After years of feckless leadership by Harvey Pitt, the Securities and Exchange Commission finally found a chairman worthy of the title: William Donaldson. Unfortunately, Donaldson quickly earned the ire of corporate America for being “a tougher regulator than expected.” It wasn’t supposed to be like that. He was a long time Bush family friend. He was a former Wall Street executive. And he was suddenly fighting for the wrong guy. Under Donaldson, the SEC has “turned the corner as far as letting people know we’re going to have integrity in the capital markets and accounting.”

Protecting the consumer? Holding corporate America accountable to the people? That type of activity certainly wasn’t popular with the right-wingers. Thus a coordinated campaign was begun:

A whisper campaign began that claimed Donaldson is engaged in “Stalinist planning.”

Several major industry groups — including the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributor — became “part of a quiet effort to convince the president that it’s time for a new Securities and Exchange Commission chair.”

In describing the implementation of Sarbanes-Oxley, the president of the Chamber of Commerce called it a “runaway system of corporate destruction being run by [New York Attorney General] Eliot Spitzer and the people who work at the SEC.”

All the while, other unscrupulous members of the business community launched an under-the-radar campaign to roll the reforms back.

Sadly…it seems they won.

For nearly a decade, top right-wing campaign fundraiser Thomas Noe has called the shots in Ohio politics. Today, he’s under “at least six investigations or audits” involving shady investments and corrupt campaign fundraising. In one remarkable case, Noe convinced the Ohio Workers’ Compensation Bureau to invest $50 million of state money in a rare coin fund he owned.

Last month, Noe said the funds were in great shape, making lots of money for the state. Whoops. Today, Noe’s lawyers admitted as much as $13 million of the fund’s assets are simply missing.

Where’s the money? Well, some was tied up in a coin bought with state cash for $122,990 and sold … for a penny. Then there are the coins Noe claims were “lost in the mail.” Then there’s the felon convicted of laundering drug money Noe hired who promptly used the state ‘s money to pay off some of his personal debt. (The state ate $850,000 on that one.)

Trying to account for the rest of the state’s “investment,” officials spent last week seizing other “collectable investments” from Noe’s shop. They say many of the seized items may in fact have been purchased with part of the state’s $50 million (thought they couldn’t say exactly which ones). Here’s a look at a few of the seized items: George W. Bush wall clocks. A Lance Armstrong jersey. Tickets from the 1980 Olympics “Miracle on Ice”. And don’t forget that solid rock of all investment strategies: Eighteen Beanie Babies (R).

Last night, the conservative website Townhall.com sent a paid message to its reader entitled “How Often Does Life Offer You a Second Chance.” In it, a man named Mark Skousen promised huge returns from his can’t miss stock tip. Here’s Skousen’s pitch:

In the tech sector, bargains have just about disappeared. This stock is one of the few exceptions. I see it moving way higher. In fact, I expect it to double and split 2 for 1. This extraordinary stock should be in your portfolio right now. Everything you need to know is in a Special Report I’ve just written: “The Company that Will Change the World: The Next Explosive Tech Stock.”

The email directs people to http://cf.heritage.org/rd.cfm?id=599 for his “free” report. In other words, this scam is hosted directly by the Heritage Foundation. (No wonder Heritage is pushing so hard to funnel Social Security money into private investment accounts.)

The report, as you might have guessed, is not actually free. You can only get it if you subscribe to an expensive newsletter written by Skousen, presumably filled with more of these can’t miss stock tips. Skousen promises that if you are dissatisfied with the newsletter he’ll refund you money. No word if he’ll refund your money after you blow your savings based on one of his outrageous predictions.

The Security and Exchange Commission publication “Invest Wisely: Advice From Your Securities Industry Regulators” warns consumers to be alert for:

Representations of spectacular profit, such as, “Your money will double in six months.” Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

Sounds like they are describing Skousen to a tee. To complain about the efforts of Skousen and Heritage to mislead investors use this online form.

The identity of Deep Throat, the secret source “whose insider guidance was vital to The Washington Post’s groundbreaking coverage of the Watergate scandal,” has now been revealed. Many call him a hero but Pat Buchanan…well, he had other words for him.

On Scarborough Country, 5/31/05: “Well, I don`t think he is a hero at all…[H]ere`s a man who has been entrusted with a high honor, deputy chief of the FBI, sneaking around at night, handing out materials he got from a legitimate investigation to ‘The Washington Post,’ Nixon`s enemy, in the middle of a campaign…I think it was payback. I think it was a nasty thing to do on his part…But let me say this. The people that went after Richard Nixon day in and day out to use anything to bring him down hated him long before Watergate…And they were doing anything to bring him down.”

On MSNBC, 5/31/05: “Well, I wouldn’t used the term ‘traitor,’ because I don’t know that he was ever a Nixon loyalist…Yes, I think he’s sneaky. And I think he`s dishonorable in what he did…He’s buttering up The Washington Post, which is the most hostile institution to the president. He’s undercutting the president in the middle of a campaign…Well, look, it brought down a president. And I think that cost us Vietnam, frankly.”

On Countdown with Keith Olbermann, 5/31/05: “And so his motivation, I think, is not good. His deeds are dishonorable, if not criminal. And I don’t know what he thought he was doing for his country. My sense is he was probably ashamed of what he did.”

The Supreme Court today upheld a law which allows prisioners to practice their religion from behind bars. Media coverage has focused on the unanimous vote by the Court, and on the atypical religions which the law protects. The Washington Post’s coverage, for example, begins “[t]he Supreme Court sided with a witch, a Satanist and a racial separatist Tuesday, upholding a federal law requiring state prisons to accommodate the religious affiliations of inmates.”

What the media has not mentioned is a radical concurring opinion by Justice Thomas which would eliminate the New Deal and roll back the Civil Rights Movement. Among the laws which would be doomed by Thomas’ approach are “the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the sick leave portions of the Family and Medical Leave, the Freedom of Access to Clinics Act, as well as minimum wage and maximum hour laws and labor and environmental laws.”

During his 2000 campaign, President Bush touted Clarence Thomas as a model Justice, and promised to appoint more Justices just like him.

– Ian Millhiser