'Occupy Wall Street' crew getting ambitious: Now they want to occupy NYC

Now they've issued a "Declaration of the Occupation of New York City."

All 500 of them? Actually, there were a few thousand marching today - largely because of a false rumor that the band Radiohead would be playing. But the permanent core who have camped out is no more than a couple of hundred; a far cry from the tens ouf thousands who braved bullets and truncheons in Tahrir square or Change Square in Yemen. And this particular protest is marching to police headquarters to demonstrate against the cops who maced the kids the other day.

This is just getting zanier and zanier. Mayor Bloomberg is deciding whether to let the show continue and for how long.

But the zaniest thing of all was the "Declaration" issued earlier today. I recall reading similar declarations 40 years ago when I was marching against the Viet Nam war.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

I've had this debate a million times with lefties over the years. Do corporations really "run the government?" If they did, we wouldn't have a clean air or water act, OSHA, MSHA, an EPA, 50,000 regulations governing corporate behavior, a EEOC, a SEC, or any of dozens of other agencies, departments, commissions, and boards that ride herd on American business. If corporations actually "ran" the government, they would have the ability to quash any legislation, or any regulation, and defeat any politician they so chose.

Do corporations "influence" government? You bet. And they have too much influence. They also have too much influence on our politics - as do labor unions, special pleading racial groups, environmental outfits, doctors, trial lawyers, and a host of other groups who contribute to campaigns or lobby congress. It is simple minded sophistry - not to mention addle headed thinking - to make the broad based charge that corporations "run" the government." They have a constitutional right to redress grievances as all groups and individuals do and they take advantage of that.

Surely we can reform the lobbying industry to take make it less corrupt and work in other areas to lessen the influence of unions, lawyers, doctors, and other huge campaign contributors including corporations. But there is the little matter of the constitution and the rights that our government are supposed to protect. Occupy Wall Street is not very respectful of those rights and has a childish notion of some of the problems:

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

No word about the deadbeat borrowers who reneged on their promise to pay back what they owe. Personal responsibility is non-existent in the world inhabited by these jamokes. A more accurate statement would be that they took some houses but that most of the foreclosures have been legal and based on the idea that it would be grossly unfair for some to stay in their houses for free while others paid their freight, keeping the banking system solvent by paying their mortgage every month.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

This is just silly. "Hostage?" Ridiculous hyperbole. No one put a gun to someone's head and forced them to take a student loan. And the idea that a college education is a "human right" is laughable. What planet are these idiots from? Let's just guarantee that everyone earns a million bucks a year. Or has a mansion to live in.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press

Huh?

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

Double huh?

Throwing a tantrum like a spoiled two year old is a lot less constructive than actually doing the hard, slogging work that reform entails. That's why it never gets done; the people who say they want reform are too busy posturing in the streets to bother. Or issuing grandiose, muddle headed, exaggerated nonsense like this "Declaration."