Yahoo News’ Chris Moody reports that “Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about ‘income inequality’ and ‘paying your fair share.’”

“I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death,” said Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation’s foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. “They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”

According to Moody, this was Luntz’s advice:

1. Don’t say ‘capitalism.’

“I’m trying to get that word removed and we’re replacing it with either ‘economic freedom’ or ‘free market,’ ” Luntz said. “The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we’re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we’ve got a problem.”

2. Don’t say that the government ‘taxes the rich.’ Instead, tell them that the government ‘takes from the rich.’

“If you talk about raising taxes on the rich,” the public responds favorably, Luntz cautioned. But  ”if you talk about government taking the money from hardworking Americans, the public says no. Taxing, the public will say yes.”

3. Republicans should forget about winning the battle over the ‘middle class.’ Call them ‘hardworking taxpayers.’

“They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers. We can say we defend the ‘middle class’ and the public will say, I’m not sure about that. But defending ‘hardworking taxpayers’ and Republicans have the advantage.”

4. Don’t talk about ‘jobs.’ Talk about ‘careers.’

“Everyone in this room talks about ‘jobs,’” Luntz said. “Watch this.”

He then asked everyone to raise their hand if they want a “job.” Few hands went up. Then he asked who wants a “career.” Almost every hand was raised.

“So why are we talking about jobs?”

5. Don’t say ‘government spending.’ Call it ‘waste.’

“It’s not about ‘government spending.’ It’s about ‘waste.’ That’s what makes people angry.”

6. Don’t ever say you’re willing to ‘compromise.’

“If you talk about ‘compromise,’ they’ll say you’re selling out. Your side doesn’t want you to ‘compromise.’ What you use in that to replace it with is ‘cooperation.’ It means the same thing. But cooperation means you stick to your principles but still get the job done. Compromise says that you’re selling out those principles.”

7. The three most important words you can say to an Occupier: ‘I get it.’

“First off, here are three words for you all: ‘I get it.’ . . . ‘I get that you’re. I get that you’ve seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system.”

Then, he instructed, offer Republican solutions to the problem.

8. Out: ‘Entrepreneur.’ In: ‘Job creator.’

Use the phrases “small business owners” and “job creators” instead of “entrepreneurs” and “innovators.”

9. Don’t ever ask anyone you want them to ‘sacrifice.’

“There isn’t an America today in November of 2011 who doesn’t think they’ve already sacrificed. If you tell them you want them to ‘sacrifice,’ they’re going to be be pretty angry at you. You talk about how ‘we’re all in this together.’ We either succeed together or we fail together.”

10. Always blame Washington.

Tell them, “You shouldn’t be occupying Wall Street, you should be occupying Washington. You should occupy the White House because it’s the policies over the past few years that have created this problem.”

The Occupy movement has scored a number of small victories since September, when the Occupy Wall Street protesters first assembled in downtown New York. Bank of America announced it would not be charging debit card fees, one of the many triggers that sparked the protests, and a congressman introduced an amendment called the OCCUPIED Amendment that would reform campaign finance laws. Campaign finance rules that favor corporate power are a chief Occupy Wall Street target.

Ed Fallon, a former state legislator and gubernatorial candidate, said Friday there’s a lot of buzz around the country around the plan. Fallon now hosts a radio show called “The Fallon Forum,” where he holds discussions on progressive issues.

Ed Fallon

Fallon said he’s not sure if people will be willing to camp out in the Iowa cold around the Jan. 3 caucus date, but he’s willing to.

The idea was floated during a general assembly meeting of Occupy Des Moines on Monday, and quickly picked up on by national media.

The group has been occupying grounds at the Capitol and then a park near it for nearly a month, and has staged several demonstrations. On Saturday morning they will march from downtown Des Moines to nearby Wells Fargo and Bank of America locations as part of “National Bank Transfer Day.”

The Credit Union National Association (known as CUNA) reports today that “at least 650,000 consumers across the nation have joined credit unions in the past four weeks, reflecting consumers’ reactions to rising fees at banks.”

CUNA “estimates that credit unions have added $4.5 billion in new savings accounts. More than four in every five credit unions experiencing growth since Sept. 29 attributed the growth to consumer reaction to new fees imposed by banks, or a combination of consumer reactions to the new bank fees plus the social media-inspired Bank Transfer Day.”

Kristen Christian, credited with creating Bank Transfer Day, writes, “While the Bank Transfer Day movement acknowledges the enthusiasm from Occupy Wall Street, the Bank Transfer Day movement was neither inspired by, derived from nor organized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the Bank Transfer Day movement does not endorse any activities conducted by Occupy Wall Street.”

Move Your Money — another movement similar to Bank Transfer Day — also calls on “individuals and institutions to divest from the nation’s largest Wall Street banks and move to local financial institutions.”

This week, about 200 people, representing a diverse array of organizations and unions, marched in Miami to demand accountability from Bank of America and to support the Occupy Miami movement. The protest came on the same day Bank of America announced it dropped a controversial proposal to charge $5 for using debit card use.

A press release from Wells Fargo, which picked New Mexico as one of the five states where the bank planned to roll-out a trial debit card fee program, reads:

“As we adjust to changes in our business, we will continue to stay attuned to what our customers want,” said Ed Kadletz, head of Wells Fargo’s Debit and Prepaid Cards. “This means understanding their needs as we continue to deliver the world-class service, convenience, and value they have come to expect from Wells Fargo.”

But the bigger news is Bank of America allegedly eying a dramatic rescaling to their proposed fee program, in which bank customers would pay $5 to use their debit cards. Only customers with accounts that have minimums of $20,000 and $50,000 would be spared.

Here’s the scoop from CNN Money:

Now, under proposals being considered by the bank, Bank of America would offer customers new ways to avoid having to pay the fee.

Currently, only customers with certain premium accounts would be exempt from the fee.

Under the new plan, customers would be able to exempt themselves by having their paychecks deposited directly with Bank of America, maintaining minimum balances or by using Bank of America credit cards.

Earlier today, JPMorgan Chase announced it too would drop its debit card fee program after running a trial version in two states since February.

Chase and Bank of America, the number one and two banks in the U.S. in terms of holdings and branches, togther hold over $4.5 trillion in total assets.

Bank of America’s double-take comes after a bevy of bad press aimed at the bank and industry as a whole. Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), a member of the Financial Services Committee, introduced a bill earlier in October to bar banks from levying mulcts from customers seeking to close their accounts. In a press release, he said, ““As megabanks flirt with menus of new fees, an increasing number of Americans will want to switch banks.

“That is the way things work in a competitive, free market as unrepentant banks are still trying to rake in vulgar profits from their customers.”

Facebook groups organized customers to switch from Bank of America to local banks or credit unions–financial firms that tend to avoid mega-bank fees.

Bloomberg explained the impetus for the new charges last month:

The [Federal Reserve] capped debit-card swipe fees at 21 cents starting Oct. 1. It will let issuers tack on five basis points, or 0.05 percent, of each transaction, or almost 2 cents based on the average debit purchase of $38, and a conditional 1-cent adjustment for lenders that follow fraud-prevention standards.

[…]

The cap, mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, replaces a formula that averages 1.14 percent of the purchase price, or about 44 cents. The limit may reduce annual revenue at the biggest U.S. banks by $8 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg Government show.

In general, banks are finding new methods of warding off low-value customers who use savings accounts but avoid higher yield financial services. With economists stoking fears of a second dip into recession throughout the summer months, commercial bank holdings have increased at blistering rates due to individuals in search of a safe place to park their money.

However, with every new dollar under a bank’s management, that’s additional federal fees the bank has to pay, like deposit insurance premiums, also known as FDIC. And with interest rates near zero, and a dearth of expensive loans being issued, the financial firms have little to gain from the additional holdings. During the financial boom years preceding the economic collapse, banks were hungry for cash holdings to better leverage the high number of mortgages issued.

CNN Money reports:

Now, under proposals being considered by the bank, Bank of America would offer customers new ways to avoid having to pay the fee.

Currently, only customers with certain premium accounts would be exempt from the fee.

Under the new plan, customers would be able to exempt themselves by having their paychecks deposited directly with Bank of America, maintaining minimum balances or by using Bank of America credit cards.

Bank of America’s retrenchment comes the same day that JPMorgan Chase decided not to impose similar fees. Chase’s decision follows a test of the fee it began in two states in February.

Wells Fargo also announced late Friday that it is canceling the debit card fee tests it was planning to introduce in five states. Customers in Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon will no longer see a $3 debit card fee that was scheduled for statements beginning on Nov. 15.

The subject of new debit card fees is just one of the issues that has protesters from the Occupy Wall Street movement rallying all over the country — including in Florida.

GOPers in Florida have said that the new regulations from Dodd-Frank are solely to blame for the banks levying these new fees. Senate candidate Adam Hasner and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., have both taken up the new conservative meme claiming that banks were “forced to charge customers new fees due to the negative and costly requirements associated with the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, in particular the ‘Durbin Tax.’” Dodd-Frank legislation was a response to the country’s financial crisis that many economists say was partially caused by the lax regulation of financial institutions.

State Rep. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, recently filed legislation that that would ban banks from charging fees on debit cards.

Clemens told The Florida Independent he considered the legislation since Bank of America first announced it would be charging fees on debit cards. He said that even though the legislation was not a direct result of the protests, he says his “outrage is similar to the Occupy Wall Street folks.”

“Now that we’ve bought into their promise of free, easy access to our own money,”  he said, “they want to charge us for it.”

Clemes also called claims that financial regulations are to blame for the fees “ridiculous.”

Weiland, 39, is a former reporter for the Lansing State Journal. She was laid off in June along with 700 others across the Gannett News system. It was the latest in a continuing process of scaling down by the news giant designed to strengthen faltering stock price returns. Weiland was called into the offices of the publisher at about 5 p.m. on June 21.

“We found out that morning that there would be 700 layoffs,” Weiland said. “I was told about 5 p.m. So they got a full day out of me.”

Weiland’s eight years of service were rewarded with eight weeks of severance pay, she says — one week for each year. But for the former reporter, what really burned was that Gannett CEO Craig Dubow retired in October, walking away with a $37.1 million retirement and disability agreement.

“If you divide that by 700 people, you get about $50,000 — that was my annual salary,” Weiland says.

Meanwhile, Weiland is now struggling to pay the bills. She is behind in her mortgage and facing foreclosure. When she was laid off, her credit cards, mortgage and bank accounts were all owned by different banks. But now, they are all owned by Bank of America. Unable to find a job even with her recently earned masters’s degree from Central Michigan University, she called Bank of America to ask for assistance. They ignored her pleas for help, she says.

“I’m upset with them because they got all this money from the government,” she says of the banking giant. “They drag these out for months and months, making people jump through all kinds of hoops and still they get foreclosed on.”

And that is why the former-journalist picked up a sign and a stack of “Occu-bucks” and marched three blocks through downtown Lansing. She and six others stood in front of the bank branch, holding signs such as “end corporate greed, help people’s needs,” “Honk if you support the 99 %,” and “born in the U.S.A. — will die in a third world country.”

The protest was closely monitored by at least two Lansing Police cars and a security guard in the lobby of the Bank of America.

Among the passersby were state lawmakers, and Ari Adler, spokesman for House Speaker Jase Bolger, stopped by the Bank of America ATM to withdraw money. He did not engage with protesters.

For Weiland, she continues to receive unemployment, but has lost her food assistance. The state authorized a whopping $16 in benefits for her, but when new rules kicked in earlier this year requiring those receiving the benefits to prove they did not have more than $5,000 in assets, Weiland gave up. To get the banking documents to provide her case worker, her bank would have charged her $15.

“It would not have been worth it,” she says. “I am not looking to game the system. I just don’t want the game rigged anymore.”

“It’s like America hates its own people,” she says of welfare cuts and tax realignments the state implemented earlier this year. “We seem to denigrate our own people, and I don’t know why.”

She says her experiences of covering poverty in the Lansing area were nothing in comparison to living in poverty. She has turned her dining room table into a food pantry, she says, lining the table with canned foods.

“When you are in it, you are exposed to it in a very different way [than when reporting on poverty],” she says.

State Rep. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth, has filed a bill that would ban banks from charging fees on debit cards.

Debit card fees are one of the issues that has protesters from the Occupy Wall Street movement rallying all over the country — including in Florida. Cities across the state and country have been mobilizing for weeks now in protest of the country’s rising income inequality, and have argued that the debit card fees are unfair considering that large banks in the U.S. are currently seeing their highest profits since the beginning of the recession.

Clemens’ House Bill 375 would prohibit “certain financial institutions from charging specified fees for use or holding of debit card by consumers” and provide “administrative penalties” if a bank does decide to charge those fees. According to a recent press release, it would make it unlawful “to charge or impose a dormancy fee, an inactivity fee or charge, or a service fee with respect to the use or holding of a debit card by a consumer.”

Clemens tells The Florida Independent that he has been considering this legislation since Bank of America first announced it would be charging fees on debit cards. He said that even though the legislation was not a direct result of the protests, he says his “outrage is similar to the Occupy Wall Street folks.”

Clemens also says that “what really bothers” him is that banks insisted on everyone moving into a “paperless and cashless economy.”

“Now that we’ve bought into their promise of free, easy access to our own money,”  he says, “they want to charge us for it.”

Conservatives have adopted a new meme that blames the recent fees on federal regulation. Along with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., GOP Senate hopeful Adam Hasner has said that banks were “forced to charge customers new fees due to the negative and costly requirements associated with the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, in particular the ‘Durbin Tax.’” Dodd-Frank legislation was a response to the country’s financial crisis that many economists say was partially caused by lax regulations on financial institutions.

Clemens says the claim that financial regulations are to blame is “ridiculous.”

In a recent press release, he explains:

Seeking to please shareholders and continue to pay exorbitant salaries, extremely profitable banks have taken to blaming federal legislation that limits the amount they can charge for so-called ‘swipe fees’ to retailers,” said Representative Clemens. “But no one is buying the weak explanation.

“No one is weeping for an industry that makes billions in profits and in some cases, doesn’t pay taxes,” Clemens added.

Wells Fargo and Bank of America were among the first banks to announce monthly fees for the usage of debit cards.

Bank of America has paid no federal income tax for the past two years, claiming losses in its federal filings. Meanwhile, they have pledged to eliminate 30,000 jobs over the next few years, adding to our country’s unemployment woes. Wells Fargo posted a $3.8 billion profit in the first quarter of 2011, and a $3.73 billion profit in the second quarter.

“The greed of these institutions knows no bounds,” Clemens said. “As soon as you try to end one deceptive or immoral practice, they come up with two more.”

Clemens says that politicians blaming regulation instead of the banks for the fees are “not there for the right reasons.”

“I don’t think they care anymore,” he says.

Clemens also says to “expect to hear the argument that state’s cannot regulate federal banks.” He says, however, that “a recent U.S. Supreme Court case (Cuomo v. Clearing House Association), [which]  granted the New York Attorney General oversight over practices of certain federally chartered financial institutions” is grounds for the legislation.

In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Cuomo that federal law did not preempt states from enforcing their own laws on national banks.

According to The Miami Herald, it’s not clear whether Cuomo will be enough to ensure Clemens’ law can be enforced. According to Anthony DiMarco, a lobbyist for the Florida Bankers Association, “the state cannot impose the law because of the country’s longstanding dual banking system.” He told the Herald that “state banks comply with state law and a few national regulations, he said, and national banks answer mostly to federal regulators like the FDIC… [which means] big banks are allowed to charge fees under federal law.”

The rally, organized by Moveon.org and the AFL-CIO, said Bank of America has become a symbol of greed. The bank recently announced a monthly $5 fee for ATM, and many groups have been critical of the bank for not paying more in taxes.

“This is as close to Wall Street as we can get,” said Wilbur Wilson of Des Moines, who organized the rally. “This company here paid no taxes in 2009 and they foreclosed illegally on people and it’s just not right. That’s why I picked this corner.”

Wilson said people are upset with the banking system, Congress and what he sees as a lack of support for the lower and middle classes.

“I’ve always believed that I am my brother’s keeper,” Wilson said. “I may not be a real religious guy but we are our brother’s keeper. If we cease to remember that we’re nothing more than barbarians.”

Mark Cooper, president of the South Central Iowa Federation of Labor, said the trickle down economics concept won’t work and people need to get behind President Obama’s jobs plan.

“We need to get an influx of money into the economy,” Cooper said. “In essence that’s why we’re out here, that we need to create jobs and it’s not about giving tax breaks to corporations, giving tax breaks to Bank of America.”

Rep. Bruce Hunter (D-Des Moines) said he thinks the Occupy movement spreading across the country along with demonstrations like this one will have an impact on state and federal governments.

“This is just the beginning stages of it and as it becomes more organized and coalesces there will be a message coming out of it and a movement that is it’s time for people to take over their government,” Hunter said.

According to the letter Rubio wrote:

In June, this paper accused me of putting “the financial interests of the nation’s biggest banks before small retailers and consumers” when I voted to delay an onerous regulation that I feared would increase banking fees and hit the wallets of Americans who are already struggling in this economy.

Last week, Bank of America announced it would implement a $5 monthly fee for those using debit cards. If you use your debit card just once — to buy groceries, gas or school supplies for your children — you will be charged the $5 fee. Bank of America is not the first bank to charge for checking accounts, as SunTrust started charging a $5 fee on its checking accounts this summer and Regions Financial will start a $4 fee next month.

At a time when Florida’s unemployment rate remains above 10 percent, we should be easing the burden of government regulation and lowering the costs of financial transactions in the process. Unfortunately, consumers are feeling the costs of a government that has extended its reach further into the economy with the so-called Wall Street “reform” bill.

Rubio is one of the latest conservative politicians making this claim. Last week, Senate candidate Adam Hasner wrote that banks were “forced to charge customers new fees due to the negative and costly requirements associated with the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, in particular the ‘Durbin Tax,’” in a campaign fundraising email.

The subject of new debit card fees is just one of the issues that has protesters from the Occupy Wall Street movement rallying all over the country — including in Florida. Cities across the state and country are mobilizing in protest of the country’s rising income inequality.

Big banks in the U.S. are currently seeing their highest profits since the beginning of the recession. However, unemployment and poverty remains pervasive throughout the country.