New American Prospect mag has major Santorum ethics slam

[scoopmeister]

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=11174

Here are the highlights:

1. Santorum and his wife received a $500,000, five-year mortgage for their Leesburg, Va., home (pictured at top) from a small Philadelphia private bank run by a major campaign donor — even though its stated policy is to make loans only to its “affluent” investors, which the senator is not.

Good-government experts said the mortgage from Philadelphia Trust Co. raises serious questions about Santorum’s conduct at a time when he is the Senate GOP’s point man on ethics reform. They explained it would be a violation of the Senate’s current ethics rules if Santorum received something a regular citizen could not get.

2. A political action committee chaired by Santorum, America’s Foundation, spends less money on direct aid to GOP candidates — its stated purpose — and more on expenditures than similar PACs. And its expenditure reports are littered with scores of unorthodox expenses for a political committee, with charges at coffee and ice cream shops and fast-food joints as well as supermarkets and a home-hardware store.

For example, America’s Foundation made some 66 charges at Starbucks Coffee, almost all in the senator’s hometown of Leesburg, and 94 charges at another D.C.-area vendor, HMS Host. Virginia Davis, the campaign spokeswoman, defended all the charges as campaign related, noting that the senator prefers to meet political aides in coffee shops rather than on Senate property.

3. A little publicized charity founded by Santorum in 2001, called the Operation Good Neighbor Foundation, is not registered here in Pennsylvania, even though the majority of its fundraising and spending takes place here. What’s more, three years of public tax returns show the charity spending just 35.9 percent of the nearly $1 million it raised during that time on charity grants, well below the 75 percent threshold recommended by experts.

You can see a shorter version here:

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002807.html

[Olney Blue]

1. He's cyberschooling his kids on the Pennsylvania taxpayers' dime.

Guess the Northern VA schools aren't good enough.

[punpirate]

2. Hmm...

... a five-year, $500,000 mortgage would cost him about $120,000 per year. Wouldn't that be just about all of his after-tax income as a Senator?

[EC]

3. I just wonder if he is making those mortgage payments

or is it really just a contribution...isn't houses one of the ways these guys launder? And Gee, I think everyone of them have a "charitable organization" in their name don't they?

[SpiralHawk]

4. The Republican culture of corruption

is vast veyond imagining