Anti-Labor Hyatt Hotels Director Penny Pritzker Raised Funds for Obama's 2008 Campaign

“Union leaders representing employees of Hyatt Hotels are calling for a global boycott of the hotel chain they've been in a dispute with for years.

“The NFL Players Association, UNITE HERE, and the AFL-CIO were among the groups that descended upon the nation's capital Monday to demonstrate against the Chicago-based company. They called for a week of demonstrations at Hyatt Hotels in 20 U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Baltimore, and Boston. And they urged travelers not to stay at any Hyatt Hotels `to send a clear message to Hyatt that its abuse and exploitation of hotel workers will not be tolerated,’ according to a press release.

"`The global boycott marks the largest escalation to date in an ongoing campaign for basic workers rights,’ the organizers said in the release. `Hyatt has singled itself out as the worst employer in the hotel industry by abusing its housekeepers and other hotel workers, replacing long-time employees with minimum wage temporary workers, and imposing dangerous and health-threatening workloads on those who remain.’…”

--from the July 23, 2012 issue of USA Today

“Joining President Obama on his short flight from San Francisco to Portland, Ore., today was Penny Pritzker, his 2008 campaign finance chairwoman and one of his earliest supporters…Pritzker, whose family owns the Hyatt hotel chain…is a member of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness…”

--from the July 24, 2012 issue of USA Today

Anti-Labor Hyatt Hotels Director Penny Pritzker Raised Funds For Obama’s 2008 Campaign

The Democratic Obama Administration failed to create the radical democratic change required to restore economic prosperity for U.S. working-class people, dramatically lower the U.S. unemployment rate and reduce the political and economic power of U.S. billionaires and their corporations between 2009 and 2012. One reason might be because a member of the board of directors of the anti-labor Hyatt Hotels corporation, Billionaire Penny Pritzker, raised funds in a big way for the Democratic Party’s 2008 Obama presidential campaign. As Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter recalled in his 2010 book The Promise: President Obama, Year One:

“The Obama fund-raising juggernaut was often seen as a social-networking phenomenon, but it was actually more like an Internet startup. Obama and [Penny] Pritzker knew that they needed the equivalent of venture capitalists to put in seed money before their enterprise could `go public.’…In the National Finance Committee tent [on Election Night in November 2008], the big donors, the ones whose early money had made it possible for him to win, climbed up on table and chairs to get a glimpse of the president-elect as he thanked them. Penny Pritzker, the…Chicago businesswoman who spearheaded his record fund-raising, sat on the cold ground, out of view. Obama expected to see her there, and when he didn’t he emailed her at 2 a.m. asking where she’d been…”

  The same book also noted that “in the presidential campaign” in 2008, Obama “pandered to younger voters by opposing a mandate requiring everyone to buy health insurance,” although the health reform/obamacare plan [which is expected to create more super-profits for both pharmaceutical corporations and health insurance corporations than a Single-Payer/Medicaid for All plan would create] that Obama eventually pushed through Congress between 2009 and 2012 did contain a mandate requiring younger voters to buy costly, but sub-standard health insurance from private health insurance companies.; and that “Obama was too competitive to consign himself to being a one-termer.”

Sitting next to 2008 Obama Campaign National Finance Chairperson and President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness Member Pritzker on the Hyatt Hotels corporate board in recent years have been former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs and former International Advisor to Goldman Sachs Bernard Aronson (who also sits on the board of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs), Goldman Sachs Managing Director Richard Friedman and former Goldman Sachs Executive Byron Trott. In addition, a director of the anti-union/anti-labor Wal-Mart Stores Inc. named Gregory Penner has also been sitting next to Penny Pritzker on the Hyatt Hotels board of directors in recent years.

Joe Kennedy III's Marshall Group and Bain Capital Campaign Contributors

If you check out the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets website, you’ll notice that among the top financial contributors to Joe Kennedy III’s current campaign to win election as Brookline’s representative in the U.S. Congress is a Marshall Financial Group executive named Dennis M. Mathisen—who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. On Feb. 21, 2012, for example, Mathisen made two campaign contributions, totaling $12,500, to Joe Kennedy III’s campaign committee. And, in addition, another Marshall Financial Group executive who lives in Cohassen, Minnesota, named Peter M. Mathisen, made two campaign contributions, totaling $7,500, to Joe Kennedy III’s campaign fund between Feb. 8 and Feb. 14, 2012.

Coincidentally, an article, titled “Collapse of a Loan Powerhouse,” by investigative reporter Jennifer Bjorhus—which was posted on the Minneapolis Star-Tribune website on Sept. 1, 2010, contains the following reference to the apparent involvement of Dennis Mathisen and his Marshall Financial Group’s failed BankFirst and Marshall Bank subsidiaries in the U.S. banking industry’s sub-prime mortage scandal that helped trigger the post-2008 U.S. economic recession:

“…In addition to the failure of its own banks -- BankFirst and Marshall Bank -- Marshall loans helped wipe out at least six other small banks across the country…according to bankers and federal regulators….Marshall's driving force, Chairman Dennis Mathisen, staunchly defends the organization as a victim of the country's real estate collapse, nothing more.

“But interviews with bankers who worked with the organization, former employees, a growing cache of court documents and the reviews of bank regulators themselves show that the organization's problems went much deeper. BankFirst, for instance, had a `large volume’ of poorly underwritten loans in an 18-month period that started shortly after Mathisen bought the bank, regulators concluded.

“In 2003, under Mathisen's leadership, Marshall snapped up a small Minnesota bank… and renamed it Marshall Bank. In early 2005, Marshall bought BankFirst in Sioux Falls, S.D....Critics accuse the Marshall organization of reckless lending. Whether a loan failed didn't affect the organization's upfront fees or commissions to the team that originated the loans or the team that sold them to participating banks -- a point regulators made when they reviewed BankFirst's failure….

“The Marshall ripple effect is still on the FDIC's radar, said an FDIC official, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said regulators have identified five failed banks in which bad BankFirst loans were a `material’ percentage of the bank's capital and played a role in their demise: Bank of Wyoming in Thermopolis, Wyo.; Venture Bank in Lacey, Wash.; Mutual Bank in Harvey, Ill.; MetroPacific in Irvine, Calif., and First State Bank of Flagstaff, Ariz….

“In 2007 regulators ordered BankFirst to stop syndicating loans….Regulators shut BankFirst down for good…

"…BankFirst's losses stemmed from `pervasive internal control deficiencies,’ according to a damning 37-page report that the internal watchdog arm of the Federal Reserve Bank released in February [2010].

“The problems included such things as not managing risk, poor loan underwriting and a pay structure that rewarded excessive risk-taking. Loan originators were paid commissions based on the size of the loans, not on quality and with no repercussions if the loan went bad….

“Mathisen dismisses as a formality the letter the FDIC sent him and other BankFirst executives and directors in March [2010], demanding that they help pay for the losses that the FDIC's insurance fund incurred as a result of the bank's failure…. “

 
Besides accepting thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Dennis Mathisen and Peter Mathisen, Joe Kennedy III’s campaign also accepted a $5,000 campaign contribution on Mar. 31, 2012 from the Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Bain Capital’s Sankaty Advisors fixed income and credit affiliate, Jonathan Lavine. Most of the $2.5 million in campaign contributions that Bain Capital executives have made since January 2011 have gone to fund the campaigns of Republican Party candidates. But besides helping to fund Joe Kennedy III’s run for Congress, Bain Capital executive Lavine (who also sits on the board of trustees of Columbia University and is a Director of the Boston Celtics) has also contributed another $50,000 since January 2011 to support the campaigns of other Democratic Party candidates. On June 27, 2011, for example, Lavine made a $30,800 campaign contribution to the DNC Services Corporation; and on Mar. 9, 2011 Lavine made a $19,200 campaign contribution to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

In addition to receiving campaign contributions from Marshall Financial Group and Bain Capital executives, Joe Kennedy III’s campaign committee also received: two contributions, totaling $7,500, from Boston real estate developer Robert Beal on Jan. 30, 2012; a $5,000 contribution from Casablanca Capital executive Donald Drapkin of New York on Feb. 16, 2012; a $5,000 contribution from Starwood Capital executive Madison Grose of Greenwich, Connecticut on April 30, 2012; a $5,000 contribution from Kramer Capital LLC executive Donald Kramer of Greenwich, Connecticut on Mar. 29, 2012; a $5,000 contribution from Carlyle Group executive Perre Sarkozy of New York City on Apr. 11, 2012; and a $5,000 contribution from Billionaire Viacom executive Sumner Redstone of Beverly Hills, California on Mar. 31, 2012.

So don’t be surprised if the Kennedy Dynasty’s latest candidate for Congress ends up representing the special, private economic interests of the Marshall Financial group, Bain Capital and “the 1 percent” of the U.S. population (that has apparently been bankrolling his election campaign since 2011) if he takes over Barney Frank’s seat in the House of Representatives—instead of representing the public interest of 99 percent of the people who live and vote in Brookline.