Daily KOS: OK: Let's get a grip re: Wurzelbacher & Keating

Just like in the days after Sarah Palin was picked for VP, there's a lot of speculation about this "Joe the Plumber" character. I think some of the speculation has been verified- the fact that he's got a tax lien, and he's not licensed as a plumber. But I've seen a lot of speculation about his possible ties to Robert Wurzelbacher, the son-on-law of Charles Keating of the Keating 5 scandal.

Move on. Nothing is there.

ttujoe's diary :: ::
Robert M. Wurzelbacher, son-in-law of Keating, was 37 years old in 1991 when federal charges were filed against Keating. It appears that he has addresses in Phoenix and Coronado, CA.

The Robert M. Wurzelbacher of Milford, OH, a heavy donor to GOP candidates, is 83 years old and retired. They're not the same person.

Digging to see if this guy is a plant or a hypocrite is a good idea. But I think it's equally important to know the link before idle speculation.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/16/133831/42/1001/632600

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE6DF173DF935A25756C0A964958260

<snip>
The guilty plea today was from Robert M. Wurzelbacher Jr., who had been a senior vice president of Lincoln's parent company, the American Continental Corporation of Phoenix, and the chief executive of an investment firm owned by Lincoln Savings. Mr. Wurzelbacher, who is 38 years old, is married to the former Elizabeth Keating, one of Mr. Keating's daughters.

<end snip>

If Junior was 37/38 in 1991, then he was born in 1953/54.

If the elder Mr. W. is currently 83, then he was born 1925/26, just about the right age to be Senior to the Keating SIL's Junior.



Not necessarily off topic, but I will tell you from first-hand experience that people who worked for/with or benefited from associations with Charlie Keating were paid to be very, very, very loyal. Many of the young loan officers who worked for Lincoln Savings in Phoenix were fresh out of college and were paid double what their counterparts at other banks were paid. When Keating fell, they remained loyal. They defended him to their last moments at Lincoln Savings.

I worked there for almost a year in 1991-92 after Resolution Trust took over. I worked with a lot of the hold-overs from Lincoln/American Continental. The man who destroyed the company and ultimately put these people on the street was NEVER criticized by them. NEVER. He paid them very handsomely. He installed free vending machines in the break room. He brought in free pizza on Fridays so there was enough left over to take home and feed the family.

A friend, ZC, who was active in Jazz in AZ would never hear a word against Keating because he donated heavily to the organization and supported local musicians. Never mind that one of ZC's friends ended up bilked out of a life savings by Lincoln; ZC defended Keating up one side and down the other.

He bought loyalty, but most of those so bought stayed bought, apparently to this day.


Tansy Gold, ex-RTCer

As you may recall from his battles with Larry Flynt there. The coincidences continue!

:)

One of the original Joe the Plumber posts of this morning had the link to the Wurzelbacher/Keating piece from the '92 NYT. Because I had worked at Lincoln, it caught my eye.

At least part of Wurzelbacher Jr.'s involvement with Lincoln revolved around the Hotel Pontchartrain, a Detroit hotel. Detroit isn't that far from Toledo. Whether the proximity means anything, I don't know. But I throw it out there.

Keating set up the deal to purchase the Ponchartrain allegedly to provide an income stream for his daughters and their husbands. One of the Keating daughters was married to Wurzelbacher. The purchase was made with an unsecured loan from Lincoln Savings. The limited partnership -- I honestly don't remember the name -- was then set up with a fat line of credit for operating funds for the hotel. At the time of purchase, the hotel was over-priced and it had never made a profit. Throughout the time the Keating surrogates owned it, it ran heavily in the red. In essence, the "operating funds" were simply cash into the pockets of the partners, and that's apparently what Wurzelbacher was convicted of and sentenced for, since he admitted, according to the NYT piece, that there was never any real intention to pay the "loan" back. How much the Hotel Pontchartrain drained out of the depositors' funds I really don't know. But it was just so blatantly fraudulent that I never forgot it.

From what I saw -- I was a loan documentation secretary so I saw the paperwork on a daily basis -- Keating intended to use Lincoln Savings as his own personal piggy bank to fund his real estate "empire." He bought a lot of land and started a lot of developments. But he was disappointed in the scheme because it didn't provide a steady flow of income. So he decided to get out of rel estate per se and into hotels and resorts, including the lavish Phoenician Resort in Phoenix. The Hotel Ponchartrain was supposedly part of that overall scheme, except that it didn't really represent a viable "investment." (Many of Keating's ventures did eventually make money, for someone else if not for him.) And the fact that the financing was set up with no security made the whole deal even stinkier. Whether the hotel itself was ever turned over to RTC as an asset, I don't know. It may have been. The estimate when I was there was that even if RTC acquired it, they wouldn't be able to get more than a small fraction return on what had been loaned.

I have no sympathy for Charles Keating or anyone who benefited improperly as a result of their association with him. He's slime. He hurt a helluva lot of people. I read the letters from elderly women who had been bilked out of their savings, from their lawyers, from their survivors. These were not people looking for 15 minutes of fame: they were innocent and trusting souls who didn't have millions but had a few thousand they wanted to get a reasonable return on and see kept safe. Keating swindled them with uninsured savings accounts and he played the victim.

Kinda like Joe the non-plumber.


Tansy Gold

And how about the relative in Wasilla, of all places??