"Occupy Torrance" -- Really?

In the November 1, 2011 edition of the Daily Breeze, John Bogert reported on an off-shoot of Occupy Wall street. This more diminutive, and doubtless less imposing, number of demonstrators collected along the more up-beat section of Hawthorne Blvd. in Torrance, CA.

Among their numbers were a pastor from a church in Palos Verdes (who insulted one passer-by), three retirees (including one from Rolling Hills Estates), a disgruntled student, and a hand-full of other middle-to-upper class types.

Do these people really think that they represent the 99% exploited by the 1%, a figure which the Occupy Everywhere movement has yet to identify?

At least one of the protesters was candid about the "movement"'s lack of direction. Yet the stunning audacity of well-off types hammering at greedy corporations is both outlandish and outrageous. Only Karl Marx could make this stuff up.

And speaking of the legacy hack-academics, the "newly sprouted" university student Elyse Doerflinger is spouting the same fussy, liberal nonsense which we have come to expect from University students, a larger indictment of post-secondary education at large. I agree that corporations should be paying more taxes, but what "common good" is she referring to? I assume she also wants the government to offer a blanket forgiveness for her and every other down-and-out college student's students loans. Then again, her status as a state university student automatically guarantees her a tax credit, since she pays far less than private school tuition.
It all sounds like one more example of the proverbial pot calling the kettle clean.

Judy Birch's assertion that "nobody should be a rich man in a poor country" is laughable, nonsensical, and inconsequential. The United States, despite lagging economic growth and consistently high unemployment, still enjoys a greater deal of wealth all around than most countries suffering through even greater financial hardships (like Greece). Our poor people are better off than most working-class individuals around the world.

Mr. Bogert's editorializing betrays an astonishing ignorance of US History, especially regarding the Great Depression. Not a lack of regulation, but overt repudiation of laissez-faire and free-market economics by Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt prolonged a severe market correction in the late
1920's into a two-decade depression. Even World War II did not restore this country's economy. Only when the federal government stopped spending and cut taxes did businesses enjoy a rebound, with a strong economic boom to follow during the Eisenhower years.

Andrea Legacki's harping about the current state of education is moot, considering that she is a former teacher herself. If she is so opposed to large class sizes, why not permit families to enroll their children wherever they please with school vouchers? Yet another subset of loud protesters -- teacher's unions -- are opposed to such reforms, which would cut into their lobbying strength in Sacramento.

As for Ms. Rachel Brunke's breathless despair, I submit that society as a source of hope simply does not exist. We have families, values, religious communities which inspire far more, and can do far more, for our youth than some abstraction labled "The 99%".

For a teacher to spout platitudes like "an injury to one is an injury to all" makes as much sense as a bunch of well-off retirees and urban professional protesting corporate greed, individuals who have no "skin in the game" of managing dwindling resources during an economic downturn.

Never would I thought to have seen "Small gathering" and "big concerns" lumped together in one headline. For the "Occupy Torrance" crowd, a moniker like "Small Gathering, Highly Pretentious, No Real Reason For Being Here" would have been more accurate.