McCain's Half Million Dollar Charitable Donations - To His Kid's Schools

Ken Silverstein has a post on the Harpers blog on as aspect of McCain's finances. Here are the facts, as best as I can glean them:

• McCain has net assets of between $20 million and $32 million, primarily Cindy McCain's inherited wealth.
• When the income from the books he's written came in, McCain apparently didn't need it, and instead donated it to his private charity, the John and Cindy McCain Foundation, of which his wife is chairman and president.
• Between 2001 and 2006, McCain contributed about $950,000 to the foundation, which presumably he deducted from his taxes. Presumably, because he hasn't released his tax returns.
• Between 2001 and 2006, the foundation made gifts of about $1.6 million.
• The recipients of the largest amount of those gifts, $500,000, were elite prep schools that his children attended. The gifts to the schools were made during the time that they were enrolled there, and dropped off or ceased after they left.
• The single largest recipient of gifts from the foundation was "the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation, which received [$420,000] ... . That money was earmarked for conferences that 'bring together key military officers and civilian academics responsible for ethics education and character developments [sic].'"
• The vast majority of the balance of the gifts made by the foundation during the period, almost $700,000, was to "medical causes of various kinds, with a focus on craniofacial research,                                        and the Halo Trust, a landmine-clearing organization."

Silverstein appends to the bottom of this piece:

There’s nothing illegal or improper about the foundation’s contributions, but it’s not exactly the pattern of giving you’d expect from someone who has cultivated an anti-elitist image.

Look, what people do with their money is their business. And I don't have any quarrel with medical charities or even the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation, though I'd want to know if their conventions resemble Tailhook at all. It just rankles a bit that, because his wife hit it big in the genetic lottery, he could blow half a million to buy his kids' way into snooty private institutions. Where do Republicans get off calling Democrats elitist?

Comments

[John]

Your comments about the Naval Academy are ill informed and insulting. You do know that every midshipman at the Naval Academy gets their education paid for (the same as at all of the service academies). You do know that the mids represent all fifty states. You do know that the Naval Academy may be the toughest and most competitive school in the country to get in to. You do know that the graduates are all commissioned in the Marine Corps or Navy where they protect your right to be ill informed and express that lack of knowledge.

[Mithras]

You're right. Naval aviators are saints. And the head saint is running for President.

[zenpundit]

Ok - assuming all of that is true Mithras, the money is McCain's and it's origin is clear. What are your views on the roughly(estimated) $100 million slush fund controlled by the Clinton's via the presidential library, significant amounts of which came from foreign sources?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/14/AR2007121402124_2.html

Admittedly, other presidential libraries also have shady funding but Nancy Reagan ain't running for president.

[Mithras]

What are your views on the roughly(estimated) $100 million slush fund controlled by the Clinton's via the presidential library, significant amounts of which came from foreign sources?

I think it's sleazy as hell. Part of the reason why she may be about to lose the nomination is that a significant percentage of Democrats see her and Bill as being unethical. It's a small part of why I support Obama. On the other hand - I can't follow your link because it got cut off by the right column - I don't know they did anything actually illegal. Just as McCain has done nothing illegal, at least, not since the early 90s.