The post Rescued from Real People, Boston’s De-Occupied Dewey Park Now Re-Landscaped for Passing Motorists has some very thought provoking ideas in it.

I’ll quote just three paragraphs.  You’ll have to read the article itself to fill in what came before and what came after.

So it was no surprise that the mostly young, idealistic and courageous occupiers were forced from day 1 to recreate government, to develop mechanisms to deal, face to face with drug abuse, violent/uncontrolled behavior, unemployment, homelessness, hunger and poor health.  It wasn’t all just marches and demonstrations and rallies and teach ins; it was also a daily struggle for human and humane survival.  And the fact this was happening was also a daily embarrassment to the city and a reminder of how badly our cities fail for so many of their citizens.

The occupation movement did not create these people or their problems — those who received the trillions in bailouts were far more responsible — nor did they  exacerbate any of their conditions.  Homeless, suffering people and conditions came to the occupation, and the movement did its best to deal with them.

None of those conditions are gone merely because tents will now be replaced with freshly mowed grass that almost no one will see or walk on.   The problems and the people who struggle with them are still there, dispersed to who knows where, mostly out of sight and hence mostly out of mind.  And that was probably the unacknowledged plan that compelled the good Mayor to lie.

I think the Occupy Boston movement was about far more than we imagined.

You hear about big losses that major companies suffer from patent and copyright violators  and the cost of theft of intellectual property.  Makes you wonder how much money they make because they have these patents and copyrights which most people do not violate.

The thought of posting this article, led me to do a little Google searching for support.  I found Patent Losses Trump ObamaCare Benefits which gives a slightly different aspect of the value of patents.  Just do your own Google search on “patent losses” for a whole raft of other articles.

If you Google search “intellectual property loss” you find articles such as Losses from intellectual property espionage: a trillion dollars a year.  Again, one has to ask about the money made from protection of intellectual property that the non-violators fork over.

I am not in any way trying to promote the idea of patents and copyrights, but what I am trying to show is the tremendous financial gain that major corporations and the “job creators” get from the government programs and laws of patent and copyright protection.  You’d think these entities would have some appreciation for the great benefit they are receiving and might want to pay some taxes to keep this benefit flowing to them.  What about the cost to the government of the courts and law enforcement that does help recoup some of the losses from patent and copyright violations?  Is there any appreciation for that. Apparently, according to what the Republicans say about taxing “job creators”, you would be wrong to think there is any appreciation commensurate with the size of the benefit.

Of course, any benefit to corporations and wealthy “job creators” they get from these protections is a loss to the people who pay the higher prices for these protected products.  This makes this all a double example of how the wealthy benefit from government, do not want to pay for it, and foist the costs on the other 99% of us.

If I were a wealthy person, I would be more careful about bringing up this whole topic of “class warfare”.  What if the 99% woke up to what the wealthy were getting for free and how much it was costing them to provide it to the wealthy?  They might decide the wealthy ought to pay for what they get or lose the benefit of the government sponsored protection.  If I were wealthy, I would shut up about this and be happy to take the free ride I was getting.

I guess the wealthy never heard the maxim, “Let sleeping dogs lie.“

I got a kick out of this political ad for Rabbi Jason.

As a bonus I’ll throw in a video about Jon Stewart’s War on Christmas. If the video doesn’t play for you, try this link.

Here is a story about Newt the historian. The article Palestinians tell Gingrich to learn history after ‘invented people’ claim is my excuse to comment on this issue.

In the article, Newt Gingrich is quoted as saying, “I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places.”

I have had this discussion with my Jewish relatives and friends a number of times.

I try to put them in a different frame of mind by trying to reduce this argument to something more personal.

Suppose a refugee, who had suffered great calamities in their life and had been dispossessed of their home, came to you and said, “I need to live in your house.  I don’t want to hear any complaints because you have the choice to live in many other places.  I’ll even offer you some money to sell the place to me.  On top of that, I will remodel and make this place a nicer place to live than you have. Now get out and shut up.”

There is no right answer for playing this suppose game. If you carry out this exercise truthfully, you might find yourself having a conversation with yourself about the merits of both sides of the argument.

We can lose our moral compass when we only talk about this group of people versus that group of people.  I hope that we can regain our sense of direction when we can remember that groups are made up of individual people.