During the campaign, President-elect Barack Obama made much hay out of his call to bar the wealthy from pocketing farm subsidies designed to help struggling small farmers.
But one of the 50 billionaires identified as receiving such taxpayer-funded subsidies -- multibillionaire Penny Pritzker -- is one of Obama's close friends and allies, serving first as his campaign finance chairman and now as co-chair of his Presidential Inaugural Committee. Obama transition spokesman Stephanie Cutter has described Pritzker as "a trusted adviser and valued friend."
Pritzker and eight of her relatives received a total of $273,000 in farm subsidies between 2003 and 2005, according to a Scripps Howard News Service computer analysis of the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture database available.
The family -- which owns Hyatt Hotels, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and other moneymakers -- commands a collective worth of at least $22 billion. Penny Pritzker's fortune alone is estimated at $2.8 billion. Among the Pritzkers' subsidized holdings are cattle and horse ranches in California and Wisconsin, plus timber interests in Louisiana, Illinois and elsewhere.
The ongoing battle against robocall solicitations has a new front. Starting this month, telemarketers who unleash prerecorded telephone messages must include a quick and simple way for us to "opt out" of receiving any more calls in the future.
The Federal Trade Commission says the telemarketers also must provide a way to immediately disconnect an unwanted call while the message is playing.
But some big loopholes remain. You can still get calls if you have an "established business relationship" with the caller -- by having a credit card from the company, for example.
Also still permitted will be political calls, "bona fide" market survey calls and pre-recorded health-care messages. The reason: the FTC lacks the legal authority to regulate those calls.
It might not be such a good idea to beam into space a movie that depicts aliens wreaking havoc on Earth, but that's what 20th Century Fox was doing Friday (Dec. 12).
In what's billed as the "first deliberate deep-space transmission" of a motion picture, the movie studio transmitted its new flick, "The Day the Earth Stood Still," into the heavens on the same day it opened in America's theaters. Studio execs estimate it will take four years for the remake of the 1951 science-fiction classic to reach the three-star system Alpha Centauri.
Let's hope no galactic civilization out there gets any bright ideas from the movie. Maybe "ET" would be a better choice.
Forget all those predictions of Election Day mass confusion, interminable lines and misplaced ballots. A recent survey of 10,000 Americans found that an overwhelming number of voters had positive experiences at the polls Nov. 4.
According to the Pew Center on the States, 91 percent said it was easy to find their polling places; 83 percent said their polling places were well run; and 75 percent said they were "very confident" their vote was counted as cast.
Seeking to capitalize on the financial meltdown, scammers pretending to be from the Federal Reserve Board are promising consumers access to personal loans through a fake Fed lending program.
Fed officials have put out a warning about the scam, which encourages consumers to deposit lots of money in a bank account in order to qualify for the "secured loan."
The Fed says it does not directly sponsor consumer-lending programs, and advises that any money put into the account goes into the wallets of the crooks.
For more information, go to www.federalreserveconsumerhelp.gov or call 1-888-851-1920.
(E-mail Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl(at)shns.com and Lee Bowman at bowmanl(at)shns.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
Washington Calling
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