In case you've been out of the media loop this weekend - or frankly, even if you have been paying attention to much of the mainstream media - you may have only begun to hear about the Occupy Wall Street protests currently happening in New York, and beginning to spread around the country. We've said for some time that these kinds of events were likely to happen here in America and, once again, we're sadly correct.
While we're not in favor of mob rule, or thinly veiled attempts by police to cage, trap, and arrest protestors with legitimate grievances, we tend to agree with the protestors that it's high time someone focused on the white-collar criminals on Wall Street. While these "masters of the universe" have been sipping champagne from their balconies as they point and laugh at the Occupy protestors, they've been continuing to use the letter of America's economic laws to gut the spirit of those same laws - just as they've gutted the spirits, rights, and bank accounts of America's middle and working classes.
The methods of payback suggested by some - like comedienne Roseanne Barr, who said over the weekend that bankers and Wall Street Types should be guillotined for the damage they've done to our economy - are extreme. That kind of violent rhetoric, while it may feel good, really has no place in a modern, civilized discussion in the media.
That said, we fully agree that retribution of some kind is not only likely by the aggrieved in America's working classes, but warranted.
The fact is, while the myriad different factions that seem to upmake up the Occupy Wall Street contingent are using a somewhat ineffective decision-making method, and they've yet to officially coalesce on a single goal, they have no lack of ideas. Some of their ideas have been echoed by mainstream media figures, like imposing a financial transactions tax, or closing the carried interest loopholes (which allow the ultra-rich to effectively put off paying income taxes on their investments until the third Monday of never).
We think the Occupy movement should listen to the message that some progressive media and labor leaders have been trying to guide the Occupy protestors towards - to get money out of politics.
Even the most insane members of the Tea Party seemed to understand that a simple, basic message was needed to unite all their various factions. We're certain that the millions of dollars of right-wing corporate astroturf money and professional political and media guidance helped the Tea Partiers come up with their primary message, that Americans were taxed enough already (T.E.A.). While the facts continue to prove the Tea Partiers wrong on that issue, the lesson that can be learned from their movement is a basic rule of effective mass communications: have a simple message and stick with it.
That message should be "get money out of politics."
As we've pointed out more than once, even Warren Buffett has acknowledged multiple times that, "There’s been class warfare for the last 20 years, and my class has won." As Buffett has elaborated, his class has won because they've basically bought the laws and legislators, on all levels, that have given the wealthy an unfair advantage over the other 98% of Americans.
That unfair advantage could be significantly leveled if the Occupy protestors followed the message we’ve mentioned above, to “get money out of politics.” To that end, former Wall Street trader, and corporate media figure Dylan Ratigan and other media figures - including our own webmaster - have begun supporting a constitutional amendment to do just that.
Getting the money out of politics won't be easy to do well or correctly. Then again, nothing worth doing is.
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