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Banned
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Originally Posted by Elphaba
Not really. They did a rough split of 1/3 each, with a total difference of one and two delegates.
Host: Thanks for the info, it's something to consider. I'm pretty sure that one or two other candidates signed that pig of a bill, too.
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Elphaba, the rest of Biden's relationship with MBNA, IMO, is contradictory to what a US senator, who is "a man of the people", would do. The money paid to his son by MBNA is walking a tightrope that could be called a "bribe". If his house sale, did happen, it smells like Randy Cunningham and lobbyist Mitchell Wade's house "deal".
If you want to be taken seriously, as a candidate for an office as high as US Senator, or president, you must be wise enough, patient enough, and have your greedy impulses under control enough, to the point where you avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Biden clearly didn't, and Obama has not, either. He has the problem of making a decision, if that is all that it is, of buying the rest of his house lot from a man who has a criminal reputation, a man who Obama had not already held at arm's length.
Did whitewater turn into an eight year, partisan witch hunt on any things more substantative than what I've just described about Biden and Obama?
I like Edwards, but even he fails in his reaction to our worst symptom of corporate takeover, and lack of priorities and fiscal discipline, not to mention the pandering that is required to go along with it. We are spending ten times as much on annual defense as the next closest rival. It is not okay. It is extreme militarism.
Again, Russ Feingold's record makes the current contenders look almost
almost as bad as they are. THEY ARE UNACCEPTABLE !
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http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...ankruptcy-law/
August 8, 2007, 6:27 pm
Clinton and the Bankruptcy Law
By Katharine Q. Seelye
.....In the late 1990’s, as first lady, Mrs. Clinton became deeply involved in the issue, her first real foray into legislation since the collapse of her health-care effort in 1994. She sought a private tutorial on the subject, worked behind the scenes with members of Congress, wrote public newspaper columns and spoke out against it.
Her concern was that the bill would hurt women and children. The law then required that if a divorced man filed for bankruptcy, he had to pay off his alimony and child-support obligations first. The bill gave equal status to credit card companies and other lenders who were seeking to recoup money.
President Clinton pocket-vetoed the bill at the end of his term, after Mrs. Clinton had been elected to the Senate. Congress had left town and did not have the chance to try to override the veto.
The bill popped up again 2001, which was Mrs. Clinton’s first year in the Senate. She worked with Republicans on it and was one of 36 Democrats who helped it pass the Senate, saying it had been improved from when she opposed it. Still, this version was vigorously opposed by consumer groups and unions, and ultimately did not become law.
When the bill came up again in 2005, Mrs. Clinton missed the vote. She did vote against a procedural motion involving the bill and said that had she been present, she would have voted against the bill itself.
Explaining Senator Clinton’s support for the bill in 2001, Phil Singer, a campaign spokesman, said, “She helped forge a compromise in the 2001 bill intended to ensure that custodial parents got child custody payments.” She opposed the bill later, he said, because “unfortunately, that provision was stripped from the 2005 legislation.”
The bill was always tricky for her because it divided her party as well as two opposing constituencies in New York: banking interests and the unions. Between 2000 and 2006, commercial banking interests gave Mrs. Clinton $685,000, according to www.opensecrets.org, the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics. That is a fraction of the tens of millions of dollars she has raised. Banks ranked 13th in the list of industries that gave her contributions. (Her top contributors, by industry, were lawyers, who gave her $6.5 million over the same period.)
For the first six months of this year, as a presidential candidate, Senator Clinton has received $493,000 from commercial banks. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a rival for the Democratic nomination, has received more ($607,000) and is the top recipient of contributions from banks among both Democrats and Republicans.
Mr. Obama and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina have been hammering Senator Clinton for accepting money from “Washington lobbyists,” who have given far more to her ($413,000) than they have given to anyone else this year. At last night’s debate, she defended taking those contributions, saying she had “worked against a lot of special interests for a very long time,” adding: “I fought the drug companies and the insurance companies in ’93 and ’94. I caught — fought them again on the Medicare prescription drug benefit. I fought the banks on bankruptcy reform. So I think that my record on standing up and fighting for people really speaks for itself.”
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Quote:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/me...dex.php?id=220
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
Who Do We Vote For This Time Around? A Letter from Michael Moore
Friends,
....Now, on to the two candidates who did agree to do the interview with me...
Barack Obama is a good and inspiring man. What a breath of fresh air! There's no doubting his sincerity or his commitment to trying to straighten things out in this country. But who is he? I mean, other than a guy who gives a great speech? How much do any of us really know about him? I know he was against the war. How do I know that? He gave a speech before the war started. But since he joined the senate, he has voted for the funds for the war, while at the same time saying we should get out. He says he's for the little guy, but then he votes for a corporate-backed bill to make it harder for the little guy to file a class action suit when his kid swallows lead paint from a Chinese-made toy. In fact, Obama doesn't think Wall Street is a bad place. He wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new health care plan -- the same companies who have created the mess in the first place. He's such a feel-good kinda guy, I get the sense that, if elected, the Republicans will eat him for breakfast. He won't even have time to make a good speech about it.
But this may be a bit harsh. Senator Obama has a big heart, and that heart is in the right place. Is he electable? Will more than 50% of America vote for him? We'd like to believe they would. We'd like to believe America has changed, wouldn't we? Obama lets us feel better about ourselves -- and as we look out the window at the guy snowplowing his driveway across the street, we want to believe he's changed, too. But are we dreaming?
And then there's John Edwards.
It's hard to get past the hair, isn't it? But once you do -- and recently I have chosen to try -- you find a man who is out to take on the wealthy and powerful who have made life so miserable for so many. A candidate who says things like this: "I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy." Whoa. We haven't heard anyone talk like that in a while, at least not anyone who is near the top of the polls. I suspect this is why Edwards is doing so well in Iowa, even though he has nowhere near the stash of cash the other two have. He won't take the big checks from the corporate PACs, and he is alone among the top three candidates in agreeing to limit his spending and be publicly funded. He has said, point-blank, that he's going after the drug companies and the oil companies and anyone else who is messing with the American worker. The media clearly find him to be a threat, probably because he will go after their monopolistic power, too. This is Roosevelt/Truman kind of talk. That's why it's resonating with people in Iowa, even though he doesn't get the attention Obama and Hillary get -- and that lack of coverage may cost him the first place spot tomorrow night. After all, he is one of those white guys who's been running things for far too long.
And he voted for the war. But unlike Senator Clinton, he has stated quite forcefully that he was wrong. And he has remorse. Should he be forgiven? Did he learn his lesson? Like Hillary and Obama, he refused to promise in a September debate that there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq by the end of his first term in 2013. But this week in Iowa, he changed his mind. He went further than Clinton and Obama and said he'd have all the troops home in less than a year.
Edwards is the only one of the three front-runners who has a universal health care plan that will lead to the single-payer kind all other civilized countries have. His plan doesn't go as fast as I would like, but he is the only one who has correctly pointed out that the health insurance companies are the enemy and should not have a seat at the table.
I am not endorsing anyone at this point. This is simply how I feel in the first week of the process to replace George W. Bush. For months I've been wanting to ask the question, "Where are you, Al Gore?" You can only polish that Oscar for so long. And the Nobel was decided by Scandinavians! I don't blame you for not wanting to enter the viper pit again after you already won. But getting us to change out our incandescent light bulbs for some irritating fluorescent ones isn't going to save the world. All it's going to do is make us more agitated and jumpy and feeling like once we get home we haven't really left the office.
On second thought, would you even be willing to utter the words, "I absolutely believe to my soul that this corporate greed and corporate power has an ironclad hold on our democracy?" 'Cause the candidate who understands that, and who sees it as the root of all evil -- including the root of global warming -- is the President who may lead us to a place of sanity, justice and peace.
Yours,
Michael Moore (not an Iowa voter, but appreciative of any state that has a town named after a sofa)
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Last edited by host; 01-04-2008 at 03:47 PM..
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