GOODY TWO SHOES: Only The Little People Pay Taxes
House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) - who is the subject of a long-running ethics investigation - amended financial-disclosure for the years 2002 through 2006 that show an additional $1.3 million in outside income, including up to $1 million for a Harlem building sale, reports the New York Post:
The documents also show [Rangel] failed to reveal a staggering $3 million in various business transactions over the same period. …
In 2004, for instance, Rangel reported earning between $4,000 and $10,000 in outside earnings on top of his $158,100 congressional salary.
But the amended filings show that after the sale of a property on West 132nd Street, his outside income that year was somewhere between $118,000 and $1.04 million.
The forms filed by House members provide for a range of value on such transactions, so the precise number isn't publicly known.
Rangel also lowballed his income by as much as $70,000 in 2002, $46,000 in 2003 and $117,000 in 2006, records show.
As The Wall Street Journal tartly observes, “When normal people happen to "find" their own money, it might mean a twenty left in a winter coat, or discovering change beneath the sofa cushions. But if you're Charlie Rangel, it means doubling your net worth.” But then, Rangel is a busy, busy guy:
When you're a powerful Congressman and working diligently to increase tax rates to pay for President Obama's health-care plan, we suppose it's easy to lose track of one of your checking accounts. That would be the one at the federal credit union with a balance somewhere between $250,001 and maybe as high as $500,000. And when you're crunched for time and pulling together bills to pass in a rush, we guess, too, that you might overlook several other investment accounts, even if some of them are sizable, such as the ones Mr. Rangel missed at JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Oppenheimer and BlackRock.
Rangel’s got a lot of Cheek, only his defense is ignorance of his own finances.
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