We’re not going to jump to conclusions about the latest Charlie Rangel ethics accusation just because in the past five months or so he’s faced charges of:
• Occupying four rent-controlled apartments simultaneously.
• Reaping tax breaks from Washington, D.C., by declaring a primary residence there, while also making his four rent-controlled New York apartments his primary residences.
• Failing to pay city, state, and federal taxes for years on a villa he rents out in the Dominican Republic.
• Soliciting donations to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York from businessmen with issues before Congress.
and
• Helping to preserve a tax loophole for an oil company as its chief officer pledged $1 million to Rangel’s school.
Because, despite his recent ethics struggles, we’re sure there’s a perfectly good reason he paid $85,000 in campaign donations for a Website, the most spent by anyone in Congress. After all, Barack Obama demonstrated the fruits of building a state- of-the-art Website, and if you want quality, you have to pay for it. And just because, in a pure coincidence, the $85,000 went to his own son, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t spent honestly.
The site “is a one pager with a third party site taking donations,” said Jamie Newell of 7AZ Web Design, a company that creates sites for a wide array of businesses in Washington. “For something of that standard, I would not pay more than $100.”
Oh.
Tangled Web: Rangel son got campaign cash [Politico]
