The Other Conspiracy to Steal the '04 Election in Ohio

[farmbo]

For months now, we've been aware of Ohio SOS Ken Blackwell's machinations calculated at making Ohio's exit polls meaningless (they showed Kerry up by 4% in Ohio). But as Blackwell gamed the vote count, dozens of partisan state officials conspired to make sure Ohio voters would go to the polls on November 2nd blissfully unaware of Ohio's shaky financial condition attributable to the pocket- lining of a handful of Bush's closest cronies.

Always ahead-of-the-curve, the Toledo Blade carries a piece today on the complicity of officials at the highest levels of Ohio's government to cover up the loss of over $200 million from the Bureau of Workers Compensation during September and October of 2004. And if you are an Ohio taxpayer-- or, given the consequences of their scheme, a US taxpayer-- this piece will make your blood boil.

The revelations are coming to light as part of notorious coin & beanie baby collector Tom Noe's trials which are winding their way through the federal and state judicial systems in Ohio. Through sworn testimony and a series of recovered emails, the activities of OBWC Chief James Conrad and officials in Governor Taft's office are revealed in all their grimy detail: all accomplished while on the public payroll.

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060813/NEWS24/608130338

<snip>COLUMBUS - Less than a week before the 2004 presidential election, Jim Conrad, then head of the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, took steps to ensure that a $215 million investment loss in an offshore hedge-fund would not become public, documents obtained by The Blade show.

On Oct. 27, 2004 - just six days before President Bush was re-elected after narrowly winning Ohio - Mr. Conrad expressed his concern about a potential "leak" of the losses in an e-mail to John Annarino, then the bureau's chief legal counsel and ethics officer. In the e-mail, Mr. Conrad advised how Mr. Annarino and James McLean, then the bureau's investment director, should manage the agency's investment staff to keep the potentially explosive losses under wraps.<snip>

On Sept. 27, 2004, Mr. Conrad, the bureau's administrator-CEO, was giving a speech in Cincinnati when he received a call from Ms. Kielmeyer, then the bureau's chief operating officer. She told Mr. Conrad that an employee had told her about an investment gone bad. That evening, Mr. McLean told Mr. Conrad in a conference call that when he wanted to "tighten the screws" on MDL, Gasper had told him that Mr. Conrad had given permission to "give MDL a break.''<snip> Mr. McLean said he was instructed by Mr. Annarino "to make sure that the staff was kept content and happy so that they would not reveal any information on MDL."<snip> "Keeping a lid on the MDL losses was not something that I simply assumed Mr. Annarino wanted; it was a straightforward mandate," Mr. McLean wrote. "The Bureau did not want any information on MDL to get out and I was to cooperate with that mandate."<snip>

The article adds yet another asterisk to Bush's historic 2004 "victory" in Ohio. The deal-breaking issue of the systemic corruption oozing from the GOP- controlled statehouse, was covered up-- thru possibly extra-legal means-- and never became an issue in the 2004 presidential race in Ohio.

[april]

1. thanks so much/great read

it is just a never ending story of how corrupt it all is