Milestones
By Miles H. Barber

The right to protest is a marvelous gift.

This is a legacy left to Americans by our Founding Fathers who realized the importance of recognized dissenting opinion.

It is not important that we agree or disagree with someone of an opposing opinion. It is important that we take a stand on what is the right and best way to address the issue of dissent.

In just the last century, we have seen the rights of oppressed sectors of our society join the mainstream of equality through the right of protest.

For some it may be difficult to believe that in a country like America, blacks were treated as third class citizens. Women did not have the right to vote and their pay was often half that of male in the same occupation.

Many inequities in our society have been addressed through protest and become the catalysts for reform, justice and equal rights.

The recent Occupy Wall Street movement has generated a great deal of media coverage and not a great deal of societal support.

Civil Rights and women’s suffrage movements included millions of supporters from all walks of life and economic status with a targeted objective. They were not using blame as their battle cry. They were simply seeking recognition of the inherent rights granted them under our Constitution.

This OWS group is using blame as its game, pointing to the banks and Wall Street brokerage houses for causing our economic problems. Now, within most of us is a degree of sympathy for these protestors because most of us have had to deal with the banks. However, it was also consumer greed that pushed us into the financial abyss not only corporate greed.

If consumers had stopped taking those ridiculous loans, buying homes they knew they couldn’t afford, leveraging their purchases into the next home, this collapse may have been avoided. And if pigs had wings they could fly.

Human nature is predictable and greed will almost always be the driver of our decisions.

Virtually all of us want more money and that is what drives us to invest, purchase stocks, bonds, property and start our own businesses.

To do this, it takes capital (money). We can sometimes borrow capital from institutions to buy a home. It is more difficult to borrow capital to start your own business. This is why so many small businesses succeed because owners have a vested interest (their own capital) at risk.

When a small business grows, they need additional capital and that’s where the banks had been helpful. However, the Obama administration has virtually shut down the spigot of capital to small business.

Americans should be focusing their protest on Washington. Open the capital markets to small business and let these entrepreneurs lead us out of the recession with new jobs.

A credit worthy borrower in this economy is worth 10 times a sign carrying dissident.