Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer

Activist Post

One thing I have wholeheartedly embraced about the Occupy Wall Street movement is the rejection of the divide and conquer control system that is the two party dictatorship we are subjected to in the United States.

Much of the protesters in various Occupations across the nation seem to have come to the realization that both Democrats and Republicans are bought-and-paid-for shills.

Yet the memo supposedly published by Wall Street Lobbyist firm Clark, Lytle, Geduldig and Cranford (CLGC) sent to the American Bankers Association (ABA) claims that Democrats are threatening Wall Street’s power.

To anyone even remotely familiar with American politics, this is absolutely ludicrous and wholly laughable.

However, this isn’t the only suspicious aspect of the memo that the MSNBC program “Up with Chris Hayes” supposedly exclusively obtained.

While the article posted on the program’s website claims that it is on the official CLGC letterhead, the formatting is not the standard formatting for a business letter, but that is by far the least suspicious aspect of the leaked memo.

The date on the memo is November 24, 2011, which means that the memo was either released earlier than was planned, in which case it is only logical that they would simply amend the date, or someone traveled back in time to leak it.

All joking aside, the memo is highly questionable because it seems to paint Obama and Democrats as some kind of anti-Wall Street body that actually poses a threat to Wall Street’s power.

If Obama had any interest in threatening the power of Wall Street, why would they play such a large part in backing his 2008 presidential campaign?

Why would the securities and investment industry donate a total of over $15 million to his 2008 campaign if they actually thought he had any interest in threatening their income?

Furthermore, why would they still be contributing to his 2012 campaign? According to OpenSecrets, the Securities and Investment industry has donated over $1.7 million to Obama’s 2012 campaign.

Let’s be clear: Obama is a liar. If he says he supports Occupy Wall Street, you’d be a fool to believe he was doing it for any reason other than personal benefit.

Yet the memo is attempting to present the possibility of Democrats and/or Obama’s reelection campaign supporting Occupy Wall Street as a threat to Wall Street’s power.

They furthermore claim that, “the bigger concern should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies – and might start running against them too.”

Again, this claim is nothing short of absurd. This memo seems to be pretending that what politicians say to get votes or short-term support is at all correlated with their actual policy making decisions when they get in office.

Most people that are a part of the Occupy movement know very well that money runs Washington and politicians are not going to put themselves in danger by going against their own backers.

Sure, they might utilize a wide range of heated rhetoric, but it always proves to be pure theater when they are actually put in the position to make decisions.

If this weren’t true then Obama would have repealed NAFTA/GATT, closed Guantanamo Bay, brought the troops home, ended the federal war against legal medical marijuana patients and dispensaries, etc.

Of course he has done none of these things and never will, just like we can expect any Democrat or Republican who attempts to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street movement to.

The memo cites a Los Angeles Times report which said that Robby Mook, the executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wrote an email saying, “protestors are assembling in New York and around the country to let big billionaires, big oil and big bankers know that we’re not going to let the richest 1% force draconian economic policies and massive cuts to crucial programs on Main Street Americans.”

They seem to be implying that “we” means the Democrats in Congress and running for election, which is absolute nonsense.

The memo claims that “they are certainly in the field right now testing messaging options and developing plans to deploy them” while never saying what makes them so certain about this conjecture.

They claim that the campaigns will “tar the financial services sector – and in particular high-profile Wall Street investment house brands – as being responsible for the economic problems facing the country and middle class Americans.”

They continue, “the Democrat half of the well-known Battleground Survey polling team, Celinda Lake, said: “It has enormous potential.”

It might have enormous potential if all of the Occupy Wall Street protesters suddenly forget the fact that the TARP bailouts were passed on a bipartisan basis by a Democrat-controlled Congress.

Both the Democratic and Republican leaders lobbied for the bill and more Democrats voted for it than Republicans in both chambers.

171 Democrats voted for it in the House and 40 Democrats in the Senate with 91 Republicans voting for it in the House and 33 in the Senate.

If you’d like a refresher, here is the complete breakdown of how both parties voted in the House and Senate.

The authors of this memo must either have a horrible memory or assume the American public can’t remember what happened in October of 2008.

The memo claims that the Occupy Wall Street movement should be treated like an organized competitor who is working with the media, is capable of coordinating third party support and even getting current office holders to do their bidding.

I wish this was true but at this stage that is far from reality, especially the part about “engaging officer holders to do their bidding.”

Office holders clearly couldn’t care less about what the people of the United States think or else this wouldn’t be going on to begin with.

Furthermore, “coordinating third party support” is less than a threat to the entrenched two party dictatorship we have here in America.

The memo claims that the only way to combat this alleged threat to Wall Street is to do the same by, “Putting the cornerstone elements of a plan in place right now” in order to “respond quickly and collectively at the earliest and most influential point”.

Interestingly, this paragraph, on the top of the second page of the memo has a major formatting error in which two blank lines appear in the middle of a paragraph.

Would a supposedly powerful Washington lobby like CLGC have such an obvious and amateur error in a document that is meant to build support for a campaign costing more than three-quarters of a million dollars?

Perhaps, but that would mean CLGC is incredibly incompetent, as would placing the date of November 24th on the document when it was released on the 18th or 19th.

I find it quite interesting that MSNBC failed to point out the date along with the major formatting error in what would be a quite important proposal.

Keep in mind that this is asking for the ABA to pay CLGC $850,000 and I make fewer errors posting on End the Lie where I get paid nothing.

I find it hard to believe that CLGC wouldn’t even glance at a proposal for $850,000 before sending it out, but to be fair, anything is possible.

They propose the following measures to counteract the supposed threat from the Democrats, “survey research and message testing, opposition research, targeted social media monitoring, coalition planning, and advertising creative and placement strategy development.”

They go on to identify key states for survey research including Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada and New Mexico.

In delving into the “opposition research” the memo says that it is crucial to identify who is funding the Occupy Wall Street movement along with their backgrounds and motivations.

They mention George Soros, as if he would have any interest in actually threatening the Wall Street power, which is laughable for anyone familiar with his projects which regularly shill for the Democrats.

They say their research into the opposition “will produce an analysis of OWS backers and funders, extremist leaders, policy positions, and rhetoric for the development of strategic polling and messaging.”

They also plan to create “fact-based negative narratives” of the movement, as if the establishment media isn’t doing a bang-up job of that already.

They plan for these “fact-based negative narratives” to focus on “high impact media placement to expose the backers behind this movement.”

You can expose the backers all you’d like but it will not change the fact that it is a diffuse, leaderless movement with varying goals, diverse political backgrounds and usually a clear repudiation of the two party paradigm.

They claim they will conduct “comprehensive media analysis of OWS and their leaders” which indicates, once again, that CLGC is woefully uninformed about the reality of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the offshoots around the nation.

They continue to say that they will conduct “records search and obtainable open records requests of leaders’ histories including civil and criminal information, litigation history, tax liens, bankruptcies, judgments, and other associations” once again proving themselves ignorant.

In a leaderless movement, who is going to care what they dig up on certain members? If it is truly distasteful enough for the movement to disapprove of such an individual being involved, I hope that they would simply say, “Get lost,” and be done with it.

They also promote monitoring social media in order to dig up “extreme language and ideas that put its most ardent supporters at odds with mainstream Americans.”

This has been attempted time and time again in order to delegitimize the Occupy Wall Street movement and it continues to fall far short of the mark.

We saw similar tactics when the movement first began in New York when the establishment media would only focus on people dressed up in wacky costumes or purposefully interview ignorant protesters.

You can do this all you’d like but many Americans are coming to the realization that Occupy Wall Street could very well represent a truly populist movement that by nature cannot be stopped just because of a few extremist members.

Under their section on “coalition planning” CLGC points out that the specific corporations being targeted by Occupy Wall Street will not be suitable spokespeople.

The memo states, “A big challenge is to demonstrate that these companies still have political strength and that making them a political target will carry a severe political cost.”

This, once again, is attempting to create the false narrative that Democrats would actually fight these corporations were they to be put in office which is demonstrably untrue.

The Democrats, just like the Republicans, will continue to go where the money is and no amount of rhetoric or promises will change that, and I believe that much of the Occupy movement is well aware of this.

The CLGC says that they will create a report which identifies “traditional and non-traditional allies, intellectual support and politically important economic footprints that could ultimately form the basis of a broad coalition”.

They go on to advocate using research to create “hard-hitting, compelling creative [advertising] that can move numbers, combat OWS messages and provide cover for political figures who defend the industry.”

Of course, as politicians demonstrate time and time again, they all defend these industries behind closed doors and will continue to do so as long as they have money.

CLGC has not commented on the memo but the ABA’s spokesman Jeff Sigmund confirmed that they received the proposal.

In a statement to the MSNBC program Sigmund said, “Our Government Relations staff did receive the proposal – it was unsolicited and we chose not to act on it in any way.”

On the program itself Obama’s campaign adviser Anita Dunn claimed that Obama wasn’t too close to Wall Street saying, “If that’s the case, why were tough financial reforms passed over party line Republican opposition?”

This statement is even more bizarre than the claim made by spokesman for Speaker of the House John Boehner who attempted to counter the characterization of Republicans as Wall Street defenders by pointing out Obama’s massive Wall Street support in both campaigns.

Keep in mind that the bill that essentially repealed the Glass-Steagall Act which helped to enable the financial crises was brought up in the Senate by two Republicans, Phil Gramm of Texas and Jim Leach of Iowa.

In the House, the bill was passed with a bipartisan 343-86 vote, showing that both Republicans and Democrats serve their bankster masters just like they serve the defense contractors that lobby with just as much, and in some cases, more money than the financial industry.

In a recent article covering the SEIU’s campaign to co-opt Occupy Wall Street, Glenn Greenwald exposes the fact that the Democrats are indeed just as much a party of the rich as the Republicans.

Indeed he points out that the false narrative advanced by the SEIU that the Democrats and Obama are working to bring about changes that benefit the 99% “is so self-evidently false as to be insulting.”

In the following paragraph he presents so much hard evidence of this fact that I would be doing my readers a disservice by not posting it in its entirety:

The ultimate point is that the memo is reinforcing the completely false manufactured left vs. right paradigm that has been proven thousands of times over to be a ruse meant to divide and conquer the American people.

The continuity of agenda between both parties is undeniable and the Occupy Wall Street movement, at least from what I have gathered, realizes this and is rejecting it across the board.

Indeed this is exactly what is required to bring any real change to this nation and it appears that many activists have come to this revelation themselves.

This memo could very well have been faked in order to drum up false support for the Democrats, giving the ludicrous impression that they are actually a threat to the criminals on Wall Street.

If it is indeed real, it just proves how astoundingly inutile CLGC really is and how deluded and divorced from reality the corrupt bureaucrats in Washington have become.

Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at [email protected]