Two of Two Hundred
by Not Sure
30 July 2023
In
the Highlander franchise of movies, the main character is Connor
MacLeod, one of a number of immortals who can only die
if they are beheaded. We learn that
“there can be only one”; the immortals must battle at The Gathering and kill
each other until only one remains. This
one will have the collected power of all the immortals who ever lived. They will have the power to enslave all of
humanity.
To
avoid detection of his immortality, MacLeod must take on a new name and
identity in each era, down through time.
***
In
1994, Elizabeth “Pussy” Paepcke died at the age of 91, in her Aspen, Colorado
home, surrounded by family. Her husband
Walter preceded her in death in 1960.
Together, they started the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, the
Aspen Music Festival, the International Design Conference at Aspen
and the Aspen Skiing Company. The Aspen
Skiing Company is now owned by the Crown family of Chicago, Illinois.
This
is from a 2004 Chicago Tribune article entitled “Aspen, the far western
suburb of Chicago”:
A private plane lands or takes off
at the Aspen airport every six minutes during the holidays, shuttling suntanned
Hollywood celebrities, East Coast business titans -- and so many upper-crust
Chicagoans that this snow-covered ski town can seem a tad too much like home.
"You think it's going to be
this great getaway, and then you're walking down the street and people are
like, `Hey, Estelle!'." says Lake Forest's Estelle Walgreen, a mother of
two who frequently spends Christmas vacation in Aspen. "The kids end up
having all these play dates -- not with new friends, but with friends from
Chicago. It's like Chicago, but with mountains."
I recognized the name Walgreen. Estelle is the ex-wife of the grandson of the
Walgreen Pharmacy fortune. They might
have loved her in Aspen in 2004, but in Lake Forest, Illinois, an upscale
suburb of Chicago, she was often at odds with her neighbors over her decision
to let her three pet pigs Pinky, Piggy, and Cooper roam freely on her
property. Perhaps they were relieved when
her home went into foreclosure in 2006, and eventually sold for $1.9 million, half
its appraised value.
The
article continued, “Chicago has had a tremendous influence on Aspen,” says
Mayor Helen Klanderud,” with the Paepckes and the
people they encouraged to come here. And now with the Crowns [the Chicago
family that owns Aspen's major employer, the Aspen Skiing Co.], Chicago
continues to have more influence today.”
Stroll through town this week, and you'd be hard-pressed not to run into
a Crown -- from patriarch Lester and his wife, Renee, to many of their 24
grandchildren.”
One
Aspen holiday party that everyone wants to attend is the annual event held by
the Crowns at their Aspen Mountain Club.
In 2022, the Aspen Mountain Club was redecorated by Paula Crown,
businesswoman, and designer. To join the
Aspen Mountain Club, one must pay an initiation fee of $275,000 and be on a
waiting list until approved. Members can
bring non-members for lunch at the club during ski season, but some
restrictions apply.
This
is gossip about a few characters who hang out in Aspen. Let’s see what’s really going on.
***
The
Aspen Institute has thirty Lifetime Trustee.
These are not the regularly rotating, hands-on Trustees. This is how the Aspen Institute’s website describes
these Lifetime Trustees:
“Lifetime Trustees
consist of former board members and other prominent individuals who have been
elected by a majority of the membership of the
board. Their mission is to create a more involved and informed way for retiring
board members and other members to stay in touch with fellow trustees
and with the work of the Aspen Institute. They are a key arm of the Institute,
responsible for providing advice concerning strategic issues facing the
organization.”
Of
the thirty, three are also members of the Trilateral Commission and nine are
members of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Three more have family members in one or the other of those
organizations.
Leonard
A. Lauder is a Lifetime Trustee, Chairman Emeritus of The Aspen Institute and Chairman
Emeritus of The Estee Lauder Companies Inc.
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations as are three of his
family members.
All
thirty Lifetime Trustees have interesting biographies and are part of the
interlock between philanthropies, business and
government, but we will look at only three more of the names on that list. Lifetime Trustee Henry Kissinger is the
Chairman of Kissinger and Associates, an international geopolitical consulting firm
with an exclusive and mostly unpublicized list of clients. He was Secretary of State and National
Security Advisor under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Henry
Kissinger celebrated his 100th birthday on May 27, 2023. This is an excerpt from a Washington Post
piece his son, David, wrote in honor of that occasion:
“Even
the pandemic did not slow him down: Since 2020, he has completed two books and
begun work on a third. He returned from the Bilderberg Conference in Lisbon
earlier this week just in time to embark on a series of centennial celebrations
that will take him from New York to London and finally to his hometown of
Fürth, Germany…He has an unquenchable curiosity that keeps him dynamically
engaged with the world. His mind is a heat-seeking weapon that identifies and
grapples with the existential challenges of the day. In the 1950s, the issue
was the rise of nuclear weapons and their threat to humanity. About five years
ago, as a promising young man of 95, my father became obsessed with the
philosophical and practical implications of artificial intelligence.”
Kissinger
spoke with Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum last year, where the main
topics were Ukraine, and what the world will look like when we emerge from the
huge changes we’re currently undergoing (the Great Reset.)
Kissinger
and two of his Aspen Strategy Group colleagues, Sam Nunn
and William Perry, and a fourth non-ASG member, have formed the think-tank, Nuclear
Threat Initiative, to advance the agenda of a “world free of nuclear weapons.” Kissinger is a member of the International
Council of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which is chaired by the “Right
Honorable” Tony Blair. “Members from
19 nations convene annually…to gain perspectives on economic, political, and
social trends in key regions and countries of the world. International Council
members provide advice to the senior management of J.P. Morgan Chase on these
and other issues affecting its clients and business.” On this council are several other people with
key positions within the Aspen Institute.
Henry
Kissinger is also a member of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies. According to Wikipedia,
“The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is an American
think tank based in Washington, D.C. It
was founded as the Center for Strategic and International Studies of Georgetown
University in 1962. The center conducts policy studies and strategic analyses
of political, economic and security issues throughout the world, with a focus
on issues concerning international relations, trade, technology, finance,
energy and geostrategy.”
Recall that Carroll Quigley taught at
Georgetown University for many years and was teaching there when he wrote The
Anglo-American Establishment and Tragedy and Hope. His assertion that the banking elite have
worked together for centuries to spread certain values globally is referred to
on Wikipedia as a “conspiracy.”
Aspen
Institute’s Lester Crown has long been a Trustee at CSIS. Thomas Pritzker is the Chairman of the Board
of Trustees of CSIS.
Thomas
Pritzker is the Executive Chairman of Hyatt Hotels Corporation, the Chairman of
The Pritzker Organization, the family’s historical merchant bank, and he is a
member of the Aspen Strategy Group. Pritzker’s
wife Margot is the current Chair of the Aspen Institute Board of Trustees. Let’s take a closer look at the Pritzker
family.
***
Abraham
Nicholas Pritzker was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1896 to Ukrainian Jewish
immigrants from Kiev. His father arrived
in Chicago in 1881, where he first worked as a pharmacist until he graduated
from DePaul University College of Law and began working as a lawyer. Abraham was known as Abram, then Abe and
finally A.N. After graduating from
Harvard Law School, he joined his father’s firm, Pritzker
and Pritzker, along with his brothers, Harry and Jack.
A.N.
and Jack eventually branched out into real estate and small companies, while
Harry remained with the law firm, managing the legal side of the family’s
businesses. According to Wikipedia, “The
Pritzker brothers were very successful and amassed a considerable fortune. They
shielded their earnings from taxes through a series of trusts, which enabled
them to distribute the money as they chose.”
A.N.
had three sons, Jay, Robert, and Donald who continued to grow the family
business, buying the Hyatt House Hotel in Los Angeles in 1957, which formed the
base of what would become a chain of hotels.
In 1984, a New
York Times article entitled “How They Grow and Multiply” described the
Pritzker dynasty. “An affectionate
Jewish family of financiers like the Pritzkers with
far-flung interests and a unified method of operating calls to mind a certain
family of bankers that emanated from Frankfurt, Germany, in the 18th century
practicing a philosophy of all for one and one for all. ''That's who I copied, the Rothschilds,''
said A. N. Pritzker, the jolly white-haired patriarch. ''We have a unique
family relationship,'' he said. Like the Rothschilds, the Pritzker dynasty has
been perpetuated through its males. Pritzker men are soft- spoken, dark-haired,
with trim figures and a penchant for good-natured banter.”
The article
continued, “At the top of the organization chart, to which the Pritzkers pay scant heed, are the family trusts for the
benefit of the descendants of the first Nicholas J. Pritzker, currently a group
of about 30 individuals but likely to increase as the fourth generation marries
and multiplies. Tom Pritzker has three sons.
A. N. established the first of these trusts in 1935. ''I turned
everything over to my sons,'' he said. ''It cemented the family and made us
one. As a result, they have had to support me. My net worth is . . .'' A. N.
formed a circle with his thumb and forefinger.
Last
year [1983], Forbes magazine estimated the family wealth at more than $1.5
billion [well over $32 billion in 2023], a figure the Pritzkers
treat both as a joke and an invasion of privacy. ''Ask me what I own
and I can't tell you. We never ask the question,'' Tom Pritzker avowed. Eyes
twinkling, he added, ''We are a communist family - from each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs.”
A 1988 CNN
Magazine article claimed that the Pritzker family had more than 1000
“elaborate” trusts. Records for these
trusts are housed in the “family nerve center,” of Pritzker and Pritzker, which
is now a small investment bank serving one client (the Pritzker family.) The four partners of the firm at that time
were Jay, Tom, Nick and Penny. Jay Pritzker passed away in 1999. Penny Pritzker was United States Secretary of
Commerce during the Obama administration.
Her brother, Anthony, is Chairman of The Pritzker Group, a private
equity firm where his brother J.B. was involved until his successful 2019 bid
to become the governor of Illinois.
In 2002, it was
announced that the family’s philanthropic holdings were being restructured away
from family foundations including the Pritzker Foundation, into foundations
controlled by eleven cousins, as part of the break-up of the Pritzker family’s
$15 billion dollar business empire to split the wealth across the family. It was suggested that this would lead to more
charitable giving as more family members would be involved in decisions. A quick search results in the following
foundation names: Pritzker Traubert Foundation, Pritzker Family Foundation, J.B.
and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation, Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family
Foundation, and the Pritzker Foundation.
There is also the
Pritzker Military Foundation, the John Pritzker Family Fund, the Pritzker
Innovation Fund, the Lisa Stone Pritzker Family Foundation, the Tawani Foundation (that’s the family of Jennifer Pritzker
who used to be known as James Nicholas Pritzker.)
By the time of
the breakup of the family empire, nineteen-year-old Leisel Pritzker had already
been a successful child actor, playing First Daughter to Harrison Ford’s
President in the 1997 movie, Air Force One. She was not pleased to be left out of the
wealth distribution plan, so she sued the family, ending up with $500 million. Despite the acrimony, she’s the kind of public
face that is good PR for the family. She
took her money to India where she taught yoga to recovering drug addicts, then
she ventured into microfinancing in Tanzania and recycling human fecal matter
in Ghana.
During the
pandemic, the very wealthy got very much wealthier. Penny Pritzker’s wealth increased by 21.7%,
Jennifer Pritzker’s grew by 5.8%, Thomas Pritzker’s by 42.8%, and Governor J.B.
Pritzker’s by 3.7%. J.B. tried to
downplay the wealth in his campaign, particularly all that was revealed about
the family’s “secret” offshore holdings, but the man can’t help it…his taxable
income tripled in 2021. Trivia: Governor Pritzker has repeatedly refused to
share details of his tax returns or assets, but he owns two adjacent homes in
Chicago worth $5.8 and $6 million on Astor Street.
In 2019, unsealed
documents in the Jeffrey Epstein case included Thomas Pritzker’s name on a list
of men that Virginia Giuffre alleged she was directed to have sex with. Pritzker denied this claim. This spring, Thomas Pritzker was subpoenaed
in a Virgin Islands lawsuit filed against JPMorgan over its alleged dealings
with Jeffrey Epstein. Also subpoenaed
was Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan.
The Pritzker’s
largess continues to fund charitable causes in Chicago, where their name is
stamped all over the city. There is the
University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion,
Northwester University Pritzker School of Law, etc. There have been little whiffs of scandal down
through the years, but the name and the wealth keep growing.
What is most
interesting and most troubling are the ways in which the Pritzkers
shape cultures and geopolitics through interlocking organizations without
accountability commensurate with the power being wielded.
Thomas
Pritzker
Center for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Thomas J. Pritzker, Chairman of the
Board of Trustees.
A bipartisan,
nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to advancing practical ideas
to address the world’s greatest challenges.
CSIS receives funding from U.S. government entities and international
ally and partner governments. CSIS maintains transparent relationships with all
government donors.
Here are a few
recent programs hosted by CSIS. National
Security and Spectrum for 5G, Aerospace Security Program, Defense-Industrial
Initiatives Group, Energy Security and Climate Change Program, Missile Defense
Project, Transnational Threats Project.
In 2020, CSIS was
named the number one think-tank in the United States for the third year in a
row.
Council on
Foreign Relations, Thomas J. Pritzker, Member
An American
think-tank specializing in American foreign policy and international
relations. Its origins go back to
President Wilson’s advisor Colonel House and Walter Lippman, with a group of
150 scholars tasked to assemble a postwar plan.
Originally called The Institute of International Affairs, the British
and Americans ultimately formed two separate groups with the British calling
their organization the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham
House,) and the Americans becoming the Council on Foreign Relations. The members were proponents of Wilson’s
internationalism.
The CFR is funded
by charitable contributions from individuals, corporations, and
foundations. Its bias leans left.
Aspen Strategy
Group, Thomas J. Pritzker, Member
The Aspen
Strategy Group's mission is to provide a bipartisan forum to explore the
preeminent foreign policy challenges the United States faces. Its
cross-disciplinary and high-level examination of policy strategies for
addressing preeminent and emerging topics makes it crucially relevant to the
American and global policy communities.
The Aspen
Institute is funded by the Carnegie Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund,
the Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, amongst other foundation
donors. It is also the funded by
individual donations.
Aspen
Institute, Chair of the Board of Trustees, Margot L. Pritzker – wife of Thomas
J. Pritzker
Last
year, the New York Post ran an article about the Pritzker family that began, “Depending
on who you ask, members of the billionaire Pritzker family of Chicago are
either the proud descendants of a financial genius who are doing good by
funding progressive causes — or a secretive dynasty who now back radical
no-bail laws and the transgender movement.”
***
From the time it
was incorporated as a city, in 1830, Chicago’s history is intertwined with
political graft and corruption, organized crime, racketing, etc., and was
famously the home of Al Capone who started the Chicago Outfit of the Italian
mafia. In 2022, for the third year in a
row, Chicago was America’s most corrupt city, Illinois its third most corrupt
state.
***
Lester
Crown
A 2007 Chicago
Life article entitled “The Busy Life of Billionaire Lester Crown” began
with a quote from U.S. Senator and Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois. “If you could only make one call to tap
into Chicago’s civic and business leadership, Lester Crown is the one.” In a ten-day period in January of 2007, “Lester
Crown, the patriarch of Chicago’s Crown family, was scheduled to fly to and
from Atlanta, to Washington, D.C. and then to Israel, where he had been invited
to speak at a conference.” When that
article was published, Lester Crown was 82 years old.
Over
the years, the Crown family has had stakes in businesses including General
Dynamic Corporation, the Empire State Building, the Chicago Bulls, Marblehead
Lime Company, Maytag, and the New York Yankees.
The founder of
the Crown family empire was Henry Crown, the son of a Lithuanian immigrant
sweatshop worker, Arie Krinsky, who changed the family’s name to Crown when
Henry was a boy. In Russian, “Krinsky”
means “one who cultivates flowers” or “one who lives near an orchard.” Henry and his brothers, Sol
and Irving, started Materials Services in 1919, selling sand and gravel to the
building industry. Lester was directed
by an uncle to participate in the family business by becoming a chemical
engineer. In the Chicago Life
piece, he recalled that the 1950s were the “halcyon” days of America. He decried that “The innovative spirit of
America is being reduced to shipping manufacturing overseas.”
Crown stated that
America needed to become less dependent on foreign oil. The author of the article, Jane Ammeson, wrote, “Which brings us to the question of the
Middle East. A longtime supporter of Israel, Henry Crown Hall is home to the
Jewish Symphony Orchestra in Jerusalem.
“Every Israeli prime minister, every Israeli president knows the Crown
family,” said Steven Nasatir, president of the Jewish
United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, according to Crain’s
Chicago Business. Crown says he’s spent a tremendous amount of time in the Gulf
countries, including Egypt, Oman and Saudi Arabia.”
At the time of
that article’s publication, Lester Crown was serving as the chairman of the Chicago
Council on Global Affairs (CCGA.)
The CCGA was formed in 1922, with a mission statement like the CFR, to
combat isolationism and promote internationalism. The think-tank is described as “a nonpartisan,
nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing knowledge and engagement in
global affairs and empowering more people to help shape our global future.” Notable speakers at the CCGA include Eleanor
Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tony Blair, Ben Bernanke, Tim
Geithner, Janet Yellen, and Hillary Clinton, and U.S. presidents Gerald Ford,
Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama.
The CCGA is
funded by corporations, foundations, and individuals.
At 98 years of
age, Lester Crown is still on the go.
He is the Chair Emeritus of the CCGA Board of Directors. CCGA is home to the Lester Crown Center on US
Foreign Policy.to
Center
for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Lester Crown, Trustee p
Hanging
out with Kissinger and Pritzker…
Aspen
Institute, Lifetime Trustee, Lester Crown:
“Lester Crown
is chairman of Henry Crown and Company. He holds a B.S. in chemical engineering
from Northwestern University and an MBA from Harvard Graduate School of
Business. Mr. Crown serves on the boards of General Dynamics Corporation,
Northwestern University, Children’s Memorial Medical Center, Lyric Opera of
Chicago, The Jerusalem Foundation, The Jewish Theological Seminary, and is
Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and of The
Commercial Club of Chicago.”
Here are few
institutions and organizations that the Crown family have funded: the Henry Crown Gallery at the Chicago Art
Museum, the Henry Crown Symphony Hall in Jerusalem, the Crown Family Israel
Center for Innovation (ICI).
The Crown Family
Philanthropies give to many programs in the Chicago area, or within Illinois,
but quite a few programs they fund are national or international. Their main target areas include Education,
Environment, Global Health, Gun Violence Prevention, Health and Human Services,
Jewish Programs and Israel.
The comments
section of some of the articles about the Crown family are interesting. The slant of most articles about the Crowns
is quite positive, but some commenters have clearly studied this family empire
closely and want to bring a balanced perspective to the piece by pointing out
some things the journalists didn’t include.
One commenter wanted to highlight the family’s involvement with General
Dynamics Corporation.
In a
stock-for-stock merger in 1959, the Materials Services Corp. (MSC) became part
of the General Dynamics Corp., a major military contractor, currently described
as the U.S.’s third largest military contractor. The Crown family obtained the
majority of shares in this deal, and because of GD’s poor financial
health, they were forced to sell their prized Empire State Building. In 1965, they had to sell their interest in
GD, thus losing control of the family business, MSC, but within five years they
had managed to obtain enough GD shares to regain control both of GD and the MSC
division. By the early 1980s, MSC had
become the Midwest’s largest distributor and producer of building materials.
A 1976 article in
the New York Times, “Taking Account of Henry Crown,” mentioned that for
decades Henry Crown was haunted by rumours that he got his start in business
through improper political influence in the Chicago Democratic machine. He denounced those accusations as indecent
and untrue. He was deeply hurt by
involvement of his son Lester in 1975 in a federal bribery case “in which
Illinois legislators were convicted of accepting bribes from an industry trade
association seeking to double the highway weight limit on cement trucks.” Granted immunity, Lester Crown “admitted to
supplying some of the money, but he said he thought it was for legal political
action.” Henry alleges that Lester was a
pawn of politicians using him as a scapegoat.
In a 1985 New
York Times piece, “Lester Crown Blames the System.” The author writes, “For a year, the
country's third-largest defense contractor has been investigated by the Justice
Department, the Pentagon, the Securities and Exchange Commission and several
Congressional committees. Its chief executive, who oversaw the production of
some of the nation's most vital weapons, recently retired under the threat of
being banned from military contracting. Top officials have been accused of
contract fraud, stock manipulation and bribery, charges they deny. General
Dynamics has been fined $676,283 for giving gifts to Admiral Hyman G. Rickover,
the retired director of Navy submarine programs, who was censured last month
for accepting those gratuities over a 16-year period. Indeed, the company's
very name has come to symbolize a grassroots concern about corruption in the
defense industry that has helped derail the Administration's military buildup.” The article detailed the investigation of the
military contractor’s improper billing practices. Lester Crown strongly defended GD. “The thing got sloppy, but not with any
thought at the top.''
Sometimes
one must look farther afield to get a fuller picture of any story. In These Times is a “progressive”
magazine started in Chicago, Illinois in 1976 by socialist James Weinstein. It was in this publication that I found a
story from 2021 entitled “Social Work Students Decry SSA’s New Name After Crown
Family Donation -- When the military-industrial complex meets social work.”
Social work master’s
student Sara Bovat received a surprising message. The School of Social Service
Administration (SSA) at the University of Chicago “is changing its name to
the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, in recognition of
a $75 million donation from James and Paula Crown. When she finds out James
Crown is director of the board for General Dynamics Corp., the third-largest
defense contractor in the United States, her surprise turns to outrage. ‘To think that our social work school would be
named after a family that profits off of the military-industrial complex just
felt very hypocritical,’ Bovat says.”
The article
continued, “General Dynamics has received billions of dollars in U.S.
military contracts for its weapons. In December 2019, the corporation received
$22.2 billion—the largest sum ever awarded by the Navy — in a
multi-year deal for nuclear-powered submarines.
In
early 2019, In These Times reported that General Dynamics bombs killed 97
civilians, including 25 children, in Yemen. General Dynamics received hundreds
of millions of dollars in Saudi weapons deals, and its stock price rose from
$135 to $169 per share between the start of the Saudi-led bombing campaign in
Yemen in March 2015 and May 2019.
In
April 2018, the USS John Warner, co-built by a General Dynamics subsidiary,
became the first of the new Virginia-class nuclear submarines to engage in
combat, firing six Tomahawk missiles in Syria. Although the Pentagon denied any
knowledge of civilian casualties, Syrian state television claimed three
civilians were injured in the strike.”
In 2022, Lester
Crown’s daughter-in-law, Paula Crown would undertake the redecoration of the
Aspen Mountain Club, where members are thoroughly vetted before paying their
$275,000 membership fee.
Lester Crown’s
son, James, was president of Henry Crown and Company, a family investment
company. James Crown was a director on
the boards of JPMorgan Chase & Co., General Dynamics, and Sara Lee. Crown was a crucial early supporter of Barack
Obama. He was also the managing partner
of the Aspen Skiing Company. James Crown
died in a single vehicle crash at the Aspen Motorsports Park in Woody Creek,
Colorado, on June 25, 2023, his 70th birthday.
The Center for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) posted this “In Memoriam:”
CSIS mourns
the death of James "Jim" Crown. Jim, and his parents Lester and
Renee, have been long-time supporters and friends of CSIS. Jim was a
towering figure in the world of business and of policy. Jim served as the
chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, one of the
premier advisory boards of the federal government, reporting exclusively to the
president of the United States. He was a trusted and influential colleague
in policy circles in Washington. His accidental death deprived us all of his leadership for many years to come. Despite
his premature departure, he left a lasting contribution for a stronger and more
secure America.
The Aspen
Institute published the following:
The Aspen
Institute is deeply saddened by the passing of our dear friend and former Board
Chair Jim Crown. We love and admire Jim and the Crown Family. Jim was a friend
to so many and a consequential member of our Board of Trustees. We mourn his
passing and ask that the Crown family’s privacy be respected at this time.
Chicago recently
ranked number 28 on a list of cities with the highest murder rate. Just a few weeks before his death, James
Crown announced a plan enlisting CEOs to find jobs for thousands of people in
the most dangerous parts of Chicago in an effort to
cut the city’s murders to fewer than 400 a year within five years. The announcement of this plan, mentioning the
need for thousands of jobs in the “wraparound services” sounds like “opportunity
zone” investing. Opportunity Zones is a
designation created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which allows
tax-emption on an increasing scale over time.
After a few years of investing in an area, the exemption lowers until
taxes owed are zero. These programs have
operated under different names for many years and are international in scale. In previous pieces, I specifically mentioned a
non-profit organization, Positive Planet, started by Jacques Attali, with
branches across the world, that focuses extensively on opportunity zone
investing.
***
In his 1958 book,
Foundations: Their Power and Influence, Rene Wormser wrote on pages 211 and
212, “Considerable evidence exists that some of the major foundations and a
group of satellite organizations operating in the field of international relations
had ignored American interests in promoting ‘internationalism’ of an
unrealistic and dangerous nature.” Professor Kenneth Colgrove testified,
“…There is undoubtedly too much money put into studies which support globalism
and internationalism. You might say that
the other side as not been as fully developed as it should be.”
On page 213, Wormser
wrote that foundations defended themselves by testifying that they used experts
where they found them and if they were globalists, it was because most experts
have a globalist point of view. The
Reece Committee had this to say:
“It may well
be said that a majority of the “experts” in the
international field are on the side of globalism. It would be amazing if this were otherwise,
after so many years of gigantic expenditure by foundations in virtually sole
support of the globalist point of view.
Professors and researchers have to eat and
raise families. They cannot themselves
spend the money to finance research and publications. The road to eminence in international areas,
therefore, just as in the case of the social sciences generally, is by way of
foundation grants or support.”
Wormser concluded
that section by writing on page 214, “Foreign policy is largely made by
“experts” – technicians – inside the State Department and other “experts” who
influence policy from the outside.
Through the operation of the foundation complex in the international
field, therefore, the overwhelming majority of these
experts, both inside and outside the Department, have been indoctrinated with
the globalist point of view which the combine has fostered.”
***
In this talk from
August 7, 2013, Alan Watt said, “And this is the con of this money system
and the gangsters and the banksters that run the world basically. It’s
run by them; it is run by the banksters at the top. And at the top, there
are only a few families at the very top, about 13 families that have been here
for centuries actually running the whole system.
And also, there are 200 families below them that do
most of the investments every day on the stock exchange. And they slush
around millions and millions of dollars, massive millions of dollars every day.”
World
Corps' Magic Creates The Tragic Nomadic:
"The
Culture Industry is a Potent Tool
For
Directing the Future, It can Fool
Youth
Especially into Vehicle for Change,
Fits
Elites' Plan to Order and Rearrange
Societies'
New Normals, Lower Expectations,
Accepting
Authoritarianism Across Nations,
Trained
in Synch for the New Social Order,
Ending
Sovereignty, Scrubbing Each Border,
Vast
Labour Forces Now are Nation-Hopping
As
Corporations Rise then Go Down Flopping
Or
Else Move Where Business Cost is Cheap,
The
Masses Accept this without a Peep,
Blatant
Corporate Mockery of Democracy,
Paid-Off
Politicos, Full of Hypocrisy"
© Alan Watt
Aug. 7, 2013
Additional reading:
The Pritzker Family: Interlock and Gleichschaltung - by Not Sure
https://cuttingthroughthematrix.com/articles/The_Pritzker_Family_Interlock_and_Gleichschaltung.htm
Aspen, the far western suburb of Chicago - 2004
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2004-12-31-0412310013-story.html
Elizabeth Paepcke dies at 91 - 1994
https://www.aspentimes.com/news/1994-elizabeth-paepcke-dies-at-91/
Aspen Institute Lifetime Trustees
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/lifetime-trustees/
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) - Thomas J.
Pritzker
https://www.csis.org/people/thomas-j-pritzker
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) - Henry
Kissinger
https://www.csis.org/people/henry-kissinger
How They Deal and Multiply - 1984 (Pritzker family)
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/26/business/how-they-deal-and-multiply.html
Pritzker Family Joins Business Jet Venture - 1997
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/feb/05/pritzker-family-joins-business-jet-venture/
Shattered Dynasty - 2003
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2003/5/shattered-dynasty
Pritzker's charity costs him little, but taxpayers a lot - 2018
Tribune exclusive: Pritzker's secret offshore holdings revealed in
Chicago duck boat land deal - 2018
How billionaire Pritzkers became key
backers of bail reform, ‘gender affirming’ care - 2022
https://nypost.com/2022/12/31/how-pritzkers-became-key-backers-of-bail-reform-gender-affirming-care/
What Isn’t Named After the Pritzkers? -
2021
https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/what-isnt-named-after-the-pritzkers/
The Spin: Jeffrey Epstein court records mention Tom Pritzker,
cousin to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Penny Pritzker - 2019
Bill Gates, Leon Black, Thomas Pritzker: One Day in
the Life of Jeffrey Epstein - 2023
Epstein Lawsuit: Billionaires Sergey Brin, Thomas Pritzker And Mortimer Zuckerman Subpoenaed In JPMorgan Case - 2023
Taking Account of Henry Crown - 1976
Lester Crown Blames the System - 1985
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/16/business/lester-crown-blames-the-system.html
Lester Crown Keeps Top-Secret Clearance - 1986
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-08-02-8602250559-story.html
The Busy Life of Billionaire Lester Crown - 2007
http://www.chicagolife.net/articles/show/342
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) - Lester
Crown
https://www.csis.org/people/lester-crown
Social Work Students Decry SSA’s New Name After Crown Family
Donation - 2021
https://inthesetimes.com/article/uchicago-military-industrial-complex
Crown Family Israel Center for Innovation (ICI)
Susan Crown – USC Shoah Foundation
https://sfi.usc.edu/get-involved/donor-spotlights/susan-crown
One of Chicago’s wealthiest people is pitching other CEOs to help
him curb violence - 2023
https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2023/6/1/23744542/james-crown-ceos-chicago-crime-violence-jobs
James Crown, Chicago Businessman and Avid Philanthropist, Dies at
70 - 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/business/james-crown-dead.html