Posted on 06/10/2005 4:45:06 PM PDT by SmithL
Toledo, Ohio -- A disastrous investment by the state in rare coins has erupted into both a financial and political scandal, with Ohio's Republicans running for cover and the Democrats seeing great opportunity.
At least $10 million is feared missing from a $55 million fund that the Ohio Workers' Compensation Bureau set up in a risky and highly unorthodox foray into the buying and selling of coins. The investment was managed by coin dealer Tom Noe, a prodigious fundraiser who has showered contributions on Republicans in Ohio and beyond.
In the past few weeks, a slew of Republicans, including President Bush and Gov. Bob Taft, have moved quickly to distance themselves from Noe by returning more than $100,000 in donations.
The Democrats have seized on the scandal, hoping it will enable them to break the GOP's decade-long grip on Ohio state government next year and even help them retake the White House in 2008.
"It's an example of the arrogance of power that comes with one-party rule," said Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman, one of two Democrats running in 2006 to succeed Taft, who cannot seek a third term. "It reinforces the need for change in Ohio."
No charges have been brought against Noe. But investigators say that at least 121 coins worth about $400,000 are missing, and they are looking into whether some of the money he handled went to Republican officeholders.
The financial scandal deepened in the past week with word that the state's insurance fund for injured workers lost $215 million in a hedge fund that was not handled by Noe.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
My brother lives in Maumee and has been following this story for weeks. He too says it is not helpful.
lol.. It's just a flesh wound.
aRnie will have his 10K donation returned as well.
----
Schwarzenegger returns donation from Ohio coin dealer
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/11866929.htm
I would say that is an understatement.
Well, I certainly have been screaming change is needed. That is why I'm backing Blackwell. The RINO's in that state are corrupt. They are the reason Ohio is drifting Leftward. The citizens are left with few other options but to kick out those that are mired in this deceit.
Republicans at the national level had better get behind real Republicans of good character in Ohio. They need to cleanse Ohio of the corruption or it will turn to the Democrats as a last resort.
Yeah.
Now we're going to hear the bs from the Dims about privatizing part of social security..."Oh, my God, they'll invest it in coins."
I once put a pocket full of those hook-nosed woman dollars in vending machines. Thought they were quarters. Something like that probably happened here.
-PJ
This is the MSM. Why should we believe it? Anyway, if the Dimocrats are able to smear the GOP, they won't stop with the RINOS. No need to do their work for them by talking about it on FR.
Right you are, Soul Seeker. The Ohio pubbies are an inbred lot of RINOs who are barely a shade better than the amoral 'Rats. The answer is a swing to the right with candidates like Blackwell. I'm not hopeful right now, but perhaps this crap will splash enough of the old school to make way for better people.
Taft, DeWine, Voinovich and the rest are worthless. And the likes of Strickland, Colemen and their lot is even worse...
Ohio needs a house-cleanin'.
"It's an example of the arrogance of power that comes with one-party rule,"
This is so true. The democrats were in power so long, they are corrupt top to bottom. The republicans only recent gained power and will slowly become corrupt too and the democrats will slowly become uncorrupted.
For now, I'm a republican.
Because it is true. Further Gov. taft held a newsconference and admitted it was true.
Ohio politicians are more stupid than corrupt. 20 years ago it was democrat gov. dick celeste that got caught up in a 2 billion dollar savings and loan scandal that brought down all the ohio savings and loans. That was when a billion was a lot of money.
At least the republicans have turned a difficult fiscal situation into one where Ohio has an 880 million dollar surplus.
There are elected Republicans in Ohio? Could've fooled me.
Here is an interesting 1999 piece regarding the only democrat who is currently running for Ohio gov.
Coleman's cabinet making
Keeping an eye on who might join the Mayor-elect's staff
by Bob Fitrakis
Now that the Michael Coleman election celebration is over and sobriety has set in, we should take note of a few early disturbing signs. In Sunday's Columbus Dispatch, Joe Hallett pointed out the all-too-visible presence of controversial developer, streetwear entrepreneur and hair salon owner T.G. Banks on Coleman's election night dais. Hallett reported that Banks gave the mayor-elect a "kiss on the cheek."
Mike needs to remember that Judas betrayed Jesus in a similar way. And Banks swings both ways: he was the leading minority construction management contractor during the Republican Voinovich administration and he was deeply embroiled with Governor Voinovich's disgraced Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud.
But Banks may be the least of Coleman's problems, if the reports concerning his possible staff and cabinet appointments are true. Last week, The Other Paper reported without comment that Warren Tyler is "expected to have a major role in Coleman's transition team and, therefore, an inside track on any administrative post he might want." The Other Paper mentioned him as a possible chief of staff. Fellow former high-ranking official in the Celeste administration, David Baker, was named as a possible director of trade and development appointee.
Currently, Tyler is technically Baker's boss at the non-profit Columbus Urban Growth Corporation, where Baker is president and Tyler is chair of the board. The Urban Growth Corporation, a Coleman initiative, was founded in 1996 with $275,000 from city coffers. Baker, the former development director under Governor Richard F. Celeste, is the husband of newly elected and well-connected Columbus School Board member Stephanie Hightower.
Tyler first headed the state Commerce Department and later the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for the Celeste administration. He moved to the Ohio EPA soon after the Home State Savings and Loan scandal blew up on his watch at the Commerce Department, which he directed from January 1983 to February 1985.
In August 1985, Tyler testified before the Ohio General Assembly's Joint Select Committee on Savings and Loans and admitted to talking to Marvin L. Warner, later convicted for his role in the scandal, about the company's peculiar and shaky investments.
Tyler's testimony of his conversation with Warner differed markedly from the testimony of former Chief Examiner of Savings and Loans, Kurt A. Kreinbring. Kreinbring told the Dispatch that he resigned from his state job "because of his frustration of the [Celeste] administration's unwillingness or inability to force Home State to divest itself of the E.S.M. investments." E.S.M. was a Florida company that sold securities deemed to be extremely risky by government regulators.
Kreinbring testified that "he had at least three conversations with Tyler between mid-1983 and November 1984 about examiners' concerns in connection with Home State's ballooning investments and repurchase agreements with E.S.M.," the Dispatch reported.
In July 1984, C. Lawrence Huddleston, then-Superintendent of the Ohio Division of Savings and Loans, wrote Tyler that "I am not willing to take the hit when this thing blows up."
Tyler is on record saying that he failed to tell Governor Celeste of the problems plaguing Home State prior to its collapse. Tyler told state investigators that he never informed Celeste of the problem because he was "convinced Huddleston and the division had it under control." Not exactly the kind of guy you want as your chief of staff with a crisis brewing. On March 8, 1985, the Home State Savings and Loan failure triggered a three-month financial crisis in Ohio.
Celeste shuttled Tyler over to the EPA in February 1985, just prior to Home State's collapse. At the time Tyler took charge at the EPA, political insiders and environmentalists considered it under-funded and under-staffed. Tyler tried to portray himself as a fiscal conservative by making even further cuts and returning unused money to the state treasury.
In 1986, Tyler's EPA failed to use $6.7 million of its $38.9 million fiscal year budget and came under heavy fire from environmentalists. Stephen Sedan, then the executive director of the Ohio Environmental Council, told the UPI, "They [Ohio EPA] finally got a budget that enabled them to increase their staff and they lapsed. It's really shocking."
Tyler became legendary in green circles for his lack of knowledge on environmental issues. Environmentalists charged that Tyler's main concern was protecting business interests. One high-ranking Celeste official recalls that Tyler selected his current attorney, Larry James, as a hearing officer at an "outrageous hourly fee" to hear an appeal of the EPA's denial of a permit to expand a Toledo landfill. James, with little or no background in environmental law, overruled the EPA's decision and sided with the landfill owners. When Richard Shank replaced Tyler as EPA director, one of his first acts was to reverse James' decision.
Tyler resigned from the EPA post in May 1987 amidst controversy. He served on an advisory board and received compensation from local architectural firm Moody-Nolan which, according to the UPI, "he recommended for a contract to design the EPA's new headquarters building." Tyler resigned from Moody-Nolan's advisory board nine days after it was announced Moody-Nolan would be the architect for the project.
More recently, Tyler and James turned up last year in the Africentric School controversy as investors interested in developing the athletic complex connected to the school on Livingston Avenue. Watching who makes Coleman's transition team and cabinet should be interesting.
Don't feed the vultures.
The more things change the more they stay the same. I thought I would post a flash from the past.
Mr. Warner's free fall after the 1985 collapse of Home State was dizzying.
He had personal wealth — about $125 million before the Home State collapse — and political power, enough to help elect Democrats to statewide office in Ohio and earn him an appointment from President Carter as ambassador to Switzerland in the late 1970s.
Born in Birmingham, Ala., the son of a baker, he earned a law degree from the University of Alabama that he never used.
Instead, he came to Cincinnati as a young man in the early 1950s and launched a career as a developer. His mark on the city is obvious even today — he developed the housing tracts that became the city of Forest Park and built huge projects such as the Highland Towers, which dominates the Mount Adams landscape.
In 1958, he branched out into finance, buying Home State Savings Bank. He quickly turned it into the dominant force in Ohio's savings and loan industry.
Then, in the late 1970s, he met Ronnie Ewton.
Mr. Ewton was the president of a Fort Lauderdale firm called ESM Government Securities Inc. He had a plan to sell bonds to local government, institutions and individuals that would guarantee overnight dividends.
But to pay off its customers, ESM needed huge infusions of cash. Mr. Warner provided it, pouring hundreds of millions of Home State assets into ESM.
In March 1985, when federal authorities charged ESM with fraud and word spread that Home State was ESM's major investor, a panic struck Southwest Ohio. Home State depositors formed long lines at branch offices trying to take their money out. Four days later, Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste — whose political career had been boosted by Warner cash — closed Home State.
But because Home State was the dominant force in the Ohio Deposit Guaranty Fund, its collapse wiped out deposit insurance for all other state-chartered savings and loans.
Thousands of depositors around the state had no access to their money for weeks. In the end, though, no depositor lost a dime.
The Ohio General Assembly ended up passing legislation to spend $129 million for the bailout of Home State and found a buyer for the wrecked institution — Mr. Lindner, who folded Home State into his Hunter Savings Bank.
Actually the vending machine would have known they were dollars. Vending Machine companies really pushed for these coins. Cheeaper than Dollar Bill readers.
I have spent one or two as quarters in stores though. The Post Office gave them as change for a long time.
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