Penny Pritzker, Our Next Secretary of Commerce - Finally the "One Percent" Get's a Seat at the Cabinet Table!

I congratulate President Obama on his selection of Penny Pritzker to be his new Secretary of Commerce – a GREAT choice. Finally, there will be a champion of that sector of the electorate that the President derisively termed “the one percent” during his 2012 campaign. Finally, a “strong voice” for the rich that will advocate lower taxes for the wealthy and support “off shore” banking to avoid taxes. Finally a “seat at the Cabinet table” for wealthy investors who know “how the game is really played” and how to manipulate the rules to make her rich class richer and avoid paying their “fair share.” In other words, a true successful American businesswoman!


At the beginning of his first term in early 2009, President Obama floated her name for a Cabinet post but relented in the face of opposition from the Liberal press, especially the New York Times, who identified her as “one of world’s most notorious Tax Cheats and money manipulators.” As a fall back, he quietly named her to his White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board on 6 Feb 2009 –but even that did not go unnoticed by that citadel of Liberalism, the New York Times!

Here is what the NY Times had to say about Pritzker when her name was floated then as a possible Secretary of Commerce: "it had never made sense for Ms. Pritzker to become a nominee. 'The confirmation hearing could have been quite ugly' .... In 1988, the Pritzker family and another wealthy investor took over a failing savings and loan and turned it into Superior Bank. Ms. Pritzker was its chairwoman from 1991 to 1994, after which she sat on the board of the bank’s holding company.... concentrating on packaging subprime mortgages into securities.... regulators later discovered accounting irregularities that overstated the value of its assets. The bank was forced to write down huge losses, leaving it without adequate capital... A 2002 report by the inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation concluded that 'the failure of Superior Bank was directly attributable to bank management and the board of directors' ...Pritzkers agreed in 2001 to pay the F.D.I.C. $460 million .... The family also increased its wealth by exploiting loopholes in the tax code, including setting up a series of offshore trusts that sheltered their assets from taxes.

The I.R.S. fought several battles with the Pritzkers over the arrangements. But the agency was hindered by foreign bank secrecy laws that concealed what the Pritzkers owned. In 2002, a few cracks appeared in the wall of secrecy when two young Pritzker heirs filed a lawsuit claiming their older relatives had looted their trusts. The litigation revealed that the family was worth at least $15 billion, that it was held in some 950 trusts...."

With this obviously unfair criticism by the NY Times but knowing he would need that paper in his 2012 reelection as his propaganda arm, Obama decided not to nominate Penny back in 2009. But with all elections now safely behind him, Penny will be our next Secretary of Commerce. To date her hearings have been a veritable love fest with Republicans welcoming her as “one of their own” (in practice if not in party identification) while Democrats who unfailingly support Obama, regardless the issue, will let her nomination sail through. And don’t expect any Senator to do anything to derail this nomination like questioning her ethics or implying she is a Tax Cheat; there will be no questions during her confirmation and certainly none from the IRS who, in keeping with how they treat all BIG Dem contributors, long ago dropped all efforts at getting her to “pay her fair share.”