dreamdancer

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I compare them to cockroaches. They'll show-up anywhere and you can't get rid of them. There should be a bounty on them.


Chuck

those jackboots are a good fit. you can strut in them with pride...

You're way off the mark there bub! Since when, can't I protect my home and property against a bunch of low-life leeching scum? In this country, I have the right to keep and bear arms and the right to protect what's mine. If, you don't like that, it's too damned bad. Anyone who supports these 'occupiers' is on the same level and they aren't 'entitled' to a damned thing.


Chuck

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I compare them to cockroaches. They'll show-up anywhere and you can't get rid of them. There should be a bounty on them.


Chuck

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The law's intent was to help ranchers and others who had tended vacant land for years, so they could eventually gain legal ownership of the property. That's done by filing a document called an adverse possession affidavit with the county clerk.

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In many countries, squatting is in itself a crime; in others, it is only seen as a civil conflict between the owner and the occupants. Property law and the state have traditionally favored the property owner. However, in many cases where squatters had de facto ownership, laws have been changed to legitimize their status. Squatters often claim rights over the spaces they have squatted by virtue of occupation, rather than ownership; in this sense, squatting is similar to (and potentially a necessary condition of) adverse possession, by which a possessor of real property without title may eventually gain legal title to the real property.

Anarchist Colin Ward comments: "Squatting is the oldest mode of tenure in the world, and we are all descended from squatters. This is as true of the Queen [of the United Kingdom] with her 176,000 acres (710 km2) as it is of the 54 percent of householders in Britain who are owner-occupiers. They are all the ultimate recipients of stolen land, for to regard our planet as a commodity offends every conceivable principle of natural rights."

Besides being residences, some squats are used as social centres or host give-away shops, pirate radio stations or cafés. In Spanish-speaking countries, squatters receive several names, such as okupas in Spain, Chile or Argentina (from the verb ocupar meaning "to occupy"), or paracaidistas in Mexico (meaning "paratroopers", because they "parachute" themselves at unoccupied land).

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Yesterday, the Oakland Police deployed hundreds of officers in riot gear so as to prevent Occupy Oakland from putting a building, vacant for 6 years with no plans for use, from being occupied and “re-purposed” as a community center. The Occupy Oakland GA passed a proposal calling for the space to be turned into a social center, convergence center and headquarters of the Occupy Oakland movement.

The police actions tonight cost the city of Oakland hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they repeatedly violated their own crowd control guidelines and protesters civil rights.

With all the problems in our city, should preventing activists from putting a vacant building to better use be their highest priority? Was it worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent?

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Barack Obama has used his state of the union address to launch his 2012 re-election campaign, with a populist speech portraying himself as the champion of working-class America against the small, wealthy elite he claimed is protected by the Republicans.

As the Republicans tore strips off one another over tax and wealth in the Florida primary to choose the party's nominee to face Obama, the president set out a strongly populist agenda, promising to tackle the inequality gap. He touched on issue after issue raised by voters, from the power of Wall Street to the pervasive influence of money in politics, and offered proposals for dealing with them.

In one striking passage, delivered in a joint sitting of the Senate and the House, Obama said the defining issue of the present time was how to keep alive the promise of America as a land of opportunity. "No challenge is more urgent. No debate is more important. We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules," he said.

"What's at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values but American values. We have to reclaim them."

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Both of you - enough. If you don't want to talk to each other, don't.

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Both of you - enough. If you don't want to talk to each other, don't.

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>and many rich - for no reason - hate the poor.

So the rich hate the poor and the poor hate the rich.

We have finally achieved equality between the rich and the poor! At least in hate. Which is something.

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Mr Romney, who led the private equity firm Bain Capital in the 1980s, enjoyed a lower tax rate than most Americans because his income came largely from returns on investments and capital gains. Under controversial reforms by George W. Bush, such income is taxed at a flat rate of 15 per cent.

Regular earned income is subject to federal income tax of 35 per cent above $379,150 (£243,475). Mr Romney pays a similar rate of tax to someone earning about $60,000 (£38,600) through conventional income.

Mr Romney was also able to cut his taxable income by almost $5 million (£3.2 million) because of losses carried over from previous years, thanks to a controversial rule.

Pre-empting the issue during the debate, Mr Romney said: “I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more”. He added: “I don’t think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes.”

The returns showed that the Romneys had a string of foreign holdings including assets in the Cayman Islands, a famous tax haven, and that they held a bank account in Switzerland, which is renowned for its tax advantages and secretive accounting.

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>the american settlers didn't hate the natives either...

And yet many poor hate the rich. Go figure.

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The rich ARE, proportionally, getting richer.

So are the poor.

not compared to the rich...

So?

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The rich ARE, proportionally, getting richer.

So are the poor.

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Mike, can you refute that the average tax savings of the 1% exceeded the average income of the 99%? If not, why isn't that relevant?

I'm not saying it is (average, without median, can be very misleading). But it'd be nice to hear.

Wendy P.

It may well be (I'd think yes) true, but it's not a meaningful statement. The typical increase in taxes to the 1% from the 1993 tax increases was greater than the average income of the 99% as well. And why would this be a surprise? Roughly half of the 99% pay no income taxes of all - of course they're not going to see a significant change from increases or decreases.

Big numbers are fun, of course. Top NBA players make more money every time they shoot the ball in a game than the average American. GOOD GOD - WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING! It's a purely emotional tactic.

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To repeat, the average TAX SAVINGS of the 1% exceeded the average INCOME of the 99%

Class envy, AGAIN?

Can't dispute the facts so you resort to insults.

Class envy whinging != facts, sorry.

And the bit about insults is frigging HILARIOUS, since you do it so much more than anyone else.

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To repeat, the average TAX SAVINGS of the 1% exceeded the average INCOME of the 99%

Class envy, AGAIN?

Can't dispute the facts so you resort to insults.

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To repeat, the average TAX SAVINGS of the 1% exceeded the average INCOME of the 99%

Class envy, AGAIN?

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Black people are 30 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police in England and Wales, according to new analysis which reveals that "racial profiling" has increased over the past year.

Researchers say the findings, based on government statistics, represent the worst international record of discrimination involving stop and search.

The figures refer to the use of section 60, the contentious police power that allows officers to stop and search people without reasonable suspicion and which was cited as an aggravating factor behind the August riots. Analysis by the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Open Society Justice Initiative shows during the past 12 months a black person was 29.7 times more likely to be stopped and searched than a white person. That figure was 26.6 the previous year.

In 2009, black people were 10.7 times more likely to be stopped than whites under the controversial "exceptional" power. Mounting disquiet over the policy's damaging effect on black communities prompted Scotland Yard last week to announce a scaling back of its use of section 60, which has become a central element of the Yard's anti-knife crime strategy.

A separate analysis, based on Home Office data, reveals that less than 0.5% of section 60 searches led to an arrest for possession of a dangerous weapon, five times fewer than a decade ago.