Pirate's Cove

I wonder if his staff is to blame?

CHAPEL HILL – John Edwards ended 2004 with a problem: how to keep alive his public profile without the benefit of a presidential campaign that could finance his travels and pay for his political staff.

Edwards, who reported this year that he had assets of nearly $30 million, came up with a novel solution, creating a nonprofit organization with the stated mission of fighting poverty. The organization, the Center for Promise and Opportunity, raised $1.3 million in 2005, and — unlike a sister charity created to raise scholarship money for poor students — the main beneficiary of the center’s fundraising was Edwards himself, federal tax filings show.

But a spokesman for Edwards on Thursday defended the center as a legitimate tool against poverty.

I guesss Edwards is considered "poor" in Liberalspeak.

While Edwards said the organization’s purpose was "making the eradication of poverty the cause of this generation," its federal filings say it financed "retreats and seminars" with foreign policy experts on Iraq and national security issues. Unlike the scholarship charity, donations to it were not tax deductible, and, significantly, it did not have to disclose its donors — as political action committees and other political fundraising vehicles do — and there were no limits on the size of individual donations.

Remember that scene in I, Robot, where Will Smith sneazed and said "Sorry, I’m allergic to bullshit"? I just sneazed.

Rather then regurgitate the rest of the article, I would highly recommend reading it all, as it is more then a one page report. Basically, the story highlights how Edwards used the money to meet people, travel around the world, attend political rallies, the normal gamut of "helping the poor," eh?

To give him some props, some of the money was used to send people to college, but

Nonprofit groups can engage in political activities and not endanger their tax-exempt status so long as those activities are not its primary purpose. But the line between a bona fide charity and a political campaign is often fuzzy, said Marcus S. Owens, a Washington lawyer who headed the Internal Revenue Service division that oversees nonprofit agencies.

"I can’t say that what Edwards did was wrong," Owens said. "But he was working right up to the line. Who knows whether he stepped or stumbled over it. But he was close enough that if a wind was blowing hard, he’d fall over it."

In other words, Edwards was playing games, as liberals are want to do, and may have crossed that legal line. Nothing unusual for a liberal.