Forum Post: Tea Party Visits Occupy Philadelphia (video)
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 27, 2011, 11:38 p.m. EST by darrenlobo
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Must see video of the press conference: http://youtu.be/3I_VqwmAd68
The Liberate Philadelphia Tea Partiers held a press conference at the Occupy Philadelphia site. It didn't go well for them. They were joined by the local, conservative radio talk show host, and advocate of torture, Dom Giordano. (He's the man interviewed in the second half of the video linked above. He can be seen defending torture in this video from earlier this year: http://youtu.be/_XNSGzt87Xw?t=1m39s )
Local news coverage of the event: http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/video?id=8446372
The Tea Partiers seem now to embrace Newt Gingrich. I know OWS is supposed to be non-partisan but how can anyone in this movement consider someone who has taken millions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for a few hours of "consulting".
Dom Giordano is so funny to listen to because he simply cannot stand to have a reasoned opposition.
I believe there are several issues that tea party and occupy could agree. One is to break the link between wall street and washington lawmakers. this would be a plus in the eyes of the public at large.
Shame on OWS for not engaging the Tea Party. We need them and they need us. Either find a way to include them or shut up with the 99% slogan.
We need discussion and unity. Not blame and demonizing.
That's right. We're given some access to an audience that's sorely in need of help. Let's help the hopeless. Peace.
OWS is not a party or a coalition to invite other confederates. It is a grass-root movement. Hence, those who like can join or announce allegiance. But it is a dream that they decide to divert it. OWS is not a secret group to be manipulated and diverted. It is the path to a solution to a very difficult problem. As far as the problem exists OWS continues to exist. Solution to that problem does not exist in the hands of those who traditionally handle the situations in the US. It is deep somewhere hidden in the US population who give hands to hand to find it; to create a society that deserve them based on their humanity not on their technology, a society of mutual recognition and respect for the nature and for the other humans on the planet Earth, allowing fulfilment of others besides pleasure of a small group of greedy money-eaters.
a lot of white noise. not sure what you are saying. I agree OWS is... organic...?? my point is that the Tea Party people at least CARE about politics and they also see a great "problem". so why not talk to them?
or at least try to.
Sir, please register them as one of the OWS coalition in your notebook, if you like. I mean OWS as a grass root cannot become partisan in terms of present day politics. Other people can announce if they are supporting OWS or won’t. They might do it only for their own personal benefits or genuinely for its social cause. OWS is not a party to summon for coalition. After that remaining part of my comment as you said is white noise. You can forget them, mate. But, regretfully you are accommodating, by saying “white noise.” That is, my sentences already has been vaccinated against, times and times, for such a days of crisis. Then nobody can use them for enlightening.
so do you think it's a good idea to attempt to talk to Tea Party folks that show up at OWS or do you think it's a good idea to "boo" them and "mic check" over them??
really i'm just wondering. maybe you are saying you don't mind either way. in the second video, there was a bit of a discussion going on, but the police felt like they had to break it up.
Sir, I believe, humbly, people should talk without becoming heated up. OWS is decentralised and can't admit traditional tools such as political parties lead them. It snowballs, hopefully, and absorbs the bulk proponents of traditional political organisations such as parties and trade unions. It is handsome to be OWSer.
Looking good.
thanks. go OWS. snowball and grow. go forth and prosper.
I hug you mate with all friendship. Bye now.
it's a shame the tea party disappeared. they had such a bright future too. good ideas, I was hoping the movement would actually become something. if only they'd stayed clear of the existing political power structure and not been absorbed into the republican party, they might have become credible. oh well, hopefully OWS doesn't follow their lead. good luck to all of us.
You retards should be listening to the Tea Party and maybe you will learn something but y'all are a bunch of libtards, so I doubt it
Love this video
Everyone who doesn't call for an end to the Social insecurity nightmare is advocating torture.
Since taxation is theft & taxes fund Socialist Security, I would say that they're advocating robbery more than torture.
hello my friend.
again we disagree. look, everyone pays into SSI, and (theoretically) everyone gets paid back when they are old and probably need it. Is it perfect? No. Does it need reform? Yes. Is it okay for the next decade or more? That's what I've heard reported from several reliable news sources.
what's the big deal? we're paying into a fund that is going directly to old people who helped make the US great-- including fighting WWII!!
well, maybe those folks are dead so now we're paying for the baby-boomers, but hey... they're cool too.
social security is retirement insurance. It's there so people who worked hard all there lives don't spend their final years eating cat food. If you ended it today the money dumped into the economy would just create inflation and elderly people would starve to death. What's the point? Just to be mean?
social security is a ponzi scheme. The young pay in the old get the money. Before people were not living long enough to collect the money they were paying in. Now everyone is living to be 90+ years so we have no more money.
Well you can't privatize it because you would need to be paying old debts without any new money coning in, that's for sure. What about fighting to bring manufacturing back to America so that there would be new people to pay into the system instead of just giving up and committing to live like a third world country
Cat food is much more expensive than pinto beans.
You know what makes me mad these days, there's this group of wall street gamblers who produce nothing of value for America who have conned this country into giving them access to the fed window. When they win they keep all the profits when they create huge losses they just go whine to the fed who prints them up some more cash to buy collateral so they can gamble some more. Since they have their hands right in the till they can write themselves huge paychecks and then somehow convince a good chunk of the American people that the elderly or the poor or a handful of middle class workers are causing the problems in this country.
Really I agree with you, almost entirely. Government has become fundamentally corrupt. The only fix is to take most of their power away, anything else is akin to asking the monster to be a little nicer.
How do you propose to take the power away from all those big banks if you are going to make government smaller?
The government is their power base. A corporation can do nothing to harm me without the power of the government helping them. Bailout money cannot be stolen unless it is taken forcefully from the public to begin with. Large businesses use the regulatory power of the government to crush their smaller competition and put them out of business. Farm subsidies, oil subsidies, defense spending and many other forms of corporate welfare are ways the corporate oligarchy use the power of the government to steal from us. Without the hammer of government, the corporations would have to convince us to willfully give them our money.
I agree with you at every turn about corporate welfare it needs to be stopped. Wall street needs to get out of our banking system. Unless you are proposing all out revolution I don't see how you would achieve any of that with a smaller government ----------those interests are so entrenched that you would end up getting rid of everything but those corporate welfare programs. That's certainly where are tea party congress seems to want to take us.
I am very familiar with the Tea Party groups, and ending corporate welfare and bailouts is a very common theme.
I think ending corporate welfare for oil, big food , banks and campaign finance reform could be a theme for %99 I really think ! I think you and I would diverge from there but those things alone would be a huge accomplishment for this country.
Well, I am not completely against federal environmental laws. Government exists (well, it should) to prevent people from taking each other's rights unfairly. If the science is sound behind the proof that a company has willfully neglected the environment, matters could be settled in a completely open (ideally...) environment in federal court. Let the truth be spread about the connections between the state legislators and the company that committed the destruction. It is much easier to make change at the state level where a vote matters much more, and organizing is easier. But like I said, I am not completely against federal oversight of the environment, especially where it comes to inter-state disputes. Another point I would like to make, I think our society looks the wrong way at leadership. We don't really take them seriously, we almost expect them to be corrupt. Most people will readily agree that politicians of both parties are corrupt, but they will still defend their party as though the party will be loyal to them. I despise both parties and think that from a distance, they are really pretty similar. In some societies, particularly Asian ones, leaders are burdened with extreme social pressure, to the point of giving their lives if they let the people down by making a mistake or taking corruption. I would like, (but am not expecting), our society to take leadership more seriously. A lot of the problems people talk about are social ones, and not really things the government can change.
As far as health care goes, breach of contract is a crime and should be. If a company makes a promise to you and breaks it, you have a right to address your grievance in court. I don't think any health reform will do a thing unless it addresses costs. Doctors pay a fortune for malpractice insurance, and it's really unreasonable to hold a doctor liable for an unlimited amount if he or she makes a mistake. My sister had to go to the E room once for poison ivy (she's extremely allergic). She had had the problem before, knew exactly what steroid fixed it, but the E room bill came to around $1,000. Without government intervention, she could have picked up the prescription steroid herself and fixed the problem. This isn't always prudent of course, but in some cases people should be allowed to take matters into their own hands. I like to treat people the way I would like to be treated, and I can honestly say if I was going to run up a $10,000,000 hospital bill on my neighbors, I don't think I could do it. I don't have a right to unlimited labor (money) from my neighbors, no matter how serious my problem. That being said, I would gladly take my chances with a well reputed, unlicensed community doctor with no right to sue if I get messed up, for 1/1000th the price. Part of the reason the Health care system is so messed up now is because of government intervention, it takes average 12 years to put a new drug on the market. If I could start taking that drug in the early to mid testing phase, it could cut that time in half. Cancer patients die waiting for the government to approve these drugs, but it doesn't sound as horrible as if someone dies after taking an approved drug.
I realize all of this probably sounds quite extreme to you, but I feel it is worthy of consideration. MLK was an extremist!
One person I know of lost her insurance when she had to quit her job because she had terminal breast cancer. She went on Cobra for 6 months after that she was on her own, she couldn't get medicaid because her husband had a job, but not one with insurance and no one will insure a terminal cancer patient. she die and left her husband a single parent with 2 kids and huge hospital bills. Another woman I know--her found out he had terminal cancer, he died a few moths later, for some reason her insurance company decided to leave the state and left her with all the bills for his very expensive last few months of life. another woman I know had lung cancer, she needed extensive surgeries and was in a lot of pain she also lost her job and insurance, she survived but had to sell her house to pay the bills ---------that's just on the block I live on . all people who worked hard all their lives bought insurance and thought they were covered. this system sucks it sucks it sucks it sucks.
I think you and I have more in common than you think. I would like to end the crushing of people's individual rights by the state. Just to think a few decades ago homosexuality was a crime, despicable. I would like to end the wars overseas, they are a large excuse to spend more money to defense contractors. I don't believe altruism exists in government. Even a program or law that overall helps people, is not implemented for the people but the politicians looking to get votes and increase their power. If you hate corruption, and have a mind for freedom and fairness at all levels, as do I, you will always be completely disappointed in any legislation you spend the time to look closely at. Pretty much all legislation at the federal level these days is written by lobbyists to increase the power and influence of their puppet masters well within the 1%. Lobbyists don't lose when it comes to legislation, because they write it. So therefore, in my opinion, any attempt to ask or lobby the corruption machine in DC to change its ways is futile, because even if something is done, it will be shaded comfortably to help the power mongers at the top. Mccain-feingold for instance, written by the people at the top, did absolutely nothing to stop the flow of money into politics, it just created a zillion new laws that small candidates are likely to violate, lessening their threat to the establishment. The only thing that scares the corporate machine is people like [the candidate who's name shall never be mentioned], because they want to tip the power balance away from the federal government and more towards the states. It's hard to buy 50 governments at once.
What is your opinion on what I wrote? I seriously want to know, you seem like a kind person.
I think there are 2 choices for who you want doing stuff. Corporations or government. The attempts at having government do everything (communism)have been disasters. Letting corporations run everything is equally disastrous. Most small business has been run out off town by the big box stores, chain restaurants, big food companies etc. so there is very little option for small business to have any power. I think you have to establish a healthy balance between the 2, I'm much more scared of corporations than government employees. I don't think our armies should be going to war to secure commodities for our corporations but in a war I would rather have the US army fighting for me than private mercenaries, I don't trust them at all. I don't think healthcare should be a "free market" system. Doctors, surgeons, drug companies and labs need to sell me a product, that's their motivation and insurance companies need to not pay for my healthcare when I need it , that's their motivation, so there is no one in the current system who is motivated by my health. I think we have well structured and efficient fire departments we could have a well run public healthcare system. we spend twice as much as all other developed countries on healthcare and I could give you a list a mile long of people I knew who were dumped by insurance companies when they had cancer. You never see a bunch of cancer victims on the street protesting because they died or they don't have the strength. I will never vote GOP for that reason alone. In short we agree on a lot of things but I fear corps more than government and you fear government more than corporations.
To be honest, I don't exactly have a fear of either one. What scares me the most, and I think you as well, is the partnership between the two. When corporations buy politicians, it opens the door to a whole new level of rights taking, because there is a combination of profiteering and the force of government. I do agree that people should decide what thing government should do and what the private sector should do, or else people end up demanding laws and programs willy-nilly because they sound good at first. I always try to ask myself a few questions when considering these things, "Is it excludable?" (is the cost of making users of the service pay for what they use higher than the amount you could charge) "Is it rivalrous?" (are users of a good or service competing for a limited amount of something, or is there an unlimited supply of it) "Is the good or service a human right?" (Defense, security, etc) "Did the good exist 100 years ago? 1000? How did people get along without it?" (Cable TV is not as right) "Will the service be available universally to all citizens or just who the government decides? Is there large potential for fraud?" "Does the good require someone else to give me something? If so, I am stealing their labor with the power of the government." "Is the good or service one of the constitutionally enumerated powers? If not, the constitution will need to be amended before the program can be instituted."
In short, I am not against government. I think the federal government has been thoroughly corrupted. I think things could and should be handled more often by the state governments, where the kinks can be worked out before the entire country is forced to take them.
It is pretty fascist these corps in bed with the gov. Worse yet wall street in bed with the fed. I just don't know how much luck you'd have with states rights with big multinational corporations. What would you do with a poor state who gives up environmental rights for money from an energy or mining company --------but the pollution ends up down river in a state that didn't make that deal ? I spend about 1/2 the year in different states, what would I do about healthcare if we ever even try to get some kind of a system besides "take their money and dump them when they get sick"?
I was being silly about torture. But yes it is theft. See my comment to beamerbikeclub above. Cheers
calm down. that's a little over the top. When the US actually was torturing people under the Bush administration I was throwing a fit.
The fact that I pay into the SSI fund each month so old people don't have to beg on the streets is neither torture or robbery.
And SSI is solvent for the next decade or more.
Calm down.
I was joking, it obviously is not torture. But now that you mention it, http://www.moneyrelationship.com/retirement/the-average-net-worth-of-americans-where-do-you-stand/
The Social Security system is the exact opposite of economic justice. See the graphs, if you are a young person barely working for a living, SIXTEEN PERCENT of what you make is being shoveled off to someone with an average net worth of $250,000. These people are not shivering on street corners, social security is theft.
i repeat... calm down.
without even looking at your graph, I'm aware that old people that are rich also receive this payment. i agree that's something that needs to be reformed. i'm not really opposed to phasing the system out. but those who have paid in, should be paid. I also repeat, that though there is a serious need for reform, my understanding is that SSI is solvent for at LEAST the next decade, and even for the next 2-3 decades can pay Most of its obligations to those who are eligible, and who-- as you put it-- have been robbed all their lives in expectation of getting paid.
I'm happy to see it PHASED out. don't know how that would work, but i'm confident a solution could be found, if it weren't for all the fear-mongering propaganda coming from people who also have plans to "privatize" all this money so they can gamble with it in derivatives markets?!!! to that i say HELL no.
and for every "rich" person receiving an unnecessary SSI check (that they paid into while they were younger) there are at least 2 poor old people who really need the assistance.
I agree.... except for the last sentence. As the graphs show, the average retiree has a net worth of around $250,000. So, mathematically, there cannot be a ratio of 2-1. Someone with a quarter mill in assets does not need a check every month... And the average retiree is this person. But yes it is fundamentally unfair to take people's checks away when they have paid into the system, I just get frustrated when I think of how the elites conned the public into accepting this nightmare almost a century ago. "Trust me with your money, I promise you'll get it back..."
I admit I pulled that number out of my ass. but I'm not sure that the "average" means much, given what we know about the top 1%.
do you know much about the history of SSI? I can't claim to know much, but I don't think it was elites "conning" the public. I think it was perhaps a rather well-meaning attempt to do something about all destitute old people at the time. And I think for the better part of the last century, it has essentially worked. we don't have old people on the streets or starving like I have "heard" we used to.
but why are we arguing this??!? surely there is middle ground and i've already said it needs reform and you've already said it's fair that people get their $ back (especially the older ones).
I think this whole discussion is a perfect example of why we need to throw out our "bribed" politicians. The one's on the Right have tried to get their hands on the SSI funds for their Wall St. buddies for years. And the Democrats are equally incompetent of fixing the problem.
We need to end corporate donations to our representatives! This is the essential message of OWS-- regardless of the noise and distractions and pot-smoking geez!
Alright, cheers. I wasn't really trying to argue.
okay. just trying to cut through all the propaganda on stuff.
Nothing like the big-enders fighting the little-enders, playing into each others' stereotypes of the "other".
I'm not blaming OWS. I'm not blaming the Tea Party. I'm blaming the tragedy unfolding before our eyes.
Be more human.
End the tragedy.
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