House Democrats had better start taking the ethics allegations against Rep. Charlie Rangel seriously. I know it's difficult for those steeped in Capitol Hill's hermetic culture to understand, but a verdict of "mistakes were made" -- which a lot of Democrats would like to reach -- doesn't cut it in the real world. Strange as it seems. Seriously.
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Republicans, I should note, are being baldly hypocritical in calling for Rangel, who has spent four decades in the House, to step down immediately as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee -- a position that makes him one of the most powerful men in Washington. Those same Republicans were happy to keep "Dancing With the Stars" dropout Tom DeLay as majority leader for years while he was under a monsoon's worth of ethical cloud cover.
But just because Republicans are posturing for political gain doesn't mean that Democrats can do the same without paying a price. If you win big majorities in both the House and Senate by railing against a "culture of corruption" in Washington, as the Democratic Party did, voters tend to get the wacky notion that you actually mean what you say.
The violations that Rangel is alleged to have committed are, inconveniently for him, easy for anyone to understand. The most serious, perhaps, is the allegation that he failed to pay taxes on about $75,000 in income from renting out a beach house that he owns in the Dominican Republic. For the chairman of the House committee that writes tax legislation not to pay his fair share in taxes would be as bad as, say, for the secretary of the Treasury not to pay his fair share in taxes. (Hold it, maybe that's a bad example.)
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The most stunning alleged violation is more of a technicality: That on required financial disclosure forms, Rangel failed to list more than $500,000 in assets. The average citizen isn't likely to have half a million bucks somehow slip his mind, since the average citizen doesn't have anything near half a million bucks.
And we're not talking easily overlooked "Antiques Roadshow" assets -- a dusty painting in the attic that turns out to be the work of a second-tier Old Master, or a rickety chair in the basement that experts date as 18th century. What Rangel failed to declare were liquid assets -- a credit union account worth more than $250,000 and an investment account also worth more than $250,000 -- plus some real estate he owns in New Jersey and assorted stock holdings.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/08/AR2009100803131.html
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