Occupy Wall Street -- just venting

[VeloVT]

Bike parking is at a premium in the neighborhood around Zuccotti Park. Here's one way to solve the problem!

That seems pretty risky.

OWS has occupied our city park here in Burlington VT, and marches down the pedestrian shopping arcade at noon every Sunday. There have actually been quite a lot of people participating. While I'm quite sympathetic to the problematic lack of regulation in the financial sector in the past 20 years, the protest (here at least) feels a lot like your garden variety WTO protest -- some people who want to save sea turtles, some people with "no blood for oil" signs, a whole lot of people chanting "you got bailed out, we got sold out" (who seemingly don't understand what would have happened otherwise)...

Anyway, someone just shot himself in the park, and it's going to turn very ugly shortly. The right blaming it on the city administration not taking a stronger stance on the "park occupation", the left arguing (rightly, in my view) that this incident could have easily happened in any of the cities with active "occupations" and the real issue is gun control/the fact that concealed weapons are legal here. In any case, it was a suicide by someone who was, from preliminary news stories, homeless, troubled, and without adequate support, and regardless of the "side" you support, it is a sad incident and unfortunate that it will certainly be highly politicized here.

The news tonight was this, the Paterno scandal, the Dover scandal - pretty depressing all around.