Free Republic

BOSTON, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has threaten Hyatt hotels with a boycott after the company abruptly replaced 98 housekeepers with cheaper labor. Many in Massachusetts were up in arms after an Aug. 31 newspaper article described three Hyatt hotels as firing $15- per-hour workers, some with 20 years experience at Hyatt, after they had trained their $8 per hour replacements. The housekeepers said the hotel told them the cheaper workers were being trained to cover for vacations and other hard-to-fill shifts, The Boston Globe reported Thursday. Gov. Patrick has since threatened to advise state workers to...

For the Pritzker family of Chicago, the 2001 collapse of subprime-mortgage lender Superior Bank was an embarrassing failure in a corner of their giant business empire. Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family's 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama's national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her -- and perhaps to the campaign. Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. Government investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices. Ms. Pritzker, a...

OBAMA'S MONEY CZAR OWNS HOTEL HOSTING AHMADINEJAD Penny Pritzker, national finance chair of Barack Obama's presidential campaign, is the owner of the Hyatt, the hotel hosting the genocidal Hitler wannabee, Ahmadinejad. This is the latest in an assault on Israel and Jewish Americans. Obama and co. strong armed and bullied the craven organizers of the Anti-Ahmadinejad rally to disinvite Pro-Israel supporter Sarah Palin. Clearly Obama's chief fundraiser could refuse to host the Ahmadinejad at her hotel. Instead, she has rolled out the red carpet. It was bad enough that Obama would not send someone to represent him at the anti-Ahmadinejad...

Berkshire to Pay $4.5B for Marmon Stake CHICAGO (AP) — Warren Buffett's investment company announced Tuesday it will pay $4.5 billion for 60 percent of Marmon Holdings Inc., a private company of more than 125 manufacturing and service businesses. Berkshire Hathaway Inc., based in Omaha, Neb., said it plans to acquire the remaining 40 percent of Marmon over the next five to six years depending on future earnings of Marmon, according to a statement released Tuesday by both companies. Marmon is owned by trusts for the benefits of the Pritzker family of Chicago, the family that developed the Hyatt Hotel...

Fairmont Hotels and a New York investment firm pulled out of a $46 million deal to buy the Peaks Resort, leaving Telluride’s largest hotel in long-term limbo as it prepares to reopen for the ski season. Two people with direct knowledge of the negotiations — one from each side of the table — said the hotel’s expensive infrastructure problems had torpedoed the deal. After examining the Peaks, buyers Fairmont and Manhattan-based Thor Equities concluded that the hotel needed $6-7 million in repairs, on top of a planned $60 million renovation... The impasse didn’t break, and on Friday, Fairmont and Thor...

McLean, Va. (AP) -- The Hyatt hotel chain has come under fire for agreeing to host a conference this weekend sponsored by a white supremacist group.

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama, the U.S. Senate candidate from Chicago who has become the Democratic Party's latest rising star, is drawing enough support from the entertainment industry to put on his own variety show. From comedian Chris Rock to singer Barbra Streisand to musician Herbert Hancock, entertainers have written out checks of $1,000 or $2,000 to help the 42-year-old Illinois state senator win the seat being vacated by retiring GOP Sen. Peter Fitzgerald. Film directors Rob Reiner ("The American President") and Edward Zwick ("The Last Samurai" and "Courage Under Fire") both contributed in the past three months, according to Obama's...

The Democratic 527 organizations have drawn support from some wealthy liberals determined to defeat Bush. They include financier George Soros and his wife, Susan Weber Soros, who gave $5 million to ACT and $1.46 million to MoveOn.org; Peter B. Lewis, chief executive of the Progressive Corp., who gave $3 million to ACT and $500,000 to MoveOn; and Linda Pritzker, of the Hyatt hotel family, and her Sustainable World Corp., who gave $4 million to the joint fundraising committee.

WASHINGTON – The Starwood hotel chain says the pro-Democrat tilt of individual company campaign contributors does not reflect corporate policy in deciding which cable news channels it makes available to its guests. Nonetheless, Fox News Channel, recently denounced by leading Democat politicians, has been unable to secure a corporate endorsement from Starwood, even though FNC beats all other cable news channels combined in ratings. "Starwood has no objections to carrying Fox News programming on our properties," the hotelier’s spokesman Mark Ricci told NewsMax 2½ weeks after our initial request for comment and about a week after we reported that (unlike...

She is 18-year-old Liesel Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt hotel chain. She is young, beautiful, and ostensibly, wealthy. She co-stars in movies with Harrison Ford (Air Force One) and played -- prophetically, as it turns out -- the title role in the 1995 Warner Brothers film, A Little Princess, in which her character takes on the British government in a fight over -- what else? -- her father's money. According to a civil lawsuit filed by the young heiress, life indeed imitates art. In the suit, Pritzker claims that her father, 76-year-old business exec Robert Pritzker, sold off assets belonging...