When Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House, she swore to 'drain the swamp'. Apparently that only goes for the right side of the swamp. Charlie Rangel's admonishment by the House Ethics Committee on his unethical corporate-funded vacations should be enough to demand he step down from his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee, but apparently Queen Nan doesn't agree. She has said that she wants to wait until the committee has investigated all of the charges against him.
Considering how long it took for them to investigate this small part of his alleged wrongdoing, and how many other charges there are, from questionable fundraising efforts to rent-controlled apartments in Harlem to hundreds of thousands of dollars in unreported income to his failure to pay taxes on a vacation home in the Dominican Republic, it will take months, if not years to investigate it all.
Just the fact that there are so many issues being investigated, combined with the fact that there is already a finding of wrongdoing which resulted in an admonition should be enough to force him to step down from his chairmanship. A man with that many tax issues should not be chairing the committee that writes the tax code, period.
But Nancy needs every vote she can get, no matter how corrupt. Actually, scratch that - the more corrupt the better, because the better the odds are that they can be 'persuaded'.
The first apartment we got when we moved to South Florida was situated on a 'cypress preserve'. It sounded lovely, and when the complex told us they had a nice, quiet apartment next to the preserve, we took it. It didn't take long for us to realize that the picturesque 'cypress preserve' that was so enthusiastically sold to us was really a mosquito-infested, racoon-ridden swamp.
Pelosi is trying to sell us a cypress preserve, but believe you me, this is a swamp, and Charlie Rangel is the biggest slime-covered toad in the bog.
No comments:
Post a Comment