Giannoulias Features Radical Left-Wing Activist at Campaign Press Conference, Defends Him When Questioned
Watch the Video
Key Questions for Alexi Giannoulias:
1. Did you know that David Borris was a radical left-wing activist who opposed the Afghan war, Iran sanctions and Israel’s right to self-defense before you invited him to be your campaign surrogate?
2. If you did not know, is it because you applied the same kind of vetting procedures you employed while Chief Loan Officer at Broadway Bank?
3. Do you agree with Mr. Borris that all members of Illinois National Guard should be withdrawn from Afghanistan?
4. Do you agree with Mr. Borris that Iran is only interested in peaceful nuclear energy and that the United States should not pursue economic sanctions against the regime?
5. Do you agree with Mr. Borris that Israel was wrong to declare Gaza a “hostile entity” after months of continuous Hamas rocket attacks?
Background:
Yesterday, just five days after announcing his support for a state income tax increase, Alexi Giannoulias held a press conference to highlight his support for 12 new federal taxes contained in the newly enacted trillion-dollar health care bill.
Since non-partisan small business owners (and the National Federation of Independent Business) know that the health care bill will raise costs, slow growth and kill jobs, Alexi Giannoulias needed to find partisan surrogates to advance his high-tax agenda.
Alexi Giannoulias turned to Hel’s Kitchen owner David Borris – a radical left-wing activist who disagrees with President Obama when it comes to the Afghan surge, Iran sanctions and Israel’s right to self-defense.
* Last year, Borris signed a petition to withdraw all Illinois National Guard from Afghanistan and Iraq.
* In 2007, Borris signed a petition condemning Israel for actions taken to protect its citizens from Hamas terrorist Qassam rocket attacks.
* In 2006, Borris signed a petition opposing sanctions against Iran and stating his belief that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Giannoulias’s Shady Dealings with Iran
Giannoulias’s Shady Dealings
Illinois Senate candidate does business with French bank known for its financing of Iran’s energy sector.
BY Daniel Halper
March 19, 2010 6:02 AM
Alexi Giannoulias is no stranger to controversial business relationships: As chief loan officer at his family’s Broadway Bank, the Illinois Democrat running for President Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat authorized loans to convicted organized crime leaders like Michael “Jaws” Giorango (a pimp and bookmaker) and Demitri Stavropoulos (an illegal gambling operator). Giannoulias also serviced loans for convicted felon Tony Rezko.
And, just last week, a Chicago businessman who contributed $115,000 to Giannoulias’s campaign and received millions in loans from Broadway Bank was arrested on bank fraud charges as he attempted to flee the country.
Giannoulias, currently the state treasurer of Illinois, has some disturbing, if indirect, business connections to Iran.
Although several legislative efforts in Congress are currently in the works to apply more sanctions to Iran, and although Giannoulias has called Iran “the greatest single threat to peace in the Middle East,” when it comes to his personal finances, however, Giannoulias does not apply the same standards.
Giannoulias owns stock in his family’s Giannoulias Enterprises, a limited partnership that owns several properties in Chicago. Giannoulias’s brother, Demetris, serves as the president.
In April 2007, Giannoulias Enterprises refinanced its real estate portfolio, taking out a $21.5 million, 10-year loan on six properties – four of them being the locations of the family’s Broadway Bank. With all the banks in the world to choose from, Giannoulias Enterprises selected the French investment bank Natixis – an institution with a long and public history of doing business in Iran.
In 2007, the French bank held $117 million in deposits from the Central
That’s right. The same year Natixis held $117 million in deposits from the Central Bank of Iran, the Giannoulias family took out a $21.5 million loan.
And it’s hard to claim ignorance when the French bank’s involvement in Iran was widely reported for years. One would assume the Giannouliases understood whom they were doing business with.
In 2005, Natexis – which merged with IXIS to form Natixis in 2006 - participated in a $108 million refinancing deal for three oil tankers owned by the state-owned National Iranian Tanker Company. It also participated in a $1.1 billion loan to finance new facilities for National Iranian Tanker Co. in South Korea.
In 2004, the Financial Times reported that Natexis participated in a $1.745 billion financing package for National Iranian Oil Company to develop its South Pars natural gas fields.
In 2002, the AFP reported that the bank partnered with an Iranian bank, Karafarin Bank, to create an Iran-based leasing company for Iranian businesses. Also in 2002, the bank helped arrange $164 million in financing for Iran’s National Petrochemical Company to build an ethylene plant.
In 2001, the AFP reported that the bank participated in an $882 million syndicated loan to Iran’s National Petrochemical Company.
Alexi Giannoulias has some explaining to do
Illinois Senate candidate does business with French bank known for its financing of Iran’s energy sector.
BY Daniel Halper
March 19, 2010 6:02 AM
Alexi Giannoulias is no stranger to controversial business relationships: As chief loan officer at his family’s Broadway Bank, the Illinois Democrat running for President Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat authorized loans to convicted organized crime leaders like Michael “Jaws” Giorango (a pimp and bookmaker) and Demitri Stavropoulos (an illegal gambling operator). Giannoulias also serviced loans for convicted felon Tony Rezko.
And, just last week, a Chicago businessman who contributed $115,000 to Giannoulias’s campaign and received millions in loans from Broadway Bank was arrested on bank fraud charges as he attempted to flee the country.
Giannoulias, currently the state treasurer of Illinois, has some disturbing, if indirect, business connections to Iran.
Although several legislative efforts in Congress are currently in the works to apply more sanctions to Iran, and although Giannoulias has called Iran “the greatest single threat to peace in the Middle East,” when it comes to his personal finances, however, Giannoulias does not apply the same standards.
Giannoulias owns stock in his family’s Giannoulias Enterprises, a limited partnership that owns several properties in Chicago. Giannoulias’s brother, Demetris, serves as the president.
In April 2007, Giannoulias Enterprises refinanced its real estate portfolio, taking out a $21.5 million, 10-year loan on six properties – four of them being the locations of the family’s Broadway Bank. With all the banks in the world to choose from, Giannoulias Enterprises selected the French investment bank Natixis – an institution with a long and public history of doing business in Iran.
In 2007, the French bank held $117 million in deposits from the Central
That’s right. The same year Natixis held $117 million in deposits from the Central Bank of Iran, the Giannoulias family took out a $21.5 million loan.
And it’s hard to claim ignorance when the French bank’s involvement in Iran was widely reported for years. One would assume the Giannouliases understood whom they were doing business with.
In 2005, Natexis – which merged with IXIS to form Natixis in 2006 - participated in a $108 million refinancing deal for three oil tankers owned by the state-owned National Iranian Tanker Company. It also participated in a $1.1 billion loan to finance new facilities for National Iranian Tanker Co. in South Korea.
In 2004, the Financial Times reported that Natexis participated in a $1.745 billion financing package for National Iranian Oil Company to develop its South Pars natural gas fields.
In 2002, the AFP reported that the bank partnered with an Iranian bank, Karafarin Bank, to create an Iran-based leasing company for Iranian businesses. Also in 2002, the bank helped arrange $164 million in financing for Iran’s National Petrochemical Company to build an ethylene plant.
In 2001, the AFP reported that the bank participated in an $882 million syndicated loan to Iran’s National Petrochemical Company.
Alexi Giannoulias has some explaining to do
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Strategy
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/18/gop-uses-people-strategy-in-bid-to-grab-obama-seat/
Originally published 04:00 a.m., March 18, 2010, updated 05:34 a.m., March 18, 2010
Illinois GOP borrows Brown's strategy in bid to grab Obama seat
Joseph Curl
It worked in Massachusetts, so Illinois Republicans are looking for a repeat.
"This is not Obama's seat, it's the people's seat," Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, the Republican candidate running for Illinois' Senate seat vacated by the president, declares at campaign stops.
Eager to tap the voter angst and stump lines that propelled Sen. Scott Brown to unexpected victory in another Democrat-dominated state, Massachusetts, Mr. Kirk has made it clear that even though the president remains popular in his home state, his policies aren't.
And with just 38 percent of all Illinois voters giving Mr. Obama good or excellent ratings for his handling of health care reform, the five-term lawmaker is actually putting the Democratic stronghold in play.
"For the first time in a long time, the Republicans have a good chance of winning this Senate seat," said Paul Green, a professor of policy studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago.
Republican Party leaders in the state are making no secret that they'll target Mr. Obama as the consummate Washington insider, and the latest polls indicate some traction. A Rasmussen poll last week showed the race statistically tied, with Mr. Kirk trailing Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, the treasurer of Illinois and a basketball-playing friend of Mr. Obama's, by just three points, well within the survey's margin of error.
"President Obama's still very popular here, and he will always be popular here, but he hasn't shown any coattails," said Pat Brady, the state's Republican Party chairman.
"Anyone who's running against any of our Republicans in congressional or Senate campaigns, we're going to tie them directly to President Obama's policies, which are not popular here."
But some analysts say the GOP is walking a dangerous path in a blue state and suggest not overplaying the hand.
Mr. Green said Mr. Kirk could take an anti-Washington stance, attack House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, "but I'd stay away from Obama."
"He has to be careful, only because Kirk's success has been he's been able to straddle, to get a lot of people who vote Democratic to vote for Kirk," he said. "The Democratic Party here is in a whole bunch of trouble. You could spend all day doing that."
The woes of the Democratic Party, said DePaul University political analyst Michael Mezey, should keep the Republican from focusing his campaign on the president.
"That's probably the one mistake Mr. Kirk could make. I think Kirk would be silly to do this when he is running against a candidate who can be attacked on his own and has numerous weaknesses," he said.
Illinois Democrats have been mired in political scandals. In January 2009, the state legislature impeached and ousted Democrat Rod R. Blagojevich as governor. His trial on charges of racketeering, fraud, lying to investigators and trying to sell Mr. Obama's former U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder is set to begin in June and could run right up to the November election.
Mr. Obama's replacement in the Senate, Roland W. Burris, also made headlines when reports emerged that he had contacts with Mr. Blagojevich's brother before being appointed. The Senate Ethics Committee admonished him in November 2009; Mr. Burris is not seeking election to the seat.
In addition, Scott Cohen, a pawnbroker-turned-politician who won the Democratic nomination to run for lieutenant governor, became embroiled in a scandal over charges that he beat his girlfriend in 2005. Just a week after winning the nomination in February, he dropped out of the race.
Mr. Giannoulias, 33, has plenty of his own problems. He has been under scrutiny as state treasurer for his handling as of a college savings program that lost $150 million. His family's bank, Broadway Bank, where he worked as a lending officer before entering politics, is on the verge of takeover by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The bank made hundreds of millions of dollars in bad loans and shortly before the mortgage crisis, the Giannoulias family withdrew $70 million from the bank in 2007 and 2008, according to news reports.
Mr. Giannoulias also made millions of dollars in loans to Tony Rezko, a political fundraiser for Mr. Blagojevich who is awaiting sentencing on convictions of fraud and money laundering. He also made loans to Michael "Jaws" Giorango, a convicted prostitution-ring operator.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has gotten in on the act, issuing a Web video last month that mocked Mr. Kirk's opponent, asking at the end: "Is this change we can believe in?"
Mr. Obama carried Illinois over Sen. John McCain by a whopping 25 percentage points, 62 percent to 37 percent, in 2008. Fifty-six percent of voters in the state now approve of the job he is doing as president, the latest poll found.
What's more, Illinois voters, by a 52 percent to 39 percent margin, oppose the massive health care reform bill in its current form, preferring Congress pass smaller bills that address individual problems in a step-by-step approach.
Originally published 04:00 a.m., March 18, 2010, updated 05:34 a.m., March 18, 2010
Illinois GOP borrows Brown's strategy in bid to grab Obama seat
Joseph Curl
It worked in Massachusetts, so Illinois Republicans are looking for a repeat.
"This is not Obama's seat, it's the people's seat," Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, the Republican candidate running for Illinois' Senate seat vacated by the president, declares at campaign stops.
Eager to tap the voter angst and stump lines that propelled Sen. Scott Brown to unexpected victory in another Democrat-dominated state, Massachusetts, Mr. Kirk has made it clear that even though the president remains popular in his home state, his policies aren't.
And with just 38 percent of all Illinois voters giving Mr. Obama good or excellent ratings for his handling of health care reform, the five-term lawmaker is actually putting the Democratic stronghold in play.
"For the first time in a long time, the Republicans have a good chance of winning this Senate seat," said Paul Green, a professor of policy studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago.
Republican Party leaders in the state are making no secret that they'll target Mr. Obama as the consummate Washington insider, and the latest polls indicate some traction. A Rasmussen poll last week showed the race statistically tied, with Mr. Kirk trailing Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, the treasurer of Illinois and a basketball-playing friend of Mr. Obama's, by just three points, well within the survey's margin of error.
"President Obama's still very popular here, and he will always be popular here, but he hasn't shown any coattails," said Pat Brady, the state's Republican Party chairman.
"Anyone who's running against any of our Republicans in congressional or Senate campaigns, we're going to tie them directly to President Obama's policies, which are not popular here."
But some analysts say the GOP is walking a dangerous path in a blue state and suggest not overplaying the hand.
Mr. Green said Mr. Kirk could take an anti-Washington stance, attack House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, "but I'd stay away from Obama."
"He has to be careful, only because Kirk's success has been he's been able to straddle, to get a lot of people who vote Democratic to vote for Kirk," he said. "The Democratic Party here is in a whole bunch of trouble. You could spend all day doing that."
The woes of the Democratic Party, said DePaul University political analyst Michael Mezey, should keep the Republican from focusing his campaign on the president.
"That's probably the one mistake Mr. Kirk could make. I think Kirk would be silly to do this when he is running against a candidate who can be attacked on his own and has numerous weaknesses," he said.
Illinois Democrats have been mired in political scandals. In January 2009, the state legislature impeached and ousted Democrat Rod R. Blagojevich as governor. His trial on charges of racketeering, fraud, lying to investigators and trying to sell Mr. Obama's former U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder is set to begin in June and could run right up to the November election.
Mr. Obama's replacement in the Senate, Roland W. Burris, also made headlines when reports emerged that he had contacts with Mr. Blagojevich's brother before being appointed. The Senate Ethics Committee admonished him in November 2009; Mr. Burris is not seeking election to the seat.
In addition, Scott Cohen, a pawnbroker-turned-politician who won the Democratic nomination to run for lieutenant governor, became embroiled in a scandal over charges that he beat his girlfriend in 2005. Just a week after winning the nomination in February, he dropped out of the race.
Mr. Giannoulias, 33, has plenty of his own problems. He has been under scrutiny as state treasurer for his handling as of a college savings program that lost $150 million. His family's bank, Broadway Bank, where he worked as a lending officer before entering politics, is on the verge of takeover by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The bank made hundreds of millions of dollars in bad loans and shortly before the mortgage crisis, the Giannoulias family withdrew $70 million from the bank in 2007 and 2008, according to news reports.
Mr. Giannoulias also made millions of dollars in loans to Tony Rezko, a political fundraiser for Mr. Blagojevich who is awaiting sentencing on convictions of fraud and money laundering. He also made loans to Michael "Jaws" Giorango, a convicted prostitution-ring operator.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has gotten in on the act, issuing a Web video last month that mocked Mr. Kirk's opponent, asking at the end: "Is this change we can believe in?"
Mr. Obama carried Illinois over Sen. John McCain by a whopping 25 percentage points, 62 percent to 37 percent, in 2008. Fifty-six percent of voters in the state now approve of the job he is doing as president, the latest poll found.
What's more, Illinois voters, by a 52 percent to 39 percent margin, oppose the massive health care reform bill in its current form, preferring Congress pass smaller bills that address individual problems in a step-by-step approach.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Kirk sends letter to Obama about attacking Israel
Kiork the criticism is proving to be bipartisan. Pennsylvania Rep. Christopher Carney, a Democrat, and Illinois Republican Rep. Mark Kirk are sending a joint letter to Obama telling him to recommit to a number of principles, including “the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, [under which] official United States policy recognizes Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel.” Rep. Eliot Engel added his voice to those pro-Israel Democrats. (”We should not have a disproportionate response to Israel. We need to be careful and measured in our response, and I think we all have to take a step back.”) And Minority
Monday, March 15, 2010
Here is Kirk on Jerusalem. what does his opponent say?
Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk, now a Senate candidate, issued this statement as the mess unfolded last week:
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Jerusalem Embassy Act, making it official United States policy that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel,” Congressman Kirk said. “As a staff member, I helped draft this historic legislation; as a Congressman I continue to urge its enforcement. History teaches us that a divided Jerusalem leads to conflict while a unified Jerusalem protects the rights of all faiths. I urge the Administration to spend more time working to stop Iran from building nuclear bombs and less time concerned with zoning issues in Jerusalem. As Iran accelerates its uranium enrichment, we should not be condemning one of America’s strongest democratic allies in the Middle East.
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Jerusalem Embassy Act, making it official United States policy that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel,” Congressman Kirk said. “As a staff member, I helped draft this historic legislation; as a Congressman I continue to urge its enforcement. History teaches us that a divided Jerusalem leads to conflict while a unified Jerusalem protects the rights of all faiths. I urge the Administration to spend more time working to stop Iran from building nuclear bombs and less time concerned with zoning issues in Jerusalem. As Iran accelerates its uranium enrichment, we should not be condemning one of America’s strongest democratic allies in the Middle East.
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