The "Occupy Wall Street" protest, now in its third week, has recently brought to light (que the sarcasm!) a disgraceful act committed by banking giant J.P. Morgan Chase: Charity! $4.6 million to be exact, donated to New York City’s finest.
While OWS suggests on its website a causal link between the anti-capitalist uprising and the generosity extended on behalf of JPMC, with one supporter commenting, “wow, good catch. so now we know the cops are literally bought and paid for in this,” it is clear from the facts that this is nothing less than a benevolent act of a successful business self-interestedly investing into the security of our city. Although OWS would like you to believe that JPMC donated those funds as a bribe for protection against demonstrators, with some going so far as to say the banking giant directly funded the arrests of more than 700 on the Brooklyn Bridge, it took no less than 2 seconds worth of research to pull up an article dating back to June 4, 2011 that describes this exact donation in question being made, months prior to the beginning of the protest on Wall Street. According to JPMC’s website:
JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD's main data center.
This begs the question, how could JPMC’s intentions have been easily misconstrued to be something more sinister? To understand how a charitable act could be misinterpreted, it’s important to understand the mindset of the statist. Statists believe that people are inherently bad, and thus, must be coerced to do good (if they did not fundamentally believe this, there would be no point to their support for the use of force). Therefore, they believe that an act of charity (possible thanks to Capitalism), as evidenced by OWS and many of their supporters on the blogosphere, must be accompanied by a nefarious agenda. Their solution is State control, as evidenced by the protesters' signs calling for wealth redistribution from the rich to the poor via government force. Ironic, and inconsistent, with other signs amongst the group proclaiming to be in support of “Human Rights.” How can anyone take this group seriously?
It’s simply illogical to believe that JPMC’s donation was a bribe to police for an upcoming protest that was not even being planned or discussed at the time of the donation. Is there a time-machine nobody know’s about? It stands to reason that if JPMC did in fact feel threatened by OWS, they would have hired a private security firm to protect their property (as most businesses do anyway). But what strikes me most is that this accusation is not so much of harm to JPMC as it is to the integrity of the officers that are on the streets protecting the rights of all citizens. This is nothing less than an act of vengeance against an entire department for the potential (pending an investigation) misconduct towards a few demonstrators by a few officers.
On a final note, the generosity exhibited by JPMC is nothing less than a simple demonstration of objectivism in practice, and goes to show a government solely limited to it's moral role of protecting individual rights could in fact be funded (contrary to the statist’s beliefs) in a non-coercive, voluntary way, especially by the rich and successful. The reality of the situation is, we all benefit from what JPMC has done. The NYPD now has more resources to combat crime and protect all of our rights. This act deserves nothing less than gratitude and commendation.
(With that said, I want to extend my deepest apologies to the past, the present, and the future generations of this great nation and of this world, on behalf of my generation for its part in the OWS uprising. We, the ‘gimme’ generation who have had it so easy, who have been handed so much, instead of giving thanks, we demand more. We have now grown to be an insatiable parasite. May we one day be forgiven.)
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