Republican senatorial candidate Mark Kirk returned his Goldman cash, but is still facing criticism from Alexi Giannoulias for not returning even more:
Giannoulias’s campaign further criticized Kirk today for agreeing to return contributions to his Senate campaign and not the full $54,010 it says Kirk has taken from Goldman employees during his congressional career.
“His artfully worded pledge to return contributions made only in the current cycle offers a fig leaf of ethical propriety, but in reality is nothing more than a typical Washington politician’s trick,” Giannoulias spo
kesman Matt McGrath said in a statement.
As David Freddoso points out in his column, however, Giannoulias has his own sordid financial history. The Democratic nominee’s family paid itself 147 million out of the equity of the bank it owned, between 2001 and 2009 “in the form of sometimes very large dividends:”
The first number to consider: $147 million. That’s the amount the Giannoulias family paid themselves out of Broadway’s equity between 2001 and 2009, in the form of sometimes very large dividends. Their largest dividend — $47.8 million, or 35 percent of the bank’s year-end equity — came in 2007, when Broadway was still profitable. In 2008, as its bad construction and commercial real estate loans were causing the bank to lose $13 million, the Giannouliases still took a $34.5 million dividend, worth 46 percent of the bank’s remaining equity.
Broadway’s $75 million loss last year did not stop them from cashing out a modest $4 million, either.
It’s not so much a pot calling the kettle black as it is a black paint factory covered in darkened ash from an Icelandic volcano calling a tea cup black.
