Lunch Break: Rangel’s Next Gig

Goodtime Charlie Rangel. Now you know why I had given him his name in earlier posts.
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These people not only thumb their noses up at the American voters, but also push the American faces into the dung just for the spite of it.
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They truly have no shame.

Oh please. Delay: High rise polyester pants and white man’s overbite.

Almost all politicians do this, on scales proportional to their offices. And when their socializing and shows of community schmoozing bring home the bacon for local coffers, public and private, their constituents reward them. So of course they keep doing it.
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Not excusing Rangel, just pointing out how and why it is ubiquitous. It will not change until the incentives to do it change. It is as hard to stop as it is to stop cops from busting the wrong heads.

Welcome to the TEA Party movement. We are against everything all the Charlie Rangel’s in Washington stand for and a return to honor with our politicians in Washington.
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At no other time since the founding of this country has there been a call to end all of the corruption, the back-room wheeling and dealing and the other forms of abuse and taxpayer fraud.
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Join with us if you want to see a return honesty and decency. Or sit on the sidelines and just moan and complain how bad it is and as usual do nothing to stop it.
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No more lobbyists, no more special interest groups, no more of the bad politics which have nearly ruined this country.

@1.2~
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Thanks for the invite, but I have been on this theme for 41 years, and I did attend some town halls where Tea Partiers convinced me they were not going to be effective. Sure, they were angry enough, but incoherent and still not understanding that there is no free lunch — they did not seem to be interested in giving up any of the goodies in order to get rid of the problems.
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I think they are ripe to be fooled by crafty candidates who tell them what they want to hear and then, once in office, would just be corrupt in slightly different ways, because Tea Partiers would be fooled by the “clothes” they wear.
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I would like to be wrong about this. believe me, but I think I know a self-help scam when I see one. The participants mean well, but those that rise to the top are sales people with only one goal in mind — personal gain.

“At no other time since the founding of this country has there been a call to end all of the corruption, the back-room wheeling and dealing and the other forms of abuse and taxpayer fraud.”
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“The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s.[1] Keeping corruption out of politics was a main goal of the progressive era, with many Progressives trying to expose and undercut political machines and bosses. Many Progressives supported prohibition in order to destroy the political power based in saloons. At the same time, women’s suffrage was promoted to bring a “purer” female vote into the arena.[2][3][4][5]

Theodore Roosevelt was a prominent contributor to the Progressive Era with his many reforms during his presidency.

Initially the movement was successful at local levels; later it progressed to state and national levels. Progressives drew support from the middle class, and supporters included many lawyers, teachers, physicians, ministers and business people”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era
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Sorry, Rusty, rooting out corruption is what “progressive” means.
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With such a very large number of people in the twelve years of Republican rule over both houses and eight years of Republican control of the White House going to jail, including Tom Delay and the obvious fact that Democrats do not flinch in getting rid of people like Rangel, if you ask most people here, progressives want to route out corruption, corporate special interest influence and the Tea Party are the ones who wish to bring back corruption and corporate control of the government.
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To me, Rangel is all Tea: go ahead and break the rules so long as you are the one who makes the rules just like Tom DeLay with a good tan.

If you’ve got a link of Rangel doing “Minnie the Moocher”, I’ll click….

patrick @ 1.4 and newfreedomblog @ 1.2~
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I submit that the Progressives have not been successful at accomplishing that agenda, and face some of the same hurdles and trap-doors that the TPers do.
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The culture of governance, its arcane and convoluted sefl-”rules”,and its enormous incentives to engage in acts of favoritism and personal gain.
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For instance, my Congressman, Peter DeFazio, is what one (of you) might term a Populist Progressive, But certain others would refer to him as a Liberal Commie.
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Case-in-point #1, then — People who see him as a Liberal Commie would not vote for him no matter how stalwart he was against corruption in Congress. There are even more people who would not vote for him just because he is a Democrat — they would vote for an unknown TPer or a Republican with a dubious record of ethical conduct, by looking the other way on the issues that newfreedomblog lists, instead choosing to place their vote based on, say, “pro’-life” advocacy or “Wise Use” endorsement.
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Peter keeps his job because he continues to apply for the same job, in a Congressional District where the voters know him, the majority like all his issue stances, and a vast majority of voters, even those who disagree with some of his issue stances, are convinced of his honesty, integrity, intelligence, work ehtic, and populism. But if and when he runs for US Senator or Governor or President, he would have to appeal to a different collection of voters.
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And since Congressional reform and many legislative successes take more than one term to see through, he feels he needs to continue to get re-elected.
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So, Peter has, on too many occasions for my tastes (but still not that many, and I am not in his shoes to judge his judgment) compromised on his political principles (although, to my knowledge, never on his principles of ethical conduct regarding use of the taxpayer’s money or the influence of his office for private gain, although I suspect he has engaged in backroom political chip-trading,) Why? In order to both keep some of the voters he already has gotten, to keep it harder for opponents to beat him in the next elections with shrill ideological rhetoric, and to be a Congressionally “collegial” in order to lessen the risk of finding himself without much support from his colleagues.
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Because the bizarre rules of legislative procedure are an entire Rube Goldberg menagerie unto themselves. They are so convoluted and strange that it takes many terms to even begin to understand how they work. And the rules themselves make reform hard to accomplish. Only multi-term legislators could hope to enact effective reform.
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That is, unless we elected a super-super majority of people hell-bent on reforming them. However, if they changed them one-by-one, each change would produce unexpected consequences, most of which would lead to procedural morass. Perhaps they could swiften the process by immediately tossing out all the rules, but then at least the entire session, if not years of them, would be taken up entirely with the task of deciding on new rules, and working the bugs out of them.
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So Peter lives to fight another day, hoping to slowly shift the paradigm. But it is a Fool’s Errand, as anyone can see. The Dark outgrows the Light.
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Lest anyone think that the only people I finger as the reason why more true anti-corruption legislators are not voted into office are people who would not vote for a sincere, proven, anti-corruption legislator like Peter DeFazio just they did not like either his stance on another issue or because of his Politiucal Party affiliation, let me make it clear that I feel just as certain that relatively equal blame is shared by people who would not vote for any sincere, proven, anti-corruption candidate who was Republican or “pro-lifer” or “pro-Monsanto” or “pro-logging”.
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To use the examples you two provided, it is my opinion that TPers and Progressives (though my no means alone), do not all hold anti-corruption as their overriding priority once filling out their ballots. They all fear potential changes in other areas of their life if they ignore other issues.

Charlie feels he did nothing more than other members in the political club. He might be right but whenever the public hears about the special benefits of the elite they get angry. Could an ordinary citizen amass 4 rent stabilized New York apartments? I talk about the issues of the club in my blog

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-steven-friedman/charlie-whats-it-like-ins_b_679968.html