Tracy Postert, before and after. Integrity is not a job requirement on Wall Street.
Out of work Ph.D Tracy Postert spent 15 days at Zuccotti Park advocating revolution, condemning the corruption of Wall Street and decrying the moral bankruptcy of the capitalist system. Then she decided to hold up a sign advertising her degree and specialty while she was protesting the evil ways of the financial district. Wayne Kaufman, chief market analyst for John Thomas Financial Brokerage, saw her on the street, was intrigued by her background in biomedical science, and took her resume. Then he asked her if she’d like to come for an interview.
Kaufman offered her a job as a junior analyst evaluating medical companies as potential investments, and she accepted. Postert has now just completed her third week as paid employee of the system she was railing against on the street, studying for exams to be a certified financial analyst.
“I want to get a perfect score,” she told the New York Post. She gets a perfect hypocrisy score already. Imagine Martin Luther King agreeing to accept a special membership in all-white country club, or taking a lucrative job as Sen. Strom Thurmond’s advisor on racial matters. Imagine Jane Fonda signing an Army contract to recruit soldiers for the Vietnam War. Wall Street and capitalism were the embodiment of evil and injustice for Postert, until she had a chance to move from the “99%” to the 1% whose values she had sneered at.
Is there anything wrong with working as a Wall Street analyst? Hell no—unless you have derided Wall Street analysts as the scum of the earth before you had the chance to be one. I don’t assume that Tracy Postert is typical of all OWS protesters, but I am confident she is typical of many of them. Not principled, but angry. Not idealistic, but envious. Not serious, but cynical. In other words, hypocrites, just waiting for the opportunity to show it.
Here is the irony. The fact that Wall Street would make a job offer to someone as ethically inert as this intellectually dishonest and feckless class warrior shows that Occupy Wall Street is not entirely wrong about the dearth of ethical values in the business community
And the fact that an Occupy Wall Street protester would accept such an offer shows that Wall Street may be right about the protesters.
Ethics Alarms 
(First of all, Jack, what the heck is with this garish red/green all over your site? Or is it my browser? IMO the colors are butt ugly and the text is hard to read. Well, maybe that last part is a good thing hahahaha!)
Jack, speaking of taking advantage of an opportunity, isn’t that what you’re doing here, milking the Occupy Revolution for your own ends? (Please don’t tell me I’m off topic here. I’m just offering a different perspective.)
Secondly, yes, I’m certain there are plenty of Occupiers who would love to take advantage of the movement. In a manner of speaking, I’m one of them. I want my poem to go down in the history books as a document which captured a period in history. This is my ego and I embrace and I make no apology.
Lastly, regarding Rachael Maddow’s report on how Occupiers are coming to the aid of families facing eviction due to foreclosure, is that not another instance of someone using the Occupy Movement to their own advantage? http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-rachel-maddow-show/45531691#45531691 Is there anything wrong with that?
I mean, where does one draw the line, Jack? Books will be penned. Art will be, created. Music will be made. Movies will be produced. Like any major event (and, as you probably now begrudgingly understand, this IS a major event in the history of our country), people will react, and people will take advantage, whether for themselves, or for the good of humanity.
It’s not all bad, Jack. Try to find a silver lining, OK?
You’re changing the subject, Jeff. This is hypocrisy. You don’t dispute that, do you? The post is not about exploitation, in the sense of using aspects of your life to make a buck. This is side-switching. I’m not side switching when I write about the ethical issues raised by OWS—the story comes to me, I don’t manufacture it. You’re not side-switching by trying to find readers and publishers for your poem.
Where is the silver lining in hypocrisy, or in people who use public space and resources to protest insincerely? When you hear that I’ve gone to work for Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump, Herman Cain, Charlie Rangel, Jim Moran, Ed Schultz, Glenn Beck, Keith Olberrmann, Manny Ramirez, Barry Bonds, Goldman Sachs, Eric Holder, or Tom DeLay, THEN you can call me on side switching….just like Tracy Postert. Because then, and only then, will I be like her.
As to the other question—those are the Ethics Alarms Christmas Colors. Opinion is split 50-50, just like when it made its debut last year. I like it, so I’m the tie-breaker. It also gives me some time to work on the collage.
Glad it’s not my browser! OK, I bow to your Christmas colors.
Hypocrisy? But of course. But, it seems to me you are using a broad brush here, Jack. Earlier you wrote that lawyers must keep abreast of ethics as part of their ongoing responsibilities. But, what of those lawyers (i’m speaking of corporate lawyers in the main) who skirt those ethical constraints at the behest of their corporate clients? http://www.sutherland.com/files/Publication/2c988096-4122-4114-82dc-aad7280c3b65/Presentation/PublicationAttachment/8fa33867-ec86-4fa3-a7fa-9c769fd7e03f/EthicalandProfessionalIssuesPostEnron101402.pdf
You don’t hear me proclaiming “Kill all the lawyers!” for that would be using a broad brush when only a small percentage of lawyers (I hope) are guilty of misconduct. I think it’s way too early to proclaim, as you do, Jack, that, “I don’t assume that Tracy Postert is typical of all OWS protesters, but I am confident she is typical of many of them.” Typical of many of them? OK, then would it be fair for me to say that ethical misconduct of corporate lawyers is “typical of many of them”? I don’t think so.
Check.
Yes, it would be probably be completely accurate to say that the ethical misconduct of corporate lawyers as you describe it is “typical of many of them”? But even they have better arguments that we are wrong than Tracy has against the charge of hypocrisy.
Tracy has no defense. I think the issue is this: “I don’t assume that Tracy Postert is typical of all OWS protesters, but I am confident she is typical of many of them. Not principled, but angry. Not idealistic, but envious. Not serious, but cynical. In other words, hypocrites, just waiting for the opportunity to show it.”
What basis do you have for that? You might as well be calling them dirty hippies.
It’s an opinion based on a lot of contact and conversation with protesters of all stripes and kinds throughout my life. It’s an opinion based upon many of my 60’s era law school classmates, who spouted similar class warfare cant and took environmental law and anti-trust courses and swore that they were going into poverty law, public interest law and the like, and wore long hair and beards and t-shirts and jeans as badges of commitment, and then when their grades hit the top of the curve and they realized they could go to work for white collar defense firms and Monsanto (even though they had held sit-ins against Monsanto when they were undergraduates) they took the big money and abandoned their supposed principles. It’s an opinion, but I think it is an informed opinion, and one of things it informs is my suspicion of the integrity of most protesters in this country. The anti-war protesters who shut down my campus had a healthy proportion of members who just didn’t want to have to fight, that’s all. Et Cetera. I know human nature. Still, its just my opinion, which is why I said “I am confident.” It is nothing like calling them dirty hippies.
It was an opinion with no supporting evidence. Now that you’ve supplied your reasoning, it’s an opinion based on false generalization. You had some classmates who protested, and then flipped and you filled in why. You have an unsupported belief that an unknown but significant number of anti-war protesters on your campus didn’t want to fight.
The plural of anecdote is not data, but your anecdotes themselves are questionable.
Humans are horrible at accurately assessing patterns. Your confidence is completely unfounded.
(You should also note that the anti-war protesters you described were not hypocrites, so you are left with one supplied anecdote)
The anti war protesters he described were cowards.
When one is assessing unrevealed motivation and underlying character of strangers, there is not likely to be proof of the sort that you demand. We all base many decisions on judgment based on experience. I believe that protesters in general share many characteristics. Your faith in their constancy is similarly unproven–I suppose you feel the only justified assessment is “I don’t know.” but, you see, I DO know. You don’t.
And you do put words in my mouth—I didn’t say that many of the OWS crowd were hypocrites—though I suspect they are—I said they are probably angry, envious and cynical. Which of these don’t you agree with? I suppose envious is the least well documented.
You responded to the the wrong post.
We all base many decisions on judgment based on experience.
And we know that humans are horrible at doing this. You think you’re special. You’re not.
Your faith in their constancy is similarly unproven–I suppose you feel the only justified assessment is “I don’t know.”
The proper response is that until you get any evidence, it’s silly to state one claim unequivocally.
but, you see, I DO know. You don’t
Again, you’re not special.
And you do put words in my mouth—I didn’t say that many of the OWS crowd were hypocrites—though I suspect they are—I said they are probably angry, envious and cynical.
You just quote mined yourself. The sentence after that statement is: “In other words, hypocrites, just waiting for the opportunity to show it.” I stand 100% behind my accusation.
Which of these don’t you agree with? I suppose envious is the least well documented.
I disagree with all of them. We have evidence that some protesters are principled and evidence that some are angry, but not enough evidence to state that a majority is either. They’re also not mutually exclusive. While I’m not actually protesting, I’m both angry and principled. Your “not idealistic, but envious” is based on one person. That last, “not serious, but cynical” is also pretty bad. What evidence do you have to believe that they are not serious? What reason to characterize the lion’s share of them as cynical in the bad way? If that’s supposed to be point and counterpoint….you think they’re doing this on a lark, knowing that it won’t work?
I forgot to reply to the first part:
When one is assessing unrevealed motivation and underlying character of strangers, there is not likely to be proof of the sort that you demand.
First, you’re looking for a logical impossibility. If you could determine the motivation, it wouldn’t be unrevealed.
Second, you actually made an argument for not judging people. If you don’t have the evidence necessary, you shouldn’t make the judgment, not lower the level of evidence. Here’s a court analogy.
Going back a while, there was an issue with DWI cases. It turns out that breathalyzers don’t actually analyze blood alcohol content, and they are affected by a number of things unrelated to whether blood alcohol level is above .08 or .1 or whatever the standard. Cases were being thrown out. What to do? Get a new toy that actually measures BAC? No. Instead, the laws were rewritten so that blowing more than the limit on the machine was illegal, no matter what the BAC actually is. Instead of drunk driving laws prohibiting driving drunk, they prohibit driving when this specific gizmo will have a reading on this specific person.
That’s what you’re doing. Instead of demanding the evidence to call someone angry, envious, and cynical, you’re changing the rules so that angry, envious, and cynical now mean possibly angry, possibly envious, or possibly cynical.
They were also behaving rationally.
Have you seen the people in downtown DC????? Ive been by both sites and I think that dirty hippies and bums pretty much describes a good deal of the people down there.
You don’t have to bow to them…
OK. Just a little curtsey then. BTW, my old blog, Teachers’ Lounge, is still decorated in our country’s colors. Back in 2004 I wasn’t quite as angry as I am now. http://consilience.typepad.com/teachers_lounge/2004/12/index.html
You seem to imply that all OWS protesters are anti-capitalist. I don’t think this is the case. The OWS movement is (or was) pretty heterodox, consisting of people opposed to capitalism as a system who want it replaced by another system, people who are not anti-capitalist but are opposed to the large bailouts of the banks, unemployed young people who are angry that what seemed like promises of the older generation (work hard at school and you will get a good job) turned out to be false, people appalled by the growing wealth disparities between the rich and poor and people who are generally dissatisfied with the status quo and just like to protest. This heterogeneity of viewpoints is what led to people complaining about the lack of coherent demands from the OWS protesters. I don’t know about Tracy Postert’s reasons for joining the movement, but if she was one of the unemployed younger people, rather than one of the anti-capitalists, I would not say she was hypocritical.
Eric, I think by this time OWS is estopped from playing the game of using its own intentional vagueness and failure to specify goals and principles as an all-purpose defense. Enough anti-capitalist propaganda has issued from the various encampments that they own it.
Many protests have incoherent demands when they first get going, and consist of disparate groups of people who are all unhappy with the status quo, but do not agree about the best way to change it. Successful ones eventually coalesce around certain objectives which they try to achieve. Less successful ones peter out. The verdict is still out on the OWS movement.
Wayne Kaufman doesn’t realise who he has just employed. Tracey Postert aka Tracey Blevins also goes by the name of “medical marijuana barbie” or “rainbeaux barbie”. She is an marijuana activist.
See her blog – http://rainbeauxbarbie.blogspot.com/2004/06/my-ten-point-plan-for-new-york-city.html
She is also a 9/11 truther and peddles her own conspiracy, namely that the WTC was destroyed by turning all the steel to dust. If her finacial analysis is as poor as her analysis of supposed dust from the collapse of the twin towers then she won’t be much use to John Thomas.
You can read her views regarding 9/11 at the James Randi forum – http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=189421
I wonder how many people she is now working with knew someone who died that day.
Link to her “analysis” of dust – http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=7566820&postcount=38
There’s a reason she was unemployed, now you know.
I’m not sure what being a marijuana activist has to do with working on wall street, or why it matters if her coworkers knew someone who died in the 9/11 attacks.
Being a truther, though, does show some horrible analytic skill.
You have to read her 10 point plan for NYC. She is now a high profile employee. Do YOU want this person managing your retirement? Do you want to use a company that would employ this person to manage your retirement?
I don’t want this person involved in managing my retirement, but it’s not because she’s a marijuana activist.
Crazy person: bad.
Advocate of marijuana: irrelevant.
How do you know it is the same person? I don’t really see the resemblance in the pictures.
Neither do I.
Yes, they are the same person.
Tracy Lynn Postert (“protest”, what a cheeky anagram) = Tracy Lynn Blevins
Go to:
http://www.intelius.com/
Search for both names. Type New York as the state for your search. Notice how Tracy “Postert” and Tracy Blevins have the exact same relatives! THEY ARE THE SAME PERSON! She changed her last name to hide her flaky, troubled, shameful past.
She changed her name because she got married to a guy named Postert. She changed it back to Blevins when she divorced him. Perfectly logical. Millions of women change their names when they get married and divorced.