Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Seems realistic, doesn't it?

As some of you may be aware, there is a group of nutjobs calling themselves "Occupy Wall Street" who have been setting up camp in New York's financial district for a couple of weeks. Copycats are springing up around the country, and they seemed to be the same types of protestors we had in St. Paul for the Republican National Convention: Anarchists who have no real aim other than generating attention for themselves.

But I wanted to be fair, and so I went to their web site, where one of the protestors listed the demands the group has. They are:

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Free trade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Demand four: Free college education.

Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.

Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

So that all seems pretty reasonable, eh? Dissolve all debts, pay everyone at least $20 an hour whether they work or not and spend $2 trillion on infrastructure and "green energy." All that's missing is mandatory missions to the moon to harvest the green cheese, and free pixie dust rations for everyone.

I'm guessing that not too many of these kids have spent time in an economics class, or perhaps any classroom. But I'm sure it won't take long for the New York Times, Washington Post or Star-Tribune to call them something like, "An authentic voice of a generation yearning for social justice and equality."

4 comments:

  1. When did social justice come to mean stupidity?

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  2. In the '70s, when George McGovern used it to mean "tax the rich people" and Jesse Jackson used it to mean "shake down successful people." Ever since, the phrase makes my skin crawl.

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  3. In most cases, people who say "social justice" mean "Communism" Equality for all, regardless of effort. The anti-Capitalism, if you will.

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  4. I see First Covenant isn't talking much about social justice.

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