Washington, DC Needs Women... But Not Women Like Penny Pritzker

This week, EMILY'S List launched a program, Madam President, to elect a woman president. The idea is GREAT. America is overdue and really needs a woman president. EMILY'S List, though, is the wrong organization to lead the effort, not much better than if the GOP launched the effort to push Michele Bachmann, Virginia Foxx or Kelly Ayotte. We've seen many times before that EMILY'S List's modus operandi is to viciously and baselessly attack progressive men with sterling records on women's issues, in order to push forward their own hackish candidates-- like Nikki Tinker-- who happen to be females, regardless of the damage those candidates' conservative agendas are likely to cause. What America needs is a strong, progressive woman president.

That's also what America needs in the House, the Senate, in state legislatures, in the Cabinet and across government. I was surprised-- though why I don't know-- to read this morning that although women are 51% of the nation, they make up just 8% of House Republicans. (It’s 30 percent on the Democratic side, which isn't something to be that proud of either.) And only 20% of the current senators are women. Obama's nominated 15 of his 16 Cabinet members-- and just 4 are women, Kathleen Sibelius, Janet Napolitano, Sally Jewell and now Penny Pritzker.

And that fact that she's a woman shouldn't make Pritzker any more palatable for a progressive. That's really scraping the bottom on the barrel and I'd love to see the Republican obstructionists in the Senate do soemthing worthwhile with their filibuster regime for a change. Pritzker is a real Greg Palast nightmare. "You made fun of me," he wrote, "when I suggested that President Barack Obama would nominate a confessed bank scammer, a loan-sharking mortgage predator, to his cabinet. But thar she blows! Today, Obama has named Penny Pritzker Secretary of Commerce. As the President says, It's a milestone: the first female fraudster to hold that post. No longer will criminal bankers have to lobby the administration-- because now they'll have one of their own in the Cabinet. Obama goes way back with Pritzker in Chicago Democratic politics.

Pritzker's net worth is listed in Forbes as $1.8 billion, which is one hell of a heavy magic wand in the world of politics. Her wand would have been heavier, and her net worth higher, except that in 2001, the federal government fined her and her family $460 million for the predatory, deceitful, racist tactics and practices of Superior, the bank-and-loan-shark operation she ran on the South Side of Chicago.

Superior was the first of the deregulated go-go banks to go bust-- at the time, the costliest failure ever. US taxpayers lost nearly half a billion dollars. Superior's depositors lost millions and poor folk in Sen. Obama's South Side district lost their homes.

Penny did not like paying $460 million. No, not one bit. What she needed was someone to give her Hope and Change. She hoped someone would change the banking regulators and the Commerce Department so she could get away with this crap.

Pritzker introduced Obama, the neophyte state senator, to the Ladies Who Lunch (that's really what they call themselves) on Chicago's Gold Coast. Obama got lunch, gold and better-- an introduction to Robert Rubin. Rubin is a former Secretary of the Treasury, former chairman of Goldman Sachs and former co-chairman of Citibank. Even atheists recognized Rubin as the Supreme Deity of Wall Street.

Rubin opened the doors to finance industry vaults for Obama. Extraordinarily for a Democrat, Obama in 2008 raised three times as much from bankers as his Republican opponent.

So what did Citibank's Rubin get for showering Obama with gold? Obama agreed to take care of Rubin's poodles, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner. They became Obama's first cabinet picks: Summers as Economics Czar and Geithner as his czarina, Secretary of the Treasury.

Geithner and Summers were the gents who, under Treasury Secretary Rubin, designed the deregulation of banking. In effect, they had decriminalized the kind of financial flim-flammery that brought the planet to its knees while bringing Rubin, Pritzker and the banksters loads of lucre.

...In return, in 2008, Obama decided to make his patron Penny the Secretary of Commerce. But then, in November 2008, just as Obama was about to submit her nomination to Congress, a bunch of Pritzker's victims marched on Washington. They were not from her busted bank, but unhappy workers from the lucrative nursing homes that her family owns through a string of complex offshore trusts. Obama slammed the door on Penny pronto.

The Pritzker family made its billions mostly from Hyatt Hotels and Hyatt nursing homes. Penny, on the Hyatt board of directors, is an infamously combative anti-union apostle. UNITE HERE, the union that represents Hyatt workers, has called for an international boycott of Hyatt hotels. In 2012, UNITE HERE and its parent, the AFL-CIO, were crucial to Obama's winning Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. So, in this last campaign, Obama had to keep his billionairess heiress on the down-low.

Obama appeared to keep the door shut on Pritzker throughout the 2012 campaign, reducing her to hosting an election fundraiser at her Gold Coast digs, which she had to bill as a Goldman Sachs PAC event. This marks possibly the first time and last time anyone used Goldman Sachs as a PR cover.

But today, with the unions' money and votes already pocketed and counted, Obama can give working folks The Finger and give Penny her pound of flesh: the Commerce post.

The New York Times says that, "At Commerce, Ms. Pritzker could provide the president with a new way to reach out to the business community." The last time Pritzker reached out to the business community was to sell them sub-prime mortgage securities, worthless bags of financial feces manufactured by Superior Bank.

By giving Penny, the Piggy Banker, Commerce, we have to change Obama's rating to sub-prime. I do note that some woman's organizations are applauding the appointment of the first female to the Commerce post.  But I prefer to honor the victims of the Chicago femme fatale. Most of Penny's victims, busted bank borrowers and underpaid health care workers, are women, too. But, unlike those wounded and destroyed by Pritzker, she worked hard for her money: it was not easy inheriting her first billion from her daddy.

Obama mislead the public when he introduced this sack of crap to the public. “Penny is one of our country’s most distinguished business leaders. She’s got more than 25 years of management experience in industries including real estate, finance and hospitality. She’s built companies from the ground up.” He left out the part about her being vehemently anti-union, both on the Chicago School Board and on the board of Hyatt. And he neglected to mention that FDIC action against her bank and her role in pioneering the re-packaging of subprime loans.

We want more women in government-- but not women like Michele Bachmann and not women like Penny Pritzker. And, by the way, when will ordinary working women-- rather than multimillionairesses and billionairesses-- get some representation. They sure need some-- on every level. But, of course, EMILY'S List has no interest in working class women either.

Radical Right Filibuster Against Hagel Broken

Tantrum subsides-- 3 Stooges changed its mind

Like I've said many times, I'm neither pro-Hagel nor anti-Hagel. Or, more aptly, I'm both anti-Hagel and pro-Hagel. But I didn't win the presidency-- nor did the candidate I voted for-- so President Obama is entitled, within reason, to pick his own Secretary of Defense. There's no reason to believe that Chuck Hagel won't be a far better Secretary of Defense than recent disasters like Robert McNamara, Cap Weinberger, Frank Carlucci, Dick Cheney or Don Rumsfeld or ancient ones (then called Secretary of War) like John C. Calhoun or Jefferson Davis. In any event, Obama sets the policy for the Secretary to carry out. And there's no one who didn't know that the Republican spiteful jihad against Hagel was just another assertion of their racism and their attitude towards President Obama's legitimacy.

In the end, the filibuster crumbled because 18 Republicans left their 27 most heinous and obstructionist colleagues without enough votes to pull off the filibuster for another day. Cloture, the procedure to shut down a filibuster, requires 60 votes. Harry Reid's motion to reconsider the cloture vote from February 14 passed 71-27. Among the Republicans who apparently had reconsidered were 14 who voted against cloture on the 14th and for it yesterday: Orrin Hatch (R-UT, who voted "present" on Feb. 14), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Bob Corker (R-TN), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), John McCain (R-AZ), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Richard Shelby (R-AL), Jeff Sessions (R-KKK), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Richard Burr (R-NC), John Thune (R-ND) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), the third Stooge.

Reid said Hagel's nomination was "delayed for one reason: Partisanship... What has the filibuster gained my Republican colleagues? Twelve days later, nothing. Nothing has changed.” So who was packed into the Republican Party Clown Car yesterday? The filibustering idiots were:

• John Barrasso (R-WY)
• John Boozman (R-AR)
• Dan Coats (R-IN)
• John Cornyn (R-TX)

• Mike Crapo (R-ID)
• Ted Cruz (R-TX)
• Mike Enzi (R-WY)
• Nan Fischer (R-NE)
• Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
• Dean Heller (R-NV)
• John Hoeven (R-ND)
• James Inhofe (R-OK)
• Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
• Ron Johnson (R-WI)
• Mark Kirk (R-IL)
• Mike Lee (R-UT)
• Miss McConnell (R-KY)
• Jerry Moran (R-KS)
• Rand Paul (R-KY)
• Rob Portman (R-OH)
• Jim Risch (R-ID)
• Pat Roberts (R-KS)
• Marco Rubio (R-FL)
• Tim Scott (R-SC)
• Pat Toomey (R-PA)
• David Diapers Vitter (R-LA)
• Roger Wicker (R-MS)

By late afternoon, the Senate reconvened and confirmed Hagel as Secretary of Defense. The final vote was 58-41, Thad Cochran (R-MS), Mike Johanns (R-NE), Rand Paul (R-KY), Richard Shelby (R-AL) the only Republicans with the courtesy and good grace to join the Democrats in the vote.

Will The GOP Slap Down Obama By Torpedoing Chuck Hagel?

I've never been a fan of Chuck Hagel's-- and I'm not about to start now. Would he be a better Defense Secretary than Casper Weinberger, Frank Carlucci, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld (or, for that matter John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis, although back in their days it was called Secretary of War)? He could hardly be worse. But I'm not going to get stampeded into "rooting" for him just because warmongers and partisan shitheads like McCain and Ted Cruz are opposing him. Cruz, for one, will oppose anyone Obama nominates for anything. He was one of only 3 who voted against John Kerry as Secretary of State. Yes, the hysterical, McCarthyite opposition to Hagel is really little more than a temper tantrum on the right and a way for them to express their psychotic hatred for Obama and their insistence than his presidency is illegitimate. A KKK stalwart like Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and his claque will never recognize someone as president who was elected with "colored" votes. As for McCain... the bile and venom and the unending lust for young blood has rotted his brain to a point where he's as great a danger to America as any anywhere on the planet.

The Republicans seemed to behave as the confirmation hearing was about finding the next U.S. Ambassador to Israel rather than someone to run the Pentagon. Hagel didn't do himself any favors with his performance, emboldening the extremists in the GOP to press for a filibuster against confirmation. Unfortunately, people watching C-Span learned more about the venality of McCain, Jim Inhofe and Cruz than about Hagel and about how he would run the Pentagon. The questions were about whatever their pet peeves happen to be in their sick jihad against President Obama... and against America. and, yes... Jim Inhofe gets his information from the Drudge Report. Poor Oklahoma!

Will Hagel be confirmed anyway? Unless the GOP goes ahead with an unprecedented filibuster that the whole demented caucus agrees to, yes. And two Republicans-- Thad Cochran (MS) and Lisa Murkowski (AK)-- have already said they're voting for confirmation. Hagel doesn't even need a single Republican vote to win a straight up or down confirmation vote. He's not going to lose any Democrats and both Independents seem to be OK with voting for him. And the GOP probably doesn't have the guts to mount a real filibuster against a former conservative Republican senator over trumped up charges on lunatic fringe right-wing websites. the kooks and obstructions will, as anyone who watches the Senate already knows, vote no. So? What else is new?

The Best Thing About Jack Lew's Nomination: He's Not Erskine Bowles

Lew & Geithner-- you'll never know the difference

It's not a shock that Obama picked his chief of staff, Jacob "Jack" Lew as his Treasury Secretary to replace Tim Geithner. It's unlikely anyone will ever know Geithner's gone and Lew took his place-- except on Saturdays when the Orthodox Lew doesn't work. (I wonder if Obama is looking into a Shabbos Goy if anything important comes up on a Saturday... Colin Powell, Mario Cuomo, Martin Scorsese and Elvis Presley have all played that role; no, really.)

The White House spin machine has put it out there that Lew is "a liberal" who was down with Eugene McCarthy and Paul Wellstone, which scares me since there's a good chance that if they're saying that, he's probably really a horrible conservative. What we do know about him is that when he was chief operating officer of Citi's Alternative Investment department, he invested in a hedge fund that was betting on the collapse of the housing market.

Under Lew, the Multi-Adviser fund doubled its investment in Paulson's fund to nearly $42 million by March 2008; by the next quarter, it'd cranked that investment up to just over $60 million, making it the biggest piece of the Multi-Adviser fund, Nasiripour reported. So how'd it go for Lew and Citi?:

Citi paid Lew $1.1 million for his year at Alternative Investments, according to an ethics disclosure report filed in January 2009. He was also eligible for an undisclosed bonus... His unit, though, lost as much as billions of dollars in 2008 as its bets turned sour. In the first quarter of 2008 alone the unit lost $509 million; the company stopped publicly disclosing the unit's individual numbers soon thereafter, but the part of the company that absorbed Alternative Investments lost $20.1 billion in 2008, according to the bank's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Citigroup, as you might recall, also received $45 billion in TARP money.

The White Houset says he's a "budget wiz" (like Paul Ryan?) and worked as director of the OMB for both Clinton and Obama. (Before taking the OMB job, Lew worked for Hillary at the State Dept. as deputy secretary for management and resources, providing the perfect excuse for Lindsey Graham or some other deranged right-wing obstructionist in the Senate to put a hold on the nomination until they get answers to their silly Benghazi smears. But probably not. He'll likely be confirmed-- once again-- by the Senate and make Wall Street very happy that they have one of their own-- once again-- as Treasury Secretary.

He's famous for his awful signature. Below is what it might look like on a dollar bill. I wonder if he could also sign the trillion dollar coin. As you may recall, I would have preferred Brad Miller or Paul Krugman get the job, but both are progressive and Obama... isn't. And he only accepts pressure from the far right, not from the moderate left. Don't talk to Obama (or Lew) about breaking up the big criminal bankster operations.

The biggest Wall Street banks are now far bigger than they were four years ago when they were considered too big to fail. The five largest have almost 44 percent of all US bank deposits.

That’s up from 37 percent in 2007, just before the crash. A decade ago they had just 28 percent.

The biggest banks keep getting bigger because they can borrow more cheaply than smaller banks. That’s because investors believe the government will bail them out if they get into trouble, rather than force them into a form of bankruptcy (as the new Dodd-Frank law makes possible).

That’s why it’s necessary to limit their size and break up the biggest.

Washington may be getting the message. A few months ago Dan Tarullo, the Fed governor who specializes in bank regulation, proposed capping the size of the banks’ balance sheets.

Some former titans of Wall Street are saying much the same thing. Even Sandy Weill, who created Citigroup (which required $445 billion in TARP loans and asset guarantees) is proposing the biggest banks be broken up.

The new Congress may also be supportive. The new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Texas Republican Jeb Hensarling, has been a strong ally of small banks in their push to rein in their bigger rivals, and has expressed concern about the largest being too big to fail.

It’s not irrelevant that the Dallas branch of the Federal Reserve Board, in Hensarling’s home district, has also proposed breaking up the biggest.

Meanwhile, over in the Senate, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, is a strong advocate for breaking up the big banks and is now on the Senate Finance Committee. And Elizabeth Warren, scourge of Wall Street, will sit on the Senate Banking Committee.

In other words, the timing is right. The oven is ready. All we need is another multi-billion dollar banking loss-- like JP Morgan Chase’s last year-- and the biggest banks are cooked.

Let's see if anyone asks Mr. Lew about it.

UPDATE: BERNIE SANDERS-- A NO VOTE ON LEW!

Senator Sanders:

“Jack Lew is clearly an extremely intelligent person and I applaud his many years of public service to our country. I believe that he will be confirmed by the Senate. Unfortunately, he will be confirmed without my vote. At a time when the middle class is collapsing and millions of workers are unemployed, I do not believe he is the right person at the right time to serve in this important position.

“As a supporter of the president, I remain extremely concerned that virtually all of his key economic advisers have come from Wall Street. In my view, we need a treasury secretary who is prepared to stand up to corporate America and their powerful lobbyists and fight for policies that protect the working families in our country. I do not believe Mr. Lew is that person.

“We don't need a treasury secretary who thinks that Wall Street deregulation was not responsible for the financial crisis. We need a treasury secretary who will work hard to break up too-big-to-fail financial institutions so that Wall Street cannot cause another massive financial crisis.

“We don’t need another treasury secretary who believes in ‘deficit neutral’ corporate tax reform. We need a treasury secretary willing to fight to make sure that large, profitable corporations pay their fair share in taxes to reduce the deficit and create jobs.

“We don't need a treasury secretary who will advise the president that he should negotiate with the Republicans to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits. We need someone who is going to strengthen these programs.

“We don’t need another treasury secretary who believes that NAFTA and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China have been good for the American economy. We need someone in the White House who works to fundamentally re-write our trade policy to make sure that we are exporting American goods, not American jobs."

Did We Elect Rahm Emanuel Last Night? I Want My Money Back

You may have guessed that Ken and I haven't been terribly pleased about having Rahm Emanuel around the House of Representatives pulling the strings to betray working families and pushing his corporate agenda at every opportunity-- not to mention, standing behind the curtains at the DCCC making sure plenty of reactionaries and Republicans got recruited to run as Democrats. As great as it was to see Rahm's creature Tim Mahoney go down in FL-16 yesterday (along with fellow fake Dems Nick Lampson and Don Cazayoux) it's mind boggling how many conservative Democrats were recruited in this cycle. (Please don't say "But he doesn't run the DCCC any more." He's still on the recruitment committee, which is "run" by one of his shills, Artur Davis and how much sway he has over Chris Van Hollen is only an argument about degree.) So let's remember Rahm Emanuel when we start watching the votes roll in from Bobby Bright (AL), Parker Griffith (AL), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Suzanne Kosmas (FL), Debbie Halvorson (IL), Frank Kratovil (MD), Harry Teague (NM), Michael McMahon (NY), Steve Dreihaus (OH), John Boccieri (OH), Gerald Connolly (VA), and Glenn Nye (VA)-- a dozen new voices against progressive values and ideals.

So I have mixed emotions about the flurry of reports circulating widely that Obama asked him to take the chief of staff job. A friend in the Obama camp said he doesn't think its true. But maybe it is. Remember, Emanuel also circulated rumors earlier this year that Obama wanted him for VP. MSNBC has gone so far as to claim that Emanuel even accepted the job-- and then updated it and denied it.

I also love the idea that Illinois' corrupt and beleaguered governor-- and Emanuel benefactor-- Rod Blagojevich, won't be appointing Emanuel-- or himself-- to Obama's Senate seat.

So let's wait and see if the spectre of Emanuel as chief of staff is just another odious Evan Bayh as VP ploy before we start wishing Palin had won. Besides, if we want to dwell on rumors, how about all the cabinet positions being bandied about. My fave was Olympia Snowe (R-ME) as EPA head-- which puts Tom Allen in the Senate where he belongs? I guess that job's already promised to RFK, Jr. though-- just as Colin Powell as Secretary of Defense and/or Education. Here are more:

Caroline Kennedy- Ambassador to the UN
Emanuel- anything he wants if he decides he doesn't want to be Chief of Staff
Larry Summers- Secretary of the Treasury (or maybe Robert Rubin or even Henry Paulson)
Tom Daschle- Secretary of Wimpiness
A Daley for something; you can always use someone with that bloodline for something... wet
Robert Gates- if Powell or Emanuel or Lieberman or someone doesn't become Secretary of Defense; at least we won't have to buy new furniture and drapes and stuff.

Susan Rice or Greg Craig- National Security Advisor
John Kerry, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd or Richard Lugar as Secretary of State (what happened to Chuck Hagel?)
Janet Napolitano or Eric Holder or Deval Patrick as Attorney General

And there are plenty more at HuffPo-- from Sam Nunn, Eugene Ludwig, Chet Edwards, and Lee Hamilton to Hillary, Jack Reed, David Bonior to Howard Dean, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lincoln Chafee and even sillier suggestions. And the Washington Post probably has Obama laughing too. Ed Rendell? Fred Smith? (the Fed Ex guy)

Even if he does give Emanuel a job, at least this guy (or anyone else from the monster years) won't be hired for anything... I don't think:

JOHN EDWARDS FOR...

Ardy Kassakhian Is the City Clerk of Glendale, just down the road a piece from where I live (walking distance). Michael Fish doesn't live that much further away, although in the other direction (West Hollywood). Like Ardy, he's a progressive activist. He makes his living as a record producer and screenwriter. The two of them have been pondering John Edwards' next move and wrote up a report for DWT:

JOHN EDWARDS FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL?

by Michael Fish & Ardy Kassakhian

They stood there at the debates and it was down to three.

If Barak Obama was "Speak No Evil," and Hillary was "See No Evil," by subtraction, arguably, it could be said that Edwards was "Hear No Evil." John Edwards was not about to listen to any reason why, together, we couldn’t cure the disease of poverty in America. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be enough to get him into the general election, however heartfelt and cogent his message. It’s not that we didn’t believe him: we did. He spoke in that noble way that separates statesmen from politicians. But a presidential candidate needs to speak to a larger array of issues. Obama’s message of ‘change’-- however imprecise it may have sounded at times-- symbolized a larger canvas more suitable to a man with presidential ambition.

Still, John Edwards emerged as the custodian of democratic conscience. When conservatives scoffed and told the middle and lower classes that it took hard work to succeed, it was John Edwards who reminded them that working hard wasn’t the issue; it was the opportunity to do the work that evaded so many. For Edwards, the issue was always access, making sure the law served everyone equally, not just the privileged.

Yesterday Senator John Edwards gave Barack Obama his support and the pundits all went into overdrive. The cliche we heard most often was whether Edwards would agree to be the vice president. So let me say it now and get it off my chest

If John Edwards agrees to be the Vice President of the United States, we will have lost-- potentially-- one of the best and greatest attorney generals America never had.

Pundits are smart, but seem to lack imagination... so let’s review....

George Bush and Karl Rove attempted to turn ‘justice’ into an RNC annex, perverting and neutering the intent of that office while distorting the brilliant purpose underlying constitutional imperatives. John Edwards can fix that. He must. It’s the logical first step in his plan for social mobilization.

John Edwards should be the legal custodian of this nation: it is organic to who he is. If Sen. Edwards wants to make sure his "war on poverty" has the countenance of a legal system designed to retool archaic American institutions that allow poverty to thrive, ground zero is making sure a ravaged Justice Department is repaired. Equality in all aspects of education, employment, government and military service-- without regard to sexual orientation, race and religion, or political connection is the goal.

Of course, the V.P. office would be fine, but we need to turn Mr. Gonzalez’ former desk over to a man of character, an agent whose purpose is a principled Madisonian one. We need a person who defines the law in terms of fair play while propelled by the sheer political will to finish the job. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy once made sure a young African American girl could walk with dignity into a ‘white school.’ John Edwards has demonstrated he has instincts parallel to Kennedy’s. Forget poverty czars and commissions. If it’s "liberty and justice for all" your after, John Edwards - as our attorney general-- seems poised to deliver on that promise, the American promise.

Lets hope the pundits are listening. 


UPDATE: PROOF ARDY AND MICHAEL ARE ON THE CORRECT PATH

The lamest GOP shill anywhere: "...the suggestion that John Edwards would be even considered for Attorney General is horrifying. I really can't think of any mainstream political figure more inappropriate for that job than Edwards."