ridethepiggy
Banned
That's what pisses me off. They had momentum, they had media coverage, they had an opportunity and they wasted it. Absolutely wasted it.
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PoliGAF 2013 |OT3| 1,000 Years of Darkness and Nuclear Fallout
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That's what pisses me off. They had momentum, they had media coverage, they had an opportunity and they wasted it. Absolutely wasted it.
Fair and balanced Sorkin is worst Sorkin.
Holy crap. I thought that $500 million number for healthcare.gov was some stupid made up right-wing talking point (a la Obama's $100 million/day trip to India), but turns out that shit's LEGIT? What the fuck? I was totally willing to go to bat for Sebellius, but that's a pretty huge fuckup.
It's almost as if it's a drama written for TV.
speculawyer
Member
This guy. He's like a Hollywood Demagogue villain.Ted Cruz back down in Texas said:
I guess he thinks this schtick of being Sarah Palin but with Ivy League degrees will work. I don't see it working. But he'll make a great addition to the GOP presidential nomination clown car.
NYCmetsfan
Banned
Texas isn't mentioned in the Constitution, DC is ted
speculawyer
Member
Yeah, she should probably be fired. And wasn't one of the big outside contractors a Canadian consulting firm? I mean come on.
I know, she's not the one that did the coding but the system didn't work, it cost too much, she's hiding from the press, etc.
You really believe that? We are on the internet, of all places. As I type this, thousands of people are being made dumber from the stupid shit they're reading and accepting at face value.
Yeah, and 5 million lines of code? Fun fact: the average PS2/GC/Xbox game had around 250k lines of code. Meaning HHS could have funded 20 Halo 2s. Let us take a moment to let that sink in.
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thepotatoman
Unconfirmed Member
The goal was obvious. It was to stop and reverse the trend of politicians only catering to the 1%, with the housing crisis, and resulting bailout and lack of punishment being the most common example against that.
Because that would fracture the protest's direction. I bet the large majority of OWS protesters would be for all those things, but which one do you focus on first? Who decides which one to focus on? What are the details to those plans?
With civil rights, the goal of equality always the main focus. The goal was what made those protests a success. The solution just happened to be a lot more obvious. Look at MLK's I have a dream speech. There wasn't a single mention of a plan, just a dream.
The thing is if OWS had been a continued success, the solutions that OWS supported would have become more obvious as well, as whatever the next political debate was, OWS would have obviously been on the side of the "99%". But in a time when OWS was literally the only thing on the news, you're not going to see the majority of signs pointing towards the exact same solution. Which is why I brought up Larry Summers.
No, I don't ascribe it 100% to OWS, just pointing out that those same Occupy organizers have added some more direct demands, and acted on them. I guess I made the tea party comparison because maybe if people supported OWS instead of downright hating them for no good reason OWS would have continued to have the presence to have more of a name in that accomplishment.
Even if you wished OWS to be more successful, I don't understand why is the focus solely what could have been done better, to the point of actual hatred. Seriously you "loathe" it because it didn't reach its full potential? Surely at least reaching half it's potential should be praised, since its better than nothing. If nothing else, at least be happy at the charity work it did helping the homeless and occupying sandy.
To be fair it was supposed to be an atom bomb designed to force a deal, unfortunately no one realized just how crazy the Tea Party was at that point.
Oh yeah I definitely get that. I'm just shocked at the length. I wasn't sure how long it was, but I was almost certain it would be 5 at the very most.
My point is they had no reason to make it reasonable, it was an atom bomb. If they made it a reasonable length then it's not an atom bomb.
RustyNails
Member
OWS had noble goals. But their aversion to EVERYTHING made them allergic to everything politics, which herded a group mentality "congress is bad = politicians are evil". They were completely oblivious to the fact that everything they rail against could have been fixed if they focused on bringing change from within congress. Field congressmen and run them. Exactly like how teaparty did.
But no. Sitting in Zucotti Park having pizza parties and annoying people trying to go to work by banging drums was more fun.
But no. Sitting in Zucotti Park having pizza parties and annoying people trying to go to work by banging drums was more fun.
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thepotatoman
Unconfirmed Member
NYCmetsfan
Banned
This is super ignorant of the civil rights movement and its actions. They had a plan, they had come to support an actual piece of legislation. They also came up with demands
They pretty much got all of that. Again, OWS has gotten nothing. And if they will frature if they issue any demands, then they're not a protest movement. They're just a loose collective of people yelling.
You don't move politicians by saying yelling at them to do something without telling them what to do. They won't listen. And they haven't. Things like larry summers have been effective (And I wouldn't give any credit to OWS) because they're was an actual demand.
Yes they did. Nobody thought the supercongress was gonna work.
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thepotatoman
Unconfirmed Member
Maybe people at OWS didn't have a unified plan on exactly how to accomplish their goal, but they certainly weren't dismissive of the entire government like you say they were. If they were, it was only after the government responded to the protest by sending its police after them.
I never said the civil rights movements didn't have a plan, I'm just saying that plan wasn't central to the entire movement, and it didn't become important until an endgame. Remember OWS had like one week of attention at most before everyone started dismissing them for these dumb reasons. Given more time OWS would have had a lot more plans and successes to come from them.
makingmusic476
Member
Oh, OWS. How much hope I had for thee.
The lack of any sort of coordination definitely stymied OWS' potential impact. With no leadership or figureheads to take the spotlight, media outlets were left to interview randoms about OWS positions, and most of the people at OWS were unable to effectively put into words the many problems they were speaking out against, or succinctly describe potential solutions to those problems, even though their hearts were definitely in the right place. I remember lots of "Man... the rich. THE RICH. WE ARE THE 99%." Okay. Great. That tells us nothing.
I understand that far left movements are, at their core, about enhancing democracy by restricting the power imbalances that stem from great imbalances of wealth, but the anarchist, "every voice is equal" bent of OWS prevented it from advancing any specific policies or candidates. I would guess that the constant association with Stalinism, authoritarianism, etc. that far leftist groups have dealt with for decades in the US encourages many to recoil from any semblance of hierarchical organization, but it's really preventing them from the level of organization necessary to accomplish their goals.
That being said, OWS did a great deal of good. The 99% and the 1% have been cemented in the American - fuck, global - political vernacular, and it significantly increased awareness of the severity of income inequality in the US. The constant bombardment of articles and discussions on gaf and elsewhere that stemmed from OWS is what got me back into politics after a several year hiatus, and I ended up on the complete opposite side of the political spectrum (upon entering college, I was Limbaugh believer D
.
I think that the OWS movement heavily influenced the eventual backlash to the Tea Party and Libertarian movements in the US, and I think Romney and the GOP in general would've been viewed more favorably going into the 2012 elections had the movement never happened.
But they had an MLK who could make that speech. Among many other influential leaders.
The lack of any sort of coordination definitely stymied OWS' potential impact. With no leadership or figureheads to take the spotlight, media outlets were left to interview randoms about OWS positions, and most of the people at OWS were unable to effectively put into words the many problems they were speaking out against, or succinctly describe potential solutions to those problems, even though their hearts were definitely in the right place. I remember lots of "Man... the rich. THE RICH. WE ARE THE 99%." Okay. Great. That tells us nothing.
I understand that far left movements are, at their core, about enhancing democracy by restricting the power imbalances that stem from great imbalances of wealth, but the anarchist, "every voice is equal" bent of OWS prevented it from advancing any specific policies or candidates. I would guess that the constant association with Stalinism, authoritarianism, etc. that far leftist groups have dealt with for decades in the US encourages many to recoil from any semblance of hierarchical organization, but it's really preventing them from the level of organization necessary to accomplish their goals.
That being said, OWS did a great deal of good. The 99% and the 1% have been cemented in the American - fuck, global - political vernacular, and it significantly increased awareness of the severity of income inequality in the US. The constant bombardment of articles and discussions on gaf and elsewhere that stemmed from OWS is what got me back into politics after a several year hiatus, and I ended up on the complete opposite side of the political spectrum (upon entering college, I was Limbaugh believer D
.I think that the OWS movement heavily influenced the eventual backlash to the Tea Party and Libertarian movements in the US, and I think Romney and the GOP in general would've been viewed more favorably going into the 2012 elections had the movement never happened.
But they had an MLK who could make that speech. Among many other influential leaders.
speculawyer
Member
(upon entering college, I was Limbaugh believer D
i could not imagine how hard the denial must have been at first.
Thanks to my not yet getting my new NeoGAF password over to my work computer, I could only browse during the day. It felt odd to lurk. (I'll fix that tomorrow morning.)
A few thoughts on the heathcare.gov fiasco.
The two most damning things I read in the last few days are not the ones getting the most attention. I've hit my NYT reading limit for the month, but I read a couple days ago that the site was cobbled together by 40+ different contracted companies. I just can't imagine why the site had to be sliced and diced like that, which in and of itself creates tremendous complexity from a project management standpoint.
The other is around the HHS directors adding or changing site requirements as late as September, before they'd even done a testing round. That strikes me as the kind of nonsensical thing some upper manager would do, someone who doesn't have the slightest idea how system development and deployment works. You just can't be in system design that late in the development cycle and expect anything but unmitigated disaster. Someone, somewhere in the chain should have said no and been in a position to enforce it.
At work, we recently deployed a new internal system. Over the summer we had the first end user testing session (I was one of the end users), and it was a comical disaster. The dev team was super proud of the tool and shortly after showing us the interface, set us to work on a set of tasks to work through. And right away the wheels flew off the bus as bug after bug was uncovered. (My favorite: when you filtered data on an input screen, and then saved, only the data that was visible saved.)
It was a disaster, but we all agreed a welcome one: it identified all the bugs they needed to fix before launch. That was the entire goal! As a result the launch itself went great.
It sounds like HHS was making design changes a month prior to launch, and then launched without a full test run. That is pure, unmitigated incompetence. The director in charge of the system needs to be fired, period. They don't know how system development works.
BTW, the October jobs report is tomorrow, at last.
A few thoughts on the heathcare.gov fiasco.
The two most damning things I read in the last few days are not the ones getting the most attention. I've hit my NYT reading limit for the month, but I read a couple days ago that the site was cobbled together by 40+ different contracted companies. I just can't imagine why the site had to be sliced and diced like that, which in and of itself creates tremendous complexity from a project management standpoint.
The other is around the HHS directors adding or changing site requirements as late as September, before they'd even done a testing round. That strikes me as the kind of nonsensical thing some upper manager would do, someone who doesn't have the slightest idea how system development and deployment works. You just can't be in system design that late in the development cycle and expect anything but unmitigated disaster. Someone, somewhere in the chain should have said no and been in a position to enforce it.
At work, we recently deployed a new internal system. Over the summer we had the first end user testing session (I was one of the end users), and it was a comical disaster. The dev team was super proud of the tool and shortly after showing us the interface, set us to work on a set of tasks to work through. And right away the wheels flew off the bus as bug after bug was uncovered. (My favorite: when you filtered data on an input screen, and then saved, only the data that was visible saved.)
It was a disaster, but we all agreed a welcome one: it identified all the bugs they needed to fix before launch. That was the entire goal! As a result the launch itself went great.
It sounds like HHS was making design changes a month prior to launch, and then launched without a full test run. That is pure, unmitigated incompetence. The director in charge of the system needs to be fired, period. They don't know how system development works.
BTW, the October jobs report is tomorrow, at last.
empty vessel
Member
I don't know what can be meaningfully learned from comparing a decades-old civil rights movement to a new economic justice movement.
Sure you do. It is the most effective way of making policy changes, in fact. Movements don't have to write policy. They have to make demands. OWS made plenty of economic demands. It just happens to have been effectively repressed. At any rate, OWS is hopefully the beginning of a long struggle for economic justice, not the end of it.
You can view any NYT article by simply googling the name of the article and clicking through from the search results. This includes after hitting your 1 article/month limit. They left that feature in on purpose.
makingmusic476
Member
Actually, I accepted it pretty easily. In my adult years, I've always been one to fit a conclusion to the evidence, as opposed to the reverse, so I adapted pretty easily upon receiving new information. I'm also a generally curious person, so I'm constantly trying to figure out the inner workings of stuff. Once I started to come back to politics, I was constantly trying to figure out how policy X or Y worked, and learning about that often lead me to remarkably different opinions than my family's re: the Affordable Care Act, etc.
I remember one day I was annoyed because I kept seeing terms like socialism, communism, and fascism pop up in political discussions, and I couldn't figure out what exactly differentiated the three. So I hopped on Wikipedia and shortly thereafter became a socialist.
Though four years of tuning out politics altogether (mostly because I had matured to a point where I realized my ignorance of the subject matter meant I should probably not get involved) helped me restart with a clean slate, so to speak.
I would argue that having a leadership team and a coherent set of demands would be one.
Were the demands effectively repressed? Or not communicated effectively? My view is a bit of both but leaning more towards the latter.
Do you think that OWS could have done things differently to be more successful?
empty vessel
Member
OWS was repressed before it had any meaningful chance to succeed, in my opinion. Still, the focus on OWS per se is probably misplaced. OWS is hopefully part of the story--the very beginning--of a broader and longer popular movement for economic justice.
RustyNails
Member
I knew it.
I hope we learn something from all of that shit, the US has the best tech companies in the world, fuck those outsourcing IT firms, they're skills are mostly at writing proposals and billing.
theprodigy
Member
clearly the Tea Party was right, that damn inefficient government!
(stupid excessive subcontracting)
When you have most of the mainstream media and police dead-set against whatever you're advocating, it's kind of hard to get your message out.
CoffeeJanitor
Member
I don't think that's what happened. There was no main message. There didn't seem to be any leaders. Not exactly the best way to go about things.
So some guy at TNR wrote something that I've been saying for a long time:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_10/divided_they_move_right047439.php
Righty-o. I never agreed with the idea of trying to separate the Teabaggers from the average Republicans for this very reason. By making such a distinction, this automatically allows the non-teabagger Republicans to appear moderate, even though there's no fucking daylight between the two.
For all the shit that Peter King spoke about the teabaggers which made him a darling in the eyes of the beltway media, he never broke ranks with the rest of his party, and agreed with the idea of refusing to bring up for a vote to end the shutdown. Same thing with that Willard Mitt Romney guy. He never officially backed away from most of his extreme positions, but by the mere fact that he was the guy that wasn't Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich, he became a "moderate" by default. In Romney's case, it was even worse because that would mean he would be forced to prove his conservative bonafides by signing every abortion and creationism bill in sight, if he ever became president.
So let us stop treating teabaggers and the likes of Mitch McConnell and John Boeher as if they're not the same type of people.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_10/divided_they_move_right047439.php
Righty-o. I never agreed with the idea of trying to separate the Teabaggers from the average Republicans for this very reason. By making such a distinction, this automatically allows the non-teabagger Republicans to appear moderate, even though there's no fucking daylight between the two.
For all the shit that Peter King spoke about the teabaggers which made him a darling in the eyes of the beltway media, he never broke ranks with the rest of his party, and agreed with the idea of refusing to bring up for a vote to end the shutdown. Same thing with that Willard Mitt Romney guy. He never officially backed away from most of his extreme positions, but by the mere fact that he was the guy that wasn't Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich, he became a "moderate" by default. In Romney's case, it was even worse because that would mean he would be forced to prove his conservative bonafides by signing every abortion and creationism bill in sight, if he ever became president.
So let us stop treating teabaggers and the likes of Mitch McConnell and John Boeher as if they're not the same type of people.
OWS was against economic inequality and excessive money in politics. The General Assembly was the "leader".
NYCmetsfan
Banned
The civil rights movement was also a economic justice movement. It was very influential in making sure great society programs were implemented on a racially natural. Political movements all follow the same basic idea.
Having demands is different than writing policy. And your making excuses for OWS's incompetence, they had a few months in the park before they were expelled. But that can be brushed aside because it was somehow repressed. Because the civil rights movement wasn't oppressed? The early labor movement? Environmental movement? Anti-War activist? All of these went against the powers that be and they all succeed. OWS can't organize and won't ever be an effective voice of change because they can't articulate anything.
I'm glad it won't be OWS leading changes. Let people who know what they're doing, do it. Not the adbuster reading hipsters in Zuccatti
I'm for no terrorism and world peace. How do we get there?
empty vessel
Member
Let's just say that while you may understand that movements affect policy, you don't really understand movements or how they affect policy.
NYCmetsfan
Banned
You really are extremely smug in your opinions. But you're not always correct.
For anyone interested in why OWS ended up the way it did I recommend Direct Action: An Ethnography. It's an inside look at the far left movements that ended up being the seed for OWS. While the author obviously means for it to be a positive portrait of such movements I ended up with a very... unkind view of them personally.
Who's this "we"? If you want to do something, then go do it. Maybe others will like it and follow along. That's how it works. If you have a bunch of great ideas about what people should be doing, but all you do is wait for people to spontaneously do them... then you'll always be disappointed. And whose fault is that, really?
NYCmetsfan
Banned
I don't think you understood my post. Its so vague its meaningless.
smokeandmirrors
Banned
Side note: Zuccotti Park is an awful place to camp out.
it doesn't even look comfy!
it doesn't even look comfy!
Bam Bam Baklava
Member
One of the things I've always loved about Republicans is how they say their for prosperity and against terrorism like Democrats are the opposite or something.
theprodigy
Member
classic projection
NYCmetsfan
Banned
Ok. that resolution is stupid then. It's meaningless. I'm for less income inequality and getting money out of politics. I don't belong or identify with OWS though
empty vessel
Member
What are the tea party movement's demands?
Demands have to be relatively vague. That's how movements are built! End the War now! is a demand. The specifics are irrelevant. It's for the elite class cowering in fear to figure out how to appease popular movements.
This is a bit much coming from you.
empty vessel
Member
I am not talking about OWS. I am talking about movements in general. But, yes, OWS was indeed feared. That's why it was violently repressed.
NYCmetsfan
Banned
Defund Obamacare
Vote no on Immigration
Vote no on Health Care
Vote no on anything
Those are demands. Even end the war, that you can determine when its achieved.
Don't agree with either. It wasn't feared and it surely wasn't violently repressed.
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