Redstate

Posted at 9:12am on Jul. 11, 2008 Blue-on-Blue Watch: NYT versus Charlie Rangel.

Although there's a subtext, here. There usually is, with these things.

By Moe Lane

Let's say that you're a news/media organization, and you have yourself a problem. There's this guy running for President. You loved that the guy was running for President. You got totally into fact that the guy was running, to the point where you pretty much gushed and cooed and did all sorts of really, really embarrassing things on your front page in support of the guy. You did everything that you could to get the guy the Democratic nomination, and lo! - he did.

And then the guy abandoned public financing for the election.

You loved public financing. It was like a starving puppy that you found in a storm drain during a blizzard, all whimpering and scared and alone. You took public financing home and kept it alive, cleaning its sores and giving it its worm medicine, making sure that it had all its shots and got housebroken. And the guy? When he came over, he made you think that he loved public financing just as much as you did... up until the moment where he took a rock and did his level best to bash its brains in. And when you came home to discover what he had done, he shrugged at you. He actually shrugged.

So what do you do?

Well, if you're the Washington Post, you tell your editors to take off the filter that gives the guy his halo. If you're the LA Times, you let your house blogger know that it's no longer Be Kind To The Guy Millenium. If you're ABC News, hey, Jake Tapper suddenly sees himself on TV more often. But if you're the New York Times, maybe you don't have those options. Direct action is going to get squashed before it starts. The people who control your paper don't care about public financing, really. They're still entranced by the guy. So, you can't go after him directly.

But that's actually OK: he has friends.

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Charlie Rangel | Culture of Corruption | Obamafiles — Comments (10)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:04pm on Nov. 8, 2007 It's Corruption, Stupid

By Erick

Holy Cow! And this is coming from the New York Times. It must be really, really bad if they're willing to bash Charlie Rangel.

Check this out.

The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has proposed legislation that would effectively halt some current tax audits of people who get a tax break for living and operating a business in the United States Virgin Islands.

Many beneficiaries of the tax break are campaign contributors to the lawmaker, Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, according to data collected by CQ MoneyLine, which tracks political contributions.

At least one of them, Richard G. Vento, is currently under audit, according to court filings. Mr. Vento gave $4,400 last year to the Baucus-Rangel Leadership Fund, which supports Mr. Rangel and Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who heads the Senate Finance Committee.

So much for the Democrats making the GOP out to be the corrupt party.

Here we have the powerful Ways and Means Chairman trying to use the power of Congress to stop his friends campaign donors from getting audited.

Maybe Congressman Rangel needs to be audited?

Mr. Rangel’s proposal would end any such audits involving years before 2004. That upsets Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican responsible for legislation that year that tightened rules governing taxes on Americans in the Virgin Islands.

“Congress rarely takes action that affects ongoing I.R.S. audits,” Mr. Grassley said in a statement, “so it’s striking that House leaders are proposing changes in the statute of limitations for U.S. taxpayers who are newly claiming residency in the Virgin Islands.”

Sadly, the President is such a nice guy, he won't sick the feds on Mr. Rangel like the Democrats would do to the GOP. Why is it that our guys don't do that?

It'd be interesting to compare the number of prominent Democrat activists who have been audited in the past eight years compared to the number of prominent Republican activists who got audited during the Clinton Administration.

Posted in Charlie Rangel | Congress | New York | new york times — Comments (6)/ Email this page » / Read More »