Occupy Wall St. Is Not Political and Doesn't Want To Be

I haven't written much (one item actually) about the Occupy Wall St. protests that appear to be spreading across the nation.  My neglect has largely been because this blog isn't a social movement facilitator.  As much as anyone would like it to be, it's not.  It's just an opinion blog like thousands of others on the web.  To a larger extent, I haven't written much about the protests because I don't know who or what they are.  Sure I can empathize with them when it comes to paying bills but as far as much else, I live in the middle of the country where such movements are the last thing you tend to jump into.

What I do know is the protest is a long time coming.  Almost 3 years ago to the day the Bush administration signed an $800 billion piece of legislation known as TARP that effectively bailed out the Wall St. fat cats.  In addition, trillions of tax payer dollars have been poured into Wall St. in the form of very low interest loans which will rarely get repaid.  The result did rescue the economy from collapse but it also financed the greed of Wall Street. Millionaire CEO's are pulling in the largest salaries and bonuses in history. The rich are getting richer and the rest of America is stagnant or falling behind.  All of that is recipe for the majority to finally make some waves.

The movement seems to have no ties to the left and certainly none to the right.  What you can clearly see are the people involved want equal treatment and a fair shake at life.  Bailing out the rich while ignoring the vast majority of America is not an attribute most people, especially Americans, embrace. That in and of itself does nothing for movement politics.  But politics is not at all what the people protesting care about.  Politics is what gave us TARP in the first place.  Politics is what has allowed the richest 1% of Americans to keep getting richer.  The last thing Occupy Wall Street wants to do is turn into a political movement lining up candidates for election.  So far, that's a good thing.

*Update:

So who are the top 1% everybody is so mad at?  Tax Policy Center has the numbers.

• The top 1% of American earners have an average yearly income of $1.5 million.
• The top 0.1% of American earners have an average yearly income of $6.7 million.

Suffice to say I'm not in either group.

Don't confuse this, though, with the notion that people are mad that the 1% are rich.  No one is saying that it's not fair the rich are rich and I'm not.  And no one is saying take from the rich to give to the poor.  What the Occupy Wall St. movement is saying is that the top 1% have been unfairly given tax payer money (TARP and various other bailouts over the last 3 years) to make themselves richer while 99% of Americans have received no such help.