Posted on 12/05/2008 4:48:25 AM PST by Puppage
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 Web sites 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 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 LLC 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 McGeehee 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 on-line operation (Network Politics)—and the firm's fees included money for Web advertising designed to promote traffic to the Web site,” 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 Web sites by any House member during the 2004-to-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 Web sites, 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 Web sites, 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 Web sites 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 re-election campaign should have cost “no more than $900,” excluding maintenance fees, Newell said.
Rangel’s 2008 campaign site was designed and run by non-relatives 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.
Like Pelosi’s earmarks in the bailout, to the tune of 33 million, that enrich her husband’s business interests in American Somoa; their corruption doesn’t count.
You mean they don't ALREADY have enough evidence of wrongdoing to kick this worthless scumbag out of Congress or force him to resign? Jeez!
What? You say he's a Democrat? Oh, okay. That explains it!
Sorry. My bad.
Let’s see the website and decide if it was worth $80,000 or $100.00.
How long until Rangel is dragged away by the FBI whle Pelosi buries her head in the sand?
yawn. Rangel will keep being elected by Harlem residents. This won’t matter one iota to them.
>>>>Rangel will keep being elected by Harlem residents. This won’t matter one iota to them.<<<<<<<
Shoveling large sums of campaign cash to your family is what you’re *supposed* to do.
Wonder if Charlie (d’crook) will be doing a talking-head tour on Hannity & Colmes’ show?
From the website of the Workers World Party, workers.org:
http://www.workers.org/march19/index2.html
________________________________________________________
Also from Workers World:
"Workers World Party values our close, comradely relations with the Workers Party of Korea very highly. We are proud to have known Kim Il Sung as a great leader and a comrade in the international communist movement. ..."
With comradely solidarity, Sam Marcy Chairperson, Workers World Party" (1994):
http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/sam94/1994html/s940721.htm
_____________________________________________________________
Workers World
55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news
http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php
Troops Out Now Coalition
55 W. 17th St. #5C
NY NY 10011
www.TroopsOutNow.org
International Action Center
55 W 17th St #5C
New York, NY 10011
212-633-6646
iacenter@action-mail.org
ndomtickets@safewebmail.com
www.iacenter.org
[http://www.iacenter.org/polprisoners/dom-2007.htm]
Looks like Charlie found the Ways and the Means to get his kid money.
oh pleased......They are DEMOCRATS and Rangel is BLACK, and Pelosi is a woman....NOTHING WILL HAPPEN....NOTHING!
Tom Delay paid his wife and daughter something like $600,000.00
“The culture of corruption is open under new management” should be repeated each and every day by every Conservative member of Congress (if there are any left, besides Pence and Flake).
Do both sides speak at communist rallies?
This reminds me of the story about a lobbyist handing out checks on the house floor and the news conference the outraged democrats had. It went well until one report ask if the same thing had not happened during their terms.
He needs to be investigated for his involvement with groups like Workers World Party.
Workers World Party are members of the International Communist Movement. Are you saying you're OK if the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee helps promote their agenda by speaking at their rally?? The pull-out-of-Iraq-now speech he gave was on March 19, 2005. The day marked the 2nd anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. If this powerful politician is actually supporting America's enemies, I'd say that was a problem, wouldn't you? Theirs is obviously NOT an anti-war agenda. It is an anti-American, anti-Capitalist, PRO-Communist one.
Rangel is a real piece of Work, But he did serve his country honorably. And if he leaves before me I will honor his service.
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