Nice work, if you can get it:

The family of Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Alexi Giannoulias stands to collect more than $10 million in federal tax refunds even if its Broadway Bank fails, which Mr. Giannoulias said this week is likely.

A $75-million loss at the struggling lender last year generated tax benefits potentially worth between $12 million and $15 million to Mr. Giannoulias, his two brothers and his mother. As the sole owners of a subchapter S corporation that controls $1.2-billion-asset Broadway, they pay the taxes on the bank’s income and reap tax deductions on its losses.

The possibility of family members pocketing millions in tax refunds as Broadway slides toward insolvency and federal receivership is likely to fuel more controversy for Mr. Giannoulias, who is already under fire for his role in the bank’s downfall.

(Via Hot Air) Of course, not being in a rich banking family linked to Chicago’s culture of political corruption… oddly enough, that’s precisely the kind of work that I can’t get.  And then there’s this little gem:

Asked whether he would advise his family to put the tax refunds back into the bank to help recapitalize it, Mr. Giannoulias said, “We’ll do everything we can to keep the bank going. . . .You’ll have to ask management of the bank what the best course of action is.”

Translation: “No.”  Mind you, if they took this money and added it to the 70+ million in dividends that the Giannoulias family pulled in from the failing bank from 2006 to 2008, the bank would probably be able to avoid closing.  But that would hurt them; so better to let the bank fail, let the FDIC take it over, and let the taxpayers take the blow.  Much better, all around.

After all, the Giannoulias family got their refund.

Moe Lane

PS: Mark Kirk for Senate.  He doesn’t get paid three times for failure.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

(H/T: @sorendayton) You know, I noticed during the run-up to the Illinois Senatorial primary that more than one Democratic activist expressed worries about a Giannoulias primary win.  And why were they worried?

Pretty much because of what you’re about to see.

Welcome to Chicago.

Moe Lane

PS: Mark Kirk for Senate.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The RNC Resolution Concerning Party Support of Candidates:

WHEREAS, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have recently supported primary or special election candidates who professed allegiance to the Republican Party but who, as their circumstances changed and to serve their own interests, turned against the Republican Party and became or supported a candidate of another party; and

WHEREAS, many Republican leaders and Republican organizations were undermined and lost credibility as a result of the actions of such candidates; and

Just a few questions.  Does this statement apply to Rep. Mark Kirk who is a current candidate seeking the Republican US Senate nomination in Illinois?  If so, does this mean all those - John McCain, John Shimkus, Aaron Schock, Tim Johnson, Pat Brady, and others - have to drop their support and endorsements of Mark Kirk?

Take a moment to meet Mark Kirk, candidate for U.S. Senate in Illinois.

Mark Kirk…

Pat Brady, the Chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, says the anti-Mark Kirk element within the GOP is ‘fringe.’

That’s actually not quite true and is precisely why so many conservatives in Illinois don’t like Brady or Kirk — they feel repeated disrespected and treated as fringe.

In fact, considering how active the Illinois Tea Party movement is in opposing Kirk, Brady is, in effect, calling all of those activists fringe. He might want to be careful.

Conservatives across the country are seriously considering a last minute air-drop of support into Illinois for Pat Hughes. The thinking goes that the last minute effort to help Scott Brown put him over the finish line and the same could be done in these last eleven days before the Illinois GOP primary.

If conservatives come out early next week in an organized fashion, throw a pile of targeted money into Illinois, and rapidly drive up Pat Hughes’ name identification, the polling in Illinois suggests Hughes will win.

He is not polling well against Kirk right now, but then he has significantly lower name identification. All the polling suggests Kirk’s support is very week and once people find out about Hughes, they break overwhelmingly for Hughes.

It’ll be interesting to see if it is game on for Hughes in Illinois. We’ll see what conservatives do come Monday or Tuesday of this week.

My hangover from celebrating Scott Brown’s victory hasn’t even worn off yet, and here we have another headache to deal with.  The Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady has, in essence, called every Tea Partier/9-12er/conservative in Illinois a “fringe element”.  He does actually call us out by name, but the inference is there.

As I have stated before in prior posts, I have traveled across Illinois and I have yet to find a Tea Partier, 9-12er or real conservative that supports Rep. Mark Kirk, aka “He Who Shall Not Be Nominated”.  So to be clear, we are members of the “Dump Kirk” crowd that Pat Brady is referring to.

Brady goes on to explain that that IL GOP is unified.  Huh.  Not the last time I checked.  For those outside of Illinois, we have a massive problem with what we call the Illinois Combine.  In a nutshell, the bigwigs of both parties put up candidates that are so similar to each other that you can’t really distinguish between a Republican or Democrat which results in the regular voter (almost exclusively Republican voters) getting the shaft.  All the while, those party bigwigs ignore what the voters want.

The establishment GOP, notably Sen. John McCain, Rep. John Shimkus, Rep. Aaron Schock, and Rep. Tim Johnson have endorsed Mark Kirk - many before petitions were even turned in.  Being told by the party bosses who we should vote for (even before anyone has “officially” declared) is a pet peeve of many a Tea Partier/9-12er/conservative.

There are many of us mentioned above who favor other candidates for the US Senate on the Republican side.  Many support and endorse Patrick Hughes, including the Homer/Lockport (New Lennox 9-12 fame), Rockford, Joilet, Effingham Tea Parties, plus the great Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham.  On the same day as Chairman Brady’s dismissal of many of us, the Tea Party Nation released it’s endorsement of Patrick Hughes against Mark Kirk.  I guess that makes them a “fringe element” as well?  What about the Gun Owners of America who also endorsed Patrick Hughes? Or the various other conservative groups, Right to Life groups, and others who are against Mark Kirk.  What’s Pat Brady’s response?  We are just a “fringe element”.

Not too long ago, Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer was pushed to resign because of his ties and support of Charlie Crist against Marco Rubio, who enjoyed the support of Tea Partiers/9-12ers/conservatives.  Now, we here in Illinois seem to be faced with the same problem as Florida.  The largest and most significant difference between Florida and Illinois is that we have less than 2 weeks before we head to the polls to nominate our US Senate candidate!

Those national conservatives that are out there, please, help us here in Illinois.  You see what we’re up against.  Even our IL GOP Chairman is fighting against us!  If we can take New Jersey, Virginia, and now Massachusetts - the bluest of blue states - we can take Illinois back in the name of conservatism!

February 2, 2010 is the Illinois Republican Primary. Less than one month away. Patrick Hughes is running an upstart campaign against the would be Republican nominee, Mark Kirk. Patrick Hughes is as far right as Kirk is as far left.

Patrick Hughes aims to harness the conservatives and tea party activists in Illinois who feel marginalized by Kirk and the Democrats further to the left of him. On Friday, Mark Levin endorsed Patrick Hughes and urged conservatives to rally to Patrick Hughes in this last month before the primary.

It makes a compelling case to see just how rapid a response the tea party activists and conservatives can make in a Republican Primary. Should Patrick Hughes win the GOP primary, it would send shock waves across the nation and severely shake the foundations of the GOP establishment.

Mark Kirk has gotten a lot of bad press in Illinois for his cap-and-trade vote. Illinois is a transportation hub with oil and coal reserves. Cap and trade would harm Illinois’s industrial base at a time the state has 11% unemployment.

Patrick Hughes has been making that case across the state — taking a national issue and making it very local. People are registering their impact.

The race right now comes down to name ID. Kirk has it. Patrick Hughes doesn’t. But polling shows when Republican voters know Patrick Hughes and Kirk, they go with Patrick Hughes overwhelmingly. In fact, polling also shows 60% of primary voters are undecided — something that suggests a one month blitz by Patrick Hughes could dramatically improve his numbers.

Patrick Hughes was born on the northwest side of Chicago in a small apartment. His parents told him if he believed in God and worked hard, he could do whatever he wanted. He went to law school, became a lawyer, then became a small businessman.

Now he wants to represent Illinois in the United States Senate. If conservatives and tea party activists rally to him, he has a shot. But the hourglass is almost out of sand.

And I’m blaming the Governor for this one because I find it inconceivable that he would have let his subordinates set policy in such a nakedly partisan fashion without him first signing off on it.  Apparently the Democratic party just doesn’t care how many ‘moderate’ Democrats have to have their careers sacrificed to the leadership’s ambitions.   I don’t know where we’ll use this development - yet - but if you think that we’re not going to use this (win or lose):

The U.S. Senate ultimately will schedule the swearing-in of Kirk’s successor, but not until the state certifies the election.

Today, a spokesman for Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, who is overseeing the election but did not respond to a call seeking comment, said certification of the Jan. 19 election by the Governor’s Council would take a while.

“Because it’s a federal election,” spokesman Brian McNiff said. “We’d have to wait 10 days for absentee and military ballots to come in.”

Another source told the Herald that Galvin’s office has said the election won’t be certified until Feb. 20 - well after the president’s address.

Since the U.S. Senate doesn’t meet again in formal session until Jan. 20, Bay State voters will have made their decision before a vote on health-care reform could be held. But Kirk and Galvin’s office said today a victorious Brown would be left in limbo.

In contrast, Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Lowell) was sworn in at the U.S. House of Representatives on Oct. 18, 2007, just two days after winning a special election to replace Martin Meehan. In that case, Tsongas made it to Capitol Hill in time to override a presidential veto of the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

…to hammer home the point that Democrats Lie, think again.  The ads write themselves, and even should Coakley win the speed with which she’ll be installed will still let us run those ads.  And she would be installed speedily: her party’s leadership doesn’t just lie.  It assumes that the electorate is dumb, too.

It’s not, by the way.

Moe Lane

PS: That SCHIP veto wasn’t actually overturned, by the way.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Best-selling author of Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto and nationally syndicated conservative talk radio icon (yes, in my opinion, icon) Mark Levin just gave Patrick Hughes the opportunity to be heard by his millions of listeners. Unlike the McCain contingent and the party elitists, Mark remembers the votes cast by the Cap and Trade Eight! That isn’t entirely true, the McCain contingent agrees with Cap and Trade.

I’ve met Hughes and support his candidacy, yet I was pleasantly surprised with his ease and confidence on a national stage. He represented himself well and received the endorsement of “The Great One”! More importantly, he had the opportunity to speak to an audience of millions, which hopefully included a large number of registered voters in Illinois.

Given that Hughes does not benefit from the insider’s advantage or have access to John McCain’s donor list as does “He Who Must Not Be Nominated” Mark Kirk, the platform provided is very important. As a concerned Illinois conservative and huge Mark Levin fan, I am extremely grateful that he had Hughes on his show. Perhaps there are other concerned Illinois conservatives who have been wondering if the nomination of Kirk is a foregone conclusion (put differently, that the situation is hopeless.) Perhaps they did not see any way to reasonably oppose the leftist “moderate” and his establishment push. I certainly hope they will be inspired now to join the fight against the kind of Republican who would vote for Cap and Trade (then a couple of months later effectively say: whoopsie, I need you voters to ignore that and listen to my promise not to do it again), support partial-birth abortion, oppose any common sense restrictions/notification requirements on abortion, sponsor hate crimes legislation tucked in a defense bill, and seems far too comfortable voting like Nancy Pelosi!

Let us hope that Levin’s listeners will visit PatrickHughesforSenate.com and pitch in. There is reason to have hope, Illinois, Mark Kirk has not won the nomination yet! I do not intend to minimize the character and the candidacies of Judge Don Lowery and John Arrington, but I do hope these three good men can come together behind the common goal of putting a conservative in the Senate Seat once (yet ever-so briefly) held by Barack Obama.

Cross-posted from my blog: “The Immoderate Blog“

With less than a month left before the Illinois Primary on February 2nd, Patrick Hughes has released this TV ad:

While most of the politicos and pundits are focused on other races across the United States, Illinois has one of the first opportunities to place a conservative Republican on the ballot for the General Election.

With this ad, Hughes shows what is truly on the line in the upcoming Primaries and Generals.  We are fighting for Progressive versus Progressive-lite or Pelosi versus Pelosi-lite.  Tea Partiers like myself reject the idea that this is our only choice.  Many of the larger Tea Parties in Illinois, including the Joliet, Homer/Lockport, and Rockford Tea Parties, (along with some downstate Tea Parties including Effingham) have endorsed Hughes as their candidate to beat Rep. Mark Kirk and retake the Illinois US Senate seat from the same old, same old establishment characters.

Recently, We have seen the near revolt within the Republican Party in Florida has cost the Florida Republican Chairman Jim Greer his job because of his early endorsement of Gov. Crist while for the most part ignoring the Tea Party sentiment and Marco Rubio as a viable candidate - not to mention ignoring conservatives.  I would argue that a similar internal revolt is happening within the Illinois GOP which spells trouble in the General Election should Mark Kirk win the nomination in the Primary.

Yesterday, Michael Steele went on TV and essentially threw most of the Republican party under the bus.  He also went further by saying he’d join the Tea Parties.   While I would like to believe that this was a genuine sentiment, I wonder why now and why not prior to NY-23 or even earlier.  He went on to explain that if he wasn’t the head of the GOP, he’d “be out there with the Tea Partiers”.  If he is genuine, then more power to him, but actions speak louder than words.  As Chairman, he has a unique opportunity to direct the GOP in one direction or another.  If he really believed in the Tea Parties, then why come out now and claim to believe in what they stand for?  Call me a cynic, but I question his motives because of polls released showing the GOP trailing behind Democrats and Tea Parties in a mock election, the resignation of FL GOP Chairman Jim Greer, the recent defection of Parker Griffith from the Democrats, the increasing number of Democrats retiring from Congress, and finally, the prospects of picking up a good amount of seats in both Houses of Congress.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Erickson asked whether conservatives should take another look at Illinois.  With less than 28 days to go until Illinois votes on February 2nd, I hope conservatives do take another good long look at the Illinois US Senate race.  Time is running short and there is no time like the present!