On March 3rd, Rangel officially stepped down from his chairmanship of the Ways and Means committee. Eventhough Rep. Rangel said he was only stepping aside temporarily, the likelyhood of a future House vote reinstating him to his former post is unlikely given the circumstances in which he was forced to step aside.
If you lied on your income taxes and failed to declare the income you received from rental properties you owned, how quickly do you think you would end up in jail or at the very least before a judge? Pretty quick, I'd say.
That is, unless you happen to be a Congressman. And not just any congressman but the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Now what do you suppose the Ways and Means Committee does? That's right, they write our tax codes.
Now either the tax codes are just so complex and convoluted that not even the guys who write them can figure them out or something fishy is going on. Even though the tax codes are complex to the nth degree, I'm putting my money on the later.
Enter Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York's 15th Congressional District.
Rep. Rangel has found himself in hot water, something he's been in pretty consistently since 2008, and is in danger of losing his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee. This according to a recent Politico story that states:
"Republicans plan to force a House floor vote this week on whether to remove Rangel from the chairmanship following last week’s finding that he violated House gift rules by accepting a corporate-sponsored trip to the Caribbean."
You can read the entire story HERE
Read over the ethics investigations into Rep. Rangel's activities between 2008 and 2010 and you will find that they are not only quite extensive but this current ordeal with the Caribbean trip seems to be one of the lighter of his many lapses of ethics and morality.
Take for instance the four apartment units Rep. Rangel himself rents in the same apartment building in New York City. These four apartment were rented to Rangel for a combined price way under the actual market value of the units. One of the rent-stabilized apartments was being (and could very well still be) used as a campaign office despite being in violation of city and state statutes that require all rent-stabilized apartments to be the renters primary residence.
It just so happens that this apartment building is owned by the Olnick Organization and one of Olnick's owners donated thousands of dollars to Rep. Rangel's campaign. Well, isn't that a strange coincidence? I'm sure Rep. Rangel is in no way beholden to this organization for the sweet hookup on the NYC apartments. I hear apartments in New York are not only very expensive but pretty hard to find as well.
Rep. Rangel, however, paid a mere $3,894 a month for all four units when four similar units in that building would go for roughly $8,125 a month. That's an illegal gift of $4,231 a month that Rep. Rangel is receiving, albeit in a roundabout way, from the Olnick Organization.
$4,231 is well over the $100 members of the House are allowed to accept as a gift, if indeed this is to be treated as such. It should very well be but politicians have a nack for parsing facts and weaseling their way out of trouble so I have doubts that anything will come from these previously stated facts. It's just the way things are done in Washington. Nobody takes responsibility for their own actions.
Even though Rep. Rangel keeps these NYC apartments as his primary residence (well, three out of four of them anyway), that didn't stop him from applying for, and receiving, a "homestead" tax credit on his Washington D.C. home despite not being legally eligible for the credit.
A quick side note.
Here's a list of some other Congressmen who are grifting the system by getting "homestead" tax credits they're not legally entitled to:
Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI)
Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA)
Rep. Steve King (R-IO)
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL)
Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA)
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY)
Rangel has blamed his current tax woes on his wife, on his aides and dismissed them as simple "errors of omission". "I know it's somebody's fault, but that somebody just isn't me", is essentially what Rangel is saying regarding the allegations of tax evasion.
If you're in a masochistic mood and want to read all about Rep. Rangel's lack of ethics you can read them all HERE
More needs to be done about Rep. Rangel's constant flaunting of the rules that every other decent, hard-working taxpayer has to follow besides simply stripping him of his Ways and Means Committee chairmanship. He should be removed from Congress at the very least and be forced to pay back every red cent he weaseled his way out of paying to the IRS.
It's high time that our representatives were not only held to the same standard as the rest of us, but to a slightly higher standard. We all know that they THINK they're better than us. Maybe it's time they start acting like it.
I thank you for your time and apologize for any typos.
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