"Wall Street" Is A Symbol - & It's Even LESS Popular Than Congress!

October 5, 2011 by Left in Alabama

A new Rasmussen Reports poll shows that 33% of Americans view the Occupy Wall Street protesters favorably.  In contrast, an ABC poll found that only 14% of Americans view Congress favorably.  Looks like the public is far ahead of the media and pundits: we know who's screwing us over - and it's not the folks camping out in NYC.

Yet still, the traditional media is having a difficult time - perhaps on purpose - articulating the issue.  Douglas Rushkoff discusses their dilemma on the CNN Web site:

Like the spokesmen for Arab dictators feigning bewilderment over protesters' demands, mainstream television news reporters finally training their attention on the growing Occupy Wall Street protest movement seem determined to cast it as the random, silly blather of an ungrateful and lazy generation of weirdos. They couldn't be more wrong and, as time will tell, may eventually be forced to accept the inevitability of their own obsolescence.

Yes media types: there are multiple issues being discussed.  That's because they're all related.  Sorry if your training hasn't equipped you to handle complexity, but this isn't an issue that can be boiled down to the false dichotomy of Left vs. Right.

Let's try to explain it in terms that even a cable anchor can understand:

• Corporations abandoned Henry Ford's business philosophy that workers should be paid a "living wage" so they can afford to buy the products they build.
• Instead, they dedicated themselves to pumping up short-term profits to benefit CEO stock options & stockholder demands.
• This led to "globalization" and outsourcing where labor was moved to countries paying lower wages with fewer worker and environmental protections.
• Concurrently, Wall Street traders concocted various "financial products" (like the credit default swaps that helped to almost bankrupt Jefferson County). Traders took the money and ran.  When the system crashed, they went to Congress with their hand out.
• Congress obliged, bailed out Wall Street, and the DOJ seems disinclined to prosecute the offenders.
• In the meantime, the economy slid into recession as the housing bubble burst and the market tanked.
• Our household incomes fell and Wall Street traders/bankers pocketed it and whined about government regulations that might stop them froom looting the economy YET AGAIN.
• Average folks lost their jobs, their houses, their pensions, their health insurance, and their hope for the future.
• They went to Congress for help and got....NOTHING.  And the MSM is surprised that these people are pissed off?
  

American workers work harder for less wages, lower pensions (if they have them at all), see Social Security & Medicare on the chopping block, and watch their "representative" in Washington rush to kowtow to the bankers and bail them out. 

Even as GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor refuses to even bring President Obama's jobs bill up for a vote.  If he's sure it won't pass... what is he afraid of?

Yes, media types, those kids out on the sidewalks on Wall Street understand something you don't.  The deck is stacked against American workers, Wall Street holds all the cards, and the GOP Congress is their bridge partner.

Watch your own damn news programs; it's not hard to understand.