Convicted bank fraudster Robert Creamer, who recently set up a nationwide political consultancy to boost Democrats’ 2012 campaigns, and who wrote the Democrats’ political strategy on health care from federal prison, is promoting efforts by Democrats and the #OccuptWallStreet protestors to single out Bank of America.
Bank of America has been a focus of the #Occupy demonstrations across the country. Last Thursday, in downtown Los Angeles, eleven #OccupyLA protestors were arrested after illegally occupying a Bank of America branch.
(The demonstration was filmed by Andrew Breitbart and myself; footage of the bank occupation appears at the beginning of the video below.)
Creamer, who is married to Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), went to prison in 2006 for bank fraud and tax evasion. That has not stopped him from demanding that Americans pay higher taxes and attacking Bank of America for introducing–as other banks have done–a monthy fee for debit card usage.
It is unknown how closely Creamer is involved in the #OccupyWallStreet movement, but he has visited lower Manhattan as the protests have unfolded, and has been promoting the demonstrations at his Huffington Post blog. (Schakowsky has described visiting the #OccupyWallStreet protest at the same time that Creamer was in Manhattan, and has claimed ignorance about “who’s organizing it or how.”)
Indeed, Creamer may be an important link between the fringe “community organizing” and anarchist groups behind the #Occupy protests, the unions that have joined the demonstrations, and the Democrats’ campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama.
Creamer worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign in a senior capacity, training volunteers and activists at “Camp Obama,” and running the Democrats’ “field based rapid response” operation.
He has been an important source for journalists covering the #OccupyWallStreet protests, as in this New York Times article last week, which noted the close resemblance between #Occupy slogans and Obama’s re-election message (emphasis added):
The decision by organized labor to join the demonstrations has given them an extra jolt of numbers and credibility, since unions have historically played an important, but waning role, in mobilizing voters on the left.
“There’s been a lot of talk about how the progressive base is demobilized,” said Robert Creamer, a longtime organizer for progressive causes. “Not only do I believe this will inspire the progressive base, the same way that Tunisia inspired Egypt, but President Obama has framed up the issues perfectly.”
Indeed, the placards carried by the protesters — with messages like “I am the 99 percent; I don’t have a lobbyist” — could have been written by the Obama campaign.
Creamer has not shied away from echoing the violent rhetoric of the most radical of the protestors, writing today: “Let’s make Bank of America remember the old adage: ‘The pigs get fat and the hogs get slaughtered.'”
He accuses the financial sector of having “vacuumed money out of the pockets of people who actually work for a living producing goods and services.” That is an apt description of the crimes Creamer himself committed, and of the predatory role he proposes for government in the economy.
Thus far, the mainstream media has shown little interest in probing the machinery of the #OccupyWallStreet movement, choosing instead to portray it as an outpouring of idealism and legitimate grievances.
The blatant irony and hypocrisy of one of America’s most high-profile bank fraudsters leading the charge against the banks ought to raise the alarm about what the #OccupyWallStreet movement really stands for, and whose direct interests it serves.