If you want change, you have to be consistent. And consistency means you have to call out people no matter what political stripe the person might carry. So, it’s just a fact that Penny Pritzker, the president’s nominee for Commerce Secretary, has been the beneficiary of an off-shore tax dodge.

Honestly, this isn’t a shocker. Pritzker is a solid member of the corporate elite of the country, solidified in particular by her close relationship to the president — as many will recall, she really helped open the door to major corporate and elite donors for the then-Senator Barack Obama going back long before he actually announced he was running for president.

Citizens for Tax Justice gives us the 411:

While many wealthy families go to great lengths to avoid taxes, the Pritzker family (most famous for it’s ownership of the Hyatt hotel chain) is unique in its role as “pioneers” in the use of offshore tax shelters. Many of its existing offshore trusts were set up as long as five decades ago ago, and some have allowed the family to continue benefitting from tax loopholes that have long since been closed…

…When the  New York Times asked Penny Pritzker for her thoughts on the ethical implications of her family’s use of offshore trusts, she remarked that the trust was set up when she was only a child, after all, and that she does not control how the offshore trusts are administered. Her continued vagueness on these issues makes it likely that she will face more questions about her views of offshore tax avoidance more generally next week when she goes before the Senate for her confirmation hearing.

While Pritzker’s personal involvement with her family’s most infamous tax avoidance legacy is unclear, it is clear that she has actively used tax avoidance strategies in her own professional and private life. For example, a family member in this Bloomberg News profile from 2008 recounts one of her very first assignments working for Hyatt, which was to set up a like-kind property exchange to help avoid taxes on a property owned by Hyatt.

It turned out Penny was a natural at this particular tax avoidance scheme, in which a company takes deductions for the purported depreciation of their property and then sells the property at an appreciated price, but avoids paying capital gains tax by swapping the property for another like-kind property.

Those are the facts. Not surprising but real.