Where's my bailout?

BEN BOYCHUK: "If the Occupy Wall Street protests were merely a gathering of liberals angry at the pathetic state of the economy and the incestuous relationship between Big Government and Big Business, most Americans likely would be on their side.

But something else is happening here.

We don't have much real data about who these protesters are or what exactly they believe. But we have a few hints. The protesters' online manifestos read like a Marxist child's letter to Santa Claus, demanding everything from college loan debt forgiveness to a living wage "regardless of employment."

New York Magazine took a snapshot poll of 100 protesters camping at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. About 34 percent of the "young, smart, educated young people" the magazine surveyed are "convinced the U.S. government is no better than, say, Al Qaeda."

So it's fair to say a sizable minority of the people camped out in New York and dozens of other cities around the country are on the fringe of mainstream American politics.

And yet Occupy Wall Street has touched a nerve for the right reasons.

"If you're a bank or an insurance firm, and you create a product that your investors and your regulators can't understand in a crisis, you aren't punished...Instead, you get rewarded with bailout money," my City Journal colleague Nicole Gelinas observed recently. "It's hard to argue with the Zuccotti protesters' manifesto on this point: 'They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity."

The difference between the Tea Party marches of 2009 and the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations of 2011 is the difference between "No more bailouts!" and "Where's my bailout?" For the Tea Party, Big Government -- too many regulations, too much federal meddling in Americans' lives -- is the problem. For Occupy Wall Street, bigger government-more taxes, more regulation, more subsidies -- is the solution. The choice is yours."

Red and Blue America; what does Occupy Movement mean?