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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ish who wrote (312895)	10/31/2002 7:39:30 PM
From: Mr. Palau	Respond to of 769670

No glee. I agree that the Court reached the right decision.

To: Ish who wrote (312895)	10/31/2002 10:38:12 PM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Ya think? Many who may have voted for Wellstone may not like Mondale. Mondale is big on boards Minnesota's new candidate for the Senate is part of a parade of political leaders who have migrated to the boardroom after careers in government. BY MIKE HUGHLETT Pioneer Press It's hard to imagine Minnesota's late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone — an adamant critic of corporate greed — sitting on a corporation's board of directors. Walter Mondale, the Democrats' choice to carry on Wellstone's candidacy in Tuesday's election, has almost made a vocation out of it. . . . Currently, he's a director for three companies: Northwest Airlines and UnitedHealth Group, both based in the Twin Cities area, and BlackRock Financial Management, a big New York-based mutual fund company. Northwest and UnitedHealth also are clients of Mondale's law firm, Dorsey & Whitney, a Minneapolis-based corporate powerhouse. So was Little Canada-based St. Jude Medical, on whose board Mondale served from 1997 to 2000. Those sorts of client-board member arrangements — while not uncommon — can raise shareholders' eyebrows. The concern: A director can be seen as lacking independence when his employer or law firm is making money from the same company on whose board he serves. "It's inappropriate,'' said Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware's Center for Corporate Governance and a corporate director himself. Mondale, a Dorsey partner, didn't return calls seeking comment. The possibility for conflict-of-interest depends on how much work a director's law firm or employer does for the company that director is serving, shareholders' advocates say. The more work, the more the perception of conflict. . . . Last year, Mondale received base compensation of $215,000. Of that, $160,000 came from BlackRock; $30,000 from UnitedHealth; and $25,000 from Northwest. He also received $1,000 to $1,500 for attending board meetings at two of those three companies. In addition, Mondale, like all Northwest directors, gets free air travel worth up to $25,000 per year. Mondale has used that benefit more than most Northwest directors over the past four years, racking up flights worth more than $18,000. One more benefit: UnitedHealth, which owns and manages health care plans, also compensates non-employee directors like Mondale with stock options, doling out 10,000 of them annually. In March, 51,000 of the 64,922 shares of UnitedHealth stock that Mondale owned were in the form of options that could be exercised within 60 days, security filings show. twincities.com