Here’s the Up With Chris Hayes story that Anne Laurie was talking about earlier today:
A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”
The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.
CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.
According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”
The memo also suggests that Democratic victories in 2012 should not be the ABA’s biggest concern. “… (T)he bigger concern,” the memo says, “should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”
It was pretty obvious that this was the plan and has been Wall Street’s response for some time now: demonize the Occupy movement among independents/swing voters to divide them from supporters (“They’re Dirty Effing Hippies and criminals!”) and further divide and demoralize the remaining supporters by trying to split them from the Democrats (“The Dems are just as much Wall Street lackeys as the GOP, there’s no difference!”)…all to avoid losing the “populist” mantle the Tea Party currently has, giving them license to happily loot the treasury and make the rest of us suffer.
It’s a pretty good plan from an Evil Overlord perspective, and it has made headway into reducing support for the movement. Well, that was before the whole park evicting and pepper-spraying of grandmothers and college kids sitting peacefully on the sidewalk started happening.
I’m thinking that might change as a result.
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