It’s the Chicago way. The scheme of a sophisticated criminal conspiracy. A devious, deceitful shakedown and money-laundering operation hidden beneath the guise of a legitimate business. Just the sort of corrupt enterprise you’d expect from a close-knit “family” that hails from Siciliy…or from the Southside.
A hard-hitting analysis from National Review Online shows that kind of description to be anything but hyperbole when considering how Barack Obama and his consigliere, Eric Holder, are seizing money from all sorts of businesses regulated under the crushing thumb of big government…then redistributing those funds to Leftist organizations working with the regime to “fundamentally transform” America.
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It’s a shocking, sobering read that draws heavily on investigative reporting by Investors Business Daily. Among the compelling evidence offered for the charge of “fraud and extortion” is the intense pressure the DOJ and other federal regulators put on financial institutions…fines and settlements in the billions…with much of that money then funneled to hardcore progressives:
…Eric Holder, the Tom Hagen of this racketeering enterprise of an administration, is using the [money] that DOJ muscle is extorting from the banks to pour tens of millions of dollars into the coffers of the radical Left’s top rabble-rousers – in addition to diverting what should be public funds to pay off delinquent debts in cities that Democrats have destroyed.
This from Investors Business Daily:
Radical Democrat activist groups stand to collect millions from Attorney General Eric Holder’s record $17 billion deal to settle alleged mortgage abuse charges against Bank of America.
Buried in the fine print of the deal, which includes $7 billion in soft-dollar consumer relief, are a raft of political payoffs to Obama constituency groups. In effect, the government has ordered the nation’s largest bank to create a massive slush fund for Democrat special interests.
Besides requiring billions in debt forgiveness payments to delinquent borrowers in Cleveland, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago and other Democrat strongholds — and up to $500 million to cover personal taxes owed on those checks — the deal requires BofA to make billions in new loans, while also building affordable low-income rental housing in those areas.
The investigation goes on to reveal the patterns and pathways that the government-extracted riches follow to get to their ultimate Leftist beneficiaries, such as the now-infamous Obama-extension group ACORN. Included in the process chain of the “laundering” operation are progressive organizations with legitimate-sounding names like NeighborWorks:
The [Investors Business Daily] editorial goes on to explain that NeighborWorks, in fact, provided $25 million in 2008-09 to the housing division of the notorious, Obama-allied ACORN – the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, which ostensibly disbanded after a 2009 scandal dried up its government funding. In 2011, NeighborWorks doled out $35 million to similar groups, including the “Affordable Housing Alliance,” which pressures banks to make the kind of high-risk loans that caused the financial crisis and has ties to Obama officials.
And the recent multi-billion-dollar settlement with Bank of America that promises to fatten the Obama-Holder goodie jar is far from the only exampled of corrupt practices:
IBD [Investors Business Daily] reminds us that similar funding for Democrat activists has been written into the $20 billion in settlements for which JPMorgan Chase and Citibank were shaken down. This is massive fraud and extortion. The heavily regulated financial institutions are at the government’s mercy – that’s why they were making the bad loans in the first place, under pressure from politicians and the very organizations Holder is now inducing them to underwrite.
Critics of the Obama administration’s many-tentacled strategy for redistributing wealth have long argued that government systems and power have been, and will be, perverted and misused by the White House and its malicious minions. After all, this president and his party firmly believe that, “to the victor go the spoils.” Elections have consequence…they won…and now America is losing big.