Charles Rangel has "represented" one of the poorest districts in America for decades. So you would think that Harlem's Congressperson would be a little embarrassed by living so well through his connections seemingly above the law. The rents of New Yorkers are skyrocketing. So when we learn that Charles Rangel pays rent half of what the rest of us do, it seems unfair. Instead, the Congressman gives his poor constituents the middle finger. Why? Because he knows that he will keep his job in perpetuity. A person elected to Congress has a good chance of keeping that job for life. Is that democracy? This is what the two-party system has bequeathed to us.
Representative Charles B. Rangel on Friday angrily defended the unusual housing bargain he has been granted by a major real estate developer, saying that he did not believe he was being allowed four rent-stabilized apartments because of his status as a congressman.
He is so out of touch that Rangel doesn't realize the obnoxiousness of what he is saying:
Responding to an article in Friday’s New York Times, Mr. Rangel said there was nothing illegal or unethical about his relationship with the Olnick Organization, his landlord at the Lenox Terrace complex in Harlem. He also said that he did not believe it was unfair to avail himself of the multiple rent-stabilized apartments at a time of soaring rents in Manhattan and evictions of many rent-regulated tenants.
“I didn’t see anything unfair about it,” he said at a news conference he convened at the apartment complex, on 135th Street between Lenox and Fifth Avenues. “I didn’t even know it was a deal.”
Corruption by any other name:
A government watchdog group asked the House ethics committee on Friday to look into the arrangement and find out if it violated a ban on members’ accepting gifts of more than $100. The group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, also filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, seeking a review of whether the Olnick group, by granting Mr. Rangel the use of a below-market apartment for an office, was making an illegal corporate campaign contribution.
Mr. Rangel, a towering figure in New York City politics and chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, paid a total rent of $3,894 a month for his four units in 2007, according to state records obtained by The New York Times. The Olnick Organization’s Web site now advertises similar apartments in Mr. Rangel’s building at a combined market rent of $7,465 to $8,125 a month.
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