Time for Main Street to ‘occupy’ Wall Street & D.C.

GUEST COLUMN

FREDRICK P. NIEMANN

A s a conservative Republican, I’ve been watching with interest the Occupy Wall Street movement. I agree with their anger, though I think the target of their movement, rich people andWall Street fails to identify other unjust profiteers, namely (some) corporate CEOs, the federal government in Washington, D.C., lobbyists and big labor. This collective group should be the target of anger and frustration by Occupy Wall Street and Main Street America.

The greed of Wall Street is inexcusable. Those Wall Street icons, traders, hedge fund managers and designers of the failed financial products that nearly destroyed Main Street America and who profited immorally in the mid-2000s should be criminally investigated, indicted, convicted and jailed.

In addition, Main Street America should be outraged with the obscene bonuses and salaries paid to Wall Street executives. There is little connection between their aptitudes and their salaries. Their compensation dwarfs the salaries of everyday Americans. Even worse, their compensation is not free-market based; it is established by their contemporaries on Wall Street. Think about this. How do traders who manipulate the stock market benefit the real economy? The disconnect between Wall Street and America’s Main Street economy has never been greater. IfWall Street continues to pay outrageous bonuses and salaries, there should be an excess compensation tax of 75 percent directed exclusively to Wall Street and the financial industries and dedicated to federal deficit reduction .

The same outrage applies to the CEOs’ salaries of the nation’s largest companies. How can these men and women claim they are worth the multimillions of dollars in annual salaries and stock options they are paid. No doubt, a line a mile long would form tomorrow with highly qualified persons to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company for a fraction of the salaries being paid today to these highest paid executives.

From my perspective, the enemy of Occupy Wall Street should not be America’s corporations and higher income earners. TheAmerican people own American corporations as shareholders. Successful entrepreneurs, businessmen and businesswomen should not be punished for achieving professional and economic success. They have worked hard to build their businesses and the national economy, and have provided jobs and wealth to many Americans. They have achieved the American dream and they deserve their wealth.

President Obama, the U.S. Congress and the culture of Washington, D.C., are in large measure the cause of the current economic destruction of America. This president and the establishment of Washington are anti-business, anti-free enterprise, anti-capitalism, and as a consequence, the president and many members of Congress need to be removed in 2012 by newly elected officials who will pledge themselves to cleansing Wall Street, corporate America, big government, big labor unions and the special interest groups who have infected our nation. The election laws passed by Congress and the lobbyists who influence our elected officials under these laws are also fundamentally to blame forAmerica’s economic problems. As a former political chairman, I have seen firsthand the destructive influences of special interests who fund the campaigns of elected officials. The members of Occupy Wall Street should be occupying the streets of Washington and the every state capital. They should be protesting the election laws of each state and the federal government. Term limits and public fi- nancing of political campaigns are the only ways to eliminate the corporate and union interests that have corrupted our elected officials who in exchange have corrupted our political system to the economic benefit of the ultra rich, powerful and special interests.

Another enemy of Main Street America and an appropriate target for Occupy Wall Street are the big unions. They refuse to evolve to modern times, they resist innovation and efficiency, and refuse to acknowledge the economic reality of world competition. It seems their primary objective is to protect the selfish security and demands of their members to the sacrifice of the greater good. These labor monopolies are infected with self-interest and greed. The union bosses and older members have sacrificed the futures of their younger members, who should be outraged by their arrogant leaders and older membership. Young people between the ages of 20 and 30 have no jobs and no prospects for a better future. Their real unemployment rate nears 20 percent and they have unprecedented debt burdens. The reason they have been ignored is because elected officials do not respect them because they do not vote.

Our nation’s resources have been consumed by an insatiable government and wasteful spending by our elected officials who have nothing but their own reelection as their primary agenda.

The tea party and Occupy Wall Street have much in common. In many ways they have touched our nation’s nerve. If ideologically they launched a united but separate protest movement (ideologically I doubt they are compatible) to cleanse our states and our nation from the corrupt influences of special-interest lobbyists, Wall Street, corporate monopolies, big unions, lobbyists and campaign financial laws, real change can and will happen to Main Street America.

Fredrick P. Niemann, Esq., is the former Monmouth County Republican chairman.