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.

31925793-Defendant-brief-Sentencing-March-21-2006

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…”.

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Now that ObamaCare is the law of the land, it’s time to redouble our efforts to make sure that what the Wall Street Journal aptly called, the “worst bill ever” remains front and center from now through the historic Democratic massacre that must take place on November 2, 2010. Even in supposedly safe Democratic districts, we must be outspoken about our revulsion for the multi-trillion dollar scam called ObamaCare, perpetrated—Hugo Chavez style—against the overwhelming will of the American people. Since the Deautocrats in Congress are making decisions that have a colossal impact on my life, I thought it a good idea to get to know our new masters better, and to start holding them accountable for their destructive policies.

Congressman Steve Rothman, Deautocrat from New Jersey’s 9^th district, is serving his 7^th term. Rothman was an early and active supporter of Barack Obama. Here is Rothman’s endorsement of the inexperienced and radical Obama in Dec of 2007:

“I think he is an authentic agent for change, but not only that – he brings to that his extraordinary life experience, his brilliance, his vast knowledge of American and world history and his years as a community organizer as a legislator on both the state and federal level.”

Congressman Rothman is a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which allocates all of the funds in the federal budget. Rothman has used this position to bring home his share of pork. But bringing home the bacon—arguably a virtue during normal times—is certainly a vice at a time when America is following in the economic footsteps of Greece. Rothman’s verbal virtuosity, combined with his even keeled demeanor, gives many of his constituents the impression he is politically moderate. Nothing could be further from the truth.  Congressman Rothman has recklessly voted with the ruinous, budget busting agenda of Nancy Pelosi 99% of the time (you can see for yourself on http://www.opencongress.org/).

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Violent protests by public employees  in Greece who are upset that they might have to give up their 13th and 14th months salary is the ultimate sign of dependency. The private sector behaved slightly better but still opposed the changes (“We want the government to take back these measures which freeze our pay rises and force us to stay longer in the workforce,” said Maria Grigoropoulou, a cosmetics store employee. )

These guys seem unable to conceive that they could take care of themselves for a change and not just receive money from the government in exchange for nothing. And yet the Greek austerity plan isn’t that austere ( some wage cuts for public workers, a three-year freeze on pensions and a second increase this year in sales taxes and the price of fuel, alcohol and tobacco,) especially compared to the self-imposed austerity plans in Lithuania and Latvia.

With that in mind, let’s look at what’s happening in the United States. Obviously, we are not Greeks. Yet, the level of dependency is growing in America. Check out this chart.

On this chart we can see the changes over time in the composition of personal income in the United States since 1929. The most notable trend is the increase in the portion of personal income coming from government transfers (mainly social Security payments, unemployment benefits, food stamps, and personal and business tax credits.)  And the increase isn’t minor: the proportion of total personal income constituted by government money has grown from 0.9% to 17.2%.

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The BP oil rig explosion will be President Obama’s ‘Katrina’ — in fact, it will potentially be much worse in terms of long term effect. While President Bush took a matter of a few days to mobilize federal assistance to flooded New Orleans, Obama has demonstrated near-complete incompetence and inaction over a month and counting. Still, there is no leadership or clear-cut solution to answer one of the worst environmental disasters in modern time. Eleven people are dead, fisheries and scores of fragile ecosystems dying day-by-day. President Obama finds himself deservedly being attacked from the left and the right.

Environmental activist Robert Redford is demanding action from the administration. When Barack Obama starts losing the Robert Redfords of the world — something is terribly wrong. Redford has even taken to the airwaves with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a liberal special interest group, to call the President out on the lackluster response to the spill and feet-dragging on energy legislation. Robert Redford has every right to be angry, along with boaters, fishermen, Governors, Mayors and the millions who live, vacation and work on the Gulf. I suspect there will be more than a few NRA members who will dearly miss duck hunting along Lousiana’s once-pristine marshlands.

The White House answer to the disaster in the Gulf: ‘let BP handle it.’ Put the oil company in charge of the epic disaster they created. Every day, the tendrils of the slick reach further into currents that will carry the sludge to new shores, killing everything in its path. To disperse the oil, BP is dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemicals into the Gulf — to the alarm of the EPA. Increasingly, independent scientific estimates place the amount of oil at 14 times the amount stated by BP. So, what is President Obama’s position on all this? He doesn’t have one. What is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) official assessment of the magnitude of this mess? There isn’t one. And that’s the problem.

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Recent financial headlines provide a remarkable glimpse into America’s future if we stay on the same track we are now.  From Bloomberg news we learned:  “US Stocks fluctuate amid concerns European debt crisis hasn’t run course.”  Meanwhile, the IMF predicted that the “US national debt will soon reach 100% of GDP.”  Sadly, the World’s, the United States’ and California’s (16% of the US Economy and the 9th largest economy in the world) financial prospects are far worse than those headlines recognize.

The US economy is nearing $15 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP) per year.   The national debt it carries on the books is nearly that high and will certainly reach it, and far surpass it, within 2 years given the trillion dollar deficits that are predicted as far as the eye can see.  Of course, off the books, in accounting that would make Enron blush, the US government has $75 trillion or more in long term unfunded liabilities.  On a more short term basis consider this: the US Government revenues are running below $3 trillion dollars per year – yet its debt is over $13 trillion and growing.  In other words, the existing US debt is 4 to 5 times its current revenue.

Imagine if you will, if your credit card debt was 4 times your current income and the income you are likely to earn in each of the next 4 years.  There is not a bankruptcy attorney in the country that would not tell you that it is time to declare bankruptcy.  For its part, California is projected to have unfunded liabilities as high as $600 billion or 6 ½ times it current revenues.   Sadly for the US and California taxpayers, bankruptcy is simply not an option.

All of which brings us to the European debt crisis – which has anything but run its course.  Indeed, German Chancellor Merkel said this about the recent bailout of Greece: “We didn’t do more than buy time . . .” to get their collective government houses in order.  Meanwhile, USA Today, whose financial reporting is rather blunt at times, featured this headline: US “Investor fears ignite sell-off.”

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The European debt crisis appears to be getting worse. As Big Government readers know, the crisis playing out with the Euro is simply a foreshadowing of things to come here. It won’t be pretty.

At a press conference last Wednesday with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, President Barack Obama said his administration was taking a “very close look” at Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigration law, “for any implications, especially for civil rights.”

So while the Obama Administration looks at civil rights implications, the big question to ask is will they also look at the implications of the radical Islamic terrorists in America—including those who have taken advantage of the broken U.S. immigration system?

What? Radical Islamic terrorists are in America?

According to a previously disclosed 2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment, the answer is a resounding yes, and among them are members of; Al-Qa’ida, Al-Shabaab, HAMAS, Hizballah, Jama’at al-Tabligh, Jama’at ul Fuqra, Lashkar-e Tayyiba, the Muslim Brotherhood, Sunni Extremists, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Islamic Jihad Union, and the Taliban.

This information you will not learn from the Obama Administration’s Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who considers acts of terror to be man-made disasters. The same Secretary Napolitano, who quickly condemned the Arizona immigration law (intended to do the job the Federal government failed to do), even though she had not read it.

Nor would you know that Islamic radical terrorists have taken advantage of America’s immigration crisis by listening to Attorney General Eric Holder either. Instead, for instance, he obfuscated then refused to identify radical Islam as the motive behind the failed Times Square terrorist attack earlier this month, after Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen (via marriage) from Pakistan, who returned to the States after five months of terror training in Waziristan, was arrested. Holder is considering suing Arizona over their immigration law even though, as he admitted last week, he had not read it either.

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So the New York Times is lifting the curtain — just slightly — on the bankruptcies of state that are inherently demanded by the European “social democratic model” also embraced by the Obama administration to this very hour. That’s the same administration that out, of the other side of its mouth, is pressing Europe to cut off the spigot of public debt to avoid going under and dragging us with it.

After all, Team Obama have a “fundamental transformation” to impose, can’t let it be overwhelmed with public curiosity about what caused things in the workers’ paradise to go so horribly wrong. Also, focusing on shoring up our own mess wouldn’t be conducive to imposing the rest of Obama’s agenda, beginning with the “green economy” which of course is all about “organizing society” and nothing about “climate” etc., as I detail here.

Oddly, nowhere in the Times’ piece do we see mention of “green” or “renewable” energy, an expensive and net job-killing boondoggle of a fetish imposing massive economic inefficiencies and redundancies at the cost of staggering debt and “skyrocketing” energy costs. It is precisely what is dragging Spain down at the moment, as even the Spanish socialists are now admitting.

Maybe that’s because Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid is looking to bring the debacle to a vote before the 4th of July recess, which would be followed by a conference on the House’ own cap-and-trade insult, then enactment as the law of the land. Hey now, don’t dream it’s over. Until they adjourn sine die, the Left knows this baby’s in play and are determined to cram the Power Grab down.

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President Barack Obama could use Sarah Palin about right now.  With oil gushing into the Gulf and no end in sight, Palin appeared on Fox News Sunday demanding an answer why President Obama is “”taking so doggone long to get in there, to dive in there, and grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico.”

It is no surprise Palin should grasp the BP disaster better than Obama.  She was Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the state’s oil and gas fields for safety and ethics.  Palin was a whistleblower on the commission, turning in a fellow Republican who was leaking information to oil insiders.  As a former governor of Alaska, she presided over 20 percent of America’s domestically produced oil production – big, unforgiving outposts like Prudhoe Bay, North America’s largest oil field.  In fact, it is her knowledge of big oil that thrust her into America’s living rooms.

During the summer of 2008, as Americans grappled with record high gas prices, Palin had a practical appeal to John McCain’s Presidential campaign.  Palin may not have had international savvy, but she had something to say about energy and how to handle the big oil companies.

Scan the skyline of downtown Anchorage and nearly every tall building reads like an interstate pit stop – Shell, Exxon, BP.   A governor here must learn the oil business, while being mindful not to become a shill for the international conglomerates who play high stakes. What’s more, the Exxon Valdez was a hard learned lesson in Alaska that taught generations of Alaskans a hard lesson about co-existing with oil in your backyard.

So, when Sarah Palin was governor, she was no pushover.

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Thirty-seven current Democrat U.S. Senators, along with former Senators Barack Obama and Joseph Biden, believed that Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, or Samuel Alito were not sufficiently qualified to be on the Supreme Court. Using their own standards, Elena Kagan is also not sufficiently qualified and these 39 Democrats therefore should not support her nomination.

Bork, Thomas, Roberts and Alito, at the time they were nominated for the Supreme Court, had significantly more experience, scholarship, and/or accomplishments than Kagan does now.

Bork served in the U.S. Marine Corps, in private practice for several years, as U.S. Solicitor General, as one of America’s most influential antitrust scholars, and as an U.S. circuit judge. Thomas served as Missouri’s Assistant Attorney General, in-house counsel for a major corporation, a U.S. Senate aide, Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and a U.S. circuit judge. Roberts served as Special Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General, Associate White House Counsel, Principal Deputy Solicitor General, and head of the appellate practice at Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells), which was the oldest major law firm headquartered in Washington, D.C. and which now has some 2,500 attorneys worldwide. Roberts also argued dozens of Supreme Court cases and was an U.S. circuit judge prior to his Supreme Court nomination. Alito, among other things, argued a dozen Supreme Court cases as Assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General, was U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, and was an U.S. circuit judge.

Kagan does not have this same level of accomplishment.

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The race issue refuses to disappear from American politics because problems tied to race persist.

Just as children are often the best witnesses to the shortcomings of parents, so the ill treated are often testimony to a nation’s shortcomings.

Sen. James Meeks (left)

The civil rights movement showed that in a nation which is free, civil, and moral, a few can create a non-violent revolution and change the world when their claims are just and moral, and when they are willing to fight and persist.

Just as that movement, starting with a few black leaders in the 1960’s, showed that our nation was sick and needed to be healed, the same thing is happening today.

A superb example is the remarkable leadership of Rev. James Meeks in Chicago.

Pastor Meeks, the spiritual leader of one of Chicago’s largest black churches, is also a Democrat senator in the state legislature.  Working with both Democrats and Republicans, and with the help of a free market think tank in Illinois, Meeks put together legislation to provide vouchers for kids in Chicago’s worst public schools to escape and attend a private school.

Increasingly, school choice initiatives around the country are being championed at the grass roots by local black leaders, often Democrats, for whom the truth is too straightforward to deny.

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If you haven’t read by now all the headlines on this story, you’ll want to start at the beginning and read the first post, SEIU Storms Private Residence, Terrorizes Teenage Son of Bank of America Exec.  Because as each day passes, new facts are popping up.  The story seemed so outrageous at first.  After all, the thought of over 500 screaming and chanting protesters surrounding a Bank of America lawyer’s private residence while the man’s teenage son, home alone, hid frightened inside a bathroom – it’s just so extreme, even by SEIU’s standards.

I knew something was up when the following day, Fortune magazine editor Nina Easton, a neighbor of the targeted residence, published an account of the incident and was almost immediately attacked by what seemed like practically a coordinated dogpile of writers from several specific sources.

In almost mirror fashion to the Town Hall events last August, when both the Huffington Post and Media Matters seemingly tried to cover up and dismiss the violent acts that SEIU committed against Kenneth Gladney, the same players were again out in full force.  As our Larry O’Connor wrote, both outlets behaved less like journalists and more like arms of the SEIU press office, dismissing SEIU’s bad behavior and attacking an innocent party with fabricated conflicts of interest as a method of distraction and intimidation.

Bob Borosage, Erica Payne, and John Podesta

And now we learn this:  Erica Payne, the guest who was invited to appear Friday on Megyn Kelley’s Fox News show and proceeded to blame the Tea Parties for the behavior of SEIU?  She was co-founder of Democracy Alliance, the very organization that spawned and is a donor to Media Matters.  SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger is also the Vice-Chair of its Board.

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A battle is raging in Texas over our children’s minds. One of the focal points is the “wall of separation” between church and state. It’s a wall based on a false assumption, one that has distorted religious freedom in this country.

The Texas Board of Education must approve textbooks taught in Texan public schools. Its members are the gatekeepers who determine whether a textbook meets curriculum requirements. That board recently met to approve the next generation of books.

But as goes Texas, so goes the nation, because Texan standards are then adopted for textbooks sold all over America. So publishers take drafts to Texas for consultation and approval, making changes as necessary.

One of the changes that conservatives are pushing is for these textbooks to include a discussion of the “wall of separation between church and state.” More specifically, they are pushing for a discussion of what the Founding Fathers thought of this wall.

That is a worthwhile classroom discussion, because the Founding Fathers never created such a wall. That’s why it’s not mentioned in the Constitution.

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Congress and the Administration have now picked their targets for regulatory reform following the long-inflating credit bubble that finally burst in 2008, the aftermath of which still suppresses economic activity here in America as well as the rest of the world.

Commercial banks, investment banks, financial products, derivatives, etc. . . .all were placed in the crosshairs of the big legislative and regulatory guns in Washington and, perhaps, well they should be. One trophy-size culprit, however, seems nowhere to be found on the target lists of the Congressional or Administration grenadiers. Fannie Mae, that publically traded, congressionally created, private enterprise (GSE or government-sponsored enterprise in beltway speak) seems to have totally escaped the purview of the government blame seekers.  Small wonder.

Of all of the bailouts handed over to private banks, investment firms, automobile companies and insurance companies, none have been more outrageous than the bailouts provided to Fannie Mae and it’s first cousin, Freddie Mac.  Although the government very belatedly seized these GSEs, taxpayer money continues to be provided to these hybrid public‑private creations right under our collective noses each and every day.  The Congressional pontificators have focused attention on every miscreant except the one they (or their predecessors) created and which they continue to feed.

Everyone agrees that the overheated housing market created a pricing bubble that was destined, like the San Andreas Fault or Eyjafjalljokull, the volcanic mountain in Iceland, to experience a major blow-up.

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President Barack Obama and his administration, is shamefully deeply connected to the people and organizations that recently organized street mob protests, terrifying a teenage child in his own home, and storming bank buildings (violating how many Federal laws?) in a show of uncivil disobedience (intimidation).

Previous posts detail the intimate connections between the President, and “Showdown in America” protest organizers SEIU and National People’s Action (NPA)

Digging a little deeper reveals some additional disturbing connections between President Obama, and other organizers of these mob actions. These connections might be of interest to any reporters who claim the White House as their beat.

Another key organizing force behind the “Showdown in America” is a group called Americans For Financial Reform. This group is headed by former SDS radical and proud Alinsky protege, Heather Tobis Booth.

Heather Tobis Booth is the founder of a group called USAction.

USAction used to be called Citizen Action, until the illegal behavior of  Rep. Jan Shakowsky’s husband, ex-con Bob Creamer (Obama Campaign Organizer), combined with the notorious “Teamstergate” scandal, forced the organization to collapse it’s national brand into a newly named entity. (This collapse and restructuring is the role model for ACORN’s transition today.)

In the video below, the president of USAction and Chair of Illinois Citizen Action, William McNary, openly glorifies and embraces a working relationship with the Communist Party of America (CPUSA).

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Today, in 1844, the first telegraph line in the US opened. Operating between Washington D.C. and Baltimore, MD, it was inaugurated by Samuel Morse with the message, “What Hath God Wrought?” Our lives are the grandchildren of that event.

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Rob and Peter fly Steyn-less this week. Nonetheless, sharp analysis of the Kagan nomination from Richard Epstein and John Yoo and a wide ranging conversation with Fred Thompson who discusses his new book, the state of the nation and the world at large, his aspirations for higher office, and his thoughts on the cancellation of a certain TV show. As always, join the conversation on our Facebook page or on Twitter (@ricochet) or write us at podcast@ricochet.com.

Suzanne Fields in the Washington Times:

Punditry and wonkery are great fun, and occasionally get things right, but a man named Jonathan Kahn actually represents something new for conservatives to sing about. He’s on his way to becoming an authentic hip-pop culture hero.

When he made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, it looked like the journal of high finance had been smoking something from the ’60s. Why would a guitar-plucking singer from Hollywood who wears sunglasses, a baseball cap and a fashionably scruffy beard that begs for soap and a razor be news? But you quickly learn that he’s not a throwback, but a leap forward. His lyrics to “American Heart’” appeal to patriotic derring-do:

Go on, raise the flag

I got staaaarrrs in my eyes.”

It’s Tea Party time from Searchlight, Nev., to Music Row in Nashville.

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