The Central Illinois 9/12 Project became the first to expose — beginning this past March on BigGovernment.com – Shorebank’s extensive green and microfinancing agendas, in anticipation of that bank’s impending bailout.  Shorebank, a Chicago-based, community investment bank, is focused on domestic and foreign microfinancing, is heavily engaged in the financing of “green” projects and “green” jobs, and has a host of ties to the Obama and Clinton administrations. The Central Illinois 9/12 Project has most recently highlighted the bank seeking and obtaining funds from larger banks–such as Chase, Banks of America, and Goldman Sachs — to secure the necessary funding to remain viable.

The fact that Shorebank had the opportunity to be rescued while other banks were allowed to fail proved to be curious to Illinois residents, and for a time it was unknown if the bank would receive enough funds from private entities to qualify for a federally-funded bailout. Such curious treatment sent up a red flag for some Congressional members and thus influenced the formation of the financial reform bill.  Through an amendment offered by Congresswoman Judy Biggert and Congressman Spencer Bachus, the House Financial Committee voted to approve inquiries into the negotiations between the White House and any bank that had been ordered to cease engaging in unsound banking practice, via an amendment to the House finance reform bill in late June.

The Central Illinois 912 Project has learned from an assistant for Biggert that Biggert’s office sent a letter to the White House regarding this probe, but the White House denied receiving that initial letter. Biggert’s office sent a second letter which the White House acknowledged receiving; however, the White House has never responded to it.  This probe would not only have been for Shorebank, but for all other banks that have received bailout funds since June 2009 — and it would have prevented those banks from receiving any TARP funding while under investigation. Potentially, if the bill was passed and signed into law and the probe was started within the given amount of time, Shorebank would have folded without the needed TARP funds to match the private sector’s matching funds (i.e., funds from larger banks).   However, when this bill was passed by the House, the amendment was removed by Senate negotiators.

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The Obama Administration, once again, is in need of a villain to serve as a political piñata, and it is now clear that Goldman Sachs has been selected to fill the villain void.

Careful observers will note that Team Obama  is never content to argue the potential benefits of their increasingly dodgy legislation (e.g. Stimulus, Healthcare, Cap and Trade).  Obama is no fool; he understands that his wealth redistribution schemes, his desire to grow government, to provide new kickbacks to Unions, and to crush small business growth are so antithetical to most Americans that passage and support require that a villain be found that can be blamed for any and all possible evils.

Already, we have seem Team Obama single out CEOs of automotive manufacturing corporations, financial industries, drug manufacturers, and health insurance companies for special, public floggings.  So, it should come as no surprise that, once again, President Obama has found a convenient, new villain, Goldman Sachs, to be publicly flogged and abused, to help drive support for the President’s complicated, new, financial regulations and bank oversight legislation.

Cynical minds must wonder at the timeliness of the SEC’s charges of fraud levied against Goldman Sachs . Consider the exhaustion of Congress after the recent healthcare reform struggle.  As a result, the legislation for financial reform, among other proposed reforms,  had been lagging and moving lethargically in the Senate.  With another election cycle approaching, legislators were finding it hard to rally interest in, yet another, bloated piece of legislation which did little to address the Wall Street abuses that initially caused the interest in the financial reform.

All 41 GOP senators were united, voicing strong language against a useless, toothless piece of legislation, and their objections began to garner support.  Even Obama apologist,  Paul Krugman, weighed in, saying that no reform was better than the lame legislation currently being considered.

But then, just as Financial reform was crawling on its belly, going off to die, the “crisis” with Goldman Sachs suddenly occurred.  How remarkably convenient!   Suddenly, the financial reform legislation has new life, and a pitchfork campaign to further demonize Goldman Sachs is in full gear.

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What would Saul Alinksy do?

In the wake of defeats for the Obama administration last month both with Scott Brown’s stunning Senate victory in the bluest of blue states and the Supreme Court Citizens United decision that will let thousands of groups speak more freely about candidates positions’ in the 2010 elections and beyond, that’s the question President Obama and his allies are probably asking. It’s also the question that proponents of limited, constitutional government and free enterprise must be asking in order to anticipate the organized Left’s next moves.

Alinksy was the father of left-wing community organizing. He wrote the book Rules for Radicals and other primers, which explained to would-be leftist organizers how to “search out controversy” and “fan the latent hostilities.” Seeing the world as a never-ending conflict between the “haves and have-nots,” Alinsky wrote In Rules for Radicals that “in war, the end justifies almost any means.”  One community organizer who took Alinsky’s words to heart was a young Barack Obama, who worked for an offshoot of Alinsky’s network of organizations in Chicago in the 1980s. Throughout his career, according to the Washington Post, Obama has “embraced many of Alinsky’s tactics.”

And one tactic in Alinsky’s arsenal dovetails almost perfectly with Obama’s new focus on so-called “financial reform” and his bashing of Wall Street to score political points. One of Alinsky’s most important rules for radicals was that “you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.” In this case, the “moral garment” is the supposed interest of shareholders.

Obama and Democrats are pushing legislation they claim would empower average investors against powerful corporate executives. They propose requiring a shareholder vote on everything from CEO pay to – in a move to limit the freedoms in the Citizens United decision — companies’ weighing in on political candidates.

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Part one of a series

In researching the ever-intensifying Massachusetts Senate race between Democrat Martha Coakley and her Republican challenger Scott Brown, it only takes a few keystrokes to unearth her ongoing history of questionable judgment and puzzling prosecutorial decisions.  Even though the election has been effectively nationalized, with some polls showing the underdog Brown within two points or so of the colorless Coakley, she remains largely unknown outside New England.

So as a public service to the voters of the Bay State, during the run-up to the special election on Jan. 19, Big Journalism will be offering some of the Martha’s Greatest Hits, so that they can fully make up their minds whether she would make a suitable successor to the late Edward Moore Kennedy – who, as you recall, began his illustrious career by being expelled from Harvard for cheating, went on to drown Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick, and then turned to a life of drinking and debauchery, including the infamous “waitress sandwich” with soon-to-be-retired Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, before attempting to inflict “universal health care” on the country shortly before his death last year.

You can read all about Ted here in this classic profile of the last and worst of the Kennedy brothers by the late Michael Kelly.  Be sure to read the whole thing, just to get a flavor of the kind of candidate Massachusetts voters seem to like.

Homework done?  Good.  Because Martha Coakley, the current Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and thus its top law enforcement officer, is shaping up as a worthy heir to the Lion of the Senate.(more…)

It’s another day with the Federal Reserve at the center of discussion as Ben Bernanke heads to New York City to give some significant remarks. Should the Fed be more transparent? Should it be audited? We’ll talk about that and how the markets respond to the latest retail report on the latest Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

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Related Links:

AP: Stocks Rise on Retail Report
WSJ: The Fed and Transparency
David Ignatius: Dodd and the Fed
Cafe Hayek: Adam Smith and Financial Regulation
TNL: Chris Dodd’s Big Regulation Push