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The Tea Party Activists and Occupy Protesters: Are they angry about the same issues?

The Tea Party activists and Occupy Protesters are angry about the same issues

Previously I looked at the differences of the Tea Party and Occupiers, such as the protester's age, income bracket, financial backers & their expansion. 

Now, I want to focus on their similar characteristics, one being their anger. 

One is anger over government and the other over corporations, but their anger is at how both government and companies are intertwined and cannot be separated.  This creates four types of angers from both protest groups, the first being over the bailouts.

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When President Bush in 2008 created TARP and started giving out bailouts to GM, AIG and other companies, many in America felt they were not necessary. 

After President Obama created a stimulus package in February 2009 did Keli Caredder (aka Liberty Belle), Michelle Malkin and Rick Santelli mentions they wanted to hold porkulus protests or Tea Parties. 

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They were angry at Obama giving bailout money to more companies and homeowners that were facing foreclosures. 

What surprised me is that the Tea Party did not develop under Bush with TARP and his bailouts, only when a Democratic president that wanted to help those beyond Wall Street, did the anger build up to create the Tea Party.

By September 2011, with fewer Tea Parties protesting, Adbusters created the idea of the occupation of Wall Street

The Occupiers started in NYC, but in less than a month spread throughout the country and the world to places like Australia, London and Japan. 

Their anger was at the bailouts, but also other issues, like jobs, homelessness, and CEO pay.  If you compare both protest groups, you find they both hated the bailouts, but also another issue:  corruption where companies are to involve in government through lobbying. 

How else would the bailouts happen, if not through lobbying by those companies and those companies writing the laws to deregulate or weaken the government agencies that oversee the market?

The second anger of both protest groups is no bottom up oversight. 

Both groups want reform on how companies, lobbying and government work.  One group wants to get rid of government, but how could people on the bottom; the voters create change if no government?  The other group wants corporate governance, where companies have oversight by their shareholders, workers and consumers.

This leads to the third anger, which is politics.

When both the Tea Party and Occupiers were created, both wanted change in D.C., but both did not want to get involved politically because they see that both parties don't represent them.

So the Tea Party went out to find extreme Right Wing candidates to vote for in the 2010 election to represent their views. 

The Occupiers have not created their extreme Left Wing candidates because they claim to not be a political group, but they will have to do the same to get involved politically. Much like the populist and progressives reformed the corruption in the Democratic and Republican parties 100 years ago, just like the Tea Party and Occupiers now.

Lastly, the final anger with both protest groups is with the rule of law. 

America was founded on the idea that no one is above the law, but we have created a two-tier legal system for the powerful & the rest of us. 

If a CEO fails its company they leave with a golden parachute of retirement and health care for life, paid for by the company's shareholders. 

A politician that created a law to deregulate that benefit the company they are now a CEO of and the market crashes because of that law, then where is the justice?  There have only been a few arrests and prison sentences for those in government and companies that caused the current Global Recession. 

Both the Tea Party and Occupiers want those involved removed out of power, much like what has happened with the Egyptian and Greek leaders.

If justice was served by the rule of law and there were more arrests, both protest groups would see justice being served.  Those in power would see that through their lobbyists they cannot get away with corruption in both political parties. 

In short, anger toward the bailouts, no bottom up oversight, and promoting the rule of law for all is why both protest groups want change.

Both the Tea Party and Occupiers face the brunt of what companies and government decide to do through outsourcing, free trade agreements, lobbying for few special interest groups and privatizing what government use to do. 

This has caused an upheaval in economics, which I call the Capitalist Revolution.

The Tea Party and Occupiers are the Western version of protests from Libya, Egypt to Syria that demands reform in the global market and how capitalism is practiced locally.  And this anger comes from the bottom up democracy, in a hierarchical top down world. 

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