The Occupy Wall Street protest has cast a small shadow over the Value Voters Summit – not something every speaker feels like he needs to address, but something everyone has an opinion about. In her speech, radio host Laura Ingraham mocked the protesters’ signs and held up her own: “Hug the Rich.”
“Stoking class envy might get you some applause at Warren Buffett’s headquarters,” she said, a little downcast, “but it’s not going to do much for the economy.”
This was more or less the wisdom of the crowd. Larry Gladfeiler mused that the protesters had some problems: “They need to get jobs.” Fred Solomon, an Alabama activist, said “there has always been an element of people who are too lazy to get jobs.” He told me about his own hard knock life, including months spent working for free to get training. “These people are complaining that they can only get jobs that pay $7 per hour? You don’t start at the damn top.”
