Herman Cain tore into the Occupy Wall Street protest movement, saying it’s a conspiracy of unions and others to purposely draw the nation’s attention away from Obama’s failed policies.
Cain, suddenly one of the leading Republican presidential candidates, laughably characterized the protesters as anti-capitalists and anti-American and said they should unleash their anger on the Obama White House.
“We know that the unions and certain union-related organizations have been behind these protests that are going on on Wall Street and other parts around the country,” Cain said. “It’s coordinated to create a distraction so people won’t focus on the failed policies of this administration.”
This statement was bad enough, but then the former CEO of Godfather Pizza jumped over the line of reason and rational judgment when he spilled this ludicrous stream of unconsciousness from his lips:
“I don’t have a lot of patience for people who want to protest the success of somebody else,” Cain said.
Excuse me? You’re kidding, right?
This is beyond laughable and represents the apex of disingenuousness. The people who are protesting in the streets across the country are not begrudging or “hating on” the success of anyone. They are protesting serial corruption, unchecked greed and flawed processes that have bankrupted this nation.
I know that you remember Enron and WorldComm, Mr. Cain. Those were just two high-profile examples of executives defrauding their employees and the United States government, costing tens of thousands of people their jobs and their way of life. Those companies and others like them helped drive us to economic peril. This is what they are protesting.
There is a reason the courts issued judgments against a bevy of mortgage lenders, because they purposely steered naïve customers into sure-to-fail deals that helped lead the country into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. They are protesting the banks that, according to multiple reports, boasted record profits yet they are not lending money or investing in businesses. Yet the financial institutions are finding new and inventive ways to add on extra fees in order to hold our money. This is what they are protesting.
People are protesting conglomerates and corporations that continue to lay off the very workers who helped generate the increasing profits of failing CEOs. When workers fail, they get fired. When CEOs fail, they get rewarded with severance packages that could fill up a bank vault. This is what they are protesting.
If this is what you call hating, Mr. Cain, then you can add me to the list — because I am very much indeed a hater of unchecked corruption and “rewarded failure” that negatively impacts me and tens of millions of others in this county.
–terry shropshire
