Posted on 08/11/2010 8:04:22 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
As chairman and chief executive of OneUnited Bank, Kevin L. Cohee has sought to build a company that is about more than just money. He promoted the bank, now at the center of a House ethics case against Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), as a uniquely responsible investor in impoverished minority communities and urged prospective clients to live modestly.
Customers ought to focus on "real connections, real relationships," Cohee urges in a recording on the bank's Web site. Avoid "people who want to be with you based on the things that you have."
"Do you really need a Mercedes-Benz?" he asks. "Houses don't make you, cars don't make you."
Cohee, 52, took a somewhat different view in his own life. His bank purchased or leased luxury real estate he used and, until federal regulators complained in 2008, paid for his Porsche. Cohee's East Coast spread was an $880,000 condominium on Miami Beach's Ocean Drive, and out west the bank leased a $26,500-a-month mansion for him on Palisades Beach Road in Santa Monica, Calif., owned by Bruce Springsteen's drummer, Max Weinberg.
A battle of lawsuits over the house -- Cohee complained that he had to ship in "a huge bar, a desk, a chandelier," while Weinberg accused him of installing secret surveillance cameras in the master bedroom -- led Cohee and his wife, through a corporation they formed, to buy the house for $6.4 million in late 2006. OneUnited then provided him a living allowance at the mansion, where, a year later, he was twice arrested, on sexual assault and drug charges.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This reads like one of those late night get rich schemes.
I can’t believe Bambi passed over this guy and picked Geithner for treasury instead.
Cohee seems much more to be a “Chicago Way” team player. I mean, what’s Geithner got? Tax evasion? Chump change by comparison to Cohee.
Looks like the MSM has given up trying to cover for Charlie and Maxine.
I find it hard to believe that they are being sent to the firing squad only on Obama’s secret orders, however. The House and Senate leadership does not take orders from him.
Indeed. The long knives are out. However, I can't escape the feeling that some scheme is afoot.
Otherwise, this all stays in the ethics committee and gets resolved quietly (and impotently).
Two possibilities:
1. Charlie and Maxine called Pelosi's bluff because they see the writing on the wall. And realize that delaying the trial until next session would be, ah...inopportune.
2. This is the Democrat leadership's way of firing up their black base. Though it's an odd way of doing it...
Can't escape the feeling that the affair has been a carefully laid plan...until the wheels came off.
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