PRESS RELEASE
Why Have the Traitors
Targetted Charlie Rangel?
July 27, 2010 (EIRNS)—The following documentation is excerpted from an article entitled "Anti-Hillary Cabal Targets Rangel, Murtha as FDR Democrats," by Anita Gallagher, which was published in the Sept. 19, 2008 (Vol. 35, No. 37) edition of EIR Online, and provides important background on the current all-out assault on U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel. Since this time, Rangel has been forced to step aside as head of the Ways & Means Committee, but retains a powerful position, from which he has launched strong attacks on the Afghanistan war, among other treasonous Obama policies. Dates of events, where not stated, as contemporaneous, in 2008.
The same Wall Street cabal which ran a series of vicious operations to knock out Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Presidential candidate, is now targetting two Congressional Democrats who represent Franklin Roosevelt impulses for defeat—House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), who lead two of the most powerful committees in the House.
Rangel and Murtha defend the principle of the general welfare of the present and future generations, inscribed in the Constitution's Preamble. In a financial collapse like today's, it is the people who are to be defended, not predator financiers like George Soros, Felix Rohatyn, Wall Street and the London Financial District. Any fascist-modelled looting of the population to save financial parasites and their worthless paper, exemplified in the Paulson-Dodd-Frank bailout of Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac, is un-Constitutional, and must be repealed. Rangel and Murtha are obstacles, who threaten to block the financier schemes to impose fascist looting on the population.
The Wall Street-London financier establishment owns McCain and Obama. George Soros, is the Dean-Obama Democratic Party's biggest funder. Soros described his years working with the Nazis rounding up Jews in Hungary as the "happiest years of my life" in a PBS interview. Financial predator Felix Rohatyn, the protege whom Nazi collaborator Andre Meyer of France, described as "like a son to me," and who advises idiot Democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said in February 2006 that no infrastructure will be built through Franklin Roosevelt-modelled credit creation, but only "Public Private Partnerships," modelled on fascist Italy of the 1930s, where financiers buy up decrepit infrastructure and force the population to pay them to use it. The Rockefeller Foundation is a major funder of such PPPs, along with Hitler admirer, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and New York City's wannabe Mussolini, Michael Bloomberg. Put this together with the Hitler-loving New York Times, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, and Murdoch reporter Michelle Malkin, and you have the same machine that knocked out Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Presidential candidate.
Rangel is credited with persuading Hillary Clinton to run for President. That makes him a target of the financiers; former New York Gov. Eliott Spitzer was selectively prosecuted in March 2008 when he refused to lead the New York delegation to crossover and support Obama after the March 4 primaries, to knock Clinton out then. From March on, enormous pressure was put on Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race. Despite the fact that she won more popular votes than Obama, this machine deprived her—who campaigned, like FDR, as the "Champion of the invisible people," of the nomination.
Wall Street Rats Gnaw at Rangel
Rangel's chairmanship of the most powerful committee in the House, the Ways and Means Committee, where all revenue bills originate, is a prime target for this fascist machine high above partisan politics. Rangel is targetted by the hedge fund and private equity industry for opposing, and beating, them in a bitter fight to tax the earnings of managers of hedge funds and private equity firms at 35% rather an the 15% they enjoyed. Rangel's legislation passed the House 233-189, but was blocked by the pro-speculation faction in the U.S. Senate.
The unlimited bailout of Fannie-Freddie announced by Treasury Secretary Paulson on Sept. 7 had been rejected by Rangel's committee earlier this summer. Rangel and his committee limited Paulson's "bazooka" to $800 billion, and insisted on making it transparent, by raising the U.S. debt ceiling from $9.6 trillion to $10.4 trillion.
Rangel described the destruction of American middle class under the Bush Administration in an interview with Mother Jones published this month: "You just don't become middle class overnight. If your kids have to be pulled out of school; if you lost your house; if you lost your job; if you lost your dignity, it takes years, if you do recover ... And sometimes, recovery has to be from the next generation ... We are losing the most precious gift we have as a country, and that is the spirit of the middle class."
Rangel also told the magazine, "One of the biggest problems that Congress and history may have to face is why we didn't take up the Kucinich motion to impeach [Cheney and Bush]."
The attack machine started on Rangel in April 2008, when the neocon New York Sun, once owned by the jailed Conrad Black, attacked Rangel for using Congressional letterhead to raise money for a center at the public City College of New York to encourage minority participation in government service, that would be named after him. Rangel asked three wealthy New Yorkers—David Rockefeller, Hank Greenberg and Donald Trump, to meet with CCNY President Gregory Williams. It quickly broke in the New York Times and other establishment press.
- On July 14, the New York Sun exposed Rangel for renting four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem in the same building: three to live in, and one for a campaign office. Two had already been combined by a well-know minister before Rangel moved in. This is not illegal under New York State law, Rangel told the press Sept. 10, and it is in fact a common practice in New York.
- On July 31, Forbes magazine revealed another reason for Rangel's problems, in reporting that Obama's Director of Economic Policy, Jason Furman, declared that Obama is "not in favor" of Rangel's tax plan. Forbes said Obama could find Rangel "an obstacle" to getting his tax plan through.
- Also on July 31, just as Congress was about to adjourn for its summer recess, House Minority Leader John Boehner got a vote on a resolution to censure Rangel for having "dishonored himself and brought discredit to the House" by his apartment deal. The motion was tabled 254-138, as 25 Republicans voted with Democrats to table, and another 29 Republicans voted "present." Rangel himself asked the Ethics Committee to examine both actions.
- In August, before the Democratic Convention, Rangel gave Howard Dean's Democratic National Committee $100,000 from his political action committee. Soros' man Dean returned the money, saying the DNC didn't take PAC money. The story was leaked to the press, to embarrass Rangel.
- On Sept. 3, the New York Post broke the story that Rangel earned $75,000 in income from a vacation home he bought in 1988 in the Dominican Republic, which he had not reported on his taxes, and he had been given an interest-free mortgage. A "feeding frenzy" about Rangel's "corruption" ensued.
- On Sept. 9, Republican Leader Boehner announced that he and other Republicans had written to Speaker Pelosi, demanding that Rangel step down as Ways and Means Chair while the Ethics Committee investigated. Boehner, according to The Hill, also announced that he would offer another resolution to censure Rangel, and threatened Republicans in a closed door meeting Sept. 9: "Anyone who votes against debating one of my resolutions ... you just won't have a committee assignment."
- On Sept. 4, the announcement by male model Craig Schley that he had collected 6,000 signatures for ballot status in November as an Independent to challenge Rangel—who seldom has an opponent—received "electric" page 1 coverage in Murdoch's New York Post.
Rangel's Press Conference
On Sept. 10, Rangel held a 90-minute press conference in the Capitol Hill Press Gallery, making clear that he intends to stay in office, and as head of the Ways and Means Committee. The establishment's reporters came to snipe, but despite their hostility, many laughed as Rangel gave detailed accounts of the actual events that happened. Rangel told the press, "I have felt embarrassed for my friend John Boehner for believing that he has to do this politically."
Rangel explained how he bought a promise of a built cottage in 1988 for $82,000, with a a $50,000 mortgage provided by the hotel building the vacation cottages, which the hotel would rent out 41 weeks a year. To keep investors from pulling out while the cottages were built, the hotel offered everyone interest-free mortgages. The rental income was shared evenly within the pool, and applied directly to reduce mortgages. Rangel said he will amend his Federal, state, and local tax returns for 2004-2006. He said he would have earned no income, because depreciation and local taxes would have resulted in a "wash," but for the fact that he sold his New York home to move to a Harlem apartment, and the resulting capital gain cancelled his ability to use the Dominican tax as a credit. He believes his federal and local tax liability is between $5000-$10,000, for that reason only.
Near the end of the press conference, Rangel said,
"With all the issues that our nation is facing, in terms of life and death, war and peace, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, adjust this tax system, health, education, welfare, and the elections, I'm surprised that—really surprised, that this issue has reached the front page of so many newspapers."
But the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee is a high-stakes job. Two previous Democratic Chairmen of the Committee have been removed through scandals: Rep. Wilbur Mills (1957-1974) via a set up affair with stripper Fanne Foxe, and Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (1981-1994) railroaded out in the House Post Office scandal.
