Penny Pritzker is one of the richest women in America and also has the dubious distinction of having been directly responsible for enabling Barack Obama to become Occupier-in-Chief of the Oval Office.
Without Penny Pritzker, it is unlikely that Barack Obama ever would have been elected to the United States Senate or the presidency. When she first backed him during his 2004 Senate run, she was No. 152 on the Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans. He was a long-shot candidate who needed her support and imprimatur. Mr. Obama and Ms. Pritzker grew close, sometimes spending weekends with their families at her summer home. <source>
The woman behind the Manchurian
So it would seem that without Ms. Pritzker, mr. Obama would be nowhere near the presidency.
Which brings us to the title of this essay: Congratulations, Money-Penny, you are no longer a Useful Idiot for Barack Obama. Before getting into her more recent self-help success, I should discuss my usage of the term “useful idiot”, which is harsh. First, I do not use it lightly. Second, it is entirely appropriate.
I have used it because Money-Penny is a businesswoman whose family has extensive interests in hotels, banking, and real estate and yet she embraced and promoted a man to the presidency who hates capitalism; Barack Obama used her (she was “useful”) and she failed to understand or appreciate what a malignant anti-capitalist mr. Obama was and is (she was an “idiot” in this context).
But there is one more aspect to being someone’s useful idiot, and Barack and Penny achieved this as well: the bait-and-switch acts of betrayal after the idiot has served its purpose. In this I am referring to Barack Obama’s actions since becoming president. It seems that mr. Obama’s other friends — his real comrades in arms, perhaps? — have been very busy ripping Penny Pritzker apart since the ’08 election.
Take, for example, Henry Tamarin, president of Unite Here Local 1 in Chicago, a union, and an ally of Barack Obama’s. This is how someone close to Barack repays Money-Penny after she nearly single-handedly won Obama the White House:
Henry Tamarin, president of Unite Here Local 1 in Chicago, helped create a devastating campaign against Ms. Pritzker, even though she was just one member of the family and organization. He hired an impersonator who walked the picket line handing out plastic coins and shouting “Get back to work! Penny needs her billions!” according to The Chicago Tribune.
How close is Mr. Tamarin to mr. Obama? Very close indeed:
Mr. Obama benefited from Mr. Tamarin’s early endorsement in the Senate and presidential campaigns and walked a picket line with him at a non-Hyatt hotel in 2007. Mr. Tamarin’s son Nate works at the White House as a liaison to labor. Even as the elder Mr. Tamarin was waging his campaign against Ms. Pritzker, he sat at the president’s table at a White House state dinner.
Did mr. Obama try to help his Money-Penny?
Labor leaders say the White House never asked them to ease up on Ms. Pritzker.
Of course not, because he despises capitalists and the wealthy who benefit from capitalism. Why couldn’t Penny see in 2004 and 2008 who this man really was and is? This question is in the realm of psychology and the answer is never pretty.
Did these attacks hurt Ms. Pritzker? Of course they did:
“The union attacks — it hurts. I don’t like it. It should be an issue between Hyatt and the unions, not become something personal to me.”
Ah, but Penny, don’t you see now what it means to be a useful idiot? It means being attacked personally by a union boss who dines at Barack Obama’s table even as you are being beaten down.
In summary, Barack Obama first used Penny Pritzker, then dismissed her, then let her be horribly abused by union bosses whom he kept close while pushing her away. Nice guy.
But this essay is ultimately about offering Penny congratulations on waking up about Barack Obama, and doing something about it. It would seem that she has changed:
Though she is assisting with the re-election campaign in a number of ways, Ms. Pritzker — whose family owns the Hyatt hotel chain and is active in charitable and Jewish causes — is less visible, has cut back on fund-raising and has told friends that she is intentionally doing less. Some donors have taken that as a signal — or used it as an excuse — to scale back, according to those involved in fund-raising, even as the president’s fund-raising pace lags behind that of his Republican rival, Mitt Romney.
“Donors have asked, ‘Where’s Penny?’ ” said Andy Spahn, a Democratic consultant in Los Angeles who works with prominent Hollywood supporters. “We have called her and not gotten callbacks.”
Intentionally doing less. And the answer to the question “Where’s Penny?” is apparently: looking in the mirror and not liking what she sees vis-a-vis her previous worshipful support of the fraud known as Barack Obama.
Is she seeing more clearly now? Yes she is:
Even as she served as emissary, she expressed private frustration with what she called the White House’s lack of responsiveness and harsh tone about wealth…
In case there is any doubt about Penny’s recuperation from a bad case of Obama-love, here is the final verdict:
Like many of Mr. Obama’s wealthiest donors, she has not given to the “super-PAC” supporting him…
It is nice to see that some people — even those whose Obama-fantasies were particularly insane — can recover their sanity once they’ve been hit in the face repeatedly by the very man they helped to succeed.
And in Obama’s treatment of Penny, he confirms once again that he is a first-class Socialist user and hater of the productive and wealthy in society. Anyone who remains seduced by this man at this point is an enemy of all we hold sacred in the United States.
