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.

Alternative Media Censorship: Sponsored By CIA's Ford Foundation (and Billionaire Pritzker Family/Hyatt Hotels Dynasty)?--Part 5

“Although Susan and Nicholas Pritzker purchased their $2.5-million ranch several years ago, it was not until they disclosed plans to build a 10-structure family compound totaling 54,000 square feet that residents learned of the renowned hotelier's desire to go rural -- very rural.


“An hour's drive north of San Francisco, Nicasio's population of 589 could fit into just one of the Pritzker family's 212 Hyatt hotels.


“Yet this is the community in which Nicholas Pritzker, chairman and president of Hyatt Development Corp. and president of Hyatt Equities, and his wife, Susan, a part-time philanthropist and full-time mother, want to settle.


“A privately held company, Hyatt manages and owns hotels, resorts, apartment complexes, casinos, senior citizen housing and health care businesses. The large Pritzker family is among the wealthiest in the nation.


“Not all of Nicasio embraces the Pritzker plan. That the Pritzkers want to build a complex of oversized houses, critics say, despoils the very beauty that drew them to Nicasio…


“Initial plans for the Pritzkers' 845-acre ranch call for a 12,000-square-foot main ranch house, a caretaker's residence and an agricultural building. The pool house, garages, farming facilities and other houses, for their four children and two grandchildren, would be built over the course of many years…

--from a March 16, 2003 article in the Los Angeles Times

“Susan [Pritzker] has…has been a on the board of Pitzer College since 1990 and the chair since 2001. ..Susan is also chair of the board of directors of the Chicago Foundation for Women…Susan is married to Nick Pritzker, whose family are owners of the Hyatt Hotel chain.”

--from the Mother Jones/motherjones.com/ Foundation for National Progress website’s board of directors’ biographies page

“This week, Hyatt hotel workers and their allies are holding demonstrations in London and cities across the United States, marking the launch of a global boycott of Hyatt hotels. The far-reaching boycott is a response to the hotel company’s extensive abuse of its workers and low wages…Hyatt has singled itself out as the worst employer in the hotel industry. Hyatt has abused its housekeepers and other hotel workers, replacing longtime employees with minimum wage temporary workers and imposing dangerous workloads on those who remain…”
--from the Hyatt Hurts website on July 24, 2012

(Note: The following historical article about the hidden financial history of the U.S. alternative media and its historical left gatekeepers was written in 2002. So in 2012, some of the left gatekeepers mentioned in this 2002 historical article may have moved on to other positions within the U.S. alternative media/left subculture or mainstream U.S. media or academic world during the last 10 years.)

Mother Jones/ Foundation for National Progress

Like FAIR/CounterSpin/IPA, Mother Jones/Foundation for National Progress received a lot of money from Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation[Schumann Center for Media and Democracy] in the 1990s. In 1995, for instance, Mother Jones/Foundation for National Progress was given a $500,000 grant by Moyers' Schumann Foundation "to support Mother Jones magazine." A second grant of $150,000 was given to Mother Jones/Foundation for National Progress in 1996 "to support the hiring of a new senior editor at Mother Jones magazine." And an additional grant of $100,000 was given to Mother Jones/Foundation for National Progress in 1997 "to promote money in politics investigation by Mother Jones magazine." As Rick Edmunds noted in an early 21st century essay on the internet (entitled "Getting Behind the Media: What are the subtle tradeoffs of foundation support for journalism?"): "Though it is often buried in the fine print of the masthead...many journals of opinion are themselves nonprofit, the better to attract foundation funding. That is true of Mother Jones."

Mother Jones magazine claims to be a non-profit "Foundation for National Progress." Yet Mother Jones magazine took in nearly $6 million in annual revenues in 2000, including $822,358 from the sale of advertising space and $176,140 from renting out its subscriber list. From this gross income of $6 million in 2000, Mother Jones/Foundation for National Progress then paid out the following salaries to its top alternative media executives:

1. Mother Jones magazine Editor-in-Chief Roger Cohn was paid an annual salary of $144,670;

2. Mother Jones magazine Publisher and Foundation for National Progress Board President Jay Harris--a former general manager of the Washington Post Company's Newsweek magazine's Pacific operations--was paid an annual salary of $144,379;

3. Mother Jones magazine Director of Sales & Marketing Eric Weiss was paid an annual salary of $105,004;

4. Mother Jones magazine Creative Director Jane Palecek was paid an annual salary of $88,197;

5. Foundation for National Progress Secretary/Treasurer and CEO Joan Catherine Braun was paid an annual salary of $85,453;

6. Mother Jones magazine Editor Eric Bates was paid an annual salary of $74,716;

7. Mother Jones magazine Advertising Manager Eileen Ellis was paid an annual salary of $67,233; and

8. Mother Jones Art Director Caroline Joy was paid an annual salary of $61,187.

Mother Jones/Foundation for National Progress also spent $247,000 on fund-raising in 2000; and its board of directors included [now-deceased] Anita Roddick of the Body Shop, Kadima Foundation Chair Chara Schreyer, HKH Foundation director Harriet Barlow and Mother Jones magazine founder Adam Hochschild. Hochschild also has set up the Adam Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia Fund, whose stated tax-exempt purpose is to "promote the charitable literary and educational purposes of Foundation for National Progress." According to its 2000 report, the Adam Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia Fund apparently did this by contributing $2.4 million worth of stock to Mother Jones/Foundation for National Progress. As a result, $1,176,617 worth of Wal Mart Stores stock (19,082 shares) was apparently owned by Mother Jones/Foundation for National Progress in 2001. [In recent years, Susan Prtizker, the wife of a member of the billionaire Pritzker family of Chicago that both controls Hyatt Hotels and played a leading role in raising campaign funds for the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign of Barack Obama, has also been a member of the Mother Jones/Foundation for National Progress board of directors.]

Besides receiving money from Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and the Hochschild Charitable Trust/Sequoia Fund of one its own board members, another interesting connection to the world of Establishment foundations exists at Mother Jones magazine. In 1997, the wife of Mother Jones/Foundation for National Progress board member Adam Hochschild--University of California-Berkeley Professor of Sociology Arlie Russell Hochschild--was given a $3 million grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation "to establish a Center for Working Families" at UC-Berkeley, which she now directs. Among the Establishment folks who presently sit on the board of trustees of the Sloan Foundation which funds UC-Berkeley Professor Arlie Russell Hochschild's center is former Secretary of the Air Force Sheila Widnall--who represented MIT on the board of trustess of the Pentagon's weapons research think-tank: the Institute for Defense Analyses (www.ida.org). Other members of the Sloan Foundation board include former chairmen of the General Motors, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley corporate boards and two other MIT professors. In 1991, the wife of Mother Jones/Foundation for National Progress board member Hochschild also was apparently given a grant by the Ford Foundation.

So it's probably not likely that many muckraking articles about either the Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the CIA, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and Public Affairs TV Inc., the Sloan Foundation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, MIT or UC-Berkeley [or the Pritzker Family and Hyatt Hotels]--or on what evidence has been dug up by 9/11 conspiracy journalists and researchers--will be published much by the Mother Jones magazine alternative media gatekeepers/censors.

(end of part 5 of 2002-written historical article)

Black Worker Jobless Rate: 16.5 Percent Under Obama & GOP House of Representatives

Between May and June 2011, the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all Black workers in the United States increased from 16 to 16.5 percent under the Democratic Obama Administration and the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives; while the “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all white workers in the United States increased from 7.7 to 8.2 percent, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The number of officially unemployed African-American workers increased by 134,000 (from 2,838,000 to 2,972,000) between May and June 2011, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data; while the number of officially unemployed white workers in the United States increased by 722,000 (from 9,618,000 to 10,340,000) during the same period, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data..

The official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black youths between 16 and 19 years of age jumped from 40 to 45 percent between May and June 2011, while the official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for white youths between 16 and 19 years of age increased from 20.6 to 24.8 percent during this same period.

The official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Black female workers over 20 years-of-age jumped from 13 to 13.9 percent between May and June 2011; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black male workers over 20 years-of-age was still 16.7 percent in June 2011. The number of unemployed Black female workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 79,000 (from 1,172,000 to 1,251,000) between May and June 2011, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data; while the number of unemployed white female workers over 20-years-of-age increased by 205,000 (from 3,753,000 to 3,958,000) during the same period, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.

Between May and June 2011, the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino or Hispanic workers in the United States also increased from 11.1 to 11.5 percent; while the number of unemployed Latino or Hispanic workers increased by 125,000 (from 2,518,000 to 2,643,000), according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data, during this same period. The official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Latina or Hispanic female workers increased from 11.1 to 11.4 percent between May and June 2011; while the official “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino or Hispanic male workers in the United States was still 9.8 percent in June 2011. According to the “not seasonally adjusted” data, the official unemployment rate for Latino or Hispanic youth between 16 and 19-years-of-age jumped from 26.1 to 35.4 percent between May and June 2011; while the number of unemployed Latino or Hispanic youths increased by 130,000 (from 236,000 to 360,000) during this same period, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.

For all U.S. workers (male and female) over 16 years-of-age, the official “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate increased from 8.7 to 9.3 percent between May and June 2011; while the “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all male workers over 16 years-of-age increased from 9.2 to 9.6 percent and the “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all female workers over 16 years-of-age increased from 8.3 to 9.1 percent during this same period. Between May and June 2011, the official total number of unemployed U.S. workers over 16-years-of-age increased by 988,000 (from 13,421,000 to 14,409,000), according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July 8, 2011 press release:

“…Since March, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 545,000, and the unemployment rate has risen by 0.4 percentage point…

“The number of persons unemployed for less than 5 weeks increased by 412,000 in June. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was essentially unchanged over the month, at 6.3 million, and accounted for 44.4 percent of the unemployed…

“The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was essentially unchanged in June at 8.6 million. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job…

“In June, 2.7 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force…These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey…

“Among the marginally attached, there were 982,000 discouraged workers in June…Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them…

“Employment has been essentially flat for the past 2 months…Government employment continued to trend down…

“…Employment in temporary help services changed little over the month and has shown little movement on net so far this year…

“Employment in government continued to trend down over the month (-39,000). Federal employment declined by 14,000 in June. Employment in both state government and local government continued to trend down over the month and has been falling since the second half of 2008…

“Manufacturing employment changed little in June…Employment in this industry has been flat for the past 2 months…

“Construction employment was essentially unchanged in June….Employment in construction has shown little movement on net since early 2010…

“In June, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased…”