You poor kids. You are basically asking to be supported and taken care of by Mommy and Daddy. Wake up, kids. Wall Street is you, with all of your wants and needs and wishes, only they have the balls to go out and work for it. Sometimes they are crooks and sometimes they are fools -- but you know what? So are all of us. (Ben Stein – American Spectator)Time has named him one of the Five Most Colorful OWS Celebrity Critics. Among his observations are that yes, he hates crony capitalism too, but sleeping in tents and crapping in parks doesn’t really do anything about it. He wishes the protesters would take more productive steps like doing actual investigative work. As for the outrage at the greed, he observed that you might as well get angry at people for breathing in too much air.
7 Deadly Sins -- Why Stop at Just One?
"You know what the worst deadly sin is? Spiritual pride or thinking that you're morally better than other people," Stein says. "That's what the Occupy Wall Street people are all about; thinking they're better than other people and that's a sin, too." (Ben Stein – Yahoo)I agree. Have the OWS screamers looked in the mirror? Wrath and Envy are not pretty either. And why just focus on greed? Let's go after all the deadly sins! Wrath, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, and of course, Greed are all corrosives, eating away at our society and destroying our souls.
The seven deadly sins, or cardinal sins, are so identified because they are believed to be the root sins from which all worldly iniquities branch out. As the plethora of morality systems throughout the ages testify, these sinful seven have haunted our human existence since the dawn of time. The beauty of this list is that one does not have to be a member of the big three (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) to agree that they are bad. More importantly, if we could restore self-control to its rightful pedestal, we would have the moral authority to tell Big Government to go to hell next time it scolds us over salted french fries.
Make Yourself Useful
Stein used to write 7,000 word in-depth exposes on corporate fraud. "They were a lot of work but they eventually got some people prosecuted," Stein says. "They got some money recovered for stockholders." Stein offers that if the OWS crowd wants to do something helpful they should do the research necessary to direct and inform their discontent. (Ben Stein – Yahoo)I would be cheering them on, and maybe joining them, if instead of extolling the virtues socialism and using bank lobbies as toilets, they hired lawyers and went about investigating the crony crapitalists and the politicians who love them. Stein has posited the possibility of grand internet clearing houses of information where tens of thousands of independent investigators could submit what they've found. Lawyers and accountants could then collate the information and connect the grimy dots, shine a light on malfeasance, and perhaps get some crooks indicted.
The human bowel movement in the Guy Fawkes mask is losing steam anyway…
When Public Policy Polling took the temperature of Occupy Wall Street in October, “voters were split, with 35% supporting the movement’s goals and 36% opposing them.” As of today, the “split is 33-45, 11 points worse.” And it’s worse among everybody. The percentage of Democrats opposed to the movement “has risen from 16% to 24%. Meanwhile, both Republicans (from 13-59 to 11-71) and independents (from 39-34 to 34-42) have moved 13 or 14 points against O.W.S.” (Reason)For every thousand lice-infested protestors beating the leaves, there is one dogged investigator hacking at the root
Maybe OWS could grow up and make itself useful like Steve Croft at 60 Minutes. He's now braving a firestorm of criticism from Big Government's praetorian guard in the press over his expose on Congressional insider trading. See Big Journalism’s takedown of Politico, tongue bath giver to big government. That Democratic Party web site lashed out at Croft with an especial wrath, exposing it as the shameful purveyor of putrescent progressive porn that it is.
The first step to getting to the bottom of something is to face facts. The left has not yet done that.
Links to responsible journalists exposing crony corruption and congressional get rich quick schemes:
WaPo – Crony Capitalism Exposed
The Wonk Who Slays Washington
The Get Rich Congress
