Obama Says “You Can Trust” Senate Candidate with Ties to an Iraqi Arms Dealer, Tony Rezko, and Assorted Mob Figures
Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports
There is more bad news for Barack Obama’s endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate in Illinois, Alexi Giannoulias: the failed bank where he worked as an executive loaned millions of dollars to an Iraqi arms dealer and convicted felon Tony Rezko. Broadway Bank, which Giannoulias’ family started, approved a $22.75 million loan to Riverside District Development LLC. The principals of that noble-sounding institution are Tony Rezko – who famously sold the president a plot of land adjacent to the Obamas’ Chicago home – and Nahdmi Auchi. In December 1980, Auchi, a native Iraqi, brokered an arms deal between the Italian government and Saddam Hussein that netted the Iraqi Navy four frigates.
Just last week, Barack Obama personally held a fundraiser for Giannoulias, vouching for the young man’s integrity:
Alexi is my friend. I know his character. I know how much he loves this country. I know how committed he is to public service for all the right reasons…
You can trust him. You can count on him.
Obama has heavily invested in electing Giannoulias to the Senate seat that he vacated, which is at the heart of the Rod Blogojevich scandal. Joe Biden, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, David Axelrod, and Desiree Rogers have all stumped for Alexi (and, of course, Obama is a frenetic fundraiser).
His reassurances of Giannoulias’ goodwill ring hollow upon examining the record. In the 1990s, Auchi was a shareholder in what became the BNP Paribas bank. Saddam Hussein used that bank to funnel money from the Oil-for-Food scam.
Auchi’s wife, Ibtisam, served as a director of the Panamanian-based Fintrade Services, which ”lent money to (an) Obama fundraiser in May 2005.” A French court convicted Nahdmi of “the biggest fraud inquiry since the Second World War” in 2003, and he has been barred from entering the United States.
…But not from Broadway Bank. A campaign aide claims Alexi was on a leave of absence when the loan was approved in March 2006. However, the same month he told the press, "I’m senior loan officer and vice president, so I oversee a $600 million loan department." The aide now claims he misspoke.
What no one disputes is that Alexi gave thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to Obama, and as a bank executive, loaned $27 million to mobsters Michael “Jaws” Giorango and Demitri Stavropoulos. The government shut down Broadway Bank in April, which will cost taxpayers $390 million.
Giannoulias dismisses his Auchi ties as "a Washington, D.C., guilt by association game" – charging Republican Mark Kirk of associating Giannoulias with his own bank.
Apparently, the difference between Barack Obama and Alexi Giannnoulias is that Obama only pals around with American terrorists.
Watch Obama’s warm endorsement speech:
Video: Senator Sessions Calls Out Kagan Supports
Obama suggests value-added tax may be an option
AP
President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days.
Before deciding what revenue options are best for dealing with the deficit and the economy, Obama said in an interview with CNBC, "I want to get a better picture of what our options are."
After Obama adviser Paul Volcker recently raised the prospect of a value-added tax, or VAT, the Senate voted 85-13 last week for a nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution that calls the such a tax "a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income and only further push back America’s economic recovery."
For days, White House spokesmen have said the president has not proposed and is not considering a VAT.
"I think I directly answered this the other day by saying that it wasn’t something that the president had under consideration," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters shortly before Obama spoke with CNBC.
After the interview, White House deputy communications director Jen Psaki said nothing has changed and the White House is "not considering" a VAT.
Senate Subpoenas Obama on Ft. Hood
By J. Taylor Rushing and Roxana Tiron, The Hill
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on Monday issued the first congressional subpoena of the Obama administration.
It’s rare for Congress to subpoena an administration controlled by the same party and, in doing so, Lieberman followed through on a threat he made last week. The senator, an Independent who caucuses with Democrats, has increasingly become a thorn in the side of the administration.
He has accused the administration of stalling a congressional probe into the November shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, saying the departments of Defense and Justice have turned down four requests for documents over the course of five months.
Last week Lieberman said he would take the White House to court over the issue of whether to share information about the murders, allegedly committed by Maj. Nidal Hasan.
Obama’s Secret Power Grabs
By Phil Kerpen, Fox News
While Congress considers sweeping new legislation to permanently institutionalize the bailouts and federal control of our financial system (right on the heels of their health care takeover, of course) several other sweeping power grabs are going on outside the spotlight of legislative debate. Indeed President Obama seems to believe that most of his sweeping agenda to transform the country can be accomplished without even a vote of Congress. The chart seen above and found here shows what the administration is up to.
As I’ve previously noted here in the Fox Forum, the the EPA is pursuing an aggressive global warming power grab under the direction of White House Climate czar Carol Browner (who was not subject to Senate confirmation), and the FCC is pursuing a regulatory takeover of the Internet.
Both of those efforts are now escalating. The EPA has now finalized its vehicle emissions rule, for the first time regulating global warming under the 1970 Clean Air Act. While EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is trying to calm a political backlash by promising the delay the onslaught of regulations (the overall blueprint is over 18,000 pages and regulates almost everything that moves and lots of things that stay put) she remains committed to them. The Senate will have a key vote on S.J. Res. 26, which would stop the EPA, some time in May.
The FCC was smacked down in court last week in Comcast v. FCC, which held that the Commission has no jurisdiction to regulate the Internet. Yet FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a close friend of Obama’s, is now considering Internet regulations of an even more extreme nature and by an even more dubious mechanism—reclassifying the Internet as a phone system to regulate it like an old-fashioned public utility.
