YES! Occupy protesters ARE a sign of the times (Bill Hirt’s Dec. 16 letter in the Reporter)… and it’s a welcome sight.

Middle-class workers, of whom I am one — a teacher — and other public employees are not the cause of our economic problems. Currently 42 percent of financial wealth is controlled by the top 1 percent. Not since the Great Depression has there been this degree of income inequality. Wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few. Talk about people not paying their fair share and feeling a sense of entitlement, look no further than the 1 percent. Common practice for corporations and Wall Street is to privatize the gains (I earned it!) and socialize the losses (oops! let the taxpayers pick up the tab). Taxpayers did pick up the bill to bailout Wall Street, which saved the financial sector from collapse, but it was idiocy to do so with NO strings attached. No investigations, fines, prosecutions, jail sentences were acted on nor any new regulations put in place to prevent the abusers from continuing to engage in self-serving financial practices.

We finally have a peaceful robust response with the Occupy movement. There is a growing awareness that our economy and political system is rigged for the well to do from the corporate-owned media, to the courts, to the tax system, to  politicians who are beholden to large donors. It is class warfare and the rich are winning. All we have is our numbers.

I can not understand how a tiny few are so ready to direct their ire at the Occupy protesters instead of the lawless financial crowd who continue to game the system for their own benefit. Talk about a sense of entitlement; this is only trumped by the power of others to self delude.

Cathy Ferbrache-Garrand, Bothell