Charlie Rangel Is a Symptom of a Bigger Problem
by Star Parker

Charlie Rangel, convicted of eleven ethics violations – the most ever found against any member of Congress – was resoundingly re-elected, getting 80% of his district’s vote.

After 40 years representing these folks, you can’t conclude he was an unknown commodity. Granted, the conviction occurred after the election, but the charges were well publicized.

Has Charlie Rangel’s leadership produced life so grand in Harlem that flagrant and persistent unethical behavior by their Congressman means nothing to its residents?

The national poverty rate is around 14%. In the 15th district of New York, Charlie Rangel’s district, it’s 24.3%. The child poverty rate is 30.9%.

Whatever it is that Harlem voters find so attractive about Mr. Rangel, it’s hard to conclude that quality of life is something they feel they owe to him.

But let’s think about this in a broader context.

Charlie Rangel is a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

There are now 41 House members who belong to the Caucus. In the most recent elections, 37 of them ran as incumbents and all regained their seats handily. The four seats that were vacated were easily captured by new black Democrats.

That’s a 100% return rate. These Black Caucus Democrats recaptured their seats getting an average 75% of their district’s vote.

In a year when 62 Democrats were defeated – a 25% reduction in the bloc of 252 Democrats in the current Congress – the reduction of the bloc of 41 black Democrats was zero.

The average poverty rate in the districts of Congressional Black Caucus members is 20.3% – six points higher than the national average. The average child poverty rate in these districts is 28.8%.

So, as in Charlie Rangel’s case, it’s hard to conclude that these Black Caucus Democrats are being sent back to Washington by large voting margins, year after year, because they are delivering such fine lives to their constituents.

A problem here is that elections in Black Caucus districts are not exactly what might be described as free and open.

About three quarters of these districts are Majority Minority districts, hard wired to guarantee election of blacks. The remaining districts are also gerrymandered through various schemes flowing from collusion of political parties and state legislatures.

The initial provision of the Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965, to deal with voting problems was structured to counter schemes going on in the South – literacy tests, etc – rigged to keep blacks from registering and voting.

But by the 1970’s, this provision morphed into district gerrymandering. What was initially meant to protect the voting rights of blacks evolved into provisions to guarantee the election of blacks.

The result of this overall process is a bloc of politically manipulated districts which, coupled with other institutional biases protecting incumbents, virtually guarantees the election of black Democrats.

You might say that rigged elections might be justified if it meant better lives for black constituents.

But given that these districts are largely characterized by persistent poverty and some of the worst public schools in the country, this is a conclusion that’s hard to reach.

Earlier this year, the New York Times profiled the prodigious money raising prowess and dubious ethics of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. The Times editorialized, “Of all the money machines shaving ethical corners, few rival the Congressional Black Caucus…..the caucus spends far more on gala entertainments and golf outings than on the scholarships that billboard its charity drives.”

Political markets are like commercial markets. The absence of competition results in shoddy products.

When we send American soldiers into harm’s way abroad to fight for free elections, perhaps we should spend more time considering the quality of our own democracy at home.

Obama Protects Cronies at Taxpayers’ Expense
by David Limbaugh

The more we learn about the White House’s summary firing of AmeriCorps’ inspector general, Gerald Walpin, the more it smells of lawlessness, cronyism and a flagrant disregard for transparency and government accountability.

Remember President Barack Obama’s commitment to oversee the expenditure of taxpayer funds to avoid waste and inefficiency — to the point that he deputized Vice President “Mean” Joe Biden as the executive enforcer?

That was then. This is now. As has proved customary with this administration, the walk has not matched the talk. Biden’s casual admissions that the administration “guessed wrong” and that money has been wasted don’t begin to describe the fiscal recklessness and corruption that define this White House.

Walpin — in investigating the misuse of AmeriCorps funds by St. HOPE charity, which is under the direction of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a strong Obama supporter — discovered that St. HOPE had failed to use the federal monies for the purposes specified in the grant and improperly had used AmeriCorps personnel to drive Johnson to personal appointments, run other errands for him and wash his car. On Walpin’s recommendation, an official at the Corporation for National and Community Service, the organization that runs AmeriCorps, ordered Johnson’s suspension.

Walpin also referred the matter to the local U.S. attorney’s office for a criminal inquiry. Though no criminal charges were filed, St. HOPE agreed in a settlement to repay half its $850,000 of AmeriCorps grants.

But the real fireworks didn’t begin until Walpin briefed the CNCS board May 20 on his investigation. A few weeks later, the White House called him and gave him one hour to decide whether he would resign or be fired.

He refused to resign, and the White House summarily fired him, as promised, grossly violating the 2008 Inspector General Reform Act, co-sponsored by then-Sen. Barack Obama, which forbids the White House from firing an IG without providing 30 days’ notice and the specific reasons for the firing.

Norman Eisen, White House special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, in response to heavy criticism of the administration over this matter, issued a letter explaining its reasons for termination but offering not the slightest justification for its violation of the statute. Its excuses are superficial, bogus and vague. Eisen wasn’t any more forthcoming as to the grounds for the termination in his meeting with the staff of Sen. Charles Grassley, who is inquiring into the case.

In his letter, Eisen said that in the May 20 meeting, “Mr. Walpin was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve.” Eisen complained that Walpin had worked from his home in New York instead of commuting to Washington. He also cited Walpin’s “lack of candor” in providing information to decision-makers, meaning the U.S. attorney.

Though the White House dismissed Walpin without seeking his side of the story, there is another side, and it is compelling. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York interviewed Walpin, who responded to the allegations against him.

Walpin denied that he was confused or that his presentation was disorganized, though he admitted he was less organized after being asked to leave the room for a while and returning to find his papers shuffled and out of order. GOP investigators said Walpin is entirely sharp, focused, collected and coherent, an assessment that Byron York corroborated based on his two-hour interview.

Walpin said his telecommuting from New York had been expressly approved by the chairman, vice chairman and corporation’s board, and he described the charge that he lacked candor with the U.S. attorney as “a total lie.”

Even more suspicious was counsel Eisen’s stonewalling behavior in the meeting with Sen. Grassley’s staff, who said he refused to answer several direct questions about the representations in his letter, prompting Grassley to send a follow-up letter to the White House for more information.

What possible justification can there be for the White House to lack candor (to borrow a phrase) in this matter? Why does it view itself as an adversary to the inspector general who investigated the misuse of taxpayer funds?

In view of this stonewalling, it’s hard to assume the administration’s good faith. It is abundantly clear the White House had a personal interest in protecting Johnson, violated the law in firing Walpin, did not seek his side of the story or show any interest in his response to the allegations, didn’t interview him to assess his alleged confusion, and was overtly evasive with Sen. Grassley as to its reasons for termination.

Instead of showing neutrality or erring on the side of the watchdog of government funds, the administration punished the watchdog and his charge, the U.S. taxpayers, and, in the process, exhibited those negative qualities — cronyism, corruption, waste, recklessness and a lack of transparency — it forever decries.

Obama’s AmeriCrooks and Cronies Scandal
by Michelle Malkin

President Obama promised he would end “Washington games.” But his abrupt firing of the AmeriCorps inspector general is more of the same. The brewing scandal smells like the Beltway cronyism of the Bush years. And the apparent meddling of first lady Michelle Obama in the matter smacks of the corruption of the Clinton years.

If Obama keeps up with this “change,” we’ll be back to the Watergate era by Christmas.

News of AmeriCorps watchdog Gerald Walpin’s unceremonious dismissal first broke last week in Youth Today, an independent national publication focused on the volunteerism sector. Walpin was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007 and has served well, honorably and effectively. Too effectively. His removal came a week after he “questioned the eligibility of the largest and most expensive AmeriCorps program, and while the IG was contesting the ‘propriety’ of a settlement made with a mayor for alleged misuse of AmeriCorps funds,” according to Youth Today.

The first taxpayer-subsidized program is the Teaching Fellows Program, run by the Research Foundation of the City University of New York. Walpin’s audit — which can be found online at www.cncsig.gov/AuditReports.html — uncovered a multitude of grant violations, including criminal background check lapses and “pervasive problems of eligibility, timekeeping and documentation.”

Walpin’s office questioned duplicate educational awards of more than $16 million and costs worth nearly $775,000. CUNY refused to return excess funds that it had drawn down, failed to revise procedures to prevent such grant abuse and refused to provide proof documenting that its AmeriCorps participants actually existed. Walpin advised AmeriCorps’ parent organization, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), to cut off any new funding and re-examine past government funding totaling upward of $75 million.

CNCS, now chaired by Democratic mega-fundraiser Alan Solomont, has ignored Walpin’s recommendations. The Obama watchdogs are snoozing. Expect the same kind of lackadaisical approach toward policing the $6 billion AmeriCorps expansion and new national service bill signed into law by Obama in April.

The second program Walpin challenged is the nonprofit St. HOPE Academy, run by Obama supporter Kevin Johnson, the Democratic mayor of Sacramento and a former NBA basketball star. In a special May 2009 report, Walpin’s office blew the whistle on a highly politicized U.S. attorney’s office settlement with Johnson and his deputy, Dana Gonzalez. The pair exploited nearly $900,000 in AmeriCorps funding for personal and political gain. Based on Walpin’s investigation last year, CNCS suspended their access to federal funds after determining that they were:

– Using AmeriCorps members to “recruit students for St. HOPE Academy”;

– Using AmeriCorps members for political activities in connection with the “Sacramento board of education election”;

– Assigning grant-funded AmeriCorps members to perform services “personally benefiting … Johnson,” such as “driving (him) to personal appointments, washing (his) car and running personal errands”; and

– Improperly using AmeriCorps “members to perform non-AmeriCorps clerical and other services” that “were outside the scope of the grant and therefore were impermissible” for “the benefit of St. HOPE.”

But in the wake of Johnson’s mayoral victory and Obama’s election in November, the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento rushed to settle with the new mayor so he could avail himself of federal stimulus funds and other government money. It was, Walpin said in his special report last month, “akin to deciding that, while one should not put a fox in a small chicken coop, it is fine to do so in a large chicken coop! The settlement … leaves the unmistakable impression that relief from a suspension can be bought.”

Shortly after, the White House announced that it had “lost confidence” in Walpin. With Walpin’s removal, the top management positions at CNCS are now open. The decks are clear to install lackeys who will protect the government volunteerism industry and its Democratic cronies. And a chilling effect has undoubtedly taken hold in every other inspector general’s office in Washington.

GOP Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa is pressing Obama for more details. Tough questions need to be asked of the first lady, who has “taken the lead” in selecting AmeriCorps’ managers, according to Youth Today. Her former chief of staff, Jackie Norris, will serve as a “senior adviser” to CNCS beginning next week. What role did they play in Walpin’s sacking? And why?

Mrs. Obama’s interest is more than passing. She ran the AmeriCorps-funded nonprofit Public Allies in Chicago from 1993-1996 and served on its national board until 2001. Like so many of the AmeriCorps recipients investigated by the inspector general’s office over the years, Public Allies was found to have violated basic eligibility and compliance rules. A January 2007 audit reported that the group lacked internal controls verifying that recipients of education grants and living allowances were legal citizens or permanent residents as required by law.

Transparency. Accountability. Fiscal responsibility. In Obama World, these are proving to be nothing more than words. Just words.

The Blago Episode: Obama’s “Bimbo Eruption”?
by Ross Mackenzie

David Mendell, Barack Obama’s biographer, notes that regarding Chicago’s corrupt political machine, “Obama, to his credit, got through this system with very little mud on his suit.”

Still — and still. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich now finds himself mired in an unpretty place. From wiretapped telephone conversations it seems Blago tried to auction to the highest bidder the Senate seat Obama relinquished Nov. 16 following his election to the presidency. And so — in re Obama — we come to variations on the question Howard Baker made famous about Richard Nixon in the aftermath of Watergate:

What did he know and when did he know it?

The other day an Associated Press report quoted Obama as “absolutely certain” no one around him had any dealings with Blago about the sale of the Senate seat. And various press accounts have noted the apparent distance between Blago and Obama over the years — as well as Obama’s recent efforts to move still farther from the Illinois governor.

Yet the unfolding Blago episode has to be distracting Obama during his transition cruise to the White House. It also recalls past Obama responses to questions about his connections to other unsavory Chicagoans.

For instance: Bill Ayers? Hardly knew him. Jeremiah Wright? Not the man who married Obama, baptized his children, and rendered him spiritual guidance for 20 years. Developer Antoin “Tony” Rezko — now reportedly talking to investigators about Blago from the jail cell he occupies for corrupting political officials? Despite Rezko’s 17-year relationship as a curbstone adviser and campaign contributor to Obama, it definitely would be a reach to construe him as — you know — a close friend.

What’s more (1), Blago’s successor as a Chicago congressman, Rahm Emanuel, has been chosen to become Obama’s White House chief of staff. Did Emanuel, a famously four-lettering knuckle-cruncher, have any communications with Blago on behalf of Obama about who should fill the Senate seat? It seems there was at least one contact. And Emanuel would have been the logical person. According to Abner Mikva, another former congressman and federal appellate judge, and a longtime Obama mentor: Rahm Emanuel “probably had a better relationship with Blagojevich than most other politicians.”

(2) David Axelrod, an Obama senior advisor, said Nov. 23 on Chicago’s WFLD-TV: “I know (Obama) has talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names (for the Senate seat), many of which have not surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them.” On Dec. 9, about the time Blagojevich was becoming a page-one story, Axelrod recanted: “I was mistaken when I told an interviewer that the president-elect has spoken directly to Gov. Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy. They did not then or at any time discuss the subject.”

Further, there may — or may not — be a disconnect between how Axelrod and Obama define reform. NBC’s Steve Rhodes has dug up a 2005 Chicago Tribune op-ed by Axelrod about the indictment by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald — the same guy on Blagojevich’s case — of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s patronage chief for circumventing a federal ban on political hiring. (The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto passes the op-ed quote along.) Noting “the federal bureaucracy, sheltered from politics by law, has not always been known for its responsiveness and efficiency,” Axelrod wrote:

“(At a news conference) Fitzgerald proclaimed his vision of a day when the recommendations of elected officials, business, labor, and community leaders will no longer count — a day when we entirely remove politics from government. And he seemed to be declaring his intention to use the criminal code to enforce that vision. It is this system, free of political influence, I had envisioned as a young man. But after a lifetime of observing government and participating in politics, I wonder if such radical ‘reform’ is really desirable.”

There’s that word again — reform.

In Chicago and Illinois politics the Machine rules. It’s The Chicago Way. The Machine has produced Rod Blagojevich, an f-wording twerp now likely giving the jeebies to Barack Obama as he transitions to the presidency. Yet Obama is a self-ballyhooed reformer — a practitioner in hope and dreams and “change we can believe in.” How comforting for him to have demonstrated his commitment to change by reforming the Machine.

At bottom, the Blagojevich episode — whether it involves Obama himself or people close to him such as Emanuel or Axelrod — demonstrates the disconnect between Obama’s deeds and his high-sounding words. He talks tirelessly about reform but was an unobjecting beneficiary of the Machine who did not reform it. Instead, “with very little mud on his suit,” he treated it with deference. Likewise on issues from earmarks to education to ethanol, Obama has failed to prove through his actions he is the reformer his rhetoric proclaims.

Like Rod Blagojevich, Barack Obama is a product — eager or acquiescent — of the Chicago Machine. Clearly, he would prefer that any ties he might have to it recede quickly in the rear-view mirror. The Blagojevich episode gives those ties a prominence that could fracture the determined incuriosity of an Obamatized national media. And as with Bill Clinton’s “bimbo eruptions,” so with Barack Obama: Blago and the machine may dog him through much of his presidency.

The Democratic Culture of Corruption
by Michelle Malkin

Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi can stop clucking now. For the last three years, Democratic leaders cheered GOP ethics woes. Dean accused Republicans of making “their culture of corruption the norm.” Pelosi touted cleanliness as a liberal virtue. But with the eye-popping pay-for-play and bribery case against Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich topping a year of nationwide Democratic scandals, the corruption chickens are coming home to roost.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald called the breadth and depth of charges against Blagojevich and his Democratic Chief of Staff John Harris “staggering.” That’s an understatement. Anything that breathed was a potential shakedown target. It’s the Chicago way. Democrat Blago’s so dirty he’d hit up a children’s hospital for money. Oh, wait. He’s accused of doing that, too.

Democrat Blago allegedly conspired to use his power to appoint President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat as a bargaining chip for financial payment. He explored trading on that authority for an appointment as Health and Human Services secretary or as an ambassador or for installment in a cushy union position. (He discussed his trading scheme with an unnamed “SEIU (Service Employees International Union) official” and unnamed “various consultants” in Washington.)

According to the criminal complaint released yesterday, he also tried to leverage his influence over the sale of Wrigley Field (owned by Tribune media company) in an attempt to get Chicago Tribune editorial writers who called for his impeachment fired — which illustrates the very perils of media/government entanglements I warned about in my newspaper bailout column last week. His wife, Patricia Blagojevich, was apparently in on the thuggery, too. Taking a break from her first lady duties advocating “on behalf of women and children,” she is heard in taped discussions about the Chicago Tribune/Wrigley Field deal telling a governor’s aide “to hold up that f**king Cubs sh*t. … F**k them.”

Pelosi, champion of women as political cleaner-uppers, was unavailable for comment.

Fitzgerald says President-elect Obama was not implicated in the plethora of charges against Democrats Blago and Harris. The national media went out of their way to absolve him, too. But declaring Team Obama’s hands clean — especially with Blago crony and indicted Obama donor Tony Rezko in the middle of it all — is premature. (And if you’re wondering why I keep putting “Democrat” in front of the accused corruptocrats, it’s because the mainstream newspapers can’t seem to remember to identify their party prominently the way they do when Republicans are nabbed.)

Chicago’s Fox affiliate reports that Obama Chief of Staff and Chicago hometown heavy Rahm Emanuel was the catalyst for the Blago takedown and suggests Rahm-bo tipped off the feds. If so, this raises more questions than it answers about who on the transition team may have talked to Blago and his shakedown artists about what and when. Needless to say, if it were the Republican Bush administration tied to the Blago bust, the White House press corps would be frothing like a pack of Michael Vick’s pit bulls.

Democrats and the media can no longer rest on the old rationalization that Blago is an exception to the “we’re cleaner than thou” rule. 2008 was the year of Democratic Reps. William “Cold Cash” Jefferson, Charlie “Sweetheart Deals” Rangel, and former Detroit Mayor Kwame “Text Me” Kilpatrick. It was the year Democratic Massachusetts State Senator Dianne Wilkerson got caught stuffing bribes from an FBI informant down her shirt. It was the year 12 Democratic leaders and staffers in Pennsylvania’s state Capitol were stung in a massive corruption scandal involving cash, sex and abuse of public office. And it was the year of multimillion-dollar embezzlement scandals at Democratic satellite offices of ACORN and the SEIU.

The Democrats have met the culture of corruption, and it looks like it ain’t just elephants among the jackasses soiling public office.

Illinois governor tried to sell Senate seat: prosecutors
By Michael Conlon and Andrew Stern Michael Conlon And Andrew Stern

The governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, was arrested on Tuesday on “staggering” corruption charges that alleged he tried to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by fellow Democrat, President-elect Barack Obama.

The governor also tried to extort the Chicago Tribune, one of the country’s leading newspapers, into firing editorial writers who were critical of him, federal prosecutors said.

While Obama has long distanced himself from the governor of his home state — who has been under investigation on other issues for years — Blagojevich’s arrest was a likely embarrassment to the president-elect. Obama said he was “saddened and sobered” by the news and had not been aware of the alleged efforts to sell the Senate seat he vacated.

The case shined light once again on old-style corruption in the grimy caldron of Chicago politics from which Obama emerged.

Obama, who takes office on January 20, resigned from the Senate after winning the November 4 presidential election. The Illinois governor is meant to pick Obama’s Senate replacement.

Caught on tape, Blagojevich used an expletive as he described the Senate seat as something so valuable “you don’t just don’t give it away for nothing,” adding that he might even appoint himself if he could get nothing for it, the criminal complaint against him said.

“The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering,” U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the federal prosecutor, said in a statement detailing the charges.

It was enough to make revered Illinois statesman Abraham Lincoln “roll over in his grave,” Fitzgerald later told reporters, adding the arrest of Blagojevich was made because he wanted to stop a “crime spree.”

“FOR SALE” SIGN

Blagojevich and Harris were each charged in a federal complaint with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and a second count of solicitation of bribery.

The mail and wire fraud charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison while the bribery charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Each count carries a maximum fine of $250,000.

The charges “allege that Blagojevich put a ‘for sale’ sign on the naming of a United States senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism,” Fitzgerald said in his statement.

Blagojevich was accused of threatening to withhold state assistance to the Tribune Company in connection with the sale of the Chicago Cubs’ baseball home, Wrigley Field, in order “to induce the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members sharply critical” of him, Fitzgerald said.

Investigators said Blagojevitch and Harris were caught on court-authorized wiretaps.