Letter to President Obama
Dear President Obama,
There are a lot of us, and we don’t agree on everything. Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, whatever. Some of us have been foreclosed on, some have lost jobs, some can’t find jobs. But we all agree that our current political system is skewed in favor of a group of Wall Street and Washington insiders, and that it seems bent on hurting the rest of us—the 99%.
When you were re-elected, many of us wondered if you’d finally speak out forcefully for us. We wondered if you’d put an end to Wall Street favoritism, and if you’d reform corrupt lobbying practices. We wondered if you’d officially end insider trading in Congress, or at the very least end our two-tiered justice system, which prosecutes someone for stealing a soda from a gas station but does nothing to prosecute Wall Streeters who illegally foreclose on and ultimately steal the homes of their “customers.”
But those who hoped for these changes were disappointed.
And yet it didn’t have to be this way. You didn’t have to appoint Mary Jo White, a former client of Wall Street, to regulate Wall Street. You didn’t have to sign the bill yesterday repealing key aspects of the STOCK Act. You still could join a bipartisan group of Senators (3 Republicans and 3 Democrats) who want to officially end “too big to fail.” You still could fire Eric Holder, and replace him with someone who is serious about prosecuting Wall Street. Any number of options for defending the 99% are open to you.
If you want more support from us, you could start by treating Wall Street the way Elizabeth Warren treats Wall Street. Boldly and directly. You could reform corrupt lobbying practices that favor the 1% at the expense of the rest of us. You could immediately get to work on revoking your decision to let Congressional insider trading continue. In sum, if you want more support from us, you could start by ending the current two-tiered justice system, a corrupted system which offends every single one of us.
There’s still time for you to change, but that time is running out.
- The 99%
