... (I)t's clear that OWS (aka the 99 percent movement) is about a lot more than bongos, weed and the latest edition of Worker’s Vanguard. It’s about pain and insecurity. It’s about disappointment. It’s about people who were wiped out because they were laid off in middle age or got sick and lost health insurance. It’s not a joke. Any policymaker or politician who treats it that way does so at his or her own career peril.
Presidential hopeful Herman Cain, in particular, does not get that. “I don’t have the facts to back this up,” he told the Wall Street Journal, “but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama Administration.”
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Like most Americans, what grinds their gears isn’t wealth – it’s the scheming, fraud and manipulation of the system some people use to get it. In the case of Wall Street executives, the problem is not that they are rich – it’s how they got rich. More than that, it’s about how they managed to stay rich after their recklessness crashed the economy in 2008. So, yes, OWA folks resent some specific rich people. But that does not make them class warriors.
Full column here:
http://www.northstarwriters.com/2011/10/08/occupy-wall-street-protesters-dont-resent-the-rich-mr-cain-they-resent-the-fraud-some-used-to-get-that-way/