Saturday, January 21, 2023

BARACK OBAMA'S OBAMAVILLE, CHICAGO - NO BLACK GETS OUT ALIVE AND NO BLACK GETS A JOB IN THIS DEMOCRAT PARTY SANCTUARY CITY

 

HOW MUCH OF CRIME IN AMERICA IS BLACK?


As the crime wave sweeps across President Joe Biden’s (D) America, citizens are “more likely now than at any time over the past five decades to say there is more crime in their local area than there was a year ago,” Gallup reported in October.


US Veteran takes down knife-wielding man in Walmart





As the crime wave sweeps across President Joe Biden’s (D) America, citizens are “more likely now than at any time over the past five decades to say there is more crime in their local area than there was a year ago,” Gallup reported in October.


18 Shot Friday into Saturday Night in Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot participates in a forum with other Chicago mayoral candidates hosted by the Chicago Women Take Action Alliance Jan. 14, 2023, at the Chicago Temple in Chicago. Lightfoot made history four years ago as the first Black woman and first openly gay person to serve as Chicago …
AP Photo/Erin Hooley
1:53

At least 18 people were shot, two of them fatally, Friday into Saturday night in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago.

A 35-year-old man was shot and killed just after 10:30 p.m. Friday, following an argument “in the 300 block of North Hamlin Avenue,” ABC 7 / Chicago Sun-Times reported.

The person with whom the 35-year-old was arguing pulled a handgun and shot the 35-year-old in the chest.

A man was walking on the sidewalk in the “5300 block of West Altgeld Street” at 3:00 a.m. when a black sedan pulled up beside him and someone opened fire. The man was transported for medical attention and pronounced dead.

The Sun-Times identified the shooting victim as 32-year-old Ramiro Mendez.

The Sun-Times keeps a database of homicides occurring in Chicago and notes that 30 people were killed in the city January 1, 2023, through January 21, 2023.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.


At Least 21 Shot During Weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago

lori lightfoot
Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File
2:19

At least 21 people were shot, four of them fatally, during the weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago.

ABC 7  / Chicago Sun-Times reports the weekend’s first fatal shooting occurred shortly before noon Saturday, when a 29-year-old man “in the South Austin neighborhood’s 5600-block of West Lake Street” was approached by three men, one of whom opened fire.

The victim was shot twice and pronounced dead after being taken to the hospital.

The weekend’s second fatal shooting was discovered about 11:40 a.m. Sunday, when officers found an unresponsive man with multiple gunshot wounds “in the 400-block of East 82nd Street.”

The man was transported to a hospital and pronounced dead.

The third fatal shooting took place at 5:30 p.m. Sunday, when a 41-year-old woman was shot “in the 6200-block of South Michigan Avenue.” The woman was shot in chest and the neck. She was taken to a hospital, where she died.

A 25-year-old man was shot and killed just minutes before that on Sunday. The man was in a car “in the 2600-block of West Fitch Avenue” when someone in a black vehicle opened fire.

The 25-year-old was shot twice and taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The Sun-Times notes that 23 people were killed in Chicago during the first 15 days of 2023.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. AWR Hawkins holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.


MLK Day: Illegal Immigration Crushes Opportunities for Black American Men, Civil Rights Commission Finds

Justin Butts, livestock manager at Soul Fire Farm checks livestock on September 25, 2020 in Petersburg, New York. - While the Black Lives Matter movement has drawn attention to police violence and racism in American cities, racial injustice in the farming sector remains less well-known. Blacks are clearly under-represented on …
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
3:56

America’s working class — and specifically black men — have had their employment opportunities and wages crushed by waves of low-skilled illegal immigration, the United States Commission on Civil Rights finds.

In 2008, the Commission issued a briefing report following deep analysis and interviews with various experts across the political spectrum. The goal of the report was to determine the role that illegal immigration plays in the lives of the nation’s working class and, more precisely, black Americans.

“In the midst of public debate over immigration reform, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted to examine the possible effects of illegal immigration on particularly vulnerable segments of the U.S. working population, specifically low-skill black workers,” the report states.

The Commission ultimately found that illegal immigration — on a scale ranging from 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the U.S., with millions of these illegal aliens holding jobs — has “tended to increase the supply of low-skilled, low-wage labor” that favors employers’ profit margins.

Black American men, with education rates lower than the average American, “are disproportionately employed in the low-skilled labor market, where they are more likely to be in labor competition with immigrants,” the Commission report states:

Illegal immigration to the United States in recent decades has tended to depress both wages and employment rates for low-skilled American citizens, a disproportionate number of whom are black men. Expert economic opinions concerning the negative effects range from modest to significant. Those panelists that found modest effects overall nonetheless found significant effects in industry sectors such as meatpacking and construction. [Emphasis added]

The Commission described the impact of illegal immigration on working-class Americans as a “piece of the puzzle that must be considered by policymakers in formulating sound immigration policy,” though recent proposals by Republicans and Democrats have focused almost exclusively on benefitting foreign nationals not yet in the U.S. rather than Americans harmed by decades-long mass immigration.

As a recommendation, the Commission suggested that the Bureau of Labor Statistics collect monthly figures on the number of illegal alien workers in the U.S. and compile data on how their employment is impacting jobs and wages for low-skilled Americans.

To date, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has refused to collect and compile such data.

Peter Kirsanow, the longest-serving member of the Commission, writes in the report that “there is ample evidence to suggest that at a minimum, [illegal immigration] has had an aggravating effect on both the displacement of low-skilled American workers and the racial divide in employment.”

“This is because illegal immigration tends to increase the supply of low-skilled, low-wage labor already available in the U.S. labor market,” Kirsanow writes.

Kirsanow, mirroring the Commission’s findings, proposes that immigration legislation in Congress should start studying how mass immigration worsens “both the displacement of low-skilled American workers and the racial divide in employment.”

In years following the Commission’s report, working-class Americans have seen few remedies from Washington, DC aimed at cutting overall immigration to boost their quality of life and employment opportunities.

Black Americans, in many cases, have seen their circumstances get worse. In a recent example, a group of black Americans lost their agricultural jobs to imported South African visa workers along the Mississippi Delta. The black Americans settled their discrimination claims against their former employers.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here 

“Obama gave his own personal seal of ethical approval, telling deep-pocketed donors this week: "I appreciate his strong sense of advocacy for ordinary Americans. You can trust him -- you can count on him." Uh-huh. And I've got a bridge to Hope and Change to sell you.”

Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their relatives have benefited mightily

BARACK OBAMA, LA RAZA FASCISM and the CULTURE of DEM CORRUPTION

 

They Destroyed Our Country

 

“They knew Obama was an unqualified crook; yet they promoted him. They knew Obama was a train wreck waiting to happen; yet they made him president, to the great injury of America and the world. They understood he was only a figurehead, an egomaniac, and a liar; yet they made him king, doing great harm to our republic (perhaps irreparable.)”

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-democrat-party-party-for-illegals.html

 

 

THE RISE TO POWER OF BANKSTER-OWNED BARACK OBAMA

 

'Incompetent' and 'liar' among most frequently used words to describe the president: Pew Research Center

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/06/pew-american-people-legals-see-obama-as.html

 

The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy.

 

CRONY CAPITALISM ...the rise of Barack Obama and the fall of America!

OBAMA'S ASSAULT ON AMERICA -WHY WALL STREET, ILLEGALS, CRIMINAL BANKSTERS and the 1% LOVE HIM, AND THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS THE SHAFT TO PAY FOR HIS CRONY CAPITALISM

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/07/obamas-looting-of-america-crony.html

 

CEO pay is higher than ever, as is the chasm separating the rich and super-rich from everyone else. The incomes of the top 1 percent grew more than 11 percent between 2009 and 2011—the first two years of the Obama “recovery”—while the incomes of the bottom 99 percent actually shrank.

 

Meanwhile, Obama is pressing forward with his proposal, outlined in his budget for the next fiscal year, to slash $400 billion from Medicare and $130 billion from Social Security… AS WELL AS WIDER OPEN BORDERS, NO E-VERIFY, NO LEGAL NEED APPLY TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED


Unmasking Obama: The Fight to Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency, is widely available. See also www.cashill.com.

 

Unmasking Obama: The Fight to Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency Hardcover

by Jack Cashill  (Author)

 

Jack Cashill’s Unmasking Obama By Thomas Lifson 

To my surprise, Jack Cashill's new book, Unmasking Obama, couldn't be more relevant to the political struggle facing us today. In 2020, as in 2008 (and throughout the two Obama presidential terms), the key to political power is what must be called "information warfare" (my term, not Jack's) between the mighty establishment media and the feisty conservative alternative media, which Jack likens to the samizdat underground commentary in the old Soviet Union. It is the process of the unmasking of the phony propaganda peddled by the all-powerful establishment by the resource- and prestige-poor "Lilliputians" (an appropriation of Jonathan Swift's work that the satirist surely would approve of) that is the heart of the book. The narrative history presented in Unmasking Obama is captivating. Jack takes readers along with him as he was both a participant in the warfare and a historian of it, digging up parts of the elusive truth about the real Barack Obama in the face of derision and obstruction that came his way. But Jack is far from the sole hero of the story of the warfare. Because of his literary detective work, proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Bill Ayers wrote the autobiographical book, Dreams from My Father, that first established Obama as a serious intellect, Jack enjoyed access to many of the most formidable truth-tellers about Obama. The book's prologue, in fact, begins with a phone call Jack received in 2011 from a then little-known lawyer named Michael Cohen, acting as a lawyer for Donald Trump. Unmasking Obama takes the reader through the major aspects of the fraudulent picture of Obama that was painted by the media and political establishments and details how the truth was uncovered and often partially suppressed by the retaliatory efforts launched in response. It often resembles detective fiction in the drama of the struggle to get at the truth and the struggle to prevent that. I hesitate to call it beach reading, for it is not in any sense fluff, intended to while away time. But it is vastly entertaining and thought-provoking, and the 218 pages fly by rapidly. Today, exactly the same struggle is underway between the Lilliputians seeking to uncover who really is running the front-man candidacy of Joe Biden and the shadowy movement that is looting and destroying our cities and the coordinated might of the mass media that spends 95% of its time pushing a party line that Trump is an unprecedented threat to human civilization and Joe Biden an amiable and pragmatic centrist. Future historians, if there are any left still interested and able to dispassionately understand how America came to the current point of crisis, will find the story told in Unmasking Obama a very helpful guide. If journalism is the "first draft of history," Unmasking Obama is a well considered second draft, adding crucial perspective and assessment of the consequences of the real-time reports. You don't have to wait that long, though. It went on sale last week, and is well worth your time.

 

PRITZKER - OBAMA ADDS TO HIS HAREM OF CORRUPT BANKSTERS

THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT

(THE LIST BELOW, WHICH DOESN’T MENTION TIM GEITHNER IS ONLY A DROP ON THE BOTTOMLESS BUCKET OF BANKSTER CRIMINALS EMPLOYED BY BARACK OBAMA)

If confirmed, Pritzker will join a cabinet that includes Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, who earned millions of dollars as an executive at Citigroup by betting against the housing market as it collapsed. Mary Jo White, Obama’s chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC)—the federal agency tasked with regulating the exchange of stocks and other securities—made millions as an attorney for banks including Bank of America and JP Morgan during the financial crash

 

OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM – A NATION RULED BY CRIMINAL WALL STREET BANKSTERS AND OBAMA DONORS

 

Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies

by Michelle Malkin

Editorial Reviews

In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and abuses of power throughout his administration.

 

OBAMA HAS ALWAYS SERVED THE BILLIONAIRES AND BANKSTERS CLASS. It’s the rest of us who get the tax bills for their crimes, bailouts and handouts!

Senators forgive Penny Pritzker’s $80 million “mistake”

 

By Zac Corrigan

On the eve of her confirmation hearing, President Obama’s nominee for commerce secretary, Penny Pritzker, admitted that she had underreported her 2012 income to the tune of $80 million, blaming a clerical error. Pritzker is worth an estimated $1.85 billion and would become the wealthiest US cabinet member in history. Her nomination underscores the increasingly plutocratic character of the Obama administration and the US government at large.

The $80 million in earnings that had been omitted were related to Pritzker’s role managing trust funds—financial instruments used by wealthy families to control vast sums of money across generations—and $54 million of it was related to an offshore fund based in the Bahamas. This admission comes in the wake of a recent study showing that as of 2012, wealthy Americans are hoarding up to $32 trillion in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes.

Pritzker has played an important role in the Democratic Party’s own finances for years. She was the chair of Obama’s 2008 campaign finance team, which raised over $778 million, a record at the time. She went on to co-chair—along with Chicago Mayor and former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel—the president’s 2012 re-election campaign, which raised over $1 billion. She contributed $250,000 to Obama’s 2013 inauguration festivities. She is also a member of Obama’s Jobs Council, which advises the president on economic matters.

Pritzker’s record shows that Obama could hardly have picked someone more versed in the intricacies of modern financial swindling, nor more deeply immersed in the opulent world of the global elite, to “foster, promote, and develop the foreign and domestic commerce”—such is the stated mission of the US Department of Commerce which she will head, pending congressional approval.

To begin with, Pritzker’s family is one of the wealthiest in Chicago. She is heiress to the Hyatt hotels fortune. She is a director of Hyatt Hotels Corp, which operates the luxury hotel chain and nursing homes, and whose profits are based on low-wage service work. A 53-year-old Hyatt hotel housekeeper who attended the hearing told the Chicago Tribune that she cleans 16 rooms a day for $14.60 an hour with no paid lunch break, and is working under an expired contract.

Especially scandalous is Pritzker’s involvement in the 2001 collapse of Superior Bank of Chicago, where as CEO she pioneered the predatory subprime lending practices that would lead to the financial crash of 2008. In May of 2001, Pritzker told bank employees in a written letter, “Our commitment to subprime lending has never been stronger and we are fully expecting to participate in restoring the bank’s presence.”

Two months later, Superior was closed and its $1.1 billion in paper assets were sold for $52 million to Charter One Financial, Inc. Depositors collectively lost millions of dollars that will never be repaid, while Pritzker and family nonetheless pocketed close to $200 million during their ownership of the bank.

When Senator John Thune (R-South Dakota) broached the subject of Superior at Thursday’s confirmation hearing, Pritzker’s crocodile tears seemed to satisfy. “I regret the failure of Superior Bank,” she said, calling it a situation she felt “very badly about.” Thune later commented, “I’m very impressed with her qualifications,” and told reporters he expected the committee to vote in favor of her nomination.

Pritzker was treated with kid gloves by senators at the hearing. When Illinois senators Dick Durbin (D) and Mark Kirk (R ) introduced her to the committee before the hearing, Kirk called her “a vibrant part of the Jewish world,” and Durbin noted admiringly that not only had she “inherited a few dollars,” but also she had “made a few dollars in her life.” Other senators who praised Pritzker during and after the hearing include Ted Cruz (R-Texas) who called her an “enthusiastic and unapologetic advocate of free trade,” and Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) who told the hotel heiress, “You know more about [foreign tourism] than most anyone else in this room.”

It is no mystery why senators from both parties are so enamored. Over half of them are millionaires, some many times over. In 2011, the median net worth of the Senate was $2.63 million. The chair of the Senate committee reviewing her nomination is Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia), great-grandson of Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, net worth $86 million. John Kerry, who left the senate in February to become Obama’s new secretary of state, is worth many hundreds of millions through his wife’s inheritance of the Heinz Foods fortune.

This is a government of and for the rich. In an epoch of historic and ever-increasing levels of social inequality, profit is more and more acquired through risky financial speculation increasingly divorced from the production of real value. In politics, the ruling elite no longer feels it necessary to give lip service to government “of, by and for the people,” and multimillionaires and billionaires take on direct responsibility for running the government, setting policy and making and enforcing regulations.

 

THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT

If confirmed, Pritzker will join a cabinet that includes Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, who earned millions of dollars as an executive at Citigroup by betting against the housing market as it collapsed. Mary Jo White, Obama’s chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC)—the federal agency tasked with regulating the exchange of stocks and other securities—made millions as an attorney for banks including Bank of America and JP Morgan during the financial crash

 

Pritzker of the 1% serving Obama serve the 1%. THE INCEST OF OBAMA AND HIS CRONY CAPITALIST

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/05/pritzker-of-1-serving-obama-serving-1.html

 

OBAMA and his culture of BANKSTER LOOTING of America.

 

Is Penny Pritzker Obama’s newest BRIBESTER BANKSTER?

 

Obama warns against “cynicism” at Ohio State commencement address

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/05/obama-warns-against-cynicismat-ohio.html

“Pritzker has garnered broad support from Democrats and groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.”... these entities endorse Obama's assault on the American worker, our borders for more illegals, the Obama amnesty hoax to keep wages depressed and NO E-VERIFY!

 

PRITZKER IS ALL THE ABOVE!

“Pritzker has garnered broad support from Democrats and groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.”

 

OBAMA’S BILLIONAIRE NOMINEE FOR COMMERCE, PENNY PRITZKER… BILLION$$$$ MADE OFF HIRING CHEAP ILLEGAL LABOR??? show me even one dem billionaire that does not push for Obama’s agenda of OPEN BORDERS, NO E-VERIFY and NO ENFORCEMENT of LAWS PROHIBITING THE EMPLOYMENT of ILLEGALS…even one!

 

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/05/crony-capitalism-obama-nominates.html

 

Based in Chicago, Pritzker operates an international empire based on low-wage service work in Hyatt-operated hotels and nursing homes, along with several investment firms.

Pritzker has garnered broad support from Democrats and groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.”... these entities endorse Obama's assault on the American worker, our borders for more illegals, the Obama amnesty hoax to keep wages depressed and NO E-VERIFY!

 

PRITZKER IS ALL THE ABOVE!

 

ARE AMAZED AT HOW UTTERLY BRAZEN THESE CORPORATE OWNED POLITICIANS ARE?

 

GET THIS BOOK!

 

Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies

 

by Michelle Malkin

 

Editorial Reviews

 

In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and abuses of power throughout his administration.

From the Inside Flap

The era of hope and change is dead....and it only took six months in office to kill it.

Never has an administration taken office with more inflated expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard. In her latest investigative tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a powerful, damning, and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption that surrounds Team Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty crooks, slum lords, and business-as-usual influence peddlers. In Culture of Corruption, Malkin reveals:

 

Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their relatives have benefited mightily

 

* What secrets the ethics-deficient members of Obama's cabinet--including Hillary Clinton--are trying to hide

 

* Why the Obama White House has more power-hungry, unaccountable "czars" than any other administration

 

* How Team Obama's first one hundred days of appointments became a litany of embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be appointee was exposed as a tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons

 

* How Obama's old ACORN and union cronies have squandered millions of taxpayer dollars and dues money to enrich themselves and expand their power

 

How Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists are ruining the economy and helping their friends In Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin lays bare the Obama administration's seamy underside that the liberal media would rather keep hidden.

 

•           ISBN-10: 1596981091

 

•           ISBN-13: 978-1596981096

 

Michelle Malkin

 

No Shady Banking Buddy Left Behind

 

First Lady Michelle Obama's latest overseas jaunt is getting all the headlines. But President Obama's money-grubbing junket to Chicago may cost taxpayers far more in the long run. With his Gaultier-clad wife sashaying around the Spanish seaside, the lonely fundraiser-in-chief returned to Illinois to take care of some birthday-week business. Job One: Filling the Senate campaign coffers of his corruption-tainted political protege Alexi Giannoulias.

 

Mission accomplished. Obama's Thursday afternoon campaign event for Giannoulias, the beleaguered state treasurer of Illinois, reportedly raked in $1 million. Lagging behind his GOP opponent, liberal Republican Rep. Mark Kirk, Giannoulias has coveted one-on-one, grip-and-grin time with Obama for months. In addition to the cash, photo-ops and video of the Obama fundraising event that Giannoulias will milk from now until Election Day, the White House has dispatched Vice President Joe Biden, White House senior adviser David Axelrod and White House campaign management guru David Plouffe to boost Giannoulias' bid. Plouffe proclaimed Democrats "all in" for Giannoulias, whom he described as "a great progressive champion."

 

Obama gave his own personal seal of ethical approval, telling deep-pocketed donors this week: "I appreciate his strong sense of advocacy for ordinary Americans. You can trust him -- you can count on him." Uh-huh. And I've got a bridge to Hope and Change to sell you.

 

What would Giannoulias know about "ordinary Americans"? Giannoulias, 34, befriended Obama during pickup basketball games with an elite group that also included Michelle Obama's brother, Craig; Chicago edu-crat Arne Duncan (now Education Secretary); and hedge fund manager John Rogers (the ex-husband of the Obamas' ex-White House social secretary, Desiree Rogers). He spread his wealth and influence around early and often to support Obama's fledgling political career. He pitched in $7,000 in 2003-2004 to Obama's Illinois State Senate bids. He hosted fundraisers for Obama's U.S. Senate campaign in 2004 and for his presidential campaign in 2007.

 

Where'd the cash come from? Giannoulias' Greek immigrant family founded Chicago-based Broadway Bank, a now-defunct financial institution that loaned tens of millions of dollars to convicted mafia felons and faced bankruptcy after decades of engaging in risky, high-flying behavior. It's the place where Obama parked his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign funds. And it's the same place where a mutual friend of Obama and Giannoulias -- convicted Obama fundraiser/slum lord Tony Rezko -- used to bounce nearly $500,000 in bad checks written to Las Vegas casinos. This week, the Chicago Sun-Times revealed an additional $22.75 million Broadway Bank loan to a Rezko-owned business in 2006. Giannoulias held an ownership stake in the bank at the time.

 

Giannoulias served as Broadway Bank vice president and senior loan officer for four years. According to the Chicago Tribune, during Giannoulias' tenure, some $27 million of Broadway Bank's funny money went to mob crooks Michael "Jaws" Giorango and Demitri Stavropoulos. Giorango is a hustler who fronted a nationwide prostitution ring and was sentenced to six months in prison; Stavropoulos is behind bars for operating a multistate bookmaking ring. Giorango ran the $400-an-hour call girl operation out of high-rise luxury apartments in Chicago with the infamous "Gold Coast Madam," Rose Laws. Giorango and Stavropoulos used their Broadway Bank loans to start their own risky lending business for nontraditional borrowers unable to secure traditional bank financing.

 

Despite Giorango's criminal record exposed by the Tribune in 2004, Broadway Bank approved massive mortgages for him. Giannoulias' brother, Demetris, explained that as a "relationship bank," Broadway wouldn't just throw someone under the bus because of a "bad article." Instead, the bank went ahead and rubber-stamped a September 2005 loan for $3.4 million to buy a 32-unit Los Angeles apartment complex. The application falsely stated that the borrower, Giorango, had "not been convicted of a felony." Giannoulias oversaw the servicing of such shady loans totaling $11 million. Remember: He was no low-level staffer. He was, as he reminded supporters when he needed to deflect attention away from his youth, top management at Broadway Bank.

 

In January 2010, the bank entered a consent decree with federal and Illinois state regulators. It required Broadway Bank "to raise tens of millions in capital, stop paying dividends to the family without regulatory approval, and hire an outside party to evaluate the bank's senior management." The city's former inspector general blasted Giannoulias and his family for tapping $70 million worth of dividends in 2007 and 2008 as the real estate crash loomed. Broadway Bank was sitting on an estimated $250 million in bad loans. In late April, federal regulators shut it down. Cost to taxpayers: an estimated $390 million. Giannoulias refused to drop out of the race -- and instead used the company failure to argue that it made him (SET ITAL) more (END ITAL) qualified to serve in office: "I have a renewed vigor and a new perspective on just how horrible it is out there for so many people."

 

President Obama agrees: Abysmal failure should be rewarded with promotion. He's leaving no shady banking buddy behind.

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