Silverado 3a: Ken Good (Part Two) – Son of a Kansas Itinerant Minister
Neil Bush: Bit Player
Back to Ken Good, son of an itinerant Kansas Methodist minister who once owned what was described as the most expensive house in Denver (at $10 million in the 1980s), who used to show up at upscale parties in a tux and tennis shorts, etc, etc. While I gave a brief description of Good and his antics, what was missing is the role that he played in Denver’s Silverado Bank Scandal of the late 1980s, a scandal in which he was, as they say’ `a player’. Read more…
Silverado 4a: Larry Mizel, Silverado-Linked Developer Turned Philanthropist and `The CELL’
1. Mizel `With 1700 of his closest friends’
At the end of a speech by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat at the University of Denver about a month ago, the university chancellor, Robert Coombe, took a moment to thank Denver developer Larry Mizel for having facilitated the event (whatever that means). It was a presentation sponsored by the chancellor himself as well as Colorado’s Democratic Governor Bill Ritter. It gave a sense of political influence that Mizel has garnered here in Colorado over the years that Mizel pulled it all off. Sitting in the audience, he took a brief bow to a largely applauding and enthusiastic auditorium of spectators. Read more…
Silverado 4: Larry Mizel, Silverado-Linked Developer Turned Philanthropist (Intro Remarks)
Well – we continue with our `Where Are They Now’ Series related to the Silverado Bank scandal of the late 1980s, one of Colorado’s biggest.
- Michael Wise, the whiz kid from Emporia Kansas and former Silverado Bank president, ended it all a few months back by commiting suicide.
- Ken Good, the flamboyant developer who showed up in a tux and tennis shorts and had liquor running through the plumbing system of Denver mansion, is still a developer, now in Texas it appears.
- Same with Bill Walters, although he has relocated to Las Vegas.
- E. Trine Starnes, with his links to the Nicaraguan Contras, seems to still be alive. Although I could not determine his where-abouts, there is at least one record of a New Orleans condominium sale a few years ago suggesting that he remains on this side of the great divide
Perhaps the most successful of the Silverado-connected people though is Denver’s own Larry Mizel, the founder of MDC – a real estate holding company, worth $4.8 billion just a few years ago. MDC borrowed a great deal of money from Silverado in the days before the collapse – we’ll look at that in a later entry – but the company, Mizel and his sidekick and assistant Dave Mandarich, somehow – with a little help from their legal team, Brownstein and Farber, came through all that smelling pretty good and today, while a few old cynics grumble how Mizel should be in prison, he is nothing short of the `toast of the town’ in Denver, the personal manifestation of the fusion of economic success with political power.
One cannot probe economic and political power in Colorado very much without coming across Mizel who has, for all intensive purposes, left his Silverado legacy far behind and moved into the `superstar’ stratosphere. His name pops up often in one way or another. He is active in Colorado and national politics, in the Jewish Community, especially where it concerns support for Israel’s right wing, in the legislature where his friends and lobbyists have engineered significant tax cuts that would benefit his company, in the `museum’ community as a result of the Jewish museum that is named after him, etc. etc.
- When it looked like there would be fight in the Republican Party primary for the governor’s seat last year, political blogs suggest that Mizel himself went to a number of the candidates (among the Josh Penry) to `persuade’ them not to run in order not to divide the party.
- Several years back when the state legislature was about to pass a punishing bill against undocumented workers, it is said that Mizel – with long term buddy and life-saver Norm Brownstein, intervened personally with then conservative Republican (a former oil company lobbyist) Bill Owens. Owen was told that without `illegal immigrants’ as construction workers, the price of housing in Colorado would go up some 10%. Owens then vetoed a bill which he himself had pushed through the state legislature
- Mizel’s political reach goes beyond the Republican Party that he has supported most of his life, to the Democrats as well. Ed Perlmutter and Michael Bennet, both liberal Demcrats, have lobbied on his behalf for federal funding for his `war against terrorism’ museum – the CELL – in downtown Denver. Denver’s Mayor John Hickenlooper and Colorado Governor Bill Ritter have also done their bit for Mizel at different times and are careful to show up up at his mega parties with other political opportunists and ass-kissing `wannabes’ eager to be photographed with `Larry’ etc, etc.
- Recently the Mizel-Brownstein team was featured on an email – along with Howard Boigon – announcing the then upcoming national American-Israel-Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) national conference in Washington DC. Turns out that both Mizel and Brownstein are (according to the email) on AIPAC’s national board. Mizel is also current chairman of the board of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Never too far away from Mizel, Brownstein is also on the board of directors.
One could go on and on.
The above is, after all, just a modest sampling; it all boils down to a simple fact. From a nearly indicted co-conspirator in the Silverado Bank Scandal – Mizel was given immunity from prosecution in exchange for turning state’s evidence against his own sub contractors – Larry Mizel has emerged 20 years on a very powerful man, whose influence goes far beyond Colorado. From alleged, would-be shyster to philanthropic icon in less than a quarter of a century. Not bad.
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Updated – August 23, 2011
I was wondering why so many people have clicked on the series I wrote several years ago about different people involved in the Silverado Bank scandal in the late 1980s and early 1990s; one of the more colorful was Ken Good. I admit being pretty tough on him…
Now I understand. Ken Good died of cancer on August 13, 2011 in Dallas. He was 67 years old.
For a kinder, gentler take on Good than my own, read the following:
Ken Good Obituary 2 ( the Denver Post. It has a little more context)
Ken Good Obituary 3 (Tampa Bay.com)
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Updated – April 17 2010)
(Related Articles
– Running With A Bad Crowd: Neil Bush and the $1 Billion Silverado Debacle – Although the headline suggests the piece – from Time in 1990 – is about Neil Bush, it is a pretty decent summary from the mainstream press of the Silverado scandal with much info about Ken Good, Larry Mizel and the whole cast of stars
– The 1980s Savings and Loan Trillion Dollar Scandal – interview with Peter Brewton about the S & L Scandal of 1980s
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1.
Ken Good...
Kenneth M. Good – `Ken Good’ as he was called during his heydays in Denver in the 1980s – hasn’t changed much. He’s still one of the lowest species on the great moral chain of being – a developer. After he left Denver his tuxedo tail tucked under his legs in 1988 or so – he went on to bigger and worse development scandals first in Florida and then in Texas, where it appears he still resides. Read more…
Mark Udall Responds to Concern About The Goldstone Report
Although he is in the US Senate, not in the US House of Representatives, Senator Mark Udall received concerned letters about the House vote `rejecting’ the Goldstone Report. Here is his response. What is interesting is how carefully his letter refuses to even use the term `Goldstone Report’, although that is precisely to what he is responding..
Read Udall’s response here.
An Israeli Song…A Father Sings To His Daughter…
Local Response To The Goldstone Report: Juliet Wittman’s Letter To US Congresswoman Diana DeGette
Dear Diana DeGette:
I have read your letter on why you voted for H.Res. 867, and I find it both troubling and evasive. I have been an admirer of yours in the past, but that admiration has dissipated. I absolutely cannot understand why challenging and investigating war crimes should “drive people away from resuming negotiations toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” What people? And what will be the basis of those negotiations? You say the death of innocent civilians must end. How can that happen if those deaths–many of them paid for by our tax dollars–are papered over and ignored by our representatives in Congress?
You say you deplore inflammatory rhetoric. Have you read the Goldstone Report? It is a long, sober, and meticulously-researched document by one of the world’s most eminent jurists. It contains no rhetoric of any sort. Truthfully, it seems to me that you know very little about this issue. That being the case you should not, in good conscience, have voted at all.
I live in Boulder and I understand that my opinion need not concern you. (Jared Polis’s response to my questions was to e-mail me the Abraham Foxman ADL handout that apparently served as the only research he bothered to do). Still,you must be aware that after the bloody and terrible events of the previous century, the world’s most honorable thinkers–with the United States in the forefront–concluded that humanity’s last, best hope was international law. To deliberately weaken that law as you all have done is to invite further bloodshed and chaos.
Sincerely, Juliet Wittman, Boulder
Happy Thanksgiving…
I do like Thanksgiving and wish all the readers a happy one. I like it for a number of reasons. There isn’t much flag waving or bible thumping – either of which ruins the best of times. Then there is the good food (in this house it is truly wonderful and healthy to boot), drink (there will be a fair amount as soon as I get off this machine). And family. And mine brings me alot of joy. Of course there is all the shopping nonsense tomorrow and this evening a football game which somewhat ruins the mood, but then I won’t be heading to the mall at 6 am nor turn on the tv this evening.
It does help not to be reminded – as I am now doing – that this day does mark the beginning of a genocide against North American native peoples by some protestant fanatics, otherwise called our `founding fathers’ (the founding mothers were soon condemned as `witches’) who, prior to making the great journey across the Atlantic, first tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the British government because it wasn’t protestant enough for them. Had they not included the sons and daughters of those in power in Britain, the lot of them would have been hung, beheaded or whatever cruel way people were disposed of in those days. But being sons and daughters of the privileged, they were instead, expelled to Amsterdam where they were given a place to live and worship, but no power to speak of – which is what they were really after. This left them unsatisfied and consequentally they decided to head `across the pond’ to Massachusetts. Most of the native peoples in the area that they met were already dead from small pox, probably contracted by some wayward European sailors whose ship had wrecked off the coast a year so before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. The first pilgrim harvest wasn’t a harvest at all, or at least not their harvest. Instead the founding fathers – simply gathered to corn and pumpkins from fields outside of native villages where entire populations lay dead from the pox. No real achievement to speak of, was it? One of the better descriptions of all this is an essay called the First Thanksgiving in James Loewen’s `Lies My Teacher Told Me’ – one of the more fun books undermining some of the myths by which we live.
But as I said, I won’t get into all that and ruin the spirit of the day. During the recent presidential campaign my daughters did not permit me to criticize Obama too much, nor now to make cynical and unkind (if accurate) remarks about holidays that they love. So, in the spirit of familial harmony, I will let others do that. I did find a wonderful website by two 84 year old women, Margaret and Helen, whose views on the day parallel my own (although I am not into Texas football) which I encourage you to read and enjoy. My brother-in-law, David Fey, introduced me to these fine women. (For the link click here) And at that site read `Thanksgiving Letter To the Family’ – a jewel.
Remarks of Rob Prince, Summit County Unitarian Universalist Church, Copper Mountain, Colorado. Sunday November 22, 2010.
New Directions In US Foreign Policy on Israel and Palestine?
Thank you for inviting me.
I must admit that this is a day, when, 46 years ago, my sense of security about the world was shattered and, for the first time, questions about how the American political system worked arose in my mind that have never since been satisfactorily answered. It was on a Friday afternoon; I was puzzling over my once again – poor results of a Physics lab from the day before at St. Lawrence University when someone from a neighboring dormitory room burst into my room with the news that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. The messenger – had a history of being a practical joker. I got angry and it was only when I saw the tears flowing down from his face that I realized,…as my daughters used to say…`this is for reals’.
For the complete transcript please click here.
US Congresswoman Diana De Gette’s Pathetic Letter As To Why She Voted Against The Goldstone Report
Click here.
Two links worth reading, both by former Peace Corps friends – we were in Tunisia together more than 40 years ago.
- The first is by Michael Oudyn about how Beaujolais wine is a rip-off. Michael has drunk enough wine to be qualified as a world class expert. Unlike many of us who cut our wine tasting teeth on Thibar (a decent Tunisian Red – or at least it was 43 years ago), Michael actually knows alot about wines he imbibes. Drinking wine helps digesting both food and reading about the Silverado slime balls that I am exploring at present, helping the story go down more smoothly. Highly recommend it especially when I get to the antics of Ken Good, Bill Walters, and the great master of Colorado slime-ballery, then and now, Larry Mizel and the coterie of legal and political slim balls to whom he has been attached at the hip for decades. (Stay tuned). Click here for the link.
- The second is by Jean Athey. If I remember correctly Jean served in Tunisia’s far south, in Gabes, not far from the Libyan border. More recently, she has been active in peace movement in the Washington DC area for some time and recently went to Nablus – in the, perhaps, soon to be declared independent Palestinian state – where she participated in the olive harvest. Her writing about that experience is honest and painful, and so, once again, it helps to have Oudyn’s wine tips when reading it. Click here for the link.
Silverado 2 – Kermit Mowbray: From Federal Banking Regulator To New Mexico Bird Watcher…
(slightly revised – April 28, 2010)
If Michael Wise’s life ended abruptly by jumping off of the ninth story of a parking lot at Tampa International Airport, the same can not be said for many of `the cast of characters’ who buzzed around him, using Silverado Bank as a cash cow – or protecting those who did. Among those whose fate was entwined with Wise’s so long ago are Kermit Mowbray, Ken Wood, Bill Walters, Larry Mizel and his side kick David Mandarich, and perhaps the biggest fool of them all – Neil Bush, President George Bush Sr.’s son and President George Bush Jr’s brother.
A `where are they now’ piece on them all that includes something of their role in the Silverado collapse is thus in order.
The Mowbrays
Let us start with Kermit Mowbray, with his distinguished sounding name. These past years, Mowbray and his wife, Linda are enjoying retirement in Sante Fe, New Mexico, home, it seems, of many a retired rich dirt ball. It is to New Mexico that John Erlichman, of Watergate fame, had a place, grew a beard and wrote his bitter criticisms of his ex-boss, Richard Nixon.. Until recently neocon warmonger and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld enjoyed life just up the road from Sante Fe, in Taos, where he made generous contributions to the Taos Pueblo. Not all that long ago some 3000 New Mexicans demonstrated against Rumsfeld’s warmongering policies not far from his home.
Mowbray has spent his post-Silverado career mostly quietly. After a time spent teaching at Peru State College not far from Nebraska City Nebraska where he taught economics, Mowbray and his wife joined the many other Americans who chose retirement in New Mexico.
The Mowbrays enjoy bird watching, and support a locally based conservation group and library. Read more…
Silverado 1 – The Michael R. Wise Legacy To Colorado Banking
Michael Wise.
(slightly revised – May 3, 2010)
Note: This is the first episode in a series I hope to produce on this blog essentially about the Silverado Bank Failure in Colorado and the S&L Scandal of the late 1980s. In some ways it is ancient history, happening so many Middle East wars, weapons systems and financial scandals ago. I am delving into this for several reasons. I suppose the main reason is that I happen to pass rather often these days, the old Silverado Bank building on S. Colorado Blvd near where I work .
But I am developing a course on financial scandals and am impressed with how many parallels there are between the current financial crisis and those of the past – a pattern of deregulation, virtually no regulation by those agencies that might have intervened to plug the damage, the small fry get nailed but the big fish – be they scoundrel developers of the Silverado days, or the financial managers of today, walk free for the most part (with a few exceptions like Madoff).
A lot of people who did not go broke on the S&L scandal have – along with their shyster lawyers – become fabulously rich and powerful and where they used to rob and steal the public blind, today they are philanthropists, competing with each other to have their names on university buildings, museums etc. It would all make a great musical, really…if it weren’t for the fact that the country is going to pot. And somewhere along the way – finance, development, what is loosely and inaccurately called `organized crime’ and governmentseem to intertwine, then and now. With Kermit Mowbray, Michael Wise and now Ken Good, I’ve really just scratched the surface… more to come. RJP)
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Michael Wise – The Golden Boy From Emporia Kansas – Walks The Plank
On April 8, 2009, just seven months ago, Michael R.Wise paced along the ninth story of a parking garage at Tampa International Airport. As if intending to arrange a coffee date, Wise first sent a text message to a 26 year old former employee, one Chris Copelan who had worked for Wise at CFIC Home Mortgage Co. before that company collapsed. The message said `I am looking forward to catching up with you’.
Having delivered the message to cyberspace, then, taking his last long step, Wise `stepped off the side’, plunging to his death below. According to witnesses, he landed in a landscaped area with palm trees and some greenery. At 1:30 in the afternoon at a nearby hospital, Hillsborough Medical Examiner, Henry Pouge pronounced Wise dead. Having viewed a parking lot video that recorded Wise’s last moments, the airport police, ruled out any foul play. Of course let us be a little skeptical about such reports although we can not prove otherwise.
Thus ended the life of the former CEO of Silverado Bank, perhaps Colorado’s most infamous, at least to date. Wise, hailing from Emporia Kansas, where he had had a short and successful banking career, came to Denver in 1979 to take over the management of a small thrift bank, Mile High Savings and Loan in Littleton Colorado, a Denver suburb just south of the city.
Under Wise’s leadership, the name of the bank would change to `Silverado’, change the rules for savings and loan banking, make a fortune on an ocean of high interest cd’s that it quickly converted to bad loans, and then unceremoniously collapse to be shut down by federal regulators nine years later in 1988. Read more…
Arnie Zaler – Former Executive Director of the Colorado Zionist Federation – Sentenced To 15 Years in a Federal Peniteniary for Wire and Mail Fraud
Arnie’s Saga 3 (at the end of the entry)
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(updated with a few details on May 3, 2010)
Arnie’s Saga 4
An Unusually Warm and Sunny Day For Early November…
Arnie Zaler…
Yesterday was an unusually warm and sunny day for early November. With a lot of poor people, most of whom were Black or Brown, I took a bus from my Northwest Denver home to downtown Denver. I was heading to the new federal court house on 19th and Champa to attend the sentencing of Arnie Zaler to a 15 year prison term on four counts of fraud to be followed by five years of enforced parole. He was also ordered to pay restitution for $2.5 million of the money he swindled.
I had known Zaler some in his/my student activist days at the University of Colorado in Boulder. In the spring of 1969 I once saw him, with great dramatic effect, burn his draft card in protest against the Viet Nam War and declare his intentions to `give up his white skin privilege’ – the latter a bit more difficult than the former to achieve.
Zaler’s journey – from a genuine 60s radical to a failed version of a Larry Mizel or Norm Brownstein wanna-be – took him, like Sisyphus, up the hill and back down again. Not that he reached commanding heights. In the 1970s, shifting his political gears some and with an eye on bigger things – he became, if I recall correctly, the executive director of Colorado Zionist Federation. As such, he had `access’ – regular contact not only with the state’s ruling elite, – or at least that section of it that was Jewish – but also on at least one occasion accompanied a few of the state’s big-wigs to a meeting with President Jimmy Carter to lobby for Soviet Jewry. By the 1990s he was in a federal penitentiary in Arizona. Interesting personal trajectory.
His has been a strange, mostly sad – self-delusional – journey, of someone whom, in the end, was simply too greedy for his own good and `hungry’ to achieve personal power, it seems, by any means necessary. He long ago became a pathological liar and con man; along the way, – he stole tens of millions of dollars, ruined the lives of a fair number of people most of whom were Jewish, embarrassing many who helped him get out of one jam after another, and, until the day he finally surrendered himself to federal authories in Atlanta, it appeared he never stopped trying to scam people. Read more…
View from the Left Bank: Rob Prince's Blog 