Slog
News & ArtsMonday, October 17, 2011
Occupy Donald Trump: Mouthpiece of the 1 Percent
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 10:17 AM
Politico says that Donald Trump thinks the Occupy Wall Street protests were fun, but that the government is letting them go on for too long:
“I do think that government maybe is letting this go a little bit too far,” Trump said on Fox News Monday morning. “People are having a great time. They’re all going down, they’re having a great time.”
Meanwhile, that same Politico article notes that President Obama made an indirect reference to Occupy Wall Street in his Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial dedication speech this weekend:
“If [King] were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there; that the businessman can enter tough negotiations with his company’s union without vilifying the right to collectively bargain.”
1
the media, including you, Paul, really needs to start ignoring that blowhard. he's never had an intelligent insight in his privileged life.
yes, i mean Trump.
yes, i mean Trump.
5
Chris Hedges has far superior comments on the matter, uttered just a little while ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla…
It's time to roll out the guillotines for the Wall Street crowd --- let God sort out their identities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla…
It's time to roll out the guillotines for the Wall Street crowd --- let God sort out their identities.
6
It's like that nonsensical statement from Bloomberg last week that strongly implied the city "allows people to protest". No, you stupid bastards. You have it backwards under the law.
The most fun bit of this is watching all these self-inflated egos (police, the 1%, etc) getting poked and prodded ruthlessly.
The most fun bit of this is watching all these self-inflated egos (police, the 1%, etc) getting poked and prodded ruthlessly.
7
"the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there"
WTF? Did anyone actually think the OWS peeps were demonizing the secretarial pool at Goldman Sachs? The mailroom employees of JP Morgan Chase? Everyone knows WHO they're protesting against jackass, it's those in the top 1%.
WTF? Did anyone actually think the OWS peeps were demonizing the secretarial pool at Goldman Sachs? The mailroom employees of JP Morgan Chase? Everyone knows WHO they're protesting against jackass, it's those in the top 1%.
8
You may have missed this story in this Saturday's Seattle Times, about Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer, who has gotten a 37% raise, from $15 million per year to $21 million (plus perks like two jets for his personal use), even though Amgen is a big fat loser, having destroyed three percent of shareholder's value in just one year, and laid off 15% of its workforce (2,700 people).
There's your one percent. While Sharer is a bit of an outlier, the article points out how the system is structured to encourage exactly this kind of abuse, because every company uses "peer benchmarking" to ensure that their CEO is at the 50th percentile (or higher in many cases). EVERY CEO is above average by this reasoning, which means CEO pay continues to skyrocket -- the average increase was 27% in 2010.
How about Discovery Communications's CEO David Zaslav, whose pay has increased from a starvation-level $7.9 mil in 2008 to a much more satisfactory $42.6 mil in 2010.
This is the moral of the story: not that specific CEOs earn "too much", but that the compensation system is rigged to ensure that all CEOs, no matter how terrible, continue to receive more and more millions of dollars no matter how they perform.
If these protests were specific enough to demand a confiscatory income tax on Mr. Sharer's vast mostly-unearned wealth, I'd get behind that.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/bu…
There's your one percent. While Sharer is a bit of an outlier, the article points out how the system is structured to encourage exactly this kind of abuse, because every company uses "peer benchmarking" to ensure that their CEO is at the 50th percentile (or higher in many cases). EVERY CEO is above average by this reasoning, which means CEO pay continues to skyrocket -- the average increase was 27% in 2010.
How about Discovery Communications's CEO David Zaslav, whose pay has increased from a starvation-level $7.9 mil in 2008 to a much more satisfactory $42.6 mil in 2010.
This is the moral of the story: not that specific CEOs earn "too much", but that the compensation system is rigged to ensure that all CEOs, no matter how terrible, continue to receive more and more millions of dollars no matter how they perform.
If these protests were specific enough to demand a confiscatory income tax on Mr. Sharer's vast mostly-unearned wealth, I'd get behind that.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/bu…
9
If Slog allowed us to link to individual comments I would link the shit out of Fnarf's comment and Facebook it, twitter it, reddit it, and so on.
10
@9, not that I think you should do so, but you can link to individual comments. See the comment number, and how it's underlined? Hover over it. Right-click and copy.
11
Speaking of Amgen (and OWS), the chemists are getting restless.
The pointy haired bosses are saying euphemistically loaded code words ... The whole day at Amgen was wasted with scared shitless labrats floating from cubicle to cubicle ... Lots of networking going on. ”Heeeey, how are you doing? Haven’t talked to you for, what is it now? Five years? Oh, I’m doing fine ...
12
And speaking of Wall Streeters themselves, market player and talking head Jim Cramer popped up on MSNBC today, said he'd been down to Zuccotti Park learning and listening, and OWS central premise is indisputable: the top 1% don't carry their share of the load.
13
@8 That is exactly what conservatives (and trolls on Slog) don't understand. It's not about something as petty as jealousy or hatred of any person's property or person- it's about outrage over the systematic upward transfer of wealth. You don't have to believe in vast conspiracies of disdain for the poor, you just have to understand that when a system is devised and administered by the wealthiest, it isn't a shock to see it favor the wealthiest.
14
@8
Maybe the unemployment compensation for any laid-off worker should come directly out of the CEO's paycheck. One could argue that if the CEO was truly gifted and great at CEOing, he'd (because it is so often "he") could figure out a way to make his company truly profitable without laying people off. If he were a good CEO, wouldn't he have found a way to make those people useful to his company?
Maybe the unemployment compensation for any laid-off worker should come directly out of the CEO's paycheck. One could argue that if the CEO was truly gifted and great at CEOing, he'd (because it is so often "he") could figure out a way to make his company truly profitable without laying people off. If he were a good CEO, wouldn't he have found a way to make those people useful to his company?
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