More of Charles Rangel’s Corruption Exposed
Posted in U.S. Congress, corruption on Nov 24th, 2008
It really never ends with this guy.
Representative Charles B. Rangel’s legal team is reviewing his tax records to determine whether the congressman received a homestead exemption on a house he owned in Washington while living in several rent-stabilized apartments in New York City.
The situation is potentially troublesome for Mr. Rangel, a Harlem Democrat who is already the subject of a wide-ranging internal House investigation stemming from an assortment of ethical concerns.
Rent laws in New York City and the state require that tenants occupying rent-stabilized apartments use those units as their primary residences. At the same time, the District of Columbia’s Office of Tax and Revenue extends the homestead tax deduction only to properties that are primary residences.
The internal review by Mr. Rangel’s legal team was prompted by a report in Sunday’s edition of The New York Post quoting a District of Columbia tax official as saying that Mr. Rangel received a homestead tax exemption for a four-bedroom home he owned in Washington. The official told the newspaper that the congressman received the tax exemptions from 1995 through 2000, when he also had the use of rent-stabilized apartments in his district in Harlem.
As chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Rangel should know better. But I don’t think this is a case of ignorance. This is corruption, plain and simple. It is just one thing after another, and the excuses he keeps making are increasingly hard to swallow. If he was a Republican he would have been forced to resign already… or lost reelection. Rangel needs to go… It is time for the Democrats to clean up their party.
