All You Need to Know About Barack Obama is that His Crucial Mentor is Penny Pritzker

Without Penny Pritzker, the scion of the Hyatt hotel chain, Barack Obama would have never achieved anything in politics. She was the first, and arguably the most enthusiastic, big money donor to fund the political career of that guy with the funny name.

The most recent news is that she had to modify the financial disclosure forms that she filed when she was submitted as commerce secretary, because she understated her pay from her consulting by at least $80 million.

What makes this even worse is that these wages were pay to offshore funds to avoid taxes:

And also like many of the plutocrats in America Pritzker has a lot of tax abnormalities involving offshore accounts. But now Prtizker is under fire for providing a false financial disclosure statement which she has since amended.

Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker inadvertently understated a portion of her income by at least $80 million in a disclosure form required for her nomination to be U.S. Commerce secretary and has amended the document.
Forms released online last night by the Office of Government Ethics show that Pritzker earned additional income for consulting work on hundreds of trusts, including family trusts, beyond what she disclosed last week. The omission, discovered by Pritzker’s financial advisers, was due to a clerical error, said Susan Anderson, the nominee’s spokeswoman

Not surprisingly Pritzker makes a nice chunk of change “consulting” with other 1%ers.

Documents released last week show Pritzker received $32.2 million for a decade’s worth of consulting on the restructuring of domestic trusts. The filings released yesterday show she earned at least $80 million for that work, according to Bloomberg’s compilation of the data. The revised total is in addition to the amount reported last week, according to Anderson.

Pritzker, whose family founded Hyatt Hotels Corp, is scheduled to testify on her nomination before the Senate Commerce Committee tomorrow. She disclosed last week that she earned $54 million in consulting fees last year for a similar restructuring of trusts based in the Bahamas, also over 10 years. The Bahamas’ income wasn’t changed in the amended disclosure document.

Just what we need in a Commerce Secretary, someone who knows how to help companies offshore their profits to avoid tax liabilities.

Also, she has a long history of avoiding taxes through arcane instruments and offshoring for her own benefit.

We also have the the fact that she profited at taxpayer expense when she ran Superior Bank into the ground by aggressively pursuing subprime loans.  (Also here)

Also, as head of Hyatt, she has a long history of being virulently anti labor union, (also here.) as well as being a big supporter of Rahm Emanuel's plans to privatize public education.

And finally there are the longstanding family ties between the family fortune and organized crime.


The reason that this is important is not because of her nomination.  The Commerce Secretary's job has traditionally been the aggressive support of what is now called "the 1%".

Her relationship to Barack Obama is important because it defines his entire political career.

It's why we are not seeing a pursuit of the banksters, and we are seeing a pursuit of a "grand bargain" on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, which will have grandma eating cat food.<sup>*

*</sup>In the interest of health, I would suggest that people eat dog food, and not cat food. Cats because they are one of the few true carnivores, do not need the complex carbohydrates and fats that people, and dogs do. As such, dog food is better for you than cat food because it provides carbs and essential fatty acids. A dog can go blind if it is fed on cat food, but a cat lives just fine on dog food. The phenomenon is known as rabbit starvation.

If You Did Not Already Think that the TPP Sucked

The gushing endorsement of the international trade deal by corrupt subprime lendor, union buster, and enthusiastic Obama supporter Commerce Sec. Penny Pritzker should remove all doubt:

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other U.S. trade relationships are outdated and need an "upgrade", U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said on Tuesday during a trade visit to Mexico.

Attitudes toward labor and the environment as well as e-commerce and new technology have shifted trade concerns since NAFTA was signed, so the U.S. government is focusing on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would establish a free-trade bloc stretching from Vietnam to Chile, she said.

"NAFTA was a groundbreaking agreement 20 years ago and it has served all of the North American countries well," Pritzker said of the 1994 treaty between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. "But now it's time to be looking at how can we upgrade our trade relationships."

In the article, she is described as a, "a businesswoman and heiress to the Hyatt Hotel fortune who has been a prolific fundraiser for U.S. President Barack Obama," but that is a weak description of their relationship.

She has bankrolled his career from the very start. She was his first patron, and arguably his biggest supporter among the top tenth of the 1%.

She has also been virulently anti-labor in her business and public actions, and she and her family paid themselves big bucks as they drove Superior Bank into the ground.

Between, her, Rahm Emanuel, and Arne Duncan, and the full throated support of all of them from Barack Obama, it is no wonder that I've concluded that the President is a corporate tool.

H/t Crooks & Liars.

Bush Obama Nominee for Commerce Secretary Approved

Sorry about the headline, but Penny Pritzker who was just approved by the Senate as Secretary of Commerce, with only Bernie Sanders voting no:

Senators pick their battles, and by Tuesday, members in both parties had decided not to have one with President Obama over his nomination of Penny Pritzker, the billionaire hotel heiress, to be commerce secretary. In a 97-to-1 vote, they confirmed her to join the cabinet.

The lone dissenter was Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the socialist independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats.

When Mr. Obama announced in May his choice of Ms. Pritzker, 54, to join his second-term economic team as head of the eclectic Commerce Department — its responsibilities vary widely and include federal business programs and weather forecasting — rumblings from the right and left suggested trouble.

Yes, virulently anti union, a bought/looted a bank, dove into subprime mortgages, and left the taxpayers holding the bag, and keeps her fortune in overseas tax havens. (Background here.)

But the is a friend of Obama, and was his his first big buck donor, so she gets to be commerce secretary.

I guess that it's the new motto of the Obama administration cabinet, "Not quite as lame as Alberto Gonzalez."

Penny Pritzker Needs to STFU

Ms. Pritzker, Barack Obama's campaign finance chairwoman was, as I've noted earlier, chairman of the board for Superior Bank of Chicago, the bank that pioneered the subprime and predatory loans as a business model, that collapsed in 2001.

It's likely that at some point this will become an issue, but to the degree that she invites reporters to cover her, as she clearly does here, she makes it even more likely.

The article is innocuous enough, it really is quite favorable, but it raises her public profile, which makes her a more likely target.

Given the current state of affairs in banking and housing, I cannot imagine anyone, in any campaign, who would not use her background against any campaign with which she was associated.

She needs to keep her head down.

Linkage, Guaranteed Chomytz Free*

• Fonts, typefaces and all things typographical (I love Typography (ILT)) Get your linotype geek on.
• Virus trading cards (Table Top Whale) Un-dirty-word-believably cool.
• Boy on Burning Deck – What the Uss Donald Cook and the Polish Navy Were Doing off Kaliningrad When They Were Buzzed by the Russian Airforce (Dances With Bears) The US and Poland were practicing attacking Kaliningrad.
• Origins of feudalism in the West (Understanding Society) Get your history geek on.
• College Student Is Removed From Flight After Speaking Arabic on Plane (The New York Times) Live in obedient fear, citizen.
• The Invisibility of U.S. Oligarchs: The Case of Penny Pritzker (Sam Husseini) If you read anything today, read this.  Also note the Pritzker bankrolled Obama's political career almost from day one, and profited mightily from sub prime loans at a bank which was at the time the biggest bank failure ever. This explains a lot about why the banksters walked.
• Panama Papers: More Trouble For The West Than Russia (Forbes) Notable for it being published by that bastion of crony capitalism, Forbes magazine.
• What Happens When You Drink an Entire Bottle of Weed Lube (Broadly) Drinking a bottle of lube, even if it does not contain 450mg of THC (it's intended to be sprayed lightly the genitals) will not end well.
• The People Want Tyrion Lannister for President (Esquire) "Everyone's favorite Game of Thrones character beat Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in an online poll."
• How a Simple Request Got Me Blacklisted by the Pentagon (The Intercept) Of note is that it appears that Africom is concealing a lot of misdeeds by its troops with no national security justification.

Prince died on Thursday. An eclectic artist who played a plethora of instruments, produced music, and directed and acted in movies.

He also had the best cameo ever on Animaniacs, which says a lot: (Actual dialogue from the show)



H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

^*Chomaytz is leavened bread, which is forbidden during the days of Pesach (Passover).

Good News from Illinois

Not a common phrase, particularly with regard to legislation and politics, but post Bruce Rauner, it does look promising.

The state legislature has passed, and governor has signed, a law banning local right-to-work ordinances:

In a complete 180, the new Governor of Illinois J.B. Pritzker has signed a bill into law that would make local Right to Work laws illegal in the state. The new law, which takes effect immediately, was passed with overwhelming support from the State Senate and the State Assembly. It had been previously blocked by the Republican Governor Bruce Rauner.

The change comes after four years of anti-union policies coming out of the Governor’s mansion. Rauner was not only a major proponent of local Right to Work, but he was also a catalyst for encouraging Mark Janus to sue his union, AFSCME so that he would not have to pay fair share fees.

The need for the ban came after Lincolnshire, a northern suburb of Chicago, passed a local Right to Work law in 2015. The law created a legal gray area for Lincolnshire employees since Illinois is a free bargaining state. The new law also brings state law into line with lower court rulings that have affirmed the states right to determine whether local employees should pay agency fees.

Pritzker, much to my surprise, has also proposed amending the state constitution to allow for a progressive income tax.

Here's hoping that this initiative is successful as well.

An Outbreak of Uncharacteristic Humanity

The state of Illinois has banned police officers lying to children during interrogations.

The fact that it had to be banned, and is generally permitted throughout the country, is an abomination:

Police will be forbidden from using deceptive tactics while interrogating minors under a measure Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law Thursday that made Illinois the first state in the nation to ban the practice.

The bill was one of several Pritzker signed in a morning ceremony that, together with a sweeping piece of legislation he approved earlier this year that includes the eventual elimination of cash bail, represent a major overhaul of the criminal justice system in Illinois under his watch.

Advocates of the new law dealing with how police interrogate minors say lying or using other deceptive actions while questioning a young person can lead to false confessions and ultimately wrongful convictions.

Terrill Swift, who spent 15 years in prison after falsely confessing to a 1994 rape and murder, says that’s what happened to him. DNA evidence later tied the crime to a previously convicted murderer and sex offender.

The law, which takes effect Jan. 1, bars police from knowingly providing false information about evidence or making unauthorized statements about leniency while questioning those 17 and younger. Any confession made under those circumstances will be inadmissible in court unless prosecutors can prove “by a preponderance of the evidence that the confession was voluntarily given.”

This should be the standard nationwide.

In fact, it should go further, and make such behavior by law enforcement a crime.

Call Your Congresscritter

It looks like the Obama administration is planning to submit a fast track bill next week.

If this passes, expect the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) and (TTIP) Trans-atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership to follow soon after, and it both deals will pass under fast track, because there will be no meaningful public discussion:

Senators will introduce trade promotion authority legislation next week, a top Obama administration official said Thursday.

Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker expects a “fast-track” bill to be introduced early next week in the Senate and said in a call with reporters that she is “anxiously awaiting to see the language.”

Pritzker is the first administration official to suggest a firm timeline for legislation that would grant President Obama "fast-track" powers for negotiating trade deals.

Speculation has been swirling about when the Senate Finance Committee would start moving on a bill.

Senate aides have said negotiations between Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) are making progress but that no deal had been struck.

The TPP and the TTIP suck.

They favor big big banks, big pharma, and big content over ordinary people, labor rights, environmental protection, and democracy.

As a bonus, it also appears that it would make state owned banks like the Bank of North Dakota, which has saved taxpayers millions, illegal. (It would probably make a US Post Office bank, which would serve to rescue poor Americans from predatory check cashing operations, illegal as well).

Background here.

Call, and tell them to vote no, and tell them that if they vote yes, you will not vote for them ever, in any election, primary or general.

This is particularly important if your Congressmen are Democrats, because there will be a full court press from the Obama administration, which supports fast track, and has negotiated the TPP and TTIP on this. They will argue that the credibility of the President depends on this.

If your Congressmen are Republicans, call and sound like a wingnut who will never forgive them for supporting that Kenyan Muslim Marxist Atheist Tyrant.  (The more unhinged you sound, the better)

You can make email contact from here, but a phone call (The Congressional switchboard number is (202) 224-3121), or a letter sent through the mail probably have more impact.

Pathetic Wankers Gotta Pathetically Wank

I am referring, of course, to Barack Obama, who once again is saying that the Democratic Party must hippie punch their way out of the current crisis.

Okay, Ace. Here’s the thing. This kind of tough-love, pep-rally bullshit really has pole-vaulted over its sell-by date. From CNN:

“I think it’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up,” Obama said at the fundraiser, according to excerpts of his remarks exclusively obtained by CNN.

It may have escaped former President Look Forward, Not Back’s notice, but there are quite a number of Democrats who are fighting pretty damned hard against the encroaching darkness. In the House, there are Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost, and AOC, with whom the Democratic establishment still doesn’t know what to do. Chris Murphy, Sheldon Whitehouse, Elizabeth Warren, Angus King, and, yes, Bernie Sanders have kicked back against impossible odds, and King and Sanders aren’t even Democrats. Governors like Andy Beshear and Tim Walz are trying to hold the line against the excesses of the administration, and J.B. Pritzker in Illinois had been a rock in the national debate. And mayors like Karen Bass and Michelle Wu have done noble work against the ICE rampages in their cities. In fact, at the moment, most of the Democratic navel-gazing and whining concerns the horrible possibility of Zohran Mamdani’s being elected mayor of New York, and a lot of that is coming from politicians and activists loyal to Obama.

He goes on to pretend that there is no difference between people who want to fight and people who want to sell out, and once again, he comes down firmly on the side of the DLC type sellouts, only this time under the guise of the "Abundance Agenda".

F%$# him and the rest of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) pukes who want nothing to change. 

This is Gonna Get Ugly

I do not know how he does it, but Ken Klippenstein has gotten another bombshell scoop, in this case it's a leaked memo confirming that DHS is bringing in the military to support them when they target Chicago for mass abductions and violence.

I hope that Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have a plan to deal with.

One common sense measure that I would suggest is that when Illinois law enforcement encounters a masked aand heavily armed man without obvious and visible identification, that they arrest them.

Once they are fingerprinted, gotten their mug shot, and have had their names put on the police blotter, they can phone someone to bail them out.

The Department of Homeland Security has requested military assistance for upcoming ICE operations in Chicago, according to a “For Official Use Only” memo that I’ve obtained. A military advance team has already arrived.

The document requests “immediate Department of Defense support” for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) activities “to address public safety and national security.” It suggests that the support will be provided by active duty troops, making no mention of the Illinois National Guard.

The request specifically seeks “support infrastructure,” including highway access, fuel, and “other logistical nodes…” with the military staging out of the Great Lakes Naval Station in North Chicago, some 30 miles from downtown.

Dated August 27, the request is from Department of Homeland Security Executive Secretary Andrew Whitaker to Defense Department Executive Secretary Anthony Fuscellaro. Whitaker is a former Ralph Lauren Brand Ambassador and a longtime Trump politico.

Not good. 

AOC 2028

If just because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez scares the bejesus out of Republicans:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) got a Republican lawmaker to strike his comments after she accused him of trying to intimidate Democratic governors during an immigration-focused hearing. 

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D), Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) went before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Thursday, where Republican lawmakers railed against their states’ “sanctuary” laws.

………

“You are engaged in operations against federal government attempts to enforce federal law that I think now constitutes a threat to our national security, and you’re in violation of federal law,” Palmer said.

“That’s 100% false,” Hochul pushed back.

“And charges should be — for obstruction — should be brought against each one of you for doing this. I’ll leave that up to the Department of Justice,” Palmer said.

………

“Mr. Chair, point of order, point of order. That was a form of intimidation of the witness,” Ocasio-Cortez told Comer.

“Do you have a point of inquiry?” Comer asked.

“Yes, I have a point of inquiry,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

“State your point,” Comer said.

“Raising the prospect of charges against witnesses is a form of intimidation, is it not?” the congresswoman asked.

Palmer can be heard off-mic saying he “strikes” his statement, leading Ocasio-Cortez to withdraw her question.

Making nice to Republicans is a losing proposition.  We need a fighter to run in 2028 for President.

More Obama Appointments

Janet Napolitano as head of DHS. Which means, I guess that she won't be challenging McCain in his run for reelection to the Senate in 2 years, which is a bummer, she could beat him, and it means that the Dems won't have a check on districting in Arizona.

Also there is a report that Penny Pritzker was offered the position of Commerce Secrretary, but that she turned it down for "business considerations."

By "business considerations", I think that they mean that her role in the Superior Bank of Chicago, which pretty much created the subprime lending model, and then failed in 2001.

My guess is that they (correctly) figured that this would engender a destructive media circus.

A Top Obama Fund-Raiser Had Ties to Failed Bank

Well, it looks like I just beat the Wall Street Journal by 4½ months.

But they have now discovered Penny Pritzker and Superior Bank.

The bank, closed in 2001, basically created the securitization of subprime loans that is at the core of much, though IMNSHO not a majority, of the credit crunch.

And she is now Obama's national campaign-finance chairwoman.

Well, we'll be hearing this 24-7 for a while, if just to ignore the latest McCain flip-flops and screw-ups.

With Friends Like These.....

Specifically Penny Pritzker, Obama's national campaign finance chair.

It turns out that she was chairman of the board, and from all accounts an engaged and active one at that, of the, "borderline shady and failed Superior Bank", which collapsed in 2002.

It appears that these guys were the folks who created the so-called innovations that have led in large degree to the subprime mess, and it led to their downfall in the middle of the most bullish housing market in history.

See here, here, and here.

If there is one lesson to be had from the Bush administration, it is look at who the candidate keeps around him.

I agree with Earl Ofari Hutchinson's assessment, "If Obama's for real on the sub-prime crisis, he'll dump his campaign finance chair".

A Very Good Point on Obamacare

The folks at Naked Capitalism have never been big fans of the PPACA, because they feel that it has far too many sops to the evildoers in the US healthcare system, in particular the insurance companies. (I agree)

Now Lambert Strether makes what is an obvious point, that the "Cadillac Tax" on high value healthcare plans are pretty clearly a tactic developed to union bust:

I haven’t written about much about ObamaCare’s “Cadillac Tax” mostly because it seemed (as we shall see) such an obvious union-busting measure that there wouldn’t be much of interest to say. However, a recent Kaiser briefing on how many employers will be affected by it has generated a lot of coverage, and, as it turns out, the Cadillac tax — not that anybody could have predicted this — turns out to be insanely complex, based on a crazypants neo-liberal economic assumption, and will screw over a lot more working people than originally thought. (There’s actually some pressure on the Hill for reform or repeal, and not just by the usual suspects, but I won’t cover the politics of it here).

………

And if the unions can’t deliver wages, and now they can’t deliver benefits — or prevent existing benefits from being taken away — what exactly do they deliver? So who is to determine what is “generous”? Workers, or pencil-necked< neo-liberal economists? Who never mention whether CEO health insurance -- or top 20% health insurance, for that matter -- is "too generous"? That said, let's turn to the crapification. From the Kaiser briefing:

The potential of facing an HCPT assessment as soon as 2018 is encouraging employers to assess their current health benefits and consider cost reductions to avoid triggering the tax. Some employers announced that they made changes in 2014 in anticipation of the HCPT, and more are likely to do so as the implementation date gets closer. By making modifications now, employers can phase-in changes to avoid a bigger disruption later on.

………

So, a race to the bottom that starts out affecting “overly generous” health insurance, and ends up affecting more and more of the rest of us. Typical. I doubt this can be fixed by Congress this year or next, since the Democrats will not be able to admit that Obama has ever made a mistake in any aspect of his sorry administration, and Republicans have no choice but to throw red meat to their base by trying to repeal it all together. Pass the popcorn.

This is not a bug.  It's a feature.

If you were come up with a way to get the truth for any people behind Obamacare, whether Obama, Gruber, or whoever, they all would say that they want to eliminate employer sponsored health insurance by making various claims about how having open insurance markets and "skin in the game" will make healthcare more efficient.  (All the available evidence shows otherwise)

Obama has been (at best) lukewarm on unions, with no effort to push card-check, his hiring of union-busting heiress Penny Pritzker, his aggressive support of union-busting mayor Rahm Emanuel, his tepid opposition to "Right to Work" legislation proposals put forward in many states, etc.

There are way too many people among Obama's "Chicago School" policy advisers who see an Ayn Rand inspired dystopia as a model for a good society.  (As an aside, it turned out that even Ayn Rand could not live in the world which she hoped to create.)

Our country is looking more and more like the USSR circa 1987.