Category Archives: Chicago

Penny Pritzker Obama 2008 national finance chairwoman, Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Skills for America’s Future, Obama Council for Jobs and Competitiveness, Superior Bank origin of sub prime crisis

Posted on February 23, 2012 | 26 comments

Penny Pritzker Obama 2008 national finance chairwoman, Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Skills for America’s Future, Obama Council for Jobs and Competitiveness, Superior Bank origin of sub prime crisis

“We intend to close loopholes that allowed big financial firms to trade risky financial products like credit defaults swaps and other derivatives without
oversight; to identify system-wide risks that could cause a meltdown; to strengthen capital and liquidity requirements to make the system more stable; and to ensure that the failure of any large firm does not take the entire economy down with it. Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by a bank
that is “too big to fail.”…Barack Obama

“Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama says he’ll crack down on fraudulent sub-prime lenders. If he really means it he can start by firing his campaign finance chair, Penny Pritzker. Before taking over Obama’s campaign finances, she headed up the borderline shady and failed Superior Bank. It collapsed in 2002. The bank’s sordid story and its abominable role in fueling the sub-prime crisis are well known and documented. It engaged in deceptive and faulty lending, questionable accounting practices, and charged hidden fees. It did it with the sleepy-eyed see-no-evil oversight of federal. It made thousands of dubious loans to mostly poor, strapped homeowners. A disproportionate number of them were minority.

Obama’s home state, Illinois, ranked near the top of thee states in the percentage of sub-prime mortgages. Nearly 15 percent of home loans were sub-prime according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. But that only tells part of the tale. According to the Woodstock Institute, a Chicago non-profit that studies housing issues, the sub-prime fall-out was far higher in the predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods of South and Southwest Chicago.

The predictable happened when many of those lost their homes. When the bank collapsed Pritzker and bank officials skipped away with their profits and reputations intact. Aside from the financial and personal misery sub prime lenders caused the thousands of distressed homeowners, sub-prime lending has been a major cause of the housing crisis in many areas, and has dealt a sledgehammer blow to the economy. Obama has said nothing about Pritzker, Superior Bank, or their dubious practices.”…Huffington Post, February 29, 2008

“One could make the argument that Pritzker was the most important person in Barack Obama’s presidential bid – except, perhaps, for Obama himself. A longtime Obama friend, Pritzker was national finance chairwoman for the Obama campaign throughout his 2008 presidential effort. She helped him raise a record $750 million from a dizzying array of donors.
Obama’s huge fundraising advantage not only gave him clout during the primaries against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), but also provided the means to bypass federal funding for the general election and dramatically outspend Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)…Washington Post

“Why did Obama employ Robert Bauer of Perkins Coie, to request an advisory opinion on FEC matching funds that he was not eligible for?”…Citizen Wells

More on Obama’s 2008 National Finance Chairwoman and economic advisor Penny Pritzker.

From Consortium News February 28, 2008.

“Though Superior Bank collapsed years before the current sub-prime turmoil that is rocking the world’s financial markets – and pushing those millions of homeowners toward foreclosure – some banking experts say the Pritzkers and Superior hold a special place in the history of the sub-prime fiasco.

“The [sub-prime] financial engineering that created the Wall Street meltdown was developed by the Pritzkers and Ernst and Young, working with Merrill Lynch to sell bonds securitized by sub-prime mortgages,” Timothy J. Anderson, a whistleblower on financial and bank fraud, told me in an interview.

“The sub-prime mortgages,” Anderson said, “were provided to Merrill Lynch, by a nation-wide Pritzker origination system, using Superior as the cash cow, with many millions in FDIC insured deposits. Superior’s owners were to sub-prime lending, what Michael Milken was to junk bonds.”

In other words, if you traced today’s sub-prime crisis back to its origins, you would come upon the role of the Pritzkers and Superior Bank of Chicago.”

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/022708a.html

From Chicago Magazine December 2002.

“”They were always more interested in building an empire than in getting their name in the newspaper,” says Patrick Foley, formerly president of Hyatt Hotels Corporation. “They just didn’t enjoy that kind of notoriety.”

Last year, however, the Pritzkers found themselves most uncomfortably in the public eye after the stunning collapse of Superior Bank, the Oakbrook Terrace–based savings and loan they jointly owned with the New York real estate developer Alvin Dworman. The institution’s failure is “a tale of gross mismanagement,” says George Kaufman, a finance professor at Loyola University Chicago. “[Superior] was engaged in relatively unethical practices, fancy-footwork accounting, playing it very close to the edge.” Kaufman says many share in the blame for the mess-the bank’s managers, directors, and auditors, as well as banking regulators-but he also wonders how the Pritzkers, as co-owners, could have allowed it to happen. “One of the great mysteries to me is what the Pritzkers were up to, why they took these chances,” he says. “It makes no sense given their wealth and visibility.””

“The family’s most agonizing setback, however, was the stunning collapse last year of the once high-flying Superior Bank. The thrift had come into the Pritzker fold in 1988, when Jay Pritzker and Alvin Dworman-old social friends and partners in several past business ventures-put up $42.5 million for the insolvent Lyons Savings Bank, as it was then called, in return for an estimated $645 million in federal tax credits and loan guarantees. (By one estimate, it would have cost the government $200 million less simply to shut Lyons down.) Although Dworman had agreed to run the renamed Superior Bank out of his New York office, Jay deputized his niece Penny-a Harvard educated go-getter who had just earned her law degree and M.B.A. from Stanford-to help keep tabs on the investment. She served as chairman of Superior from 1989 to 1994, long enough for the bank to regain its financial health and embark on an aggressive new strategy, making high-interest home and auto loans to people with bad credit. For a time, that strategy appeared to work like a charm, yielding big profits-and large dividends for the Pritzkers and Dworman.

In reality, Superior was spiraling into ruin. Although the details are complicated, the bank’s fall stemmed from a risky business strategy and from poor oversight by the bank’s directors, according to investigations by banking regulators. Superior became heavily concentrated in high-risk assets connected with its subprime lending business, and then used “unrealistic and overly optimistic assumptions” to record the value of those assets, according to a report by the inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In language redolent of the corporate accounting scandals that have rocked Wall Street recently, the report adds that by using “liberal interpretations of accounting principles” Superior was able to “report impressive net income figures that masked the net operating losses the institution was actually experiencing.” Those phony “profits,” by the way, allowed Coast-to-Coast Financial Corporation, the holding company owned jointly by the Pritzkers and Dworman, to collect more than $200 million in dividends from 1993 to 1999-money the bank desperately could have used as it tottered toward insolvency.

After the Pritzkers and Dworman failed in July of last year to follow through on a plan to inject $270 million into the bank, Superior was seized by the Office of Thrift Supervision and eventually placed in receivership under the FDIC. Last December, to avoid being punished for Superior’s failure, the Pritzkers agreed to pay the FDIC $460 million while admitting no wrongdoing. Because $360 million of that payment was to be spread out interest free over 15 years, the settlement was worth an estimated $335 million in today’s dollars. But that won’t cover all the damage. Even with the settlement, Superior’s failure is expected to cost the federal thrift insurance fund an estimated $440 million.

Meanwhile, the Pritzkers still have not put their Superior troubles entirely behind them. Tom and Penny Pritzker are defendants (along with Dworman, several officers and directors, and the bank’s auditor, Ernst & Young) in a federal civil racketeering suit brought on behalf of Superior’s uninsured depositors (those with deposits in excess of the federally insured $100,000). Although the 1,400 uninsured depositors so far have recovered about 55 percent of the more than $65 million they lost in the collapse, they are still out almost $30 million, according to Clint Krislov, the lawyer for the plaintiffs. By contrast, the Pritzkers may not have fared so badly. Counting the tax credits and deductions they originally received and the dividends they collected over the years, “they appear not to have lost money on the deal,” Krislov says. (A source close to the family says the Pritzkers did lose money in Superior, and asserts that the lawsuit is without merit.)

* * *
The Superior scandal stained virtually everyone connected with it-the bank’s managers and directors, the accountants who signed off on its financial statements, the banking regulators who failed to act aggressively as early as the mid-nineties, when Superior’s problems were fast becoming apparent, and, of course, the owners. As the fallout spread, the Pritzkers worked feverishly to control the damage. They claimed that they had been “passive investors” while Dworman’s people ran the show (Dworman said the Pritzkers shared in the blame). They also made the case that Superior’s auditor had continued to give favorable opinions on the bank’s accounting over the years. On that score, the Pritzkers appeared to gain some vindication in early November of this year when the FDIC sued Ernst & Young for fraud in its audit of Superior, and sought at least $2.19 billion in punitive and compensatory damages. (Ernst & Young denied responsibility for Superior’s collapse and said it would vigorously fight the charges.)

To some, however, the Pritzkers were hardly the innocents they made themselves out to be. The family, after all, controlled half the board seats of the bank’s holding company, which benefited from all that dividend income, and the Pritzker Organization’s chief financial officer, Glen Miller, chaired the bank’s audit committee. Although Penny had stepped down as the bank’s chairman in 1994, she remained a director of its holding company.

“No one should have had any illusions about what was going on,” says Bert Ely, a banking consultant in Alexandria, Virginia, who tracked the Superior story. “[Superior] was reporting gains that were unrealistically high, which allowed [it] to pay big dividends [to the Pritzkers and Dworman]. It was a lot like Enron and WorldCom-reporting profitability that wasn’t there. Their financial people should have been able to figure that out. If they truly didn’t understand the bank’s fundamentally unworkable business model, then the Pritzkers have bigger problems than Superior.”

The Pritzkers said in a statement that the settlement was simply “the right thing to do,” reflecting the family’s “historical commitment to stand behind their investments.” That may have been true. But it also entitles them to 25 percent of any sum the government collects in its $2.19-billion suit against Ernst & Young. Beyond that, the settlement made an ugly story go away. “I am convinced that the Pritzkers wanted to get their name off the front page,” says Ely. “They had stepped into a pile of horse manure, and they were highly embarrassed.””

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/December-2002/Tremors-in-the-Empire/

26 Comments

Posted in Bailout, Banks, Barack Obama, Chicago, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, Financial crisis, Illinois, Money, News, Obama, Obama administration, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, Pay to play politics, The Case Against Barack Obama, US economy, Washington DC, white house

Tagged Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Obama Council for Jobs and Competitiveness, Penny Pritzker Obama 2008 national finance chairwoman, Skills for America’s Future, Superior Bank origin of sub prime crisis

Penny Pritzker Obama Economic advisor fundraiser, Media Matters aka Times of 1984, Destroy banks and economy, Blame others

Posted on February 23, 2012 | 102 comments

Penny Pritzker Obama Economic advisor fundraiser, Media Matters aka Times of 1984, Destroy banks and economy, Blame others

“During its 15 years in New York City, ACORN has helped squatters claim derelict city-owned property, forced bankers to invest in low-income communities, and organized a war against the city’s workfare program.

It’s also developed a reputation for no-holds-barred tactics—getting results through adversarial campaigns against bankers, politicians and bureaucrats using confrontation and concession rather than consensus.”…ACORN document, February 1999

“As a businesswoman and education advocate, I have spent much of my life working to improve America’s economic competitiveness — and put the American Dream within reach for more people.”…Penny Pritzker

Birds of a feather flock together. The old saying seems to be true. Take Barack Obama and Penny Pritzker. They both have done their part to destroy banks and blame others for the devastation. They both use Media Matters which looks a lot like the Times of George Orwell’s “1984” to divert attention away from them.

Before I present more details on Penny Pritzker and her collaboration with Obama, here is an interesting article by David Moburg from November 8, 2002.

“Breaking the Bank”

“After federal regulators closed the $2.3 billion Superior Bank in July 2001, investigations revealed that the suburban Chicago thrift was tainted with the hallmarks of a mini-Enron scandal. New legal developments are adding additional twists, including racketeering charges. And yet the bank’s owners, members if one of America’s wealthiest families, ultimately could end up profiting from the bank’s collapse, while many of Superior’s borrowers and depositors suffer financial losses.

The Superior story has a familiar ring. Using a variety of shell companies and complex financial gimmicks, Superior’s managers and owners exaggerated the profits and financial soundness of the bank. While the company actually lost money throughout most of the ’90s, publicly it appeared to be growing remarkably fast and making unusually large profits. Under that cover, the floundering enterprise paid its owners huge dividends and provided them favorable loans and other financial deals deemed illegal by federal investigators.

Superior’s outside auditor, which doubled as a financial consultant, engaged in dubious accounting practices that kept feckless regulators at bay. Many individuals—disproportionately low-income and minority borrowers with spotty credit records—had apparently been exploited through predatory-lending techniques, including exorbitant fees, inadequate disclosure and high interest rates. In the end, more than 1,000 uninsured depositors lost millions of dollars in savings in one of the biggest bank failures of the past decade.

Yet unlike Enron, the people behind Superior’s collapse were not nouveau-riche corporate hustlers, but members of Chicago’s Pritzker family. The Pritzkers, whose two current patriarchs—Robert and his nephew Thomas—tie for 22nd place on Forbes’ list of the richest Americans, own an empire valued at more than $15 billion, including the Hyatt hotel chain, casinos, manufacturers and real estate, and they are major contributors to both political parties. They were equal partners in the private ownership of Superior with New York real estate developer Alvin Dworman, a longtime associate of Thomas’ father, Jay Pritzker, who died in 1999.

And Superior’s accounting and consulting was not provided by the disgraced Arthur Andersen, but by Ernst & Young. When regulators shuttered the bank, the publicity-shy Pritzkers, who take pride in their philanthropy (such as the prestigious international architecture award in the family name) quickly negotiated what appeared to be a generous settlement to stay out of the newspapers and the courtrooms.

But now both the Pritzkers and Ernst & Young may face the legal and public relations uproar they were trying to avoid. On November 1, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) sued Ernst & Young for more than $2 billion. The FDIC alleges that the firm concealed its improper accounting practices at Superior to facilitate the sale of its consulting unit for $11 billion, leading to Superior’s insolvency and ultimately costing the FDIC $750 million. Ernst & Young denies responsibility, blaming the bank’s managers and board, failed regulation and changing economic conditions. Investigators from the FDIC, Treasury Department and the General Accounting Office (GAO) had cited all those causes for Superior’s failure, but also had criticized Ernst & Young’s flawed work and conflicts of interest.

Meanwhile, in a case that has received no public notice, uninsured depositors are bringing a charge of financial racketeering against one-time board chairwoman Penny Pritzker, her cousin Thomas Pritzker, Dworman, other bank principals and Ernst & Young. In this federal class-action suit filed under the RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) statute, plaintiffs’ attorney Clint Krislov claims that those who controlled Superior induced depositors to put money in the bank, “corruptly” funneling money out of the bank to “fraudulently” profit the owners. Pritzker attorney Stephen Novack says that the defendants will ask to dismiss the case as having no merit. Such a RICO suit has rarely, if ever, been used to recover money lost in a bank failure, partly because the owners in such cases, in the words of bank consultant Bert Ely, “usually don’t have a pot to piss in.” But the Pritzkers have a gold-plated pot.

This may not be the last of legal battles stemming from the Superior failure. Published reports indicate that a federal grand jury has been investigating potential criminal wrongdoing and that the Internal Revenue Service could press claims against the owners for tax evasion.

————–

The problems at Superior Bank date back to at least 1988, when the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, in an effort to conceal the depths of the developing savings-and-loan crisis, hastily made generous arrangements for the takeover of several failed thrifts. The Pritzkers and Dworman bought the failed Lyons Federal for the relatively modest price of $42.5 million, with each using a shell corporation to control half of Coast-to-Coast Financial Corporation (CCFC), a holding company created to own Superior.

Superior opened for business with substantial federal assistance and guarantees, but the Pritzkers also reportedly received $645 million in tax credits as an inducement to buy Lyons. This was not the first Pritzker-Dworman joint venture into banking. In 1985, the partners had acquired New York-based River Bank America. But in 1991, federal and state regulators closed River Bank, which was engaged in large-scale real estate speculation, when they discovered that the bank had inadequate capital and was badly managed. Nelson Stephenson, the chief financial officer of River Bank, later became chairman of Superior.

In 1992, the Pritzkers and Dworman transferred ownership of Alliance Funding Company, a nationwide mortgage banking company the partners had founded in 1985, to Superior Bank, which began specializing in selling securities backed by subprime mortgages. Prospective homeowners with less-than-stellar credit ratings often must turn to such subprime lenders, which typically charge higher interest rates to compensate for the higher risk of default.

But a great many subprime lenders also unfairly exploit borrowers, seeking them out through aggressive television, direct mail and telemarketing techniques, then charging excessively high interest rates and exorbitant fees. Since many borrowers are in difficult situations and financially unsophisticated, they often are duped into agreeing to harsh conditions, such as stiff penalties for pre-paying their mortgages if their credit improves or interest rates drop, or improper costs, such as having the entire dividend for a 30-year-mortgage insurance policy included up-front in their mortgage.

Superior Bank accumulated mortgages that originated from its own branches or Alliance offices, as well as those bought from other brokers. They would then issue securities with high credit ratings but lower interest rates than what they charged borrowers. As collateral, these securities were backed by the stream of income from the mortgages. Superior Bank would retain “residual interests”—part of the collateral mortgages plus some of the excess mortgage interest—but they also retained responsibility for all of the potential losses, or what’s known in the business as “toxic waste.”

Because of the greater risks of subprime lending, it was difficult to project the future value of Superior’s residual interests. But aided by Fintek, another subsidiary of CCFC, and abetted by Ernst & Young, Superior made extremely rosy projections and—like Enron—booked those projected profits as immediate, or “imputed,” earnings. The extremely optimistic value of some residual interests was also counted as part of Superior’s capital, which banks must maintain at regulated levels—depending on their condition and type of business—to make sure that depositors can be repaid.

————–

Examiners from the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) expressed concern about aggressive subprime policy, the value of residuals, the level of capital and other bank practices early in the ’90s. But Superior’s managers and board filed erroneous reports and repeatedly failed to take any of the action that regulators recommended. Nevertheless, according to investigators, the OTS did not take any corrective action. They were persuaded that management was experienced (even though two top managers had been involved in large losses or failures at other thrifts); that Ernst & Young had given its approval in annual audits without any reservations (even though the firm had a long history of penalties and censure for its involvement in high-profile thrift failures); and that “because of their financial status, the OTS placed a great deal of reliance on the ability of the owners to inject capital if the institution encountered any financial difficulties,” as the FDIC inspector general’s report stated.

Meanwhile, Superior was growing rapidly: Loan volume rose from $200 million generated in 1993 to $2.2 billion in 1999, with the value of securities issued reaching $9.4 billion. The bank reported a return on assets that was 12 times the industry average. But its reliance on the risky residual interests from its mortgage securitization soared to levels far out of line with the rest of the industry, and by 2000 the bank’s residual interests were valued at more than four times its less fictional capital (such as stockholder equity). Superior expanded its business to subprime auto loans, then had to pull out because it was clearly failing.

All this should have looked like a sea of red flags to regulators, but they issued modest warnings and failed to follow up when management ignored their recommendations. Superior’s management actually revised its accounting methods in 1997 to further exaggerate its projected earnings, and it more than doubled the volume of the lowest quality loans in the following years. It was all a house of cards, but a very lucrative one for the owners. During the ’90s, the bank paid CCFC—and thus the Pritzkers and Dworman—more than $200 million in dividends.

————–

There was a small problem, however. From 1995 on, investigators concluded, Superior was actually losing money, except for the fictional “imputed” earnings. So the dividends effectively were being paid out of the growing deposits, a practice that Ely describes as having “Ponzi-like characteristics.” Furthermore, in 2000 Superior sold loans to CCFC, which the holding company immediately resold for a $20.2 million profit. Such a sale of assets at less than fair market value to insiders is a violation of federal law. There were other loans made to CCFC and its affiliates totalling $36.7 million—all in violation of the Federal Reserve Act—that were never repaid, the inspector general reported.

Superior also supposedly loaned the Dworman family’s shell company $70 million in 1996, but even though Dworman promised to pay it all back by the end of 1999, the inspector general found no evidence of any payments being made. (Dworman reportedly claimed that the money was a dividend payment concealed as a loan, which would raise questions about tax evasion.) All these transactions enriched the Pritzkers and Dworman at the expense of the bank—and ultimately the FDIC insurance fund and uninsured depositors.

In the spring of 1999, both the OTS and FDIC downgraded Superior’s rating. Over the course of nearly two years, Superior and Ernst & Young resisted the analysis and recommendations of the regulatory agencies, but by January 2001 Ernst & Young finally agreed that the accounting of the residual assets had been wrong. The bank was deeply troubled even in good times, but the vulnerabilities would only increase. As interest rates declined, borrowers would try to pay off high-interest loans and refinance; as unemployment rose, increasing numbers of subprime borrowers would default.

After downgrading the bank further, regulators concluded that it was “significantly undercapitalized” and needed an infusion of $270 million, which the Pritzkers—with some participation by Dworman—agreed in March to provide. Then in July regulators reported that, as a result of overly optimistic assumptions, the bank would need to write off an additional $150 million of of its residual interests. The Pritzkers pulled out of the agreed capital plan, and the feds closed the bank.

————–

Wanting to avoid a lawsuit, the secretive Pritzkers quickly agreed to what the FDIC hailed in December as the biggest settlement they had ever negotiated. The Pritzkers would pay $100 million immediately, then $360 million over 15 years. But there were lots of little provisions in the agreement that benefit the Pritzkers. First, as former bank consultant and longtime thrift watchdog Tim Anderson notes, the $100 million doesn’t even quite pay back all of the unpaid loans made to the owners. The Pritzkers also pay no interest on the $360 million, and since it is paid over many years, the real cost to the Pritzkers may be only around $250 million. As of September 2002, according to FDIC figures, the insurance fund was still out $440 million after this settlement.

But it gets even sweeter for the Pritzkers. The FDIC also agreed to pay the Pritzkers 25 percent of any claim won in a lawsuit against Ernst & Young. Since the FDIC is now suing for $548 million, the Pritzker share could be $137 million. On top of that, the agreement stated that the Pritzkers get half of any civil penalties from such a lawsuit (after certain agency expenses). The FDIC is asking for triple damages, or $1.64 billion; the Pritzker share could be over $800 million.

Even taking into account the “record” settlement they made with the FDIC, the Pritzkers could make more than $700 million in additional profit for running a financial institution into the ground. They had already profited handsomely, sharing in the more than $200 million in dividends to the owners in the ’90s. They accomplished all this with an investment of about $21 million for each partner—though the Pritzkers had also already benefited from $645 million in tax credits.

Meanwhile, roughly 1,000 depositors who had deposits above $100,000 in a Superior account—money above the FDIC-insured limit—lost about $65 million. Most of them were middle-class individuals, attracted by Superior’s high interest rates. In the three months just before the bank was closed, there was a surge of $9.6 million in uninsured deposits. Since about 54 percent of the uninsured money has since been repaid as Superior was sold off, the depositors have still collectively lost about $30 million. (That just happens to be the amount that the Pritzkers gave to the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine earlier this year.)

————–

Some of that money could have paid back Fran Sweet for the roughly $138,000 that she has still not recovered from her deposits at Superior. After retiring as a manager at a telecommunications company, Sweet was seeking a secure place to put her entire retirement savings of about $500,000. “I knew the Pritzkers were owners of the bank,” she says, “and they were a reputable name in Chicago. I had no idea that the bank was in trouble.”

She even asked a bank manager if there was anything wrong with the bank. “She said, ‘No, nothing is wrong, We’re owned by the Pritzkers,’ ” Sweet recalls. “I want it all back. I worked 23 years for a company and got this money from them as a buyout, and the Pritzker family and Dworman stole it from me.”

People at the other end of the deal—who borrowed from Superior—are also still hurting as a result of the scam. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which monitors bank lending, last year accused Superior of participating in a variety of predatory practices, including overly aggressive telemarketing, targeting low-income minority borrowers, and disproportionately incorporating problematic “balloon payments” in the loans. One borrower in Philadelphia, represented by attorney Brian Mildenberg, ended up in bankruptcy partly because Superior didn’t properly credit him for payments he had made. In another case, Cleveland construction worker Dan Sutton claims that a broker for Superior falsified papers to inflate his mortgage and charged exorbitant fees.

The Pritzkers are likely to make out like bandits, which is exactly what customers like Sweet and Sutton think they are. All of the government studies of Superior’s failure agree that there’s plenty of blame to spread around. As the FDIC inspector general’s report concluded, the bank managers pursued an ultra-risky strategy based on unrealistic assumptions and unjustifiably pumped dividends and illegal, unpaid loans out of the bank and into the owners’ coffers.

Ernst & Young provided inaccurate audits, resisted regulators, and did not test or properly disclose crucial financial assumptions. The OTS didn’t investigate or follow up on problems adequately, ignored warning signs for years, and unduly relied on the expertise of managers, the auditor’s report, and the promise of the wealthy owners to put their money behind the bank’s strategy, which they ultimately refused to do. While the FDIC lawsuit against Ernst & Young correctly highlights the accounting firm’s sorry record of accounting malpractice, it ignores the dubious history of the Pritzkers and Dworman in cases ranging from tax evasion to bank mismanagement, instead praising the Pritzkers for their charity.

What looked like a good deal for the FDIC in resolving Superior’s failure is now looking like yet another opportunity for the wealthy Pritzkers to further profit from their misdeeds. Certainly, the record suggests that Ernst & Young bears responsibility, but so do the Pritzkers and Dworman. The question is not just who will extract money from whose pocket in the aftermath of the bank failure, but also whether the rich are simply above the law. The RICO lawsuit against bank managers, owners and auditors raises the issue of criminal conspiracy and at least attempts to recover damages for the uninsured depositors. But beyond that, argues thrift watchdog Anderson, “I think there ought to be a criminal investigation.””

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/671/

102 Comments

Posted in Bailout, Banks, Barack Obama, Chicago, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, Economy, Illinois, Jobs, Lies, media, News, Obama, Obama administration, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, Orwellian, Pay to play politics, Scandal, The Case Against Barack Obama, US economy, Washington DC, white house

Tagged blame others, Destroy banks and economy, Media Matters aka Times of 1984, Penny Pritzker Obama Economic advisor fundraiser

Obama Penny Pritzker Media Matters et al, Pritzker on Obama Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Pritzker Family Foundation funds Media Matters, Obama on board

Posted on February 21, 2012 | 35 comments

Obama Penny Pritzker Media Matters et al, Pritzker on Obama Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Pritzker Family Foundation funds Media Matters, Obama on board

“There is enough corruption in Illinois so that all it takes is someone who is serious about finding it to uncover it. If a U.S. attorney is not finding corruption in Illinois, they’re not seriously looking for it.”…Northwestern Law Professor James Lindgren

Yesterday, WND, World Net Daily presented an article about Penny Pritzker, Obama’s national finance chairman in 2008 and now a member of his Economic Recovery Advisory Board. (Highlighting of Penny Pritzker by Citizen Wells)

“OBAMA FINANCE CHIEF FUNDED MEDIA MATTERS
President deeply tied to anti-Fox News group’s top donors”

“President Obama served eight years on the board of a charity that is a top donor to the embattled Media Matters for America progressive activist organization.

Obama is also tied to numerous other top Media Matters donors and fundraisers, including a foundation run by the finance chairman of his 2008 presidential campaign, Penny Pritzker, WND has learned.

Last week, the Daily Caller released a list of grants to Media Matters.

A WND review of the donor list found a number of deep ties to Obama.

The information comes amid reports that White House staffers held regular meetings with Media Matters, which is under fire for unusual tactics, including compiling a de facto enemies list; announcing an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel; and reportedly seeking to investigate the personal lives of targeted reporters and news personalities.

The Media Matters donor list included the Pritzker Family Foundation, which donated a total of $400,000 to the progressive attack group in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

The Pritzker family is best known for owning the Hyatt hotel chain and is considered to be one of America’s wealthiest families.

The family foundation is directed by Penny Pritzker, who served as the national finance chairman of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Penny Pritzker is currently a member of the Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which formulates and evaluates economic policy for the Obama administration.

Another top donor to Media Matters, according to the released donor list, is the Joyce Foundation. Obama served on the Joyce Foundation board from 1994 to 2002.

Joyce gave a $400,000 grant to Media Matters in 2010, purportedly to “support a gun and public safety issue initiative.”

While Obama was on the Joyce Foundation board, the organization granted tens of millions of dollars to gun control organizations. Also, numerous large grants were provided to a group called Leadership for Quality Education, which was run by John Ayers, the brother of Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.

Also while Obama was at Joyce, the foundation gave numerous grants to the Small Schools workshop at the University of Chicago, which was founded by Bill Ayers and is run by avowed communist activist Mike Klonsky, who served with Ayers in the radical Students for a Democratic Society group.

Another key funding tie for Media Matters is the Center for American Progress, led by John Podesta, who directed Obama’s White House transition team.

Media Matters reportedly entered into a fundraising-sharing agreement with the Center for American Progress, or CAP.

CAP’s extensive reports and research reportedly help to inform Obama administration policy.

A Time magazine article profiles the influence of Podesta’s Center for American Progress in the formation of the Obama administration, stating that “not since the Heritage Foundation helped guide Ronald Reagan’s transition in 1981 has a single outside group held so much sway.”

CAP has received large grants from the Tides Foundation, which, according to the published donor list, is the single largest donor to Media Matters, with over $4 million in donations to the progressive media attack group.

Last week, WND was first to report on the Tides’ donations to Media Matters.

Media Matters tied to MoveOn.org, ACORN

Tides is a controversial far-left clearinghouse that funds groups such as MoveOn.org, ACORN and a litany of anti-war organizations.

The Tides Foundation is funded in part by billionaire George Soros, himself a prominent Media Matters donor via his Open Society Institute.

Tides functions as a money tunnel in which major leftist donors provide large sums that are channeled to hundreds of radical groups.

Tides documentation reviewed by WND shows the group provided a total of $4.1 million to Media Matters during the fiscal years of 2004-2009.

During that same time period, Tides provided an additional $110,000 to the Media Matters Action Network, the group’s affiliated progressive lobby.

The Tides Foundation funding to Media Matters was most significant during the progressive news organization’s startup year in 2004, when Tides granted it $2.2 million.

In 2005, Tides sent another $1.1 million to Media Matters.

The years 2006 and 2007 saw smaller Tides donations of $56,223 and $38,225 respectively.

In 2008, a significant Tides donation of $659,500 came in to Media Matters, with another $106,038 in 2009.

In 2010, the Tides Center expressed public support for Media Matters when the media group stepped up its activism against Fox News by posting a Web page dedicated to anti-Fox material along with an online petition that pressed Fox’s advertisers to “Drop Fox.” At the time, Tides chief executive and founder, Drummond Pike, endorsed Media Matters’ campaign.

Media Matters already admitted to taking $1 million directly from Soros. The billionaire has donated more than $7 million to Tides over the years.”

http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/obama-finance-chief-funded-media-matters/

The references to Obama ties to Penny Pritzker above are damning enough. However, after reading the following, first presented by The Common Conservative on October 1, 2008 and presented here on October 21, 2011, it is obvious a congressional investigation must follow.

“Obama’s Links to Real Estate Scandals, Bank Failures, and Rezko Far Deeper”

“If there is one thing Obama has been very good at, it’s been covering
his tracks. This time, I believe I have made a link that is undeniable
to his knowledge and possible participation in the real estate
dealings and the corruption in Chicago. His links to not so savory
individuals and friends have supported almost every attempt for
political office he has ever made. It is amazing how someone who came
from nowhere has risen to the position of power in such a short time.
He stands to lose much, if Tony Rezko actually tells all he knows as
his Federal sentence is about to be imposed. Possibly he is playing
“lets make a deal” in exchange for bringing down the house on Chicago
real estate ventures at public expense. Everywhere you turn, the major
players are tied directly to Sen. Obama.

First, let’s start with the Superior Bank in Chicago. That bank failed
directly under the control of Penny Pritzker. She is Obama’s Campaign
Finance Chairman and has been instrumental in raising millions for his
campaign. The regulators closed Superior Bank in 2001 because of a
vast number of sub-prime mortgage loans. She took over a failed
savings and loan in 1988 and it was renamed Superior Bank.

During the years of that Obama was actively in Chicago as a community
organizer, one interesting person comes into the picture. Stanley
Kurts reports this in his N.Y. Post article:

ONE key pioneer of ACORN’s subprime-loan shakedown racket was Madeline
Talbott – an activist with extensive ties to Barack Obama. She was
also in on the ground floor of the disastrous turn in Fannie Mae’s
mortgage policies.

Long the director of Chicago ACORN, Talbott is a specialist in “direct
action” – organizers’ term for their militant tactics of intimidation
and disruption. Perhaps her most famous stunt was leading a group of
ACORN protesters breaking into a meeting of the Chicago City Council
to push for a “living wage” law, shouting in defiance as she was
arrested for mob action and disorderly conduct. But her real legacy
may be her drive to push banks into making risky mortgage loans.

In February 1990, Illinois regulators held what was believed to be the
first-ever state hearing to consider blocking a thrift merger for lack
of compliance with CRA. The challenge was filed by ACORN, led by
Talbott. Officials of Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, her
target, complained that ACORN pressure was undermining its ability to
meet strict financial requirements it was obligated to uphold and
protested being boxed into an “affirmative-action lending policy.” The
following years saw Talbott featured in dozens of news stories about
pressuring banks into higher-risk minority loans.

IN April 1992, Talbott filed an other precedent-setting com plaint
using the “community support requirements” of the 1989
savings-and-loan bailout, this time against Avondale Federal Bank for
Savings. Within a month, Chicago ACORN had organized its first “bank
fair” at Malcolm X College and found 16 Chicago-area financial
institutions willing to participate.

Two months later, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott
announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks
that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank “summit” in
New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority
lending by lowering their standards on downpayments and underwriting –
for example, by overlooking bad credit histories.

By September 1992, The Chicago Tribune was describing Talbott’s
program as “affirma- tive-action lending” and ACORN was issuing fact
sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won
on behalf of minorities.

And Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks
“kicking and screaming” into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story
in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative
in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former
targets, now plainly cowed – Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal
Savings) were “participating in a $55 million national pilot program
with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and
moderate-income people with troubled credit histories.”

What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the
participation of Fannie Mae – which had agreed to buy up the loans.
“If this pilot program works,” crowed Talbott, “it will send a message
to the lending community that it’s OK to make these kind of loans.”

This was exactly the time frame Superior Bank was very active in the
sub-prime lending and no doubt, Obama knew exactly who Penny Pritzker
was and her involvement in the ACORN sponsored lending practices.
Another direct link early on to Obama is with another foundation that
Pritzker in involved in. Pritzker is very much involved in the reform
of Chicago’s public education system. Currently she is vice chair of
the Chicago Public Education Fund, the successor organization to the
Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which is the same Board Sen. Obama served
with William Ayers.

Obama no doubt needed the financial backing of the Pritzker’s. They
are the owners of the Hyatt Hotel chain and Obama had inside
connections. David Mendell recalled in his 2007 book Obama: From
Promise To Power:
“Obama was confident that he was destined for more than a day job
running a foundation or practicing law or languishing in the minority
party in the Illinois senate…He invited a group of African-American
professionals to the house of Marty Nesbitt, who had served as finance
chairman of his congressional campaign. Nesbitt is…vice-president of
the Pritzker Realty Group, part of the Pritzker family empire…Nesbitt
arranged a weekend gathering to help Obama reach inside the deepest
pockets he knew—those of the Pritzker family…

“…Nesbitt knew that if Obama could sell himself to Penny Pritzker, her
support would not only reap huge immediate financial dividends but
also be a crucial step in the foundation of a fund-raising network.

“So in late summer 2002, Obama, Michelle [Robinson-Obama] and their
two daughters drove to Penny Pritzker’s weekend cottage along the
lakefront in Michigan about forty-five minutes from Chicago…”

Also notice this report from WNBC in New York:

On Feb. 10, 2007, Senator Barack Obama launched his bid for the White
House in Springfield, setting himself on a course that has become one
for the history books. But Obama might not have made it even to the
Old State Capitol Building that frigid day if not for a private
meeting he had with friends and advisers in late 2002 as he was
mulling a run for the U.S. Senate. In a South Side high-rise
overlooking the lake, the junior state senator vetted his lofty
political ambitions with a group of Chicago’s African American
business elite that included Frank M. Clark Jr., Valerie B. Jarrett,
Quintin E. Primo III, James Reynolds Jr., and John W. Rogers Jr.

Remember the name Quintin E. Primo III, as he is CEO of Capri Capital
in Chicago. Capri Capital will reemerge later in this article as they
have direct ties to Obama, Pritzker, and also direct ties to Rezko.

Also during the time frame that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were buying
sub-prime mortgages, Franklin Raines was CEO of this institution from
1998- 2004. It was during this time, Superior Bank was in real trouble
and under scrutiny from regulators. Pritzker assured regulators there
was nothing wrong, and no doubt, she had to have known Franklin
Raines. Her bank was using Fannie Mae funds since the largest book of
their business was in sub-prime lending. Finally, in December 2004,
Mr. Raines was forced to resign because the Office of Federal Housing
Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulating body of Fannie Mae, of
abetting widespread accounting errors, which included the shifting of
losses so senior executives, such as himself, could earn large
bonuses.

Another interesting connection to Pritzker is from the Chicago
Community Loan Fund published in 2006:

Bank is financing partner
CCLf had the resources to make a $1 million loan for the first time in
its history in 2005, thanks in large part to a $3 million loan pool
investment from Charter One Bank. Charter One’s investment in CCLF was
part of a record-setting infusion of new investment capital in 2005.

In fact, CCLF’s partnership with Charter One and the Historic
Pacesetter Limited Partnership is now multi-faceted: the bank plans to
provide a portion of the financing for the project’s construction.

Then we take a look at Sen. Obama’s request for earmark requests for
2005 and we find a very interesting request:

Obama Requested $2.5 Million (And An Additional $ 5 Million Over Two
Years) For A Pacesetter Redevelopment Program In The Village Of
Riverdale. I2 2005, Obama requested $2.5 million for the Village of
Riverdale and their Pacesetter Redevelopment Program. The
redevelopment of the Pacesetter neighborhood is essential to the
successful industrial development in Riverdale. The Pacesetter
neighborhood is adjacent to Riverdale’s industrial redevelopment area.
The poor quality of housing, crime and image that the neighborhood
portrays must be changed in order to make the Village’s overall
efforts a success. Pacesetter Redevelopment, Phase I, would be
comprised of approximately 100 units and cost approximately $22
million. It is proposed that all of the units in this first phase be
rehabilitated. The development team would acquire these properties
from individual landowners. The plan is to control all properties
along Lowe Avenue by the end of 2005. By location and number, these
properties would create the critical mass required for economic
feasibility, while providing a development of sufficient size to make
a visible impact. The Village is seeking an initial investment in the
project of $5 million over a period of two federal fiscal years.
[Obama Request Letter to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on
Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary, HUD & Related Agencies,
11/6/05]

The Pacesetter funding by Charter One Bank and the Obama earmark
request are not so coincidental. Charter Bank is the same bank that
took over the Superior Bank assets in 2001. From the FDIC:

FDIC APPROVES SALE OF
SUPERIOR FEDERAL BANK, FSB, HINSDALE, ILLINOIS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PR-78-2001 (10-31-2001) Media Contact:
David Barr (202) 898-6992

The Board of Directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
(FDIC) approved the sale of the branches and deposits of Superior
Federal Bank, FSB. The winning bidder is Charter One Bank, FSB,
Cleveland, Ohio.

Superior Federal Bank, FSB is the conservatorship established by the
FDIC after the Office of Thrift Supervision closed Superior Bank, FSB
on July 27, 2001. Charter One has agreed to pay the FDIC a premium of
$52.4 million to assume the 17 locations and the $1.1 billion of
deposits held in conservatorship.

In addition to assuming all the deposits, Charter One is acquiring
approximately $45 million of Superior’s assets. These assets consist
mainly of home equity lines of credit, overdrafts assigned to each
branch location, cash and cash equivalents.

Now one has to wonder exactly how Sen. Obama’s request, which was
apparently denied or died on a Bill, was then funded by Charter One
Bank. Penny Pritzker was Obama’s big money and fundraiser for his
Senate campaign and also was directly responsible for Superior Banks
failure. This is no coincidence, or if it is, it surely raises red
flags to the possibility of influence peddling by the Obama camp or
even Sen. Obama directly. Read the FDIC press release. There were $45
million of home loans, and most were sub-prime loans. Questions need
to be asked regarding if Sen. Obama was able to pull a few strings
with Fannie Mae to get these loans spread to other sources of funding
in exchange to lending the project funds.

Once we look into the Rezko trial, we find something very interesting
once again. Rezko was convicted of of six counts of mail fraud, six
counts of wire fraud, two counts of money laundering and two counts of
abetting bribery. He was acquitted on eight counts, including a charge
he tried to extort as much as $2 million from Lakeshore Entertainment
Group founder and former Capri Capital principal Thomas Rosenberg, who
testified against him at trial.

Once again we find Penny Pritzker having ties to Capri Capital as they
both serve on the Boards of The Real Estate Roundtable with Ms.
Pritzker as it’s Treasurer as late as March, 2008. Much of there
efforts have been to lobby for many changes in real estate and real
estate funding laws. One letter was directly to Sen. Chris Dodd
requesting changes in allowing the Federal Reserve to purchase loans
and asset-backed securities, identically the type of securities being
sold by Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac to Wall Street. Bear in mind that Ms.
Pritzker is President of Pritzker Reality Group L.P.

Another place we find Capri Capital is in the CCLF (above). In their
2006-2007 Annual Report, we find that Capri is listed as one of the
Sponsors. Also we find that CCLF was also funded by Fannie Mae as
well. All of these funds are directed primary at the
Riverdale/Pacesetter project.

The Rezko/Pritzker connection goes deep and finding the link hasn’t
been easy. On October 1, 2006, Daley appointed Martin Nesbitt
chairperson of the Chicago Housing Authority. The CHA was created for
“the purposes of engaging in the development, acquisition, leasing,
operation, and administration of a Low Rent Housing Program and other
federally assisted programs,” according to the agency’s 2005 annual
financial report.”

https://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/obama-bank-failure-policies-acorn-penny-pritzker-cellini-trial-witness-rosenberg-dredges-up-old-memories-capri-capital-where-is-house-judiciary-committee/

Oh, and by the way, the FDIC lawsuit against Mutual Bank is still active. You remember, the bank that loaned money to Rita Rezko for the lot sold to the Obama’s. The same bank that fired whistleblower Kenneth J. Connor for questioning the appraisal.

35 Comments

Posted in Acorn, Barack Obama, Chicago, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, corruption, Franklin Raines, media, News, Obama, Obama administration, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, Rezko, The Case Against Barack Obama, Tony Rezko, Washington DC, white house

Tagged Obama on board, Obama Penny Pritzker Media Matters et al, Pritzker Family Foundation funds Media Matters, Pritzker on Obama Economic Recovery Advisory Board

Blagojevich update, February 16, 2012, Chicago attorney Len Goodman heading appeal, Rod Blagojevich assigned to Littleton, Colorado, Patti interview

Posted on February 16, 2012 | 28 comments

Blagojevich update, February 16, 2012, Chicago attorney Len Goodman heading appeal, Rod Blagojevich assigned to Littleton, Colorado, Patti interview

“Why did the Illinois Senate Health & Human Services Committee, with Obama as chairman, create and push Bill 1332, “Illinois Health Facilities Planning Act,” early in 2003, which reduced the number of members on the Board from 15 to 9, just prior to rigging by Tony Rezko and Rod Blagojevich?”…Citizen Wells

“Why did Patrick Fitzgerald and the US Justice Department wait until December 2008 to arrest Rod Blagojevich?”…Citizen Wells

“I believe I’m more pristine on Rezko than him.”…Rod Blagojevich

From the Chicago SunTimes February 15, 2012.
“Rod Blagojevich will be spending his time behind bars in a Littleton, Colorado facility as he had asked — something one of his lawyers said the family had hoped to keep private.

Carolyn Gurland, who had a hand in handling the ex-governor’s sentencing, said Wednesday that Blagojevich and his family were focused on his transition to prison.

“He and his family want some privacy during this time,” Gurland said. “The govenor’s focus is going to be that there is a smooth transition and hopes there’s some respect for his privacy.”

“Mr. Blagojevich, (the U.S. Probation Department) and the defense team were extraordinarily cautious that this information did not become public and we’re very disappointed that it did,” she said.”

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/10652447-418/blagojevich-to-serve-sentence-at-colorado-prison.html

From Chicago Business December 22, 2011.

“A Chicago attorney who has represented a Guantanamo detainee and former Cicero Town President Betty Loren-Maltese is taking over the appeals case of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, sentenced this month to 14 years in prison for soliciting a bribe and other federal corruption charges.

Len Goodman, a Chicago criminal defense attorney, will lead the effort in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. He was assigned by U.S. District Judge James Zagel, who handed down the sentence.

Mr. Goodman, who has tried criminal cases in state and federal courts throughout the Midwest, said he is still getting up to speed on the case.

“I wasn’t at the trial and need to read all the transcripts,” said Mr. Goodman, who won a rare acquittal before a federal jury when he represented a Utah pharmaceuticals executive charged with six counts of fraud.

“The main issue at trial was — what was (Mr. Blagojevich’s) intent? This is a case about campaign contributions; he was not accused of stuffing his own pockets the way some other politicians do. The governor was part of a system in Illinois which required him to raise tens of millions of dollars to stay in office and which encouraged him to seek campaign contributions from persons who received business and benefits from the state. In that type of case, the defendant has to be given a full opportunity to present evidence of his intent, or what was in his head,” Mr. Goodman said in an email. “That is what I am going to be looking at. Did the jury hear both sides of the story? Did they get a full picture? Or did they hear mostly just the evidence that the government wanted them to hear?””

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20111222/BLOGS03/111229936/chicago-attorney-who-represented-cicero-mayor-taking-up-blagojevich-appeal

From ABC February 10, 2012.

“In an interview that was rambling, tearful and sometimes punctuated by sobbing, former Illinois first lady Patti Blagojevich on Thursday spoke in detail for the first time since her husband was sentenced to a lengthy federal prison term.

ABC7 News has learned that Mrs. Blagojevich taped an exclusive interview with Chicago-based talk show hostess Rosie O’Donnell.

During the one-on-one interview, the wife of the impeached and disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich downplayed the severity of her husband’s wrongdoing that resulted in jury convictions on 17 corruption-related counts. “He was found guilty of getting advice and having routine conversations with advisors and closest friends” she told O’Donnell “It wasn’t about anything else,” she said.

Accompanied on Thursday by the lawyer who unsuccessfully defended her husband, Mrs. Blagojevich said that she wanted to provide more details about the legal ordeal and that “someday when this is over we could have 3 hour conversation” but that “his lawyers have told me not to talk about it.”

Mrs. Blagojevich said that the “case isn’t over. We have faith in system that this wrong will be righted and truth will prevail.” The former governor’s legal team has filed an appeal of the conviction and sentence.

Mr. Blagojevich is scheduled to report to federal prison on March 15 to begin a sentence of 14 years. He has requested to serve time at a facility in Colorado.”

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8537643

28 Comments

Posted in Attorneys, Barack Obama, Blagojevich, Chicago, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, corruption, Federal Court, Illinois, Judges, Lawyers, News, Obama, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, Pay to play politics, Rezko, The Case Against Barack Obama, Tony Rezko, US Department of Justice

Tagged 2012, Blagojevich update, Chicago attorney Len Goodman heading appeal, Colorado, February 16, Patti interview, Rod Blagojevich assigned to Littleton

Rush Limbaugh February 9, 2012, Mortgage lenders scapegoats for bad loans, Obama ACORN et al pushed low income loans

Posted on February 9, 2012 | 128 comments

Rush Limbaugh February 9, 2012, Mortgage lenders scapegoats for bad loans, Obama ACORN et al pushed low income loans

“However, in light of the politically oriented thrust of ACORN’s activities, it is fair to ask whether the CHD subsidies to ACORN are advisable and commensurate with the purposes of CHD.”

“This commentary does not oppose CHD funding of genuine, grassroots community organizations, run and supported by individual members of a parish or diocese. There is potential value and virtue in the collective voice. However, when the CHD funds Alinsky-style, church-based community organizations as in the best interest of the poor and supports organizations which advance other agendas, it divests the poor of their right to an authentic voice. This process tends to treat the poor as exploited units of human capital, rather than as human beings created in the dignity of God’s image.”

“To accomplish its goals, as outlined in the People’s Platform, ACORN has developed a political alliance with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Together with others, ACORN and the DSA have formed a political party, the New Party.”…Report to the Catholic Bishops of the US, 1999

“Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).”…New Party website October 1996

I don’t get to listen to Rush Limbaugh that much due to the fact, as my mom always told me, that the British Royal Family does not acknowledge my claim to the throne. In the midst of working today I was able to catch part of Rush’s show.

“BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: On the foreclosure front, big news here. Eric Holder and attorneys general from 42 states have shaken down the country’s mortgage lenders for $25 billion. Folks, this whole notion of these predatory lenders and people being tricked into taking out a mortgage, have you ever heard of that happening? People wandering innocently by a bank on the street and some guy inside the bank with a hook grabs ’em in, “Okay, pal, you’re taking out a mortgage.” That’s what the regime wants us to believe happened with this.

So as part of a campaign effort here, reelection effort, $25 billion from the country’s mortgage lenders to give to customers who were hit upon and forced, under duress, to take out a mortgage… (interruption) What was that? Can you get a piece? Perhaps. I think everybody’s share comes out to as much as $20,000. You might get paid off as much as $20,000 here if I’m reading it right. Now, what this is, folks, is social justice at work, because after all, the banks were forced by the government at the point of a gun to loan to people they knew couldn’t afford the mortgages. That’s what really happened. That’s the root of the subprime mortgage crisis. It was the government forcing the banks to lend money to people that never had a chance, would never be able to repay the loans. Social justice, affordable housing, the so-called good intentions and don’t judge us on the failure of our results.

So now the banks have the pay the price for making those bad loans. This is all part of continuing the ruse that the banks were the originators of this scandal and the originators of the problem. And so now there’s a $25 billion shakedown. I’m gonna tell you, Snerdley, you can apply for it, but I’m gonna tell you all of you mortgage people, you are not gonna see a dime. This is nothing but a slush fund. What Obama has done is gone to the bank, ’cause they’re having trouble fundraising. They’re nowhere near their billion dollars they’ve been bragging about. You ought to see what they’re gonna do at their convention. They’re gonna charge, what is it, a million dollars for a skybox. A million-dollar donation or something like that, to witness Obama’s acceptance speech. I think there’s a million-dollar charge or donation for something.”
“Now, this is Obama servicing his constituents. He is fulfilling that campaign promise he made to pay their mortgages. You may think, “Come on, Rush, he didn’t promise that.” We ought to dig out sound bites from one of his early town halls in 2009, the famous one that was in I think Tampa where a woman, who it turned out had a couple of houses or whatever, stood up and wanted a new kitchen. She thought that’s what the election of Obama meant. That’s what she thought it meant. I’m sure a lot of people that voted for Obama thought that’s what their lives held in store for them. Obama was gonna give them a house. Obama was gonna make sure that all the transgressions and all the discrimination and all the evil that had been perpetrated against these people in all of these years since the country was founded is gonna be fixed here.

Obama’s gonna make sure they get what they’ve been denied. That’s what they thought. They even showed up at town halls and asked him. As I said previously mere moments ago and I think quite accurately, I will be shocked if any of these people ever see any of that $25 billion. It’s just gonna get laundered back to the Democrat National Committee, which most union salaries end up being laundered back, at least a percentage of them, to the Democrat National Committee. That’s where all of this kind of money, most of it, ends up ultimately. But we’re told that one million underwater homeowners could be eligible for as much as $20,000.”

“Some evil bankers came along and tricked them into taking out a mortgage. That’s the basic claim, that these evil bankers (who are all big supporters of Obama and the Democrat Party: JPMorgan Chase, General Motors Acceptance Corporation, Bank of America) tricked poor people into applying for mortgages. They tricked people into lying about their incomes and assets, and they used robosigning. Have you ever heard of robosigning? (interruption) You have? (interruption) You know what robosigning is? I didn’t know what it was. I had to dig deep and find out. You know where the term comes from? What it really means? Robosigning is a term that was coined by a foreclosure lawyer in Florida way back in October 2011. It was made up out of whole cloth.”

“OBAMA: Lenders who sold loans to people, uh, who couldn’t afford them — by buyers who knew they couldn’t afford them, by speculators who were looking to make a quick buck; by banks that took risky mortgages, packaged them up, uh, and traded them off for large profits. It was wrong, and it cost more than four million families their homes to foreclosure.

RUSH: That’s right. They were tricked! These poor schlubs, they were tricked into this, but now Obama’s getting even with the tricksters. Obama is getting even with these evil bankers, the lenders who sold loans to people that couldn’t afford them. I can’t tell you how big a lie all of this is. All of this is a lie. Well, some of this stuff happened, but the reason for it is a total, total lie. The banks did take risky mortgages and package ’em up and traded ’em off, sold ’em to other unsuspecting dupes until they weren’t any unsuspecting dupes left. And then it was, “Bye-bye, Lehman Brothers,” and, “Hello, bailouts,” and that’s exactly what happened.

The banks were told to lend money, people couldn’t afford ’em, they did. Under federal duress. There was no income stream on these mortgages because people couldn’t pay them back, they never qualified, they never were gonna be able to pay them back. So worthless mortgages with no income stream were packaged up sold. Mortgage-backed securities. Yes, a brand-new financial product and they were sold to unsuspecting people. “Look at the income stream from all of these mortgages,” and their eyes got big and they saw a monthly income stream out the wazoo! Until they found out nobody’s making payments on their mortgages. They couldn’t afford them. They had no money. So the second dupees found a new way to package the mortgages for a third set of dupees.

And they kept going and kept going until they weren’t any people left to dupe. And then it was time to bail everybody out for this. The people who did the right thing are the people who are gonna pay for the people who do the wrong thing. The people that did the right thing — got a mortgage, make the payments — you are the ones paying for the people that did the wrong thing. The banks bundled these mortgages to try to protect themselves. They were forced to make these transactions! They knew they are shaky. They were trying to share the risk. I don’t know, did Clinton and Obama just expect the banks to go under? Did they except them just to absorb all of this as the definition of “affordable housing” and “social justice”? Here’s the second Obama sound bite as he takes his victory lap here.”

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/02/09/regime_shakes_down_banks_for_25_billion

Obama, Rezko, Penny Pritzker, Franklin Raines , Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, et al.

Citizen Wells October 21, 2011.

Obama, et al,played a large role in creating the sub prime mortgage problem and in typical Obama fashion, he blames others.

Obama lied about his connections to Acorn:

Obama helped Acorn in organizing of “Project VOTE” in 1992.
Obama was a community organizer.
Obama represented Acorn as attorney, ACORN vs. Edgar.
Obama was involved in Acorn leadership training sessions.
Obama, Annenberg Challenge, William Ayers, Acorn.
Acorn, New party endorsement of Obama.
February 25th to May 17th 2008, Obama camp paid $832,598 to Acorn.
Acorn Voter fraud.
Obama may have stolen the nomination through Acorn voter fraud.

https://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/obama-acorn-community-organizer-new-party-democratic-socialists-of-america-dsa-saul-alinsky-obama-acorn-attorney-exploited-poor-acorn-voter-fraud-obama-lied-about-his-connection-to-acorn/

There is plenty more at Citizen Wells on Obama’s connections to ACORN and Chicago corruption ties and how they created this mess. A simple search will find them.

128 Comments

Posted in Acorn, Attorney General, Barack Obama, Chicago, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Eric Holder, Fannie Mae, fraud, Freddie Mac, Lies, News, Obama, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, Obama taxes, The Case Against Barack Obama, Tony Rezko, US economy, Washington DC, white house

Tagged 2012, Mortgage lenders scapegoats for bad loans, Obama ACORN et al pushed low income loans, Rush Limbaugh February 9

Reid Schar Rezko Blagojevich prosecutor leaving U.S. attorney’s office, Former Sidley Austin law firm attorney, Schar Hamilton Niewoehner convicted Rezko

Posted on February 3, 2012 | 11 comments

Reid Schar Rezko Blagojevich prosecutor leaving U.S. attorney’s office, Former Sidley Austin law firm attorney, Schar Hamilton Niewoehner convicted Rezko

“Why did Patrick Fitzgerald and the US Justice Department wait until December 2008 to arrest Rod Blagojevich?”…Citizen Wells

“I believe I’m more pristine on Rezko than him.”…Rod Blagojevich

From the Chicago Tribune January 27, 2012.

“Blagojevich prosecutor leaving U.S. attorney’s office
Reid Schar headed for private practice after 12 years of public service”

“Bringing down a governor or another high-profile defendant is one of those career-defining moments for prosecutors and usually hastens their exit from public service. So it goes forReid Schar.

Schar, the lead prosecutor in both corruption trials of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, will be leaving the U.S. attorney’s office after 12 years, said three people with direct knowledge of the matter.

He plans to go into private practice and has started interviewing with some large law firms, according to people familiar with his plans. Schar declined to comment on his future.

Schar, 39, has been a loyal lieutenant to U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald, staying longer than most assistant U.S. attorneys. Since September, Schar has served as an adviser to Fitzgerald, giving input on management, personnel, cases and a host of other issues. The promotion came soon after a jury in the second trial convicted Blagojevich of sweeping corruption, including allegations that he tried to sell President Barack Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat in 2008.

The Blagojevich conviction is the biggest of several notches on Schar’s belt. In 2008, the same trio of prosecutors that put Blagojevich behind bars — Schar,Carrie Hamilton and Christopher Niewoehner — convicted Tony Rezko, a former Blagojevich fundraiser.

Before Rezko, Schar led the prosecution of Muhammad Salah and Abdelhaleem Ashqar, who were accused of aiding the radical Palestinian groupHamas. The two men were acquitted of being members of Hamas and conspiring to support terrorism. They were convicted of lesser charges, including obstruction of justice.

“His work on the Hamas case, Rezko and Blagojevich are only the most visible ways in which he has been as asset to the office and the citizens of Illinois,” said Jeffrey Cramer, who worked with Schar for 10 years and left in 2009 to head the Chicago office of Kroll, which performs corporate investigations. “His talents will be missed.”

The Blagojevich and Rezko cases augmented the reputation of the U.S. attorney’s office for successfully prosecuting public corruption. Blagojevich’s predecessor in the governor’s mansion, George Ryan, also is behind bars. Patrick Collins, who led the prosecution of Ryan, left the office in 2007, shortly after the former governor was sentenced, to join the law firm of Perkins Coie.

Schar’s looming departure is hardly surprising to observers of the U.S. attorney’s office. There wasn’t much left for Schar to accomplish after successfully prosecuting Blagojevich. Prosecutors also can make a lot more money in private practice. Schar is married and has three young children.

There has been a revolving door between the office and big Chicago law firms for years. Former assistant U.S. attorneys are valuable to law firms and their clients for their ability to handle complex cases and knowledge of criminal and regulatory matters. The revolving door slowed down in the last few years because of the economy and the dearth of white-collar legal work in Chicago.

Schar is interviewing with Chicago-based firms as well as firms in San Francisco. He graduated from Stanford University and received his law degree in 1997 from Northwestern University. He clerked for U.S. District Judge Elaine Bucklo before briefly working at the Sidley Austin law firm.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0127-chicago-law–20120127,0,941539.column

Reid Schar Sidley Austin.

Barack Obama Sidley Austin.

Robert Bauer Perkins Coie.

Patrick Collins Perkins Coie.

Ellen Weintraub Perkins Coie.

It’s one big happy family in Chicago.

11 Comments

Posted in Attorneys, Barack Obama, Blagojevich, Blagojevich trial, Chicago, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, corruption, Law firms, Lawyers, News, Obama, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, Patrick Fitzgerald, Prosecution, Rezko, The Case Against Barack Obama, Tony Rezko, US Department of Justice

Tagged Former Sidley Austin law firm attorney, Reid Schar Rezko Blagojevich prosecutor leaving U.S. attorney's office, Schar Hamilton Niewoehner convicted Rezko

William Cellini retrial hearing, Tuesday, January 24, 2012, Judge James Zagel, Where is Daniel Frawley?, Obama GA ballot court challenge, Stuart Levine Steven Loren status hearing

Posted on January 24, 2012 | 15 comments

William Cellini retrial hearing, Tuesday, January 24, 2012, Judge James Zagel, Where is Daniel Frawley?, Obama GA ballot court challenge, Stuart Levine Steven Loren status hearing

“Why was Obama promoting Capri Capital and other investment firms at the same time that Rezko, Levine and Cellini were shaking them down?”…Citizen Wells

“Why has Obama, since taking the White House, used Justice Department Attorneys, at taxpayer expense, to avoid presenting a legitimate birth certificate and college records?”…Citizen Wells

“Why did Obama employ Robert Bauer of Perkins Coie, to request an advisory opinion on FEC matching funds that he was not eligible for?”…Citizen Wells

“Why is Obama now employing private attorneys to keep his name on state ballots, despite compelling evidence that he is not a natural born citizen?…Citizen Wells

It is going to be a busy court week for Barack Obama. One of his corruption cronies, William Cellini, has a hearing today for a ruling on a possible retrial. Judge James Zagel may make that ruling today. Tomorrow, January 25, 2012, Stuart Levine and Steven Loren have a status hearing in the courtroom of Judge Amy J. St. Eve. And conspicuously absent from the courtroom is Daniel Frawley, ex partner of Tony Rezko. Frawley’s sentencing has been repeatedly delayed. Daniel Frawley linked a payment from Tony Rezko to Barack Obama in a deposition.

And of course, Obama has a court date on January 26, 2012 in GA regarding his eligibility to be on the Georgia ballot and his Natural Born Citizen Status.

Daily Calendar

Tuesday, January 24, 2012 (As of 01/23/12 at 05:47:05 PM)

Honorable James B. Zagel Courtroom 2503 (JBZ)

1:08-cr-00888 USA v. Cellini 04:00 In Court Hearing

http://www.ilnd.uscourts.gov/home/DailyCal/0.htm

Stuart Levine knows almost as much about Obama ties to corruption as Tony Rezko.

15 Comments

Posted in Attorneys, Barack Obama, Chicago, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, constitution, corruption, Courts, Election 2012, Election Law, Eligibility, Federal Court, Judges, Jury, Lawsuits, Lawyers, Natural born citizen, News, Obama, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, Presidential candidate, Rezko, Stuart Levine, The Case Against Barack Obama, Tony Rezko, US Constitution, US Department of Justice, William Cellini

Tagged 2012, January 24, Judge James Zagel, Obama GA ballot court challenge, Stuart Levine Steven Loren status hearing, Tuesday, Where is Daniel Frawley?, William Cellini retrial hearing

William Cellini status hearing January 11, 2012, New trial for Cellini?, Juror Candy Chiles enough to overturn conviction?

Posted on January 11, 2012 | 75 comments

William Cellini status hearing January 11, 2012, New trial for Cellini?, Juror Candy Chiles enough to overturn conviction?

“Why was Obama promoting Capri Capital and other investment firms at the same time that Rezko, Levine and Cellini were shaking them down?”…Citizen Wells

“I just think it’s very, very disturbing that we have these pay-to-play allegations going on for years.”…Patrick Fitzgerald

*** Update Below ***

William Cellini, who was convicted of 2 counts of conspiracy to commit extortion and aiding and abetting the solicitation of a bribe on November 1, 2011, is scheduled for a status hearing on January 11, 2012 in the courtroom of Judge James Zagel.

Daily Calendar

Wednesday, January 11, 2012 (As of 01/11/12 at 05:46:42 AM )

Honorable James B. Zagel Courtroom 2503 (JBZ)

1:08-cr-00888 USA v. Cellini 02:00 Status Hearing

http://www.ilnd.uscourts.gov/home/DailyCal/0.htm

Will Bill Cellini get a new trial?

From the Chicago Tribune January 7, 2012.

“Cellini juror defiantly denies bias
Woman who failed to disclose her criminal past is openly hostile to defense attorney”

“In between colorful tirades aimed at William Cellini’s lawyer Friday, a juror in the Springfield power broker’s case acknowledged that she misled the court about her criminal past during jury selection but said she followed the judge’s orders to be fair-minded during the trial.

Candy Chiles, a 50-year-old child care provider from the South Side, made no attempt to hide her disdain for the attorney, Dan Webb, during a daylong hearing aimed at determining whether her equivocations masked a bias toward the judicial process. At one point, she shouted at Webb to sit down because he was getting on her nerves.

“Don’t make a fool out of me,” she said. “I sat here for five weeks and watched the way you work. I know what you’re doing.”

Heated responses are rare in the staid federal courthouse, where decorum typically prevails. And such daggers are certainly seldom thrown at Webb, a former U.S. attorney who is considered to be one of the nation’s top lawyers.

Chiles, however, said she resented being used as a scapegoat in Cellini’s efforts to get his conviction overturned.

“You’re trying to see if I’m a liar so you can get him off?” Chiles said as her voice choked with emotion. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

U.S. District Judge James Zagel cut that outburst short by ordering a 90-minute recess. Chiles quickly walked out of the courtroom, shaking her head and muttering about the defense team.

It was one of her many blowups at Webb during his pointed, two-hour examination, which centered on whether Chiles knew she was being untruthful when she told the court she had not been arrested or convicted of a crime. He also questioned whether Chiles misled the court when she said she had never been involved in a civil lawsuit, despite being sued in four eviction proceedings.

Chiles repeatedly said she didn’t know that those counted as lawsuits.

“Do not do me like this,” she said from the jury box in Zagel’s courtroom. “I am not a criminal. I didn’t steal anything. … Damn you.”

Zagel — who did not order background checks on potential jurors before the high-profile trial — called the hearing to determine if Chiles’ false answers denied Cellini a fair trial. He is expected to hear arguments from both the defense and prosecution later this month before ruling.

Zagel acknowledged that Chiles hadn’t been truthful in her answers to the court during jury selection.

“I think it’s pretty clear … you did not give complete answers to these questions,” the judge said. “In a way, you did not follow the instructions of the court to answer truthfully.”

Prosecutors did not question Chiles during the hearing but made several successful objections to questions Webb asked about her past. Chiles smiled at them and said “thank you” as she left the courtroom after questioning of her ended.

Chiles, who indicated she never wanted to be picked for jury duty, said that she didn’t reveal a 2000 drug conviction because she had put the incident behind her.

“It’s in my past. I never mention it at all, that foolishness in my life,” she said.

Chiles also did not tell the court about a felony DUI conviction in 2008 and an assault arrest in 1994. She initially told the judge that she didn’t know why she failed to disclose those cases but later said that she was confused and nervous during jury selection.

But to overturn a conviction, the defense must prove that the juror had bias or prejudice toward the judicial process. Chiles insisted she had been fair to Cellini and had followed all other jury instructions.

Cellini’s lawyers are seeking a new trial based in part on revelations in a Nov. 11 Tribune story that Chiles failed to disclose two felony convictions.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-cellini-juror-hearing-0107-20120107,0,4264353.story

Cellini background info from Citizen Wells January 5, 2012

“William Cellini, who was convicted of 2 counts of conspiracy to commit extortion and aiding and abetting the solicitation of a bribe on November 1, 2011, is scheduled for a evidentiary hearing on Friday,January 6, 2012 in the courtroom of Judge James Zagel. The Mainstream media has done it’s part in conjunction with the Justice Department to keep Obama out of this story.”

https://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/january-6-2012-obama-corruption-ties-william-cellini-hearing-judge-james-zagel-media-and-justice-department-protect-obama/

*** Update January 11, 2012 5:45 ET ***

The Cellini status hearing has been rescheduled.

Friday, January 13, 2012 (As of 01/11/12 at 03:47:53 PM )

1:08-cr-00888 USA v. Cellini 11:15 Status Hearing

75 Comments

Posted in Attorneys, Barack Obama, Chicago, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, corruption, Federal Court, Illinois, Judges, Jury, Lawyers, Lies, News, Obama, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, Pay to play politics, Rezko, Stuart Levine, The Case Against Barack Obama, Tony Rezko, US Department of Justice, William Cellini

Tagged 2012, Juror Candy Chiles enough to overturn conviction?, New trial for Cellini?, William Cellini status hearing January 11

January 6, 2012 Obama corruption ties, William Cellini hearing, Judge James Zagel, Media and Justice Department protect Obama

Posted on January 5, 2012 | 14 comments

January 6, 2012 Obama corruption ties, William Cellini hearing, Judge James Zagel, Media and Justice Department protect Obama

“Why was Obama promoting Capri Capital and other investment firms at the same time that Rezko, Levine and Cellini were shaking them down?”…Citizen Wells

“The citizens of Illinois deserve public officials who act solely in the public’s interest, without putting a price tag on government appointments, contracts and decisions.”…Patrick Fitzgerald

William Cellini, who was convicted of 2 counts of conspiracy to commit extortion and aiding and abetting the solicitation of a bribe on November 1, 2011, is scheduled for a evidentiary hearing on Friday,January 6, 2012 in the courtroom of Judge James Zagel. The Mainstream media has done it’s part in conjunction with the Justice Department to keep Obama out of this story.

From NBC Chicago January 3, 2012.

“Illinois powerbroker William Cellini could get a new trial after it was revealed a juror in his recently-ended trial failed to disclose two felony convictions.

Judge James Zagel on Wednesday called for an evidentially hearing to see if the juror was biased and if a new trial is warranted.

Shortly after jurors earlier this month found the clout-heavy millionaire guilty of conspiracy to commit extortion and aiding and abetting bribery, the Chicago Tribune revealed that one of the jurors failed to disclose a felony conviction for crack-cocain possession and an aggravated DUI conviction.

Cellini was accused of conspiring with three other men to shake down the producer of “Million Dollar Baby” for a $1.5 million campaign contribution to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.”

http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/cellini-new-trial-possible-134415128.html

The following comment placed there proves my point.

“Guilty of a shakedown of a movie producer, that is it? I can only hope there are a pile of cases behind this one that are much more serious when it comes to RICO and Obama.”

There is obviously more to this long story of Chicago corruption and Rezko could have filled in many blanks.

From Citizen Wells October 19, 2011.

“In the media, Obama always made it sound like he rarely saw Rezko, saying they met for breakfast or lunch once or twice a year. However, the FBI mole John Thomas helped investigators “build a record of repeat visits to the old offices of Rezko and former business partner Daniel Mahru’s Rezmar Corp., at 853 N. Elston, by Blagojevich and Obama during 2004 and 2005,“

During his March 14, 2008 interview, the Times told Obama, Thomas is an FBI mole and he “recently told us that he saw you coming and going from Rezko’s office a lot.”

“And three other sources told us that you and Rezko spoke on the phone daily.””

“Following Obama’s efforts, the Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System gave Ariel Capital $112.5 million to manage, and added hundreds of millions more over the next few years.”

“Three other minority-run firms — Holland Capital, Loop Capital and Capri Capital Partners — also saw hundreds of millions of assets turned over to them to manage after meeting with Obama and the state pension boards.”

“Capri Capital is a little more interesting.

From the William Cellini Indictment Press Release:”
“Cellini’s alleged crimes – essentially conspiring with others to force Capri Capital, also a real estate investment firm, and Thomas Rosenberg, a principal and part owner of Capri, to raise or donate substantial political contributions for Public Official A – were the subject of testimony earlier this year at the trial of alleged co-conspirator Antoin “Tony” Rezko. Cellini was charged with conspiring with Rezko, former TRS trustee Stuart Levine, the pension fund’s outside lawyer Steven Loren and others between the spring of 2003 and the summer of 2005 to defraud TRS beneficiaries and the people of Illinois of Levine’s honest services as a TRS trustee. TRS, a public pension plan for teachers and administrators in public schools statewide except in Chicago, serves hundreds of thousands of members and beneficiaries and has assets in excess of $30 billion.

https://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/william-cellini-trial-capri-capital-obama-connection-obama-arrest-prevented-by-corrupt-us-justice-department-where-is-the-house-judiciary-committee/

From Citizen Wells October 18, 2011.
“The significance of Stuart Levine’s testimony in the William Cellini trial yesterday went unnoticed except for those of us watching with great scrutiny and keeping the Obama connection to Chicago corruption stories alive.”
“Stuart Levine says he also paid bribes more than 10 times to the Chicago Board of Education to get contracts for a bus company.”

“We knew from the Rezko trial that Levine had bribed the Chicago Board of Education. We now know that it happened more than 10 times. This was an ongoing activity. When I read this I intuitively knew that Obama was connected. It did not take long to find out.”

https://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/stuart-levine-cellini-trial-testimony-reveals-obama-connections-levine-bribed-chicago-board-of-education-arne-duncan-cps-ceo-ariel-capital-management/

From Citizen Wells July 7, 2011.

“The William Cellini trial is scheduled for October 3, 2011. Tony Rezko and Stuart Levine have not been sentenced. Until recently, the major news sources have been mostly quiet about Cellini even though, as John Kass of the Tribune stated “Illinois is six degrees of Cellini.” Here are some recent articles.”
Rezko Trial

March 6, 2008

“Prosecutor Carrie Hamilton talks about how Highland Park businessman
Stuart Levine is central to the government case “

“She also explains how William Cellini, a powerful Republican power
broker, was also allegedly central to many of the alleged kickback
schemes at the Teacher’s Retirement System.
Hamilton finished remarks after an hour. She did not mention the name
of Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama, whose U.S. Senate
campaign in 2004 allegedly was the beneficiary of $20,000 in campaign
cash from intermediaries in the kickback schemes the government says
were orchestrated by Rezko.”

https://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/william-cellini-trial-chicago-businessman-the-pope-of-illinois-politics-bill-cellini-101-cellini-101-cellini-blagojevich-rezko-levine-obama/

14 Comments

Posted in Attorneys, Barack Obama, Chicago, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, corruption, Crime, FBI, Federal Court, Illinois, Judges, Lawyers, News, Obama, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, Obama thugs, Patrick Fitzgerald, Pay to play politics, Rezko, Stuart Levine, Tony Rezko, US Department of Justice, William Cellini

Tagged 2012 Obama corruption ties, January 6, Judge James Zagel, Media and Justice department protect Obama, William Cellini hearing

Rick Santorum Iowa Caucus, January 3, 2012, Meet the Press interview, Santorum interview impressive, Citizen Wells endorsement

Posted on January 3, 2012 | 19 comments

Rick Santorum Iowa Caucus, January 3, 2012, Meet the Press interview, Santorum interview impressive, Citizen Wells endorsement

Tonight, January 3, 2012, the Iowa Caucus will be held. Rick Santorum has been surging in the polls, close to the front runner , Mitt Romney.

I have been listening to Rick Santorum being interviewed for years and have always been impresssed with his solid, consistent answers. Santorum was interviewed on Meet The Press on Sunday, January 1, 2012. It is clear from the interview that Rick Santorum is the right man to be the Republican candidate and President. The antidote for Obama.

Watch the entire interview and read the transcript here. If the interview disappears, let me know.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45840626/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/meet-press-transcript-jan/#.TwMZmNQV33c

From the transcript:

“it’s funny. i haven’t asked anybody. and the reason i haven’t asked anybody, i’m sitting at 3% in the national polls. and i really haven’t gone out and asked any united states senator, i haven’t asked a single one to endorse me. but i felt like i had to earn it first. that i had to go out and prove to — you know, i lost my last race. and the general consensus was, you know, we like rick, but, you know, you can’t — who goes from losing their last senate race to winning the presidential nomination? my answer to that was, well abraham lincoln. but other than abraham lincoln, this is not a common occurrence”

“if people want to endorse me, i’d love their endorsements. but i’m not coming to be buddies with my — with, you know, my friends in the senate and house, i’m coming to change the entire nature of washington, d.c. it’s one — one of the benefits, frankly, of being out and looking in, and seeing what, you know, sometimes you said i was running as a consistent conservative. there are votes that i took, not that i advocated these things but i voted for some things and look back and say, why the heck did i do that? you get involved in sort of the the — the idea that well, you got to make things happen, and you forget sometimes, you know, sometimes making some things happen is not — you’re better off”
“what i’ve said is your role as a member of congress, if you look at the constitution, is to appropriate money. of course if you appropriate money you’re going to say where that money’s going to go. and historically congress has taken the role of, you know, allocating those resources, and jim demint who led the charge on pork barrel spending, earmarked things for years and years. so what happened, after i left congress, was budgets began to explode. when i was in the senate, i voted for tough budgets, i voted for restrictions on spending, and made sure that that didn’t happen. and as president, i propose cutting $5 trillion over five years. i propose we’re going to balance the budget in at least five years, hopefully sooner. so if you’re looking for someone who’s voted for tough budgets, voted for spending restraints, and”

“well, what changed was who he’s running against. at the time, that was five days or four days before super tuesday, it was after florida. it became clear to me that there were two candidates in the race at that point. i thought mike huckabee– i would have loved to have mike huckabee out there. but i made the political judgment, right or wrong, that the best chance to stop john mccain, which was what my concern was, i had served 12 years with john mccain, i like and respect john mccain immensely personally, and he’s done a lot of great things, obviously, for this country. but i did not think he was the right person, based on my experience and deep knowledge of his record, that he was the right person to be the nominee”

“of course my background is to find compromise. that’s what you have to do in order to get things done. but you don’t compromise on your principles. i use welfare reform as an example. i — i went out and helped author the welfare reform bill that became the contract with america bill, and then when i was in the united states senate, i managed that bill as a first-term, first-year member of the united states senate. i went up against daniel patrick moynihan and ted kennedy and battled over two vetoes of president clinton and was able to get it done. did i make compromises? you bet. but the compromises i made were not fundamental to the transformation that was important in welfare. which was to end the federal entitlement, the only bill that i’m aware of, only law that’s actually ever ended a broad-based federal entitlement. i was the author and manager of the bill on. and we put time limits on welfare. and we put a work requirement in place. those were the things that i believe were transformational. was i willing to compromise on day care funding? yes, i was. was i willing to compromise on transportation to get folks from welfare to work? yes, i was. but what we did was something that was moving the direction of a more limited government, and in order to get the necessary votes to get that done, you have to make compromise. but, we did a direction of limited government, maybe less than what we wanted to. but we weren’t going in the direction of more government, and getting less of more. that’s where republicans have been in error for so many years. and that is, compromising on just a little less big government, instead of saying no. no more compromises and less big government. we’ll compromise on less-less government. but, not going the other way.”

“you have to have someone you can work with. and this president has done more to divide than any other president that i’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime. this president goes out and gives speech after speech after speech trying to divide america between class, between income group, between racial and ethnic groups. this is the great divider in chief. and it’s very difficult when you’re being led by the president on a regular basis, not just as a party but individually, to then — and the president, who i don’t believe has met with boehner or any of the republican leadership, and now six months, hard to compromise and work with someone who won’t meet with you. who won’t sit down and try to negotiate things and try to talk. so i’m not surprised at all that republicans are having a difficult time with someone who has no interest”

“number one, he didn’t support the pro- democracy movement in iran in 2009 during the green revolution. almost immediately after the election — i mean, excuse me, like within hours after the polls closed ahmadinejad announced he won with 62% of the vote. within a few days, president obama basically said that that election was a legitimate one.”

“i understand why the president announcing a minute after the polls close he won, he comes from chicago, so i get it. the problem was this was an illegitimate election, the people in the streets were rioting saying please support us president obama, we are the pro- democracy movement. we want to turn this theocracy that’s been at war with the united states, that’s developing a nuclear weapon, that’s killing our troops in afghanistan and iraq with ieds and the president of the united states turned his back on them. at the same time, a year later we have the same situation where muslim brotherhood and islamists are in the streets of egypt opposing an ally of ours, not a sworn enemy like iran, but an ally of ours like mubarak and he joins the radicals instead of standing with our friends.”
“we know by the israelis. we don’t have any evidence, if you look at what’s being done, most of the evidence to actually trails back to the israelis and the methodology that they use. there’s no evidence the united states is at all complicit in working at that. that’s what — i would be very direct that we would, in fact, and openly talk about this. why? because i want to make sure that iran knows that when i say that iran is not getting a nuclear weapon, that we will actually affect out policies that make that happen. this president has not done that. he has opposed tough sanctions on iran, on their oil program. why? because he’s concerned about the economy and his re-election instead of the long-term national security interests of this country. i would say to every foreign scientist that’s going in to iran to help them with their program, you will be treated as an enemy combatant like an al qaeda member. and finally i would be working openly with the state of israel and i would be saying to the iranis you need to open up those facilities, you begin to dismantle them and make them available to inspectors or we will degrade those facilities with air strikes and make it very public.”

“iran would not get a nuclear weapon under my watch.”

“yes, that’s the plan. i mean you can’t go out and say, this is — this is the problem with this administration. you can’t go out and say this is what i’m for and then do nothing. you become a paper tiger. and people don’t respect our country. and our allies can’t trust us. that’s the problem with this administration.”

I was pleased to hear Rick Santorum make the following statement:

“i understand why the president announcing a minute after the polls close he won, he comes from chicago, so i get it.”

I continue to endorse Rick Santorum for the Republican nomination and the presidency. He is the breathe of fresh air that this country needs.

19 Comments

Posted in Barack Obama, Chicago, Citizen News, Citizens for the truth about Obama, CitizenWells, Congress, constitution, Election 2012, Election update, Electors, Obama, Obama lies, Obama Nation, Obama records, Pennsylvania voters, politicians, Politics, polls, Presidential candidate, Primary polls, republicans, Rick Santorum, The Case Against Barack Obama, United States, US Constitution, US economy, Washington DC, white house

Tagged 2012, Citizen Wells endorsement, January 3, Meet the Press interview, Rick Santorum Iowa Caucus, Santorum interview impressive

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Category Archives: Chicago

Penny Pritzker Obama 2008 national finance chairwoman, Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Skills for America’s Future, Obama Council for Jobs and Competitiveness, Superior Bank origin of sub prime crisis

Penny Pritzker Obama Economic advisor fundraiser, Media Matters aka Times of 1984, Destroy banks and economy, Blame others

Obama Penny Pritzker Media Matters et al, Pritzker on Obama Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Pritzker Family Foundation funds Media Matters, Obama on board

Blagojevich update, February 16, 2012, Chicago attorney Len Goodman heading appeal, Rod Blagojevich assigned to Littleton, Colorado, Patti interview

Rush Limbaugh February 9, 2012, Mortgage lenders scapegoats for bad loans, Obama ACORN et al pushed low income loans

Reid Schar Rezko Blagojevich prosecutor leaving U.S. attorney’s office, Former Sidley Austin law firm attorney, Schar Hamilton Niewoehner convicted Rezko

William Cellini retrial hearing, Tuesday, January 24, 2012, Judge James Zagel, Where is Daniel Frawley?, Obama GA ballot court challenge, Stuart Levine Steven Loren status hearing

Daily Calendar

William Cellini status hearing January 11, 2012, New trial for Cellini?, Juror Candy Chiles enough to overturn conviction?

Daily Calendar

January 6, 2012 Obama corruption ties, William Cellini hearing, Judge James Zagel, Media and Justice Department protect Obama

Rick Santorum Iowa Caucus, January 3, 2012, Meet the Press interview, Santorum interview impressive, Citizen Wells endorsement

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