Random thoughts while waiting for the Dow to get back to 17,000. I’ve vowed not to look at my Charles Schwab account until that happens. (It closed at 16,285 Wednesday, up more than 600 points over Tuesday’s close.)
:: David Hudnall of The Pitch had another good story about one of our “good Catholic boys” who got filthy rich — and then in big trouble with the feds — running payday lending scams.
My favorite “good Catholic boy” is Tim Coppinger, because of the irony of hailing from a family that has been an anchor of Visitation Church at 51st Terrace and Main. As I have reported before, Tim Coppinger is now a Mission Hills resident and a member of St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Prairie Village — where he is the church poker-playing champion, by the way. (I shit you not.)
Tim Coppinger
If you’ll recall, the Federal Trade Commission closed in on Coppinger last year and shut down his online lending company, CWB Services. In a settlement with the FTC, Coppinger surrendered bank accounts totaling $520,000, and he sold a house he owned in Lake Lotawana. Hudnall reported, however, that Coppinger got to keep his Mission Hills home, valued at nearly $1 million, and his 401(k).
In an amazing bit of resourcefulness, Hudnall latched onto a website that keeps track of golfers’ handicap scores — GHIN.com — and discovered that after a break of several months, Coppinger returned to playing golf fairly regularly at Indian Hills Country Club last spring.
Although I stand in admiration of Hudnall, I have to say he must not be a golfer. Otherwise, he would have pointed out that the last score listed for Coppinger, on Aug. 15, was a very impressive 76 — just six over par at Indian Hills.
That score tends to indicate to me that Coppinger is relaxed and focused. If he’s shooting six over par, he can’t be worried about very much. (I play a lot of golf, and my best score of the year has been 77 — on a much easier course than Indian Hills.)
In any case, Hudnall was clearly irked by the country club membership, posing this rhetorical question: “Would a fair settlement in this case rally allow Coppinger to continue paying dues at an elite country club?”
Like Hudnall, I would also like to see Coppinger stripped of everything but his Jockey shorts, but, unfortunately, the filthy rich (and I do mean filthy) usually get to hang on to a lot of their ill-gotten gains.
:: I didn’t go to the air show over the weekend, and after reading how people were delayed up to two hours getting out of the Downtown Airport area Saturday, I’m really glad I didn’t go that day. It sounds like signage was poor, the number of buses was insufficient and the buses were delayed by downtown traffic jams in making their return trips to the airport. Apparently, the organizers got things somewhat straightened out for Sunday’s show. The Star reported that Sunday’s crowd was about 25 percent smaller.
Poor planning had to be a factor in Saturday’s mess, but I think another was the three-year break between air shows (because of that sequestration thing). When something as big as the air show is not done annually, it’s easy for the fine tuning to fail. In addition, significant changes have been made to some downtown streets, particularly Main Street, which now has streetcar rails from the River Market to near Union Station. Main is not the Main Street it used to be, and may not be for a long, long time. I’m sure we all agree it’s the price of progress…We do agree, right?
:: Johnny Cueto laid another egg last night, giving up six runs in five innings in the Royals’ 8-5 loss to the Baltimore Orioles. He’s now 2-3 since coming to the Royals from Cincinnati in a late July trade, and he’s lost two in a row. I tell you, it looks to me like the guy is just a showboat, delighting in wiggling his butt when he pitches and sending his dreadlocks flying in every direction…Instead of Cueto, I wish we would have gotten Cole Hamels from the Phillies. Now there’s a real pro. But the Rangers got him.
