Friday, November 18, 2011

Occupy the Ash Heap?

Is Occupy Nashville slowly dying?:


Belief that the constitutional rights of the people who are sitting in on Legislative Plaza are sacrosanct, and agreement with the ideas that many of the protesters are promoting are two different things, however, and this writer has been clear that his sympathies lie with the Constitution, not with this political movement. One of the problems with the so-called Occupy Movement is that-especially in Nashville-even its supporters do not know what its clear goals are, and no one from Occupy Nashville has laid out a clear program for the Tennessee General Assembly in the next session that focuses on their agenda. This may be because they have no real agenda and no leader-Occupy Nashville has given us some idea of what they are against, but they cannot tell us what they are in favor of it change the things that they believe are dysfunctional. Even people who are otherwise inclined to support the Occupiers admit this is a problem.





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Thursday, November 17, 2011

Mitt's Media Problem

If you want to know why Mitt Romney hasn't quite closed the deal with the Republican base, actions like this may be why:

You'll never find this writer telling a candidate that they can't have a private fundraiser. However, when that fundraiser just happens to be in a major public space in the middle of downtown Knoxville, and the candidate is a major candidate for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination, it may not be a good idea to ban all media from an event in such an openly public space. Furthermore, when the Presidential candidate does come to town, it stands to reason that the candidate and his supporters will likely get some pretty bad press in the local area where this occurs if it happens to get out that the news photographer who was covering the candidate's visit was denied access to the building, and a news reporter seeking a short interview was apparently escorted away by private security.


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Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Occupy the Courtroom

A New York State Supreme Court Judge yesterday proved me wrong, but there may have been reasons other than the obvious:


Secondly-and far more importantly-as several people have pointed out to me in the last 24 hours, Zuccotti Park is actually private property. It is owned by a private company, Brookfield Properties, which has an agreement with the city that allows the land to be used as a park. Since Brookfield owns the turf, you can be certain that they weren't pleased that their lovely green space was being turned into a festering, desease-ridden, crime infested public health hazard. We may never know whether it happened or not, but it might be a fair bet that the Brookfield folks went to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and told him to clean up the mess or the long-standing agreement to allow Zuccoti to be used as a park by the city would be brought to an end based on the city failing to keep the place in good order.






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Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Bloomberg Takes A Page from Nashville

Apparently New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg forgot that trying to remove Occupy protestors has backfired elsewhere:


What is happening in New York is now an almost mirror image of Nashville, and on a larger scale. The Mayor is defending his actions while the courts threaten to intervene, reporters were threatened and even barred from the site where the arrests were taking place (Remember the Nashville Scene reporter who was arrested for doing his job?), and support seems to have galavanized around the evicted protestors-who are out in force again.
 
Apparently Mayor Bloomberg didn't get the word that this was tried in Tennessee, where the protests weren't particularly popular, and it had the effect of making people side with the protesters who would not otherwise be so inclined to do so.

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Monday, November 14, 2011

Occupy Some Sense

So the Occupy Nashville people get to stay at the Plaza-what is their plan?:

What is the continuing purpose of the sit-in at the Capitol? What demands do the protesters have of the Tennessee General Assembly? Since the Occupy movement seems to enjoy comparing itself to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's, then the leaders of Occupy should know that at some point, that movement established clear goals, and moved from sit-ins and boycotts to tangible political action.




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