Kristine Mayle shares union critique of Penny Pritzker (appointed as U.S. Commerce Secretary), while new video interview with Kristine Mayle
While the corporate media have generally been applauding the appointment by President Barack Obama of Chicago heiress Penny Pritzker at U.S. Commerce Secretary, at least one newspaper got some of the critique of Pritzker accurately. The Guardian, published in Great Britain, noted that Pritzker is closer to the philosophy of recently deceased British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher than to anyone with concerns for the majority of people in the USA or elsewhere.
During her time on the Chicago Board of Education, Penny Pritzker voted in favor of every proposal to destroy the public schools of Chicago and to cripple or bust the Chicago Teachers Union. Pritzker's votes included the establishment of a new, out-of-town executive leadership over the system, led first by Rochester's Jean-Claude Brizard and then by Detroit's Barbara Byrd Bennett. In addition to the foreign "Chief Executive officers," Pritzker's appointments included a revolving door or mercenary executives, whose work has continued to sabotage the management of the city's real public schools. Bizarre titles for positions like "Chief Portfolio Officer" and "Chief Officer of Incubation and Innovation" replaced straightforward school district administrations. Above, Pritzker arriving for the December 21, 2012 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education, at which the members of the Board continued the avoidance of Illinois law in preparation of closing 54 schools and disrupting dozens of others behind the smokescreen of corporate school reform. Substance photo by David Vance.And the Guardian knew enough to quote someone familiar with Chicago's public schools when the President of the United States was hailing the former member of Rahm Emanuel's Board of Education:
"Kristine Mayle, financial secretary of the Chicago Teachers Union, called Pritzker's appointment 'deeply disappointing,'" the Guardian reports.
"Pritzker resigned from the board [the Chicago Board of Education] in March after overseeing what is believed to be the largest school closing programme in US history. 'I can only hope she does a better in this position than she had done for the children of Chicago,' said Mayle.
Chicago is planning to shut 54 schools in a move that will hit 47,000 children, 88% of them African American. The closures have sparked huge protests. 'It just shows if you donate enough money, everything is fine, said Mayle."
The child of enormous privilege, Penny Pritzker has been noted for her controversial business practices since she began her career in the 1990s. By the end of the Clinton years, she had overseen the invention of sub-prime mortgage exploitation of minority individuals and communities through Superior Bank, which was eventually taken into bankruptcy. She was also one of the senior Pritzkers who was accused in a family lawsuit of taking money from the trust funds of the younger Pritzker heirs and heiresses.
As has been widely known, Pritzker is also synonymous with tax dodging. The scion of the family, attorney A.N. Pritzker, established the tight series of offshore trusts that all of the Pritzkers, Penny among them, utilize to avoid as many U.S. taxes as possible.
But when the name "Pritzker" is mentioned, the family has succeeded in making sure that the average press account sees the name as a synonym for "generous." The family's tax exempt foundations have enabled all of the Pritzkers, including Penny, to put the family name on hundreds of entitities, ranging from the Pritzker Pavillion in Chicago's Millennium Park to the Pritzker Architecture prize.
According to the most recent ranking in Forbes magazine, Penny Pritzker is one of America's wealthiest individuals, with a person wealth of approximately $1.8 billion. She is one of a dozen Chicago billionaires.
A new You Tube video, featuring Chicago Teachers Union financial secretary Kristine Mayle, is now available through Progressive Democrats. The video is nearly a half hour long. The URL is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ddsk0IoFZo
