, tax, taxing the rich--and you don't know whether they might be right? Really? I mean, really.
I just hope they weren't all chanting together like THIS mindless, lobotomized group in Atlanta.
Under "Useful Idiots" insert these people.
If it weren't so creepy, it might be funny.
Oh man, I want a shopping cart, like the one in the photo, to haul all of my crap into public buildings. Where can I get one?
DBQ, your link doesn't work.
Sorry. Let me try again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QZlp3eGMNI
You have to open it in full screen to see it, then you can minimize.
If they were really 99% they wouldn't need to be out bothering people.
Prof. A wrote, "The main point is that they are upset about economic problems. Whether any of them are right about how to solve these problems... who knows?" With due and genuine respect to our hostess:
I categorically reject that.
Anyone who can balance a checkbook knows. They may pretend otherwise, but if you understand even pre-algebra math, you can't pretend that both sides' views are equally legitimate or that this is some great mystery.
"Whether any of them are right about how to solve these problems... who knows? "
Yup! Who is to say black might be white, up may be in fact down. Standard liberal dribble..."Who am I to say wahat's right?"
My God...adult thinking? Really???
"Whether any of them are right about how to solve these problems... who knows?"
Well, we've tried incremental overspending across the Western world for the last 75 years, and now each of those nations is on the verge of collapse.
But what we must do now is anyone's guess!
You're not really supposed to be proud of sounding Orwellian...
As long as someone else is sharing the sacrifice and they're getting (or think they're getting) something for nothing they love Orwell as much as Lenin and Marx. Or, maybe, they thought "Animal Farm" was a utopic novel and not distopic.
"How do we fix the deficit?"/"Tax! Tax! Tax the rich!"
"All shared sacrifice is equal, but some must share the sacrifice more than others."
Right up there with the "rich don't pay their fair share" nonsense.
I wish Irony was lethal.
"It took several years of protest to finally get out of Vietnam."
And it took hardly any time at all for the 1.4 million dead to pile up in Cambodia after your little "victory".
What will be the death toll if your kind were to "win" again?
"All shared sacrifice is equal, but some must share the sacrifice more than others."
Amazingly clueless.
"There is too much at stake, even if some of you are too blind to see it."
Your superior vision is actually diplopia, Mitchy.
And tell us more about the Triune Trooper.
It's a really cool theory. Really.
No matter how much you like you're Orwellian sounding phrase, you should know better than to shout it in public.
What's the conservative equivalent of a Moby? Cause just maybe we have a brilliant infiltrator here.
I just hope they weren't all chanting together like THIS mindless, lobotomized group in Atlanta.
Amazing, just amazing. I guess none of these people have ever seen Monty Python's "Life of Brian".
Brian: No, no. Please, please please listen. I've got one or two things to say.
The Crowd: Tell us! Tell us both of them!
Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong. You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!
The Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals!
Brian: You're all different!
The Crowd: Yes! We're all different!
Man in crowd: I'm not...
Man in crowd: Shhh!
Brian: You've all got to work it out for yourselves.
The Crowd: Yes! We've got to work it out for ourselves!
Brian: Exactly!
The Crowd: Tell us more!
Brian: No! That's the point! Don't let anyone tell you what to do! Otherwise - Ow! Ow!
Beldar: you can't pretend that both sides' views are equally legitimate or that this is some great mystery.
Exactly. Via Insty, Ed Driscoll sums it up nicelyL
"It’s really intriguing how the policy differences are informed by cultural differences. The twentysomethings haven’t paid much, if anything, in taxes and have received more than they’ve given. The Tea Partiers tend to be older and have spent a lot of time paying into the system. They resent paying for handouts. The Occupy Wall Streeters resent not getting them. And their definition of greed is not merely wanting to keep your own money, but resisting when others try to take it from you.
That’s a huge, huge difference."
http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2011/10/07/why-liberaltarianism-is-doomed/
We've a cottage industry, perhaps an industrial complex talking past each other. I was raised in an aspirational blue-collar household, and we still got slaughtered by the smartest guys in the room.
I'm not sure any of these folk, left or right, have an inkling of what to do for the millions of folk that have been decimated by the economic transformations, but it sure as he'll isn't green jobs or pursuing creative class economic development...neither of which will lead us anywhere.
They just won't go away. There is too much at stake, even if some of you are too blind to see it.
I'm with Steyn:
"If the specifics of their "program" are somewhat contradictory, the general vibe is consistent: They wish to enjoy an advanced Western lifestyle without earning an advanced Western living. The pampered, elderly children of a fin de civilisation overdeveloped world, they appear to regard life as an unending vacation whose bill never comes due."
http://articles.ocregister.com/2011-10-07/news/30258805_1_debt-forgiveness-steve-jobs-iphone
Short version: the starving artists and raving liberal arts majors are doomed to 40 hours a week of "would you like fries with that?".
Boo-hoo.
Third time's a charm, Mitchy.
Give it the old college try.
You're too generous, Pogo.
"It took several years of protest to finally get out of Vietnam."
Yeah, but what a moment it was. That last helicopter on the roof of the embassy, American diplomats and soldiers punching and kicking the Vietnamese who had worked for us for decades, the women and children crying and then the lift off to the waiting carrier out in the ocean.
A great day for America.
"The New York Times reports that many wealthy, high-earning Greeks are not reporting their income."
Yes, as are the less wealthy middle income Greeks and everyone else up and down the scale.
Did the Times also report that this has been common practice for decades?
It does appear I was wrong, Fen.
She could try Ex-Lax.
Occasional use only, Mitch.
"How do we fix the deficit?
Tax! Tax! Tax the rich!"
Have they even looked at the math?
"A 100% tax on taxpayers earning $500,000 or more would STILL leave us with a $500 billion deficit."
http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/100-tax-on-rich-raises-only-13-of-the-current-year-deficit/
Taxes should be raised on the wealthy, across the board. They can afford it (and most don't deserve millions, regardless of what the trailer-park Ayn Rands of AA.com insist..). And that would fix the deficit. 50%..as per Reagan's first term
Really, this is how you spent this beautiful Sunday?
Why 99%? Not that too many more would believe a number like 70-80%, but isn't 99% just instantly dismissed as garbage by any thinking person?
J: The wealthy don't deserve millions
But somehow you and your kind do...
This is what happens when Envy is no longer shameful.
The left may well be right - if unicorns and pixie dust do exist.
from my link upthread:
"we can barely cover ONE YEAR OF DEFICITS by income confiscation of everyone that makes $200,000 and above"
"Funny how now China ,the other red menace is our trading partner and banker."
Funny how it took China over 80 years and killing over 60 million of their own people before they figured out that socialism doesn't work (although they keep trying).
How many of our own citizens is Mitchy willing to kill do you suppose?
Yes it is seared....seared in her memory!
The wealthy don't deserve to pay a lower percentage in taxes as the middle class.They deserve their wealth only if they did it legally and didn't evade paying taxes with tax havens and loopholes.
You mean like Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway Inc?
Or the The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation?
This is what last February looks like!
Ann Althouse said...
Whether any of them are right about how to solve these problems... who knows?
Their solutions have been tried here and elsewhere for over a century and we know they don't work.
The only solution that's going to work is to run the government like a business, not a political slush fund masquerading as a charity.
Mitochondri-Allie said...
They just won't go away. There is too much at stake, even if some of you are too blind to see it.It took several years of protest to finally get out of Vietnam.
And look how well that turned out.
How many million dead in IndoChina from '75 to '90?
In the re-education camps?
The Killing Fields?
The Boat People?
The Extermination of the Montagnards?
And, lest we forget, South Vietnam turned into the sweatshop of Asia!
I think that the instinct of most Americans is that we don't want anyone, elected or not, deciding what is "deserved".
If you got what you have legally and through voluntary exchanges, then it is really not anybody else's business.
Wait a minute. It was an absolutely spectacular day in Madison today: warm, nice breeze, not a cloud in the sky.
Brewers' first pitch was at about 3 p.m. and the Packers play tonight.
So it was a perfect day to go somewhere, and no state sports distractions until mid-afternoon.
And with all that, only about 60 people showed up at the Capitol to protest? Including several children who had no choice, so the number of people there of their own free will was fewer than 60.
That is absolutely PATHETIC. Not to mention hilarious.
The Madison protests jumped the shark long ago. Go home, people.
We need to find a some one on the left to run against Obama to Pied-Piper all of these morons into electoral oblivion.
A word to Mitochondri-Alli and J-- you don't think the rich pay their fair share? I don't either. They pay far too much. The top 1% of earners pay 38.02% of federal income taxes. The top 5% pay 58.72%. The top 10% pay 69.94%. The top 25% pay 86.34%. The top 50% pay 97.3% The bottom 50% pay 2.7%. It's all here Can you possibly believe that the rich are not sufficiently taxed? Do you really believe the poor should be paid by the rich for being poor? What kind of twisted logic is that, if it is logic at all?
@Mito
David, what a day it must have been when a mother had a visit from the Uniformed Officer bringing her news that her son was blown to bits,
WTF do you know about it? You don't even have enough respect to google the correct terminology which is Casualty Notification Officer.
My only brother died at Hue, he was a young career officer and my mother, an Army wife, was as proud of her son as she was of her brothers who died in Okinawa and Normandy.
You know nothing about how Gold Star Mothers and/or military families feel, so just STFU. Okay?
what about the Veterans who were at the Wall Street protests in uniform.
Who fucking cares whether there are veterans there or not? They don't have a greater voice in American politics than anyone else. We're not a military dictatorship.
@edutcher:
Yeah, that was hilarious. Oops!
This comments thread sucks.
How about talking about substance instead of bullshitting about each other? Do you seriously think this dreck has value for the general reader?
I feel like deleting 80% of the comments on this thread.
In fact... I will.
Now, start over and no more talk about sockpuppets or whatever the fuck you've been wasting my space on.
I stand by my observation of the level of hate I have had hurled at myself and my daughter today by some of Althouse's loyal commenters.
I don't believe that anyone has said anything about your daughter (imaginary or not).
You however, are a vile bitter nasty personality, who cannot seem to have a civil conversation. Assuming you are not the same Applecakes persona you are certainly cut from the same disgusting cloth.
You, and she, cast stones and call names and then get the vapors when people pick up the stones and throw them back at you. Hypocrites of the first degree.
Althouse, I agree, enough said.
I apologize to the good commenters who got deleted in the vast culling I just performed. But let this be a lesson to everyone.
You need to be interesting. Insults can be interesting, but a long string of insults just drives away most readers. When an obvious troll shows up, don't fill up the thread with interaction with this person. That is just stupid and makes the thread worthless.
Althouse giving The Finger to this thread.
"You're not really supposed to be proud of sounding Orwellian... but there you have it."
Soon, the 99ers will be dressing up in stock broker clothes.
If they protest in my town, I am gonna carry a sign that says:
Taxpayers are evil and rich!
We hate you!
Give us all your money!
Pretty accurate summary.
Ann Althouse said...
I apologize to the good commenters who got deleted in the vast culling I just performed.
The purge has begun. Violence is inherent in the system!
How about:
Get back to work, taxpayer serf!
I need your money
For my next check!
Move it!
Your work ain't gonna do itself, fatass
I don't think you could even say tacit approval of the commentary.
Althouse didn't delete the comments based on viewpoint, but the degeneration of the thread into an insular snipefest between a few commenters.
"Down with companies!"
"Up with jobs!"
"Down with profit!"
"Up with wages!"
"Down with logic!"
"Up with entitlement!"
Sockpuppet, I wouldn't think about it all that much.
Every blog needs a good enema, once in awhile.
Animal Farm, where "one fine day Pig delegates from far and wide arrive to celebrate the coming of a New Era."
wv - "podsi" = extraterrestrial duplicate of Richie Cunninghams' friend who appears identical on the surface but is devoid of any emotion or individuality
No, there's a difference between allowing free speech and discussion (rowdy to a point) and "Althouse's explicit approval to pollute threads with their insults, racism, and anti-semitism". I never saw the latter.
I just think the drivel was stopped. If she puts the hammer down in future, a lot of people here won't like it because she gives them a lot of latitude.
I don't mind rules if it keeps the discussion going in a cogent direction. Ann's tried to go without rules. Maybe, like some appellate court decisions, we're seeing the theoretical can't live with the practical.
Freeman, nice to have you chime in. You don't comment as much as you used. well done.
"How about talking about substance instead of bullshitting about each other?"
How's this: the individuals claiming to be the 99% and those who are sympathetic to them are apparently poor at math. It's okay as long as they aren't in a position to wield any power and they shouldn't be ashamed; math is hard.
They are not the 99%, and taxing the "rich" (>250k) at 100% won't come close to balancing the budget. You'll have to seize all of their assets as well (and that will happen but once; what about next year?). For that matter, simly taxing them at 100% will happen but once. After that they will get a clue and quit working (hell, they'll quit before the first witholding occurs).
Caplight, thanks. I am much busier than I used to be.
Ditto caplight, Freeman.
I like your sign better; it captured their paradoxical demands.
Warping the writings of Orwell so that you can make him sound like a fan of flat and regressive tax advocating conservatives like Grover Norquist is pretty stupid. And ahistorical.
You don't have a clue about the man's political views, do you?
Funny how it took China over 80 years and killing over 60 million of their own people before they figured out that socialism doesn't work (although they keep trying).
No doubt the killings they regularly conduct now are more to your liking. ;-)
Does anyone on this thread have a clue about George Orwell's political feelings re: shared sacrifice and taxation?
Anyone?
Bueller?
Aww... screw it. You don't care.
Talking points uber alles.
Pogo?
Pogo!!!!!
Man, is it good to see you!
You must be pretty happy to see Governor Pawlenty back at home and ready to not be president.
That would have been an awfully horrible shared sacrifice to make on the part of all the Good Minnesotans. Watching him go to D.C.
You guys really squeaked by on keeping him back home!
If I'm not mistaken more than 50% of the American population is not sharing the sacrifice at all.
Wouldn't real shared sacrifice mean everyone - including the working and non-working poor - pays some income tax?
Freeman:
That was pretty brilliant! It sounded like something Mark Steyn would say [I mean that as high praise].
I got the point, Sorepaw.
I just think it didn't make this place look very esteemed to focus on an unfortunate, and yes, maybe even stupid phrasing of an idea, when the man taking issue with other things using such language, would have wholeheartedly endorsed that idea.
The post uses the authority of Orwell, the writer and man, to force a wedge against an idea that he supported, according to all the evidence.
Communism was not the same thing as socialism. If you are attempting to conflate the two, that doesn't allow for a productive criticism of what Orwell stood for or what he opposed.
You guys in Madison need to put up one of these at the entrance to your Rotunda.
youtube: Toll booth in Blazing Saddles
They look like little kids playing 'dress up'.
The funny thing is that these people are so unhappy about the unjust way they feel they have been treated, and yet these very same people almost certainly voted for Barack Obama. They blame "the rich" for their ills because they cannot bring themselves to admit that Obama's policies are the reasons they can't get a job, that bank fees went up because of laws passed by Dodd, Frank and Schumer (known for their hit "Don't Pull Your Money Out On Me, Baby"). It's your own damn fault, you losers! You put them into power and now you're crying because President Goldman Sachs didn't give you a cut in the bribes and payoffs. Idiots!
""Althouse giving The Finger to this thread.""
She's for protests, as long as it's of the..."lower my taxes, goldangit" form. Ie teabugger
"How do we fix the deficit?"/"Tax! Tax! Tax the rich!"
I see someone hasn't done their math or looked at the numbers.
Take 100% of the taxable income of everyone making over 200K a year (is 200K "rich"?) - and you just manage to cover the deficit this year*.
But you can only take 100% once at that level, because no matter what we think about marginal changes in labor vs. taxation, when you take it all, almost everyone stops working.
And then you get, in plainest Anglo-Saxon terms, fuck all next year.
(Sources: IRS. See "Tax Rate and Size of Adjusted Gross Income", for 2009, which is the latest year we have stats for.
Sum up the values for taxable income for $200k on up. It's 1.625 trillion dollars, which is more or less exactly the deficit.)
Why do leftards always look like unwashed forest people?
Because they know "Methadras" prefers to suck freshly shaven ballsacks.
The perfect commentary for Ann's behaviour on this thread:
ADDED:
They are trying to argue that all those comments were spam that needed to be removed. But the bloggers and commenters over there had interacted with [the commenter]. You don't interact with spam. A step up from spam is "troll." But everyone knows not to feed the troll. Why did they go back and forth with [the commenter] if he was a troll? Their interaction is the evidence that he was not a troll. [The blog owner] simply became exasperated and embarrassed when [the commenter] outwrote him, and he destroyed the material that made him look bad. He's like a scientist who destroys his data after his conclusions are questioned. The obvious presumption in the case of destruction of evidence is that it hurt your case. Of course, the evidence of their interaction with [the commenter] is still there, and that evidence also, as I've just explained, is evidence against them. What colossal losers!
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