It's funny how looking into one scandal can lead you into dozens more. After posting on Jack Abramoff and following the trail of dirty money, I came upon GOP Congressman Bob Ney of Ohio. Bob Ney apparently took a trip to Scotland on the dime of some Texas Native American tribal leaders interested in re-opening some casinos that required the support of a bill in Congress. The bill didn't pass, but the golf trip to Scotland cost $150,000 (they need some new travel agents, I could have gotten them something nice from Hotels.com for $150 a night) in addition to a $30,000 in campaign donations. I'm not a lawyer, but shouldn't something like this be against the law? Bob Ney also on the Congressional Record denounced the owner of a Florida based gambling ship that Abramoff was interested in buying. The owner did eventually sell, and the poor guy ended up getting stiffed by Abramoff for $23 million, and then whacked in Florida.
So many scandals, so little time to write about them.
So okay, back to Ohio. Yesterday the Governor of Ohio, Bob Taft, pleaded no contest to charges of ethics violations for accepting gifts of golf outings and sports tickets that he did not report. That doesn't seem so bad, but the guy he accepted the bribes from was Tom Noe, the same Tom Noe who is tied to the workers comp scandal in Ohio that invested in some risky rare coins deal in the Bahamas and lost $200 million in funds that were supposed to go for workers who get injured on the job, people who have disabilities and such. The Governor, Bob Taft, knew about the fraud six days before the 2004 Presidential election, and kept the scandal under wraps until after the election. So not only is Bob Taft guilty of accepting favors from a guy who makes shaky investments, he is guilty of withholding important information that Ohio voters needed to make an intelligent decision in the Presidential election.
Tom Noe, the guy in charge of Ohio's Bush 2004 election campaign is accused of a lot of misdemeanors, but namely stealing 15 million in state funds and investing it in his personal business of rare coin collecting. How he was able to get his hands on those state funds is a wonder, shouldn't they keep those funds locked up somewhere so that greedy Republicans can't steal it? Noe may have also violated the law by giving money to people who would then donate it to the Bush re-election campaign. As for the cover-up of the coin scam, as early as October 2003, the rare coins began to mysteriously disappear, but funny, no one heard a word about it until April of 2005. I can understand the Republican's reluctance to talk publicly about it, after all, if the President's man in Ohio were caught with his fingers in the state cookie jar, it might make some people suspect of the President's judgment, and even change people's minds about who they might vote for.
But wait! There's more!
In 2004, the feds gave the Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell $30 million to replace old punch card voting systems under the Help America Vote Act. It seems that the Secretary cannot certify exactly how the money was spent. Instead of replacing the outdated machines, or buying extras for those places in Cleveland where they only had one, (remember those stories of people lining up around the block in the rain to vote?) he parked the money in a bank run by a top Republican. Can you guess which party Mr. Blackwell was a member of?
There were stories of vote fraud out of Ohio that were told after the election. No one paid much attention, who has the energy to fight that battle every four years? I don't think that there is much doubt in anyone's mind that if the elections were held today, Ohio would most certainly join the rest of the blue states, and John Kerry would be President. I'm not sure that would be such a great thing, I wasn't a big John Kerry fan, I had to drink the Kool-Aid during the election year, but we would most certainly be in a better position today in almost every way that matters.
What will happen in Ohio, now that the scum is floating to the surface? One would hope that thieves of either money, or elections will be put in jail as they deserve. There is some hope that this can happen at the state level, after all there aren't a bunch of people rushing to change the ethics rules, and the Toledo Blade has done an outstanding job of investigating these many scandals. It may be that these local county prosecutors and DA's may be able to tear themselves away from the important work of putting pot smokers in jail, and deliver some real justice that the nation lacks. If it is found that actual vote fraud occurred it will most likely make no difference in Washington. It made no difference in 2000, when the Supreme Court decided in favor of Bush. Maybe the best we can hope for is that these guys in Ohio will be doing time in the next election and we will not have to wonder about fair voting. Change will never happen in Washington until it happens in Ohio.
