If Rangel was a Republican

Unless you’ve been zonked out in a beach chair on the Dominican Republic next to New York Congressman Charlie Rangel, you’ve probably heard yet another instance of financial chicanery has surfaced against the democratic Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee. The latest was the revelation Rangel took a “homestead” tax deduction intended for year round D.C. residents even though Mr. Rangel’s legal address is New York. In fact, old Charlie has no less than four illegal rent controlled apartments he calls home in Harlem. He has been using one of them as a campaign office which is also illegal. Charlie likes giving himself off the books tax cuts.
Before that was not paying taxes on property he owns in the Dominican and improperly storing a car in the garage of the House of Representatives. But hold on, I’m not through yet. As illegal and arrogant as these transgressions are, it appears Mr. Rangel may have an even more damaging skeleton rattling around in his well appointed closet by the name of Eugene Isenberg. It seems Mr. Isenberg made a pledge of $1 million to a boondoggle to be called the Rangel School of Public Service at City College of New York. I can only assume corruption and tax evasion will be electives. On the very same day as Rangel snapped up the $1 million, Rangel saw to it a controversial tax loophole that saved Isenberg’s company millions was preserved. Can you say quid pro quo?
You would think this growing laundry list of financial and ethical lapses would probably force the average schnook to turn in his or her paper hat at McDonalds, never mind the chairmanship of the congressional committee that writes the tax laws of the country. You would think wrong. In spite of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s much ballyhooed boast about the Democrats intention to preside over the most ethical session of Congress after assuming the majority from those corrupt republicans, she and other democrat leaders continue to turn a blind eye to Rangel’s repeated flouting of the law.
Now either Speaker Pelosi’s judgment has been compromised by one too many botox injections or corruption has become a partisan issue. Because if Charlie Rangel was a republican, he’d have been relieved of his chairmanship if not his congressional seat by now. So far, the closest Pelosi & Co. have come to disciplining Rangel is turning over some of this to the House Ethics panel, whatever that means. I suspect it means passing the buck. There’s a reason polls show Pelosi and this Congress even more unpopular than George Bush.
Hopefully President Obama and his team talk some sense into Pelosi and the House democrats. Given tax reform and tax cuts will be taking center stage in the new administration’s agenda; this is not the time to have those deliberations sidetracked by allegations of financial misconduct on the part of the chairman of the Way and Means Committee. Given Rangel and some of his supporters have already hinted he is being targeted because of his race, it would send an important message if the new President showed he was playing no favorites when it comes to corruption.
Charlie Rangel continues to claim ignorance of the law or blame others, including his wife for his mistakes. Even if you believed his nonsense, do you really want a guy that naïve or stupid writing the tax laws? Somebody should buy this career hack a one way ticket to his Caribbean hideaway and give Obama the clean slate he’s going to need.