It's the Potato Salad, Stupid

I wrote a telling financial blog against Occupy Wall Street, so you might think that I have no sympathies with its kinder elements, such as the idealistic students and the majority of the union members at the protests. I do sympathize though, especially with how badly this movement's going to end for the just part of their cause.

Why? Because there are elements attracted to this movement that don't have the sense to understand that at a point you lose when you stay. Non-protesting Americans respect your right to protest, but not when you start occupying the banks we patronize, stink out our delis or make it difficult for us to work or use our favorite stores; thus perhaps, putting them out of business with your squatting and anarchy. You see, Americans don’t want tear gas in their potato salad.

Of course, the response will be, “Well these issues are more important than your potato salad.” And that's why you lose. Because the American people don’t care about political issues at the daily level, they care about their potato salad because 90% of them have jobs, and these you have to win, and you ain’t doin’ it.

It goes to a story that happened to Lincoln. The Senate wanted to look at the Navy’s private records. Lincoln realized that if the Senate received the Navy’s records, the Senate could then look at the President's private papers as both areas were under him.

The Senate was really after Lincoln anyway, as they were always intriguing against him because in the beginning, the war had gone badly for the Union. The Senate wanted much more power and hoped to find dirt on Lincoln. Needless to say, Lincoln didn’t let the Navy's records go.

The meaning of my story? To paraphrase a line from the movie “Hoosiers”, if you get drunk, take off your clothes and howl at the moon in the woods, I don’t mind it so much; when you do it in my living room that’s another story. And like the Lincoln story, when the American people figure out that Wall Street isn’t the target of the anarchists, they are because they're too capitalistic, too worried about their pensions, too imperialistic… You get the point; the movement will implode because Americans will mind that.

This doesn’t mean that most students and union workers are radicals. They’re the bodies that organized and well funded radicals waving false flags need. And it’s too bad because there are real problems to be addressed.

We lost 6 million manufacturing jobs under President George W. Bush. President Clinton was just as bad with the GATT and NAFTA free trade treaties which advanced to completion free trade policies both parties support, yet they agree on nothing else. Find this odd; it's called corruption.

The road we’re on is dangerous now and the time’s short for a solution. China exports to us now even high tech equipment in surplus of what we export to them. They hold 3 trillion dollars in American currency and have factories that our plants can’t compete with as things are now.

China has no labor protection laws, no worker safety laws, no environmental laws and no social safety nets such as the ones companies over here have to pay for, which lowers Chinese factory costs. In addition, China has a 45 % undervalued currency making their goods even cheaper against the dollar. They also illegally tariff our goods under other tax names knowing we won't do so because we have the rule of law; and they don't obey the rule of law. How will the American stock holders of those factories be treated once we are a second rate power? Could be like old potato salad.

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