The Right Wing Pushback to Occupy Wall Street

I came across this today on my Facebook page:



Only in America do minimum wagers fight for the rights of millionaires to keep their collective foot on the throats of the "have-nots."

A new website has cropped up called, "The 53%." This is a response to the Occupy Wall Street protesters, and according to their cute, little pictures with their signs, they seem perfectly happy working multiple jobs to make ends meet, pay for college and don't understand why the OWS protesters, "want something for nothing." (I put that in quotes because I've seen it on multiple signs.) Their failure to understand what the protests are about is painfully obvious.

This isn't about partisan politics. This isn't about Democrat vs. Republican, Liberal vs. Conservative. This isn't about getting something for nothing. This isn't about iPads or smart phones or new cars. This is about a matter of fairness.

These people are protesting the fact that Wall Street has the government's economic policy by the balls, with one party in their pocket while the other party plays along as well. Both parties collect plenty of coin for their campaign coffers from Wall Street.

As former, and hopefully future, Congressman Aman Grayson so elequently described in last Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, and which I'll paraphrase here, the people standing on the streets day in and day out are there because Wall Street basically wrecked the economy three years ago and no one has been held responsible for it. No one's been indicted. No one's been convicted. Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme bilked people of $50 billion in investments and retirement savings and that made the front page headlines for months. But $50 billion is a fraction of what Wall Street's games cost the country - 20% OF OUR NATIONAL NET WORTH - you and I as taxpayers bailed them out so we wouldn't fall into a catastrophic collapse. And yet here we sit three years later and absolutely nothing has changed in terms of their practices to avoid flirting with the edge of the financial abyss again. In fact, they received multi-million dollar bonuses for their efforts. Does that seem fair to you? Even GOP candidate Buddy Roemer (yes, a Republican) agrees with and backs the OWS movement.

Does it seem fair that Bank of America has decided to earn an extra $3 BILLION a year simply by charging it's customers $5 a month to use their debit card for purchases? Does it seem fair that Citibank arbitrarily raised credit card interest rates to 29.99% for no reason other than to skim some more of our hard-earned money before credit card legislation stopped (or at least slowed down) their loan sharking ways?

This isn't about hating the rich. I don't have a grudge against rich people. For those who earned their way and clawed their way up the financial ladder, good for them and their fortunes. For those who were born into money, well who am I to moan about it? But if I'm paying 28-33% in federal taxes, they'd better pay the same goddamn rate. What's wrong with that? Why should they pay less? Reinvestment for job creation? Please. Enough with the "job creators" bullshit. How many stock brokers create jobs? Why should a hedge fund manager or a stock broker have a lower tax rate than a teacher or a carpenter or a sanitation worker or a research scientist?

If you think someone playing with other people's money should be entitled to a lesser tax rate than someone who works as hard as the misguided person holding this sign, then it's time to recalibrate your moral compass.

ADDING... Although I assert this is not about right versus left, the title of this post remains relevant as the something-for-nothing-get-a-job-hippies-welfare-queens attitude of the anti-OWS voices screams of right wing memes.