Taft appointed Noe to the commission at a time when Moorman's duties included oversight of the commission.

Meanwhile, state investigators continue to examine a $55.4 million rare-coin investment that Noe managed for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation. An estimated $10 million to $12 million in state money is missing.

For the first time, Taft suggested that some of Ohio's investment funds might have landed in candidates' campaign coffers.

\"There's a question here as to whether some of those contributions may have come from a diversion of state funds,\" Taft said at a news briefing on Defense Department jobs Thursday in Cleveland.

Gov. Bob Taft’s office learned seven months ago — not this week — that the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation had lost $225 million in a high-risk investment.

In an Oct. 26, 2004, e-mail to Taft aide James Samuel, the bureau’s administrator-CEO, James Conrad, wrote that the “entire value” of the portfolio managed by MDL Capital Management was down about $225 million.

Mr. Conrad also alerted the governor’s office that the bureau had rejected MDL’s request for another $25 million and the firm was in danger of collapsing, which he said would be “likely to make national news.

dfwAggie99:
I swear these people make it too easy sometimes...they are truly their own worst enemy.

It just makes me smile...

MIB:
Just who do these people think they are, Illinois politicians?

gmginsfo:
\"(s)he outta resign!\"

RazorbackTX:
gmg,
You really should get over your Nancy obsession.

gmginsfo:
.... apparently she had an election night fit with her staff about her own perceived \"poor showing.\"*

gmginsfo:
Don't they teach you folks down there the three Rs?

I didnt go to school \"down\" here but from what I see there's not alot of emphasis on education, it doesnt matter much, you can still be a total idiot and become President.

... nor were any flowers ever tossed in Baghdad


Yeah, I know, I never thought there would be. That fantasy came from the mental giants in your party.

But I did - and continue to - take satisfaction in doing something that others profess \"ZERO interest\" in doing but of which I remain proud.

OK then, congrats on your 80 - 20 loss, I know you're proud.

gmginsfo:
More misreads, Mr. Raze? Are you and Brother Bobby one and the same?

MIB:
Further analysis is leading to this conclusion, gmg. Their posts are eerily similar in style, plus they usually just don't make sense.

RazorbackTX:
I prefer to stick to one screen name and one personality, unlike the two of you.

RazorbackTX:
I prefer to stick to one screen name and one personality, unlike the two of you.

In yet another surreal twist in Ohio’s “coin-gate” scandal, the wife of Bush’s chief Ohio fundraiser, Tom Noe—who is currently embroiled in campaign finance and money laundering probes—surprised poll workers and observers alike by disrupting the ballot count during the 2004 general election, RAW STORY has discovered.

Bernadette Noe, who served dual roles as chairman for the Lucas County Republican Party and the Lucas County Board of Elections, sent twelve “partisans” into a warehouse on Election Day, according a memo authored by Ohio’s Director of Campaign Finance Richard Weghorst who was present at the time.

The assertion is part of a comprehensive investigation prepared for Ohio Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell regarding reports of irregularities in Lucas County. The report found gross failures on the part of Ms. Noe’s board in preparation for and administration of November’s election.

fantomas:
Ohio's GOP is a like a house on fire

Obviously people who have followed this story before know the basic facts already, but for those who ignored Ohio until now, here's a very brief greatest hits of Ohio irregularities:

� As was the case in Florida, the secretary of state (Kenneth Blackwell, in Ohio), who is in charge of elections, was also the co-chair of the state's Bush-Cheney campaign.

� In a technique reminiscent of the semantic gymnastics of pre-Civil Rights Act election officials, Blackwell replaced the word \"jurisdiction\" with \"precinct\" in an electoral directive that would ultimately result in perhaps tens of thousands of provisional ballots�votes cast mainly by low-income residents�being disallowed.

� Blackwell initially rejected thousands of voter registrations because they were printed on paper that was, according to him, the wrong weight.

� In conservative, Bush-friendly Miami County, voter turnout was an Uzbekistan-esque 98.55 percent.

� In Warren county, election officials locked down the administration building and prevented reporters from observing the ballot counting, citing a \"terrorist threat\" (described as being a \"10\" on a scale of 1 to 10) that had been reported to them by the FBI. The FBI made no such report. Recounts conducted during this lockdown resulted in increased votes for Bush.

� In Franklin County, 4,258 votes were cast for Bush in a precinct where there were only 800 registered voters.

But the election in Lucas County had become so infamous that on April 8, Blackwell fired the entire County Board of Elections. Bernadette Noe had announced her plans to resign in December, 2004. But Blackwell's desperate move was a slap in her face, especially since the Secretary of State himself is at center stage in deepening disputes over how Ohio's 2004 election might have been stolen. Blackwell served as Ohio's Bush-Cheney co-chair while running what he claimed to be a fair election.

Blackwell's investigation of the Lucas County BOE has been received with shock and awe around the state.

It cites no less than thirteen areas of \"grave concern\" including \"failure to maintain ballot security\"; \"inability to implement and maintain a trackable system for voter ballot reconciliation\": \"failure to prepare and develop a plan for the processing of the voluminous amount of voter registration forms received\"; \"issuance and acceptance of incorrect absentee ballot forms\"; and \"failure to maintain the security of poll books during the official canvas.\"

Richard Weghorst, Ohio's Director of Campaign Finance, and Faith Lyon, the Secretary of State's liaison to county board of elections, found among other things that optical scan ballots received from a private printing company were left unattended and unsecured in a warehouse for nearly a month prior to the presidential election.

Ms. Noe was quoted in the Toledo Blade, saying, \"It is important for everyone to remember that we had a good, fair, and accurate election in November, despite the fact that we were at the epicenter of the national election.\"

But election protection activists are swarming into Lucas County and have added to Blackwell's list a stunning litany of irregularities, all pointing in the direction of massive vote fraud for the benefit of George W. Bush, engineered at least in part by his friends Tom and Bernadette Noe.

The governor has fired others over ethics violations. But he said Thursday he would not resign, saying he still can be an effective governor and has much he wants to accomplish.

COLUMBUS — Tom Noe often transferred tens of thousands of dollars from the Ohio rare-coin funds he managed to his personal business before bankrolling Republican candidates and causes with contributions and loans.

A Blade examination of the accounting records from Mr. Noe’s $50 million rare-coin venture shows a pattern of large sums of money moving from the coin funds to his personal business, Vintage Coins and Collectibles, in the days and weeks before the coin dealer and his wife, Bernadette, made contributions to Republican candidates ranging from President Bush to U.S. Sen. George Voinovich and Gov. Bob Taft down to Lucas County Auditor Larry Kaczala.

Mr. Noe typically listed the payments from the coin funds to Vintage Coins as \"profit distributions\" or \"coin purchases.\"

But both of those explanations have been assailed as fraudulent by Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro, who has branded Mr. Noe a thief and accused the former Toledo-area coin dealer of running a Ponzi scheme and making questionable coin trades with the state fund.
***
According to the computerized accounting records of Capital Coin I, II, and their subsidiaries, Mr. Noe since 1998 transferred more than $19 million from the state coin venture into his business accounts at Vintage Coins, including more than $13 million for \"coin purchases\" and more than $1.7 million in \"profit distributions.\" In that same time period, Vintage Coins transferred about $5 million back to the coin funds, the records show.

As Mr. Petro lodged accusations about how Mr. Noe bought houses and paid-off loans with state coin fund money, he stopped short of making claims about how the coin dealer paid for political contributions and loans he and his wife doled out, totaling more than $300,000 since 1998 — the year he received his first installment of $25 million from the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation to invest in rare coins.
***
Mr. Noe’s political contributions to Republicans increased substantially in 1998 after he received the first payment from the state, and his contributions more than doubled again in 2002, the year after the bureau gave him his second installment of $25 million.

Since The Blade first reported on the rare-coin venture on April 3, a long line of politicians — including President Bush, Governor Taft, and even California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — have returned their contributions from the Noes after Democrats charged that the money came from Ohio’s injured-workers’ fund.

The contributions and fund-raising are central issues in the scandal that has engulfed the Ohio Republican Party over the past six months. The controversy has led to the criminal conviction of Mr. Taft on ethics violations and high-level firings and resignations at the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation and has spawned more than a dozen criminal and civil investigations.

Investigators are examining the Noes’ contributions, and a federal grand jury has been convened in Toledo to look into charges that Mr. Noe illegally laundered money into President Bush’s re-election campaign. Mr. Noe, who was chairman of the President Bush’s re-election efforts in northwest Ohio, was labeled a Bush \"Pioneer\" for raising at least $100,000 for the campaign.

The money-laundering investigation centers on an Oct. 30, 2003, Bush campaign fund-raiser in Columbus that was attended by the President and raised $1.4 million for his re-election effort. Mr. Noe sponsored a table at the luncheon and invited a number of people to attend.

Less than four weeks before the fund-raiser, coin fund records show that Mr. Noe transferred $800,000 from Capital Coin I to Mr. Noe’s personal business — Vintage Coins. No reason was specified in the electronic records for the transfer.

A few months earlier, on July 15, 2003, Mr. Noe moved $200,000 from Capital Coin II to his Vintage Coins accounts for \"coin purchases.\" Within one month, the Noes made contributions of $4,000 to President Bush’s re-election campaign.

fantomas:
...And we've got people worried about poor people spending $2000 on luxury goods when you've got this scumbag systematically looting the public funds to put other looters and thieves and liars in office? It boggles the mind.

gmginsfo:
Not at all, when some of those same people have consistently called for rigorous prosecution against ALL looters and lawbreakers, wherever found, hiding or not, regardless of their poverty, economic, moral or otherwise. Nothing difficult to comprehend about that - even in academic terms.

KeyWest Guy:
Another GOP indictment!

Lincoln must be so proud.

TOLEDO -- Thomas W. Noe, the coin dealer and prominent Republican contributor whose $50 million state coin investment sparked one of the biggest scandals in Ohio state government history, was indicted today on 53 felonies, including theft of more than $1 million.

The charges include engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, 11 counts of theft, 11 of money laundering, 8 of tampering with records and 22 of forgery. He could be sentenced to a maximum 175 years in prison, although such a sentence is considered unlikely.
***
Besides the state charges unsealed today, Noe also faces federal charges of illegally funneling $45,400 to President Bush's re-election campaign by giving money to friends and associates to contribute in their names.

Noe pleaded not guilty to those charges last November and was released after posting a $350,000 bond secured by property from relatives in the Toledo area.

Noe, 51, who was chairman of the Lucas County Republican Party from 1992-95, was selected in 1998 to manage what came to be a $50 million rare-coin investment at the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation.

On paper, the unusual investment earned millions. But after questions surfaced about the coin funds last year, the investment was shut down in May and Noe's lawyers admitted a \"valuation shortfall\" of up to $13 million.

Attorney General Jim Petro has accused Noe of stealing at least $4 million and as much as $6 million from the coin funds, including a theft on the very first day Noe received state money to invest in 1998.

\"Tom Noe pilfered millions intended for injured workers,\" Petro has said.

More than two years after investigators began probing Tom Noe’s vaunted political fund-raising ability, he admitted yesterday that he used friends and colleagues to illegally pour thousands of dollars into the effort to re-elect President Bush.

Noe, whose fund-raising acumen earned him star status as a Bush “Pioneer” and helped him secure coveted federal and state political appointments, pleaded guilty to all three felony counts he faced.

Noe said he wanted to “spare my dear family and friends ... further embarrassment.”

The 51-year-old is facing between 24 and 30 months in prison and a substantial fine according to federal sentencing guidelines, assistant U.S. Attorney John Pearson said. However, he said he would seek an even stiffer penalty because of the “potential loss of public faith” in the presidential election.

For more than a year, Republicans in Ohio and Washington have been subjected to continued revelations about a man who had constant access to Gov. Bob Taft’s office and who was a guest at the White House. The President won a second term on the strength of a narrow victory in Ohio.

\"I have pled guilty because I violated the federal campaign laws. In 2003 I was pressured by Bush-Cheney campaign officials to become a pioneer for George Bush....\"

fantomas:
Let's see how long the national \"liberal\" media ignore this.