Posted on 05/25/2010 9:37:11 PM PDT by STARWISE
I have found evidence that may explain the intense interest of Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) in bailing out ShoreBank, the “community development” bank that has received extraordinary assistance from her and several other “friends in high places.”
The New York Times confirms that Rep. Schakowsky played a leading role in the ShoreBank bailout. Yet ShoreBank is not based in Rep. Schakowsky’s congressional district, and she did not help the Bank of Lincolnwood–which is in her district, and failed in 2009–or Park National Bank, which was also active in community development in Chicago until it was closed by federal regulators last year.
Now, court documents that I have obtained reveal that ShoreBank was one of several banks that Rep. Schakowsky’s husband, Robert Creamer, used in the check kiting scheme for which he was convicted and sentenced to federal prison in 2006.
When another bank, Cole Taylor Bank, refused to continue honoring his checks, Creamer turned to ShoreBank for help. ShoreBank evidently provided him with extra time to find over $1.4 million to cover the overdrafts.
As Creamer wrote to the U.S. Probation Officer prior to sentencing: “When I learned that Cole Taylor would no longer pay on uncollected funds, I immediately contacted South Shore Bank (now ShoreBank)–the bank most likely to incur an overdraft.”
That helped Creamer’s organization, Illinois Public Action, avoid a catastrophic series of defaults, and enabled his attorneys to argue that no bank lost money as the result of his actions.
The result was that Creamer was given a fairly light sentence–five months in federal prison and eleven months of house arrest during which he was allowed to travel to and from Washington, DC.
Given these facts, Rep. Schakowsky’s role in the ShoreBank bailout is completely inappropriate. At best, she has a conflict of interest. At worst, she may be attempting to pay ShoreBank back for helping her husband and his organization.
The court documents also raise additional questions about the ShoreBank bailout. In his letter to the U.S. Probation Officer, Creamer also wrote that he kited checks because he was sure he would be bailed out by powerful friends: “…I knew of the receivables in the pipeline and I always knew that in the event of a serious problem there were many supporters who were ready and willing to come to the aide [sic] of the organization.”
That same pattern is reflected in ShoreBank’s recent operations, in which the bank made reckless investments, believing it could count on powerful friends to bail it out.
Indeed, ShoreBank obtained $35 million in federal stimulus funds, then used Rep. Schakowsky, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), and former president Bill Clinton to press Illinois authorities for another $100 million. Finally, unable to raise the necessary capital from a near-bankrupt state, ShoreBank was able to obtain apparently politically-brokered favors from Wall Street, with personal help from Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
In addition, if Creamer was able to obtain special help from ShoreBank when his check kiting scheme fell apart, it is possible that ShoreBank has helped other powerful clients similarly.
A privately-funded bailout will allow ShoreBank to avoid close federal scrutiny of its operations. As taxpayers, we deserve to see a full, independent forensic audit before ShoreBank receives the $75 million in additional federal funds it needs to avoid closure, or obtains any other public assistance of any kind or from any source.
~~Continuing saga of cabal of IL corrupt thugs .. PING!
Robert Creamer! The author of healthcare while he was in prison! Same Marxist thug?
Ping.
Yes, ma’am .. the very same IL thug in the
swamp of corrupt crooks and thugs.
Robert Creamer - Probation Letter
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/40113827/31925957-ShoreBank-Probation-Letter
Robert Creamer has been a political organizer and strategist for almost four decades. He and his firm, the Strategic Consulting Group, work with many of the country’s most significant issue campaigns. He was one of the major architects and organizers of the successful campaign to defeat the privatization of Social Security. He is a consultant to the campaigns to end the war in Iraq, pass universal health care, change America’s budget priorities and enact comprehensive immigration reform. He has also worked on hundreds of electoral campaigns at the local, state and national level. Creamer is married to Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky from Illinois. Arianna Huffington calls his recent book, Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, a master’s class in electoral politics.
His clients have included labor unions, public interest groups, and advocacy organizations like MoveOn.org, Americans United for Change and USAction.
******
Ex-Con Robert Creamer Designed Leftist Blueprint
The felon’s name is Robert Creamer and he’s a disciple of the Marxist founder of community organizing, Saul Alinsky. He’s also the husband of Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), one of Capitol Hill’s most visible cheerleaders for DMV-style Big Government healthcare. Schakowsky acknowledged in a speech that the Democrats’ ”public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer.” Creamer founded the radical group Illinois Public Action and this makes him a hero tothe left, whose members don’t care that he wrote a series of bad checks to pay his salary and meet other financial demands.
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2009/12/09/ex-con-robert-creamer-designed-leftist-blueprint/
(Glenn) Beck observed that Creamer, who recently attended the official White House dinner for the Indian prime minister, used $2.3 million in fraudulently obtained funds to cover his $100,000 annual salary and remain in his five-bedroom home.
******
While everyone has been watching the reality show wannabes who crashed the White House party, the real concern should be the convicted felon Robert Creamer. Robert Creamer, lobbyist for ACORN group Illinois Public Action Fund, has been known for such illustrious past times as over a dozen charges of bank fraud to the tune of $2 million among other crimes in which he took a ‘forced vacation’ in prison. While there he wrote a book called “Stand Straight Up,” which follows the Obama Administration’s scare tactic blueprints for pushing through health care EXACTLY.
Apr 5, 2006 6:45 pm US/Central
Congresswoman’s Husband Gets 5 Months Jail Time
The husband of an Illinois congresswoman was sentenced to five months in federal prison Wednesday for writing rubber checks and failing to pay withholding taxes.
Robert Creamer, 58, husband of U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., also was ordered to serve house arrest for 11 months after he finishes his prison term.
Prosecutors had wanted a three-year sentence, but U.S. District Judge James B. Moran said five months was fairer because no one suffered “out of pocket losses” and Creamer acted not out of greed but in an effort to keep his community action group going without cutting programs.
Rep. Schakowsky gasped, closed her eyes and doubled over when Moran sentenced her husband to five months.
She said she was proud that her husband “has for his entire adult life devoted himself to fighting for a better future for others — he has been a constant crusader for social and economic justice in this country and beyond.”
Creamer is one of Chicago’s best-known political consultants. He has worked for the campaigns of both Mayor Richard M. Daley and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
The money was used to keep Creamer’s group — Illinois Public Action — in business without any cutback in its programs. That included Creamer’s $100,000 annual salary, prosecutors said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph M. Ferguson told Moran that Creamer had still not completely acknowledged his wrongdoing and had been using the work of his community action group to justify himself.
Ferguson said Creamer’s statements suggested that while he admitted his check kiting was “legally improper it was somehow morally acceptable.”
“He shouldn’t have taken money from banks, he shouldn’t have taken tax money,” he said.
Under Moran’s order, attorneys said, it might be possible for Creamer to travel to Washington to continue with his political consulting business while he is under house arrest. They also said he could be eligible for a halfway house toward the end of his five-month prison sentence.
Schakowsky got her political start helping advance her husband’s social agenda as a member of IPCA and later, Citizen Action. She served on the board at the time the crimes occurred. She was never charged.
Every honest, decent person in Chicago need to vacate so that they city with all its corruption and thugs can be leveled in one swoop. Calling Superman.
Seriously, it’s stunningly corrupt.
Q: What do you call a building full of Illinois Obama Supporters?
A: Federal Prison
:-)
I hear people talk about Louisiana, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania .. no doubt Chicago and IL are
right up with the best of the corrupt thug
politician in history.
Anywhere with democrat infestations.
Hahahahahaha
just try getting your bank to pay out to you on “uncollected funds”;
One set of rules for them, another for the little people ...
At a Glance
Current Position: U.S. Representative (since 1999); Chief Deputy Whip (since 2007)
Career History: Representative, Illinois General Assembly, (1990 to 1999); Director, Illinois State Council of Senior Citizens (1985 to 1990); Program director, Illinois Public Action Council (1976 to 1985)
Birthday: May 26, 1944
Hometown: Chicago, Ill.
Alma Mater: University of Illinois, B.S. (Elementary Education), 1965
Spouse: Robert Creamer
Religion: Jewish
DC Office: 2367 Rayburn House Office Building
(202) 225-2111
District Office: Chicago: 5533 Broadway
Chicago, IL 60640
(773) 506-7100
http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Jan_Schakowsky#Robert_Creamer.e2.80.99s_Bank_Fraud_Scandal
Is there any Chicago politician (esp. Democrat) that is not a crook?
Calling the New York Times!!!!
Calling the Washington Post !!!
Democrat consultant sentenced to prison
Chicago Tribune (IL) - Thursday, April 6, 2006
Author: Michael Higgins and Laurie Cohen, Tribune staff reporters.
Robert Creamer , a top Democratic consultant and the husband of U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), was sentenced Wednesday to 5 months in prison for using bad checks to prop up his struggling consumer group and for a tax charge.
Creamer, founder and former head of Illinois Public Action, also must serve 11 months of home confinement. But he escaped the longer sentence of 30 to 37 months suggested by federal guidelines.
Creamer, 58, of Evanston, apologized in court for his conduct but maintained that he had merely been overzealous in his support of a good cause.
“I will never again allow my passion for that goal to overwhelm my good judgment or my respect for the law,” Creamer said in a short statement after the hearing.
Schakowsky said in her own statement: “More than anything, I am proud of who Bob is. ... He has been a constant crusader.”
Creamer pleaded guilty in August to bank fraud and a federal tax charge. But his attorneys argued that he should not serve prison time because he didn’t take the money for his personal use, covered the debts later and has led an “extraordinary” life devoted to social activism.
Prosecutors countered that Creamer’s arguments sounded more like self-promotion than true remorse. But U.S. District Judge James Moran agreed that Creamer was not like a typical bank-fraud defendant.
“There was no intention to cause a loss,” Moran said in court. “Neither the banks nor the government suffered any actual out-of-pocket loss.”
Moran said he also considered that the case against Creamer played out slowly after the check-kiting scheme was discovered in 1997, subjecting Creamer to an “emotionally draining experience.”
More than 200 people wrote letters of support on Creamer’s behalf, including U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Cook County Clerk David Orr, state Sen. Carol Ronen (D-Chicago), Chicago Ald. Joe Moore (49th), former State Sen. Dawn Clark Netsch and former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol Browner.
Political consultant David Axelrod and Rev. Jesse Jackson also wrote letters on his behalf.
Creamer’s ties to the Democratic community are so deep that Moran considered recusing himself from the case. The judge, a former Democratic state representative from Evanston, said he had a potential conflict of interest because his son-in-law, political consultant Peter Giangreco, had worked with Creamer and Schakowsky and had sat on the board of one of Creamer’s organizations.
However, neither defense attorneys nor prosecutors voiced concerns about Moran’s connections to Creamer.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph Ferguson said Wednesday that he was disappointed in the sentence and that prosecutors would consider whether to appeal.
But Ferguson expressed satisfaction that Creamer, despite “having the benefit of that powerful network of individuals, is going to jail.”
Creamer admitted in August that as the head of Illinois Public Action, he directed underlings to deposit insufficiently funded checks into various bank accounts, thus allowing the group to temporarily use money that it didn’t have.
Prosecutors said Creamer used the tactic in 1993, 1996 and 1997, when the scheme was detected with Creamer owing $1.4 million to Cole Taylor Bank.
The tax charge stemmed from Creamer’s failure to make withholding-tax payments. Prosecutors dismissed 28 counts in exchange for the guilty plea.
(snip)
//
October 09, 2009
Mayor Daley Appoints Joseph Ferguson as City's New Inspector General
Has Spent Past 15 Years in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2402358/posts
Was Democrats’ Health Care Strategy Written In Federal Prison?—
Big government breitbart ^ | Dec 7th 2009 | Joel B. Pollak
Rep. Schakowsky’s husband, Robert Creamer, used to be the leader of Citizen Action/Illinois. He also founded its predecessor, Illinois Public Action, in which Ms. Schakowsky served as Program Director. He runs a political consulting firm, the Strategic Consulting Group, which lists ACORN and the SEIU among its clients and which made $541,000 working for disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.
Creamer resigned from Citizen Action/Illinois after the FBI began investigating him for bank fraud and tax evasion at Illinois Public Action. He was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to five months in federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, plus eleven months of house arrest.
While in prison—or “forced sabbatical,” he called it—Creamer wrote a lengthy political manual, Listen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight! How Progressives Can Win (Seven Locks Press, 2007).
The book was endorsed by leading Democrats and their allies, including SEIU boss Andy Stern—the most frequent visitor thus far to the Obama White House—and chief Obama strategist David Axelrod, who noted that Creamer’s tome “provides a blueprint for future victories.”
In the book, Creamer draws lessons from decades of experience on the radical left, including the teachings of arch-radical Saul Alinsky, and several episodes from Rep. Schakowsky’s political career. He also lays out a “Progressive Agenda for Structural Change,” which includes a ten-point plan for foisting universal health care on the American people in 2009:
(Excerpt) Read more at biggovernment.com ...
This just makes me SICK!
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