Charlie Rangel And Washington's Bipartisan Culture of Corruption

The original raison d'être for this blog was to help investigate the Washington Culture of Corruption as personified by a southern California band of brothers on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, Jerry Lewis and Duncan Hunter being the two most outstandingly corrupt. In the end a sloppy, overly greedy, alcoholic small fry, Duke Cunningham, was nabbed and thrown into prison. Lewis, Hunter, Darrell Issa, John Doolittle, Ken Calvert, Bill Young, Dana Rohrabacher, Virgil Goode and several other Republicans are still at large and haven't been seriously investigated for their roles-- almost all of them more serious than Cunningham's-- in the bribery scandal. That said, DWT started calling for Democratic congressional crook Charlie Rangel to step down in 2008.

With Rangel's case now becoming a mega-issue in the Republican drive to replace Nancy Pelosi with John Boehner as Speaker-- i.e., win the midterms-- and with Fox driving the story in the national media, this is a mess that should have been cleaned up long ago. More and more Democrats are finally starting to call on Rangel to step down-- the latest being House Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC)-- and even though most of them are craven Blue Dogs and cowardly Republicans afraid voters are about to dispense with their services, wastes like Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Mike Arcuri (Blue Dog-NY), Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID), and Zack Space (Blue Dog- OH), legitimate Democrats and allies of Pelosi's like Betty Sutton (D-OH), John Yarmuth (D-KY), Patrick Murphy (Blue Dog-PA) and Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH) have joined in now.

Interestingly, one of the most reactionary of the Blue Dogs, Alabama's Bobby Bright, has taken a distinctly contrarian, even principled, position.

Rep. Bobby Bright (D-Ala.), a Blue Dog Democrat and top Republican target in 2010 given the conservative nature of his Alabama congressional district, responded "absolutely not" when asked if Rangel should step down.

"We have a procedure in place and we need to let that procedure work," Bright said. "It's easy politically for politicians to voice their opinions, but it's the true statesman and rational people who say, 'let the process work.'"

If the charges are found to be true, Bright added, Rangel should face the consequences including possible expulsion from the House. But until then, he said, members should hold their fire.

Sounds good coming from Bright. Funny, though, it's also what Republicans desperately want. GOP staffers actually cooperated with Democratic staffers on the Ethics Committee to work out a smooth and as graceful a transition out as could be expected-- a final step in the Inside-the-Beltway incumbent protection racket (and not unlike what was done for crooks like Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert) but Republicans Members killed it because they want Rangel twisting slowly in the wind for as long as possible. This is a gold mine for the Republican Party and they have no intention of leaving any veins unmined. Meanwhile, Jerry Lewis-- for whom Karl Rove disposed of not one, but two, U.S. Attorneys-- is the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee and could become Chairman of that Committee if Boehner becomes Speaker.


UPDATE: New York Sun Comes to Rangel's Defense

A good friend of mine, a hugely successful attorney told me he studied the "charges" against Rangel and he said they're a joke and that no jury would vote to convict him of fraud in a million years and that this really is a media lynching. It shocked me... although I'm not sure why. So is this defense of Rangel believable?

On its face, the alleged infraction strikes us as not only petty but also illogical. No one carped when Mr. Rangel used earmarks to steer something like $1.9 million in taxpayer funding to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Affairs at City College. But his use of congressional stationary to approach people like David Rockefeller and ask them to contribute to City College to educate minority students in public service is somehow taken as scandalous.

The statement of alleged violations issued by a House investigative subcommittee reckons the charitable contributions to the Rangel Center “constituted indirect gifts” that were “attributable” to Mr. Rangel. He, incidentally, is described as “respondent,” though, since he himself requested the investigation, the “respondent” could just as easily be the Ethics Committee.

The reason these contributions are “gifts” and “attributable” to Mr. Rangel seems to be that he would have an office in the Rangel Center and the center would allow him to store and archive his papers and “to perpetuate his legacy.” But the papers themselves would no longer be Mr. Rangel’s, because he is giving them to a university that is owned by the public. The logical move is to send Mr. Rangel not a subpoena but a thank you note.

One of the contributors to the Rangel Center, Eugene Isenberg, chairs a company, Nabors Industries, that had an interest in a matter before Ways and Means. It got decided in a way that benefited Nabors. No quid pro quo is in evidence, or even, so far as we can tell, alleged. The Isenberg check was a gift to Mr. Rangel only by the logic of the Ethics Committee.

What really happened is that Messrs Rangel, by his papers and name and time, and Isenberg, by his $100,000 check, each gave to the same charity, a center to help uplift minority students to careers in public service. The approach to Mr. Isenberg, moreover, was made not by Mr. Rangel, though the two talked on September 19, 2006, in the presence of the president of City College, Gregory Williams. The meeting had been arranged by a paragon of political probity, Robert Morgenthau, the district attorney of New York County, whose grandfather had gone to City College.

The commitment by Mr. Isenberg to make a contribution to the Rangel Center was made in a meeting between Mr. Isenberg and Mr. Williams, at which Mr. Rangel was not even present. The meeting took place on November 9, 2006, before Mr. Rangel acceded to the chairmanship of Ways and Means, and at a time when Nabors had no matters pending before the committee.

It turns out that when Mr. Morgenthau was United States attorney for the Southern District, he gave Mr. Rangel his start. And over the years Mr. Morgenthau made, separately, the acquaintance of Mr. Isenberg and learned of his interest in minority education. For that reason he sought to bring him together with the Rangel Center. Mr. Morgenthau has been defending Mr. Rangel throughout this drama.

Illogic also infects the controversy over the alleged abuses of the rent-controlled apartment that Mr. Rangel’s political committee used as an office. Mr. Rangel’s defense filing pointed out that it was an un-renovated, vacant space in a building in which there was a 20% vacancy rate. It was allegedly rented in Mr. Rangel’s name, but the landlord accepted its use by a political committee.

The Ethics Committee seems to reckon this added up to a benefit to Mr. Rangel. But how so? It might be a benefit to his political committee, but not even that is clear. There’s a lot of office space in Manhattan. The benefit, if there is one, seems to be that Mr. Rangel’s political committee is conveniently located near his modest residence. Call out the National Guard, we say.

The squabble over Mr. Rangel’s errors on his tax return strikes us as indicating nothing so much as the need for tax reform. Mr. Rangel’s tax error was not nearly as serious, in our view, as, say, Secretary Geithner’s. But if the chairman of Ways and Means can’t figure out his taxes, how can the rest of us long-suffering Americans?

Here the Ethics Committee could order Mr. Rangel to have lunch with Steve Forbes, who is the leading advocate of a flat tax that would be easy to understand and hard to dodge. Mr. Rangel, as Ira Stoll pointed out over the weekend in a defense of Mr. Rangel at futureofcapitalism.com, has shown a certain a savvy in respect of capital gains.

Mr. Rangel doesn’t deserve the bum’s rush he is getting from President Obama. Let the president remember his haste in respect of Shirley Sherrod. When Mr. Rangel was 20, he was lying in a ditch in Korea, while the corpses of many of his fellow GIs lay nearby, either slain in combat or frozen to death. Private Rangel rallied his comrades and led 40 of them out from behind enemy lines. Instantly recognized as a hero, he was decorated for valor.