Rick Santorum: Let's Dig a Little Deeper

I've given many of the other candidates the same treatment, and came across an interesting listing by a fellow DPer. I will attempt to verify the information, which tests my internet research prowess. I love a challenge!

Rick Santorum: The Biggest Loser

The top reasons Rick became THE BIGGEST LOSER:

– Rick was improperly spending tax dollars on HIS family.He took $100,000 from a struggling PA public school district to pay for his children’s “cyber” education program.
Unfortunately, Rick and his family were living in suburban Virginia then, so they were not entitled to those funds.
And when exposed in the press, Rick wouldn’t pay back the money, so the school district had to go to court to get it back — which cost us even MORE money.
Pretty hypocritical, since Rick won his first congressional race by attacking the incumbent for living in VA instead of PA.

 To be fair, I can see this both ways. He did have a residence in both places. My question, as a homeschool mom, is why the heck does it cost $100,000 dollars to "cyber" educate five kids? That's insane. Let me put it in perspective: I spend about $1,000 to homeschool my three kids for a whole year! I hope those kids got some killer laptops and a premium Lazy-boy recliner desk combo!

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– Rick voted against raising the minimum wage 8 times. But he did vote to allow his own pay to be raised by $8000.When he did propose a small increase, he excluded 10 million workers who live on tips, and even tried to end overtime pay beyond the 40-hour work week.
And who would have benefitted from that? The owners of big chain restaurants like Outback Steakhouse. And big hourly employers like Wal-Mart.
No wonder Rick took the Wal-Mart corporate jet to Florida for his fancy political fundraiser with Outback Steakhouse executives. (and oh, by the way, that was the same trip as Rick’s infamous visit to Terry Schiavo’s hospice when other events had been canceled out of “respect” for the Schiavo family).

As a free-market type, I don't support a minimum wage because it discriminates against the low-skilled workers. The hypocrisy here is that he voted to up his own pay which does not reflect a public service mindset. The amount of cronies about him that would benefit from not raising the minimum wage also reeks of special interest influence and not of free market principles.

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– Rick wanted to privatize Social Security and raise the retirement age.Remember, he was serving as a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania — the second oldest state in the country.
Seriously, he led the charge for George W. Bush’s Social Security privatization plan, thinking Wall Street a safe place for the retirement funds of America’s seniors.
And he said not only would he raise the retirement age to “at least” 70 — he “would go even farther” if he could.

I'll be the first one to admit you have to do something with social security, but from what I've learned about our whole financial system, I sure as heck don't want JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America managing my social security, do you?? How much have people lost on Wall Street since 2008? From those who have been following my Wall Street series on the Bolsheviks and FDR, you know what I'm talking about. This would give a select few Insider cartel companies a no-bid monopoly on the entire Social Security fund. What could possibly go wrong? I know that when conservatives hear the word privitization, they think private ownership = good. However, what they fail to understand is that the companies allowed to do the privitization are all pre-selected and chosen over smaller companies that are not connected with the machine. It's like having all the letters of the alphabet and being told you get to choose A, B, or C and when you're choice is not satisfactory, you get told, but you had a "choice"! Wrong. You did not have a free choice, just a controlled choice among a handful of corrupted companies. The Elites bounce us Americans back between government control and corporate control. The joke is, of course, is that both sectors are owned by the same people.

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– Rick voted with big Pharma and against seniors getting lower cost prescription drugs.He sided with the big drug companies by voting to increase their profits and keep seniors from buying low-cost prescription drugs from Canada.
No wonder the drug lobby gave Santorum committees half a million dollars.

Rick voted for the Medicare Part D plan that was a huge step toward socializing medicine in America. Thanks a lot comrade Rick! Here's an itemized table of gifts received.

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– Rick isn’t interested in protecting other people’s right to compensation if they are victims of medical malpractice, but that position didn’t keep his wife from suing a Virginia chiropractor for a half-million dollars in “pain and suffering.”Instead, Rick voted to prevent Americans from getting just compensation for their pain and suffering caused by medical malpractice.
And his wife suing a chiropractor for $500,000 becomes even more hypocritical since that’s twice as much as the cap on such damages that his own legislation would have allowed others to receive.
Rick calls their own lawsuit a “private family matter,” but doesn’t seem to think everyone else’s family deserves the same rights and respect.
In fact, Rick has said that Griswold vs. Connecticut was wrongly decided, that there is no right to privacy and, therefore, the state has the right to regulate even the use of birth control by married couples.

Again, I'm against frivolous lawsuits and think there ought to be serious tort reform. But half a mill for "pain and suffering"??  Note to medical professionals, if you are taking care of a Congressman's family member and don't deliver the goods, expect your life to end in financial ruin. In fact, the judge slashed the settlement:

"That's where again you're misled is that a lot of, there was cumulative damages," he said. "The medical bills, lost income, all those other things that were out there."
Those medical bills totaled $18,800, yet she sued for $500,000. And lost income? The judge made no mention of that when he slashed the jury's award in half, saying it was excessive.

Lost income? Does the woman even work outside the home? I thought she was a SAHM?

The judge noted that the remaining damages "awarded amounted to something in the neighborhood of $330,000 or so for injuries sustained and the effect upon Mrs. Santorum's health, her past and future pain and suffering and inconvenience.

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– Rick claims to be opposed to stem cell research, but is he or isn’t he?At the same time he was declaring his opposition, his political committee accepted well over $50,000 from companies that perform this very type of research.
And then he compared Sen. Specter’s bill to provide federal funding for a wider range of stem cell research to “the wholesale destruction of human life paid for by the federal government.”

Against all Heresies has a very good run-down on the hypocrisy on display here.

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– Rick voted to cut billions in loans that help middle class students afford college, but he voted to give oil companies an additional $2 billion in new tax breaks.Roll Call 363, H.R. 6, December 21, 2005
Santorum voted to concur with the House amendments to S. 1932, the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005
“House OKs legislation to save $39 billion over 5 years,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, Feb. 1, 2006“…The largest reduction in spending would be a nearly $12 billion slice in federal student loans.”
Joint Committee on Taxation, “Estimated Budget Effects of the Conference Agreement for Title XIII. OF H.R. 6,” July 27, 2005Roll Call 213, H.R. 6, July 29, 2005“How Those Big Bucks End Up In Big Oil’s Pockets,” Washington Post, Aug 7, 2005“…In recent months, oil company profits have soared again as international crude prices have hit new highs. Yet the reaction of the American public has been more muted. And that has probably emboldened Congress — which, instead of investigating oil companies, just handed them (by various estimates) anywhere from $1.4 billion to $4 billion in tax breaks in the new energy bill.”

I'll be the first to agree that the Constitution does not provide for underwriting student loans. It however, does not authorize social and economic planning via selective tax breaks, either. Sen. Santorum was the #2 recipient of donations from the Oil and Gas sector right behind Kay "bailout" Hutchinson in the 2006 election cycle. Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran indeed. Who would want all that sweet, sweet Texas tee which is a bubblin' on the Persian plane?

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– In his last year as a Senator, Rick’s political committees accepted more money from lobbyists than any other member of Congress. No wonder he voted to give billions in special tax breaks to oil companies.“The Bankrollers: Lobbyists’ Payments to the Lawmakers They Court,” Public Citizen, May 22, 2006 http://www.citizen.org/documents/BankrollersFinal.pdf“Lobbyists: Top 20 Recipients 2006,” Center for Responsive Politics web sitehttp://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.asp?Ind=K02&cyc...http://santorumexposed.com/?p=133

The man didn't meet a lobbyist he didn't like, except of course a gay lobbyist, that's probably his line in the sand. Selling America out to everybody and everything with an open wallet is not a problem, however.

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Rick Santorum has a long, colorful history of making bizarre, inflammatory and just plain ridiculous statements about all sorts of important issues. Here is a rundown of some of Rick’s “greatest hits.”“A lesbian woman came up to me and said, ‘why are you denying me my right?’ I said, ‘well, because it’s not a right.’ It’s a privilege that society recognizes because society sees intrinsic value to that relationship over any other relationship.”
- Rick Santorum on gay adoption, 5/3/11

I'm not in favor of gay adoption, in fact I've seen what it can do first hand - warp a child incredibly. But what's interesting about his comment is that Santorum states that "society" sees an intrinsic value to a particular relationship. Having a child, God Willing, is a right recognized in the Old Testament. Remember the story of Tamar and Onan? God gave this woman the parts to get the job done. Why did Santorum not remind the woman of the privates God gave her? He goes to this nebulous society Borg collective idea that the progressives have been pushing down our throats for a century now. You see, my privilege in homeschooling is totally dependent upon society seeing an intrinsic value in it. That's the logic Santorum is following. We don't have rights, we have privileges bestowed upon us from an ever shifting society. That's just messed up!

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“The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just wrong.”
–Arguing that poor, unwed mothers don’t really need college educations. It Takes a Family, Pg. 138, July 2005.

Um, ok. This is partially true if we were living in a world where the special interests that Rick Santorum so clearly works for hadn't rigged the job market to where you need a college degree or some sort of licensing to obtain even menial employment. I think a lot of you know exactly what I'm talking about. Knowledge that used to be acquired "on the job" is now part of some program that you have to pay for and who benefits but the banks that underwrite the funding. It also doesn't help that our manufacturing base has been off-shored and all we've got left in the low-skill arena is service jobs.

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“Why do I owe them money for a bill they approved that was lawful? I don’t owe them anything,”
–On why he doesn’t plan to reimburse the Penn Hills School District the $100,000 it spent on his children’s tuition while they were living in Virginia.
Senator denies owing district, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, November 24, 2004

Again, $100k on "cyber" education? It's called a $5 used World Book encyclopedia, a ream of paper, and a pack of pens. Good grief!


So in conclusion, what we have here is a seriously conflicted individual. On the surface, he appears as the consummate family man, giving all the right lip service that us social conservatives like to hear. But in the background, we see a man who never met a lobbyists he couldn't deal with, except maybe a gay rights one. By refusing to work with them, he probably rationalizes all the other wheeling and dealing he does. I'm not a pro-queer person, understand, but there are a lot of motes sticking out of eyes here. There is a vacuous space where principle ought to be. For instance, there is no way I would ever take $100K to educate my kids, not even if I had 10 of them, because that's just obscene. Even after you bought all their books, paid for an umbrella school, enrolled them in a co-op, and paid for piano, dance, and whatever lessons, you'd still have a ton left over. Why not send them to Andover or something. Good grief! The starving kids and Bibles for China would have been appreciative of that money, but anyway..
Getting back to our man Santorum, I have made a colorful map which should help those of you see what we're talking about. It is important to note that in the infamous 2006 election cycle where the Republican Party had its behind firmly whipped, Santorum received more campaign contributions from lobbyists than any other Congressperson. Well Done, Rick!

During that same election cycle, Ron Paul raised 1.5 million with 97% being from individuals.
Comparing that to Rick, who raised $28.6 million with 78% being from individuals, most of which were connected.

Oh yes, and Rick is still all about the Patriot Act. Maybe he doesn't know or care how this could be turned on anyone his nebulous "society" deems undesirable.

The obligatory map:

link