NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A lot of lip service has been paid to the idea that Occupy Wall Street lacks focus. The critics ask: What's the goal of these protests? Everyone wants something different. Which is exactly the point.Why it's not about a list of demands? That's an easy one - the "list" reads like a leftist's Christmas list: Investigate successful companies; send Federal investigators after "Wall Street criminals" who "clearly broke the law" (although no broken laws are listed); tax the rich; prevent corporations from hiring lobbyists; etc. There's a lot of class warfare rhetoric; there's a small amount of class envy; there's speculation and a clear absence of a grasp of basic economics. Sure, some of the demands are a good idea - like preventing regulators from leaving their positions and going to work for the very companies they were regulating; but overall it appears to be little more than a hit piece on corporations.
It's easy to trivialize Occupy Wall Street -- even as it inspires similar protests around the country -- by saying the movement lacks an end game. The group is trying to crowdsource its list of goals, which all but guarantees that no major ones will be set.
This isn't the 19th century and Upton Sinclair's jungle. We're perfectly free to work for someone else or buy someone else's products if we don't like their business practices. Folks have pointed out the dichotomy of the OWS protesters railing against "corporations" while they tweet on their iPhones in their Northface jackets. Some have pointed out that this is exactly what they *should* be doing - if you don't like the way a company does business, grab a bullhorn and tell the world. If they weren't calling for government regulation, I'd agree wholeheartedly.
And, again, there's another component that's missing. There's an entity that's sponsoring the OWS wholesale - the labor movement - and they are the biggest donors to politicians. There was a list of the top donors to both Republicans and Democrats, and labor unions in one guise or another utterly dwarfed "Wall Street criminals" in donations to politicians (overwhelmingly Democrat politicians to boot). If you honestly want to remove all lobbyists from Washington and politics, you're missing more than half the problem by ignoring - or outright partnering with - the effort of organized labor.
That's my biggest problem. Organized labor is helping with the OWS in a brazen, bold attempt to muscle the competition out - they want DC politicians all to themselves for influence. They watched as GM got a fat .gov bailout - and the union got paid before the shareholders. How's THAT for "Wall Street criminals"??? If the Occupy Wall Street movement wants to gain any traction or credibility, they've got to divest of the union influence and focus on *all* entities that contribute to special politicking in DC.
Otherwise they're just another tool of the DNC.
That is all.
4 comments:
Actually, BESIDES the Union Thugs, there's a Reuter's story titled "Who's behind the Wall Street Protests?" Answer: George Soros, the Billionaire Marxist. I'll send it to you for further details.
One thing I did notice on a lot of the signs is that a lot of the OWS protestors had roughly the same list of initial grievances as the Tea-Party, i.e. Companies that eff up spectacularly and ruin our economy do not deserve taxpayer bailouts, fraud should be prosecuted, the government shouldn't be subsidizing the finance industry, etc.
Of course, that didn't last any longer in the OWS people than it did in the Tea-party, and we're pretty much back to team-sport politics as usual.
One speaker in SanFran (natch) called for "violence" as the only answer.
Um, dude. Do you know the other side has weapons that have a longer range than your cell phone?
As I blogged when this first started, this is carefully orchestrated by the Obama re-election campaign. The intent is not to bring about change, but to assist in his demonization of "the rich".
You'll also notice that this has garnered far more attention from the obsolete media than "Fast and Furious". Or Solyndra for that matter.
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