OPINION:
The “Occupy Wall Street” protesters think the source of their angst is the “greedy” heart of New York’s financial district. If these malcontents truly believed in economic justice, their hordes would mass at the gates of the White House. That’s where policies have been set in motion that assure Americans a future of deprivation.
This ill-defined movement of left-leaning complainers started in the Big Apple last month and has since spread nationwide. Among the lengthy shopping list of demands, one finds random ideas such as restoration of a “living wage,” universal health care and free college education. It claims to be “a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions,” according to one of the main organizing websites. To the contrary, drawing back the curtain on the unfolding drama reveals the usual cadre of radical leftist puppeteers who have been planning this uprising for months.
Last March, after the union-organized occupation of Wisconsin’s capital ended, former Service Employees International Union (SEIU) banking and finance campaign director Stephen Lerner spoke at a forum at New York City’s Pace University, where he outlined a plan to trigger a series of economic disruptions: “I’m not going to go through all the detail except to say there’s extraordinary things we could do … if we really thought about moving to the kind of disruption in Madison, but moving that to Wall Street and moving that to other cities around the country.”
In the last few days, activists like Mr. Lerner from more than 30 unions, including the SEIU, AFL-CIO and United Auto Workers, have stepped out from behind the curtain with their members, spreading the occupation to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Washington and dozens of other major cities. Celebrity leftists like Susan Sarandon, Michael Moore and Al Sharpton have dropped by to take advantage of the spotlight.
President Obama now joins with Democrats in voicing sympathy for the hot emotions of today’s protesters as he assembles the weapons of class warfare with his demonization of “millionaires and billionaires.” Protesters would change the nation for the better by cutting the liberal puppet-masters’ strings and taking their disenchantment to Pennsylvania Avenue, where the White House is assembling a permanent majority of voters all equally dependent on scraps from Leviathan’s table.
With the unemployment rate stuck at 9.1 percent and median household income falling 9.8 percent between December 2007 and last June, the only occupation that benefits Americans is the kind that rewards each according to his effort - with a paycheck.
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