The Occupy Wall Street Movement

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Wednesday - October 26, 2011

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In the Oct. 4 “Insight” section of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Nicholas Kristof wrote a column on the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City’s Liberty Square: “Enough is Enough! The Occupy Wall Street movement isn’t quite like the ‘Arab Spring,’ but there are similarities.” Kristof continued, “where the movement falters is in its demands: It doesn’t have any.”

In the next few days some 13 tediously detailed “demands” showed up on the official “Occupy Wall Street” website; (an “open” website where anyone with a password can make a posting). Their gist can be summarized in one paragraph: Raise U.S. minimum wage to $20 per hour, institute universal single-payer health care, ban all private health insurers, institute guaranteed living income regardless of employment, institute free college education for all, immediate investment of $1 trillion into infrastructure, and another $1 trillion for ecological restoration, decommission all nuclear power plants, institute open borders migration (anyone can travel to live and work anywhere), immediate total across the board forgiveness of all debt: sovereign debt, national debt, personal debt, “all debt on the entire planet.”

In other words, ask a second-grader “What would you do if you could be president for a day?” and there’s your answer.

Recently, however, it appears cooler heads have prevailed and those 13 “demands have been replaced on the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) website by a more succinct version: “We are our demands” (think, think, think ...)

There have been other interesting developments since the Kristof column. OWS has been endorsed by several unions, Nancy Pelosi joined them in Zuccotti Park to offer her encouragement, President Obama says he understands why they are angry, Democratic U.S. Rep. Barney Frank supports the Wall Street protesters but still takes cash from Wall Street bankers, and according to POLITICO, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) sent out emails to financial services lobbyists urging support for the protesters.

So now the Occupy Wall Street protesters are supported by the Communist Party, the Nazi Party and elements of the Democratic Party.

Lest you think I may be too preoccupied with the OWS demonstrators and their Democrat supporters, please consider my personal journey. To me the Wall Street “occupiers” look and act too much like the anti-war protesters of the 1960s and ‘70s I saw on the flickering propaganda movies shown by my communist captors in Hanoi, year after year after year same mindless demands with no concept of longer term consequences, same media madness magnifying their significance and the same pacifist Democratic Party (“the war in Iraq is already lost” U.S. Sen. Harry Reid) all too eager to throw away the sacrifices already made to win. Ultimately the anti-war protesters played a significant role in the loss of South Vietnam, condemning millions of our South Vietnamese friends to death and imprisonment.

It’s gonna be interesting to see how it all plays out as the Dems try to justify their sympathy for OWS to their Wall Street benefactors.

I had a good laugh reading my MidWeek colleague Bob Jones’ column in last week’s issue, “Where’s the Law Enforcement?”

He laments the illegal sidewalk/trailside hucksters in Waikiki and in Diamond Head crater operating with impunity, and the hapless head of the DLNR unable to stop fishing violations in Maunalua Bay, all of which he lays at the feet of our governor (“I don’t expect much from Abercrombie”) and our mayor (”... promoted beyond his abilities”).

Bob, the governor and the mayor are simply following the lead of their party leader in the White House, whose Homeland Security secretary refuses to crack down on illegal aliens or on municipalities that harbor them or employers who hire them, and whose attorney general sues the states that do. An AG who refuses to prosecute blatant Black Panther voter intimidation, or who, despite evidence to the contrary, denies knowledge of the hundreds of guns provided to Mexican drug gangs in an ill-conceived pseudo sting operation.

What do they all have in common?