Have You No Shame, Charlie Rangel?
Posted on 12/05/2010 8:29:45 AM PST by AtlasStalled
Last week the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted by a margin of 333 over 79 to censure former Ways and Means Committee Chair Charlie Rangel for a series of ethical violations. * * *
And yet the fallen Representative has no shame. In a Nixonian riff he insists "I am not corrupt," and with an Alice-in-Wonderland logic insists he was not motivated by personal gain. * * *
Instead of accepting responsibility for his ethical violations Rangel blames political persecution. Of course, if anyone understands the mix of politics and crime it's Charlie Rangel. In 2006 Rangel attempted to derail a criminal prosecution against plaintiffs class action law firm Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman LLP and several of its partners. * * * Notwithstanding the efforts by Rangel and others, the indicted partners subsequently all pleaded guilty, and the law firm agreed to pay a $75 million fine and employ a compliance monitor. Indeed, if there's any messy politics behind the current Rangel debacle, it's probably being used to spare the apparent tax cheat from a criminal investigation.
* * *
Meanwhile, yesterday Rangel returned home to his Harlem constituents with a hero's welcome and a standing ovation. * * * As P.T. Barnum once said: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time." Rangel's constituents must be those people whom can be fooled all of the time since they ushered him into a 21st term last month with 81 percent of the vote. Or maybe his constituents simply are standing up for corruption.
(Excerpt) Read more at bitterqueen.typepad.com ...
He has no shame, but he does have a home in the Bahamas, and two subsidized apartments in NY.
“Rangel’s constituents must be those people whom can be fooled all of the time since they ushered him into a 21st term last month with 81 percent of the vote. Or maybe his constituents simply are standing up for corruption.”
Those constituents are not fooled at all. They obviously relish having a representative who thumbs his nose at the world. First, they had Adam Clayton Powell for 26 years and now 40 more by Rangel. 66 years is a long time of corruption, but not for the corrupt minded. If they didn’t approve they would not have allowed it.
It’s tough being the sacrificial lamb, ain’t it Charlie?
Um, to the writer at “Friends of Ours,” that quote was from Abe Lincoln, not P.T. Barnum who said something along the line of A Sucker’s born every minute.”
Have You No Shame, Charlie Rangel?
If Rangel was Republican would he be let off so easily?
At what point does Corruption stop being the exception, and becomes the accepted norm? I believe we have passed that point, as the moral fiber of the Christian core beliefs that this nation was founded on fades and the end-times approach.
We are well on the way to becoming a mafia nation, similar to what Wikileaks has pointed out that Russia has become under Putin...
Sorry, Cholly, your race card has been declined.
Have you no shame, Charlie Rangel?
duh!!!! No!!!!!
No, communists operate on a different set of moral and eithical codes than other Americans.
How a decorated war hero becomes a slithering, corrupt enttilement whore.
Having known both Duke Cunningham and Charlie Rangel, I have to say Rangel was a piker compared to Cunningham.
“Prosecutors call it a corruption case with no parallel in the long history of the U.S. Congress. And it keeps getting worse. Convicted Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham actually priced the illegal services he provided.
Randy “Duke” Cunningham
Randy “Duke” Cunningham poses with a Rolls Royce he received in exchange for granting government contracts.
Prices came in the form of a “bribe menu” that detailed how much it would cost contractors to essentially order multimillion-dollar government contracts, according to documents submitted by federal prosecutors for Cunningham’s sentencing hearing this Friday.
“The length, breadth and depth of Cunningham’s crimes,” the sentencing memorandum states, “are unprecedented for a sitting member of Congress.”
Prosecutors will ask federal Judge Larry Burns to impose the statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
The sentencing memorandum includes the California Republican’s “bribery menu” on one of his congressional note cards, “starkly framed” under the seal of the United States Congress.
The card shows an escalating scale for bribes, starting at $140,000 and a luxury yacht for a $16 million Defense Department contract. Each additional $1 million in contract value required a $50,000 bribe.
The rate dropped to $25,000 per additional million once the contract went above $20 million.
At one point Cunningham was living on a yacht named after him, “The Dukester,” docked near Capitol Hill, courtesy of a defense company president.
Exactly. In Charlie’s mind, if you vote for Obamacare, food stamps, welfare and never-ending unemployment benefits, graft and corruption is then acceptable.
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