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Occupiers Proving the Futility and Hypocrisy of Their Cause

Moderate/Conservative Response to Occupy Wall Street: March on Main Street



Many of those who choose to occupy Wall Street and other public places throughout the world are counterproductive. What is needed now is a movement to counter these occupations, and to do so in a constructive manner.

A Moderate/Conservative Alternative

Moderates and Conservatives need an alternative outlet to serve the mainstream and the independents. What better address and approach than to March on Main Street, but with positive values and positive solutions. They should emphasize that they represent the working people of Main Street rather than the jobless people and their sympathizers who are squandering time that could be spent upgrading old skills, learning new trades, searching for new jobs, creating new products, and devising new services. Perhaps they should focus their energies on active marches and demonstrations on weekends, when they are not working or doing what is necessary to obtain work, which they do during the week, instead of passively occupying open spaces and complaining all week long about why they can’t find jobs while they don’t prepare for them, seek them out, or work at them.

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Those who choose to march on Main Street should make it clear that they oppose greed as much as everyone occupying Wall Street, but instead of biting the hands that feed them, they should put their hands together, roll up their sleeves, brainstorm with their colleagues, and find ways to make the system more equitable. They should seek ways to extend a proverbial hand up to people without jobs or without well-paying jobs, rather than encouraging handouts, whether or not described euphemistically as donations, contributions, or even subsidies. They should advocate more job training rather than more job complaining, and more careers in the private sector rather than jobs in the public sector. They should go a long way toward solving the energy, foreign policy, and financial crises facing the free world by turning to drill-ready and other industries on and off (but adjacent to) our shores, with adequate safety safeguards, and in the private sector, rather than taking taxpayer money to subsidize illusory shovel-ready jobs and unnecessary and inefficient merit-undermining union jobs in the public sector. They should march for lower taxes and a simpler tax code, without necessarily getting an oversimplified tax code which would be sure to hurt even hard working people.

What’s Wrong With the Wall Street and Other Occupiers?

Although at this point many good people with solid American values have joined the anarchists, socialists, anti-capitalists, anti-Americans, and other bigots occupying Wall Street and other streets, boulevards, and public places throughout the world, many of these demonstrations are counterproductive in the following ways: Many of them rail against the whole capitalist system, in effect seeking to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs for working people to consume, instead of focusing on making it work better; they seek the downfall of the people who provide the jobs, and fail to realize that the rich already pay much more than the middle class in taxes, and the poor don’t pay any income taxes but receive a share of the money earned by the rich and the middle class, and if the rich will be taxed much more heavily than they are already, they will find loopholes or tax shelters or plans and planes to leave the state or the country and take the middle class jobs with them. (See also this writer’s article in an earlier issue of this periodical in rebuttal to Michael Moore’s anti-capitalist movie, “Rebuttal to Moore’s Distorted Portrayal of Capitalism, Canada Free Press, October 30, 2009”). Although there are many sincere, well-intentioned, and constructive people among those who are occupying Wall Street and other streets throughout the world, many of the occupiers are filled not just with legitimate despair, but also with often misplaced and misdirected anger and negativity. Many of them most improperly take out their frustrations, which may be legitimate, on innocent people who happen to live and work in the neighborhood instead of on the greedy people who used to work on Wall Street, and are now, incidentally, by and large, on Park Avenue and other streets. Many of the occupiers follow the opposite of the golden rule, not just seeking to eliminate the sources of the golden eggs, but also ruining the lives of working people by violating public laws designed for the public good, health, and welfare by day and in many cases by creating intentional noises at night, making it impossible for innocent working people to sleep and make a living the next day. Many of the occupiers cannot even bring themselves to be considerate to people who personally look them in the eye and plead for mercy in the face of the stench that emanates from the lack of hygiene and which prevents them from breathing through the nose, and in the face of the noise from the drums outside which assaults their internal ear drums into the night. How can such people have the standing to stand up and to claim to have the blueprint to making the world a better place for the millions of people they have never met who never even had the opportunity to plead to them personally for mercy, let alone for common courtesies? The people who occupy Wall Street are climbing the wrong walls. Aside from the fact that most of the fancy “Wall Street” firms are no longer on Wall Street, as noted above, the heads of many if not most of these firms are supporters of the party of President Obama and are being supported by President Obama with the most influential government jobs, so those who are now occupying Wall Street should be out occupying and picketing the Treasury Department and the President’s economic advisors who were free to do whatever they wanted to do during the first two years of the Obama Administration, and who instead took all the stimulus money and squandered it on programs that failed to stimulate the economy. If the Wall Street occupiers want the fat cats who misused the system and violated the laws punished, they should be down in Washington, complaining why President Obama’s Attorney General hasn’t punished them. One person they haven’t railed against, by and large, is George Soros, the former felon who was convicted for benefitting from insider dealing, the symbol of what is worst about Wall Street, who is of course supporting their movement.

Occupiers Proving the Futility and Hypocrisy of Their Cause

Those who claim the moral high ground and encourage the rest of society to share the wealth are demonstrating what they would or would not do with the wealth once shared. According to a recent article in the widely circulated Metro New York, The New York occupiers raised $480,000 within the first month of their occupation, while “Occupy Philly” raised only about $10,000 in this period, but once the occupiers of New York received a bit of the wealth, “New York protesters haven’t shared one cent with other occupy camps set up across the nation” (Metro New York, October 24, 2011). They welcome people like Michael Moore who rails against corporations but heavily invests in many of them, and hardly shares as much of his wealth – or his food – with as many people as he easily could. Many of the Hollywood celebrities share their celebrity, but certainly have enough left over to allow them to fly around in private jets and live in palaces that could easily be gratefully shared with jobless or homeless people or earnest occupiers who will really be left out in the cold as the winter sets in.

An Ironic Play on Words

Those who are occupying Wall Street and other streets are thrilled with the waves they are making in their occupation of these streets and other public places. How much better would each occupier be if he or she would leave this occupation and focus, instead, on creating or retraining or preparing for a paying occupation? The Wall Street occupation will get more difficult as the winter sets in. How much better off the current occupiers would be if they were to leave the negativity behind, do whatever it takes to get the best available productive work during the week, and then join the constructive March on Main Street on the weekends of their choice?


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Aaron I. Reichel, Esq. -- Bio and Archives

Aaron Reichel is a New York attorney whose writings have been widely published and republished, some in the U.S. Congressional Record. His most notable book remains Fahrenheit 9-12 – Rebuttal to Fahrenheit 9/11.

 


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