Will his loan from US Century Bank drag down Marco Rubio? ... by gimleteye

Marco Rubio is being staged by the Bush wing of the Republican Party to be a Hispanic vice presidential candidate on the 2012 GOP ticket. But the pile-up of bad news for Rubio points to limited effectiveness in the one place that counts: swinging the Hispanic vote to the GOP.

The hyperbole that plays in West Dade never played very well with non-Cuban Hispanics. Who forgets their family immigration story? "He is a laughing stock in the Southwest … because people discovered he wasn’t telling the truth about his political Cuban exile history,” said DeeDee Garcia Blase, founder of Somos Republicans, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based GOP group that backs a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants."

Then there is the role of the Miami Dade insider piggy bank, US Century, in Rubio's home mortgage. Rubio signed up for a loan at the top of the real estate market. According to the recent investigative report by ProPublica, "Rubio received a 2006 loan from the bank while serving as Florida's state house speaker. A story broken by The Miami Herald in April 2008 revealed that the bank gave Rubio a home equity loan of $135,000 shortly after he bought his house for $550,000. But a month after the purchase, the house was appraised at $735,000. The $185,000 gain in equity in just 37 days paved the way for the U.S. Century loan. Rubio initially failed to disclose the loan on his public financials. He and U.S. Century have consistently denied wrongdoing. According to a spokesman for the senator, the Rubios locked in a pre-construction price of $550,000 a year before the closing on the house, making the time between appraisals 13 months and not 37 days. ProPublica asked the senator's office for documentation of the transaction but has not yet received it."