Do the Occupiers have a right?

As you all probably know the people who are "occupying" Wall Street are giving people mixed messages on what their true purpose of their protest is. They have no written demands of what they want to get out of the protests or what they want from corporations. One big idea they are advocating is that corporations, instead of claiming a profit, are saying they made no profit by giving huge bonuses to the CEO of the corporation so they don't have to pay any taxes.


Another purpose of their protests is to tell the government to make more jobs. One of their protest locations was to gather on many bridges across the country to send the message to remodel bridges to create more jobs. My opinion on this is that these jobs will be temporary and what will these people do after their job is gone and all the bridges have been remodeled? Plus our nation is already engulfed in massive amounts of debt, so in order to raise money for these projects to create jobs the government would be forced to raise taxes. This is a little counter intuitive because sure you'd have a job (temporarily) but then you'd also have to pay much more in taxes.


Another reason for the protest is to show that they are angry at banks who have money to give out loans but they don't want to take a risk on anyone right now in this time of financial crisis. This is further hindering our nation from recovering from our crisis.


In Constitutional Law we are learning about whether or not the Occupy Wallstreeters have a first amendment right to "occupy" parks with tents and sleeping bags. The first amendment "prohibits the making of any law... abriding the freedom of speech" or "... interfering with the right to peaceably assemble". The occupiers' message of this protest was to occupy where corruption and corporate greed was occuring at the source. Therefore they are not actually camping, they're occupying which is a form of expression and assembly.


Do you think they have a right or do you think the first amendment doesn't cover the right to occupy wallstreet? Is occupying the same thing as camping in this case or is occupying part of their message - therefore part of their constitutional right.

Herman Cain?

In the news lately there has been a lot of accusations saying that Herman Cain, a Republican hopeful for the presidential nomination, has sexual harassed a few women. Just in one week, four women have come out in saying that Cain groped them harassed them even after they asked him to stop. In this BBC News article Sharon Bialek becomes the first accuser to speak publicly about Cain's inappropriate and un-presidential behavior.

Of the course Cain's campaigners deny everything about this accusations saying that Cain is certainly fit to be our nation's president and has never done such a thing to any women. But what is odd about this firm statement is that the National Restaurant Association (which has strong ties to Cain) made a $45,000 payout to one of the woman who made the accusation, who requested to remain anonymous.

This leads to an important question - Why would the National Restaurant Association make that payout even though Cain said firmly that he did not sexually harass anyone? Do they know something that the press hasn't been told about how honest Cain has been? Another question that arises because of this payout is - Are the other women just trying to get money by accusing Cain after they heard about the $45,000 payout or is there truth in what they're telling the press?

It's hard to tell where the truth lies in this situation, but my guess is that there must be some truth in what the accusers are saying. Bialek said in her statement to the press that Cain reached his hand up her skirt and pushed her head towards his crotch.

I'm sure that even everything these women are saying is false, this scandal has killed Cain's chances of ever becoming president (if he ever had a chance to begin with). Since he wasn't that strong of a candidate before with his under qualifications (in my eyes) I'm almost positive this sleaze bag will never become president due the severity of the accusations. What do you guys think? Do you think this scandal will kill his chances all together? Also do you think this will give Republicans as a whole a bad name and give Obama a better chance of winning his second term?

:-)