Rangel just keeps rooooooooooling along!
(Emphasis TH's)

December 11, 2008

Editorial

Mr. Rangel’s Problems Roll On

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is heading into the new Congress without the quick resolution she dearly hoped for on Representative Charles Rangel’s mushrooming and deeply embarrassing ethics problems.

The normally mute and far-too-passive House ethics committee has done the right thing in announcing that it is broadening its inquiry to look into the recent report that Mr. Rangel — chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee — helped preserve a lucrative off-shore tax loophole for an oil drilling executive.

While Mr. Rangel and the executive deny any link, the businessman conveniently pledged $1 million for a planned Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York. (Now that’s what we call service from the public.)

“Bar nothing,” demanded Mr. Rangel, the powerful New York Democrat, calling on the ethics panel to look into various questionable dealings. He insists the charges are either false or honest mistakes.

Beyond suspicions about the offshore tax loophole worth tens of millions, the panel must look into Mr. Rangel’s use of congressional letterhead to solicit support for his eponymous center. Then there’s his use of rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem at cut rates and his failure to pay taxes and disclose $75,000 in income from a Dominican villa on which he enjoyed an interest-free mortgage.

The ethics panel must muster the courage to actually vet one of the House lions (especially with voter cynicism again rising with fresh headlines about the Illinois Statehouse scandal). Ms. Pelosi must muster the courage to urge — or demand — that Mr. Rangel give up his chairmanship while the investigation proceeds. If he won’t, she should strip him of his gavel.

There can be no clean start here until the ethics panel answers all of the questions about Mr. Rangel, his center, his apartments, his villa and that loophole. With huge fiscal and tax issues looming for the next Congress, there can be no doubts about the leadership’s priorities.

Original Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/opinion/11thu3.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=rangel&st=cse

TH
Watching Out For The Village!

The Charles Rangel Saga Continues

The saga continues. Read the article below.

The community may want Charlie gone, but who is there to replace him?

Again, the community needs to begin to have earnest and productive discussions about who it feels should replace this albatross around the Harlem's neck.

The discussions do not need to focus on just one person, having several choices would lead to competitive and revealing political campaigns among "the best" in the Village.

Let us hope this drama does not continue to go on endlessly and that Harlem will have some good candidates for the position.

December 10, 2008
House Ethics Panel Expands Rangel Inquiry
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

The House ethics committee voted on Tuesday to expand its investigation into Representative Charles B. Rangel to examine his role in preserving a tax loophole for an oil drilling company whose chief executive pledged $1 million to a City College of New York project that will bear the congressman’s name.

Mr. Rangel, whose personal finances and fund-raising have been the subject of an inquiry for several months, came under renewed scrutiny last month, when The New York Times reported that he was a pivotal figure in stymieing efforts to close a tax shelter for Nabors Industries and three other companies during the same month that the chief executive of Nabors made a $100,000 donation to C.C.N.Y.’s Rangel Center of Public Service.

The chief executive, Eugene M. Isenberg, had acknowledged that he and a company lobbyist met with Mr. Rangel at the Carlyle Hotel in New York on Feb. 12, 2007, the same day that the Ways and Means Committee, of which Mr. Rangel is chairman, was considering a bill that left the loophole intact, but said they did not discuss his pledge to donate $1 million to the school.

Mr. Rangel, a Democrat from Harlem, has strenuously denied any wrongdoing and this week asked that the ethics panel examine his relationship with Nabors.

The ethics committee statement did not set a timetable for the inquiry, but lawyers and congressional aides said that the expansion of the investigation means it is unlikely that the panel will complete its case by Jan. 3, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested last month.

Republicans have called for Mr. Rangel to step down as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which shapes tax policy and will be instrumental in crafting President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed fiscal stimulus program to jump-start the flagging economy.

Original Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/nyregion/10rangel.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=rangel&st=cse

TH
Watching Out For The Village!

More Shenanigans from Chanles Rangel.

Charlie is now involving more of his family in his shenanigans. At one time he tried to blame his wife, that is, tried to say his wife was the responsible one for managing the finances associated with the unreported rental income from a luxury villa in the Dominican Republic. Now, apparently, he has been overpaying his son for web site work.

Read the articles below from the Wall Street Journal and Politico.com!

Tick, tick, tick .....

DECEMBER 6, 2008, 11:37 A.M. ET
Rangel Paid Son $57,500 for Web Work


By CHRISTOPHER COOPER and JOHN R. WILKE

U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel paid $57,500 from a campaign account to a Web-design company owned by his son over two years, paying more for Internet services than any other House member during the same period, according to federal records.

Using campaign funds to pay relatives is legal, as long as the products or services are priced at fair market value.

Associated Press

House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel is currently facing four investigations by the House ethics panel for possible misuse of his office.

House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel is currently facing four investigations by the House ethics panel for possible misuse of his office.

Federal records show Rep. Rangel paid Edisonian Innovative Works LLC, which Steven Charles Rangel ran from his Maryland home. Rep. Rangel, 78 years old, a New York Democrat, also lives there when the House is in session, according to his autobiography.

The amount of money paid to Edisonian exceeds what fellow House members paid for similar services during a two-year period beginning in 2005, according to the analysis of federal records by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

The average House member buying Internet services spent $4,541 on campaign Web sites during that period. Mr. Rangel paid his 40-year-old son $57,500, the analysis shows. The second-highest spender was Rep. Ralph Regula, an Ohio Republican, who paid $44,000 during that period. Seven other congressmen report spending more than $20,000 on their Web sites.

In total, Rep. Rangel's campaign account paid his son's company $79,000 over 30 months, from 2004 to 2007, records show.

A spokesman for the lawmaker, Emile Milne, said Steven Rangel earned less than a Web firm the congressman used in 2004 to perform essentially the same work. During that year, a Brooklyn company called Networked Politics received $41,000 from Rep. Rangel's political action committee and campaign committee, while the junior Rangel received $19,560 for about a half-year of work, Mr. Milne said.

Rep. Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is currently facing several separate House ethics committee investigations for possible misuse of his office reported by the New York Post and New York Times in recent months.

Among the allegations under review by the committee are that he improperly used a rent-subsidized New York apartment as his office; and that he failed to disclose rental income from a luxury villa in the Dominican Republic purchased in part with loans from a lobbyist.

Rep. Rangel denied wrongdoing in the ethics complaints, though he has said that he will restate his financial disclosures, which are required annually from all lawmakers.

Earlier, Rep. Rangel helped his son get a job with the Federal Communications Commission in 2000. The younger Rangel worked on various projects at the FCC in 2000 and 2001, including ensuring telecommunications access on tribal lands, according to commission records. Mr. Rangel through Mr. Milne, the spokesman, acknowledged that he "did make an initial call on Steven's behalf to the FCC -- an agency he had no legislative oversight or responsibility for."

A spokesman for the FCC declined to comment, and Steven Rangel didn't return a call for comment.

After leaving the FCC, Steven Rangel, an ex-Marine, incorporated his Web company in June 2004. The first $9,780 payment from Mr. Rangel's political action committee came a week before the company was incorporated. A second $9,780 payment was made one month later. In 2005, Steven Rangel's company received $22,500 from his father's re-election campaign, and in 2006, the company received another $32,500, federal records show.

It isn't uncommon for congressmen to pay family members small amounts of money for campaign or administrative work. Most lawmakers disclose the names of relatives receiving these payments, although it isn't required. Rep. Rangel's disclosure doesn't indicate his son was associated with Edisonian.

The payments from the Rangel campaign account to Steven Rangel's company ended January 2007, the same month he got a job on the staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The job coincided with the arrival of a new chairman, John Dingell (D., Mich.), a close political ally of Rep. Rangel.

"No one is alleging that Steven Rangel performed poorly," Mr. Milne said. He added that Steven Rangel is fully qualified for his House staff job.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Dingell's committee issued a statement calling him "one of the most hard-working members of our staff," who has been involved in both FCC and Food and Drug Administration inquiries. "Steven has been a welcome addition to the committee and would serve any chairman well," the statement said.

A person with direct knowledge of Steven Rangel's hiring on Energy and Commerce said his father helped him get hired. "How does anyone get any gig on Capitol Hill? It's who you know," this person said.

Write to Christopher Cooper at christopher.cooper@wsj.com

Original Article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122852432614184499.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs%3Darticle

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Tangled Web: Rangel son got campaign cash
By: Luke Rosiak and Glenn Thrush
December 5, 2008 03:22 PM EST

Between 2004 and 2007, Rep. Charles Rangel steered nearly $80,000 in campaign cash to an Internet company run by his son. Photo:AP

Between 2004 and 2007, Rep. Charles Rangel steered nearly $80,000 in campaign cash to an Internet company run by his son — paying lavishly for a pair of political websites so poorly designed an expert estimated one should have cost no more than $100 to create.

The payments are apparently legal under federal law, but their disclosure raises new questions about the Ways and Means Committee chairman as he faces House ethics committee probes into his failure to pay taxes on rental income and his alleged use of House stationery to solicit contributions for a public policy center that bears his name.

Rangel’s leadership PAC and congressional committee shelled out $79,560 to Edisonian Innovative Works for “websites,” according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Edisonian Innovative Works, which lists several clients on its homepage — none of them politicians — was founded by Rangel’s son, Steven Charles Rangel, 40, of Greenbelt, Md.

“This is probably legal but is definitely wrong,” said Meredith McGehee of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit organization that monitors compliance with electoral law.

“You're in a situation where you were given money for a campaign and it's being used to enrich family members,” she added. “The return argument is they're performing legitimate services. The question that needs to be asked in this case is: Was this a legitimate payment or was this a payoff?”

Rangel spokesman Emile Milne said Rangel’s son was a valuable member of the congressman’s re-election team and was paid a modest monthly retainer to build, maintain, update and publicize the site.

“Steven Rangel's firm was paid roughly $2,500 on a monthly basis — less than the firm that had previously managed Congressman Rangel's Web and online operation (Network Politics) — and the firm's fees included money for Web advertising designed to promote traffic to the website,” Milne wrote in an e-mail message to Politico.

“In 2007, the Rangel political organization made the decision to go with a scaled-back Web presence and hired NGP software” to run the site, he added.

Still, the sum paid to Rangel’s son was the most paid for websites by any House member during the 2004-2006 election period, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings provided to Politico by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio) and since-ousted Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) were distant runners-up, shelling out $44,000 and $30,000 for their websites, respectively, during the 2006 cycle.

Both Regula and Shays may have needed the exposure to fend off serious challengers. Rangel, a Harlem Democrat and dean of his state’s House delegation, hasn’t faced serious competition in years and retained his seat with 94 percent of the vote in 2006.

The vast majority of House candidates who set up campaign sites in 2006 paid a relative pittance, with 200 members spending less than $10,000 each for websites, according to the CRP analysis.

The payments to Steven Rangel began in mid-2004 and stopped in early 2007 when the former Marine, who is also a lawyer, was hired by the House Energy and Commerce Committee as an $80,000-per-year “investigative counsel,” according to records.

“It is difficult and often misleading to compare what individual members pay for Web services because of the wide range of activities that websites can support, depending on what campaigns choose to do with their sites,” Milne said.

Steven Rangel is close to his father and has long played an active role in his campaigns, even videotaping his dad’s campaign events in the early 1980s. The 78-year-old chairman often sleeps at his son’s house in Maryland, according to people who know both men.

Rangel is hardly the first House member to hire his family for campaigns. Between 2002 and 2005, Julie Doolittle was paid $136,000 in fundraising fees by the campaign of her husband, retiring Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.).

And Long Island Democratic Rep. Timothy Bishop raised eyebrows in 2005 when Newsday reported that he had paid his daughter Molly $87,828 in salary and travel expenses to act as his campaign’s finance director for two years.

But few relatives have ever played such a visible role.

Steven Rangel’s design for his father’s National Leadership PAC site appears to have been slapped together in a hurry, intermittently updated and never spell-checked.

An apologetic note near the top of the site warns readers that the page is undergoing “routine maintenace [sic]” and cautions that “much of our content is currently unavailable.”

Another button urges visitors to “Give Contribuition [sic].”

The site “is a one pager with a third party site taking donations,” said Jamie Newell of 7AZ Web Design, a company that creates sites for a wide array of businesses in Washington. “For something of that standard, I would not pay more than $100.”

The now-dormant page for the congressman’s 2006 reelection campaign should have cost “no more than $900,” excluding maintenance fees, Newell said.

Rangel’s 2008 campaign site was designed and run by nonrelatives for less than $25,000.

Messages left on Steven Rangel’s work phone weren’t returned.

In a short bio written on his now-defunct personal Web page, he described how his frustration with designers led him to learn the ropes himself — and write an e-book on how to make money on the Internet.

"I… spent a lot of money trying to get third-party vendors to develop to my standards. Fed up with their performance, I decided to teach my self,” he wrote.

Original Article:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16219.html

TH
Watching Out For The Village!

World Aids Day and Harlem

Today is World AIDS Day.

Wanted to take a moment to remind the Village of the importance of this day.

Many Harlem Residents have been touched by this disease. They have been touched either as one who has been infected by the AIDS virus or as one who is a relative, friend and neighbor of one infected by AIDS.

It is not a day to judge but to understand and to care.

Do something positive for someone with AIDS today. Go by their home or phone them to say hello. Ask them how they are doing. Make it something you do often.

Let us hope this is one world health day that will go away in our lifetime because a cure has been found.

To learn more about 2008 World AIDS Day:
http://www.worldaidscampaign.org/static/en/

TH
Watching Out For The Village!