Billionaire Mayor Says Wall Street Protesters Want to Destroy Jobs
Everyone's going on and on, trying to figure out Occupy Wall Street protesters want. New York Mayor Bloomberg has finally figured it out: They want to "destroy the jobs of working people."
In his weekly radio show today, Bloomberg told a caller:
"What they're trying to do is take the jobs away from people working in this city,"
"They're trying to take away the tax base we have because none of this is good for tourism.
Tourism! Because Zuccotti Park, where protesters have been camping out for weeks to protest corporate greed and economic inequality, is one of New York's premier tourist destinations, of course. Was Nathan's planning on holding their hot dog eating contest there this year or something?
In fact, exactly the opposite has occurred: Occupy Wall Street has turned this random park into an unlikely tourist hot spot. We should probably encourage more protests in different parts of the city to attract tourists there.
Bloomberg continued to willfully misunderstand protesters' goal, saying:
If the jobs they are trying to get rid of in this city — the people that work in finance, which is a big part of our economy— we're not going to have any money to pay our municipal employees or clean the blocks or anything else.
Bloomberg has been cold but accommodating towards protesters all along. But now it seems that he's fed up. Watch out, protesters: This guy can shoot down a freaking plane. [NYP, photo via Getty]