Thread: Sara Palin Controversy

Bombshell in commissioner controversy - KTVA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPTMcs8wpHc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pak-rH0dCeA

Um, starting a thread requires a comment.

It's a non-controversy anyway. There's a LOT of context to this one. You have to look at Palin's entire history, and the way she approaches her offices she holds, but she does in fact have a clear and consistent pattern in this regard. She's being investigated for this ONE just because one of the people happened to be her relative. I don't give this very much weight, right now. I might be wrong, things like this have a way of hangin' around, especially when the opposition's there to keep hammering on 'em.

Originally Posted by TheBestPerspective

Bombshell in commissioner controversy - KTVA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPTMcs8wpHc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pak-rH0dCeA

As long as were comparing VP's

The Senator from MBNA
From the past, a look at Joe Biden's connections.

By Byron York

Note — Barack Obama's choice of Joseph Biden as his running mate is likely to bring up lots of old stories about the long-time senator from Delaware. In 1998, someone called me to talk about the sale of Biden's house, which had been a minor issue in his reelection campaign two years earlier. But when I traveled to Delaware, I found there was more to it than met the eye, and it was just part of Biden's close, intertwined relationship with MBNA, the giant credit-card company based in his home state. (MBNA was bought by Bank of America in 2006.) This is the story from The American Spectator in 1998:

In the 1996 campaign, a Republican businessman named Raymond J. Clatworthy challenged Joseph Biden's run for a fifth term as senator from Delaware. By many accounts, Clatworthy ran a hapless, hopeless race. He tried to portray Biden as a soft-on-crime liberal. It didn't work. He tried to portray Biden as a big-government tax-and-spend liberal. That didn't work, either. He even brought in Hollywood GOP icon Charlton Heston to campaign for him in all three of Delaware's counties. Still no luck; the popular Biden maintained a strong lead in the polls going into election day.

Despite his frustration, Clatworthy stuck to the issues. He had to; early in the race, he had vowed to stay away from personal attacks. Then, less than two weeks before election day, one of Clatworthy's campaign consultants ran a so-called "push poll" in which campaign workers call voters ostensibly to learn their opinions but in truth to spread damaging information about the candidate's opponent. Clatworthy's callers said that earlier in the year Biden had sold his house to a top executive of the Delaware-based credit card company MBNA. The price, they said, was twice the home's value, suggesting that MBNA had bought off Biden as well as his house.

But as much as he bungled the issue, it turns out Clatworthy was on to something: Biden and MBNA have indeed developed a pretty cozy relationship. John Cochran, the company's vice-chairman and chief marketing officer, did pay top dollar for Biden's house, and MBNA gave Cochran a lot of money—$330,000—to help with "expenses" related to the move. A few months after the sale, as Biden's re-election effort got under way, MBNA's top executives contributed generously to his campaign in a series of coordinated donations that sidestepped the limits on contributions by the company's political action committee. And then, a short time after the election, MBNA hired Biden's son for a lucrative job in which, according to bank officials, he is being groomed for a senior management position.

Byron York on Joe Biden on National Review Online

Son was a paid consultant for industry Biden helped

The Democrat's son worked for the credit card industry while he pushed through laws helping its bottom line.

By CHRISTOPHER DREW and MIKE McINTIRE, New York Times

Last update: August 24, 2008 - 10:51 PM

During the years that Sen. Joseph Biden was helping the credit card industry win passage of a law making it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy protection, his son received more than $400,000 in consulting fees from one of the largest companies pushing for the changes, aides to Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign acknowledged Sunday.

Biden's son, Hunter, received the fees from MBNA Corp. from 2001 to 2005 for consulting work on online banking issues. Aides to Obama, who chose Biden as his vice presidential running mate Saturday, said that the younger Biden, who works as both a lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, never lobbied for MBNA and that there was nothing improper about any of the payments.

But campaign officials acknowledged that the connection between the Bidens and MBNA, the enormous financial services company then based in their home state of Delaware, was one of the most sensitive issues they examined while vetting the senator for a spot on the ticket.

Biden's support for the bankruptcy changes, which were signed into law in 2005, puts him at odds with Obama, who opposed the bill and has criticized the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, for supporting it. Consumer advocates and other Democratic allies remain sharply critical of Biden's actions, saying in recent days that they could hamper the campaign's efforts to attack the Republicans over their handling of the nation's credit crisis.

Son was a paid consultant for industry Biden helped

Biden sells his house to an MBNA officer for double the value, then pushes for a law helping the credit card industry making it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy protection. Nice job Joe! Which VP would you rather have, one that fired a Commissioner because he wasn't doing his job or Biden above?

I'm glad it is being investigated, but at this point I don't think there is much to it.