Posted on 08/24/2008 10:32:54 AM PDT by mojito
Has any material from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records been redacted, removed, or destroyed since my dispute with the library began? The answer is: I do not know. I don’t know if UIC simply determined that it had legal authority to open the materials, without further agreement from the donor, or whether UIC is making this material available only after having restricted some material, at the donor’s request. Obviously, I will be on the lookout when I view the records for evidence of tampering, or of, say, names in critical places being blacked out. I will also be able to compare folders indicated by the "finding aid" with what is made available to me.
But as of now, I simply know nothing of what might or might not have happened to the records in the past ten days, or about what further agreements and restrictions may have been laid on the material at the behest of the donor in the past few days. I have not yet seen UIC’s actual statement announcing the release of the records. According to the following note from the Chicago Sun-Times: "Friday, UIC said it had fulfilled the terms of the gift and plans to make the records available Tuesday." So what exactly are "the terms of the gift?" What restrictions might that entail, and will these restrictions perhaps already have barred me from access to key portions of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records? At this point, I simply cannot answer that question.
Last Monday afternoon I filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking to see all communications between UIC and the donor regarding the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records. That FOIA request is still active, and is supposed to receive a response within seven working days. This may provide some clues to the mystery. Presumably, it would likely also reveal the name of the donor.
Interesting.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDIxYjUzYzIyYjNiN2VlYzdkMjdmZDMyOWQwODExNGI=
and one by Steve Diamond:
http://globallabor.blogspot.com/2008/08/obamaayers-update-annenberg-mystery.html
What are they hiding?
It shouldn’t be so hard to release records if there is nothing to hide.
“It shouldn’t be so hard to release records if there is nothing to hide.”
Think John Kerry.
Dose Mr. Kurtz know the criminal enterprise he is investigating? Has he read this FBI file?
Someone needs to cross-ck the names in these FBI files, with Hussein’s staff and donors.
http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/weather.htm
The files indicate that Ayers fingerprints were found in the “bomb factory” apartment.
An amazing read.
Susan Crown
VP at Henry Crown and Company
Father: Lester Crown (billionarie, b. 1926)
Susan M. Crown ‘80 is a principal of Henry Crown & Company, a firm which manages investments in real estate, banking, transportation, oil and gas, cellular phones, and home furnishings.
She just completed her term chairing Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. She also serves on the boards of Chicago Public Education Fund.
Susan Crown, a scion of the wealthy Crown family, has sold her 13-room Gold Coast mansion-though only after accepting a bid that was nearly 30 percent below her asking price. The triple-turreted Romanesque house, built in 1890, sits on a suburban-size lot: 60 feet wide by 110 feet deep, a rarity in this densely packed neighborhood. Behind its Georgia marble façade, the house has 8,000 square feet of space on four levels, seven fireplaces, some Tiffany stained glass, a designer kitchen, and a lap pool in the basement.
Crown, 49, is a principal at Henry Crown and Co., which owns pieces of the New York Yankees, the Chicago Bulls, JPMorgan Chase, Hilton Hotels, Rockefeller Center, and ski resorts in Aspen, Colorado. The Crown family fortune, which Forbes magazine estimates at about $4.5 billion, originated with Susan’s grandfather Henry Crown, who in 1919 started a company called Material Service; the company later merged with the engineering powerhouse General Dynamics. The daughter of Lester Crown, Susan Crown is married to William Kunkler III, an executive with another Crown company, CC Industries.
******
THOSE DARN ‘RICH’ Republicans!
******
Obama and The Crown Dynasty(General Dynamics)
Chicago’s Crown Dynasty financially backs U.S. federal candidate Barack Obama.
Under U.S. federal law an ultra-rich person is not supposed to make a campaign contribution of more than $2,300 per election each year to any one candidate for U.S. federal office. Yet in recent years members of an ultra-rich Chicago-based family, the Crown Dynasty, have apparently been making individual campaign contributions of more than $2,300 per election each year to a federal candidate named Barack Obama. According to the Center for Responsive Politics web site, for instance:
On September 29, 2003, Paula Crown of Henry Crown & Company gave an individual campaign contribution of $9,500 to Barack Obama. Subsequently, Paula Crown gave another individual campaign contribution of $2,000 to Obama on June 2, 2004 and a third individual campaign contribution of $2,000 to Obama on February 24, 2005. Four days later, on February 28, 2005, Paula Crown also gave a $25,000 campaign contribution to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The following year, Paula Crown gave another $25,000 campaign contribution to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on June 15, 2006;
On March 25, 2003, Susan Crown of Henry Crown & Company gave an individual campaign contribution of $2,000 to Obama. Later that same year, on December 10, 2003, Susan Crown gave a second individual campaign contribution of $5,000 to Obama. A few months later, on March 11, 2004, another individual campaign contribution of $5,000 was given to Obama by Susan Crown. And the following month, an additional individual campaign contribution of $5,000 was given by Susan Crown on April 15, 2004 to Obama;
An individual campaign contribution of $12,000 was also given on December 10, 2003 by Renee Crown to Obama. The following year, an individual campaign contribution of $2,000 was also given to Obama by Renee Crown on June 2, 2004;
On March 10, 2004, an individual campaign contribution of $12,000 was given by Rebecca Crown to Obama. The next month, on April 15, 2004, Rebecca Crown also gave a $10,000 campaign contribution to the DNC Services Corporation;
More...
Penny Sue Pritzker (b. 1959) is an American business executive, and a member of the Pritzker family of Chicago, one of America’s wealthiest families. She is currently CEO of Classic Residence by Hyatt, a chain of luxury senior living communities spread throughout the United States, and the national finance chairwoman of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
1987 – founded Classic Residence by Hyatt, now the market leader in luxury living for older adults.
1989 – named as Chair of Superior Bank of Chicago. Pritzker stepped down in 1994, but remained on the board until the thrift’s collapse in July of 2001.
1991 – CEO of Pritzker Realty Group, overseeing all of the family’s non-hotel real estate investments. In this capacity she developed the Hyatt Center in downtown Chicago, the headquarters for Global Hyatt Corporation.
2005 – became chair of TransUnion, a credit reporting agency.
director of LaSalle Bank Corporation, now a part of Bank of America, from 2004 to 2007
With a net worth estimated at $2.8 billion, Pritzker ranked 135th on the 2007 Forbes list of richest Americans.
Pritzker is very much involved in the reform of Chicago’s public education system. Currently she Vice Chair of the Chicago Public Education Fund, the successor organization to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Pritzker became chairman of Hinsdale, Illinois-based Superior Bank of Chicago when her uncle, Jay Pritzker, purchased a stake in the bank from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which had taken over the bank when it failed in the 1980s. Under Pritzker’s chairmanship, the bank “embarked on a business strategy of significant growth into subprime home mortgages,” according to a 2002 report by the United States Treasury Department.
In July 2001, FDIC seized the bank after the bank’s investors declined to fund the recapitalization.
Writing about the largest thrift failure in almost a decade, the FDIC in 2002 noted that the bank had paid out $200 million in dividends during a time of seemingly rising profits; in reality, these profits were a product of “flawed” accounting and masked operating losses.
Penny Pritzker, the Obama campaign finance chairman. She and her family were central to the innovation known as “Mortgage Backed Securities,” which are now at the center of the financial crisis and real estate melt down.
Penny’s brother has apparently been playing a spokes-person role in Hillary’s campaign.
“One reason Barack Obama might not want to talk about the role of financially irresponsible bank board members in creating the subprime mortgage foreclossure financial disaster is that the national finance chair of Obama’s campaign, Penny Pritzker, is a former board member of the failed Superior Bank S&L that engaged in irresponsible subprime mortgage lending during the 1990s.”
Billionaire business mogul Penny Pritzker becomes national finance chairman of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Obama’s national campaign-finance chairwoman, Penny Pritzker, headed a bank (Superior) which helped to fuel the crisis and was also guilty of predatory lending practices.
TransUnion: Ms. Pritzker is chair of TransUnion, a global leader in credit data information services (one of three FICO scores).
During this time, according to the Journal, Superior funded more than 6,700 new subprime loans worth more than $550 million. Most of these loans were subsequently sold to another bank. The problems was, many of these loans suffered from the same deficiencies as other subprime loans - unqualified borrowers, inflated appraisals, and inadequate verification of borrowers’ incomes.
The WSJ states, “Hundreds of borrowers who took out Superior subprime loans on the FDIC’s watch - some with initial interest rates higher than 12 percent - have lost their homes to foreclosure.” The FDIC stopped funding new Superior loans in early 2002 and closed the lending operation by mid-year.
Campaign advisers tied to lending crisis
Obama’s national finance chairwoman, Penny Pritzker, was chairwoman of the board of a Chicago-area bank in 1993 when it adopted a subprime business strategy that regulators say ultimately led it to collapse in 2001.
“Superior was effectively facilitating very sleazy lending,” said Bert Ely, a Washington, D.C., banking consultant who testified before Congress on the Superior failure.
The Tides Foundation is the supreme example of a money-laundering donor operation. If you want to donate a million bucks to the Fraternal Order of Kid Touchers or the Terrorists Legal Defense Fund and you don’t want your name associated with it, you simply donate 1,250,000.00 to the Tides Foundation (along with your instructions). Officially, you’ve given to the Tides Foundation, and that’s what goes down in the record.
Then the Tides foundation takes their cut and makes a donation to Perverts ‘r’ Us or the Jihadis’ Benevolent Association or whoever. Officially, it came from the Tides Foundation.
No fuss, no muss, no embarrassing receipts.
“the Pritzkers and their business partner received an estimated $645 million in federal tax credits and loan guarantees”
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Obama Campaign’s Pritzker/Superior Bank S&L Scandal Link?
Penny Pritzker is the National Finance Chair of 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign. Yet the Obama campaign’s national finance chair served as chairman of the Superior Bank from 1989 to 1994, before the savings and loan institution collapsed in July 2001, due to the Pritzker bank’s involvement in financially reckless subprime mortgage lending.
Created at the end of 1988 as the successor bank to the failed Lyons Savings Bank, the Oakbrook Terrace/Hinsdale, Illinois-based Superior Bank was 50 percent owned by Chicago’s billionaire Pritzker family. Yet, according to an Oct. 16, 2001 statement before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs by Ely & Company Inc. President Bert Ely, the Pritzker family’s Superior Bank “started life with enormous tax benefits and a substantial amount of FSLIC-guaranteed assets under a FSLIC Assistance agreement.” In a Dec. 2002 article (“Tremors In The Empire”) that appeared in Chicago Magazine, Shane Tritsch noted, for instance, that for investing $42.5 million in the failed Lyons Savings Bank before it was reopened as Superior Bank, the Pritzkers and their business partner received an estimated $645 million in federal tax credits and loan guarantees; but “by one estimate, it would have cost the government $200 million less simply to shut Lyons down.”
Pritzker has spent a good bit of her career fending off criticism about her family and her role in its businesses. U.S. government officials sued the Pritzkers to collect taxes from her grandfather Abram’s estate after he died in 1986.
The case centered on hundreds of trust funds Abram had set up in the Caribbean to avoid taxes. In 2001, an Illinois savings and loan that was once headed by Penny collapsed. Some 1,400 depositors are still out about $10 million, says Clinton Krislov, an attorney suing Penny and bank officers on their behalf. That same year, part of her family turned on her when seven brothers and cousins alleged in court documents that she’d enriched herself at their expense.
Fran Sweet, a retired Ameritech Corp. manager, is more blunt. Sweet lost $100,000 in the failure of Hinsdale, Illinois-based Superior Bank, the S&L half owned by Penny’s family.
``The Pritzkers are crooks,’’ Sweet says. ``They don’t care anything about people who spent their whole lives trying to save.’’
(Warren) Buffett praises Pritzker’s management skills. His Berkshire Hathaway Inc. agreed in December to pay $4.5 billion for 60 percent of Marmon Holdings Inc., where Penny was a director from 2002 to ‘08.
Pritzker’s conduct has entangled her in controversy. In 2001, relatives including her younger brothers, Anthony and J.B., and her cousins John and Daniel accused her, Thomas and Nicholas Pritzker of paying themselves too much to run the family enterprise, moving assets to their own trust funds and failing to disclose those actions.
The disputed compensation and assets were worth about $1 billion.
The Pritzkers sold chewing tobacco maker Conwood Co. to Reynolds American Inc. for $3.5 billion in 2006.
The Pritzkers own 80 percent of a partnership that holds a 15.6 percent stake in Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. The family portion was worth $719 million on Aug. 19. The Pritzkers list eight casinos on company Web sites. The casino licenses alone are worth $500 million each, says John Kindt, a University of Illinois business professor.
All told, the Pritzker empire is worth as much as $40 billion, a person familiar with the situation estimates.
The family’s offshore accounts prevent anyone from getting a complete picture of their wealth. In 1986, when Abram Pritzker died, his heirs claimed an estate worth $25,000. The Internal Revenue Service sued to collect $53 million in back taxes. The two sides settled in 1994 for $9.5 million, according to U.S. Tax Court records.
In his campaign, Obama says he wants to crack down on overseas tax havens and stop allowing hedge funds to pay a 15 percent capital gains rate on most income, rather than the 35 percent income tax rate.
``The top 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion last year,’’ Obama said in Philadelphia in April. ``That’s not fair.’’
Chicago Mob.traces back to Al Capone.
Maybe these Annenberg documents will expose lots of hidden Obama skeletons.
Maybe Ayers is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Ping.
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