Peter King, a right wing New York Republican congressman joined the growing list of Republicans condemning the Occupy Wall Street protests that continues to spread far beyond Wall Street with smaller protests cropping up in cities from coast to coast, and spreading around the world, but King's condemnation was especially amusing since, without realizing it, he compared the protestors to the American colonists who revolted against British rule.
In an interview with right wing radio host Laura Ingrahm, King referred to the Occupy Wall Street protestors as "anarchists" and a "rag tag mob", precisely the same language the British used in referring to American colonists who revolted against King George. He's now the second king to refer to American protestors as "anarchists" and a "rag tag mob".
King was also concerned that the Occupy Wall Street protestors were getting too much attention from the media, something he has no problem with when the Tea Party organizes protests.
Referring to the protestors as a "mob", King said:
"We have to be careful not to allow this ( the protests) to get any legitimacy," he warned. "I'm taking this seriously in that I'm old enough to remember what happened in the 1960's when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy," he said. "We can't allow that to happen."
The policies that King referred to that were shaped by the protests of the 1960's that he objects to were civil rights, equal rights for African Americans, the Voting Rights Act that gave African Americans the right to vote, integration, equality for women, insistence that 18 year olds who were old enough to get drafted and be sent to war were old enough to vote for or against those who send them there, respect for the global environment with protests against polluting the air and water, sexual freedom, freedom of speech, an end to social double standards, and an end to an ongoing war that killed 50,000 American soldiers needlessly because of egregious miscalculations by two presidents and the super ego of one, Richard Nixon.
In two sentences about the Occupy Wall Street protests, King summed up everything that is at the root of all liberal vs. conservative animosity and conflict. Not only have conservatives still not gotten over losing the Civil War, they haven't gotten over the 60's either when so many of the conformist, unequal, unconstitutional and narrow minded values they cherished were exposed as frauds and demolished.
Mayor Bloomberg might have a point when he says that the Occupy Wall Street protestors miss the point that it's the taxes these banks and Wall Street firms pay that help pay for the services in the city that benefits everyone. But Mayor Bloomberg misses a different point -- that it was the taxes paid by average working people that went to prop up these banks that were on the verge of collapse because of the sheer greed, ineptitude and incompetence of those who controlled them. Average working people saw their tax money spent on cleaning up the egregious and dishonest mistakes of bank presidents and investment houses and benefit the people with the multi-million dollar salaries, the people who caused all the problems in the first place but, thanks to government bail outs didn't lose their jobs ( a case can be made that many of them should have gone to jail much less lose their jobs), while not enough of their tax payer money went to saving their own jobs and the economies of their own communities.
The biggest point the protestors are missing is that the inequality and injustice they now feel is not the fault of the banks or Wall Street who are only doing what the law allows. That fault can be laid directly at the feet of Barrack Obama who, despite a huge congressional Democratic majority watered down Financial Reform and took out its most important provisions." Too big to fail" the concept that was at the heart of the tax payer bailout has not been fixed because Obama caved in to Wall Street and bank pressure, a pattern which followed his caving in to pressure from health insurance companies by dropping the public option.
It is not the banks or Wall Street that has to go. It's Obama. And the Republican majority in the House.
One root cause of what is ailing main street is that any debt, and many of the loans were based on something legitimate, needed to be reworked WITHOUT the bankers being allowed to declare a default on the customer who wants their debt restructured.
ReplyDeleteI am not going to argue the point that Obama has to go. He has. But the point that the protesters are making and hopefully will make clear to all is that the real seat of power is in Wall Street. The government is bought and owned by them and no longer represents us the voters. The two party kabuki merely serves to split the 99%.
ReplyDeleteObama was the shiny product Wall Street packaged to channel the mass discontent W provoked. DNC & dems merely responded predictably to the money they were showered with.