Another nominee for The Whitey - Charles Rangel

Six or seven months ago, when The Teleprompter Jesus was trying to fill his cabinet, I created something called The Whitey Award. The Whitey is given for the best effort at eliminating government waste. Special consideration is given to nominees who accomplish this by not giving the government any of their money.

Previous nominees include Tom Daschle, Rahm Emmanuel, She Whose Name Is Not Spoken, Tim Geithner, Hilda Solis, and the two guys who wheeled a corpse into a convenience store in an effort to cash the dead guy's Social Security check. (Hey, if that dead man's money had gone back to the government, it would've been spent on Clunkers, stimulus programs, or bailouts, instead of drugs and alcohol.) You can go here to read the qualifications of each Whitey nominee.

Early on in the Obama administration, I thought I was going to have to retire the trophy. The playing field was almost like the Special Olympics: too many winners. Then we went about three months without a new scandal, and we seemed to have achieved tax-paying compliance from those we pay our taxes to.

Then comes Charlie Rangel. Rangel is chair of The House Ways And Means Committee, and controls more money than Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong-Il, or any other socialist I can think of. And he goes to great lengths not to share any of the pile that is his. Here's a blogger named Ripclawe, from someplace in the Caribbean, on Rangel's latest accomplishment:

Representative Charles B. Rangel failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and assets on his financial disclosure forms for 2002 through 2006, including tens of thousands of dollars in rental income from a Harlem brownstone he sold in 2004, according to records filed this month with the clerk of the House of Representatives.


Mr. Rangel, who is facing investigations by two House subcommittees into his personal finances and fund-raising, filed amended financial disclosure forms on Aug. 12 acknowledging that he had omitted an array of assets, business transactions and sources of income. They include a Merrill Lynch Global account valued between $250,000 and $500,000; tens of thousands of dollars in municipal bonds; and $30,000 to $100,000 in rent from a multifamily brownstone building he owned on West 132nd Street.

So to Representative Charles B. Rangel, you have our respect and undying gratitude for doing your part to eliminate government waste. Your nomination has been recorded, and we wish you good luck beating the rap on this one.
If you ever get your hands on your own tax money, you'll probably just waste it.