OccupyFail: the "general strike" that wasn't

Despite claims of a "general strike," business, except for ferries, carried on as usual. As recently as a Sunday, Occupiers were promising major May Day events like occupying and closing the Golden Gate Bridge. They were going to have early morning buses drive protesters from several staging areas to the bridge. At the civic center staging area, a mere 20 occupiers showed up. The bridge rally was canceled entirely supposedly in favor of supporting union picket lines. Picket lines at San Francisco locations, however, appeared sparsely manned. The Occupiers did manage to disrupt some traffic downtown and further vandalize the city (beyond what they did last night). They had some assistance in this from City Hall: the police were under orders to "facilitate" Occupier activities. The facilitation did stop briefly when one Occupier started throwing bricks at people, leading to his arrest on felony charges of aggravated assault.

Let us start with the pre-event hype which claimed that the Occupiers would stop a major traffic artery:


They even registered the URL occupythebridge.org for this. This plan collapsed when the bridge workers union pleaded with them not to stop bridge traffic. Apparently, the union didn't think that it was a good plan to make enemies with the 100,00 commuters who use the bridge.

The Occupiers then decided to focus May Day activities on picket lines against the Golden Gate ferries. The ferry service preemptively suspended service that morning, making protests superfluous.

The first big event of May Day was the 10:00am march through the San Francisco's Mission district in support of illegal immigration. 300 or so protesters attended. After Monday's night's vandalism, there was a strong police presence and I saw no disturbances. I may post some photos from this rally at a later time.

At noon in the financial district, the occupiers held the major Occupy rally of the day, billed as a "People’s Street Festival." As the rally started, Occupiers held up banners across streets to stop traffic. Here, two occupiers explain to a truck driver that they won't let him through and, to get out, he will have to back up for most of a city block (click on any photo to enlarge it):

After they gained control of the streets, the occupiers started to paint slogans on the asphalt, as shown here:

You might wonder where were the police during such an overt act of vandalism? They were standing by watching. They were there in large numbers. Here is one of many lines of police vans present that the rally:
The police had riot helmets in hand but did nothing. A policeman told me that no permits for the rally, for the bullhorns, or for blocking streets, let alone vandalizing them, had been issued but that, to his displeasure, the police were under orders to do nothing except "facilitate."

These orders are not particularly surprising here. In San Francisco, when the occupiers speak, the Board of Supervisors listens.

The police did facilitate. Rather than try to re-open busy city streets, here are two policemen who parked their motorcycles in front of an Occupy banner to assist the Occupiers in stopping traffic:
The sound system arrived by truck courtesy of SEIU Local 87:
SEIU has a lot of power in California. They decide elections, literally: in many California counties, ballots are counted by SEIU workers.

This festival had a lot of street theater. Here, a flag with a big "99%" written on it is raised and lowered by the crowd:
Here a puppet is being assembled:
Below, a lesbian performance group tries to tame "the beast of capitalism":
As is typical of San Francisco rallies, nominally mainstream groups mix freely with the extreme left. The latter are represented below by the banner supporting the (Marxist) PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation) and the flag celebrating Che Guevara.
The Tea Party has been criticized for using the "militant" Gadsden flag, even leading to legal cases as liberals have tried to force its removal from public display. Consequently, I was surprised to find the Gadsden flag on display at the Occupy rally without repercussion. It was held by a man in an anarchist t-shirt:
The t-shirt, by the way, reads "Live like Jesus, die like him."

Tea Parties have also been criticized for having people dressing up in "silly" costumes. This even led to Glenn Beck recommending to Tea Partiers that, in order to be taken more seriously, they stop wearing costumes. Liberal marchers have never have such concerns. For that matter, you can see below one of the Occupiers dressed in the revolutionary era garb that is so favored at Tea Parties:
Below are two protesters holding signs proclaiming May 1st to be a day of "general strike" with "no work, no school, no housework, don't bank, don't buy":
By the standard of a "general strike," May Day in San Francisco was a failure. Overwhelmingly, business went on a usual. Not that businesses didn't try to be prepared. Some appeared to have a bit more security than normal, such as this Bank of America branch with two security guards standing outside:
Is that not a nice irony: a call for "no work" under a May Day "general strike" leads to increased work on May Day as businesses hire extra guards?

UPDATE: Zombie has videos of the SF Occupier throwing bricks at bystanders. See also Moonbattracker.

RELATED: The story of police complicity of the Occupiers previous takeover of the building at 888 Turk is here.

WELCOME to readers of Zombie.

Occupy Wall Street analyzes the Greek debt problem

At OccupyWallStreet.Org, they are outraged by the unpopular austerity measures being forced on the Greek government:

Wages are to be cut by more than 20 percent, thousands of civil servants will be laid off, and vital social programs will be severely cut. These laws punish the Greek 99% to repay the debts of the ruling class. The government has sold out sovereignty, the poor, and the working class in the interest of foreign creditors and the demands of the 1%. Bankers continue to make millions and corporations pay fewer taxes. The rest of society, having done nothing wrong, is being punished for the failures of the market. [Emph. added]

Is Greece bankrupt because of "the debts of the ruling class"? No. It is bankrupt because of the debts of the Greek government. What has the Greek government been spending its money on? You can find the data (in English fortunately) at the Greek Ministry of Finance. Their 2009 budget is here (PDF). On page 10, there is a helpful pie chart (click on the chart to enlarge):

Greece is bankrupt because it has been spending money that it doesn't have on "health and social policy," "education," and all the other things that left-wing governments spend money on. It is bankrupt because it is a socialist government and it has run out of "other people's money" to spend.

Occupy Wall Street is too busy hating on the "1%" to realize that Greece's problems were caused by politicians buying votes from the "99%".

Government health care is something to die for

In a peer-reviewed study(abstract here and full text (PDF) here), two researchers from the University of Pennsylvania compared US health statistics with those from Europe. Here are their results for 5-year cancer survival rates:

The US does better in all categories and often dramatically better. If you get prostate cancer in the US, you have a mere 0.7% (5-year) chance of dying from it. In Europe, it is thirty times worse: 22.5%.

Numbers such as these are always questionable because different countries gather statistics differently. Since Obamacare has forced the issue, however, we need to compare with the best numbers we can find. In this case, that appears to be this U. Penn. study.

Hat tip: Prof. M. J. Perry.

Occupy San Francisco!

When they aren't getting arrested blockading Wells Fargo's headquarters, the Occupy San Francisco protesters live in this camp near the San Francisco Ferry Building:
The red flag in the center shows Che Guevara, the left's favorite mass murderer. When asked what he felt about living under a flag honoring a murderer, a kind resident explained that he didn't know who Che was. However, he enjoyed the free food.

In the above photo is a sphere with sign taped on it which further clarifies the political philosophy of these protesters. A close up of this sign is below:

The sign reads "we need affordable housing, rent stabilization, no more slum lords, livable wages, [and] 30 hours a week." That makes sense: if you are going to get all that free stuff, why work 40 hours a week?

San Francisco already has rent stabilization (see the SF Rent Board) with anti-landlord policies and the highest minimum wage in the nation. So, shouldn't the protesters celebrate living in this worker's paradise? Must not have worked out like they would have hoped.

Here are two more signs. I'll leave it to you to work out what their policy implications are:
Below is the encampment's kitchen, which appeared well stocked with boxes of apples and bread:
Left-wing protesting seems to generate an extraordinary amount of trash that overflows all the provided trash containers. This view is from just off the kitchen and you can see the Che flag in the background:
Living in a park for months at a time with trash always overflowing is not always popular. The protesters blame the police:
Managing these protests is a lot of work. Below is the org-chart for the Occupy-SF protest:
Note that they have volunteers in charge of "gender issues" and "arts + culture" but, unsurprisingly, no one has volunteered for "sanitation."

Also note that no one has volunteered for the "finance" post. Would you volunteer for that post if you lived in a camp that demonized bankers?

Many ask: are corporations people? The sign below on the left tries to answer that:
It reads:

"I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one! -- I am the 99%"

Of course, corporations are executed, mercilessly, all the time: it is called Chapter 7 (liquidation).

Note the green sign in the center above. It was left by a Republican who brought it for today's anti-UN protest (see the post below). Is it out of place here? Will they notice?

PREVIOUSLY, you have seen this same park on this blog as the site of a Tea Party protest:
•To protest Obamacare, San Francisco holds a sick-in (Nov. 15)

PREVIOUSLY on Occupy Oakland:
•Occupy Oakland protesters are committed Marxists

RELATED: In Atlanta, the Democratic Mayor wants to clear the park of Occupy protesters. OWS protesters "don't want to restrict anyone's behavior" unless the anyone is driving to work in which case they are happy shut down the road. Zombie has an excellent photo essay on Occupy Oakland.

PREVIOUSLY on Tea Parties in the San Francisco area:
•Long Strange Trip: Hippies defend establishment; Tea Party protests (Jul 18)
•A Tea Party greets Obama in San Francisco and the left is not happy about it
•Collected photos of this year's San Francisco Tea Party events
•Minutemen vs. May Day protesters in San Francisco
•A tax day Tea Party breaks out in San Francisco's Union Square
•A tax day Tea Party breaks out on the San Francisco Peninsula
•3 in 10 Californians identify with tea party protests
•To protest Obamacare, San Francisco holds a sick-in (Nov. 15)
•A Tea Party greets Obama in San Francisco (Oct. 15)
•Videos of the October 15 San Francisco Tea Party
•San Franciscans speak to Nancy Pelosi (Aug. 14)
•The San Francisco Tax Day Tea Party Protest in Pictures (Apr. 15)
•Farmers protest in San Jose (Nov. 21).
•Tea Party breaks out in Palo Alto (Nov. 21)

Occupy Oakland

Steve Kemp and friends visited Oakland on Monday and came back with some interesting video of what the Occupy Wall Street (Oakland) movement believe:

At one point the interviewer asks whether capitalism is effective. From among the protesters responses:

"I don't think capitalism is effective at all."

"I think [capitalism] is a total bogus system. It is based on slavery and genocide"

"I think capitalism is inherently bad because it feeds on resources... it needs to keep feeding on resources. So, capitalism is not sustainable." [But don't try to take her iPhone away from her.]

In the 20th century, the human race experimented with national socialism and international socialism. The results were disastrous but, apparently, that doesn't bother the OWS/Occupy-Oakland protesters.

Separately, an e-mail dump obtained by Big Journalism reveals that MSM journalists have been helping craft the OWS message at the same time that they file "unbiased" reports on the movement.

US Postal Union Election Delayed After Ballots Lost in the US Mail

The government is beyond parody. Fox News reports:
Soon, thanks to Pres. Obama, your medical care will be delivered with the same efficiency and reliability.

Rule of Obama, illustrated

From Hope n'Change:

This of course refers to the Obama administration's response to the BP oil spill but will equally apply, once it is fully implemented, to Obamacare.

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of red tape and bureaucracies:
•By contrast with Obama, Russia works to reduce bureaucracy
•The belief in the intelligent bureaucracy
•Is having a big bureaucracy the same thing as food safety?
•Bureaucrats don't need no stinking facts
•Left believes government bureaucracies solve problems
•Karl Marx advocates government bureaucracies as being "intelligent" and "reasonable"

What Obamacare would mean

While Mr. Kane Gorny was being treated for cancer in St George's Hospital in Tooting, South London, the nurses could not find time to feed him water. In desperation, he called the police to ask for water but the hospital staff convinced the police that he should be ignored. After three days, he died of thirst.

On the bright side, because Britain has socialized medicine, Mr. Gorny's health care was "free."

Democrats and Taxes

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that yet another prominent Democrat was caught cheating on this taxes:

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and his wife failed to pay more than $239,000 in taxes over a three-year period and have had a lien slapped on their property by the Internal Revenue Service, public records show.

Dellums, 73, and his wife, Cynthia, 55, who acts as his unpaid adviser, are named in an IRS lien filed with the Alameda County recorder's office Oct. 14. A lien naming Ron Dellums was also filed Oct. 22 in Washington, D.C., where he lived for more than 30 years as a member of Congress and a lobbyist.

The Alameda County lien says the couple failed to pay $124,198 in federal income taxes in 2005, $66,554 in 2006 and $48,246 in 2007, the year Dellums took office as mayor.

Mayor Dellums' city is also financially mis-managed:

A city report projects a deficit of $18.9 million in Oakland's general fund by the end of the 2009-10 fiscal year because of revenue shortfalls and some overspending from July through September.

What it means is more painful budget cuts for a city that faced an $83 million budget deficit going into the fiscal year and had to cut an additional $8.1 million out of the general fund at the end of July.

Prior to being mayor, Ron Dellums served in Congress where he had the distinction of being "the first avowed socialist in Congress since World War Two."

Clearly, Pres. Obama should take notice and appoint Dellums to be one of his czars.

PREVIOUSLY:
Sen. Daschle caught not paying taxes
Rep. Charlie Rangel and unpaid taxes
57% of those who describe themselves as "very liberal" think it OK to cheat on taxes.
Taxes, Sen. Al Franken, Sen. Paul Wellstone, and Clinton's AG nominees
The rules apply only to other people

The incoherence of government health care

As illustrated by Glenn McCoy:

The future of health care under Obama

In Vancourver, Canadians are considering making their already long waiting lines for medical care even longer:

According to the leaked document, Vancouver Coastal — which oversees the budget for Vancouver General and St. Paul’s hospitals, among other health-care facilities — is looking to close nearly a quarter of its operating rooms starting in September and to cut 6,250 surgeries, including 24 per cent of cases scheduled from September to March and 10 per cent of all medically necessary elective procedures this fiscal year.

The plan proposes cutbacks to neurosurgery, ophthalmology, vascular surgery, and 11 other specialized areas.

The president of the Canadian Medical Association is aware of the problem:

The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country's health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.

Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country - who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize that changes must be made.

"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press. [emph. added]

UK health care is also in crisis:

Instead of improving access to NHS dentistry the reforms have made it worse, the report by the House of Commons Health Select Committee found.

The number of dentists working in the health service has fallen, the number of NHS treatments carried out has dropped and in many areas patients are still experiencing severe difficulties in finding a dentist to treat them.

Worryingly, complex treatments carried out on the NHS have dropped by half while both referrals to hospital and tooth extractions have increased.

This suggests dentists are simply removing teeth rather than taking on complicated treatments because they have become uneconomical to provide. [emph. added]

Of course, no such problems would happen in the US system because it would be run by the smartest leader in the world: Pres. Obama.

Hat tips to Shout First, Threedonia, Webloggin

RELATED on the subject of socialized medicine:
Statistics documenting the Canadian health care collapse
Obama explains why health care should be denied to seniors
VP Biden offers medical advice
"The Post Office, with scalpels"
Dems oppose affordable medicine
Socialized medicine in Japan: Baby dies after 8 hospitals refuse to admit mother

Obama wants to kill your mother!

President Obama has weighed in on health care for senior citizens:

President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.

In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don't unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."

He added: "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."

RELATED: Michelle Malkin notes that viewers turned away from ABC News' "unbiased" infomercial for ObamaCare and wonders "Who’s funding the Obamacare Astroturf campaign?"

PREVIOUSLY on the subject of government-run health care:
The Canadian health care collapse: 15 years of regress
The Flu and Federal Incoherence
Socialized medicine explained
Health care crisis faces threat. Democrats respond
Socialized medicine watch
Medical care and governmental control
HillaryCare will stop this: Canadian MP flies to US for treatment
In government we trust: Britons fly abroad for health care

The Canadian health care collapse

The Fraser Institute compiles statistics on hospital waiting times in Canada. Two of their charts show clearly just how much health care has deteriorated in Canada in the last 15 years. The first chart shows wait times by specialty:

12 of the 13 specialties showed increased wait times since 1993. The longest waits are for neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery. It is best not to have a brain tumor if you live in Canada. The second chart shows wait times by province:


In each province, wait times have risen dramatically from 1993 to 2008. Both these charts are for the wait time between referral by a GP and the appointment with a specialist. These charts include neither the time you have to wait to see the GP nor the time you have to wait for treatment after your appointment with the specialist.

Wait times, AKA rationing, are of course the socialist way of saving money. There is a human cost. Calgary emergency room doctor Grant Innes says "there's no question patients are dying because of the wait times. We just don't really know how many." Rationing may not even save money, as Globe and Mail reports;

Waiting for a joint replacement not only prolongs pain in the knees, it causes billions of dollars of damage to the health of the Canadian economy, a study released Tuesday by Canada's doctors says.

The study, conducted for the Canadian Medical Association by the Centre for Spatial Economics, found that it cost the economy $14.8-billion in 2007 to have patients wait longer than medically recommended for four procedures: joint replacements, cataract surgery, coronary bypasses and MRI scans.

That, in turn, cut provincial and federal government revenues by $4.4-billion, the report says.

“Time spent waiting robs the economy of workers, both patients and their caregivers. Time spent waiting also leads to increased costs on the health-care system, as patients need extra appointments, tests and medication,” it says.

Of course, one of the advantages of that single-payer health care would have in the US is that Pres. Obama is so smart he can make work well, as Scott Stantis illustrates:

Dems love tyrants

On a visit to Cuba, the Congressional Black Caucus fell in love with Fidel Castro.  Mona Charen reviews the situation.  A brief excerpt:

Rep. Laura Richardson (D., Calif.) was impressed that Castro knew her name and her district. “He looked right into my eyes,” she gushed, “and he said, ‘How can we help you? How can we help President Obama?’” 

“This is the dawning of a new day,” exclaimed Rep. Bobby Rush (D., Ill.). “In my household I told Castro he is known as the ultimate survivor.”  Funny how easy it is to survive when you don’t hold elections.

In Cuba, any talk-show host who criticizes Castro ends up in prison.  It is a place Democrats could love.

Socialized medicine explained

Callimachus explains how he views nationalized health care:

Paul Krugman thinks the Republicans are scaring me away from nationalized health care with the phrase "socialized medicine."

No, sir, they aren't. I like the idea, or ideal, of basic health care for everyone. But some things Americans just do not do well. What scares me off from the notion is not GOP sloganeering. It's the VA Hospitals. The public school system. The "Social Security is broke" crisis that comes up every two years. The Farm Bill. When I think of national health care in the U.S., I think of the Post Office, with scalpels

"The Post Office, with scalpels": I think that sums it up nicely.

Communists are still Number 1

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports:

China continued to be world's worst jailer of journalists, a dishonor it has held for 10 consecutive years.

By CPJ's count, China currently imprisons 28 journalists. In second place is Cuba with 21 imprisoned journalists.

In related news, the International Herald Tribune reports on China's continuing use of an old Stalinist tactic:

Local officials in Shandong Province have apparently found a cost-effective way to deal with gadflies, whistleblowers and all manner of muckraking citizens who dare to challenge the authorities: dispatch them to the local psychiatric hospital.

What the left thinks of peacekeepers

A protester, as seen by Zombietime, in front of the Berkeley Marine recruiting center:

The Jawa Report has more on www.bolshevik.org.

RELATED: Zombietime's hall of shame is here.

FLASHBACK: Zombietime explains how the news media crop photos of protesters in ways that change/cover-up the meaning and significance.

Venezuela's other major export: organized crime

Moises Naim writes about Venezuela under Hugo Chavez in an L A Times op-ed:

While this situation has so far been rather invisible to the rest of the world, it is patently clear to those in charge of fighting transnational crime. Anti-trafficking officials in Europe, the United States, Asia and other Latin American countries are paying unprecedented attention to Venezuela. These officials are not particularly interested in Venezuelan politics or in Chavez's policies. All they care about is that the tentacles of these global criminal networks are spreading from Venezuela into their countries with enormous power and at great speed.

The numbers speak volumes: About 75 tons of cocaine left Venezuela in 2003; it is estimated that 276 tons will leave the country this year. Before, the main destination was the United States; now, Europe is increasingly the target. Italy and Spain are two new important and lucrative end-user markets, ....

A senior Dutch police officer told me that he and his European colleagues are spending more time in Caracas than in Bogota, Colombia, and that the heads of many of the major criminal cartels now operate with impunity, and effectiveness, from Venezuela. The cartel bosses aren't exclusively Colombians -- there are Asians (especially Chinese) and Europeans too. ....

Venezuela appears near the top of lists compiled by the anti-money-laundering authorities as well. Money moves in and out, and not just through electronic inter-bank transfers. The combination of private jets, suitcases full of cash and diplomatic immunity has opened up new possibilities. ....

A group of Venezuelans had engineered the sale of Iranian arms and munitions to his country, using Venezuelan companies as a cover to bypass the U.N. embargo on Iran's arms trade. Likewise, the guerrillas in Colombia seem to have no trouble acquiring weapons -- many of which come through Venezuela-based arms dealers. ....

Diamond traders are doing equally well. "Venezuela is allowing massive smuggling of diamonds," stated a recent report by Global Witness and Partnership Africa, two respected nongovernmental organizations.

John Hinderaker writes "Communism is, in essence, rule by a criminal gang. So it shouldn't be a surprise that Hugo Chavez is turning Venezuela into a haven for international crime."

In government, we trust, II

Over at DailyKos, Kos complains about the difficulty that he has had dealing with the massive bureaucracy at Blue Shield over paying an out-of-network anesthesiologist. As a liberal, he, of course, expects that huge government-run bureaucracies, like HillaryCare, would be friendlier. If the problem is a bureaucratic run-around, the solution would hardly seem to be a larger bureaucracy.

He asks "[h]ow could a government-run service be any worse than these unaccountable, unethical, disgusting creeps?" Well, for one, he didn't have to leave the country to get care. Also, they didn't poison him. Yes, government-run systems can be worse.

In government we trust

HillaryCare update from the UK Telegraph:

Record numbers of Britons are flying abroad for medical treatment to escape NHS waiting lists and the rising threat of hospital superbugs.

Thousands of "health tourists" are going as far as India, Malaysia and South Africa for major operations – such is their despair over the quality of health services.

The first survey of Britons opting for treatment overseas shows that fears of hospital infections and frustration with NHS waiting lists are fuelling the increasing trend.

More than 70,000 Britons will have treatment abroad this year – a figure that is forecast to rise to almost 200,000 by the end of the decade.

Hat tip Bookworm Room.