Apparently, other countries, but not the U.S., have oligarchs. Billionaire and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker came and went to the National Press Club with hardly a tough question on Monday.
I’d submitted several questions, but first a word on the choreography of the event: Virtually every “news maker” event I recall seeing at the Press Club had the speaker at the head table which is on a stage a few feet up, speaking at a podium. This event, it was just her and the moderator, Press Club President Thomas Burr on two cushy chairs on the stage, with the “head table” below them. Whether this was to elevate the two of them, save her the trouble of having prepared remarks, or perhaps a new thing, an attempt to cast the billionaire in a more casual light — inspired by Davos-type events — I don’t know. But it was weird. [See video and PDF.]
President Barack Obama talks with President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker following a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office, Sept. 18, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Speaking of choreography, on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue around the same time, several hundred people were arrested at the Capitol as part of the “Democracy Spring” and “Democracy Awakening” actions. It seemed odd to me, protests happening with “arrests” as part of a very planned action aimed in part against money in politics, while the very personification of big business advocacy in government received virtually no scrutiny.
It’s not just her job, or that she and her family is incredibly rich. It’s that Pritzker enriched herself by crashing a bank with sub-prime loans, causing 1,400 people to lose their savings. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s Sub-Prime Conflict.”]
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