« Oh the bitch is back | Main | Time to vote »

May 28, 2005

Ohio Republican's growing "Coingate" scandal

The latest addition to our blogroll is BloggerRadio.com. Like our fine little blog here, BloggerRadio started out as an Oregon blog and has since expanded. CS, the Ohio half of BloggerRadio.com, has been covering the "Coingate" scandal in Ohio of which I had been blissfully unaware of until this morning as I was perusing the posts over there.

It seems the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation has a rare-coin investment fund which is managed by Republican campaign contributor/operator Tom Noe. That is where the lack of controversy ends and the unanswered questions begin.

After being stonewalled by the Bureau, a couple of elected representatives resorted to filing suit before the Ohio Supreme Court to force the Bureau to answer some very basic questions like what is owned by the fund. Lawyers for the Bureau of Workers Compensation have refused to divulge that information on the grounds that it's protected under "trade secret" law. WTF???

Oh, but it gets more interesting. Five of the seven Justices on the court, including it's Chief Justice, have recused themselves from the case because they all accepted campaign contributions from this guy. So now the Court's only Democrat finds herself not only as acting Chief Justice for the duration of the case, but she will have to dip into the state appellate court system just to seat enough temporary Justices to even hear the case.

But, the 2004 vote in Ohio was legit and above board. Right...? Hey, stop thinking independently! Forget Ohio's election. Console yourselves with the knowledge that the same Secretary of State Blackwell whose fingerprints are all over the questionable 2004 vote is independently investigating Coingate. Feel better? Yeah, me neither. BTW, Mr. Noe was also a regional campaign president for Bush/Cheney04. Surprised? Me neither.

Of course what ***.gate story would be complete without missing money? Coingate is no exception. $10 - 12 million out of the $50 million total is missing.

Fortunately, CS is like a dog with a bone on this story. His latest post on it can be found here with a timeline here.

Posted by Kevin at May 28, 2005 08:25 AM