Time for a little stroll down memory lane. This is what I wrote about Penny Pritzer, Obama's just-announced appointee as Commerce Secretary, back in February:

Penny Pritzker, union buster.

Penny Pritzker, sub-prime lender who drove Superior Bank into the ground.

Penny Pritzker, Chicago Board of Ed members who thinks your children only deserve enough education to make them a member of the workforce.

Penny Pritzker, billionaire tax dodger.

Penny Pritzker, potential Secretary of Commerce nominee? Is this a joke?

No, it was not. Okay, just kidding. Yes, it was. The joke's on us. Ha, ha!

(MoneyWatch) The position of U.S. Commerce Secretary has often been a political plum for top fundraisers, so it was no surprise that President Obama continued that tradition today when he named Penny Pritzker, the Chicago billionaire heiress to the Hyatt fortune.

Said to be worth nearly $2 billion, Pritzker put together nearly $800 million for Obama's presidential campaigns.

Pritzker's appointment shows that the administration is abandoning even a fig leaf of a relationship with labor unions -- Hyatt has had many run-ins with its work force, and Pritzker herself was deeply unpopular with the Chicago Teachers Union during her tenure on the Chicago Board of Education.

The appointment also suggests the administration is betting that people don't care much anymore about the subprime meltdown that succeeded in bringing the world to the brink of financial ruin. Her role in the banking business may startle those not familiar with the history of the subprime meltdown.

The Pritzker family, along with a partner, bought the failed Lyons Savings Bank in 1988 for $42.5 million, getting $645 million in tax credits in the process and rechristening it Superior Bank. Under Pritzker, who served on the board, Superior bought Alliance Funding, which moved aggressively into subprime lending.

Bert Ely, an independent banking analyst who testified about the failure of Superior, noted the garish pitch the bank was making at the time. "I remember the basic message to mortgage brokers: 'Send us the applications that no one else will accept.' "

As one of the earliest pioneers of risky loans that were then bundled off and sold as securities, Superior was also one of the practice's earliest casualties: The bank collapsed in 2001. "The kinds of lending they were doing were outrageous," Ely said. "But what was also outrageous was that when Superior failed -- there were a lot of uninsured depositors who took losses. It was more outrageous given the wealth of the family, which may have walked away without any losses."

Tim Anderson, a retired banking consultant who has written and testified about the failure of Superior, said Penny Pritzker played a direct role in persuading people to park their money in a bank that was taking wild-eyed risks. He points to a letter she wrote in May 2001 to bank employees and managers, assuring them that the bank was being recapitalized. But while that pledge of support may have convinced people that the bank was sound, the recapitalization never occurred. In fact, the bank failed two months later.

The letter was also indicative of the approach the bank was taking, and of Pritzker's hands-on role in strategy. "Our commitment to subprime has never been stronger," she wrote.

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Penny Pritzker, union buster.

Penny Pritzker, sub-prime lender who drove Superior Bank into the ground.

Penny Pritzker, Chicago Board of Ed members who thinks your children only deserve enough education to make them a member of the workforce.

Penny Pritzker, billionaire tax dodger.

Penny Pritzker, potential Secretary of Commerce nominee? Is this a joke?

Chicago businesswoman Penny Pritzker has emerged as a leading candidate to serve in the administration of President Obama, for whom she has long been a campaign supporter and top fund raiser.

A senior administration official cautioned that no announcement is imminent and that Obama has made no decision. But Pritzker is under consideration to serve as Commerce secretary or perhaps in another senior position involving relations between Obama and business leaders, according to officials close to the process who spoke anonymously to comment on internal deliberations.

Pritzker is a member of the Chicago family behind the Hyatt Hotels Corp. She has been a prominent Obama friend and supporter since his early days in politics and ran his 2008 campaign fundraising operation.

[...] Forbes’ annual list of the world’s billionaires last March put Pritzker at No. 719 and said her hotels and investments were worth $1.8 billion.

Be sure to watch the video, it's great.

First of all, a big round of applause for Sam Seder and his terrific job guest-hosting Up With Chris Hayes this weekend. More of him, please?

Today Sam spent a long time on education in the context of the teachers' strike, and of all the segments, this was the one that I most want people to share.

One of the hidden dirty secrets in education is the double standard. Like Bill Gates and Rahm Emanuel sending their kids to school with small class sizes, many resources, libraries, and arts programs while kids living in impoverished areas often don't even have their own textbooks!

Dissent Magazine reports:

In 1995 African Americans comprised 45 percent of the teaching force in Chicago. Today, after a decade of closing neighborhood public schools and opening charters, just 19 percent of city teachers are African American. About 42 percent of their students are African American. “[T]he private managers who run charter schools tend to favor rookie teachers who are younger and far less likely to be minorities, studies have shown.” (Reuters, September 10, 2012)

Chicago spends $7,946 a year on instruction per student. This is well below the wealthiest suburban Chicago districts. (Reuters, September 9, 2012)

Matt Farmer, a Chicago public school parent, lawyer and musician, described some of the differences between CPS and suburban schools in wealthier areas. In 2011, Farmer made a video where he cross-examined CPS Board member Penny Pritzker for her own double standard on educational opportunities. Here's the video:

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A parent who's an attorney cross-examines Penny Pritzker, billionaire member of the Chicago Board of Education. (She was Obama's finance chair.) Via Diane Ravitch, former Bush education official:

Farmer is a trial lawyer. He describes how he bristled when he heard an interview on the radio in which Pritzker described what Chicago students need: enough skills in reading, mathematics, and science to be productive members of the workforce. Why no mention of the arts, of music, of physical education, he wondered.

So he cross-examined Pritzker in absentia. Her own children attend the University of Chicago Lab School. Mayor Rahm Emanuel sends his children there too. Arne Duncan is a graduate. [Editor's note: Malia and Sasha Obama attended when the Obamas lived in Chicago.]

Farmer points out that the Lab School has a rich curriculum, not preparation for the workforce. Children there get the arts and physical education there every day. The Lab School has a beautiful library, and Pritzker is raising money to make it even grander and more beautiful. He asks the absent Pritzker, “Do you know that 160 public schools in Chicago don’t have a library?”

The Lab School has seven teachers of the arts. In a high school that Pritzker voted to close, there was not a single arts teacher.

Matt Farmer goes on to quote the director of the Lab School, who opposes standardized testing and insists upon a rich curriculum. The statement by the Lab School’s director about the importance of the union bring the assembled teachers to their feet, roaring and applauding.

I hope Penny Pritzker and Rahm Emanual watch this video. People who have the good fortune to send their children to elite private schools should do whatever they can to spread the same advantages to other people’s children. When they are members of the board of education and the mayor, they have a special responsibility to do what is right for the children in their care. If they inflict policies on other people’s children that are unacceptable for their own children, they should be ashamed.