Going to Occupy Raleigh tomorrow to take pictures/maybe talk to people. The main thing that I get out of the entire movement is that so much money is being spent on bullshit. Why not redistribute all the money raised to lobby special interests or to campaign for certain candidates back into the system for creating the jobs that are stymied by the very same group? Why waste millions of dollars to accomplish your own personal goals by hamstringing any others?
Something I find interesting is that NC has an allegedly shadowy and consequently interesting figure - Art Pope. He is the president of Variety Wholesalers, Inc. He runs businesses like Roses, Maxway, ValuMart, Super10, Super Dollar, and others ; all low-dollar budget stores. The food stock is way down in terms of quality and the clothing is the same. It gives people something to hold onto when they have next to nothing to live on. It's basically a step below Wal-Mart, and it gets the job done for those that are living on next to nothing.
He also controls the majority of the conservative advocacy groups, think tanks, and conservative-inclined academic institutes in the state. Grooming politicians for the future...
There was a post by Roses on the Occupy Raleigh page basically conjuring the idea of "YOU CAN DO IT!" to the majority of the people that are in the situation of NEEDING to rely on his "services" because of no alternatives.
I originally said allegedly shadowy, and here is why: Considering Art Pope and his organizations have spent millions of dollars on various forms of media propaganda, 100% of it going towards efforts to oust certain political candidates by completely unbalancing any monetary assets raised for a campaign through massive and convoluted corporate donations, I'd be kinda pissed.
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011...influence.html
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...entPage=all%5C
As far as these articles go I don't know how much I'd particularly want to believe but I cannot fathom how a corporation whose president has lobbied for his own personal goals to make waves in the political landscape can somehow also support the people who would want to protest against him. The entire point of this movement, to me, is that money makes up entirely too large a portion of the decision making process.
Am I fully confident in this being the case? No. Am I fully confident in the type of media reporting this information to me? No. Especially after the yellow journalism seen just earlier this week by the piece of shit that tried to incite a riot and instead got pepper sprayed.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/...180750896.html