People who live in multi-million dollar homes shouldn’t throw stones. Art Pope lives in what may be the largest and most expensive home in Raleigh’s Country Club Hills yet his 2006 property taxes are listed as "Delinquent" even as his puppets point fingers at the home of John Edwards. There is one law for the rich and another law for the richer.
The boys at the Pope funded John Locke Foundation were no doubt high-fiving each other Friday when internet traffic shut down Carolina Journal servers in the wake of the "National Enquirer" style hit job on John Edwards living quarters in Orange County. They seem oblivious to the fact that their own paymaster, Art Pope, is a millionaire living in a large multi-million dollar house in Raleigh’s exclusive Country Club Hills just 147 feet from a property owned by Edwards until about two weeks ago.
They also seem oblivious to the fact that the account for Art Pope’s house is listed in Wake County tax records as "Delinquent" in the amount of $25,345.92 of which $496.98 is an interest penalty applied 1/8/07.
Some 90% of the John Locke Foundation funding comes from the Pope Foundation which has contributed $4.3 million in the past two years to the right-wing think tank. A nominally "non-partisan" free-market foundation funded by a wealthy man who lives in a large house shining a spotlight on the home of another wealthy man? Has the "Carolina Journal" become the Southern Living of politics? When will we see a "reveal" of Art Pope's $3 million, 10,000sf home? Right now:
Pope paid $2,995,000 for the 10,057 square foot house 12/30/2004. It was a new house built on one acre of a subdivided 2 acre lot. It has an assessed value of $2,322,632. Had Pope purchased the other 1 acre lot he would have shared a corner post with the Edwards property. Much has been made of the size of the Edwards new house yet the living quarters at 10,400 square feet (which includes 2 garages) are comparable in size to Art Pope’s Country Club Hills residence. As to expense, the total estimated value of the Edwards’ new property is less that the sum of the proceeds from the sale of their Washington and Raleigh properties combined. What may have been a politically unwise decision was certainly a smart investment decision.
The attack on Edwards was clearly coordinated with right-wing bloggers as posts appeared time stamped early on Friday when the article appeared in the John Locke Foundation’s Carolina Journal online. The JLF claimed coyly it was a result of Matt Drudge linking to the story but bloggers apparently had a "heads-up" and wasted no time wandering down the path cleared by the JLF.
All of our Web sites were down briefly this morning after The Drudge Report linked to Don Carrington's story about John Edwards' house in Chapel Hill. In addition to Drudge, many bloggers also linked to it, which added to the massive traffic that our servers couldn't handle.
They can’t handle the fact that a Democrat can have money, that he can still care about those that don’t have money and that instead of wasting millions on right-wing stink tanks like the John Locke Foundation he chooses to invest his money in tangible property. Now I don’t think it’s a big deal that Art Pope is late on his taxes. It’s a cost of the rough and tumble of life that I share with Pope and Edwards.
It is disingenuous for wealthy Republicans to point fingers at wealthy Democrats and to presume that they know who should represent the Democratic Party and those who are not wealthy. It makes a lie of all the free-market jingoism because in the end it is clear that neither poor nor wealthy Democrats are welcomed by the invisible hand of the Republican Party. If wealth is a disqualifier for speaking on behalf of the poor then the John Locke Foundation is simply a mouthpiece for wealthy Republicans.