One year after the meltdown, the executives who collectively ran the banking system into the ground rewarded themselves nearly $20,000,000,000 in taxpayer-funded bonus money.

Two years after the meltdown, the financial industry was spending more than $35,000,000 every month lobbying against any and all financial reform.

Three years after the meltdown, they lobbied House Republicans to bring our country to the brink of bankruptcy to block any attempt to raise taxes on people making more than $1,000,000,000 annually.

Today, these same financial vampires are vilifying our generation for being upset, and can’t understand why so many people hate them.

When you think about it, it is understandable why these bankers are confused.  They’ve been getting away with so much corruption for so long that trying to tell them that the system has to be fixed now is like trying to convince an alcoholic that liquor stores should be outlawed.

To be completely fair, a lot of these investment bankers do not believe their free-for-all “investment” tactics are corrupt in the first place.  A lot of them believe that their industry would better serve the economy if the government just eliminated all the rules, and left them to their own devices.  A lot of them don’t even believe that what they’re doing is gambling.  They think they’re investing money into the economy to create jobs.

But when you take money that customers deposit into your bank, and you use it to bet five times what your worth that poor people will indefinitely be able to pay their mortgages forever – you’re not creating jobs; you’re gambling away people’s savings.

Beyond the corruption of all that nonsense – this industry took $850,000,000,000 from taxpayers because they were about to disintegrate from the earth, and then used that to reward themselves $20,000,000,000 in bonuses.  Forget the fact that $20,000,000,000 could finance half of what the federal government spends on higher education, and let’s just focus on the concept of rewarding yourself a bonus when your bank breaks.

Anyone who worked for a bank that was bailed out and accepted a bonus that ended with the suffix “illion” would most definitely eat his own son.  And people like that belong in prison.

Which brings us to the third tier of corruption: why were these banks allowed to use taxpayer money to reward themselves huge bonuses?  Because people like (D) Senator Chris Dobbs were in charge of including that rule, but forgot to include it because AIG gave him $225,000 in campaign contributions after giving his wife $500,000 every year to serve on various AIG boards.

My parents are always confused about why the Occupy Wall Street movement is protesting Wall Street instead of the government.  But the concept I think our generation understands more extensively than theirs is how much our government is controlled by Wall Street.

And I don’t mean to say that we’re smarter or anything condescending like that.  It’s simply a testament to how much the Internet has revolutionized our ability to find out how governments all over the world really operate.  The same realizations are happening across the Middle East, where the Internet has enabled rebels from our generation to bypass state-controlled media and understand how their governments really operate.

I don’t think the Occupy Wall Street movement will end as dramatically as the movements in Egypt, Lybia and soon-to-be Syria – primarily because our citizens aren’t nearly as oppressed.  But I do see this movement as our generation’s anti-Vietnam War movement: when people realized on a massive scale how ridiculous it was to continue sending thousands of kids to die overseas for no strategic reason other than “fight the commies forever.”

I like the fact that our generation is occupying Wall Street instead of Washington, D.C., because it shows that we understand that Congress doesn’t write our laws – Wall Street lobbyists write our laws and deliver them to Congress where they come under a vote.  The occupation of Wall Street represents the knowledge that we know Wall Street controls our government, and we want that corruption to end.

And that is the reason I support Occupy Wall Street.

The OWS movement will inevitably fade like every other political trend.  But if it were to accomplish one demand, I would want Congress to pass a law that ensures “The Separation of Corporation and State” – so that giant companies will no longer be allowed to finance political campaigns, and install politicians that they can control.  Because we can’t even begin to fight the corruption until we stop the corruption from writing our laws.

It all started after my parents helped move me in to my new apartment, and my dad and I decided to walk through the Occupy Wall Street protest near the Denver capitol building.

Because my dad works for a bank, we thought it would be funny to take pictures of him standing in front of anti-bank signs pretending to shout angrily in support with his fist in the air (see pictures below).

After an intense showdown between the Denver SWAT Team and the protesters, we thought it would be even awesome to stage a Jayhawk fan among the intense emotions, shouting equally as passionately about his love for the Kansas Jayhawks.

We drove to a nearby Office Depot to pick up the supplies, quickly crafted a KU poster and picked up a Jayhawk finger from my apartment.  Once we returned to the demonstration, we waited for a stereotypical protester to start shouting.

The moment came when the guy at the beginning of the video started shouting angrily into a megaphone at a local Denver journalist, blaming him personally for manipulating the American people into supporting the invasion of Iraq.  By the time my camera was ready, he was ending his rant with the best possible stereotypical buzz words, and then Dennis started into his own rant…

“Kansas Basketball No. 1!”  He shouted, “Bill Self for Federal Reserve Chairman!  Five National Championships!  55 Conference Championships! …Missourah has won NO CHAMPIONSHIPS OF ANY KIND!”

Most people, including the guy on the megaphone and the journalist, laughed.  Others looked confused.  One guy yelled “Fuck Kansas!”

You can watch the video and pictures from the protest below.

The Video

Photos of Dennis Raging with OWS Protesters

]]> http://andygreenhaw.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/jayhawk-fan-my-dad-occupies-wall-street-in-denver/feed/ 7 grizzlar Jayhawk fan occupies wall street back story Jayhawk at Occupy Wall Street Picture 2 Jayhawk at Occupy Wall Street Picture 1 Jayhawk at Occupy Wall Street Picture 3 http://andygreenhaw.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/and-the-oklahoma-thunder-rolls/ http://andygreenhaw.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/and-the-oklahoma-thunder-rolls/#comments Wed, 11 May 2011 03:51:17 +0000 grizzlar http://andygreenhaw.wordpress.com/?p=3462 ]]> UPDATE: I took down the video, and I’m in the process of uploading the extended version, with guest star Cole Aldrich.  You can watch the extended version on Youtube (below), but the FunnyOrDie.com link leads to nowhere.

My friend AJ Steinle and I produced this video for his film class, animating PhotoShopped pictures from Google Images of Russell Westbrook, Kendrick Perkins and Kevin “Durantula” Durant.

He wrote the storyboard, and I edited it into an action-packed cartoon that accumulated more than 3,000 views in five days, and was picked up by the Daily Thunder.

“Don’t really know how to accurately describe this video, nor do I understand the motivation behind it.  Regardless, it’s awesome,” wrote Daily Thunder contributor Royce Young.  ”Basically everything you could ever want in the most random Thunder video I’ve found yet.”

We decided to upload it to FunnyorDie.com, where it has drawn 169 views and a 96 percent funny rating – as of Tuesday, May 10.

It jumped to the No. 5 highest rated animation of the week, and No. 7 for most buzz.  And if we can keep it in the top 20 of one (or both) of those categories, FunnyorDie.com could potentially feature it on the front page!  Disclaimer: The previous sentence is a total assumption with no facts to support it – only hope.

So click this sentence to go to FunnyorDie.com and vote “Funny” for our video (unless you don’t find it funny, in which case you can click “Die.”)

Independence approved plans to build a new high school gymnasium, and part of those plans involve renovating the old gym.

The school is now selling pieces of the gym to raise money for student scholarships, classroom grants, and exceptional learning and enrichment activities designed to benefit local K-12 students.

I produced this video (below) for her project, which features photos from the old gym.

You can learn more about owning a piece of Losey Gym at http://buyloseyfloor.com, which I also built.

The article revealed how a website called DecorMyEyes.com treated customers badly to purposely egg on bad reviews and comments, which created link-backs to the website, and improved its rank in search engines.

Google said in its blog that it was “horrified” to read about peoples’ experience with DecorMyEyes, and immediately put together a team to look for an algorithmic solution to this loop-hole.

“That team developed an initial algorithmic solution, implemented it, and the solution is already live,” Google said in its blog.  ”I am here to tell you that being bad is, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Google’s search results.”

Google claims its algorithm can now detect websites that provide extremely poor user experience, but it did not go into detail about how the algorithm evaluates these websites – for fear of informing people how to game its system.

I am definitely in favor of Google punishing sketchy websites, but being too sensitive to all forms of negative criticism could open a whole new loop-hole: allowing competitors to blacklist one another by spreading false complaints and poor customer reviews across the Web.  Hopefully Google’s new algorithm understands how to tell the difference between genuine reviews, and fabricated spam.

I made this video for a client who’s website was promoting online marketing strategies, and selling affiliate marketing programs.  The idea is, people searching for information about starting an affiliate marketing program might come acros this video, and then visit this website, where they can follow the client’s blog for more information – and hopefully make a purchase down the road.