[We have cross posted this at our
blog for Kos readers enjoyment]
As we noted yesterday, Gov. Bob Taft has hired a criminal defense attorney and has admitted he filed deficient financial information. Much of the missing financial information has to do with unreported golf outings. Much of the initial interest about the outings focused on the alleged presence of Tom Noe, ace GOP fundraiser and one of the ringmasters behind the Coingate circus.
Late yesterday, however, much of the buzz in Columbus was over who else Taft golfed with. This morning, the Toledo Blade ran an intriguing story that claims that at least one of Taft's golf buddies was current U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow at a period when Snow was still with the CSX Corp.
From the Blade:
The Blade learned yesterday that in October, 2001, Mr. Taft golfed with John Snow, the chairman and chief executive officer of CSX Corp. who became secretary of the treasury in February, 2003, and Neal Zimmers, a lobbyist for the transportation company. Mr. Snow is a native Toledoan.
The group golfed in the Columbus suburb of Dublin at Muirfield Village Golf Club, owned by Jack Nicklaus. Gary Sease, a CSX spokesman, told The Blade it was unclear who paid for the outing.
Mr. Taft yesterday wouldn't talk about whether his failure to disclose golf outings on his annual ethics statements involved Mr. Noe, Mr. Snow, or others; how many outings he failed to disclose, and how many years of free golf are involved.
The governor also would not say whether the state and federal investigations of Mr. Noe uncovered the golf outings that he told the Ethics Commission about on June 14. He said he had failed to disclose those outings on his ethics statements.
"There's a lot I'd like to tell you today, but I just can't because I want to respect the Ethics Commission process,"
In addition, in a blistering editorial, the editors of the Toledo Blade accuse the newly appointed leaders at BWC of throwing up unnecessary roadblocks in the paper's investigation of the MDL scandal:
The bureau continues to stonewall this newspaper's attempts to gain access to any and all public records relative to the BWC's relationship with MDL Capital Management of Pittsburgh, the outfit that helped the agency lose some $215 million in a hedge-fund investment the bureau should never have made.
Reasonable people would expect that records connected to that relationship - including communications, e-mails, memos, you name it - would be public information and turned over as soon as The Blade or anybody else filed a legal public records request, which we have done.
Instead we get resistance and the phony excuse that much of what we seek is protected by the client-attorney privilege.
That's ridiculous. The public demands with one loud and clear voice the prompt release of every piece of material we seek - unredacted, a legal term for blacking out entries and items the releasing agency doesn't want anyone else to see.
The BWC is an agency with zero credibility right now, and the reasons why have been thoroughly documented in our pages since April 3.
Both are worth reading just for the fun of trying to read between the lines.