Obama is clearly losing goodwill points every day that Blago-gate drags on. Now it appears that indeed Rahm Emanuel was in touch with Blago and aide Harris about the senate seat though no evidence yet of malfeasance on Emanuel’s part.

The stench of Chicago machine politics now clings to Obama like a cheap cologne.

It did not have to be this way.

Obama started out his career firmly in the reform anti-Daley machine wing of the Chicago Democratic Party. That’s what it meant to be an Alinsky-ite Community Organizer in black south side poor and working class neighborhoods in the 80s (where, by the way, he first got to know the powerful Balanoff family of Tom Balanoff aka “SEIU Official” – the flag pole contact in the Feds affidavit against Blagojevich).

That’s what it meant to fight the Mayor’s office and the powerful school board and the teachers union simultaneously in the push for a school reform bill in 1988 which Obama did alongside his pal Bill Ayers. And Obama did that in opposition to mainstream black organizations like Operation PUSH and The Woodlawn Organization.

That’s what it meant to join again with Ayers in securing and then spending $160 million on education reform AGAINST the desires of Mayor Daley in what were called the Chicago School Wars. That’s what it meant to hold his initial campaign event in the home of his “family friends” Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. That’s what it meant to step into the shoes of outgoing state rep. and fellow traveler Alice Palmer.

In fact, that’s what it meant if your aspiration in political life, as it was for Obama, was to depose Richard Daley Jr. inspired by Obama’s hero, Harold Washington, the first black mayor of the city who died in office while Obama was a community organizer.

But at some point in the late 90s or so, Obama realized he had higher ambitions and perhaps becoming Chicago Mayor was not enough. At that point he began to establish relationships with the Chicago mainstream, including key business figures like Penny Pritzker and he even began cozying up to the Daley machine itself. These would prove critical in his rise to national prominence

And now he is stuck with them. Instead of taking advantage of his new national ties to the Kennedy family or VP-elect Joe Biden he immediately fell back on the Chicago crowd for his earliest appointments – Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett, for example – while only leaving behind Jeremiah Wright and, hopefully, Billy Ayers.

For whatever reason Democratic Presidents seem too heavily dependent on the home team. Carter had his Georgia buddies as Clinton had his Arkansas cronies. Usually, however, it takes a few years for their inadequacies to shine through. Obama hasn’t even moved to Washington yet!

From my blog, Global Labor and Politics.

Listen to the video in its entirety because Matthews describes further how VERY near he was to where that bomb went off. And Ayers (of course, this was not discussed today) is a free man solely because his attorneys managed to prove the FBI improperly conducted wiretaps. (I have MUCH MORE TO SAY about this below, and ask you to read along and then share YOUR reactions and add your own knowledge and your own impressions of what occurred, shamefully, on MSNBC.)

I can only imagine what Concerned Mother would have to say about this travesty.

It is unconscionable to me that we and the MSM constantly RAGE about O.J. Simpson, who murdered two people, but not reject Barack Obama, a presidential candidate, now president-elect, who has associated freely and over a long time with a man who could have killed dozens and dozens of people.

On his remarkable radio show a few weeks ago, Nocturnal Warrior made a brilliant point about PEBO’s selection of numerous former Clinton White House and cabinet members. Warrior said that PEBO has to select such people because he has almost no FRIENDS or LONGTIME ASSOCIATES to appoint to any serious jobs in his administration. This is a situation that has NEVER occurred in the history of the presidency of the United States. Heretofore, every U.S. president has had a rich collection of friends, associates, and allies from whom he could select many qualified for high-ranking administration positions. But not Barack Obama. You faithful readers of No Quarter know of many of Obama’s real longtime associates: Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Father Michael Pfleger, William Ayers, Allison and Cullen Davis, Penny Pritzker, Bernardine Dohrn, and on and on, only a very, very few of them suited for any respectable position at any level in an administration. (I’ve clicked several Categories to provide you with a list.) And now, this week, we learn more about other Obama longtime associates like Rod Bagojevich and his wife.

William Ayers’ Crimes, and Additional Perspective History

The SOLE reason no one died is because Ayers et al. were piss-poor bomb makers. What is the sentence range these days for an attempt to commit murder? And don’t forget all the other bombs that nearly killed many others. Including the judge, his wife, and his children — while they slept — simply because that judge was doing his job: Handling the trial of a Black Panther. I’m not generally in favor of the death penalty, but Ayers’ and the Weather Underground’s attempts, repeatedly, to kill as many people as possible in the Capitol, the Pentagon, police stations, and a judge’s home are the works of people so dangerous that those people should never be freed, and may be eligible to be charged with a capital offense.

Ayers has famously said, “Free as a bird, guilty as hell, ain’t America great.” (From Larry Johnson’s must-read article, “A Statement by a Retired FBI Agent Re William Ayers.”)

Dear readers, please understand this: All that, to Matthews, is just some history. It has some import to Matthews, given that he might have been blown up himself, but apparently not much since the conversation flows easily and reasonably amicably, and Matthews, at the end of the interview, gladly flogs Ayers’ book. THEN, after this interview, Matthews has his panel on. Matthews asks Joan Walsh, Salon’s editor, why Ayers — who appeared today to be “confessional” in his tone — didn’t do that during the campaign. Ms. Walsh LAUGHS with a SMIRK on her face, and says, “I think he wanted to stay out of it entirely, and not dignify what the McCain campaign and others were doing.”

Thank you, Ms. Walsh. We now know who the real criminals are. Shame on you, John McCain. Shame on you, Sarah Palin.

Ms. Walsh, please share your opinions with John Murtagh. Well, of course. That’s unfair. You don’t know who John Murtagh is.

Uppity Woman can tell you, in her story, “When This Man Was 9 Years Old, Ayers Bombed His Home.”

If I may, I will contrast the actions of William Ayers and the rest of the sociopathic members of the Weather Underground to the actions of a man who — unless you’re my age and you closely followed anti-war activities during the Vietnam War — you’ve probably NEVER heard of, and will not hear of in the MSM.

After all, he didn’t make bombs. He didn’t befriend a future president and excite the easily excitable rightwing. He simply did the hard work of truly changing history and he paid the price that true, albeit boring, heroes do, in anonymity.

His name is David Harris.

He was the resident counselor in the boys’ dormitory across the street from my girls’ dorm. Many of us sat at his feet as he modestly told us his stories about traveling to the South in summers past to try to help black people get the right to vote. He also shared with us the music he’d learned about in the South — the blues. He told us about Muddy Waters and more. We were entranced. With him, with his stories and the very REAL danger he was in during those summers when white racists wanted to kill him and every white college kid who dared to fight for blacks’ right to vote.

He ran for student body president and I worked on his campaign. He ran on the sole condition that, if elected, he would not serve. He won in a landslide. And did not serve.

Then his draft number came up. (My memory is vague these days, but I believe he tried all the normal routes available back then, such as conscientious objector status, and so on. All of those routes failed.)

So he went to prison. Leavenworth. About seven years ago, I did a search on him, curious what his life had been like. I discovered that he had written a book about his time in Leavenworth, along with his then-wife Joan Baez. I bought the book, and read it. It was a heart-wrenching account. I had no idea that being an inmate in Leavenworth was such a horrific, maddening, insane experience.

It is a simple story, really.

He refused to fight for a war he did not believe was right.

The U.S. government tried him and sentenced him to prison.

He served roughly three years, as I recall.

You may disagree with his decision, but he decided to take the punishment like a man.

He had a father who, as I remember it, was an attorney in Fresno, California. His father surely had some means, but not enough to prevent his son from going to prison.

Bill Ayers had a father who was Chairman of Commonwealth Edison and a mover/shaker in Chicago politics, the arts and education. His father had the means to hire a cadre of attorneys who successfully prevented his son from spending a single day in prison.

David Harris did not build bombs.

He tried to help blacks in the South get to vote, at great risk to his own life.

He helped educate and watched over younger students attending the university, which was often a tedious task, listening to those 18-year-olds’ angst and fear and uncertainty and their various problems with and anxieties about their classes.

He helped the students with the difficult reading for the required freshman class, The History of Western Civilization, because he had read all of those works, including all of Plato, Socrates, and more, and he could — and did — explain those works to those anxious students. He spoke with them patiently and kindly and always very softly.

He was a hulk of a man with broad thick shoulders and a large angular head and a blond mustache but he was, as they say, a gentle giant.

He did not teach the younger students to build bombs or burn down buildings.

He taught the students about giving black people the right to vote and about the blues and about philosophy and about literature and about political thinking and about peaceful protest and about Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

He marched and sang folk songs with his wife, who bore their son.

What a dull man.

Doubtless, Chris Matthews will never invite David Harris for a feature interview.

If only he’d built bombs and then buddied up with a future president, he’d be a sought-after guest.

At least he has an entry in Wikipedia.

:::::::::::

Via Google News results:

Matthews to Ayers: ‘I Agitate My Way, You Agitate Your Way‘ – NewsBusters

Chris Matthews invited on Bill Ayers on Wednesday night’s “Hardball,” and actually confronted him about his bombing of Capitol Hill during his days as a member of the ’60s terrorist group Weather Underground, as the former Capitol Hill police officer emotionally observed: “I was a Capitol policeman at the time, so I was one of the guys that could have been killed obviously at the time you put that, your guys put that bomb in there. So I have a little personal interest. It wasn’t just vandalism. To me it was life-threatening to the guys I worked with. And there were some pretty good guys working there.”

However Matthews, who paradoxically may not even be alive to conduct this interview today if the Weather Underground’s bombs were more devastating, devoted most of the interview tossing softballs Ayers’ way, as the two often agreed with each other on Barack Obama and Iraq policy as the “Hardball” host pointed out they only really differed on how to spread their points of view: “Well, Mr. Ayers, with all due respect, you agitate your way, I agitate my way.

Matthews, who back in October dismissed Sarah Palin’s mention of Ayers, as “the politics of distraction,” began the interview by setting up Ayers to play down any association he had with Obama: …

READ ALL: Matthews to Ayers: ‘I Agitate My Way, You Agitate Your Way‘ — NewsBusters

AND READ MORE of NoQuarter’s treasure trove of materials on the bombings conducted by William Ayers.

If you are surprised by this appointment consideration, please know that I am not. And if you don’t know who Penny Pritzker is, you can count on me to refresh your memory.

Penny was Barack Obama’s national campaign finance chair and now she would like to become Secretary of Commerce. Well I suppose we should all be grateful that she hasn’t been tapped as Secretary of Treasury, considering she owes the Federal Government nearly a half billion dollars in restitution for her seized Superior Bank in Illinois.

Yes, my friends, Penny Pritzker, the Mother of subprime lenders, former owner of the seized Superior Bank is on Barack Obama’s short list for Secretary of Commerce.

I am sure all those customers she screwed are thrilled. In fact one of them had quite a bit to say about Barack Obama and his relationship with Prizker right here on this radio show after ole Penny’s bank went under and left her with a large part of her life’s savings flushed down the proverbial drain. (Note: If Play doesn’t work, click on MP3 Stream link, you don’t want to miss this woman’s story)

I can assure you this woman wasn’t psychic when she expressed concern that Pritzker would become a member of an Obama cabinet. She just happened to understand the concept of “Show me who your friends are and I will tell you what you are“.

You might say that Penny was a Pioneer of sorts. After all, her Superior Bank folded like a plastic door in a cheap banquet room years before the rest of the dominoes fell.

You might even say that the Superior Bank was a boilerplate for what’s happening today on Wall Street. She avoided the rush, so to speak. Her bank failed in 2001. I discussed this here on April 4, 2008. So did plenty of other bloggers, including RBO. Of course, all of this was dutifully ignored by those bastions of integrity, MSNBC and CNN.

For those of you who need a refresher course, here are some clips from that non-fiction story:

The Pritzkers are one of the nation’s wealthiest families and heirs to the fortune created by the Hyatt hotels. Yes, Penny is a billionaire. So basically, Penny could squash me like a bug right now for writing this.

Among their other endeavors, the Pritzkers were the owners of Superior Bank in Hinsdale, Illinois when it was seized.

Yes, I did say seized.

Penny Pritzker, Barack Obama’s great Chicago (of course!) friend was a pioneer you might say! She was a failed subprime lender who set the tone all the way back to 2001. She did it before it was even in style.

Here’s a little press release from the Office of Thrift Supervision back in 2001:

OTS Closes Superior Bank FSB; Hinsdale, Ill. Thrift is Insolvent

WASHINGTON – The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) closed Superior Bank FSB, Hinsdale, Ill., today and appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver.

The FDIC transferred the insured deposits and substantially all the assets of Superior Bank into a newly chartered, full-service mutual savings bank, known as Superior Federal, FSB, which will open for business on Monday morning. All depositors of Superior Bank automatically become depositors of Superior Federal, and will have immediate access to their insured funds. All 18 of Superior Bank’s Chicago metropolitan area offices will open for business Monday and will continue to offer full banking services, including online banking. Superior Bank’s loan production and servicing operations will also continue to operate normally.

OTS used its authority under the FDIC Improvement Act of 1991 to close Superior Bank when it found that the bank remained critically undercapitalized — that its tangible equity capital was less than two percent of its total assets. The bank failed to implement a capital restoration plan that it submitted to OTS on May 24 this year.

Superior Bank suffered as a result of its former high-risk business strategy, which was focused on the generation of significant volumes of subprime mortgage and automobile loans for securitization and sale in the secondary market. OTS found that the bank also suffered from poor lending practices, improper record keeping and accounting, and ineffective board and management supervision.

Superior became critically undercapitalized largely due to incorrect accounting treatment and aggressive assumptions for valuing residual assets. The bank also experienced significant losses during 2000 from its automobile lending program.

OTS has determined that Superior Bank is insolvent, having incurred losses that have depleted all or substantially all of its capital. OTS also determined that Superior Bank was no longer able to transact business in a safe and sound manner.

OTS notified the bank of its serious concerns in July 2000.

The bank was purchased by two families in 1988 — the Pritzker family of Chicago, owner of Hyatt Hotels and other interests, and the Dworman family of New York, with interests in real estate and financial services activities — and was operated through a complex network of holding companies.

In light of these findings, OTS determined that closure and the appointment of FDIC as receiver were necessary to protect the interests of the bank’s insured depositors.

As of March 31, 2001, the failed bank had total assets of $1.9 billion and total deposits of $1.5 billion. FDIC insures depositors’ accounts up to the statutory limit of $100,000.

Superior is the only bank that OTS has closed in 2001, and only the fourth OTS-regulated institution closed in the past five years.

The FDIC has established a toll free telephone number for customers of Superior. That number is 1-800-331-6306, and will be available until midnight tonight and then from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily thereafter.

At the time of this seizure, it was determined that Penny Pritzker and her family owed $460,000,000 to the Federal Government. Yes, that’s right folks. Nearly a half a billion dollars. Gee, i wonder if that’s all paid back yet, don’t you?

Back in September, 2008, I discussed Penny and her siezed subprime lending institution yet again and so did RBO. I felt she deserved another go-around considering she certainly appeared to be a prime forerunner of today’s Wall Street Meltdown–and this didn’t seem to bother Barack Obama one bit:

You see, while Barack Obama is faking outrage over all the bankruptcies and bailouts, he doesn’t mention that a number of his top ten contributors are from Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs, Lehman and the JP Morgan Chase. He also fails to mention that one of the first subprime lenders to stick it to borrowers and have her bank seized is a woman named Penny Pritzker, who just happens to be Barack Obama’s campaign Finance Chair (as confirmed on April 3, 2008) and a potential Secretary of the Treasury in an Obama administration.

Power and Control blogger has this to say:

This is a long and complicated story about how Obama backers were behind the mortgage industry meltdown. It hast to start some where, so lets start with a well known Chicago name Penny Pritzker. It starts with a bank failure.

And now, Penny is being considered as Secretary of Commerce. Kind of makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, doesn’t it? Don’t you always have a warm feeling when you meet one of Barack Obama’s close friends?

But don’t worry. Penny is going to fix herself and her friends us up really well. After all, look how well she has looked out for the little people in the past.

I guess the main stream media didn’t think this Petty little Penny Pritzker Problem (say that three times fast) was important enough to look into back when some of us was being sooooooooo trivial about it.

Change You Simply Cannot Believe.

Additional links on this bilking of innocent people:
NY Times, December, 2001
FDIC Failed Bank Information – Superior Bank
OTS Closes Superior Bank FSB; Hinsdale, Ill. Thrift is Insolvent
OTS Announces Resolution of Charges Against Auditor of Closed Superior Bank FSB

Additional Uppity Coverage of this marvelous “choice” for Secretary of Commerce:

Barack Obama’s Finance Chairwoman and the Seized Superior Bank (April 4, 2008)

Obama’s Finance Chair – Failed Bank Owner Penny Pritzker and Wall Street Today (September 14, 2008

RBO: Penny Pritzker’s Problem (September 16, 2008)

He is a quintessential enigma wrapped in a conundrum (i.e., an inscrutable mystery having only a conjectural answer). He is an old style Chicago politician, complete with all of the corruption and unsavory relationships, but has a soothing voice and easy manner. He got away with a mythological presentation of his family history in part because the media was unwilling to ask him why he was known as Barry Soetoro until he was about 18 years old. He has still not explained his trip as a young man to Indonesia and Pakistan.

We know nothing about his academic achievements in college. If you have an honest, objective bone in your body you will admit that if he had high SAT or ACT scores we would have heard about it. His college performance as an undergraduate was mediocre and he certainly earned no accolades for getting a high GPA. Otherwise, we would have heard about it. I graduated Cum Laude and was Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Missouri. We know nothing about Obama’s record at Columbia University or Occidental College.

We do have a clear record of his clever politicking but meager accomplishments since 1995.

Barack is a savvy, tough politician. He figured out a way to shove an established politician, Alice Palmer out of the way. And he won election to the Senate of the United States. However, he was at best an undistinguished legislator and only got his name on a slew of bills in his last two years in the Illinois state legislature thanks to Emil Jones. Barack avoided many tough votes, often choosing to vote “present,” but did not champion any major legislation. He continued this record in the U.S. Senate. He did not chair any hearings and undertook no significant legislative initiatives.

Barack did prove to be adept at raising money. This was achieved, as we will discover in the coming year, through the efforts of two prominent Chicago families–Lester Crown and Penny Pritzker–who also bankrolled Rahm Emanuel.

In fact, I believe that Rahm Emanuel may have been the one to introduce Obama to the Crown and Pritzker network. It is a point worth pursuing. Barack also put together a very sophisticated, nationwide campaign organization that made phone calls to prospective voters and knocked on doors.

We have discussed in detail on this site the fraudulent fundraising that was part of his campaign. At the end of the day, Barack reneged on his promise to rely on public funding and outspent the McCain folks by at least a factor of 8. Let’s give Barack credit–he played hardball and won. He’s not the first politician to use political and financial shenanigans to beat an opponent–just ask Barry Goldwater and George McGovern about Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon).

I have watched and listened with a mixture of amazement and sadness at the celebrations of African Americans over Barack’s triumph. Let’s be clear. Barack is no Jackie Robinson (Jack Roosevelt “Jackie” Robinson). Back in the day when African Americans were banned from competing on an equal basis, there was no doubt that Jackie Robinson and host of other black baseball players deserved to play in the Major Leagues. The breaking of that color barrier was long overdue.

But Barack Obama has never, until now, had any significant experience managing a government enterprise. If he had been white, with his record and associations, he would never have been elected and certainly would not have ousted Hillary Clinton. So let’s admit that he is an Affirmative Action choice by a majority of Americans.

I welcome sending a clear signal to every person who is a minority in this country that they are accepted and loved. The legacy of racism in our country has left ugly wounds that unfortunately are still festering. It is odd that so many African Americans continue to insist there is blatant racism in the face of the commercial and professional achievements of black entertainers, athletes, and businessmen and women. America today is not the America of 1946 that still allowed segregation and kept talented individuals like Jackie Robinson, Josh Gibson and Larry Doby from having the opportunity to compete.

The nice thing about the full integration of professional sports is that we no longer worry or think about a players color when discussing their performance. As a Washington Redskins fan I think cornerback Carlos Rogers is a bust. The man, who has dropped more sure-fire interceptions than any cornerback I can remember, could not catch the clap in a Thailand whorehouse. Shawn Springs, however, is a stud who delivers. When Washington played Pittsburgh last Monday Springs was out with an injury, which gave Rogers the chance to play. My point in this is to illustrate that in talking about the performance of these two men we don’t worry about their color. It is what they do on the field during a game that counts.

In watching Jesse Jackson, Juan Williams, and Oprah Winfrey weep over the news that Barack had won, I could only think of Sally Fields. Remember when she won the Academy Award for her work in Places in the Heart? She tearfully accepted the Oscar with this unforgettable line:

“The first time I didn’t feel it but this time I feel it and I can’t deny the fact you like me. Right now, you like me!”

So, America now has officially told black people, “we like you, we really, really like you.” Got it? From that standpoint I am happy that Obama’s election will inspire and reassure African Americans that they are accepted. Barack’s election does not completely erase the scars of segregation and Jim Crow, but it is a welcome step.

It is now Barack’s Martin Luther King moment. We are not going to judge you by the color of your skin but by the content of your character. We are going to judge you on what you do. So how is that going?

Barack’s selection of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff is alarming and troubling. It is a sign that he is catering to the Lester Crown family and his national finance chair, Penny Pritzker. He selected a man who served on the board of Fannie Mae when deliberate lies about the company’s performance were reported to shareholders. He selected a man who was a strong supporter of the October 2002 resolution to go to war in Iraq. The fact that Emanuel is closely tied to his money people tells me that this is more of the old style politics that rewards those who pay the most.

On the plus side, Barack has selected some solid people to advise him on what to do about the intelligence community. He and his advisors are showing good judgment on that front. I look forward to getting back to an intelligence community that is allowed to be a truth teller without being subjected to political pressure.

I do not hate Barack Obama. While I think he is unqualified to be a good President I stand ready to be proven wrong. Which reminds me of Robert Gates. I opposed Robert Gates as the replacement for Don Rumsfeld. Gates’ record at the CIA was not distinguished. He played politics with intelligence and pandered to the Reagan White House.

But let’s give Bob Gates his due. He has been an outstanding Secretary of Defense and has restored sanity and integrity to that entity. I was wrong about Bob Gates. I hope I am wrong about Barack Obama. If I am, then America will be better off.

The relationship between the Democratic Party’s Presidential candidate Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, the founder and leader of the now defunct terrorist organization Weather Underground, is deeper and closer than currently understood, according to an individual who has had a senior role in the Obama candidacy. Ayers has had direct contact with the candidate.

The Weather Underground was responsible for a series of bombings during the 1970s that caused extensive property damage. [Only two bomb's failures (at the front of the home and under the gas tank of the family car) kept an entire family from dying as they slept, reports John Murtagh, then the 9-year-old son of the judge whose family WU wanted to kill. See Uppity Woman's story, "When This Man Was 9 Years Old, Ayers Bombed His Home." - Ed.]

As far as it goes, Stanley Kurtz of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center and the National Review Online, has done a reasonably good job in this essay in the Wall Street Journal of capturing the intimately close political relationship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers in their work together on the $160 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) from 1995 to 2002.

But there is a key piece missing in this continuing puzzle.

Global Labor readers will recall that Dr. Kurtz, a Harvard-trained social anthropologist, was initially invited to view the CAC’s records held at the University of Illinois’ Chicago campus but was then denied access for several weeks after the former Executive Director of the CAC, Ken Rolling, demanded that the University keep the CAC records, donated to the University by the CAC for public research in 2002, off limits to the public.

No one has yet been able to explain how Rolling, who now runs a non-profit in Mississippi, happened to call the University library the same day as Kurtz – August 11 – and demand that Kurtz be denied access to the records.  Unless, of course, someone tipped him off.

The University relented, however, after conferring with Rolling who was then given an opportunity to recommend that certain documents be kept confidential. The University maintains nothing was changed.

Kurtz was then able to review the records, some of which I had already seen after securing copies from a separate archive at Brown University earlier this summer.

My own assessment of what the Ayers/Obama Challenge experience adds up to is explained in my essay, The Authoritarian Radicals.

Kurtz’ main argument is that the CAC was a continuation of the “radical” agenda towards education that Ayers developed as a civil rights and anti-war activist in the 1960s.  Thus, he points to Ayers’ intention to use the funds of the CAC to infuse students and teachers with an interest in resisting oppression, racism, and social injustice.

There is a great deal of truth in this.  Ayers speaks widely of his commitment to “social justice” teaching where he sees the classroom as the potential starting point of revolutionary consciousness.  Such nonsense deserves the derision the Kurtz piece suggests.

But one is left wondering, would the national Annenberg Challenge program have really awarded Ayers nearly $50 million if this kind of silliness were the real purpose of the CAC?  

Would Chicago area foundations like the MacArthur Foundation and the Pritzker Family Foundation, as well as major corporate and public donors, have provided $110 million in matching funds for such an agenda?  

Could anyone have realistically expected such an agenda to have improved student outcomes?

Somehow I doubt it.

Rather, I think there was a more pressing purpose at the heart of the award and the support it engendered among certain elite institutions and individuals in Chicago. Ironically, while Kurtz wants to tar Obama with the red paint brush of the 60s “radical” Ayers, an understanding of the real purpose of the CAC indicates a much closer political alliance between Obama and Ayers.

The grant application itself and much of what the CAC was up to emerged in the heated “Chicago School Wars” underway in that city from the late 1980s until the late 1990s.  This war was for the control of Chicago’s public schools.  

One side in this war was controlled by Mayor Richard M. Daley, Jr., son of the legendary Mayor Daley.  

And the other side was led by Ayers and a small group of reformers that had emerged several years earlier in 1988 during a battle to create a new power center in the Chicago schools, the so-called Local School Councils, or LSCs.  The LSCs were an effort to rein in the power of unionized teachers, school principals and school administrators, in the wake of an unpopular teachers’ strike in 1987.

This milieu around Ayers also included, as far back as the late 80s, Barack Obama and the Developing Communities Project (DCP) that had hired Obama as its Executive Director in 1985. The DCP was a leading participant in the campaign to establish the LSCs.

Thus, in fact, the “radical” Bill Ayers and his ally Barack Obama, a Democratic political activist and lawyer on the rise in Chicago, were engaged in an anti-union effort to influence the direction and nature of the entire Chicago public school system.  It would lead them into a battle with Mayor Daley himself.

By 1994 the Local School Councils were losing momentum and Daley started to reassert his power, looking to new legislation to strip the LSCs of their power and return power over the system to his office. Ayers and his reformers turned to the Annenberg Challenge money to reinvigorate the power and impact of the LSCs.  

They also funded, as Kurtz documents, a network of so-called “external partners,” such as the Small Schools Network run by Ayers’ comrade from the 60s, ex-Maoist Mike Klonsky.  These Partners engaged in what one union activist called “teacher bashing” rather than concrete programs to improve outcomes for students.

This was the heart and soul of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge – a front in the Chicago School Wars.  For a time mainstream figures like the former President of Northwestern, Arnold Weber, backed the effort, but later began raising objections to its “political” agenda.  

But the project prevailed and over time dumped nearly $160 million in six years into the schools, consistent with the Ayers’ camp’s political agenda of supporting the LSCs as a power center against the teachers’ union and the city administration. (Ironically, the LSCs were not supported by major black groups in Chicago like Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH.  The LSCs anti-teacher approach was viewed with alarm as teaching had become one of the few sure routes to a middle class life for black Chicagoans.)

Thus, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was far more than just a chance for Ayers to engage in “radical” efforts to raise the political consciousness of young students.  It was that but it was much more – it was a front in an important battle for control of the Chicago Public School system. In fact, according to the Ken Rolling, Daley himself tried to wrest control of the Annenberg grant money away from Ayers and Obama.

The Challenge was radical, but not the right wing’s simplistic view of “radicalism.”  Rather it represented an authoritarian and bureaucratic agenda – a desperate attempt to use parents to control teachers through a politically correct curriculum, yes, but more importantly to use them as canon fodder in the battle to control teachers and administrators.  This authoritarian approach is entirely consistent with Ayers’ long held political views as he has consistently sided politically with the most undemocratic regimes available, including most recently that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

And at Ayers’ side the entire time during this battle was his comrade-in-arms, Barack Obama, who served as President and Chairman of the board of directors of the Challenge.

Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools – WSJ.com

Let’s see now. Last week we discussed the 2001 failed Superior Bank of Chicago and Penny Pritzker,  Barack Obama’s Campaign Finance Chair.  Ms. Pritzker, it seems, is the Mother of the subprime lenders and the Mortgage Meltdown. She did it before it was even in style!

This week,  Obama’s Godfather, Political Fixer, Tony Rezko, who was convicted on 16 counts of corruption on June 4 of this year, is back in the news answering charges of surprise! Mortgage Fraud.

You do remember him, right? Tony crank up my political career and get me my mansion cheap and I won’t notice the rats and lack of heat in those houses you didn’t renovate for the poor on taxpayer money I got you “That is Not the Guy I Knew” Rezko?

Cross Posted from The Real Barack Obama–RBO, formerly Rezko Watch:

In a brief item, ABC News 7 Chicago reports that convicted political fixer, Antoin “Tony” Rezko (see below) is due back in court today, September 23, 2008, “to face charges of mortgage fraud.”

Rezko, along with two other men, are accused of rigging the price of pizza franchises to fraudulently obtain more than $10 million in loans.

The indictment for this case “alleges that Rezko fraudulently obtained more than $10 million in loans for a pizza restaurant business from General Electric Capital Corp. (GECC) and also defrauded investors in that business.”

Rezko is accused of defrauding General Electric Capital Corporation in connection with a $4.5 million loan he obtained from that lender supposedly to buy a chain of Papa John’s pizza franchises in Milwaukee with a straw buyer and inflated prices, misrepresenting his role in the transaction and then defaulting on the loan.^Source

Rezko was convicted in April 2008, on 16 charges of “fraud, bribery and money laundering in a political corruption case. His sentencing for that conviction is scheduled for next month,” ABC News reported.

Several high-ranking members of Congress also appeared on Sunday morning programs, as lawmakers rushed to bring on the far-reaching legislation to a vote next week.

“We need to give the secretary the authority to work,” Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) said on ABC’s This Week. “These are complex issues. I don’t think we ought to micromanage that part of it.”

Sen. Dodd expects strong interest from lawmakers in dealing with the Main Street aspects of the financial crisis.

“There are things we might do to try to help clean up a lot of these bad mortgages out there,” he said. “We need to try and address that without compromising the ability of the secretary to get rid of the toxic instruments that exist in these institutions.”

Dodd, in other words, believes our economy will recover if and only if we eradicate all the “toxic instruments that exist in these [financial] institutions.” One would hope Democrat Barack Obama would agree with Dodd, especially as Democrats are viewed by Americans as the Party most committed to addressing and ameliorating financial crises.

But Obama cannot confront this crisis in the manner Dodd desires, for his National Campaign Finance Chairperson, Penny Pritzker, is largely responsible for the creation and lending of the “toxic instruments” Chris Dodd decries as responsible for our current economic woes.

Beholden to Penny Pritzker as well as to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Barack Obama is essentially one of those “toxic instruments” we must shed if we are to recover from the mortgage and sub-prime lending crisis.

Danny Schechter, Leftist media critic and author of Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the ‘Sub Prime Scandal,’ offers a history of the sub prime mortgage. I quote one of the reviews of his magisterial text:

When it began, “subprime lending” wasn’t a term in common usage, let alone understood outside financial circles. One of its late 1990s originators was Obama campaign finance chairperson Penny Pritzker when she served on the Board of the failed family-owned Hinsdale, IL Superior Bank. It cost the FDIC $700 million and depositors another $65 million, while Pritzker made millions on predatory lending now called “subprime” mortgage schemes. One definition is as follows: “the practice of making loans to borrowers who do not qualify for the best market interest rates because of their deficient credit history.” Another in the recent environment was to force-feed them to the largest number of homebuying prospects possible.

According to the short history Schecter’s recounts, it is Penny Pritzker who invented the “toxic” financial instrument that has precipitated our current financial crisis. The doyenne of predatory lending, Penny Pritzker is just another Jim Johnson and Frank Raines: both the cause and the symptom of all that is wrong on Wall Street, Penny Pritzker and her position of power on the Obama campaign raises serious doubts about Obama’s ability to reform the institutions responsible for our current economic doldrums.

Pritzker’s involvement in this crisis is not limited to the invention of the sub prime mortgage instrument; she is also largely responsible for the current financial crash. I quote Dennis Bernstein, who cites Timothy Anderson, a finance expert who relentlessly pursued the late Republican Henry Hyde for the latter’s entanglements in the failure of Clyde Federal Saving & Loan:

Though Superior Bank collapsed years before the current sub-prime turmoil that is rocking the world’s financial markets – and pushing those millions of homeowners toward foreclosure – some banking experts say the Pritzkers and Superior hold a special place in the history of the sub-prime fiasco.

“The [sub-prime] financial engineering that created the Wall Street meltdown was developed by the Pritzkers and Ernst and Young, working with Merrill Lynch to sell bonds securitized by sub-prime mortgages,” Timothy J. Anderson, a whistleblower on financial and bank fraud, told me in an interview.
“The sub-prime mortgages,” Anderson said, “were provided to Merrill Lynch, by a nation-wide Pritzker origination system, using Superior as the cash cow, with many millions in FDIC insured deposits. Superior’s owners were to sub-prime lending, what Michael Milken was to junk bonds.”

In other words, if you traced today’s sub-prime crisis back to its origins, you would come upon the role of the Pritzkers and Superior Bank of Chicago.

It all stems from the questionable practices of Penny Pritzker and the Superior Bank of Chicago. Prtizker, by the way, is a major bundler for the Obama campaign. Indeed, the scion of one of Chicago’s wealthiest families has raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for Barack Obama’s Presidential bid. Her family also donated over $40,000 to Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign. Now wonder why Obama is opposed to interest rate freezes and a moratorium on sub prime mortgages: most of his campaign cash is from those who have shamelessly profited from our current economic collapse.

Democrats are aware of this problem, and a few are not very pleased. One Democratic member of the House uttered the following when interviewed by a reporter for the conservative American Spectator on 8 Sept 2008:

“How can Obama go out with a straight face and saw it was Republicans who made this mess, when it is his key advisers who ran the agencies that made the big mess what it is?” says a Democrat House member who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. “It’s his people who are responsible for what may well be the single largest government bailout in history. And every single one of them made millions off the collapse that are lining Obama’s campaign coffers. If the McCain campaign lets this one go, they deserve to lose.”

Hopefully the McCain campaign will not ignore this egregious conflict of interest of Barack Obama. And hopefully the Obama campaign will fire and denounce Penny Pritzker for creating the current economic crisis on Wall Street. But I doubt Obama will, for Obama is the recipient of cash from many who are the beneficiaries of the sub prime mortgage scandal: he accepted $1,180,103 from the top issuers of subprime loans during the primaries. And here are the names of a few of Obama’s bundlers who earn their profits in the unscrupulous sub prime loaning industry:

Louis Susman, Michael Froman and J. Michael Schell of Citigroup; Steve Koch of Credit Suisse; Bruce Hayman, David Heller, Eric Schwartz, and Todd Williams of Goldman Sachs; Mark Gilbert, Christine Forester, John Rhea, Nadja Fidelia, and Theodore Janulis of Lehman; and Robert Wolf of UBS Americas.

Beholden to the interests responsible for creating the sub prime mortgage crisis that has rippled across our country and across the world, Obama cannot eliminate those who created the “toxic instruments” Democrat Chris Dodd decries, for he is too dependent on their largesse.

Will Obama return the donations and bundled cash he received from the subprime industry? Will he fire and denounce Penny Pritzker? Or will he simply ignore his complicity with the unscrupulous sub prime mortgage industry and simply give us more “okie doke,” “bamboozling” and “hoodwinking?” Even if he does denounce the industry that has financially sustained his campaign, it will be too little, too late: the economy has already collapsed; the foreclosure crisis has already destroyed communities; and families are on the streets.

Barack “Sub Prime” Obama: unable to reform the industries responsible for our current economic crisis, he is anything but ready for prime time. Indeed, Obama is and will remain “sub prime.”

See also Uppity Woman’s 16 SEPT 2008 essay entitled “Obama’s Finance Chair, Failed Bank Owner Penny Pritzker And Today’s Wall Street Problem.”

You see, while Barack Obama is faking outrage over all the bankruptcies and bailouts, he doesn’t mention that a number of his top ten contributors are from Wall Street, including Goldman Sacs, Lehman and the JP Morgan Chase. He also fails to mention that one of the first subprime lenders to stick it to borrowers and have her bank seized is a woman named Penny Pritzker, who just happens to be Barack Obama’s campaign Finance Chair (as confirmed on April 3, 2008) and a potential Secretary of the Treasury in an Obama administration.

Power and Control blogger has this to say:

This is a long and complicated story about how Obama backers were behind the mortgage industry meltdown. It hast to start some where, so lets start with a well known Chicago name Penny Pritzker. It starts with a bank failure.

Power and Control is not only correct, but it looks like it’s time for a re-print (and then some) of my April 3 2008 piece on Penny Pritzker and the failed Superior Bank. I must have been psychic, I guess.

Let’s meet Barack Obama’s Finance Chairperson, Penny Pritzker.

We all know that Barack Obama hangs out with some interesting people and Penny Pritzker is no exception. I thought you might like to know more about Penny Pritzker and the closing of Superior Bank, which was owned by the Pritzker family.

The Pritzkers are one of the nation’s wealthiest families and heirs to the fortune created by the Hyatt hotels. Yes, Penny is a billionaire. So basically, Penny could squash me like a bug right now for writing this.

Among their other endeavors, the Pritzkers were the owners of Superior Bank in Hinsdale, Illinois when it was seized.

Yes, I did say seized.

Penny Pritzker, Barack Obama’s great Chicago (of course!) friend was a pioneer you might say! She was a failed subprime lender who set the tone all the way back to 2001. She did it before it was even in style.

Below is a 2001 press release from the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS)

OTS Closes Superior Bank FSB; Hinsdale, Ill. Thrift is Insolvent

WASHINGTON – The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) closed Superior Bank FSB, Hinsdale, Ill., today and appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver.

The FDIC transferred the insured deposits and substantially all the assets of Superior Bank into a newly chartered, full-service mutual savings bank, known as Superior Federal, FSB, which will open for business on Monday morning. All depositors of Superior Bank automatically become depositors of Superior Federal, and will have immediate access to their insured funds. All 18 of Superior Bank’s Chicago metropolitan area offices will open for business Monday and will continue to offer full banking services, including online banking. Superior Bank’s loan production and servicing operations will also continue to operate normally.

OTS used its authority under the FDIC Improvement Act of 1991 to close Superior Bank when it found that the bank remained critically undercapitalized — that its tangible equity capital was less than two percent of its total assets. The bank failed to implement a capital restoration plan that it submitted to OTS on May 24 this year.

Superior Bank suffered as a result of its former high-risk business strategy, which was focused on the generation of significant volumes of subprime mortgage and automobile loans for securitization and sale in the secondary market. OTS found that the bank also suffered from poor lending practices, improper record keeping and accounting, and ineffective board and management supervision.

Superior became critically undercapitalized largely due to incorrect accounting treatment and aggressive assumptions for valuing residual assets. The bank also experienced significant losses during 2000 from its automobile lending program.

OTS has determined that Superior Bank is insolvent, having incurred losses that have depleted all or substantially all of its capital. OTS also determined that Superior Bank was no longer able to transact business in a safe and sound manner.

OTS notified the bank of its serious concerns in July 2000.

The bank was purchased by two families in 1988 — the Pritzker family of Chicago, owner of Hyatt Hotels and other interests, and the Dworman family of New York, with interests in real estate and financial services activities — and was operated through a complex network of holding companies.

In light of these findings, OTS determined that closure and the appointment of FDIC as receiver were necessary to protect the interests of the bank’s insured depositors.

As of March 31, 2001, the failed bank had total assets of $1.9 billion and total deposits of $1.5 billion. FDIC insures depositors’ accounts up to the statutory limit of $100,000.

Superior is the only bank that OTS has closed in 2001, and only the fourth OTS-regulated institution closed in the past five years.

The FDIC has established a toll free telephone number for customers of Superior. That number is 1-800-331-6306, and will be available until midnight tonight and then from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily thereafter.

At the time of this seizure, it was determined that Penny Pritzker and her family owed $460,000,000 to the Federal Government. Yes, that’s right folks. Nearly a half a billion dollars. Gee, i wonder if that’s all paid back yet, don’t you?

I thought you might also like to hear an interview with one of Penny Pritzker’s victims and how this bank closing affected her life. You will also hear her reaction to the thought that Barack Obama would hire Penny Pritzker as his campaign Finance Chair, not to mention her horrified reaction to the thought that Ms. Pritzker might one day be “Secretary of the Treasury”. If “Play” doesn’t work, Click in MP3 Stream link.Buckle your seat belt first, please. This woman does not spare details and is not in a good mood. I suppose I wouldn’t be in a very good mood either if I lost my savings to Penny Pritzker.

I guess the main stream media didn’t think this Petty little Penny Pritzker Problem (say that three times fast) was important enough to look into back in April, 2008 when insignificant little me wrote about it. Ooops! Wait! They don’t seem interested in looking into it now either! Obama’s going to fix this problem. Oh yeah, for sure.

While your at it, take a look here at The Real Barack Obama’s repost of her piece on the Penny Pritzker Problem. It contains a nice round-up of Pritzker contributions to Obama as well.

Additional links on this bilking of innocent people:
NY Times, December, 2001
FDIC Failed Bank Information – Superior Bank
OTS Closes Superior Bank FSB; Hinsdale, Ill. Thrift is Insolvent
OTS Announces Resolution of Charges Against Auditor of Closed Superior Bank FSB

Copyright © 2008 Uppity Woman. All Rights Reserved.

The denial of access to the archives of the CAC was unusual and possibly illegal.  It was done after the University, again without any legal justification that I am aware of, contacted someone they said was the “donor” of the records. That “donor” wanted to examine the records prior to their release to the public.

This is highly unusual in light of the fact that the records had been deposited with UIC in 2002 and had been processed by UIC librarians and made ready for access by researchers.  Only when Mr. Kurtz, a conservative, requested that he be allowed to see them was the “donor” contacted.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of a 3rd year law student in Chicago who filed a Freedom of Information Act request with UIC, Global Labor can reveal tonight that the alleged “donor” who was contacted by UIC and who tried to block Dr. Kurtz’ access to the CAC records was Ken Rolling, former Executive Director of the CAC and a former staff member of the Woods Fund in the 1980s when the Woods Fund provided financial support to the Developing Communities Project which was then headed up by Barack Obama.

Thus, someone with a 20 year history with Senator Obama was tipped off in advance and in secret by a public University about the interest of a political opponent of the Senator in these public records.  The CAC was a non profit corporation organized under the laws of the state of Illinois to serve the interests of the people of Illinois.  Of course, Ken Rolling now has no legally cognizable interest that I am aware of in the long defunct CAC.  Legally, the successor organization to the CAC is the Chicago Public Education Fund, on whose board sits Obama Campaign Finance Chair Penny Pritzker and Obama supporter Susan Crown.

I am reviewing now the documents that were produced as a result of this FOIA request.  As soon as I complete my review and assessment I will post the documents here as well as my conclusions.

- Steve Diamond (biography and blog)

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SusanUnPC’s Note: Read all of law professor Steve Diamond’s articles on the six-year, $160-million Annenberg project that Barack Obama never mentions — curious, isn’t it — when he’s asked about executive experience.

Others here, including Larry Johnson, have also written about the Annenberg project. Larry’s most recent article was “The Obama-Ayers Coverup [Update] .”

Senator Barack Obama stirred his legions of supporters, and raised our hopes, promising to change the old order of things. He spoke with passion about breaking out of the partisan mold of bickering and catering to special pleaders, promised to end President Bush’s abuses of power and subverting of the Constitution and disowned the big-money power brokers who have corrupted Washington politics.

Now there seems to be a new Barack Obama on the hustings. First, he broke his promise to try to keep both major parties within public-financing limits for the general election. His team explained that, saying he had a grass-roots-based model and that while he was forgoing public money, he also was eschewing gold-plated fund-raisers. These days he’s on a high-roller hunt.

The privileged Penny Pritzker threw grassroots donors under the bus:

Even his own chief money collector, Penny Pritzker, suggests that the magic of $20 donations from the Web was less a matter of principle than of scheduling. “We have not been able to have much of the senator’s time during the primaries, so we have had to rely more on the Internet,” she explained as she and her team busily scheduled more than a dozen big-ticket events over the next few weeks at which the target price for quality time with the candidate is more than $30,000 per person.

The editors naively think that this is a “new” Barack Obama? Uh, no. That’s the real Barack Obama.

If only the New York Times and other MSM had paid any attention to Tom Buffenbarger, president of the machinists’ union, when he described the REAL Barack Obama:

Read all about what Tom Buffenbarger saw in how the REAL Barack Obama operates (includes stories from Chicago newspapers).

Here are more broken promises that today’s Times editorial lists:

• “The new Barack Obama has abandoned his vow to filibuster an electronic wiretapping bill if it includes an immunity clause for telecommunications companies that amounts to a sanctioned cover-up of Mr. Bush’s unlawful eavesdropping after 9/11. …” [...]
• “The Barack Obama of the primary season used to brag that he would stand before interest groups and tell them tough truths. The new Mr. Obama tells evangelical Christians that he wants to expand President Bush’s policy of funneling public money for social spending to religious-based organizations — a policy that violates the separation of church and state and turns a government function into a charitable donation. …”
• “On top of these perplexing shifts in position, we find ourselves disagreeing powerfully with Mr. Obama on two other issues: the death penalty and gun control.”

The editorial closes with these two paragraphs:

We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.

There are still vital differences between Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain on issues like the war in Iraq, taxes, health care and Supreme Court nominations. We don’t want any “redefining” on these big questions. This country needs change it can believe in.

Look. The only “change” anyone can believe that Barack Obama will act on is any finger-to-the-wind “change” that helps him achieve his SOLE goal: Winning.

He is not abandoning his principles because he doesn’t have any that he holds dear.

He is not shifting his policies because he is not the policy wonk that Hillary Clinton is, and frankly doesn’t care that much about any policy.

Ambition is a vital trait in a political candidate. Ambition helps a candidate keep going when the going gets tough.

But ambition for the sake of ambition — for the sole objective of winning — is extremely dangerous. It suggests a personality that is wholly self-absorbed and only feigns caring and concern for others.

Hillary Clinton is ambitious. But she also cares deeply about enacting policies dear to her, and has a long track record of actually accomplishing great legislation and programs — particularly for children. Which is why, in my story yesterday morning, “Obama and the hoi aristoi,” I linked to the remarkable essays by Alegre and MarkJay:

“She Changes People’s Lives,” by Alegre

“Four Reasons, By a Father I’ve Come to Know,” by MarkJay

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On February 20, 2008, we posted this YouTube as a warning. If only more people had heeded our warnings — but there was too much of a cult-like adoration of Obama for people to use their common sense, and also do some “due diligence” on this politician:

There’s still time to make this right. Before it’s too late. And the Democrats nominate an ill-qualified, inexperienced shape-shifter as its candidate, and thereby enable the election of John McCain.

There’s still time to nominate Hillary Clinton, who has already WON the key swing states and has already WON the hearts and brains of voters — particularly blue-collar workers who see through charlatans and who KNOW that delivering on promises matters more than speeches.

The Pritzkers are one of the nation’s wealthiest families and heirs to the fortune created by the Hyatt hotels. Yes, Penny is a billionaire. So basically, Penny could squash me like a bug right now for writing this.

Among their other endeavors, the Pritzkers were the owners of Superior Bank in Hinsdale, Illinois when it was seized. Yes, I did say seized.

Here’s a Press Release from the Office of Thrift Supervision, Bureau of the US Treasury:

OTS Closes Superior Bank FSB; Hinsdale, Ill. Thrift is Insolvent

WASHINGTON – The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) closed Superior Bank FSB, Hinsdale, Ill., today and appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver.

The FDIC transferred the insured deposits and substantially all the assets of Superior Bank into a newly chartered, full-service mutual savings bank, known as Superior Federal, FSB, which will open for business on Monday morning. All depositors of Superior Bank automatically become depositors of Superior Federal, and will have immediate access to their insured funds. All 18 of Superior Bank’s Chicago metropolitan area offices will open for business Monday and will continue to offer full banking services, including online banking. Superior Bank’s loan production and servicing operations will also continue to operate normally.

OTS used its authority under the FDIC Improvement Act of 1991 to close Superior Bank when it found that the bank remained critically undercapitalized — that its tangible equity capital was less than two percent of its total assets. The bank failed to implement a capital restoration plan that it submitted to OTS on May 24 this year.

Superior Bank suffered as a result of its former high-risk business strategy, which was focused on the generation of significant volumes of subprime mortgage and automobile loans for securitization and sale in the secondary market. OTS found that the bank also suffered from poor lending practices, improper record keeping and accounting, and ineffective board and management supervision.

Superior became critically undercapitalized largely due to incorrect accounting treatment and aggressive assumptions for valuing residual assets. The bank also experienced significant losses during 2000 from its automobile lending program.

OTS has determined that Superior Bank is insolvent, having incurred losses that have depleted all or substantially all of its capital. OTS also determined that Superior Bank was no longer able to transact business in a safe and sound manner.

OTS notified the bank of its serious concerns in July 2000. The bank was purchased by two families in 1988 — the Pritzker family of Chicago, owner of Hyatt Hotels and other interests, and the Dworman family of New York, with interests in real estate and financial services activities — and was operated through a complex network of holding companies.

In light of these findings, OTS determined that closure and the appointment of FDIC as receiver were necessary to protect the interests of the bank’s insured depositors.

As of March 31, 2001, the failed bank had total assets of $1.9 billion and total deposits of $1.5 billion. FDIC insures depositors’ accounts up to the statutory limit of $100,000.

Superior is the only bank that OTS has closed in 2001, and only the fourth OTS-regulated institution closed in the past five years.

The FDIC has established a toll free telephone number for customers of Superior. That number is 1-800-331-6306, and will be available until midnight tonight and then from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily thereafter.

I thought you might also like to hear an interview with one of Penny Pritzker’s victims and how this bank closing affected her life. You will also hear her reaction to the thought that Barack Obama would hire Penny Pritzker as his campaign Finance Chair, not to mention her horrified reaction to the thought that Ms. Pritzker might one day be “Secretary of the Treasury”. If “Play” doesn’t work, Click in MP3 Stream link. Buckle your seat belt first, please. This woman does not spare details and is not in a good mood. I suppose I wouldn’t be in a very good mood either if I lost my savings to Penny Pritzker.

I guess the main stream media didn’t think this Petty little Penny Pritzker Problem (say that three times fast) was important enough to look into.

Additional links on this bilking of innocent people:
NY Times, December, 2001

FDIC Failed Bank Information – Superior Bank

OTS Closes Superior Bank FSB; Hinsdale, Ill. Thrift is Insolvent

OTS Announces Resolution of Charges Against Auditor of Closed Superior Bank FSB

And please visit my blog:

Hyper Educated Uppity Woman