Obama's Finance Chair: Another subprime lender problem
By Soren Dayton Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Housing Crisis | Penny Pritzker — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The Pritzkers are one of the leading business families of Chicago. They run Hyatt and have a reputation for particularly cut-throat business practices. (sometimes outside of honorable) So it isn't entirely surprising to find Penny Pritzker at the center of Barack Obama's hypocrisy over his relationship to subprime lenders. Earlier today, I wrote about Jim Johnson, who got a sweetheart deal from Countrywide which Obama had attacked. And then there was UBS, which his campaign shopped a story about, and the reporter didn't point out that the CEO of UBS has raised a quarter million for Obama.
And then there is Penny, Obama's Finance Chair. She was the former Chairwoman of a bank that failed, according to regulators via a 2001 Chicago Tribune article, due to "poor oversight by its board." The depositors felt so screwed, that they filed a RICO suit against Penny and other directors. The Pritzker family eventually settled with regulators for $460m.
So Obama is attacking CEOs of subprime lenders. And his Finance Chairman was the Chairman of a subprime lender that went under because of poor oversight. One of his major donors is the CEO of another one. And the person making his VP recommendation got a sweetheart deal from another.
When you hear Obama speak your like wow that was a great speech, but if you read what he says it usually really isn't that great, actually it's bad. Now it looks like he is a hypocrit on top of it. It will be tough but I think we'll take him in November. McCain 08
The problem really is that Penny Pritzker is a phenomenon in Chicago and is such an eminence that she's welcome at Northwestern University Law School to lecture their JD/MBA students...
So you might as well be aiming at Godzilla with a peashooter, because if anyone was going to make an issue of Pritzker in a negative fashion, it would already have been done. She's part of the reason Obama doesn't have to answer any hard questions -- because neither does she.
Unlike the people writing, I actually know Penny Pritzker. The reason this story has no legs in the mainstream media is because it is booshwa - she's a quality person with an admirable record.
It's also cheap and slanderous to allege that the Pritzkers as a family have a less than honorable reputation - that's simply not the case. They build real companies. If you believe in capitalism - and don't we Republicans believe in capitalism? - there's not much to complain about with the Pritzkers. Of course, if you think it is evil to make money, or that you should volunteer to pay more tax than you are legally obligated to pay, or that you should be embarrassed to negotiate hard or hold people to the terms of the deals they make, you might not like them, but if that's the way you feel, why are you a Republican? (And the Pritzkers, btw, are not all Democrats - I've served on the boards of a conservative organization with at least one generous conservative member of the family, and that particular 101st Airborne vet didn't seem "outside of honorable" to me).
There are problems with Obama, principally that he's an unreconstructed left winger that thinks more government is the solution to all ills. There is plenty to attack in terms of philosophy of government and where this country will go under his stewardship.
But, having lost our way over the last eight years, the GOP seems not to want to run on Republican issues. We seem not to believe that supporting free trade or opposing bogus "windfall" taxes on energy companies can lead to victory. So, we sink to not only character assassination, but off base, pointless character assassination on good people that has no chance of sticking.
Let me clue you in, champs - we aren't going to win on character assassination. We need to advance a positive agenda. All this kind of slime is going to do is turn off the many friends the Pritzkers have built over three generations of entrepreneurial success and aggravate the unease the entrepreneurial class has with the Republican party as now constituted.
You're certainly right about needing more than character assassination. It would help a lot if our candidate didn't sound like Deputy Dawg trying to make an arrest.
So, are the accusations in the OP true and accurate? We all tend to overlook the shortcomings of our friends--that's why they remain our friends. Would an unbiased observer agree with your assessment? After all, almost everybody else but you doesn't know Penny Pritzker.
Character assassination is worth little if it's all by itself. But when so many of his friends are of questionable character (I know, you say PP isn't) the phrase "guilt by association" starts to have a valid application to the candidate.
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Let's remember that this is an attack on Penny Pritzker, and as we look at this let's all consider whether we would feel fairly treated by a web site that called us the names RedState is calling Penny Pritzker if the facts were the same.
The thrift the Pritzkers dominated did go out of business. It did offer loans to low income borrowers, although this was before the whole subprime concept took on the form of recent years. The Pritzkers did settle in light of what certainly looked from the outside like bad facts, and Penny had been on the board.
Of course, she was left the board five or ten years before the events that took the thrift under took place. She was long gone from the company when the stuff that was iffy happened. Me, I would consider that significant. There are organizations out there that I was associated with five or ten years ago, and some of them still have friends of mine working there. All the same, if they do something bad today I wouldn't consider it fair for folks to come laying it at my doorstep. If I got slimed by association in the mainstream press with the timeline left out, I would consider it very poor journalism.
This is at least the second time RedState has published this attack without noting the timeline. It would reflect poorly on the New York Times if they did something like that about a Republican; it reflects poorly on RedState and its credibility that they do it about a Democrat.
As for Penny Pritzker aside from this incident - she's a very bright, well-educated, hard working woman who has been happily married to a practicing physician for a long time, and who has raised two children. She's not Mother Theresa, but she doesn't flaunt her wealth or engage in conspicuous consumption; she and her family do support a very long list of charitable causes. Setting aside the vast wealth, I would be delighted if any of my daughters or nieces ended up living the kind of live Penny Pritzker lives - hard working, contributing, considerate, faithful, modest.
As for the Pritzkers as a family being "outside of honorable," it's hard to refute something that atmospheric. That's certainly not the reputation they have enjoyed in the Chicago business community over the past decades. Aside from the issue with the thrift - and they ponied up pretty big money to clean that mess up even though their legal liability was far from clear and even though they were a long way away from even being in a situation where that kind of payment looked necessary to get a legal settlement of all claims - I'm not aware of anything involving the Pritzkers that even arguably involves more than canny, hard nosed but scrupulously honest business tactics. If Mr. Dayton has facts to back that up kind of defamatory slam, he can post them.
With regard to Mr. Dayton, let's take a moment to note who RedState is promoting to the front page to conduct this smear campaign. Soren Dayton, if it is the same Soren Dayton, was booted from the McCain campaign for tactics that embarrassed McCain and that he did not want to be associated with. If Dayton is someone the Republican nominee refuses to be associated with, why is RedState slapping him on the RedState front page for this kind of ill-advised character assassination? I though the idea of the site was to promote Republicans and Republicanism, not to embarrass the party and undermine our credibility by giving a front page forum to people tossed overboard by our candidate.
and I think you don't understand why Soren isn't with the McCain camp anymore.
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History, I think, would argue against the notion that being low rent and without class leads to lasting electoral success.
Nixon took a dip on the dark side in 1972, and it very near killed the party. Donald Segretti and the rest thought they were oh so clever, but they were massive screw ups.
Part of what brought the party back was Reagan's class. He was a competitor and stood up for his beliefs, but if you think back you won't remember low class moments with Reagan's fingerprints on them.
I've been reading every word of what you've written about this increasingly sickening story which has not been even mentioned in the mainstream press. That doesn't mean you should stop reporting it, because people need to hear this and understand how deeply hypocritical the Obama campaign is. Literally every word out his mouth is a fabrication, and the media are ignoring it.
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