Two weeks into Occupy Wall Street protests, movement is at a crossroads

Editor admits to ‘infiltrating’ D.C. protest to undermine ‘Occupy’ movement

An assistant editor for the conservative magazine The American Spectator admitted in print Saturday to infiltrating an antiwar protest in Washington, D.C. in hopes of undermining the “Occupy” movement.

Patrick Howley — “for journalistic purposes” — was one of the antiwar protesters who clashed with security staff at The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum on Saturday, leading to one arrest and numerous people being pepper-sprayed.

The progressive blog Firedoglake has condemned the editor as an agent provocateur, but it is unclear if Howley actually incited the clash with security guards.

According to the conservative writer, he rushed into the museum entrance with only a handful of other protesters.

“I forced myself into the doors and sprinted blindly across the floor of the Air and Space Museum, drawing the attention of hundreds of stunned khaki-clad tourists,” he said.

“As far as anyone knew I was part of this cause,” Howley wrote, “a cause that I had infiltrated the day before in order to mock and undermine in the pages of The American Spectator — and I wasn’t giving up before I had my story.”

The “mock and undermine” portion of the article was later removed without comment after numerous media outlets, including The Washington Post, New York magazine and The Guardian, reported the story. The URL of the article was also changed.

The protest was part of the “October 2011 Stop the Machine” antiwar demonstration. The protesters planned to demonstrate against the drone exhibit at the museum.

Howley, conflating the antiwar protest with the “Occupy” movement, wondered if the “ill-defined, anti-corporate and anti-bailout protests” were dangerous, but concluded that without ideological uniformity and a willingness to boldly confront authority, the “protesters have no political power.”

Some of those in the museum demonstration were affiliated with the “Occupy D.C.” protest group that began on October 1, but the two groups have made it clear that they are separate.

Updated October 10, 2011 at 1:09pm ET.

I agree that financial crimes can hurt many people, but if your moral compass makes that worse than murder we probably have irreconcilable differences about our underlying criteria upon which our moral codes rest.

You made a specific claim Cyclo, you said they knew that they would be ruining their banks and the economy but didn't care. You said they knowingly did this.

When you did, I said that I hoped you would have the intellectual honesty to admit that you believe this without supporting evidence. It is a hope that I still hold.

Let's just say I agree with all your rhetoric and hot air to make that easier, so we are now theoretically on the same page about the financial crimes being worse than murder. So I think we should lock some of these criminals that you are talking about. So what are their names, and what evidence do you have about their crimes?

Can you get off of this bullshit point? I'm not an investigator for the gov't, RG. I don't have access to the evidence you are talking about.

I hope you at least are honest enough to admit to yourself that you believe this, "firmly", in the complete absence of supporting evidence.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Can you get off of this bullshit point? I'm not an investigator for the gov't, RG. I don't have access to the evidence you are talking about.

I don't see why not. It took forever but at least you finally owned up to it.

Let's examine a specific point I raised: companies who were improperly reviewing mortgages at a rate which clearly was inappropriate. This has widely been reported on in the news. Are you going to have us believe that those who were running these companies didn't know what was going on?

I remind you once again that we're not in court. You're not owed that level of evidence in order for my argument to be a perfectly valid one. So, your demand is immaterial, and really just a dodge.

You're relying on semantics because you can't address the actual points I raise.

You can't do this because what you are claiming doesn't make any logical sense.

Please display a little intellectual honesty yourself here...

let's start simply, with the example I gave in the last line of my last post:

Quote:

Let's examine a specific point I raised: companies who were improperly reviewing mortgages at a rate which clearly was inappropriate. This has widely been reported on in the news. Are you going to have us believe that those who were running these companies didn't know what was going on?

I firmly believe that a huge percentage of the bankers involved knew what they were doing would end in massive collapse for their own banks, and were betting on being bailed out - or on being retired comfortably with their fortune no matter what happened.

I'd love to hear your explanation for how those in charge weren't responsible for unethical or illegal actions taken by their employees. And your explanation for why we shouldn't investigate and prosecute those who knew what was going on.

In fact, income inequality has gotten so extreme here that the US now ranks 93rd in the world in "income equality." China's ahead of us. So is India. So is Iran.

I gotta tell you, if you wonder why people think you're an apologist for the banks and financial industry, you oughta try reading your own posts and look at the lengths you'll go to in order to avoid discussing specific instances - and the assurances YOU make, with no knowledge, that people had no idea what the effects of their actions would be.

Cozy relationships and ‘peer benchmarking’ send CEOs’ pay soaring

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — As the board of Amgen convened at the company’s headquarters in March, chief executive Kevin W. Sharer seemed an unlikely candidate for a raise.

Shareholders at the company, one of the nation’s largest biotech firms, had lost 3 percent on their investment in 2010 and 7 percent over the past five years. The company had been forced to close or shrink plants, trimming the workforce from 20,100 to 17,400. And Sharer, a 63-year-old former Navy engineer, was already earning lots of money — about $15 million in the previous year, plus such perks as two corporate jets.

The board decided to give Sharer more. It boosted his compensation to $21 million annually, a 37 percent increase, according to the company reports.

Why?

The company board agreed to pay Sharer more than most chief executives in the industry — with a compensation “value closer to the 75th percentile of the peer group,” according to a 2011 regulatory filing.

This is how it’s done in corporate America. At Amgen and at the vast majority of large U.S. companies, boards aim to pay their executives at levels equal to or above the median for executives at similar companies.

The idea behind setting executive pay this way, known as “peer benchmarking,” is to keep talented bosses from leaving...

“We have too many regulations stopping democracy and not enough regulations stopping Wall Street from misbehaving,” Stiglitz, an economics professor at Columbia University, told protesters the next day. “We are bearing the cost of their misdeeds. There’s a system where we’ve socialized losses and privatized gains. That’s not capitalism.”

Hundreds of #Occupy events are happening across the country this Saturday, October 15th.  As you're probably aware, the number one complaint amongst the various protesters has been overwhelming, economically-crushing, student loan debt.  This is a moment in history for all of us to make our voices heard and to draw even greater attention to the ever-growing crisis of student loan debt.