Ruffin Poole and $500 Million
2009-11-24 - by
I guess exposing Black may have made Sinsheimer a kind of pariah to North Carolina’s deal making politicians but it’s also made him a kind of one man crusade against corruption and he just struck again – after former Governor Easley’s factotum Ruffin Poole told the State Board of Elections he wasn’t going to testify at Easley’s hearing subpoena or no subpoena.
It sounds like Poole, an attorney, was what I guess folks in an older cruder political age would have called a bag-man – a political fixer collecting campaign cash for Easley’s campaigns then passing out favors from the Governor in return.
But Sinsheimer added a piece to the picture everyone else missed: He pointed out before Governor Easley left office he appointed Poole to the Board of the so-called ‘Golden Leaf Foundation,’ a political pork-barrel fund that has half a billion dollars in tobacco settlement money sitting in the bank to pass out. In other words, former Governor Easley’s wheeler-dealer is sitting on the board of a state sponsored ‘Foundation’ where he can go right now on wheeling and dealing.
So Sinsheimer, who doesn’t seem to have any qualms at all about putting politicians on the spot, wrote Governor Perdue and in effect said, Don’t you reckon you ought to do something to straighten this out? – but Governor Perdue’s response was pretty much the same as former Speaker Jim Black’s when the Lottery Scandal started unraveling: She ignored him.
As a result Ruffin Poole’s going right on sitting on the Golden Leaf Board but thanks to Sinsheimer he’s got one big problem: Now just about every reporter in North Carolina is watching to see what he does with the money.
Ruffin Poole and $500 Million
2009-11-24/
I guess exposing Black may have made Sinsheimer a kind of pariah to North Carolina’s deal making politicians but it’s also made him a kind of one man crusade against corruption and he just struck again – after former Governor Easley’s factotum Ruffin Poole told the State Board of Elections he wasn’t going to testify at Easley’s hearing subpoena or no subpoena.
It sounds like Poole, an attorney, was what I guess folks in an older cruder political age would have called a bag-man – a political fixer collecting campaign cash for Easley’s campaigns then passing out favors from the Governor in return.
But Sinsheimer added a piece to the picture everyone else missed: He pointed out before Governor Easley left office he appointed Poole to the Board of the so-called ‘Golden Leaf Foundation,’ a political pork-barrel fund that has half a billion dollars in tobacco settlement money sitting in the bank to pass out. In other words, former Governor Easley’s wheeler-dealer is sitting on the board of a state sponsored ‘Foundation’ where he can go right now on wheeling and dealing.
So Sinsheimer, who doesn’t seem to have any qualms at all about putting politicians on the spot, wrote Governor Perdue and in effect said, Don’t you reckon you ought to do something to straighten this out? – but Governor Perdue’s response was pretty much the same as former Speaker Jim Black’s when the Lottery Scandal started unraveling: She ignored him.
As a result Ruffin Poole’s going right on sitting on the Golden Leaf Board but thanks to Sinsheimer he’s got one big problem: Now just about every reporter in North Carolina is watching to see what he does with the money.