I've been distracted, working like a lunatic on revisions to Client Relations (I found an excellent writers' website by sheer happenstance - TheNextBigWriter.com - great bunch of writers there).
Along with being wrapped up in the Republican wrangling for the nomination (meltdown followed by meltdown), the near-daily debacles in Congress, the gut-churning insanity of the financial markets (up 150 points today, down 150 yesterday). And I'm not even mentioning the global stage....whew!
No wonder my poor blog is lonely!
But right now, I'm really frosted at all the pro-Occupy Wall Streeters who cheered - mostly from afar, not in downtown Manhattan - a bunch of purposeless people who trashed a private park for months. The "Occupy" people were protesting something (what, exactly?), without ever bothering to get permits. How hard would getting the proper permits have been? Seriously?
The protestors added to the woes of a strapped NYC budget by straining the overburdened sanitation workers and police department -- all for the sake of YouTube videos. While the secretaries, messengers, copy clerks, deli workers, shop owners - stepped over the trash and tried to ignore the media circus so they could get to work every day.
Their distant, armchair supporters across the country didn't have to deal with any of that.
Tsk, tsk, shame on me for having no mercy on the "unwashed poor." Wait, I'm paying NY taxes, among the highest in the nation - while the rest of the country dumps their "unwashed poor" on NY.
Wanna get a movement to counter the marginal but disproportionately powerful Tea Partyites? Have a simple, unifying purpose. Lobby for political influence. Organize to capture elections.
Maybe the 99% concept, which eventually resulted from the ogling media attention the Occupy people captured in the fall, will gain lasting traction in the political arena. Although I'm skeptical, given the lack of money, influence and celebrity (that's right, I said celebrity - Is Sarah Palin, on the opposite side of the spectrum - anything else?) support.
Where the hell are those enraptured, embrace-the-unwashed-poor, anti-Wall Street people now? Apart from maybe (finally?) realizing that their 401-ks suffer when Wall Street shudders, as it has been since last May?
They're certainly not paying attention to the latest wtf moment that lays out the searing issue that Occupy movement SHOULD have been about: Reversing -and strengthening - the regulation of our financial institutions and financial markets.
Sound dull? Uh-uh.
Even the pro-business commentators on CNBC yesterday were flabbergasted at the sworn testimony of former Senator and current MF Global CEO Jon Corzine before a Congressional committee. (Yeah, Congress was actually doing something - hard to believe, I know.) You see, at least $1.2 billion in customer funds has vanished - poof! - from MF Global, causing the company to go belly-up.
What happened to all the money? Congressional representatives asked him. They grilled him for hours.
"I simply do not know where the money is," he said. "I'm not in a position...to know." Huh? The CEO doesn't know and is in no position to know? Wait, isn't a CEO supposed to be, like, in charge of the whole company?
I'm thinking about all the farmers who hedged their risks against bad growing seasons, never suspecting that their funds were being gambled on European debt, and secreted away in the hinterlands. They've no doubt figured out what the "MF" in MF Global stands for.
So what happened to the pro-Occupy Wall Street people? This is EXACTLY what that movement should have been about: the wholesale, large-scale theft of billions of dollars by financial institutions, money managers, wheeler-dealers, and testosterone-tanked traders - all as a result of over a decade of deregulation and indifference by the SEC and CFTC. The prime reason for the widest income disparities (the 99% vs 1%) in the US since the pre-Depression Era.
A wtf moment for Corzine, but also for the anti-Wall Streeters who aren't paying attention now that the young bodies illegally camped out in Zucotti Park aren't posing for the cameras anymore.
There, I've sort of gotten this out of my system.
