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OPINION: Tall Tales: Rangel short on excuses for series of tax mishaps(Paducah Sun, The (KY) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sep. 18--Sorry, Charlie. Your excuses just don't add up. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel says he didn't mean to evade taxes, he just didn't understand the tax code. You know, the tax code he helped write. The New York Democrat failed to report $75,000 income and pay $5,000 in taxes. Yes, the tax code's 600+ pages leaves even tax accountants scratching their heads. It is past time for a flat tax, or at least a far simpler graduated tax, with fewer deductions to go with lower rates. But if anyone must be held accountable for paying all his taxes, it should be the Ways and Means chairman. "If there were errors" -- there were, Rangel has admitted as much -- "it was not intentional," said his attorney, Lanny Davis. Wonder if that argument would work for working stiffs like us. Davis, the former special counsel to Bill Clinton, said, "The chairman believes the facts should prevail, not the innuendo of the Republican leadership." Rangel did not report two decades of income from a beach villa he owns in the Dominican Republic. That's a fact, not innuendo. And the House Ethics Committee is investigating whether there is more -- failing to report the $70,000 profit he made on the sale of a Florida condo and paying under-market rates for four rent-stabilized Manhattan apartments in violation of local laws and federal ethics rules. Rangel said the problem was partly due to the language barrier between him and the operators of the villa. Whenever he met with his Dominican partners, he said, "they'd start speaking Spanish." Ah. Well, here's some plain English he might understand: Tax evasion is a crime. He refuses to step down from his committee chairmanship, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to remove him. As the House Ethics Committee investigates his finances, Rangel has himself hired a forensic accountant -- whatever that is -- to examine his financial records. Somehow we don't think he hired the accountant to uncover anything the ethics investigators might overlook. Rangel's troubles come on the heels of revelations that Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, got sweetheart deals from the rogue mortgage giant Countrywide Financial Corp. on two homes he owns, netting Dodd a savings of $75,000. Countrywide was the biggest player in the subprime mortgage scandal that precipitated the current Wall Street meltdown. Rangel and Dodd gave Republicans a gift. At a time when Barack Obama and Joe Biden are attempting to portray troubles on Wall Street as a consequence of Republican policy, members of their own party in Congress are up to their necks in it. Not that Obama needed the help. He did, after all, select Franklin Raines as an economic advisor. Raines is the former Fannie Mae CEO who was forced to resign in 2004 over an accounting scandal that netted him $50 million in unearned bonuses. Raines paid millions in fines and relinquished millions more in stock after investigators found he had abetted widespread accounting errors to overstate earnings. Obama also hired, but has now thrown under the bus, Raines' predecessor at Fannie Mae, Jim Johnson, another recipient of a sweetheart mortgage deal from Countrywide. Obama himself benefited from a shady real estate deal with his friend and fundraiser, Tony Rezko, who was convicted in June of 16 counts of corruption for extorting millions of dollars from firms seeking state contracts in Illinois. Republicans might not have clean hands in this mess. But Obama's efforts to blame Wall Street's woes on Republicans' coziness with corrupt fat cats doesn't stand up to scrutiny -- any more than Charlie Rangel can blame his tax evasion on the fact that he doesn't understand Spanish. To see more of The Paducah Sun, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.paducahsun.com. Copyright (c) 2008, The Paducah Sun, Ky. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |