An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
OWS….You’ve Been Had!
To the OWS protesters: You’ve been had
by Anthony Martin
I have a message to the protesters engaged in the Occupy Wall Street movement that has spread to various cities across America: you’ve been had. You’ve been duped. You are being used as tools by extremist subversives who do not wish to merely correct some excesses on Wall Street to but totally destroy the American way of life that has led this nation to become the most prosperous in the history of the world.
A mere look at the movement’s organizers and high-profile participants tells the story: Communist Van Jones, Michael Moore, Jodie Evans and Code Pink, terrorist Bill Ayers, George Soros and his paid lackeys in Media Matters, Moveon.org, and hundreds of other organizations he has funded, and of course, the usual suspects such as ACORN and SEIU.
The fact that these entities are behind the movement has been well-documented and reported. This is clearly not a ‘grassroots, citizen movement of common, everyday workers who feel that they have been betrayed by Wall Street fat cats.’
Most of us believe we have been betrayed by Wall Street fat cats. But they are not the source of the problem. The federal government is behind most of the excesses that led to the near catastrophic collapse of 2008 and the monumental taxpayer-funded bailout that served only to reward their bad behavior.
Beginning in the 1990s, the federal government implemented a policy under Bill Clinton that, for all intents and purposes, used Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the government-established entities that guarantee mortgage loans for lenders, as welfare agencies. The government pressured mortgage lenders to give money to anyone regardless of whether they could repay their loans or not.
I have first-hand knowledge of this dubious practice due to the fact that for several years I had a real estate license. I know for a fact that there were mortgage lenders out there whose primary purpose was to get mortgages for the poorest of citizens, and their calling card was that they aimed for a 100% approval rate. Practically everyone qualified if they had a job, and some didn’t even have that. This meant that scores of individuals who did not meet the minimum income standard to repay their loans were qualified to receive multi-thousands of dollars in mortgage loans–loans that they never had any hope of repaying.
This cycle could continue for years as the money simply kept coming–from taxpayers. When home-owners ran out of money, they simply refinanced. The bubble continued for over a decade until the chickens came home to roost in 2007-08. Such a scheme can only last for so long.
When the money ran out of the housing market due to the near-collapse of big mortgage lending banks, the scheme was over. But instead of allowing Fannie and Freddie, and others such as Goldman-Sachs, Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan to collapse and pay the price for their sorry management practices, the federal government–Democrats and Republicans alike–decided to reward their bad behavior by taking nearly a trillion dollars from the taxpayers to bail out these sleazy institutions. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama participated in pushing for these bailouts.
Now tell me, who, exactly, is to blame for this? Not the Wall Street banks, for sure. Why? Because it was the federal government under Bill Clinton that pressured them into this false bubble to begin with. Mortgages are not meant to be instruments of public welfare. People are meant to pay back what they borrow, or else they entire system collapses. But not only did government create the problem, it continued the problem by bailing out the banks when they were about to collapse.
But of course, SEIU, ACORN, and Code Pink, George Soros, and Van Jones are not going to tell you the truth about the government’s role in creating the very problem they denounce by making Wall Street the convenient fall guy for the current economic crisis. These entities and individuals have a vested interest in making sure that government is viewed as the savior that can rescue the country from the evil, Wall Street fat cats.
Their view, as the mantra goes, is that if only we can give more power and money to ‘the people’ by taking it away from Wall Street, all will be well. This, of course, is coded language for Marxism, Socialism, or to be blunt, Communism.
I have news for you. ‘The people’ of this country are at home working their jobs, paying their taxes, raising their families, and NOT spending week after week in city after city decrying a straw man over some supposed unfairness. Responsible people with real jobs do not have the luxury of standing toe-to-toe for weeks on end with stinky, smelly, hippy-types from the 60s who have been looking for another movement to which to hitch their wagons for decades.
The unfairness in all of this is that the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been brainwashed into believing that the boogeyman resides in American businesses, when the real boogeyman is in Washington, DC–in the White House and Congress.
If the protesters truly wished to hold responsible the real perpetrators behind the nation’s current economic ills, they would be camped out in front of the White House and the U.S. Capitol, demanding to know why elected officials forced taxpayers to give a trillion dollars to bail out failed ventures that were implemented at the insistence of the federal government in the 1990s.
Pure awesome, Kate. But these are the ones trained by the hippies in ties to believe in the government, populated by the hippies in suits who emplaced themselves to perform that destruction. The books of “How To Destroy Capitalism” ALL say the same thing, get inside and sabotage. Why no action from Congress? Hippies in suits.
Ya know what’s weird? I was considered a hippie way back when, but I grew up, and my daughter isn’t out there acting the fool like these offspring of the culture. UGH! What happened to the grown ups?? Where did they all go?