Give Charlie his day in court

[themadscientist]

Give Charlie His Day in Court

We were treated this week to a very entertaining, occasionally rambling, but certainly important speech by embattled Congressman Charles Rangel. According to him, against the advice of peers, Mr. Rangel chose to come to the floor to ask for "exposure of the facts." Despite my firmly-held belief that Charlie Rangel is the poster child for the sort of entrenched corrupt money-grubbing and hiding scumbags that pollute our body politic, he is still a human being and he has as much right as any of us to see the evidence against him and in a timely fashion.

The accusations against Mr. Rangel are substantial, but they are out there and he really doesn't have anything to lose personally by facing the music as soon as possible. This has been a long chain of events as the depths of his corruption are plumbed, the timeline spans years.

http://www.nlpc.org/stories/2009/10/07/ ... l-timeline



First came the rent-controlled apartments, described as "...a 1,700-unit luxury development of six towers, with doormen, that is described in real estate publications as Harlem's most prestigious address."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/11/nyreg ... .html?_r=2
"While aggressive evictions are reducing the number of rent-stabilized apartments in New York, Representative Charles B. Rangel is enjoying four of them, including three adjacent units on the 16th floor overlooking Upper Manhattan in a building owned by one of New York's premier real estate developers."

Next we discovered he was soliciting donations for a pet project on Congressional stationary.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02546.html

"The New York Democrat has penned letters on congressional stationery and has sought meetings to ask for corporate and foundation contributions for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York, a project that caused controversy last year when he won a $1.9 million congressional earmark to help start it."

He didn't seem to be nervous as he lounged at his Dominican villa. Nor was he forthcoming about the rental income it provided him.



http://www.nypost.com/p/news/internatio ... qSWasoovZI

"For 20 years, Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel has owned a beachfront villa in a sun-drenched Dominican Republic resort, yet has only sporadically declared income on the property in federal filings."

I believe the Washington Post article captured the scope of his omission best.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... tml?sub=AR

"Mr. Rangel's amended financial disclosure form, which exposes omissions from his 2002 through 2006 records, is a treasure trove of outrage. He neglected to report a checking account with the Congressional Federal Credit Union and one with Merrill Lynch, each valued between $250,000 and $500,000; the tens of thousands of dollars he's earning from dividends from a number of mutual funds and stocks; and the money made from the sale of a Harlem townhouse. As a result, Mr. Rangel's reported net worth doubled, from between $516,015 and $1,316,000 to between $1,028,024 and $2,495,000."

You would think he would curtail any activities that might be controversial, but no, he couldn't skip the Congressional Black Caucus junket underwritten by several large corporations.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/regional/s ... TmhyGSOJzJ

"High-ranking members of Congress were flown to a lush Caribbean resort this month for a three-day conference planned and paid for by several of the country's most powerful corporations - a violation of federal ethics rules, critics say."

When it came time to investigate that they made sure to pick an impartial arbiter, G.K. Butterfield. One snag though;

"The chairman of a House ethics probe into a Caribbean conference attended by members of the Congressional Black Caucus is himself a CBC member who attended the same event in 2005."

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/49506 ... bbean-trip

Butterfield again sits in judgment of Rangel, he is a member of the Ajucatory Subcommittee charged with the overall investigation of the breadth of his transgressions which are:

http://ethics.house.gov/Media/PDF/Rangel%20SAV.pdf

Count 1: Conduct in violation of the Solicitation and Gift Ban
Count 2: Conduct in violation of Code of Ethics for Government Service, clause 5
Count 3: Conduct in violation of the House Gift Rule
Count 4: Conduct in violation of Postal Service Laws and Franking Commision Regulations
Count 5: Conduct in violation of Franking Statute
Count 6: Conduct in violation of House Office Building Commission's Regulations
Count 7: Conduct in violation of the Purpose Law and the Member's Congressional Handbook
Count 8: Conduct in violation of the Letterhead Rule
Count 9: Conduct in violation of the Ethics in Government Act and House Rule XXVI
Count 10: Conduct in violation of Code of Ethics for Government Service, clause 5
Count 11: Conduct in violation of Code of Ethics for Government Service, clause 2
Count 12: Conduct in violation of the Code of Conduct: Letter and Spirit of House Rules
Count 13: Conduct in violation of the Code of Conduct: Conduct Reflecting Discredibility on the House

Butterfield again finds himself in a conflict of interest. Rangel has provided his campaign fund $4,000 from his National Leadership PAC , money Butterfield has, as of this writing, refused to return.

He is in good company, though. He, along with two of the other Democrats on the Ethics Committee who have also had their pockets enhanced from Rangel's PAC have been dubbed "Charlie's Angels" by a salivating Republican opposition.

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/10 ... wanes.html

Peter Welch chose to return his $19,000, but Ben Chandler, so far, thinks keeping his $10,000 contribution is not a conflict of interest as he weighs in on the ethics charges of the man who gave it to him.

In total Rangel's PAC and Candidate Committees have funneled millions of dollars to Democrats, a fact he reminded them of during the speech. "As much as I love you Democrats that figure it'll be easy for you, I'm the guy that was raising money in Republican districts to get you here."

I can appreciate Rangel's outrage at how disloyal his colleagues have been in his time of comeuppance, er, uh, "need." One can't blame the rats for abandoning a sinking ship, though, and Charlie is taking on water fast. They have their own ethical problems and the light shined on him could cast rays of truth on them. Zoe Lofgren, the Chairperson of the Ethics Committee charged with the investigation, herself, has a taste for campaign money. Her cash connection was John Murtha and his friend's PMA Group PAC.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =100850606

She gave the $7,000 back without commenting further, but at the same time her Committee was investigating the PMA Group and Murtha's connections to it, she was pushing for earmarks for her district from Murtha's House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, 9.5 million dollars worth.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01431.html

Now she sits in judgment of another fallen money man. Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

[themadscientist]

This is the crux of the matter. Charlie Rangel is dirty and when the disclosure that he demands comes he will be disgraced as he should be. That's not the real story here. What I find distasteful is that it will likely be treated as nothing more than the singular action of a corrupt individual rather than the exposure of just one practitioner of a systemically corrupt body. For all his errs, Rangel's defenders suggest it's not that bad, and they are correct in their measurement of the context.

Watching bad men threaten to undermine other bad men, the erosion of the prior "honor" among thieves, is delicious. Not only are the Democrats turning on one another, but they clawing at the Republicans trying to drag them down too. They have released what they call a "hypocrite list" To counter the charge that cookie crumbs can only be detected on the hands of Democrat lawmakers.

http://politics.usnews.com/news/blogs/w ... -list.html

While their motivation is not a noble one the effect is positive. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and having politicians outing each other in a futile attempt to justify or marginalize their own bad behavior is the first true public service many of these crooks have done.

The Republicans, too myopic to see the forest for the trees, are jumping on the ethics bandwagon and seizing on it as a way to further degrade the electability of anyone with a "D" next to their name. The Democrats have so correctly charged in return that they are throwing stones from the porch of a lovely glass house.

Eric Cantor, you're a fun guy and I really enjoyed watching you make Obama sweat during the Healthcare Summit, but I think you should think long and hard before making statements like this.

ERIC CANTOR ON RANGEL SCANDAL

http://www.youtube.com/v/rk3XkBT-NAA?fs=1&hl=en_US

One word Eric, "Abramoff." Your hands are far from surgically clean either so you should be careful when championing ethical behavioral lest you be hoisted on your own petard.

But enough about them. They may in fact get a chance to show us how they have "learned their lesson" come November; back to Charles Rangel. When he said from the floor a few days ago "...all I'm saying is I deserve and demand the right to be heard" he was right. The Democrats, in their selfishness, have not only cheated Rangel, but also his constituency. If he is found guilty of the charges against him, he is political poison. He will taint his own candidacy and that of anyone associated with him. He would not be a viable choice for the Democrats going into the mid-term elections. As August ticks away, the chance to allow him to fade away and for a viable Democratic candidate to move to the front to compete for his seat is fast-fading.

I'll be perfectly honest, I don't like northeast liberals and the thought of that seat swinging the other way would please me, but it's not fair to the people of the district in question to leave Rangel swinging like a pini'ata any longer. They deserve the option of a viable Democrat on the ballot and that is being denied to them by the leadership who rather than confront the Rangel issue would rather kick it down the road for their own political sake.

Yes, Charlie Rangel is a bad man. His greed and sense of entitlement is leviathan, but it is not singular. He is a member of a fraternity of like-minded individuals who for the moment toil away in the shadows to get as close to where the outgoing member rose without exceeding their grasp as he did.

After Charlie is gone, after Maxine Waters is gone, while America is in the mood and lawmakers in Congress still fear for their jobs, let's clean house! If they will not start taking those members that act unethically to task, we will have to do it. I encourage everyone to look into the activities of your representative and decide if they have earned the right to judge Mr. Rangel. If not it's your responsibility as a voter to give your particular bum his or her walking papers. Let Charles Rangel be the first rock that incites the avalanche of self-serving crooks leaving office this November.

[IBCoupe]

That's way too far into the weeds of American political figures for my tastes, but I commend you for doing all that work; it's impressive.

[AZhitman]

Far from it.

He's been a member of Congress since the early 70's and is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee... As Charlie goes, so goes New York.

Humorous indeed, to see his DNC cronies deny him after so many years. Sad way to go out, but good riddance.