Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) doesn't have much use for protests, he told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Monday night. So while he supports much of Occupy Wall Street's aims, Frank said their efforts to rein in Wall Street would have been better served at the ballot box. "We had an election last year in which people who disagree with them, and disagree with me and with you, got elected," he told Maddow. "I don't know what the voting behavior is of all these people, but I'm a little bit unhappy when people didn't vote last time blame me for the consequences of their not voting." (Watch video below) Does Frank have a valid point?
Without voting, this is mostly hot air: The Occupy Wall Street movement has seriously shaped the global debate about financial regulation and unjust income inequality, says The Montreal Gazette in an editorial. But "what counts in the end is the action they generate," and in enlightened democracies, that means voting. Bringing about meaningful change "takes more than merely complaining, legitimate as the complaints may be."
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