CNN Contributor Erick Erickson Launches Fraudulent Counter Movement To "We Are The 99 Percent"

http://mediamatters.org/research/201110110010

Over at the Wonk Blog Monday, The Washington Post's Suzy Khimm shed light on CNN contributor and Red State editor Erick Erickson's decision to lead a conservative "counterpunch to the viral 'We are the 99 percent' site that's become a prominent symbol for the Occupy Wall Street movement."

WeAreThe99Percent allows users to post images with testimonials laying out their personal struggles amid growing income inequality, in order to explain their support for the growing Occupy Wall Street movement against economic and social injustice.

In response, Erickson posted a testimonial calling the protesters "whiners," and claiming to represent the "53 percent subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain." After a Twitter campaign to promote his movement, several people have responded with similar testimonials.

Gawker has more on Erickson's movement calling it "a response to 'We Are the 99 Percent,' an Occupy Wall Street-affiliated blog that collects the stories of the underemployed, overworked, debt-ridden and uninsured victims of the recession."

Erickson, recall, once called then-Supreme Court Justice David Souter a "goat-fucking child molester."

Gawker points out that Erickson's movement is centered around the misleading notion that nearly half of Americans don't pay taxes. As The New York Times David Leonhardt noted in April, the figure distorts the economic debate away from growing income inequality and completely ignores taxes that all American households pay.

In the post that sparked the "counterpunch" Erickson wrote that he works "three jobs," and complained about insurance costs and the housing market, adding "But I don't blame Wall Street."

Berkely economist J. Bradford DeLong eviscerated the post, noting that Erickson's high insurance costs are a function of a broken health-insurance system, and that the struggling real estate market is connected to a massive housing bubble inflated by Wall Street bundling toxic mortgages and selling them to investors with fraudulent credit ratings.

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