The Invisibility of U.S. Oligarchs: The Case of Penny Pritzker

[Divernan]

1. Tough ???s submitted by Press Club members, but ignored by Pritzker

The press Club must have had to agree to let Pritzker screen the questions in advance, because none of the many tough questions submitted and quoted in the OP link were read to her by the Press Club President/moderator.

And off shore shell companies were in the news of late. Oxfam just released a report claiming: “Tax dodging by multinational corporations costs the U.S. approximately $111 billion each year and saps an estimated $100 billion every year from poor countries” [PDF]. A prior report from the Tax Justice Network would seem to indicate that this was a severe under estimate. That found that as of 2010, the super-rich are hiding at least $21 trillion in accounts outside their home countries [PDF].

I’d at least expected a mild question about off shore activity—and figured she’d talk about how the Obama administration is allegedly now making moves to stop tax inversions.

But there was nothing about any of this. At the news maker event, I wrote a question on a card on the nub of the issues at play, was something like this: “A relation of yours—Liesel Pritzker Simmons—is mentioned in the recently released Panama Papers. Do you have comment on the extent of off shore shell companies—especially given your family uses them through grandfather clauses in ways that would not be legal for anyone new now?”

That didn’t get asked, nor did several I’d submitted in an email prior to the to the Press Club president by email:
The Pope—and Bernie Sanders—talk about a “moral economy”—that it’s inherently unjust if a very few individuals and families have enormous wealth while billions on the planet have virtually nothing. Your family of course is enormously wealthy—What do you think of that? (for overview, “Panama Papers: Pritzkers, American Oligarchs”.)
You have been charged with crashing Superior Bank in Chicago with a subprime mortgage scheme, resulting in 1,400 people losing their savings. How do you respond to these charges? (”Obama’s Subprime Conflit” and Bloomberg “Pritzker’s Superior Bank Subprime Losses Blemish Resume”)
Do you argue that your massive fundraising efforts for Obama in 2008 and 2012 had nothing to do with him appointing you as Sec of Commerce? (See from Public Campaign “Penny Pritzker, Not Just an Obama Donor.”)

The name of Liesel Pritzker Simmons appears in the recently released Panama Papers, a relative who sued much of the rest of the family for allegedly trying to cheat her. But what’s perhaps notable about your family, as Forbes has written, is that you set up shell companies decades ago and thus can do things because of grandfather clauses that are not legal any more. Is that moral?