Obama's Sugar Mama

What do James Bond and Barack Obama have in common besides suaveness, subterfuge, stealth, and secrecy? 

 

 

 

Moneypenny!

While Ian Fleming named his fictional character ironically, she being a mere secretary, Barack wouldn't know irony if it bit him in the tush. (example: his standard "This is not who we are" verbal vs. defacto policies for drone strikes, Gitmo, a record number of whistleblowing prosecutions, a record number of deportations, a record amount of campaign contributions, a slew of unregistered lobbyists in his White House, restriction of Plan B contraceptives only hours after gushing to Planned Parenthood that he'd forever honor the freedom of the uteri of America, etc.)

Another difference is that the fictional Moneypenny is smitten with Bond. In real life, MoneyPenny is smitten with power, and Obama is smitten with MoneyPenny's money.

But speaking of irony -- the socialite parents of Obama's Commerce Secretary-designate and mega compaign bundler Penny Pritzker must have had it in spades, what with hilariously naming their privileged spawn after a one-cent piece. And Penny Sue, no less, after the Mom who died tragically young in 1982, having inexplicably flung herself from a tow truck hauling her broken-down car. Penny's father also died young, of a heart attack at age 39.

The surviving and thriving Penny and her entire multi-generational clan make the dreaded Greater Evil Mitt Romney look like St. Francis of Assisi. Patriarch Abram, who lived to be 100, deliberately modeled his dynasty after the banking Rothschilds. The Pritzkers were stashing their billions in offshore accounts when Mitt was still in diapers, long before it became fashionable to do so.

MoneyPenny was a pioneer in the economy-destroying subprime mortgage industry, an institutional racist who helped evict poor black Chicago families from their homes. The multimillion-dollar fine the Pritzkers paid in restitution for losing millions in Superior Bank depositor accounts was just the cost of doing business. A friendly judge actually barred the victims from suing the Pritzkers, who personally recouped and pocketed part of the FDIC payout after their bank collapsed under the weight of its own greed.

In their heydey, which culminated in the roaring 90s, the Pritzkers leveraged buyouts of such stalwarts as Eastern Airlines, the biggest private hospital chain in Britain, and Royal Caribbean. The medical school at the University of Chicago is named after them, as is the prestigious architecture prize. All told, the number of the extended family's vast holdings was at one point in the 10,000 range. Afterward, the clan began an orgy of self-cannibalization, becoming embroiled in a generation-spanning slew of lawsuits reminiscent of Dicken's Bleak House.

Right up until the time Obama dropped his last vestige of pretend-populism last week and nominated her to his cabinet, MoneyPenny had been serving on Rahm Emanuel's Chicago school board. She rubber-stamped the firing of hundreds of unionized teachers and the closing of more than 50 schools in poor, mainly black neighborhoods. Did I mention that she is a big fan of for-profit charter schools? And why not -- she owns one of them. She also owns creepy credit reporting agency Trans-Union. Don't like mistakes on your credit reports? MoneyPenney blames you for not regularly checking them. So (Penny) Sue Her! Plenty of people have. But no matter. Her family has its own in-house law firm, which does nothing but defend these predators, 24/7.


A few years ago, during Chicago's record heat wave, her Hyatt hotel management team ordered heat lamps turned on striking workers. She has resisted calls to include the hired housekeeping help on the Hyatt board. She's cashed in on every local, state and federal tax loophole on the cooked books. She's successfully and serially protested against the property tax levies on her Chicago estate. 

MoneyPenny had to keep a low profile as Barack's Sugar Mama throughout his first term, when his re-election hopes hinged on differentiating himself from that other vulture capitalist, Mitt Romney. It might not have sat well with the base had he openly canoodled with the feminine version of Mitt. He did give MoneyPenny a secret ride on Air Force One last summer after she'd raised some secretive millions at a closed-press fund-raiser in San Francisco.

(Another bit of irony: one of MoneyPenny's nieces, Liesel Pritzker, was a child actress who had a role in the Harrison Ford blockbuster Air Force One. She also starred in A Little Princess. Liesel later sued MoneyPenny and her uncles and her cousins and her aunts for looting her trust fund. The Pritzkers make the Dynasty and Dallas TV soap opera famiglias look like The Waltons. The wholesome TV Waltons, not the real Waltons, whom they actually do kind of resemble)

Mitt ultimately lost because his operatives, unlike Barack's, failed to confiscate cell phones at fundraisers. One disgruntled bartender took aim in Boca, and the 47% takers/makers speech went down in history. The plutocratic cell phones at the Obama pay-to-play soirees were all safely stashed in garbage bags for the duration. No more Clinging to Guns and Religion moments for Obama! He bit the bullet to live another term as placeholder for the interests of the oligarchy.

From all indications, an honest to goodness 21st century robber baroness will be confirmed as our Commerce Secretary and end up having nominal jurisdiction over such entities as NOAA. Which is ironically fitting, given that we're long overdue for both climate and financial cataclysms, occurring solely because of the negligence and corruption and greed and deregulatory frenzies of the powers that be.

We don't need a MoneyPenny. We need a HennyPenny. Because in actuality, the sky is falling.