Drivers in Miami today were likely doing double takes on Wednesday as they passed what looked like a banker hanging by a noose from a telephone wire alongside a Florida highway.

To accompany his Occupy Wall Street-themed mural, the international graffiti artist known by his street name Above, took his message a step further by adding the rather life-like hanging dummy to his display.

The mannequin is dressed in a black suit with a white collared shirt and red tie.

‘I tried to clothe him and dress him up as if he was what I imiagined a Wall Street banker might wear,’ Above said to MailOnline.

He is also holding a briefcase that has a string of what looks like dollar bills.

‘It was the cherry on the top of the word play installation,’ Above continued.

‘It’s extremely shocking which is part of the point as well. I think it is really gone too far, but then again I think it’s my retaliation to how far Wall St, has gotten in general.

‘It is shocking to me when I look at these numbers when I see that one per cent of the people have all of the money,’ he continued.

The mannequin was hung next to a mural that he painted along the northbound side of the I-95 highway which stretches from Miami up the east coast.

Making it’s connection to the Occupy Wall Street protests, the mural reads ‘Give a Wall St banker enough rope and he will hang himself’.

Read more here.

Nationwide, government at every level is requiring more and more of the workforce to get its permission just to earn a living.

In the 1950s, only about 5 percent of the workforce needed a government license to do their job. Today, that number is over 30 percent.  And governments impose all kinds of other requirements that make it hard for would-be entrepreneurs to start and grow small businesses.

Entrepreneurs like Chuck, here:

Unemployment in the United States has now topped 9.5 percent for 14 straight months—the longest stretch since the Great Depression.  Nearly 14.8 million people were unemployed last month.

Consider the nation’s capital.

Year after year, Washington, D.C., is ranked the worst place in the United States to start a small business. How can the District change its ways to allow entrepreneurs to create more jobs and opportunity?

That is the question answered by a new Institute for Justice study launched this week, Washington, D.C. vs. Entrepreneurs:  DC’s Monumental Regulations Stifle Small Businesses. The report shows that our nation’s capital is languishing, yet can unleash economic growth and the creative energies of thousands of would-be entrepreneurs simply by removing needless red tape.

The report is part of a nationwide “city studies” investigation that examines barriers to entrepreneurship in eight cities across the nation.  In addition to Capital City, we studied Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Newark, and Philadelphia.  You can watch the press conferences for DC, Houston and Milwaukee on our You Tube channel.

According to the Wall Street Journal editorial board:

Politicians of all stripes like to celebrate ‘small business’ while running for office, but the reality is that they often strangle entrepreneurs once they get in power. Read the Institute for Justice study and you’ll better understand why the business of America is no longer business. It’s bureaucracy.

Want to help people like Chuck?  Want to fight bureaucracy and restore the American Dream for countless people nationwide?

Visit the Institute for Justice to learn more about our nationwide economic liberty campaign.  And please get involved.  Join our conversation on facebook, You Tube and in the twittersphere.

As IJ’s President Chip Mellor puts it:

If the nation is looking to the federal government to create jobs in America, it is looking in the wrong place.  If we want to grow our economy, we must remove government-imposed barriers to honest enterprise at the city and state levels.  Remove those barriers, and you will see a return to the optimism and opportunity that are hallmarks of the American Dream.

“O’Keefe, a self-described filmmaker, and Giles, the eldest daughter of a conservative Christian minister in Miami, visited ACORN offices in the summer. An ACORN spokesman said they were turned away in Miami, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, where workers called police and filed a report. But workers welcomed them in the other cities.”

First of all, this reporter repeats the false and unsubstantiated claim from “an ACORN spokesman” that James and Hannah were turned away from multiple ACORN offices. (Let’s put this rumor to rest. Footage was obtained at every office they visited and you will see them all here on Big Government.)  More disturbing is the reference to Hannah’s father and his profession.  

And in case you missed it the first time, Mr. Fears repeats himself in the very next paragraph:

“Giles is a journalism novice who has written two columns for the conservative Web site Townhall.com. Her father, Doug Giles, serves as minister of the ultra-conservative ClashChurch near Miami, where he proclaimed that liberals “spit on the Word of God,” according to a report by the Miami New Times.”

No mention that Hannah attended the National Journalism Center in Washington, DC. Local angle, anyone? No, this reporter thought it was somehow more relevant to mention that her father conducts church services in Florida.

Pass the hand sanitizer, please.

As most of you outside of the MSM know by now, the House voted overwhelmingly last night to defund ACORN. And this vote, of course, came rapidly on the heels of a landslide vote in the Senate (83-7) to cut off federal funds to this organization.

Yet again there is no such headline on the front page of The Washington Post today. Nor will the reader find this headline on page 2 or 6…or 26. Instead Mr. Fears and Carol D. Leonnig present a puff piece about James and Hannah under the headline, “The $1300 Mission to Fell ACORN.” No mention of the House vote in this article, until you jump to page A16.

It seems that The Washington Post, once legendary for their commitment to investigative journalism, is demonstrating a bizarre new commitment to scrub the news from their newspaper.