Ethics Committee Convicts Rep. Rangel on 11 Counts

You’d think Rangel would’ve become a little more discreet and circumspect in his flouting of ethics rules in 2007 after assuming chairmanship of the high-profile House Ways and Means Committee, which is responsible for writing all tax laws and overseeing all revenue-raising measures.  Instead, he became the poster boy for the presumption that rules do not apply to the powerful men who write them…

The adage, pride goes before the fall, seems appropriate here…

And, if convicted on ethics charges, what a spectacular fall from grace that would be for this man who was always so fond of bragging “I haven’t had a bad day since” being elected to Congress 40 years ago. Sorry Charlie…

(Ethically challenged Rep Charlie Rangel forced to “step aside”, The iPINIONS Journal, March 10, 2010)

Well, Rangel has fallen ... and he can’t get up.  Unfortunately, he only compounded his political humiliation by standing up at his trial before the House Ethics Committee on Monday, having a fool for a client by representing himself, and making patently specious claims about being denied due process and fair treatment.

For this was clearly a pathetic and pitiful attempt to play the race card – especially considering that all of the members of the committee are white. And he played it in spades by walking out of his own trial – daring the committee to hold him in contempt for the utter contempt he was showing for it by doing so.

Meanwhile, this founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus has known about these charges for over two years. Even worse, he wasted over $2 million dollars in legal fees trying to make them go away. After all, Rangel himself stood in the well of the House of Representatives over the summer and admitted that he was guilty as charged. 

Frankly, as best as I can tell, his only defense throughout has been to assert some distinction without a difference about being ethically challenged but not a crook. 

This is why I was not at all surprised when the committee convicted him on Tuesday, in what amounted to a summary judgment, on 11 of 13 counts of ethical wrongdoing.  These ranged from using his good offices to solicit over $30 million – to fund the “Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service” at The City College of New York – from rich folks who did business before the committee he chaired, to “filing a decade’s worth of misleading annual disclosure forms that failed to list hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets,” including rent-stabilized apartments in New York City and a beach villa in the Dominican Republic.

More to the point, though, Rangel’s contempt on Monday rendered anticlimactic the punishment the committee reconvened yesterday to consider.

Yet here’s how he pleaded for “a drop of fairness and mercy” from this jury of his peers in typically ironic, if not contradictory, fashion:

There can be no excuse for my acts of omission. I’ve failed in carrying out my responsibilities. I made numerous mistakes. But corruption and personal enrichment are certainly not part of my mistakes.

(Associated Press, November 18, 2010)

But then, continuing his strategy of playing on white guilt, he brought along a civil rights pioneer from Georgia, Rep. John Lewis, instead of a fellow member from New York, to assure the committee that Rangel is a “good and decent man … my brother.”

However, given not just the uncontroverted evidence of his corrupt behavior, but the personal enrichment he derived from it, the 80-year-old Rangel might have been better served by pleading diminished capacity due to the premature onset of senility. Not least because committee members might have been persuaded that only a senile mind could have led him to show such contempt for them by walking out on Monday only to come back on Thursday to plead for mercy.

In any case, after deliberating for only a few hours, the five Democrats and five Republicans on the committee voted 9-1 for censure, the most severe punishment it could recommend short of expulsion.  Now Rangel will be forced to stand in the well and listen silently as the Speaker chastises him for bringing the House into ill repute.  (The last members to have been censured were Daniel Crane (R-IL) and Gerry Studds (D-MA) in 1983, for engaging in sexual relations with congressional pages.) He will also be required to make restitution by paying all he owes in back taxes.

But I don’t see how any of this could possible add to the humiliation and pain Rangel has already suffered. Frankly, I suspect the only punishment he really feared was outright expulsion.

This is why he’ll probably derive some consolation from the fact that, despite (or to spite) everything, Harlem voters seem just as determined to continue electing him as DC voters are to continue electing Marion Barry (whom they duly reelected as mayor after he served time in federal prison on notorious drug charges).

NOTE: The reason I have so little sympathy for Rangel is that, even though he admitted wrongdoing, this arrogant SOB spurned all overtures from the committee to settle this matter with a simple public apology. He reportedly did so because he felt that such an apology was beneath the dignity of a war hero and legendary black politician like him. 

How ironic then that the public humiliation he’s suffering now is ten times worse: a humiliation made painfully manifest for all the world to see by the woe-is-me tears that flowed as he pleaded – all too belatedly – for mercy yesterday….

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