House Ways and Means Cmte, Chairman Charles Rangel soliciting donations from corporations with business interests before his panel

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From Judicial Watch
http://www.judicialwatch.org/

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel is soliciting donations from corporations with business interests before his panel

[...] according to The Washington Post:

"House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel is soliciting donations from corporations with business interests before his panel, hoping to raise $30 million for a new academic center that will house his papers when he retires.

"The New York Democrat has penned letters on congressional stationery and has sought meetings to ask for corporate and foundation contributions for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York, a project that caused controversy last year when he won a $1.9 million congressional earmark to help start it. Republican critics dubbed the project Rangel's "Monument to Me."

The powerful New York Congressman also secured grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development totaling $690,000 for the Rangel Center.

If you ask me, all of this sounds very similar to the Clintons' fundraising efforts on behalf of the Clinton Presidential Library, where the Clintons shamelessly traded favors (including presidential pardons) in exchange for donations to the library, which was designed to help secure the "Clinton legacy." (The Bushies may have crossed the line, too.)

And what is Charlie Rangel's response to all of this? He doesn't think he's done anything improper, or at least he's not saying so publicly. In fact, even he is calling for an investigation, saying that he wants to "clear the air." In a display of arrogance even unusual for a politician, Rangel seems to believe that because he believes he is ethical, anything he does is ethical.

Let's hope the ethics committee accepts his challenge.

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