# Suggestions for Specific Demands for Occupy Wall Street **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 3, 2011, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427 "2011-10-03T13:13:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/41 "2011-10-06T17:46:34Z")
> [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > Even if this is the case, write a new fucking law that says that anybody in business of any kind who paid any money in whatever way to politicians, regulators etc. over the past two decades is guilty of a crime of bribing the government (or whatever you want to call it) and is thus eleigible for a mandatory sentence of a hundred and fifty years. Even better. They can have a choice between either a full one fifty in the slammer, in which case they’d be old men by the tiome they got out, or serving a reduced twenty five year term follwed by execution. Would it be fair? The law is there to provide justice and if some fucker can be given fifteen years for robbing a bank of a hundred dollars, feeling remorse and returning the money the next day > > [http://digitaljournal.com/article/265402](http://digitaljournal.com/article/265402) > > then a hundred and fifty years for the gentlemen on Wall Street is a very lenient sentence. Gee, wouldn’t it be easier to just pass a law requiring everyone to be issued a winning $250, 000,000 Powerball ticket? I _do_ want to thank you though, for pointing out exactly what is wrong with “solutions” offered by those without even a basic understanding of how politics, financing, or our system of laws works. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/42 "2011-10-06T17:47:32Z")
> [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > Even if this is the case, write a new fucking law that says that anybody in business of any kind who paid any money in whatever way to politicians, regulators etc. over the past two decades is guilty of a crime of bribing the government (or whatever you want to call it) and is thus eleigible for a mandatory sentence of a hundred and fifty years. Are you going to make this an _ex post facto_ law and violate the Constitution that way, or is the fact that it violates freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to petition government for redress of grievances enough? Essentially what you are saying is that political contributions should be illegal. Fine, let’s pretend it would last fifteen seconds before being overturned. You have now made it the case that only self-funded campaigns are possible. Great idea - especially when one candidate is Barack Obama and the other is Mitt Romney. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/43 "2011-10-06T17:50:10Z")
> [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > I’d love to see this thing get bigger and bigger. None of the corporate news will get behind it though, but the whole 99% thing has potential to grow over the years, as let’s face it the 99% are going to get increasingly shafted. If they could just elect a rump hardcore who do to the Dem party what the teahadists are doing to the GOP it would be a wonderful thing. And what the hell would the “corporate news” report? “A group of people with no knowledge of how politics, finances or how our system of laws works wants everything to change overnight!” ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/44 "2011-10-06T17:52:50Z")
Here’s the perfect slogan for this movement: _We Don’t Know What We Want-And We Want It Now!_ ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/45 "2011-10-06T19:06:26Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Are you going to make this an _ex post facto_ law and violate the Constitution that way See what you did, **Dick**? You just made me agree with **Shodan**! Seriously. I’m all about some radical lefty change in this country (and I’m slowly beginning to revise my opinion of this protest: if I do, it’ll be a political epiphany the likes of which I haven’t had in over a decade). But writing time-machine laws that suddenly outlaw behavior **in the past** is a bridge too far for even me. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/46 "2011-10-06T19:50:46Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Here’s the perfect slogan for this movement: > > _We Don’t Know What We Want-And We Want It Now!_ A better would be, “We Know What We **Don’t** Want!” ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/47 "2011-10-06T20:25:04Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > And what the hell would the “corporate news” report? > “A group of people with no knowledge of how politics, finances or how our system of laws works wants everything to change overnight!” Would these be the people most recently running our financial systems? The ones who have all that knowledge about how it, ah, “works”? You may not know precisely how put out a fire. Yell “Fire!” anyway, if you see one before others do. I have had an agenda before, Stop the War. I wasn’t sure precisely about the logistical arrangements but I wanted they should Stop the War. So did many, many other people whoi endured years of tiresome bullshit to accomplish that end. Well, did you? you may well ask. Did it do any real good? If I am to be ruthlessly honest, I’d have to say I don’t know. Jury is out, forever. But I’d do it again tomorrow. In a much more modest way, I will do it again, tomorrow. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/48 "2011-10-06T22:18:17Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Well, did you? you may well ask. Did it do any real good? > > If I am to be ruthlessly honest, I’d have to say I don’t know. Jury is out, forever. You mean, you’re not sure whether the Vietnam War would have ended later, or sooner, or differently, in the absence of a big American political movement against it? No opinion at all? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/49 "2011-10-06T22:35:54Z")
Sure I do, lots of them. Certainty? Nope. It was 1968 when more Americans were “against the war” than were for it, and it ground on and on for years. Maybe Walter Cronkite changed more minds than we did, maybe we changed his mind, and he changed theirs. Maybe the Power we were up against could have kept on ignoring us for six more years, maybe they only caved because they were losing on the field. Many of the same people who sneered at us for being ineffectual later accused us of treason for losing the war. And so it went. My point, if I have one, that such considerations don’t matter all that much. You will never know. OK, so what? Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Whacka do, whacka do. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/50 "2011-10-06T22:41:17Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Maybe the Power we were up against . . . Is it the same Power now? The same Power the Wall Street Occupiers are up against? Serious question. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/51 "2011-10-06T23:19:08Z")
You are requesting _'Luc’s Collected Thoughts on the Nature of Good and Evil in the Political Perspective?_ Would that be Volume One, then? Different set of circumstances, different aspect of evil, different deadly sin, greed as compared to violence. Fighting pigs rather than hawks. Pigs and hawks are quite different, though they often collaborate on position papers. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/52 "2011-10-06T23:20:29Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > You are requesting _'Luc’s Collected Thoughts on the Nature of Good and Evil in the Political Perspective?_ Would that be Volume One, then? > > Different set of circumstances, different aspect of evil, different deadly sin, greed as compared to violence. Fighting pigs rather than hawks. Pigs and hawks are quite different, though they often collaborate on position papers. And that’s how pigs **can** fly. If you’re occupying Wall Street, carry an umbrella. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/53 "2011-10-06T23:21:15Z")
These folks had a more coherent agenda on Day One than the teabaggers have developed _yet_. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/54 "2011-10-06T23:44:54Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > These folks had a more coherent agenda on Day One than the teabaggers have developed _yet_. I disagree, unless the active voice is important. The teabaggers had a very coherent (if totally spurious) agenda: help Republicans and the far right take political control of the country, by blaming the country’s ills on immigrants, unions, government regulations, the poor, and the liberal elite, and by giving control of the country to the conservative elite, who clearly reached their positions through hard work. True, Glen Beck et al cooked up that agenda and gave it to them, so it’s not like they developed it themselves, but it’s pretty coherent, and so far it’s been pretty effective. If OWLS (love it, btw) can be as effective, I’ll be overjoyed. I’m just not seeing it, given the lack of direction, and seeing the hyperdefensiveness of their putative allies who take any sort of constructive criticism (“focus!”) as both a personal attack and an admission of terrible personal failing. ---
**Author:** ![Agnostic\_Pagan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@Agnostic\_Pagan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agnostic_Pagan)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2011, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/55 "2011-10-06T23:58:51Z")
So what were the specific demands of the revolutionaries is 1776? In 1789? In 1917? Any list will be likely irrelevant by the end of whatever process is now beginning. This is the prelude to the presidential campaign, among other things. The purpose of the protests are not to make any specific demands yet, but build a consensus that some changes must be made. The system (the financial system of Wall Street and the political system in almost every US capital) is corrupt, broken and increasingly futile in reforming itself. I do not want to see any violence. I would like to see an absolute minimum of drama. I hope to see a coherent platform emerge that will be heartily debated over the next year leading to the next election and that the winners will have a specific mandate on what to do after that point. But the ‘demands’ for a list of demands is premature and irrelevant at this point. The protests are a means of getting people aware that a list does need to be created though, and then acted upon. I have no idea what that list/platform will look like in its final form, but I do plan to participate in helping create it, and I would hope every other progressive will be doing so also. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/57 "2011-10-07T01:31:19Z")
> [@gravitycrash](#): > > I’ll take it more seriously when I see a ratio of less than 50-50 hippies, maybe. Nah, the Left needs hippies. The hippies themselves don’t truly know what they’re doing, but obviously at heart they are on the right side or they wouldn’t be hippies. Once they get themselves worked into a froth we intellectuals, at our removes, may paste what we may onto the event. Brilliant! So, I am going to forward Boulder, CO’s [Amendment 2H](http://lwvbc.org/files/2011_BallotBoulderQuestion2H.pdf): > [@](#): > > BOULDER QUESTION 2H > AMENDMENT TO ABOLISH CORPORATE PERSONHOOD > Shall the People of the City of Boulder, Colorado, call for reclaiming democracy from the corrupting effects of corporate influence by amending the United States Constitution to establish that: > > 1. Only human beings, not corporations, are entitled to constitutional rights; and > 2. Money is not speech, and therefore regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech. I include those specific lines because 1) it gets the point right across and 2) I can’t put my finger on just exactly what is ‘off’ in the rhetoric of the first sentence. The rest of the motion includes its own rebuttal. Lawyer-types may enjoy the details. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/58 "2011-10-07T01:45:26Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > …The rest of the motion includes its own rebuttal. Lawyer-types may enjoy the details. The rest of us may prefer to gouge out our eyes with Q-tips. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/59 "2011-10-07T01:50:11Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > The rest of us may prefer to gouge out our eyes with Q-tips. Actually I think you wouldn’t be able to do it. All you’d do is hurt yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Acid\_Lamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Acid\_Lamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acid_Lamp)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/60 "2011-10-07T13:19:13Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Can you translate that into English? 😉 Sorry about that, there was supposed to be a [LINK](http://www.getmoneyout.com/) there. I must have messed up my coding. > [@John\_Mace](#): > > There you go with the “revoke” again. Not gonna happen, nor should it, unless you want to turn back the clock on the economy about 300 years (at least). Nice cherry pick. If you quoted me in entirety, you would notice I mentioned redefinition of corporate personhood to something that makes more rational sense. Taking away some of their protections, absolute right to free speech, and other corrections will hardly turn the clock back 300 years. It will just ensure that they cannot game the system and walk away from their shennigans scot-free. I used the word “revoke/redefine” for a specific reason. If we cannot come to an agreement on redefinition, then we should completely revoke it and see how long it takes big business to come to the table. > [@John\_Mace](#): > > That’ll do wonders for the housing market. Might was well forbid the banks from giving out any new loans, because they won’t under those conditions. Like they are loaning at all anyway? If they are it’s only to the rich and those who can come up with an amazing amount of capital. Most families would have a hard time saving 20k for a 100k loan considering that the average income for a two-earner, four person household is around 50k a year. The only ones who would be hurt are the banks, and they owe us a few hundred billion dollars already. It would be better to keep the public in their homes, off the street and public dole as much as possible until we can figure out where our money is. > [@John\_Mace](#): > > Here’s the thing. Demanding to turn the economy completely upside down and eliminate centuries of progress in certain areas because you just don’t like how much money certain people are making is a non starter. It just puts your demands in the loony fridge bucket. Don’t put words in my mouth. I have nothing against people making money, or even becoming repulsively wealthy. What I DO have issue with is those people engaging in shady activities, taking a tax-payer bailout, paying themselves even higher bonuses out of it, then refusing to fix the problem that they made with the money they took from US to fix it. The problem is not that people are getting wealthy, it is that they are doing it at the expense of crashing the entire economy and then asking those least able to afford it to fix the problem while they skinny dip in caviar. There is nothing wrong with getting wealthy, just do it a reasonably safe and ethical manner. If you are arguing that cannot be achieved, then you are saying that money is more important than people, and there is no further point debating with you at all. I notice you didn’t bother to respond to my other points which tend to be more conservative friendly. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2011, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427/61 "2011-10-07T16:07:27Z")
I realize this may be among the more radical suggestions. How about require all lawmakers to follow the Constitution. All this talk about new laws or new amendments is laughable. We don’t follow the supreme law of the land. What makes you think they’ll follow a new law? There is no accountability whatsoever in D.C. The voters are supposed to hold people accountable but we don’t even know whats going on because a) the media is absolutely worthless b) the government is just too large, powerful, and secretive for the average Joe to find out whats going on c) There is a glaring conflict of interest in the executive branch that nobody seems to realize or care about. The people who could hold these criminals responsible are the district attorneys. They can be removed at any time by the president. Until we start holding these people responsible for their actions there is no hope at all. OWS is scapegoating the corporations. Yes the corporations are causing the corruption, but that’s only because we give the government authority to help out these corporations. The government needs to stop giving out handouts left and right, and stop creating burdensome regulations proposed by big business to stifle competition. This is why the Constitution created a central government that was limited in scope. The more power they have, the more they can abuse it. It is as simple as that. This protestation of big business is the most naive thing i’ve ever heard. What happened to a good old fashioned boycott? Thats how you change business practices. The only sector of this Occupy movement I support is the one calling for the End of the Fed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/suggestions-for-specific-demands-for-occupy-wall-street/598427.md?page=4)