This is an interesting article for many reasons. One is that it seems to address MY just-made point, that we've got class envy playing a huge (and despicable) role among the 'Tax-The-Rich' crowd. The article claims that that isn't what the OWS movement is about... and he may be right. OWS, the author says, is about stopping the CORRUPTION.
Okay. I agree with that. Who wouldn't? The problem is, OWS is overshadowed by Liberals who are simultaneously clamoring to tax the rich. ALL of the rich. Whether any corruption was involved in making them rich or not.
Screw that. We should JAIL and even EXECUTE the rich who achieved their ends through corrupt or criminal activity. But, that's only a very, VERY small number of people - even if you take the Wall Street wealthy into account. Americans deserve to benefit from their accomplishments - even if the benefit sets them apart, income-wise, from the mundane and poor who make up the majority.
Unfortunately, that majority tends toward economic incompetence and unrepetent avarice. As a rioting hoard, they may ultimately achieve their ends through acts more treacherous and immoral than that employed by ANY of the uber-rich, Bernie Madoff not withstanding.
And that's what concerns me. The corrupt are criminals who should be punished. But if we become a nation that has no problem with dining on the innocent, we will lose everything that once made us great. We wouldn't even be Americans anymore, except in name. What a loss that would be.
OWS's Beef: Wall Street Isn't Winning – It's Cheating
October 25, 9:26 AM ET
Matt Taibbi
Taibblog
Rolling Stone Magazine
I was at an event on the Upper East Side last Friday night when I got to talking with a salesman in the media business. The subject turned to Zucotti Park and Occupy Wall Street, and he was chuckling about something he'd heard on the news.
"I hear [Occupy Wall Street] has a CFO," he said. "I think that's funny."
"Okay, I'll bite," I said. "Why is that funny?"
"Well, I heard they're trying to decide what bank to put their money in," he said, munching on hors d'oeuvres. "It's just kind of ironic."
Oh, Christ, I thought. He’s saying the protesters are hypocrites because they’re using banks. I sighed.
"Listen," I said, "where else are you going to put three hundred thousand dollars? A shopping bag?"
"Well," he said, "it's just, they're protests are all about... You know..."
"Dude," I said. "These people aren't protesting money. They're not protesting banking. They're protesting corruption on Wall Street."
"Whatever," he said, shrugging.
These nutty criticisms of the protests are spreading like cancer. Earlier that same day, I'd taped a TV segment on CNN with Will Cain from the National Review, and we got into an argument on the air. Cain and I agreed about a lot of the problems on Wall Street, but when it came to the protesters, we disagreed on one big thing.
Cain said he believed that the protesters are driven by envy of the rich.
"I find the one thing [the protesters] have in common revolves around the human emotions of envy and entitlement," he said. "What you have is more than what I have, and I'm not happy with my situation."
Cain seems like a nice enough guy, but I nearly blew my stack when I heard this. When you take into consideration all the theft and fraud and market manipulation and other evil **** Wall Street bankers have been guilty of in the last ten-fifteen years, you have to have balls like church bells to trot out a propaganda line that says the protesters are just jealous of their hard-earned money.
Think about it: there have always been rich and poor people in America, so if this is about jealousy, why the protests now? The idea that masses of people suddenly discovered a deep-seated animus/envy toward the rich – after keeping it strategically hidden for decades – is crazy.
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Full article here - and you may enjoy the reader comments at the end too: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/owss-beef-wall-street-isnt-winning-its-cheating-20111025
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