Tell Me More, OWS...

See, now why can't Democrats push something like this? I don't understand- I'd never heard of this until today and the more I read about it, the more I think it's a damn good idea. Tax financial transactions on Wall Street.

I've still got any number of issues with the OWS Crowd:

First, camping out in a park is still not a radical act of revolution. Sorry. Especially when your supposed ideological purity gets undermined by the site of some very nice tents (at least in Iowa City- are those Columbia Tents? I think they might be...) and cell phones, iPhones, iPads and other hallmarks of liberal-hipster middle class privilege.

Second, I'm not wild about this. F**k the Boomers and their stupid a** hippy nostalgia! You want socialism? Move to Europe- I'm sure the Greeks can tell you all about how swell it is. The biggest problem we have to wrestle with- and it's not just us, it's everbody is that capitalism as we know it today plainly doesn't work- it's morphed into a weird nexus of government and business making our country more corporatist than democratic- but unfortunately, the wreckage of the Cold War more than proves that state led economic central planning and hard Socialism/Communism doesn't work- and given Europe's parlous financial state right now, I'd argue that soft socialism ain't that great either. So what does work? I don't know- but we need to break out of the 2-Party-Coporatist-Box and start developing new ideologies (and new parties) for the 21st Century.

Third, I'm not part of the mass of progressive sheeple. It makes me crazy when situations like this come up and people (usually liberals) say things like 'well, at least they're doing something' or 'you lack the awareness to understand this properly.' If what you're doing isn't accomplishing anything, then it's not helping anything much. This is the problem with 'power to the people' leaderless movements- everybody wants 20 things from 20 different people and no one has one overarching goal. I keep hearing about the supposed success of OWS, but is it? How do we know? What are the benchmarks we can measure it by? Should there be any? If 10% of the people get what they want is that enough? What about the crazy guy that wants a unicorn in every garage in America- doesn't he matter? I can understand why people don't want agendas- but it weighs down the efficacy of what you're trying to do.

Which is what makes this Robin Hood Tax idea so interesting to me- while some Republicans will argue that any tax is a bad tax, you can't say you're taxing small business when you're going after financial transactions of Wall Street Titans like Goldman Sachs. Any revenue stream is a good revenue stream after all.

Fourth (and finally), I will be the first to send canned goods/money/my time, whatever to a truly anti-Establishment movement- which OWS is definately not. You can't say that President Obama is the solution to the problem when is part of the problem. And don't give me any shit about 'the lesser of two evils.' No- all of 'em are evil, all of 'em are bad and I want 'em all tossed out.

But: I am intrigued... tell me more, OWS. Tell me more.