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Billionaire Penny Pritzker, of the plutocratic Pritzker family, has been floated by the Obama Administration as a candidate for Commerce Secretary.
Penny Pritzker, an heiress to the Hyatt hotel fortune, is a leading candidate to become President Obama’s next commerce secretary as the president slowly moves to complete his second-term economic team.
Ms. Pritzker, who led the groundbreaking fund-raising effort for Mr. Obama’s first presidential campaign, withdrew from consideration for the same position in 2008, with some people suggesting that her family’s immense wealth might complicate her nomination at a time of deep financial crisis.
Now, however, people familiar with the president’s thinking, who declined to be named because no announcement had been made, said he may yet turn to Ms. Pritzker to lead the Commerce Department and join the administration’s effort to recharge the still sluggish economy.
Not surprisingly the idea of Obama stacking his economic team with yet more 1%ers is leading to opposition. Ms. Pritzker’s case being exceptionally problematic given her massive and diverse fortune inevitably leading to conflicts of interest as Commerce Secretary.The rich are already well represented in Obama’s administration.
And now a petition has been launched claiming Prtizker engaged in anti-worker practices as a Hyatt Board member and member of the Chicago School’s Board of Education:
As a member of the Hyatt Hotel chain board Penny Pritzker has refused to intercede on behalf of struggling workers. Last summer Chicago workers who organized a rally had the hotel’s heat lamps turned on during a mid-summer heatwave. Housekeepers have had their workloads nearly double without proper compensation. All the while Penny has remained silent.
She stood by as her family’s hotel chain received a company wide letter from OSHA that warned them of hazards facing housekeepers on the job...
Ms. Pritzker serves on the Chicago Public School’s Board of Education. In her role there she attempted to bust the union with her fellow board members by closing public schools and opening charter schools, mostly operated by the well-connected, that do not recognized the local union.
Will President Obama listen to the workers or pay a big fundraiser back?
Photo from Penny Pritzker’s website
21 Comments
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I think the Pups know the answer.
“Will President Obama listen to the workers or pay a big fundraiser back?”
Guess.
DS, imho, the single greatest impediment may be her family’s connection to Trans Union, part of the credit bureau cartel. She’s already on all sides of a lot of big financial transactions.
short memories
Maybe if I had gillions of dollars I’d spend all my time multiplying it for myself (and my heirs) BUT I DOUBT IT – One can be quite wealthy personally and still share the wealth with your employees. Camels and eyes of needles and all that.
Hyatt was involved in firing and replacing 100 union housekeepers with a non-union contractor in Boston shortly after President Obama was first elected and not only did he not “walk on the picket line” he did not so much as call his buddy Penny or lift a finger to help them. Another bad choice — we do not need yet one more person in the upper echelons of his administration who does not realize that low wages and union busting are bad for the workers and for the overall economy.
Another inspiring rags to riches story. She had the brains, the pluck, the utter determination to pick the right parents.
Wot! Our blessed President chooses another Overlord for his cabinet?
Say it ain’t so.
Yet another example among hundreds that demonstrate that Obama is a Fraud.
Third Party Support would have given us Romney, this time. Would have begun a transitional phase. The Deomcratic Party is Republican Lite.
That’s right. Praise Republican Jesus that there be no significant “Death Tax”.
big fundraiser hacks
Penny wise, pound foolish.
“The rich are already well represented in Obama’s administration.”
Right. And Penny Pritzker isn’t going to tip any balance: there isn’t any balance to be tipped. She’s a nice lady and a generous philanthropist in addition to being a good Democratic donor. And really, it isn’t going to make any difference.
Surely you jest….I hear Jesse Jackson Jr. is out of a job. There must be some better choices.
Rest assured, those of the plutocracy are all too aware of the workers afflicted by their maneuverings and they don’t give a shit. Not about the hoi polloi or the economy-at least the “Little people’s” economy.
The message is clear, the elites decided a few years back that it’s time for capitalism’s “B Team,” the Democrats, to have the wheel for a while. That may please the Blue party robots at Kos and Dem Underground but this is not really good news. The ruling class understood that the recklessness & overt corruption of the cowboy comic Bush regime was damaging the interests & credibility of US capitalism to an unacceptable degree. At the same time, the Democrats demonstrated that they will obediently follow all the same basic policies that the capitalists have built the structure for, with only minor variations in rhetoric & personalities.
Therefore, much is to be gained (from the viewpoint of elites) by a change of personnel. The Democrats were allowed to win the presidential election in 08 and ’12, with much cheering & self-congratulation about how American democracy “works” and the people could vote for (imagined) change. Tensions were be greatly reduced and the wind was sucked out of all truly progressive leftward movements by the black man with good diction and his legion of liberal Hopesters.
But this is precisely the kind of situation for which the 2-party system is designed — to allow for a blowing off of steam, and a fake “rejuvenation” & feeling of “new direction” –while fundamentally, nothing at all really changes. The effect of a Dem win was to strengthen faith in the 2-party system and destroy any populist energy.
And of course the Dems continue to support the phony War on Terror, support all military funding, and increase the surveillance state at home. They continued all free-trade arrangements, and 100% support for Israel. Almost none of the horrible Bush legislation (PATRIOT, torture, eavesdropping etc) was undone, and no serious investigations of Bush crimes undertaken.
The point here is not to quibble over whether a Dem win or a Repub win in kabuki elections is “better.” The point is really that it makes no difference, because 99% of the populace will lose either way. And, longer term, it is actually a negative to have general faith in the 2-party system strengthened by temporarily passing control over to the B Team. As long as we stay in the framework of the 2-party system, there is no chance of meaningful change.
“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”
-Karl Marx’s 1859 Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
A note on income distribution: As a member of the Forbes 400 (271) it is quite possible that Ms. Pritzker has little insight into the predicament of the threshold 1-percenter muddling through on $367K of 2011 dollars. More in Piketty and Saez (pdf) here, or in the spreadsheet at Saez’s UCBerkeley website, figures 2 and 3.
Obama is and always was a lackey of the rich. I’ve been saying it since 2007. He’s the brown-noser in chief.
If she’s anti-union, then to hell with her.
>Will President Obama listen to the workers or pay a big fundraiser back?
Are you kidding Obama has NEVER supported a working American in any way
He is the 1% president invented by Pritzker
Sub prime queen penny invented the sub prime securitization robbery
http://www.flashpoints.net/?p=3381 feb7 2013 minute 31
also as a member of Chicago school board her Hyatt hotel got a construction loan from the school board
no money for teachers books but loans for billionaires
Also bank robbery at Superior bank by Pritzker her own bank of course
I guess you are still hoping that Obama might do something pro-union, pro-common citizen, anti-oligarch etc. I am not.
or third party support would have given us a third party president, two candidates who were very progressive; Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson