Occupy Wall Street? No, I'll pass. Financial institutions -- with the one huge exception of that housing bubble meltdown which obliterated the middle class -- have been doing EXACTLY what they are tasked with doing: creating and maximizing shareholder value. Greedily, tirelessly, ruthlessly maximizing value. I wouldn't want to invest money in any bank or investment firm that claimed to do otherwise.



But there is a problem in America, to be sure.

Growing police violence against unarmed students peacefully protesting their abject future and atrocious student loan obligations.

Ridiculously high long-term unemployment rates that crush the hopes and dreams of an entire generation.

An emerging police state which searches its own citizens without warrants or cause -- at times even molesting and groping them. (This happened to me yesterday in a TSA security line. It is happening to others as well: just do a quick Twitter search for "groped by the TSA" at any given time throughout the day, and you'll see the shocked accounts from other American citizens who have been violated by these thugs).

A crumbling public education system and a transportation infrastructure that is 30 years behind that of emerging Asian super-powers (ahem, China).

The decay of our once prestigious and visionary space agency, NASA, and virtual abolition of our manned spaceflight program. No more space shuttles; we now rent seats on aging Russian spacecraft.

An expensive drug war that puts non-violent offenders behind bars for years, tragically destroying their lives and the lives of their families.

Is Wall Street responsible for all this? No, sir.

Instead, you should be directing your anger squarely at Congress. It has a 9% approval rating, the lowest in American history, for a reason:



1) This Congress, a gathering of power-drunk old multi-millionaires and egotistical media attention whores, thinks it is exempt from the rules -- blatant insider trading at the highest levels and legislating oppressive new laws for the rest of us that members of Congress feel they are exempt from: none of them wait in TSA security lines, none of them are subjected to the potentially harmful backscatter x-ray radiation that the new full-body scanners emit. (Europe recently banned the use of such backscatter x-ray machines; the U.S. has them in at least 78 airports domestically, with plans to bring 12 or more new machines into operation soon.)



Meanwhile, the 'everyday citizens' are forced to be exposed to this radiation, and to expose our children to it.



2) This Congress failed to do even the most basic task of maintaining fiscal stability, which led to the first credit downgrade in our nation's history since our founding -- and we're on the verge of another downgrade, according to some.



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