RANGEL GETS HIS RETIREMENT PACKAGE

"A House ethics subcommittee announced Thursday that it found that Rep. Charles B. Rangel violated congressional ethics rules and that it will prepare for a trial, probably beginning in September. The panel is expected to make the details of his alleged violations public next Thursday.

Rangel (D-N.Y.) has been under the House ethics committee's microscope since early 2008 after it was reported that he may have used his House position to benefit his financial interests. Two of the most serious inquiries have focused on Rangel's failure to declare $239,000 to $831,000 in assets on his disclosure forms, and on his effort to raise money for a private center named after him at City College of New York using his congressional letterhead."
Washington Post

I'm thinking to myself this morning about the Rangel indictment and I just got to believe something's fishy here.

Rangel was a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and he's been in Congress since God made dirt. If anybody knows where the bodies are buried, he's the guy. He's 80 years old and has got to be thinking about retirement. I'm just about positive that his version of retirement doesn't include poverty or jail. So how did he get caught up in this mess?

I don't think he got caught up at all. I'm figuring that he brokered a deal of some sort with the House leadership that would allow them to look like fair and non-partisan champions of the public good in the last few months leading up to the elections. This is a huge story which will be useful in taking other, less desirable stories off the front page.

The Democrats are going to make a big deal of this. Until the elections are over. My guess is that the outcry over this "scandal" will be deafening until the elections are passed. And like Macbeth we'll see " it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Because after the elections have passed these allegations will fade away.

Rangel will retire, falling on his sword to benefit the party and he'll be rewarded for his heroic deed. Maybe some minor penalty will be assessed but for the most part he'll walk away a rich and powerful man, keeping the vast majority of his ill gotten gains and thumbing his nose one last time at the people he swore to represent and the Constitution he swore to uphold.