Bad News for Bush Haters

You duck questions when the answers show the truth, which is generally how wrong you are.

The problem is, the older you get the more you forget so you don't know what you argued a week ago.

ziggy wrote:

(Aaron)- The problem is, the older you get the more you forget so you don't know what you argued a week ago.

Apparently you are seiing things that no one else here is seeing.

So show us.

Aaron wrote:I would but the search on this forum sucks. Literally, it sucks. You can put in a key word and hit search, even adding the author and it still comes back no results. You guys need to look into that.

My only other option would be to go back through individual post or over many pages and frankly Frank, you ain't worth that kind of time.

And the only questions I don't answer is your's and that's usually because they're trick or loaded questions. I'm not the only person that thinks so. If I'm not mistaken (and we both know I'm not) another poster accused you of the exact same thing about a week back.

ziggy wrote:Who? Sheik Ben? He didn't accuse me of anything.

Aaron wrote:

ziggy wrote:Who? Sheik Ben? He didn't accuse me of anything.

I guess since Mike was making a statement, it wasn't an accusation, huh Frank.

ziggy wrote:By the way, does the Bible proscribe human cannabalism?

SheikBen wrote:

ziggy wrote:That I "didn't deny it" means nothing.

But if it helps you feel better, I was not trying to set you up. The question came to mind as the discussion was about eating the flesh of various creatures.

I was rather hoping that you were. Oh well.

I think it's Hitchens who goes from discussions of cannibalism to criticisms of the Lord's Supper. That you weren't going there is my mistake.

Aaron wrote:Whatever you say Frank. I'll just note that you knew EXACTLY what I was talking about as soon as you read it. As far as I'm concerned, you proved my point for me.

Thanks.

Aaron wrote:...................... The problem is, the older you get the more you forget so you don't know what you argued a week ago.

Aaron wrote:I think the question we should be asking is why the legislature and the governors, democrats and Republicans alike, put us in the financial crisis we've been in for as long as I can remember and what our biggest problem is. Seems to me that it's under funded pension plans that legislatures keep passing to keep getting elected is what is causing the bulk of the problems. Am I wrong?

Manchin is the first governor that I can recall who said before we pass a liability, let's ensure what the true cost is going to be and access it from that point, not what the teachers union or the state workers or the Police unions or judges want, but what the true cost is.

We as a state have pushed out way too much coal to be a poor state and like it or not, as democrats have had control of this state for almost 80 years, it is democrats who must shoulder the bulk of the blame.

[b]That is not partisan politics; like it or not, that is simply how it is. [/b

WV has a balanced budget amendment so we can't overspend on anything else.

Other then the pension programs, what else keeps adding to the deficit year after year after year?

And that you have to go back to the 19th century to put some blame on Republicans is just sad.

Aaron wrote:WV, with the exception of 20 years of governorship has been controlled exclusively by democrats for 75 years. Why do you feel the need to pass the blame equally among democrats and Republicans?

Aaron wrote:

shermangeneral wrote:Maybe you should ask about the episodes of clandestine meetings at the Charleston city dump and the stuffing of $100 bills in pockets while hunkered down in the car seat etc.?

Maybe her sources forgot that part.

(not to mention the bags of cash in the office drawers, etc.)

Here's a question for you Sherman.

Who exactly was Arch Moore paying all of this money to?

During West Virginia's century-and-a-half history, which politician holds the all-time record for the most corruption scandals? It's former Gov. Arch Moore, by a mile.

Former Mingo County political boss Johnie Owens said Moore once lay down in the back seat of a car, to avoid being seen by passers-by, and "held up $12,000 and begged me to take it" to induce the county Democratic machine to support the Republican governor in an election.

Controversial coal operator Paul Kizer testified that he and Moore hid in a parked car at night behind Charleston's abandoned incinerator to agree on perjury they could tell to federal investigators.

Former campaign manager Tom Craig testified that Moore once handed him a ski cap containing $100,000 in wads of cash for illicit politicking.

Suspicions, investigations, indictments and finally prison tainted Moore for 20 years, damaging West Virginia. The Gazette was entwined in the process. The paper's late publisher, W.E. "Ned" Chilton III, personally filed an ethics complaint asking the State Bar to disbar the dishonest politician. Here's the long saga:

Back in 1970, midway in his first term as governor, Washington rumors said the Internal Revenue Service had recommended a tax-evasion indictment of Moore, but the Justice Department under Republican President Nixon and Attorney General John Mitchell scuttled it. The rumors faded, and Moore defeated Democrat Jay Rockefeller in the 1972 gubernatorial race.

In 1973, Moore's former attorney told me the tax-evasion case "was some turkey. It was peanuts - no good. It never should have been brought. We had it thrown out." The Gazette printed his sneer, knowing it would anger West Virginia IRS agents who originally performed the probe.

Sure enough, I got a surreptitious phone call from an agent in the regional IRS headquarters at Parkersburg. He asked me to meet him secretly in parked cars at a pull-off at the little Wood County town of Washington, south of Parkersburg.

In our furtive meeting, he said the tax evidence against Moore had been powerful, involving $200,000 in unreported income. He said the lawyer-politician had been executor of the estate of a crotchety hermit, and had found a signed, blank "certificate of assignment" in the hermit's safety box - so he wrote in stock numbers and gave himself 900 Exxon shares from the old man's assets. Also, he said, Moore converted $80,000 in campaign funds to personal use, and didn't report $6,000 from a land deal in which a mental defective was cheated out of a fair share.

Through a friendly stockbroker, the Gazette obtained a printout of Exxon stock transfers showing that Moore got 900 shares from the hermit, just as the IRS agent secretly said. When we printed this mess, I wrote that it came from a "Washington source," since the leak occurred at the tiny town of Washington.

As the 1970s proceeded, the Gazette revealed more Moore machinations - so many that the governor publicly dubbed the paper the "Morning Sick Call."

For example, we reported that Diversified Mountaineer Corp., a shady loan firm, lavished expensive entertainment on Moore's banking commissioner, George Jordan, and installed a bank vault in its Kanawha City building while awaiting approval of a state bank charter. Jordan was indicted in 1974 for falsifying state expense accounts, but the case later was dropped on a technicality.

In 1975, Ashland Oil executives confessed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that they had given $20,000 of corporation funds in cash, in a briefcase, to Moore in his office at the Capitol.

Perjury allegations rose after a nonunion Virginia trucking firm complained that it had won bidding to haul the state's liquor, but the contract abruptly was revoked. In a lawsuit, the governor testified that he knew nothing about the cancellation - but former Teamsters Union local President Eugene Carter testified that he had called Moore and asked him to void the contract.

In 1975, Moore and his top aide, William Loy, were indicted on federal charges of taking a $25,000 payoff from Diversified Mountaineer's crooked president. Banking Commissioner Jordan was named a co-conspirator. During their 1976 trial, Moore's attorney said in bench conferences that Moore had received $120,000 in unreported cash in the 1972 election. U.S. Attorney John "Jack" Field III said the amount was $180,000 - including a $5,000 blank check that was cashed with the mysterious signature "Amos Jones." A jury acquitted Moore and Loy. The Diversified Mountaineer chief later went to prison.

In 1976, Moore quietly gave West Virginia's license plate contract without bids to an Arkansas businessman with a record of bribe-paying.

In 1977, three days before he left office at the end of his second term, Moore released the Pittston Co. from liability in the historic Buffalo Creek disaster that drowned 125 Logan Countians and left 4,000 homeless. His action left West Virginia taxpayers stuck with a $9.5 million flood cleanup debt to the U.S. Corps of Engineers that finally was paid in 1989. During a lawsuit over the debt, U.S. Judge Norman Ramsey ruled that part of Moore's testimony was untrue.

In 1977, on his final day in office, Moore had the state pay $127,500 for a collection of John Brown papers previously valued at $50,000, and two of his ex-aides got a $30,000 commission on the sale.

In 1979, Moore's former alcohol commissioner, Richard Barber, was charged with squeezing campaign money and free booze from distillers. Barber told FBI agents he got more than $50,000 from liquor firms during the 1972 campaign and took it to Moore. Barber was sentenced to three years in federal prison.

In 1989, during the fraud trial of Marrowbone Coal Co. executives, witnesses testified that $80,000 was given to a company engineer, reportedly to be delivered to Moore administration officials to speed up coal permits.

Suddenly, in 1990, Moore pleaded guilty to federal charges of extortion, tax evasion, mail fraud and obstruction of justice. He confessed that he took $573,000 from Beckley coal mogul Paul Kizer in return for giving Kizer's firm a $2 million refund from the state black lung fund. He also admitted getting $50,000 from Marrowbone, and more from others.

Moore was sentenced to nearly six years in federal prison and was fined $170,000. Then, weirdly, the ex-governor tried to withdraw his guilty plea. His attempt went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it failed. He served almost half his jail time, then returned to his Northern Panhandle home, Glen Dale. He appears occasionally at Republican events.

Moore was a charismatic figure with strong leadership ability - but his career ended in dismal disgrace.