James Crown of the military-industrial complex is dead.
A member of Chicago’s ruling elite, James Crown, died yesterday, driving his motorcycle into a wall in Aspen Colorado.
He was 70.
President Joe Biden mourned the death of Crown who he said had turned a little construction-supply company “into an empire.”
Former President Barack Obama said Crown was among his “closest friends.”
Gov. JB Pritzker tweeted that Crown’s “passion for caring was unending.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson praised Crown’s work in addressing the city’s problems of crime and violence.
Not mentioned in all the praise of James Crown was his position as one of the heads of the U.S. military-industrial complex.
He sat on the board of JP Morgan Chase and General Dynamics, the defense company which the Crown family owns.
James and the rest of the Crown family are generous philanthropists.
The Crown name can be found engraved on institutions all over Chicago.
But General Dynamics is a major maker of the machinery of war.
You might even say James and the Crowns are war profiteers.
The Crown family’s money has come from General Dynamics for more than 60 years.
James and the Crown family are to war what the Sackler family is to opioids.
James Crown was chairman of the Aspen Institute, a yearly conference, what it calls an “ideas festival”.
It was during this year’s festival that James crashed his motorcycle.
I remember James Crown from his role in an incident that took place at the Aspen Institute a decade ago.
I, along with some other education bloggers, got hold of a video of Stand for Children’s Jonah Edelman making a presentation at Aspen.
In the video Edelman is explaining how his education reform group came into Illinois and bamboozled the legislature and the teachers unions, the IEA, IFT and CTU, into supporting their corporate education reform plan.
In the video is James Crown sitting next to Jonah Edelman, moderating the presentation.