Walter Williams writes:

… promoting jealousy, fear and hate is an effective strategy for politicians and their liberal followers to control and micromanage businesses. It’s not about the amount of money people earn. If it were, politicians and leftists would be promoting jealousy, fear and hate toward multimillionaire Hollywood and celebrities and sports stars, such as LeBron James ($48 million), Tiger Woods ($75 million) and Peyton Manning ($38 million). But there is no way that politicians could take over the roles of Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga and LeBron James. That means celebrities can make any amount of money they want and it matters not one iota politically.

The Occupy Wall Street crowd shouldn’t focus its anger at wealthy CEOs. A far more appropriate target would be the U.S. Congress.

via Pitting Us Against Each Other – Opinion – PatriotPost.US.

COMMENT:

Read the whole column for the full context. Walter Williams notes that celebrities earn ten times as much as CEOs and therefore opposition to CEOs, simply because they make so much more money, doesn’t make sense.

I think this point is leaving out what Williams should know is going on.

It is truly sickening that OWS is against freedom and therefore the free market. But this fact shouldn’t be used to evade the fact that the US Congress is the target of Occupy Wall Street. The perception is that wealthy CEO’s (though especially in the financial sector) are in control of Congress. Congressional hatred of CEOs is just a diversionary tactic. Agents for the enemy always cover themselves by acting patriotic and Obama himself shows how politicians hired as “muscle” for corporations pretend to be against “big business.” This is easy to do because “big business” is a wide target and one can destroy sectors of it at the behest and for the profit of other sectors.

Celebrities don’t wield this kind of political power. They are not being opposed because OWS is better than it knows. It is against slavery, not against wealth in itself.

Again, having no concept the private sector can regulate itself, or how the “financial sector” is mostly the opposite of the real economy (and thus smudging “deregulation” of productive businesses with the empowerment of bankers to pillage Main Street), derails OWS from doing anything good, but why ignore what is really going on.

Walter Williams was an early influence of mine. His The State Against Blacks made me never able to forget how State interference in the economy hurt the poor for the sake of the middle and upper classes while hiding the damage. But I simply don’t see why that same perspective is not being used here. Congress is simply the enforcement arm of Wall Street. I’d like OWS to have a clearer and more consistent opposition to Congress and the President, but Williams column will do more to polarize the situation than bring clarity.