'unresolved set of issues in the Democratic Party between people of wealth and people who work'
Obama Did It For the Money
Posted on May 7, 2013
By Robert Scheer
The love fest between Barack Obama and his top fundraiser Penny Pritzker that has led to her being nominated as Commerce secretary would not be so unseemly if they both just confessed that they did it for the money. Her money, not his, financed his rise to the White House from less promising days back in Chicago.
“Without Penny Pritzker, it is unlikely that Barack Obama ever would have been elected to the United States Senate or the presidency,” according to a gushing New York Times report last year that read like the soaring jacket copy of a steamy romance novel. “When she first backed him during his 2004 Senate run, she was No. 152 on the Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans. He was a long-shot candidate who needed her support and imprimatur. Mr. Obama and Ms. Pritzker grew close, sometimes spending weekends with their families at her summer home.”
But don’t sell the lady short; she wasn’t swept along on some kind of celebrity joyride. Pritzker, the billionaire heir to part of the Hyatt Hotels fortune, has long been first off an avaricious capitalist, and if she backed Obama, it wasn’t for his looks. Never one to rest on the laurels of her immense inherited wealth, Pritzker has always wanted more. That’s what drove her to run Superior Bank into the subprime housing swamp that drowned the institution’s homeowners and depositors alike before she emerged richer than before.
Pritzker and her family had acquired the savings and loan with the help of $600 million in tax credits. She became the new bank’s chairwoman and ended up as a director of the holding company that owned it. Under her leadership, Superior specialized in subprime lending, hustling folks with meager means and poor credit into high interest loans that were bundled into the toxic securities that wrecked the U.S. economy. ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obama_did_it_for_the_money_20130507/
= new reply since forum marked as read
I believed in and worked hard for the first candidate Obama. After watching him continue and enhance bush policies, I became disillusioned.
When he repeatedly appointed banksters as advisers and never fought against repub. "negotiation" proposals, I realized that we had another member of the ruling elite, interested in his future, not ours.
While I thought that I stayed pretty politically informed, this article both broadsided me and explains so much.
IMO, the dlc third way'ers have now officially taken over our party.
The few real Progressive politicians left seem to be our only hope.
I assume that the information in this article is common knowledge in D.C., I am disappointed that Sanders, Warren, Grayson and a few others, have not found a way to get this information out.
Again, IMO, we need to start a real grassroots peoples party and field (put forth) our own candidates.
In the mean time we should do as candidate Obama has said... hold his feet to the fire. Now that we finally know what we are dealing with (status quo politician), we should make this a summer to remember.
on edit:
Thank you so much marmar for revealing that specific information that explains so much to me.
Sorry I implied that everybody was taken in by him.
