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Tag: Andrew McCain

  • Susan Mikula was Muckety’s top search last week

    Susan Mikula, Andrew McCain and people related to the former Detroit mayor’s legal troubles topped the list of the most searched names on Muckety last week.

    Susan Mikula

    Artist Susan Mikula moved to the top spot as her partner, Rachael Maddow, launched her new TV show on MSNBC. “The Rachael Maddow Show” debuted on Sept. 7.

    Andrew McCain

    Andrew McCain moved up two positions to become the number 2 most searched term last week as news spread of the failure of Silver State Bank, where McCain had been a director. McCain is the son of GOP presidential nominee John McCain. Regulators seized the Nevada bank and sold it, blaming its failure on soured loans in commercial real estate and land development, mainly in Los Vegas.

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    Kwame Kilpatrick et al.

    Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and others who were involved with the text-messaging scandal that sent Kilpatrick to prison landed them in the number three spot for last week.

    On Sept. 4, Kilpatrick agreed to plead guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice, for committing perjury. He will serve four months in jail and five years’ probation, and will pay up to $1 million in restitution.

    Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty, were indicted in March on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, misconduct in office and conspiracy. At the time, he had pledged to fight efforts to remove him from office.

    Hunter Biden

    Users continued to search for information about Hunter Biden, the 38-year-old son of Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden.

    On Friday, Biden quit lobbying in an apparent effort to shield his father and his father’s running mate, Barack Obama, from negative political fallout.

    Ramah Wright

    Our fifth most searched for term last week was Ramah Wright. Wright is an associate pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a church formerly attended by Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. She is married to Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who retired from the church earlier this year.

    Ramah Wright’s name turned up in the news after a Reuters report mentioned a 37-year-old Texas woman who claimed to have had an affair with Rev. Wright.

    According to Reuters, “Ramah Wright reportedly went to Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for marriage counseling in the 1980s when she and her first husband were trying to keep their marriage alive.”

    Following counseling at the church, Ramah Wright became the Rev. Wright’s second wife.

    Top five stories for the week

    J.K. Rowling victorious in copyright suit against Michigan publisher
    Rowling won her claim that a Harry Potter fan had violated her copyright with his plans to publish an encyclopedic guide to the boy wizard’s world.

    Sex, drugs and bid-rigging described at the Interior Department
    A government watchdog has detailed bid-rigging, acceptance of improper gifts and sexual relationships among top department officials charged with overseeing oil and gas companies.

    Silver State bank fails; John McCain’s son had been director
    Andrew McCain may have left in the nick of time. The son of GOP presidential nominee John McCain resigned as a director of troubled Silver State Bancorp just five weeks before regulators shut down the bank.

    McCain’s campaign for change is fueled by same old money machine
    John McCain’s reputation as a maverick and his selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would signal that he’s bringing change to the Republican Party. But his campaign money machine sends a different message.

    Obama and McCain both have ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
    In the wake of the federal government’s bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two presidential candidates are calling for reform.

  • Silver State bank fails; John McCain’s son had been director

    It looks like Andrew McCain got out just in the nick of time.

    McCain 46, the son of GOP presidential nominee John McCain, resigned as a director of troubled Silver State Bank and its parent company, Silver State Bancorp, on July 26, citing “personal reasons” – just five weeks before regulators shut down the federally-insured bank.

    Regulators announced Friday that they had seized the Nevada bank and sold it, blaming its failure on soured loans in commercial real estate and land development, mainly in Los Vegas.

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    Andrew McCain had served on the company’s three-person auditing committee since joining the board in February, 2008, but there is no indication he committed any wrongdoing, or that his father had any knowledge or involvement in the bank’s difficulties

    Still, his involvement in a failed bank is politically awkward for his father’s campaign since it conjures memories of John McCain’s role in the 1980s savings and loan scandals when he was accused of improperly aiding Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.

    After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee cleared John McCain of impropriety, but chastised him for exercising poor judgment in helping Keating. Three other senators – Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald Riegle – were found to have improperly interfered with a federal investigation.

    In Andrew McCain’s case, he had been appointed to the boards of Silver State and its holding company in February, and resigned five months later. Silver State issued a July 26 press release announcing his immediate resignation for “personal reasons.”

    Only a week afterward, the company announced a $62.7 million net loss for the second quarter of the year – along with the resignations of its CEO and chairman, Corey Johnson and Bryan Norby, both of whom had co-founded the bank in 1996.

    The bank said in a subsequent regulatory filing that its second-quarter net loss was actually more than $10 million higher than what it had originally announced. It also said in the filing that its worsening financial condition meant there is “uncertainty about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

    The holding company has 13 bank branches in Southern Nevada and four around Phoenix.

    Silver State had $1.7 billion in deposits, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Nevada State Bank is taking over the deposits insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., leaving $20 million in uninsured deposits, which may not be wholly recovered. Silver State became the 11th federally insured bank to fail in 2008.

    A Wall Street Journal story looking into Andrew McCain’s sudden exit suggested he had resigned at the urging of those who felt his position on the board could become a liability in his father’s presidential bid. The younger McCain, who is CFO of Phoenix-based Hensley & Co., the distributorship owned by his stepmother Cindy McCain, had also recently agreed to lead the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, and had concerns about balancing his responsibilities, according to the Journal .

    In any case, he was not the first to leave the beleaguered bank.

    Douglas French, then the executive vice president of commercial real estate lending, had resigned in May, also citing personal reasons. French is an associate editor of the conservative Liberty Watch magazine, which counts Bill O’Reilly and John Stossel among its contributing writers.

    The younger McCain, who is one of two sons from his father’s first marriage, had previously served as a director of Choice Bank in Scottsdale, Arizona, from 2006 to April 1, 2008, when it was acquired by Silver State Bancorp

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  • Hunter Biden is Muckety’s top search this week

    Hunter Biden, Edra Blixseth, Konrad Ng and Andrew McCain topped the list of most-searched names on Muckety for the week of Aug. 28 through Sept. 3.

    Hunter Biden

    Topping the list was Hunter Biden, the 38-year-old son of Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden. Hunter Biden was in the news last week after Barack Obama announced his VP pick and reporters began doing their own vetting of the Biden family.

    The younger Biden was a consultant with MBNA from 2001 to 2005, while the banking giant was lobbying his father to help the credit card industry win passage of a law making it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy protection.

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    Edra Blixseth

    No. 2 was Edra Blixseth, who was the subject of a profile by Bloomberg’s Anthony Effinger after she settled a 19-month-long divorce fight with ex-husband Tim. This is a snippet from the Bloomberg report:

    Edra lives in a 30,000-square-foot (2,800-square- meter) mansion on an estate near Palm Springs, California, called Porcupine Creek. The house, complete with servants, is surrounded by a private golf course.

    Porcupine Creek, a Gulfstream II, a 2004 Rolls-Royce Phantom and a BMW 760 are some of the spoils of Edra’s July divorce from Tim. After a 19-month-long fight, she also got control of one big source of their wealth: a private Montana ski- and golf resort called the Yellowstone Club, where the likes of Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, News Corp. President Peter Chernin and hotelier Barry Sternlicht have erected supersized chalets on lots that until the real estate crash sold for $2 million and more.

    Konrad Ng

    Konrad Ng, the husband of Barack Obama’s half-sister, was the third most-searched name on Muckety, after his wife, Maya Soetoro-Ng, spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

    Here are a few nuggets about Obama’s half sister from MSNBC’s profiles of convention speakers:

    • Soetoro-Ng, 36, cites Obama as a father figure, as her parents divorced when she was just 9.
    • She holds a Ph.D. in comparative education from the University of Hawaii.
    • She teaches 9th-grade world cultures and 11th-grade U.S. history and the U.S. Constitution at an all-girls school in Honolulu.
    • She and Ng, a Chinese-Canadian, have one daughter, Suhaila, who was 2 in September 2007.
    • One of the four bumper stickers on her car reads, “1-20-09. End of an Error.” Another is a “Women for Obama” sticker.
    • She recalled their mother would wake them up in the middle of the night to look at the moon.

    Andrew McCain

    Andrew McCain, one of John McCain’s two sons from his first marriage to Carol McCain, came under scrutiny after resigning as a director of Silver State Bancorp in late July, just days before the Nevada-based company announced it might be on the brink of failure. Andrew McCain is also the CFO of Hensley & Co., the Arizona beer distributor where his stepmother, Cindy McCain, is chair of the board.

    Rounding out the top 10 were:

    Arthur Culvahouse, Jr.

    Arthur Culvahouse, Jr., who is the chairman of the law firm O’Melveny & Myers and the head of the GOP vice-presidential search team for John McCain. With McCain’s surprise pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and the questions surrounding the depth of her vetting, Culvahouse ended up being vetted himself.

    Anne Korin

    Anne Korin, an analyst with the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, who got a lot of attention for her August speech before the National Conservative Student Conference. More about Anne Korin…

    Ashley Biden

    Ashley Biden, the daughter of Sen. Joe Biden, who was not so much in the news, but in the search results as the curious sought to learn more about the family of the Democratic vice presidential nominee. More about Ashley Biden from Mahalo.

    Susan Mikula

    Susan Mikula, who was caught in the spotlight when her partner, political analyst Rachael Maddow, sat in for the vacationing Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, and was then given her own show, at the expense of Dan Abrams.

    Neilia Hunter Biden

    More Biden family vetting here as people sought to find out more about Joe Biden’s first wife, who was killed in a car accident in 1972. One of Biden’s daughter’s was also killed in the crash. More here…

    Scott Bommer

    Scott Bommer, who was in the news after he sold his co-op at 1060 Fifth Avenue for $48.9 million. Bommer bought the co-op in January for $46 million, setting a record at the time. The New York Observer has an article on the sale.

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