RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Promethean rebels of Occupy Wall Street – who somehow think that pooping on police cars is truly “sticking it to the man” – are now marching on the individual homes of the super-wealthy.  They’ve finally realized that sitting outside buildings on Wall Street is a worthless tactic, so they’re going uptown: to sit at the homes of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, David Koch (Koch Industries), John Paulson (Paulson & Co.), Howard Milstein (New York Private Bank & Trust), and Rupert Murdoch (News Corp.).  Why exactly aren’t they sitting outside the house of President Obama, who backstops all the malfeasance on Wall Street with our taxpayer dollars?  The answer’s simple: they’re socialists, silly, and they know an ally when they see one.

Watching losers complain about rich people is amusing enough.  But adding to the spectacle are members of the entertainment industry, who are mobilizing behind the Occupy Wall Street crowd.  It started with Roseanne Barr, who suggested that anyone with a net worth of more than $100 million who insisted on keeping his or her wealth should be beheaded.  One wonders what she would say to Marcy Carsey, creator of Roseanne, who is worth approximately $600 million.  And why exactly did Roseanne set the bar at $100 million?  Maybe because it allows her—net worth reportedly approximately $80 million – to be grandmothered in?

Then there’s Kanye West, who showed up at Occupy Wall Street to tell Taylor Swift that Beyonce should be there – oh, sorry, wrong protest.  He showed up to demonstrate support for the protesters who have been turning the place into a toxic waste site with their occupation.   At the protest, he wore his patented large gold chains.  He was all sympathy, but wasn’t going to give anyone the $355 Givenchy shirt off his back.

They’re not the only rich entertainers backing the OWS movement.  The Writers Guild of America – the average working member earns about $200,000 per year – is now standing with the protesters.  Christopher Keyser, president of the WGA, issued this asinine statement: “The economic statistics don’t lie. The rich are getting much, much richer in America. At the same time, the middle class, which was once the vibrant economic backbone of this country, is disappearing, and our poor and our unemployed are in free fall.  The corporations and the people who gambled with our future, who made a killing on that bet and then got bailed out by us, are back with robust profits and unconscionable salaries. No one has paid a price for that but the American worker. And neither political party seems to have the guts or the independence to hold anyone accountable or to demand meaningful safeguards to protect us from all of this happening again…. The rallies happening on Wall Street and around the country are shining a much-needed spotlight on the harm being caused to America’s working men and women by a system run amok. People from all walks of life are rising up and demanding accountability and change.”

The same week Keyser came out with his statement, Gov. Jerry Brown of California signed a law that gave $100 million in annual tax breaks to film and television producers who keep jobs in California.  As I detailed in my latest book, Primetime Propaganda, Hollywood has long had an extensive relationship with the government.  Bill Clinton instituted a research and development credit worth $1.7 billion to Hollywood.  Former Ohio Democratic Governor Ted Strickland offered a $10 million tax incentive for Hollywood moviemakers to do their work in Ohio; in 2004, Maryland and Pennsylvania offered tax breaks to Hollywood to woo them; during 2009, Texas considered tax rebates of up to $60 million to Hollywood; in Michigan, those tax breaks constituted $48 million as of 2008; the city of Los Angeles has attempted, in true Obama fashion, to create a “film czar” dedicated to getting breaks for Hollywood; the Democratic Congress passed a $470 million tax break for Hollywood in the October 2008 spending bill; President Obama’s first stimulus package had a $246 million tax break for Hollywood in the first draft, before Republicans carved it out.

Hilariously enough, the Left seems unruffled by the inordinate wealth of certain types or rich people: actors, athletes, musicians.  That’s because those folks are assumed to have made their cash on luck, sort of like lottery winners.  The Left simply hates those who made their money in business while employing people, because it gives the lie to liberal ideology in two distinct ways: first, it suggests that wealth is a matter of skill rather than luck and does not require government intervention; and second, it suggests that the private sector rather than government creates jobs.  Don’t look for the OWS folks to hustle Kanye and Roseanne to the guillotine anytime soon.