Occupy Wall Street-A Student's (Different) Perspective

Have you heard about Occupy Wall Street? Many people have by now, and it's looking like it will be around for at least a little while longer.


Anyways, today a student stood up in my religion class and made an announcement that they would be occupying my city as well. He tried to get me to come to a meeting on Wednesday night and stressed how important it was for us to "make our voice heard".


I have never had a problem sharing my thoughts or making my voice be heard, but I decided to get straight to the source of these Occupy Wall Street people. That, of course, meant Facebook stalking them and looking at their main Web page. I have linked it here. This is their list of demands (not ideas, demands) that form the core of their movement.


As a college student, I was initially interested in this movement because quite a few of these people are my peers, college students or twenty somethings. After reading through these demands, I find it important to distance myself as far as possible from this lunacy. It's never a good thing to be ignorant, but the only thing worse is to be ignorant and not realize it.


So let's take a look at what these people are camping out for.


1- A new minimum wage ($20 bucks per hour). Why $20? If we are giving ourselves a raise, why stop at $20? Let's make it at least $100 per hour so we can all be richer?


2- Institute a single payer healthcare system. Obamacare is rolling closer and closer, and more and more people are seeming to have problems with it. I will save this for another post


3- Guaranteed minimum wage, regardless of employment. Awesome! I'm quitting my job and hoping to get that minimum wage raised up even higher. This money is obviously coming from....o wait....I'm not actually sure where it's coming from.

4- Free college education. Screw this! If everyone makes $20 per hour, why go to college?


5- Ending the fossil fuel economy while "bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand". I'm not exactly sure where to even start here. First of all, solar power is actually a long way from being effective (see Solyndra). Second, I see no fast track way of ending the ENTIRE FOSSIL FUEL ECONOMY. Let's see....that encompasses....uh...yeah just about everything.


6-One trillion dollars in infrastructure spending.


7- One trillion dollars in ecological restoration, as well as shutting down all of the nuclear power plants.


(Not even worth typing a reply to those above....o wait....oops.)


8- Racial and gender equal rights amendment. See 15th, 19th, 24th and also the 14th Amendments.


9-Open borders migration. I think they actually mean immigration, because we have some pretty free migration already here in the US. Actually, as good as the Border Patrol is, this may be the demand that we could most easily achieve....because we are almost there


10-Bringing American elections up to the "standard" of the rest of the world. I find it amazing that we peacefully transition elected officials every 2-6 years. Are we a perfect system? Nope. Are we the best in the world right now? You bet.

11-Immediate and total debt forgiveness. " "And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period." 


12- Outlawing all credit reporting agencies


13-Allowing workers easier voting access in Union formation or something. I basically had quit reading here.


Actually, there is a post script:


"These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy."


Yup...that is Occupy Wall Street. At the core, people who really have no idea what they want or what they are doing. Don't think they are the 99%.


Of course, that's news for any of us.


That meeting tomorrow night? I can't go...I'm busy working.


Adios

A Day in the Life and State of the Blog

I'm back again! Because there is so much catching up that needs to be done, I have decided to share a synopsis of today. This should help snapshot my life, and in the future I will do "catch-up" postings on important things like weddings and such. This morning I was up at about 5:30am to head to work. That time occurs before dawn cracks. In fact, I am at work before the sun is even peeking over the horizon. I work at a large regional hospital as an Endoscopic Technician. The job is very easy, pays decently well, and is helping give me that clinical experience to get me into medical school someday (more on that later). So there I was at work at 6:30am, wearing my scrubs.

                                 =

Yeah scrubs are basically our excuse to wear pajama like clothing to work every single day. So I worked from 6:30am until 11:30am. The deal with working here is that I get an extended lunch to race over to campus and take a class until 1pm. So at 11:30am, off I go to class. This is an advanced biomedical sciences class with a crazy professor (probably tenured) that makes no sense, so it usually taxes my patience slightly. Today we read and summarized a dense article about weak hydrophilic carbohydrate associations, which is basically the most exciting thing I have ever done in my whole life.

Oh wait...not.

 After class I raced back to work until 3pm. I had planned to trim the afro/bush/mess that is my hair this afternoon, but the line was crazy at the barber. I made the easy decision to go home instead. I went to change and noticed that my wife hadn't made the bed from this morning (she sleeps in a little after I leave for work), and it sucked me in for a nap. Watch out for beds, they tend to do that.

 NOTE: I RARELY TAKE NAPS. I debated even disclosing this piece of info because it barely ever happens. Today was weird.

 To summarize the rest of the night in a concise outline
-Go on date night with wife to celebrate 4 awesome months of marriage
-Run to Wal Mart to make purchase (hold that thought)
-Go to Chick-fil-a for milkshake
-Come home, leave again to Bible Study
-Lead Bible Study, stay too long afterwards
-Return home, write this blog.
 Boom! Finished!

The purchase I referenced earlier is one of those memory foam mattress cover things. It is currently inflating, or whatever those things do when you take them out of the package, on our bed. Our mattress has been less that cozy, and now we can afford to get an awesome soft comfy mattress cover. In fact, I hear it calling my name now. This blog will survive right here indefinitely. I like the new interface, and was pleasantly surprised by the thousands of hits I received while doing absolutely nothing over the last year. I love the messages and do read all of them, so feel free to send them my way.

 Have a great day!
 Adios

 PS The mountain picture at the top is because I really want to go skiing this winter and spent the whole day thinking about a trip that we were invited to join, but can't make up our minds because it's pricey. JICYWW (Just in case you were wondering)

A Year Long Sabbatical

As a friend pointed out to me today, it has been one full year to the day since the last day I posted on this blog. His timing was absolutely impeccable, as I have spent the last week thinking about coming back to a blog thing, whether it be this one, a new one, or perhaps both. Don't you think it's ironic that those who have the most to blog about usually have the least amount of time to actually blog? So it has been with me for the past year or so. Let's see, in the last 365 days I have

1) Completed a full year of college

2) Married the most beautiful woman in the world

3) Worked 4 different jobs

4) Grown and seen more than I thought possible in a year.

Needless to say, there are things I would love to share. I am currently pondering how I am going to do that. While this blog, as it is now, will always exist, I am seriously considering moving to another platform that I find more functional. The downside is accessibilty. If I am to write, I want people to read it :)

Blogger is easy to use and easy to access. I will continue here until I post my final blog destination.

For now, enjoy the updated look and feel of this blog.

Later