Many on the Right have tried to classify the ideology of the Wall Street Protests. Glenn Beck has sounded an alarmist note, describing the ideas behind the movement as Leninist and even fascist.  It’s true there is much in the rhetoric that recalls the Bolshevik leader’s love of violence and brown-shirt style anti-semitic comments (this doesn’t necessarily separate Wall Street yellers from Leninism). However, my own experience while at ground zero of the protests gave me a different impression.

Leninists and fascists revealed some knowledge (albeit cherry picked) of history and they had read books or even a pamphlet. Lenin quoted Adam Smith, Hitler; Frederick the Great. The protestors, however, don’t even know who is being quoted (they aren’t sure whether to clap or not when Eugene Debs is cited) or who they are even wearing. I asked one masked protestor why he was wearing a Guy Fawkes’ mask and was corrected in the condescending tones of the hip that it was “V For Vendetta.”

Far from being the products of any studied ideology, they are instead the products of youtube and Comedy Central. Silence greets any invocation of Tom Mooney or Tom Joad and applause rises to a roar when Micheal Moore and Susan Sarandon do a drop-by. They do show a low animal cunning about the alternative media. Aware that the Left no longer owns it, they evince a media savviness that would make Obama envious. Asked by a reporter what system they want to replace capitalism with, a protestor was advised by a comrade not to say it. Image conscious, they know to try to block the limos that bore Sarandon and Moore to the event from camera-view. They know that slogans have consequences, so very few of them wave placards describing Wall Street as crony capitalists, which reveal an awareness that such a slogan might track pedestrians back to the president who bailed out Wall Street.

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Boo!

From #OccupyWallStreet:

We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%.

We propose a city wide general strike and we propose we invite all students to walk out of school. Instead of workers going to work and students going to school, the people will converge on downtown Oakland to shut down the city.

All banks and corporations should close down for the day or we will march on them.

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The Declaration and the Constitution have been thrown out the window by the Obama Administration.

There’s no doubt that these are two of the most impressive and influential documents in history.  The founding fathers of our country provided a framework for democracy that has stood the test of time. And yet when it comes to actual governing, that framework seems to have been forgotten.  It deserves to be revisited.

On our most recent episode, Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, asserts, “Our government needs to have a different character than it does today.” In the interview, Larry Arnn evaluates whether or not Paul Ryan’s plan and George W. Bush’s foreign policy decisions would be considered “constitutional” from a technical standpoint. And he expresses concern that the quality of our government is diminishing with each passing second.

What do you think?  Should politicians strictly abide by the principles laid out by the Declaration and the Constitution? Is the President?  What about your favorite candidate – are his or her positions in adherence to our Constitution?

To hear Larry Arnn’s interpretation of modern politics and more, watch the full interview below.

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Glenn Reynolds in today’s New York Post:

It’s officially a crisis. Student loan debt has hit the $1 trillion mark, exceeding Americans’ total credit card indebtedness. Unemployed graduates with huge loan balances are camping out in “Occupy” camps — the Hoovervilles of our age — around the nation. And President Obama, perhaps afraid those camps will be dubbed “Obamavilles,” as indeed they have already been by some, has unveiled a new proposal that promises to help graduates who are drowning in debt.

Unfortunately, “promises” is the correct word. Though unveiled with much fanfare, the Obama proposal doesn’t really do much. First, as the Chronicle of Higher Education pointed out in an article characterizing it as mostly political, “The benefit is available only to current students. Those jobless college graduates who are protesting on Wall Street and at similar events elsewhere won’t qualify.”

Second, even for those who do qualify, the benefit doesn’t amount to much. Daniel Indiviglio of The Atlantic Monthly calculated that the president’s plan will save the average grad less than $10 a month. (Even those with $100K in debt will save only $28.50 a month). You can make that sound like more — and the White House tried — by touting total savings over the life of the loan, but this isn’t going to rescue anyone who’s financially underwater. It’s a beer and a slice a month, more or less.

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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -Police arrested about 30 anti-Wall Street protesters in Portland early Sunday, dragging and carrying them to waiting vans, after they refused to leave a park in an affluent district.

The arrests came after protesters from the Occupy Portland movement marched to the Pearl District, with some saying they viewed its residents as part of the wealthy demographic they’re protesting.

Hundreds gathered in Jamison Square Saturday evening to defy a midnight curfew to vacate.

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The Minnesota chapter of a national civil liberties legal group is going to court to fight for the property rights of a Winona man who’s got other battles on his hands:  He’s currently serving as a U.S. advisor in war-torn Afghanistan. The Institute for Justice (IJ) will ask a Minnesota District Court in Winona to strike down a city ordinance prohibiting Ethan Dean, now on his fifth tour of duty in the Mideast, and three other homeowners from renting out their property.

“This is a law that started in Winona and has spread to other cities in Minnesota and what we need to do is stop this trend before it goes any further,” said Anthony Sanders, staff attorney with IJ’s Minnesota chapter. “The right to rent out your home is a fundamental property right, a traditional and accepted use of your property and Winona is trampling on that.”

The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota reported earlier this year on Dean’s campaign on the home front against the controversial Winona ordinance known locally as the “30 percent rule.” Dean says the ordinance is a double whammy.  By restricting rental properties to only 30 percent of houses per block, it deprives homeowners of rental income. Without a rental permit, houses are also less appealing to prospective buyers. Dean says the ordinance has cost him more than one opportunity to sell his $139,000 house, located in a prime rental area in this college town.

“I don’t really understand how someone believes they have the right to tell someone else how and what they can do with their home, but it is a strange world at times, I guess,” Dean told FFM at the time. City officials view the measure as a way to preserve the single family character of city neighborhoods particularly near Winona State University by regulating the number of houses rented mainly to college students. Complaints over student parties, vandalism and absentee landlords led to the imposition of the ordinance in 2005.

“It’s not ideal, but it’s working right now and it’s helping to address our problem of density of rental properties around the downtown core area and Winona State,” city council member Debbie White told FFM earlier this year. “We’ve been losing residences and homes and trying to keep a balance in our neighborhoods.”

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I’ve criticized the Congressional Budget Office for generating biased and inaccurate numbers. These are the clowns, after all, who say deficit spending stimulates the economy in the short run but they also rely on a model which seemingly predicts 100 percent tax rates maximize growth in the long run.

About the only nice thing that can be said about this collection of bureaucrats is that they’re consistent, though I’m not sure being wrong all the time is something to brag about – especially when even cartoonists start to make fun of CBO’s flawed approach.

This is why I’ve argued it may be best to shut down CBO and also written that – at a minimum – sweeping reform of the Capitol Hill bureaucracy is a test of GOP seriousness.

I’m not alone in my disdain for CBO. In a column for The Hill, Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center makes two excellent points about the Congressional Budget Office: 1) the general inability of economists to predict (we’d be rich if we knew how to do that) and 2) the use of inaccurate models.

The CBO’s consistently flawed scoring of the cost of bills is used by Congress to justify legislation that rarely performs as promised and drags down the economy. Whether it scores the recent healthcare bill or the cost of the Capitol Hill Visitor Center, an ambitious three-floor underground facility, the price for taxpayers always ends up larger than originally predicted. …Like many economists, its analysts suffer from a misplaced belief in their forecasting prowess. …CBO relies heavily on Keynesian economic models, like the ones it used during the stimulus debate. Forecasters at the agency predicted the stimulus package would create more than 3 million jobs. …But unemployment stubbornly remained around 10 percent. What was wrong with the CBO’s numbers? …the stimulus and the ACA should serve as yet more evidence that Congress should take budget scores and economic projections with a grain of salt. What looks good in the spirit world of the computer model may be very bad in the material realm of real life because people react to changes in policies in ways unaccounted for in these models.

Let’s now move from the general to the specific. Peter Suderman reports from Reason on new research suggesting that costs for just one provision of Obamacare may be far higher than predicted by the jokers at CBO.

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Despite the support from mainstream political and pop culture figures, the ‘Occupy’ movement is quite nutty and, actually, quite dangerous.

Free love. No private property. Self identifying one’s gender. More socialist than Marx.

The ideological and philosophical underpinnings of the “Occupy” movement are quite bizarre. Before either embracing the movement or blowing it off as typical left wing lunacy, it’s important to understand where these people are coming from and the kind of society for which they are clamoring.

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Today, in 1945, Jackie Robinson signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the color barrier in major league baseball.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The owner of Sankofa African Arts and Jewelry said that on the two mornings since protesters returned, her front doorway has reeked of urine.

She said her business has declined by 80 percent since Occupy Oakland began.

“I really, really want them to leave,” said the owner, who gave only her first name, Ellen. She has owned her business for 17 years. “What they are doing is making business worse.”

A camp supporter overheard her lament and shouted: “You would have lost your business anyway with the way the economy is going.”

Ellen burst into tears.

Moji Ghafouri said business has gone down 25 percent at her Caffe Teatro. Protesters also smashed one of her windows.

“I’m a small business,” she said. “If you’re against corporations or big business, I’m not them.”

Ghafouri said part of the problem is City Hall’s doublespeak – like banning people from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. and then letting people camp overnight anyway.

“If they’re not going to enforce it, don’t say it,” she said.

Meanwhile, one 1%-er is ecstatic:

As the camp grew in size Friday, filmmaker Michael Moore flew in to pump up supporters. (more…)

Jerry Brown, California’s quirky Governor, has made a credible first step on the road to reforming the State’s insolvent public pension plans. The state is the global leader for financially irresponsible government by racking-up $350 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. But with the threat of California’s credit rating being cut to the same “junk” level that is destroying Greece; the Governor has offered a 12 step recovery program to begin the long journey back to solvency.

The new urgency to reform California’s public pensions is being driven by the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) new public sector accounting rules that will require the State of California and local governments to triple their annual pension contributions. There is no law that can force California to comply with GASB; but failure to do so will result in the State’s auditor issuing a “qualified opinion” regarding the reliability of the state’s financials. Eighteen months ago Greece’s auditors issued this type of opinion. The credit rating agencies downgraded Greece’s debt; causing borrowing costs rise above to 20% and destroy the nation.

California first enacted its public sector defined benefit pension plan in 1932, shortly before the enactment of Social Security. The legislation, just like Social Security, was designed to require work until age 65, when average life expectancy of Americans was only 60 years of age. Consequently, the average public employees, just like Social Security, were both required to contribute for decades for retirement payments they would never receive. But through labor union negotiations, the average age of retirement eligibility was whittled down to 53.75 years of age from 65; while the life expectancy rose from to 78.2 years. When the average California public employee retires today they should expect initially receive $35,000 a year pension payment that is expected to rise by a 3% cost-of-living increases for the next 24.5 years. The income steam necessary to pay for the combination of today’s public sector early retirement eligibility and longer expected lifetime to receive payments has driven the costs of pension payments up from $573,484 to $1,277,445.

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Mitt Romney is still flip-flopping even as he seems ever more confident of the Republican nomination. Rick Perry is breathing life into his campaign, after his poor debate showings, with his new flat tax plan, which has been fairly well received. Herman Cain, the intelligent, accomplished, and optimistic man he is, nevertheless is encountering flip-flopping problems of his own, particularly around his stance on abortion and the question of the number of “9’s” in his economic plan. Ron Paul, polling the strongest he ever has over the years, still needs to convince more Americans that the elimination of major agencies of the federal government won’t make the country fall apart. Michele Bachmann may be fizzling out, despite her conviction to repeal Obamacare, and Rick Santorum, another individual of strong conservative convictions, still can pull ahead.

And from the shadows of what is called his “personal baggage,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is gradually rising. Turns out Mr. Gingrich had a flat tax plan way before Mr. Perry, one that is favored by many conservatives/libertarians because of its flat 15% tax rate, as opposed to Mr. Perry’s 20%. Speaker Gingrich provides a comparison of both his and Rick Perry’s plans on his website.

An informal poll taken at Hot Air on Tuesday shows that Ron Paul’s economic plan garners 56% of voters’ support, followed by Newt Gingrich’s plan at about 25%. Rick Perry’s plan received about 9% of the vote, and Herman Cain came in with about 7%. Mitt Romney’s more complicated plan received under 2% of the vote.

We are now coming to terms with the fact that none of the Republican candidates for President are perfect. Many of us like different qualities in each of them and would like to “build” our own candidates from various components. We soothe ourselves a bit by considering the matrix of presidential/vice-presidential ticket possibilities. Perhaps if we pair them up, we can get the best qualities of at least two of them? But really, there can only be one President. (more…)

Most Americans have heard of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) through its ill-conceived scheme to prevent Boeing from building a new plant in South Carolina because the Palmetto State has a right-to-work law. The board’s actions have created a huge backlash against the Obama Administration and its pro-Big Labor policies.

But how much do most Americans know about Obama’s other labor board?

Most Americans haven’t heard of President Obama’s other labor board, the National Mediation Board (NMB). This board is specifically focused on labor relations between the railroad and airline industries. And just like the NLRB, the NMB is aggressively pushing Big Labor’s agenda.

Last July, the NMB overturned nearly a century of precedent and issued a new pro-union rule regarding union elections. Instead of requiring the traditional democratic practice of a simple majority of members to unionize, now the rules only require a majority of votes cast for unionization.

If a company has 2,000 workers and only 400 people vote but 201 of them are pro-union, the entire workforce of 2,000 people are forced to unionize. Couple that with the fact that it is nearly impossible to decertify a union, and those 201 votes in effect mandate unionization for good. (more…)

I was once told by someone involved in a federal investigation not to let any identified federal law enforcement officer into your house without: a) a warrant and b) your lawyer present. At the time, this notion seemed a bit less than cooperative. Shouldn’t law-abiding citizens be able to live their lives free from the fear that our own government would underhandedly manipulate our rights in their pursuit of an investigation? After all, the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution enumerates a limitation on the federal government, one that prevents “unreasonable search and seizure.” Today, this enumerated protection is being ignored by – of all institutions – the U.S. Justice Department, under the darkened shadow of Attorney General Eric Holder.

A recent column by The Atlantic’s Emily Berman, a Furman Fellow and Brennan Center Fellow at NYU School of Law, informs the citizenry:

It just got easier for the federal government to collect information about innocent Americans — and those Americans have had surprisingly little say in the matter.

On October 15, the FBI reportedly implemented new rules that relax restrictions on, and oversight of, the FBI’s intelligence collection activities. Although they are not available to the public, reports indicate the changes permit FBI agents to search an individual’s trash with the goal of finding material that might pressure him into becoming a government informant, grant agents the authority to search commercial or law enforcement databases without first opening an investigation, and reduce the type of investigations subjected to heightened oversight because of their relationship to protected First Amendment expression, association, or religious practice.

This is the third modification of the FBI’s intelligence collection authorities since September 11, 2001. First in 2002, again in 2008, and finally, just last week, amendments were adopted with scant public attention and with minimal — if any — congressional involvement. Groups and communities concerned about the new rules’ impact on civil liberties, particularly the risk of religious or ethnic profiling, also had no constructive input.

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As the Occupy manifestation of the “Global Peace and Justice Movement” begins to decay and break down into the predictable anarchy, violence and arrests, it is becoming clear that the protests pose special dangers for women.

Even the left has begun to admit it. The Nation tries to laud the role of women in Occupy Wall Street but can’t avoid the truth:

The dozen women I spoke to for this story—most of them queer-identified and/or women of color—have witnessed varying amounts of offensive behavior, such as unwanted touching or use of casually misogynist language, within the movement…

Ashwini Hardikar, one protest participant, recently wrote a powerful blog post about two such experiences that occurred within an hour: a male protester giving her an unwanted hug, who then expressed shock when she responded (loudly) that she found his hug unwelcome and intrusive, and a young man chanting “Lady Liberty is a whore” and defending himself when she questioned his language. This kind of explaining and educating can be exhausting for women.

Here are a just a few recent incidents:

• A 14-year-old runaway was allegedly sexually assaulted at Occupy Dallas.
• A 19-year-old student activist was allegedly raped at Occupy Cleveland.
• A man was arrested on charges of indecent exposure to children at Occupy Seattle.
• A female reporter was threatened by activists at Occupy Oakland.

And even more attacks are listed in John Nolte’s “rap sheet” on the Occupy protests. The threats to women are not confined to the periphery of the Occupy movement but exist at the heart of the main Occupy Wall Street protest in New York. (more…)