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Yes, it seems like I may be obsessing about this movement, but while there are some well meaning folks that are involved, there are also some folks that definitely have an agenda that does not mesh well (to put it kindly) with what the Founders had in mind.

For instance, there is one gentleman there that is, well, rather on the radical side over at Occupy NH who wrote a few things as to what he thought should be the future our our Government and Society.  He truly seems to believe that in order to wrest society back from the evil 1% (emphasis on evil), he wants to remake everything:

1. First, work on building alternatives to the state and corporations. We’ve already built an experimental alternative to the State through occupy general assemblies. We should build our own markets/credit unions and maybe even our own currency system to decrease reliance on overpowering corporate oligarchies.

Of course, I just had to comment on it:

1a. Experiments are fine, but many ideas never get out of the experimental stage as they fail to scale. OWS has yet to prove that the GAs (General Assemblies, where everyone gets a say on absolutely everything that needs a decision) can scale using its current methodologies. And watching OWS-NYC try to move from early protest to a fuller commune, even with the GA technique, shows that it is much harder to govern (even just themselves) than to protest. Watching it attempt to govern has been painful to watch (altruistic, though, they might be) as the darker side of life walks in and occupies them (the professional homeless) and throwing monkey wrenches into their "order". The same arguments

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If you talk with the hard core Occupiers, you will hear "we are the 99%" to differentiate themselves from the top 1% of wage earners of society.  OK, that’s nice – the top 1% do earn the most in our society (but also pay the most in income taxes too).  However, following the just pathway that Our Dear Leader Barack "I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money"Obama has placed them upon, they continue the hatred of the "corporate jet owners" and the millionaires and billionaires who have gone making "enough money" in that they do not believe that anyone in that top 1% has earned it fairly and squarely.  The OWS believe that the wealth of the 1% can only be obtained by stealing it from others with the willing collusion of  Govt (but they rarely blame Govt for their part in crony capitalism).

There is one person there that I would place in the more thoughtful category but is so anti-capitalistic, s/he (I don’t know which) believes that we "99%ers" are mere slaves – we have no alternatives.  Nor free will of our own, so it seems, because unconsciously, we are unable to make decisions independent of the dreaded 99%:

The state is being used today by rent seeking classes (including large owners of capital) to allow capital to command the labor of wage earners so they have few alternatives – like being the owners of the means of production themselves.

And in this, "capital" means those that have the bucks.  But what I took exception to was the phrasing and premise of the statement – that I, as a wage earner, have no control over my life except what the 1% allows me to think I have.  In effect, they believe that the 99% are mind numbed slaves, I guess.

Nonsense, as I wrote:

I can tell that a vocabulary lesson to this ordinary schlub is in order. ANY one in ANY class can be rent seeker – that is simply a person or organization (be it a corporation, a union, or a non-profit) that wishes to enrich themselves by using government (by manipulating taxes, regulations, statutes, or policies).

It is not just the top 1% that do it. My wife and I used to own a small daycare center and we accepted state assisted kids. There were times that my blood would boil when I would hear some of the single moms, standing in my lobby, talking about how they gamed the safety net programs to get more and more free (to them) stuff. And these moms did not work, did not go to school, but looked at me and said "I’m staying home because of my three kids" (that my wife and my teachers took care of during the day on the State dime, even as they admitted that the boyfriends were in one of their garages, sitting around drinking beer).

Yes, there were a few that actually used the services well – went to school, worked part time, and their kids were well behaved and well taken care of). They used it as a hand up instead of the former who used it as a handout.

Rent seeking can work from both ends of the spectrum.

Let me add this –

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Tthere is always a sense of orthodoxy among groups – even in those that proclaim they are anti-orthodox.  In this case, the local instantiation of Occupy Wall Street -> Occupy NH. who, pretty much, have decided that the current American orthodoxy of individual freedom, liberty, and free markets is to be protested, hated, and torn down.  As posted earlier this month, I’ve been spending time defending the Founders philosophy.  For that, and along with the others (like a number of Libertarians – Conservatives have run away from the fight), discussions other than "OWS approved topics and speech" were labeled "divisive" (me, an ordinary schlub, divisive?  Moi?) (lightly edited and emphasized):

…It is frequently found on OWS sites and chats. It is what keeps the Occupy movements going. "In this room we support OWS, but we don’t discuss the politics. Folks just to be clear, mods have opinions too, so we are not trying to stop you from having opinions and people you admire or don’t. I often agree with you, but we have rules to avoid conflict and division. And we leave politics out of our conversation. There are many irc channels where you can show your support of politics or candidates. But please not here. Thanks"

Leave politics out of it?  This whole movement, along with the TEA Party, is ALL about politics!  When I did the videos of Occupy Manchester, there was nothing BUT talk about politics.  Politics should not just be considered what happens when candidates try to get elected.  Or when difficult legislation spills over to the public and the call goes out to "leave the politics out of it" – at that point you KNOW politics IS what it is all about: differing views of how solutions are to be arrived at and what those solutions should be.  Politics is the grease that allow different groups to do things (as manners are to the interactions between individuals).

At Manchester there have been many who have demanded that their divisive talks be embraced. When posts were deleted, as is done consistently at OWS, for containing political and potentially divisive dialogue, the accusation was strong, CENSORSHIP. It has been stated at many of the GA’s and in online forums that NH is different, that the GA that meets in Manchester is free to do as they wish. This is not consistent with OWS.

"demanded that their divisive talks be embraced".  Yet, in the beginning, they advertised themselves as being open, inclusive, and welcoming to all comers.  Yet, these words from Sherry Gould showed that the marketing and the actual reality she wanted (being one of the "leaderless movements leaders") were two different things (one reason why folks who describe themselves as "mere facilitators" are never just such).

Well of course, I just had to ask (twinkle in my eyes):

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At the beginning of the month, Occupy Oakland had its shutdown of the Port of Oakland AFTER a small riot had damaged small a number of retail establishments, companies, and banks (previous post).  One of the Occupy NH folks put up a link with my response being gently:

Non-violence?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRij-_SnIMM&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra5ks-Ei9o0&feature=player_embedded

where the YouTubes showed the marauding Occupiers willfully destroying things, well, for the heck of it.  One respondent said the expected "agent provocateurs" and claimed "There was no rioting. There was and still is only a peaceful protest."

Yeah, and TV wrestling is real and not staged.  

I was challenged, however, by another in a wee bit more serious way than just a "sweep it under the rug":

Just curious about what your thoughts are of blockading the Port of Oakland, where business was shutdown for several hours?

BTW -the Boston Tea Party was an act of property destruction. How do you feel about that?

My answer:

There were many at the time of the TEA Party that were aghast that someone else’s private property was destroyed and there was more than a little controversy concerning it. After all, when you read the Declaration, 10 of the Articles concerned how the Crown was appropriating the private property of others because :

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Well, I first got notified that things were afoot from some of my Samsphere blogger buds who were attending the FreedomWorks’s BlogCon11 that some things were afoot – that the Occupy Denver folks had decided that they had the horsepower to go up against what they thought were just some run-of-the-mill paid-by-the-Kochs bloggers – as in "hey, the Old Media seems to have succumbed to their <insert appropriate words here> and these bloggers can’t be better than, say, the NYT, the LAT, or ABC/CBS/NBC and the like, right?  What they didn’t understand is that 1) The Koch Brothers don’t fund FreedomWorks and 2) they were the quintessential 98 LBers going up against SEALs in this war of ideas and political philosophy (or as Stacy McCain called them "the charge of the Intellectual Lightweight Brigade").  I know many of the bloggers there personally – the bloggers were licking their chops (silly Occupiers- these bloggers LIVE on the ‘Net!) at the opportunity. Did you really think that none of the 300 wouldn’t be watching your Twitter feed??  And they started to practice:

Rob and Warner are the rightmost folks – already, practicing "Occupy-eze".  And Maggie reported that they had already bought the Milk Bones for their leader, Shelby!  Heck, even Glen from Instapundit warned them: " There are some sections of the blogosphere I would not advise you to occupy. . . ."

So much for not listening.  They did, however, try to show up early, but as the DaTechGuy notes, the bloggers were ready for them with their own recon squad out:

Sometime around 2:30 or so we noticed by sign and scent some people who looked very “occupyish” and started snapping pictures…One couple didn’t like pictures being taken the women covered her face and they ran in the Elevator, I found it very funny as they pushed button after button without knowing that the elevator needed a key card.

And once they arrived, Stephen Kruiser climbed into his Gandalf alter ego ("You shall not pass") when the Occupiers simply assumed that they would be allowed to go into the conference rooms.

More after the jump

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