America's Most Corrupt Congressman- Charlie Rangel is a Disgusting Racist!

There is no other way to describe it, Rep Charlie Rangel is a disgusting racist! Today the Congressman who has spent the bulk of his career enriching himself off the public dole was interviewed by the Daily Beast and spewed some hateful comments. He likened republicans to terrorists and the teaparty to those who fought against the civil rights movement.

House Republicans? Have done more damage to American competitiveness than al Qaeda ever could. “What is happening is sabotage. Terrorists couldn’t do a better job than the Republicans are doing.”

The Tea Party? Defeat them the same way segregation was beaten. “It is the same group we faced in the South with those white crackers and the dogs and the police. They didn’t care about how they looked. It was just fierce indifference to human life that caused America to say enough is enough. ‘I don’t want to see it and I am not a part of it.’ What the hell! If you have to bomb little kids and send dogs out against human beings, give me a break.”

Those are pretty strong words for one of the most corrupt people in congress. Let's look at some of Rangel's "record";

• He admitted a failure to report $75 thousand in taxes on a vacation property

• He was discovered taking a tax break for people whose primary residence was in Washington DC, but if his primary residence was in DC he couldn't be congressman representing NYC. And besides, he was occupying four rent controlled controlled apartments in New York, the rule is you don't qualify for rent control unless the apartment is your primary residence. That is why he got in trouble for using one of the apartments as his office.

• He misused his congressional office to fund raise for his private Rangel Center by preserving a tax loophole for an oil drilling company in exchange for funding

• Then there was the investigation of the NY Congressman, revolving around a Caribbean boondoggle.

• Once the ethics investigation began Rangel gave campaign donations to 119 members of Congress, including three of the five Democrats on the House Ethics Committee who are charged with investigating him

Then there is the matter of his financial disclosure form. Lets just say it had some mistakes also:

And there was more. Rangel was censured on the House floor in December 2010 after the ethics panel found him guilty of 11 charges related to his conduct outside the Capitol. The vote against him was a lopsided 333-79 (that might have been the last bi-partisan vote in the House).

I find his claims of Tea Party racism to be particularly repulsive.  Having been at many tea party events I have NEVER seen a racial incident at an event I attended.  In all of the tea party events viewed remotely, or seen on you tube, the only racist incident I have seen is when the SEIU was sent to a St. Louis tea party event by Kathleen Sibelius, and one of the union thugs beat up an African-American tea partier.

As both a tea party supporter and a Jewish American, one part of my heritage that I am most proud is the Jewish participation in the civil rights movement. When Dr. King marched, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (on the left in the picture below), was next to him, along with others, like Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath (carrying the Torah) who were not Black but because they too were clergy who believed that all men should be treated and judged equally:

Heschel, a Polish immigrant, scion of a long line of Chasidic rabbis, Professor of Jewish Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and King, an American descendant of slaves, a compassionate protector of the oppressed, charismatic orator, writer and theologian, marched side-by- side from Selma to Montgomery to protest the pernicious racism that poisoned America and humiliated its African-American citizens.

 As a Jewish Teapartier it is my contention that the tea party movement is the natural extension of the Civil Rights movement--a public uprising to fight for the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution. In its purest form, that's the description of the Tea Party.