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We Should Listen to the 99%
WSJ ^ | NOVEMBER 3, 2011 | JEFF GREENE

Posted on 11/03/2011 6:54:09 AM PDT by throwback

Edited on 11/03/2011 7:36:58 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]

For those of us who experienced the 1960s firsthand, there is something familiar about the Occupy Wall Street protests. But it isn't what the critics are harping about. Yes, there's a certain tie-dye feeling to the encampment at Zuccotti Park, where I wandered around last week. But when people refer to the protesters as "hippies" and sneer about their hygiene, they miss the point entirely. Those who focus on the look and feel of the OWS movement ignore the obvious fact that, like the early protesters of the 1960s, they are mainly educated, middle-class and completely sincere.


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 99; conman; grifter; liar
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They also spurred the development of sprawling communities where cars, the most expensive form of transportation around, became the logical way to get from point A to point B. The lowest gas tax in the industrialized world masked the true cost of operating these cars, while federal highway funds meant drivers never felt the cost of building all the roads that were paved to serve them.

...For our politicians the questions revolve around similar values. Do your policies reward and encourage investment in education for the long term or consumption in the moment?

Drivers pay gas taxes that go directly to roads. Where is the tax that the users of the education system pay to subsidize student loans? If anything, the student loan crowd is the one getting the free ride. Why does the WSJ print this claptrap?

1 posted on 11/03/2011 6:54:11 AM PDT by throwback
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To: throwback
It isn't your dad's WSJ anymore.

Its just another leftwing rag, with a corporate twist.

2 posted on 11/03/2011 6:58:01 AM PDT by skeeter
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To: throwback

The sincerest protesters that Soros money can buy!


3 posted on 11/03/2011 6:59:19 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (ya don't tug on Superman's cape/ya don't spit into the wind--and ya don't speak well of Mitt to Jim!)
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To: throwback

Drivers pay gas taxes that go directly to roads.

Unfortunately, in Illinois the state government puts the gas tax into the general fund. With less money for roads the state built tollways. Nice fix, huh?


4 posted on 11/03/2011 6:59:39 AM PDT by saltshaker
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To: skeeter

Being “educated” does not make someone intelligent.

The Wall Street Journal has taken a turn left and dropped down two notches in its professionalism. The newspaper is now filled with typos which I cannot fathom since spell check should catch those types of errors.


5 posted on 11/03/2011 7:04:21 AM PDT by NoKoolAidforMe (I'm clinging to my God and my guns. You can keep the change.)
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To: throwback

Heads full of Marxist mush put there by a Marxist infested NEA.


6 posted on 11/03/2011 7:05:31 AM PDT by Don Corleone ("Oil the gun..eat the cannoli. Take it to the Mattress.")
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To: saltshaker

That used to be the practice in Missouri.
It was corrected only a couple of years ago.


7 posted on 11/03/2011 7:08:41 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: NoKoolAidforMe
Being “educated” does not make someone intelligent.

Being 'educated' today does not mean what is used to mean.

Vermont Royster must be spinning in his grave.

8 posted on 11/03/2011 7:11:57 AM PDT by skeeter
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To: throwback

“...they are mainly educated...”

That, sir, is questionable.

Given what I’ve heard from them when they’re foolish enough to talk, I find it sufficient for criminal prosecution of the “professors” that deigned to take money from those gullable children.


9 posted on 11/03/2011 7:12:27 AM PDT by Da Coyote (Politics is proof of God. He created a position for those without any abilities whatsoever.)
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To: Don Corleone
Many of us who "experienced the '60s first-hand" came away with a somewhat different point of view that the author.

The 1960s featured an infantile, solipsistic, navel-gazing generation of spoiled, wealthy children endlessly banging spoons on their high chairs, demanding as a right the freedom to do whatever they felt like without responsibility or adverse consequence, and to take as much of what someone else had and they wanted, and if they didn't get it right now, why, they'd throw another tantrum.

So they did. And that tantrum has now lasted 45 years.

10 posted on 11/03/2011 7:13:29 AM PDT by andy58-in-nh (America does not need to be organized: it needs to be liberated.)
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To: throwback

I feel like that anonymous aide in Star Wars who approaches the Death Star Commander.

“We have analyzed their attack plans, and there is a danger”.

The longer the economy stays down the more people will be open to be swayed by arguments that the 1% have “too much” and that the banks “need to pay us back for bailing them out”.


11 posted on 11/03/2011 7:16:25 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: throwback

they are NOT the 99%, nor anything like it. infact, they’re fewer than the 1% they rail against. nobody appointed, elected, asked, or chose them to speak for anybody but themselves.


12 posted on 11/03/2011 7:17:36 AM PDT by camle (keep an open mind and someone will fill it full of something for you)
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To: andy58-in-nh

I agree.

The result of the 60’s was a moral decline in America from which will likely never recover.

This time I believe that it will be a financial decline from which we will never recover.


13 posted on 11/03/2011 7:22:02 AM PDT by NeilGus
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To: throwback

Umm...we are the 99%.


14 posted on 11/03/2011 7:23:26 AM PDT by AppyPappy (If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem.)
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To: throwback
they are mainly educated, middle-class and completely sincere.

Naive and foolish obviously aren't in his dictionary.

15 posted on 11/03/2011 7:25:41 AM PDT by Oatka ("A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves." –Bertrand de Jouvenel)
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To: andy58-in-nh

Mr. Greene wouldn’t know, he was 10 years old in the mid sixties.

Here is a story about billionaire Jeff Greene:

“Posted by Atenantofjeffs | 09/02/10 10:20 AM EDT
I was a tenant of Jeff’s for over 10 years throughout the 90’s. Throughout this time I had numerous conversations with vendors of Jeff including everything from groundskeepers to bankers and real estate agents.

Jeff made his money in the 80’s by approaching banks with design plans for a building. For example, he would get an amount say $5 million to build the building correctly, get the loan from the bank to build, and then build the cheapest building he could pocketing much of the construction money.

In some cases he would forfeit the property but of course keep the difference leaving the bank to own a shell of the property that he promised to build-Borrow 5 million, build a problematic building for 3 million, keep the rest and toss the building back to the bank if he felt like it or if the rents were good just rent it out.

The property that I was in was fitted with an ancient AC unit(think big industrial office building AC unit) The roof had access to it and the contractor showed me the dates on the AC unit predated by MANY years the construction of the building although he told the bank he was building an all new building.

It went on and on. He would hire gardeners, let them work for 2-3 months and never pay them. He’d just hire some more. There was the famous story of some house/mansion in Malibu where he pulled the same funny-business with the bank and a loan and stiffed many of the contractors that worked on the house so much so that the contractors returned to the house to inflict damage.

One plumber I talked to poured something called “liquid plumber” which was a powder that turned into solid concrete down his plumbing because Jeff wouldn’t pay him for work done. Apparently it ruined his wood floors. It went on and on for over 10 years the stories people would tell about him. He’s a legendary cheap skate/criminal.

Quite often you can run into someone in LA that has either been a tenant or a vendor for Jeff and it is always a combination of horrible experience”

More tales at link: http://rate.forbes.com/comments/CommentServlet?op=cpage&sourcename=story&StoryURI=forbes/2008/1006/266.html&com=143377


16 posted on 11/03/2011 7:26:36 AM PDT by free me (heartless)
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To: throwback

WSJ is the finest newspaper in the world. I guess they have to give some space to their resident leftest pinko staff writer.


17 posted on 11/03/2011 7:27:40 AM PDT by catfish1957 (A politican with a heart usually means they have one hand in our pocketbooks!!!)
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To: throwback

These marxist heathens aren’t 99% of anything...


18 posted on 11/03/2011 7:29:13 AM PDT by who knows what evil? (G-d saved more animals than people on the ark...www.siameserescue.org.)
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To: free me
Wow. Well, at least we know that Mr. Greene inherited his morals from the 1960's...
19 posted on 11/03/2011 7:32:18 AM PDT by andy58-in-nh (America does not need to be organized: it needs to be liberated.)
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To: throwback

Couldn’t read the entire article, but from the start, the issue with the protestors is; their anger is misdirected—gov’t mandate initiated and sustained the meltdown. Any fool knows that lending institutions were forced by gov’t mandate and their gangs of lawyers (obuttface was one of them) to make risky loans, mostly just another form of welfare for africans, hispanics and other selected special people. My cousin in the business told me two years ahead of the collapse what was coming and why.


20 posted on 11/03/2011 7:34:21 AM PDT by Neoliberalnot ((Read "The Grey Book" for an alternative to corruption in DC))
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