Why Are OWS Protesters Repeating White House Talking Points?

“Make the rich pay their fair share” is an Obama campaign slogan, and his new tax rule won’t even affect the rich

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Many people have rightly pointed out that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are a diverse bunch with different beliefs, and as such have no single set list of demands. However, the one message that has been embraced by the majority of demonstrators is to “make the rich pay their fair share,” which has also been a consistently repeated talking point out of the Obama White House.

The problem with the so-called “Buffett tax rule,” or making the rich “pay their fair share,” which both the Obama administration and OWS protesters have jointly advocated, is that it will do nothing to “make the rich pay their fair share,” and everything to bankrupt middle class businesses, the lifeblood of the American economy.

As the Wall Street Journal reported, the Buffett tax rule, which White House Spokesman Jim Carney made it clear the Obama administration was behind, would mostly impact the middle class, not Warren Buffett or Wall Street corporations.

“Roughly 90% of the tax filers who would pay more under Mr. Obama’s plan aren’t millionaires, and 99.99% aren’t billionaires,” pointed out the WSJ analysis.

An excellent article by Chuck Norris highlights numerous different examples of where “pay their fair share” has become a White House talking point.

From a Sept. 19, 2011, press statement from the White House’s Office of the Secretary concerning the “Fact Sheet: Living Within Our Means and Investing in the Future – The President’s Plan for Economic Growth and Deficit Reduction”: “… asking the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share. …”

From a Sept. 20, 2011, White House Rural Council blog post, titled, “Lessons from the Farm to Strengthen America,” written by Tom Vilsack, secretary of agriculture: “For agriculture, the plan focuses on what the President and I believe is one of the most pressing challenges facing producers right now … safety net and creating a better market for our agricultural goods. And it sets us on a path to compete by asking everyone to pay their fair share. …”

From an Aug. 4, 2011, post on the White House blog, titled, “All about the so-called ‘Super Committee’” and created by Jon Carson, who is deputy assistant to president and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement: “… asking millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share.”

From the July 9, 2011, “Statement from White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer on Budget Negotiations”: “We need a balanced approach that asks the very wealthiest and special interests to pay their fair share as well, and we believe the American people agree.”

These are just four out of a plethora of examples where the Wall Street-funded Obama administration has adopted the slogan “pay their fair share” as a talking point, despite the fact that Obama’s tax plan does nothing to make the ultra-rich “pay their fair share,” because the burden will fall on the middle class.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

As the WSJ analysis documents, people like Warren Buffet and the top corporations reduce their tax burden by parking their wealth in offshore havens and exploiting other loopholes that don’t exist for middle class Americans.

In mimicking this “pay their fair share” talking point, the Occupy Wall Street protesters are allowing their message to be subverted by the Obama White House, which is itself a creature of Wall Street.

Obama has deliberately adopted a populist gimmick in calling to “tax the rich,” even as his 2012 run is reliant on Wall Street for financing even more so than four years ago.

“Obama has even added new Wall Streeters who did not work for him in 2008, including former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine, Evercore Partners executive Charles Myers, Greenstreet Real Estate Partners CEO Steven Green, and Azita Raji, a former investment banker for JPMorgan,” according to a study by the Center for Responsive Politics.

We really need to educate the OWS protesters that supporting Obama’s new tax agenda will do nothing to touch the very Wall Street institutions that financed his 2008 presidential campaign – the likes of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan – it will only cripple smaller businesses and increase unemployment in America.

The Buffett tax rule is also being promoted by MoveOn.org, a Democratic Party front group that has aggressively lobbied in support of Obama and his policies. The organization has also announced its intention to become involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement. For a group that is little more than a soapbox for the Wall Street-financed Obama administration to suddenly proclaim its support for anti-Wall Street protesters and attempt to define their message stinks of subversion

OWS protesters need to keep their promise to stay non-partisan and not be fooled into advocating the same policies that the Wall Street-backed Obama administration is itself aggressively pursuing.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

This article was posted: Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 5:23 am

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