Labor Backs “Occupy Wall Street”: Back to the (Failed) Future
I sometimes wonder if Liberals and organized labor leaders are speaking to this planet or some alternative universe, especially when discussing how to resolve the current economic challenges we face. At least that seems the case in SEUI President Mary Kay Henry’s missive in the Op-Ed section of The Wall Street Journal last week regarding why the kids protesting in the financial district of New York City should be supported (“Why Labor Backs “Occupy Wall Street”, The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, October 8-9, 2011).
Her trope, for the critical eye, is like fishing by shooting into a barrel.
For starters, Ms. Henry claims the New York City protests have “captivated the nation” and are “shaking our conscience as a nation and forcing a national conversation about everything that is wrong with our economy.” As someone who works right across the street from their playpen, I can say that I hear little discussion of it back in the suburbs and in my (Non-Wall Street, blue-collar) office it gets only a chuckle and derision.
Ms. Henry drags her narrative on by stating “while students, seniors and workers didn’t cause our economic collapse, we’re the one’s paying the price.” The dirty little not-so secret is that SEIU members, according to its own website, earn over $10,000 per year more than non-union members. Is that paying the price or exacting it? The fact is, she and her union are part of corprate America.
She goes on to say that Wall Street CEOs crashed our economy. Really? You mean they were responsible for paying the mortgages of all the people who willingly entered into them and then defaulted because they were over their heads (read: living beyond their means)?
Then there is her bill of particular that banks refuse to invest in small businesses. She may wish to look to President Obama and her Democrat patrons who are making small businesses skittish with the never-ending threat of tax increases as well a regulatory environment that is presently strangling the economy.
And, of course, comes the class-warfare moldy oldie: “the richest 5% of the population holds 72% of the wealth in our country.” So what? Just for a mental exercise, what if the “poorest” 95% who owned 28% of the wealth in a hypothetical country had a Ferrari in their driveway, and the other 5% were thus able to keep a Rolls-Royce in their driveway. Would there be some “unfairness” or need for the “proletariat” to feel slighted by inequities in our economy?
Ms. Henry goes on to assert that Americans watched in “horror” as Republicans held our country hostage during the debt-ceiling debate to win budget cuts. Was the American public informed of this “horror” that they experienced? No poll I have read about nor discussion I’ve had with anyone has revealed such a reaction from the alleged fiscal draconian measures that Ms. Henry implies was attempted on our profligate federal government.
And Ms. Henry wants President Obama’s American Jobs Act passed, after hundreds of billions of dollars of similar “stimulus” programs. Remind me again what the layman’s definition of insanity is.
Ms. Henry’s directive that we hold “Wall Street and big corporations accountable for the damage they’ve inflicted on us all” is the populist blather that in no way tries to solve the problem but deflect it from big government and the unions who created the problems. It also reminds me of what that great bourgeois President, Abraham Lincoln, once said: “You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.”
Finally, Ms. Henry goes on to compare the protests of the children in the New York City to various other groups of people who “change the arc of history.” Amongst such groups she mentioned auto workers of 1930s Flint Michigan and civil rights activists. I would also like to add, if alright with her, the air traffic controllers of the early 1980s (I believe Al Gore would call such an inconvenient fact).
Ms. Henry, like all Liberals, is a dinosaur and perhaps she knows such but is just trying to justify her rich paycheck. The bromides she offers are yester-decade and do not apply to 2011 (A.D.).
-I.M. Windee
