{"id":20095,"date":"2016-04-20T14:17:39","date_gmt":"2016-04-20T19:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20095"},"modified":"2016-04-20T14:17:39","modified_gmt":"2016-04-20T19:17:39","slug":"bowing-to-americas-oligarchs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20095","title":{"rendered":"Bowing to America\u2019s Oligarchs"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2016\/04\/20\/bowing-to-americas-oligarchs\/\">Bowing to America\u2019s Oligarchs<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry-meta\"><time class=\"published\" datetime=\"2016-04-20\"><\/time>Commerce Secretary (and Hyatt Hotel heiress) Penny Pritzker was treated with kid gloves and spared tough questions at\u00a0the National Press Club, showing how America treats its own oligarchs, writes Sam Husseini.<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<hr \/>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d submitted several questions, but first a word on the choreography of the event: Virtually every \u201cnews maker\u201d 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\u00a0Thomas Burr on two cushy chairs on the stage, with the \u201chead table\u201d 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 \u2014 inspired by Davos-type events \u2014 I don\u2019t know. But it was weird.\u00a0[See\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.press.org\/news-multimedia\/videos\/npc-luncheon-secretary-commerce-penny-pritzker\"><u>video<\/u><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.press.org\/sites\/default\/files\/20160418_pritzker.pdf\"><u>PDF<\/u><\/a>.]<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_12853\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a class=\"image-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/obama-petro.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12853\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/obama-petro-300x200.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/obama-petro-300x200.jpg 300x, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/obama-petro-560x373.jpg 560x, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/obama-petro-260x173.jpg 260x, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/obama-petro-160x106.jpg 160x, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/obama-petro.jpg 654x\" alt=\"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)\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">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)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Speaking of choreography, on the other end of\u00a0Pennsylvania\u00a0Avenue around the same time, several hundred people were arrested at the Capitol as part of the \u201cDemocracy Spring\u201d and \u201cDemocracy Awakening\u201d actions. It seemed odd to me, protests happening with \u201carrests\u201d as part of a very planned action aimed in part against money in politics, while the very personification of big business advocacy in government\u00a0received\u00a0virtually no scrutiny.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not just her job, or that she and her family is incredibly rich. It\u2019s that Pritzker enriched herself by crashing a bank with sub-prime loans, causing 1,400 people to lose their savings. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2013\/05\/02\/obamas-sub-prime-conflict\/\"><u>Obama\u2019s Sub-Prime Conflict<\/u><\/a>.\u201d]<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bowing to America\u2019s Oligarchs Commerce Secretary (and Hyatt Hotel heiress) Penny Pritzker was treated with kid gloves and spared tough questions at\u00a0the National Press Club, showing how America treats its own oligarchs, writes Sam Husseini. Apparently, other countries, but not the U.S., have oligarchs. Billionaire and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker came and went to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[6963,13574,599,13573,7109,13572,827],"class_list":["post-20095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","tag-consortium-news","tag-national-press-club","tag-oligarchs","tag-penny-pritzker","tag-sam-husseini","tag-thomas-burr","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20096,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20095\/revisions\/20096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}