Rangel, as in Angle
Rep. Charles Rangel failed to report as much as $1.3 million in outside income — including up to $1 million for a Harlem building sale — on financial-disclosure forms he filed between 2002 and 2006, according to newly amended records.
The documents also show the embattled chairman of the Ways and Means Committee — who is being probed by the House Ethics Committee — failed to reveal a staggering $3 million in various business transactions over the same period.
This week, Rangel filed drastically revised financial-disclosure forms reflecting new, higher amounts of outside income and numerous additional business deals that had not been reported when the reports were originally filed.
In 2004, for instance, Rangel reported earning between $4,000 and $10,000 in outside earnings on top of his $158,100 congressional salary.
But the amended filings show that after the sale of a property on West 132nd Street, his outside income that year was somewhere between $118,000 and $1.04 million.
What can we add? I suppose proportional representation should allow for at least one black crook in Congress, but I thought that was supposed to be William “Cold Cash” Jefferson. Anyway, the Harlem Goldbricker has Cash beat by a country mile.
Dave B said,
August 31, 2009 @ 1:52 am
I have a suggestion to any congressman, present or future that I would anticipate would deflate the consequences of such things. Someone should sponsor a bill that, in general terms, allows the congressperson to be judged by an outside, non-political body, not in the judicial system but instead as to “status” as a representative of a senator for that matter. The idea is as follows: If the congressperson is found to be in a status of “unethical” or “exhibiting unethical behavior as a result of his or her position” or something of that nature then the Federal taxpayers are no longer responsible for ANY costs for that particular congressman. That includes salary, expenses, staff, staff expenses, pension, or ANYTHING from that moment forward and will be the immediate responsibility of the citizens within the district or in the case of a Senator the state that is represented by that particular elected official and that all expenses must be appropriated through town meetings and be appropriated by taxpayer funds only (an attempt to eliminate the possibility that a PAC or individual will pay the tab). That’s the only way to discourage the exact situation that Rangle represents. He’s so entrenched, so connected, so arrogant that he would never be voted out of office that he could care less… which is reflected in his attitude. His constituents don’t pay a hell of a lot of what he costs taxpayers so they could care less.. even root for him the “screw the Man” and giggle about it because they’ll keep voting him in. He can still stay in office. The citizens of Harlem will have to pay for everything however…or vote him out of office. The same goes for both sides of the aisle.
mike w said,
September 3, 2009 @ 10:07 am
2 Term limits. The only way to purge the system of this kind of corruption it to limit the time these people spend with this kind of power. Even if a Rep arrives with ethics standards ( a remote possibility) a few years of unlimited power and prestiege can corrupt most anyone. Several of the politicions have commited crimes that we would go to jail for, manslaughter, tax evasion and worse, they continue with business as usual.
The current situation is as follows - The politiction with the most money is the politition who wins - the more corrupt he is the more money he has.
Dave B said,
September 6, 2009 @ 3:36 am
Mike, I think you’re right and would have the added benefit of encouraging citizen-politicians that are doing a duty as opposed to these creeps that run for office now.