Thursday, February 23. 2006
Here's yesterday's cartoon from Signe Wilkinson of the Philadelphia Daily News.  Click here to visit Signe's cartoon archive.
Tuesday, February 21. 2006
Will Bunch's sidebar to his American Prospect article that we told you about yesterday has now been posted. It concerns Rick Santorum's charity organization that seems to have some serious problems, including not being properly registered with the State of Pennsylvania. Here's an excerpt: In 2001, he launched the Operation Good Neighbor Foundation. The charity, which seeks to award money to faith-based groups and other organizations that combat poverty and social ills like teen pregnancy, has a Web page loaded with photos of a smiling Santorum, posing with oversized checks and leaders of community groups. So far, according to the site, the Senator’s charity has doled out $474,000.
But public records show that the group has raised considerably more than that since its inception in 2001.
A review of federal tax returns filed by the foundation for 2001, 2002, and 2003 shows that the charity spent just 35.9 percent of the nearly $1 million raised on its charitable grants, while spending 56.5 percent on expenses like salaries, fund-raising commissions, travel, conference costs, and rent. Charity experts say that charitable groups should spend at least 75 percent of their money on program grants, and that donors should beware of organizations that spend as little as Santorum’s has.
...
Gary Ruskin of the Congressional Accountability Project, a good-government group, questioned why Operation Good Neighbor would hire lobbyists and political operatives instead of charity professionals. “It looks like another pocket to fill,” Ruskin said, adding: “Senator Santorum is obviously a man with many pockets.”
Many pockets indeed, pockets which seem to be large and full.
Monday, February 20. 2006
Will Bunch, the intrepid Philadelphia Daily News reporter, has penned an extensively researched new piece for the American Prospect about Rick Santorum's personal finances, which, as its lede says, "suggests that the Senate GOP might want to reconsider making him its ethics czar." Bunch has put a summary of his investigation up on his Daily News blog, Attytood. Here are two 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.
Monday, February 13. 2006
Friday night Rick Santorum spoke to the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee. Rick thanked them for sticking by him even though he sometimes makes their work difficult with things that he says and does, which led to an unwanted round of applause. He told his audience that he'll probably continue to do and say controversial and unpopular things, which caused at least one attendee to audibly shout, "NO". However, he said that he'll always tell them the truth. Judging from his recent statements about travel, the K Street Project, and Grover Norquist, we assume that Rick must have had his fingers crossed when he said that he'll always tell the truth. Here's the video:
Sunday, February 12. 2006
On Thursday we told you about a Senate committee hearing in which Rick Santorum said, "The only traveling I do is to and from my state and driving my kids all over the place." We explained that Rick had clearly forgotten a number of trips he went on over the last few years. But we didn't realize just how bad Rick's memory problems are.
The Philadelphia Inquirer has found 9 more trips that Rick has taken in the last two years, all of them on corporate jets that he only had to reimburse at the rate of first-class airline tickets. Here's how the Inquirer puts it:
It's a tempting offer for the time-strapped elected official: fly by private jet, courtesy of a corporation, without the hassle of long lines and lost luggage.
Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) took advantage of the perk 10 times in the last two years, paying more than $18,000 - a fraction of the true cost of the flights - to six companies with legislative interests before Congress, according to campaign-finance documents.
At least six of those flights came at a time when he advocated positions favorable to two of the companies: BellSouth Corp. and UST Public Affairs Inc., a Connecticut smokeless-tobacco company.
How is it that Rick could possibly have forgotten about all of those trips on private jets? Do you think he forgot about them when he voted on legislation that was important to the companies the jets belong to?
Wednesday, February 1. 2006
Norm Ornstein in Roll Call and Tom Ferrick in the Philadelphia Inquirer have unearthed more statements, made as far back as 1998, that make Rick Santorum's assertions that he wasn't involved in the K Street project and that the K Street project didn't pressure lobbyists to hire Republicans seem increasingly suspect. Ornstein:
From a Sept. 13, 2004, Roll Call piece by Brody Mullins:
“As recently as this summer, the GOP failed to convince the Motion Picture Association of America to hire a Republican to succeed Jack Valenti, who is set to retire as Hollywood’s man in Washington after a long and legendary tenure.
“Instead, the trade association announced in August that it had hired former Clinton administration Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman.
“The move infuriated Republicans. Santorum even raised the issue of Glickman’s hire at a closed-door meeting of high-ranking Republican Senators.
“‘Yeah, we had a meeting and, yeah, we talked about making sure that we have fair representation on K Street,’” Santorum said soon after the hire. “‘I admit that I pay attention to who is hiring, and I think it’s important for leadership to pay attention.’”
Ferrick:
The public record is replete with references of Santorum leading the effort to get lobbyists to meet with GOP legislative leaders in regular sessions. The aim was twofold: to get the Republican message out, especially to friendly lobbyists, and to get lobbying firms to hire more Republican-friendly lobbyists. It has a lovely symmetry.
Santorum is on the record complaining publicly about industry groups' picking Democrats over Republicans to lobby.
As his chief of staff, Mark Rodgers, told the National Journal in 1998, the message of the K Street effort was simple: "Hire Republicans." Do you think Rick didn't get that message?
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