Arkady's Thoughts

Everyone knows my high skepticism of the OWS movement as I have written previously about it extensively.  However a video from what appears to be UC Davis of students being pepper sprayed strikes me as excessive, unnecessary and potentially dangerous.  It is unclear as to what is happening and why, but one can glean the following: 1)  This appears to be a university and the crowd consists of youth. 2)  There are students who are purposely blocking a road/walkway of some kind, possibly preventing a police cruiser from driving through. 3)  The students get pepper sprayed while sitting and then arrested. I can't for the life of me understand why the police felt the need to cover students with noxious pepper spray before arresting them?   As you can tell from the video the reaction of the onlookers was rather immediate and galvanized everyone against the police.  While the video eventually turns into the typical OWS chanting it seemed prett...

You are probably familiar with the famous line from the First Epistle to Timothy in the New Testament: "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil", or the more commonly abbreviated albeit somewhat incorrect "Money is the root of all evil" .  We have been conditioned to believe that a love of money is something unhealthy and possibly abnormal, but allow me to simplify this further and show you that indeed the love of money is not only good and normal, but one of the pillars of America and the foundations of mankind. First, what is money?  More appropriately, what is money supposed to be in the most fundamental sense?   At first blush, money is used to "buy" things, but what is the action of buying?  Buying is the same as trading, except that you trade money for goods and services, selling is trading goods and services for money.  Money has no other purpose, it functions as the primary tool for trade.  That begs the question, why are we trading? ...

Oakland is in the news, as it should be given the police violence that occurred there during the encampement clearing last week.  Although the police were provoked to violence by having bottles and rocks thrown at them their response has been deemed disproportional.  One can agree with that. What is equally interesting is the handling of the entire situation by Mayor Quan.  First she coddled the protesters and left them alone.  Then she requested the police to move in and clear out the encampment.  Then she apologized for the way they were treated, vilified the police and allowed the protesters to return.  All of this is costing the city hundreds of thousands of taxpayer money.  A city that is financially strapped and cannot afford excessive waste.  In spite of that, Mayor Quan is now supporting and endorsing a general strike by the protesters. A strike like this will have massive financial implications on the city in the form o...

Quick and important observation.  After last week's crackdown of the Oakland occupiers many accused the police of willfully disrespecting the right to assemble and petition the Government.   What made me especially suspicious is that Oakland is generally a pro-OWS area.  That is to say, the politics and the current mayor are likely allies rather than enemies to the underlying message of the movement. After digging around it seems that indeed, police responded rather than initiated the violence.  Allegedly the police complained that they were being pelted with stones and bottles, either as a form of provocation or as a response by the protesters for being removed from the park. Now it is very simple you see, the local police have their own set of laws they follow and can react accordingly within the larger prism of the Constitution.  So you may have a right to assemble, free speech and protest - but your right becomes impossible to perform if you attack a pol...

It has been quite a struggle to point out to people just how Leftist the occupy movement truly is.  What makes it more frustrating is that certain "libertarian" bloggers and other individuals who are sympathetic with the underlying movement are either turning a blind eye or plain ignorant about the makeup of the protesters. I have tried to present pictures and ideas, but am still accused of generalizing and blowing things out of proportion. So a recent poll conducted with 301 protesters is shedding quite a light and confirming many of my suspicions. Some of the highlights: 15. What is your employment status (check one) Student………………………………………………………….25 Employed full-time……………………………………………..30 Unemployed…………………………………………………….28 Employed part-time…………………………………………….18 Fascinating.  70% of the protesters are either students, unemployed or partially employed.   So much for representing main stream America.  1. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bara...

A reader passed this link along and I am compelled to share. This will of course not endear the movement to the wealthy and in fact reads more like a threat than anything, but is impossible to disagree with. Most important point is that people are looking for a scapegoat. Indeed when this country was juiced up on Fed funny money nobody was complaining. When people extracted equities out of their house to go on vacation nobody was complaining. When employment dipped under 5% under Bush nobody was complaining. When every mutual fund under the sun was making money by just buying and holding and 401ks ballooned, nobody was complaining. Yet when the credit stopped flowing and the poor investments had to be erased then came the pain. Lots of pain. Instead of biting the bullet and bracing for austerity ACORN , unions and other radical leftists decided in the wisdom of Rhamb-o to utilize this crisis as best as possible.  Ahh, people will never learn.  Yesterday's Jews are...

I have been getting some push back recently for my previous articles where I accuse the OWS/Occupy movement of being a bunch of socialist nutters.  In fairness, I have also called them anarchists (socialists in disguise), Truthers/conspiracy fringe (they will protest regardless) and *even* regular people too.   However it would be foolish to consider this movement as some kind of representation of middle class America, that it most surely is not. Does it make me some right-wing extremist?  No, I am simply making observations on the mountains of visual and audio data that is streaming from around the world.  The comparisons with the Tea Party are absolutely laughable and simply shows how clueless people are when it comes to identifying basic ideological differences.  Just because the Tea Party and OWS happen to object to TARP means absolutely diddly squat.  It's like saying that Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders are ideologically compatible because they both opp...