9 Questions For ‘The Wall Street Occupiers’

9 Questions For ‘The Wall Street Occupiers’

Sweetness & Light
Oct. 21 , 2011

9 questions to the Wall Street Occupiers From New York Magazine:



Are You Smarter Than a Wall Street Occupier?

Over the past month, the crusaders at Zuccotti Park have braved the elements, tussled with police, and stood their ground against Mayor Bloomberg [sic]. But how much do the protesters actually know about the economic system that they’re fighting to change? To find out, we asked 50 occupiers a series of questions about Wall Street, taxes, and government. The results were mixed.

The results are hardly "mixed." They show overwhelming pig-ignorance. Which should and probably does gladden the hearts of the editors of New York Magazine and the news media everywhere.


1. What is the Dodd–Frank Act?

Don’t Know – 84%

A financial regulations law – 10%

Separates commercial and investment banks – 6%

(The correct answer is “a financial regulations law,” passed and signed last summer.)



2. Does President Obama control the Federal Reserve?

No – 74%

Don’t know – 14%

Yes – 10%

"He should throw a hand grenade into it" – 2%

(The correct answer is “no.” The Federal Reserve is an independent bank — although the president appoints its board members, a fact most of the “yes” respondents emphasized.)

We suspect that Mr. Obama has more power over the Federal Reserve than these people would like to admit.



3. Who is the chairman of the Federal Reserve?

Don’t know – 42%

Bernanke – 38%

"Some a–hole/idiot" – 10%

"Some old white guy" – 8%

"He’s Jewish" – 2%

(The correct answer is “Ben Bernanke.”)



4. Is the U.S. economy currently experiencing inflation or deflation?

Inflation – 76%

Deflation – 12%

Don’t know / "Both" – 12%

(The correct answer is “inflation.”)

Actually, according to the Obama administration we are not experiencing inflation. In fact, they claim to be more worried about deflation than inflation.



5. Who is Elizabeth Warren?

Don’t know – 64%

Professor / Senatorial candidate / etc. – 24%

"Warren Buffett’s wife?" – 10%

"First female president / hero" – 2%

(The correct answer is “professor, Massachusetts senatorial candidate, and financial reformer.)

Note that New York Magazine thinks Ms. Warren is a "financial reformer." Also, they seem to think these people should know her since she is the hero of the moment. Even though she was the woman who oversaw TARP, which the protesters hate so much.



6. What is the “S.E.C.”?

Don’t know – 68%

"Securities and Exchange Commission" – 28%

"The Southeastern Conference?" – 4%

(The correct answer is “Securities and Exchange Commission,” which regulates financial securities.)

"The Southeastern Conference?" LOL.



7. What is the top marginal income tax rate for the richest 1 percent?

Ten to twenty-five percent – 32%

Zero to ten percent – 30%

Don’t know – 26%

25 to 50 percent – 10%

"I know a whole f—ing family of billionaires who don’t pay a thing" – 2%

(A tough question, but the correct answer is 35%.)

Note that New York Magazine calls this "a tough question." While the tax rate on the so-called rich has been one of the biggest stories for the last three years.



8. But many wealthy filers pay only 15 percent on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains. What should it be?

Twenty-five to fifty percent – 30%

Fifty to eighty percent – 28%

Zero percent – 14%

Don’t know / didn’t answer – 12%

Ten to twenty-five percent – 10%

One hundred percent – 6%

(The correct answer is up for debate.)

And these people wonder why unemployment is so high?



9. What does the government spend more on? Health care and pensions, education, or the military?

The military – 94%

Health care and pensions – 4%

Education – 2%

(The correct answer is “health care and pensions,” which accounted for 43 percent of government outlays in 2010. Defense accounted for 20 percent.)

Again, this is another sterling testimony to our education system and our news media — and the rest of the Democrat Party. These are precisely the kind of answers that they want.

An uninformed electorate is the Democrat Party’s only hope.

And people wonder why I think these people are nothing but useful tools for the left. These answers are unreal and shows you EXACTLY why things are in the shitter.... when you have people like this at the genesis of their working life. Gawd.

Are You Smarter Than An Occupier?

Neal Boortz
Oct. 21, 2011

Countries like North Korea and China are happy because they see an electorate that is so ill-informed that there is no possible way that America can stay on top with ignorance like this parading around. They wanted a job but they put a man who had never created a job in his life into the White House. What else could these Occupy children expect when they voted a community organizer into the White House? He knows how to redistribute wealth, not create wealth. The Wall Street Journal reports,
“An overwhelming majority of demonstrators supported Barack Obama in 2008. But according to the survey data, just 56% of protesters voted in 2008, and of those 74% voted for Obama.”

These protesters don’t have a clue, and countries like China and North Korea know they don’t have a clue. All they know is that there is a growing group of people in America who are protesting wealth and want to see the demise of the US capitalist system.

Here’s what I mean when I say they don’t have a clue. Someone did at New York Magazine wrote an article: Are you smarter than a Wall Street Occupier?

• 84% of Occupiers cannot tell you what the Dodd-Frank Act is. Perhaps if they knew how the government is working to institutionalize the taxpayer bailout of too big to fail corporations, they would be protesting in Washington rather than Wall Street.
  

• 30% of Occupiers believe that top marginal income tax rate for the top 1% is 0 to 10%. And 32% believe that tax rate to be 10 to 25%. The correct answer is 35%. But that doesn’t include the Bush tax cuts that Democrats want to let expire. That would push the rate to 39.6%. And then there is this millionaires surtax. That’s another 5.6%. So we are pushing a 45% federal income tax rate for the top bracket … and a third of protesters believe this rate to be ten percent or less.
  

• 94% of Occupiers believe that the government spends more on the military than it does on healthcare and pensions. The correct answer is that 43% of government spending is on healthcare and pensions, while defense accounts for 20% of spending. Without recognizing the huge and exponentially growing burden of healthcare entitlements in this country, is it any wonder why we can’t get anywhere on reform in this country?
  

Here are a few more examples of how these Occupy Wall Street children don’t have a clue. Now remember, many of them are at that magical age where they THINK that they know everything, when in fact they are barely able to make reasonable decisions with a full awareness of the consequences.

So someone took some facts about Goldman Sachs down to the Occupiers to see how they responded. One of the facts included that Goldman Sach has set aside $10 billion for staff pay so far this year. This works about to about $292,000 per employee. Needless to say, Occupiers were not happy to hear this. One Occupier, Stephen Crawn, responds, "Do they really need all
that?" Ah, so there we go. Do they really need all of that? From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. Who decides how much an individual needs? Apparently in the minds of
these Occupiers, the government must decide.

Here’s another quote from Gabriel Brownstein. He says, "For 30 years, people have been cutting taxes, cutting regulations on Wall Street.” Really? What government school taught Gabriel these facts? The fact is that
corporations in America are now subjected to the highest corporation income tax rate of any country in the world. The people who have been cutting taxes are everywhere BUT in the United States! And where in
the hell does he come up with his idea that we have been cutting regulations on Wall Street? First of all, it’s astounding that anyone would assume that government would relinquish power by cutting anything. If there’s one fact about government it is this: it grows. In fact, government regulations on Wall Street have grown tremendously through the years. From the Cato Institute:

In a Mercatus Center study, Veronique de Rugy and Melinda Warren found that outlays for banking and financial regulation increased from only $190 million in 1960 to $1.9 billion in 2000 and to more than $2.3 billion in 2008 (in constant 2000 dollars). Focusing specifically on the Securities and Exchange Commission—the agency at the center of Wall Street regulation—budget outlays under President George W. Bush increased

in real terms by more than 76 percent, from $357 million to $629 million (2000 dollars) … In fact most of the SEC’s expand ed budget went into additional staff, from 2,841 full-time equivalent employees in 2000 to 3,568 in 2008, an increase of 26 percent.

Another measure of regulation is the absolute number of rules issued by a department or agency. The primary financial regulator, the Department of the Treasury, which includes both the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision, saw its annual average of new rules proposed increase from around 400 in the1990s to more than 500 in the 2000s. During the 1990s and 2000s, the SEC issued about 74 rules per year.

Setting aside whether bank and securities regulators were doing their jobs aggressively or not, one thing is clear—recent years have witnessed an increasing number of regulators on the beat and an increasing number of regulations.

Well, I’d say that just about does it for that guy’s argument, don’t ya think? So why don’t we close this thing out with some more cluelessness on the part of the Occupiers. It’s one thing to Occupy and public park and demonstrate … it’s quite another to occupy someone’s private property and disrupt private business. Take a look at this display at a restaurant in New York.

TexasBlue wrote:

Again, this is another sterling testimony to our education system and our news media — and the rest of the Democrat Party. These are precisely the kind of answers that they want.

An uninformed electorate is the Democrat Party’s only hope.

Wow! Really? Should we start comparing the best schools in the United States and see whether they're located in Red or Blue states? Maybe we should go to all those hick ass red states like Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, etc. and start asking some of those questions to the hillbillies who live out in the country.
Surely, they're all top educated and would have answered the above questions 100% correctly, which is exactly why they blindly vote Republican.

Un-fucking-believable. You have to ask yourself whether it's the US education system or authors like Neal Boortz that ruin the common sense of the American people...

Well since the protesters were in NYC, one can only surmise that these "questionees" are from NYC for the most part... which a very liberal city in a very liberal state... which is also the highest taxed state in the nation. How are those schools there, Bubbles?

,

BubbleBliss wrote:

TexasBlue wrote:

Again, this is another sterling testimony to our education system and our news media — and the rest of the Democrat Party. These are precisely the kind of answers that they want.

An uninformed electorate is the Democrat Party’s only hope.

Wow! Really Should we start comparing the best schools in the United States and see whether they're located in Red or Blue states Maybe we should go to all those hick ass red states like Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Missouri, etc. and start asking some of those questions to the hillbillies who live out in the country.
Surely, they're all top educated and would have answered the above questions 100% correctly, which is exactly why they blindly vote Republican.

Un-fucking-believable. You have to ask yourself whether it's the US education system or authors like Neal Boortz that ruin the common sense of the American people...

Really? The "best" schools in America?

The best schools in America are private schools. government schools have turned into nothing more than indoctrination centers on the virtues of big government.

Those "hick" states you cite, the urban areas have the bulk of the population which explains Al Gore (former Senator of Tennessee, as was his father who voted against the Civil Rights Act).

Obviously living here has not taught you anything. Let me guess, you went to government school while here didn't you?,,,,,,,,

And where are the best private schools in America located? Let's take America's best Private Prep Schools...

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/29/best-prep-schools-2010-opinions-private-education_slide_2.html

And what does the fact that Urban Areas have the bulk of the population to do with anything? still doesn't change the fact that there are plenty of Red States where the population is just as uneducated. Matter of fact, I've seen that with my own eyes. THAT's one thing I've learned while living in the US.

And yes, I did go to a government school. Did you? And Tex? Never once did I hear anybody speak in favor of big government or liberals. If any talk of politics came up, it was always in favor of conservatives due to religion.
Knowing several people that went to private schools, I can say that christian private schools are just as well an indoctrination center for conservatism.

You lived in the south where religion is a mainstay compared to the north. The point is, is that you made the comment comparing he supposed answers from southern red state schools compared to the north as asserted. The point is, is that most of these kids protesting are from New York and surrounding states. Liberal states. People talk as if conservatives are uneducated... well, it looks like no ideology has a lock on it, huh?

Kentucky is not really considered to be a southern state. It's located in the Bible Belt of the US, though.
So if all the protestors are from NY, they're de facto better educated than most people in the Red States, seeing that NY Schools are among the best in the country.

As for your last sentence, it seems like the author of the article is trying very hard to paint a picture of only liberals having a lock on it.

I'd also like to see the way the survey in the first article was conducted. 50 people are not a large sample base and I wouldn't bet on the fact that they were picked at random.
I could go to a TP Rally in Kentucky and pick the ones that look the dumbest of them all and get some pretty stupid answers. That doesn't mean that I can apply their results to the entire Rally.... unless I'm trying to pull some biased bullshit, which is most likely what happened here.

BubbleBliss wrote:
Kentucky is not really considered to be a southern state. It's located in the Bible Belt of the US, though.
So if all the protestors are from NY, they're de facto better educated than most people in the Red States, seeing that NY Schools are among the best in the country.

Maybe. Maybe not. Where are your stats on that? Read this and get back to me.

BubbleBliss wrote:As for your last sentence, it seems like the author of the article is trying very hard to paint a picture of only liberals having a lock on it.

There you go. Yet, liberals and their washdogs in the media had the Tea Party pegged as racists (with no evidence) and as dumb rednecks (with no evidence).

BubbleBliss wrote:I'd also like to see the way the survey in the first article was conducted. 50 people are not a large sample base and I wouldn't bet on the fact that they were picked at random.
I could go to a TP Rally in Kentucky and pick the ones that look the dumbest of them all and get some pretty stupid answers. That doesn't mean that I can apply their results to the entire Rally.... unless I'm trying to pull some biased bullshit, which is most likely what happened here.

It's a survey like any other survey. Gallup or whomever poll a certain number of people but those polling outfits try to find various political/social leanings to get a broad perspective. This poll was done by Doug Schoen (a Bill Clinton pollster).

Hmmm.

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/20/blue-state-schools-the-shame-of-a-nation/

Three of the nation’s ten best public high schools are in Texas — the no-income tax, right-to-work state that blue model defenders like to characterize as America at its worst. Florida, another no-income tax, right-to-work state long misgoverned by the evil and rapacious Bush dynasty, has two of the top ten schools.

Newsweek isn’t alone with these shocking results. Another top public school list, compiled by the Washington Post, was issued in May. Texas and Florida rank number one and number two on that list’s top ten as well.

There’s something else interesting about the two lists: on both lists only one of the top ten public schools was located in a blue state.

There were no top ten schools on either list from blue New England states like Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut. Nor were there any in the top 25. By contrast, Alabama made both the Newsweek and the Washington Post top ten. Only two public schools from these states made the Washpost top fifty list; zero made it into Newsweek‘s elite. 150 years after the Civil War, South Carolina is kicking New England’s rear end when it comes to producing great public schools.

and from the left-of-center Beast;
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/06/20/best-american-high-schools-how-we-compiled-the-list.html

That's about specific schools, I think the school districs themselves are more important in this discussion.
Also, you can have a look at where the best private schools in the nation are located.

This discussion is branching off into another topic.

I would like to concentrate as to why these OWS folks aren't very well-0versed in these questions asked.

I can tell you why the brats of OWS are so poorly versed on even basic political knowledge...

BECAUSE THEY'RE MORONS!!!

These are children whose idea of good government is a socialist utopia! They're idiots! They are liberal because their friends and idols are liberals. They have absolutely ZERO facility for critical thinking! They are mind numbed robots that get their "news" from the DailyKos or Entertainment Tonight!

They are a product of K-12 government schools and a university system DOMINATED by the far left.