Day of Pffft

The Day of Rage kind of turned into the Day of pfffft. A bunch of nut cases decided to descend on Wall Street to protest a "financial system that favors the rich and powerful at the expense of ordinary citizens." They expected maybe 100,000 protestors. Estimates aren't in yet, but observers say there were hundreds -- maybe 1,000 --  there.

One protestor said, "You need a scorecard to keep track of all the things that corporations have done that are bad for this country." Maybe he's talking about providing thousands of jobs? Maybe he's talking about innovations that make our lives easier? Maybe he's talking about medicines that keep us alive and funtioning? Maybe he's talking about the food on the grocery store shelves? Who knows?

Another man, 23-year-old Micah Chamberlain, is a line cook from Columbus, Ohio. He held up a sign that said, "End the oligarchy." I have my doubts that he even knows what that word means. At any rate, he said he had hitchhiked to New York. I question the wisdom of taking off work to go somewhere when you can't even afford to get yourself there. At any rate, Micah says that "1 percent of the people have 99 percent of the money." I don't know where Micah got his figures, but the latest I could find showed that the top 1 percent had just over 34% of the wealth. Maybe the reason they got wealthy was because they worked instead of making fools of themselves on Wall Street.

"'Day of Rage' mostly stymied." The Dallas Morning News; September 18, 2011; p. 6A.