I mean, he’s just discovered he’s worth twice as much as he thought he was.

And to think I get excited when I find a five dollar bill I didn’t know I had…

Mr. Rangel also realized that he made tens of thousands of dollars more than he reported in many different years over the past decade. This is the most recent string in a series of financial bonanzas for Mr. Rangel, who last year admitted he had forgotten about $75,000 in rental income on his Caribbean resort property.

I would take a bullet in the leg for $75,000 income, let alone $75,000 I didn’t even notice or care about.

There’s a big problem here even if these lapses were all honest mistakes. Mr. Rangel is chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. His cavalier attitude toward his own tax obligations reminds how out of touch Washington’s political class can be. At the very least, politicians like Mr. Rangel don’t think the laws they foist on us apply to themselves.

No wonder Democrats like to raise taxes.  God knows they don’t ever pay them.

Update x1: It keeps getting better…

Congressman Rangel has been arrogant in refusing to discuss how, as the man who writes this country’s tax laws, he failed to report over $1 million in outside income and $3 million in business transactions as required by the House, lapses under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.

“I recognize that all of you have an obligation to ask questions knowing that there’s none of you smart enough to frame it in such a way that I’m going to respond,” Rangel said.

There may be a reason for Rangel’s arrogance. CBS 2 HD has discovered that since ethics probes began last year the 79-year-old Congressman has given campaign donations to 119 members of Congress, including three of the five Democrats on the House Ethics Committee who are charged with investigating him.

I can’t even begin to tell you how unsurprised I am by this, and I have a theory as to how/why these sorts of blatant actions get found out so easily, and why they so blind members of Congress.

They still don’t understand the internet.  Not even President Obama – who was a minor deity in the use of the internet with regards to campaigning – seems to be able to adjust to the idea of “anything getting out at any time and you can’t stop it“.

Look at the DoE’s “lesson plan” for the Obama speech to students, of the constant exposure of embarrassing/contradicting statements regarding the health care insurance reform debate: They don’t seem to grasp the idea that there is always a camera, always a recorder, and it will always get onto the internet – and once on the internet, it will be found and viewed by millions and millions and millions.

Congressman Rangel obviously isn’t used to the idea that donations are search-able online, and that people will disseminate what they find.

“Look-what-I-found” Rangel is one of those things that, regardless of party, you should be disgusted by.  No one honest “forgets” about a bank account at, of all places, the Federal Credit Union.  You don’t misplace a home worth over a million dollars.  You certainly don’t claim three, simultaneous primary residences.

The man is a pox, not only upon the House of Pelosi, but upon the House of Representatives.  He is everything that is bad about career politicians, and not only should he be stripped of his position as the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, but any position on any committee or sub-committee.

That he hasn’t been, and is unlikely to be, is disgusting.

But don’t forget folks…  “Most ethical Congress ever!”

The Washington Post reported on a college thesis written by the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia:

At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master’s thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as “detrimental” to the family.

I thought it was odd for them to quote just one word as backup for this, so I checked the source – page 40:

Republican concerns for fiscal austerity are easily impaled by an additional $1.3 billion a year in expenses. Surely the leadership recognizes that existing federal child-care programs already cost more that $6.9 billion in 1988. Further expenditures would be used to subsidize a dynamic new trend of working women and feminists that is ultimately detrimental to the family by entrenching a status-quo of non-parental primary nurture of children.

On the next page he advocates making choices available for day care “to deliver quantity and quality, while allowing maximum liberty to utilize parents, churches, relatives, and friends who can truly care.”

Aside from the issue of whether it is even appropriate to imply that a  20-year old college thesis represents his current beliefs, McDonnell is clearly being deliberately misrepresented here. Working women and feminism were not new trends in 1989, but a push for government subsidies and institutional day care were. His point back then was not that working mothers were detrimental to the family. He was against government subsidies for day care and he had concerns about institutional day care.

It’s amazing what the press can do with one word taken out of context.

Who says that Government-run/supplied health care will lead to rationing and with-held care?

Hawaii, apparently.

You see, Hawaii is feeling a bit o’ pinch in the ol’ pocketbook, and when that happens, you save money where you can…

I’m not shocked, mind you…  Hawaii had a problem when they first instituted their state-supplied “insurance” system – apparently people like things on the cheap, so people with good-paying jobs were dropping employer plans in favor of the bargain-basement rates offered by the state.  It was “only” for kids, but after 7 months they had to drop the “free” (to the recipient, of course someone has to pay the bill) plan because everyone and their cousin was on it, and it was bankrupting the state.

And thus we arrive at things like this:

They held no public hearings and didn’t clearly state the ramifications to those most impacted. They just decided to save fifteen million bucks by withholding lifesaving care.

Public health care – you’re in good hands, oh yeah!The issue is mildly complex given established

public health care obligations as a result of nuclear tests in the Pacific Islands some time back. But the action the government attempted is very clear. When it came time to cut costs because of budget issues, the government attempted to withhold life saving health care under a plan called Basic Health Hawaii.

Awesome.  Thankfully, the AP reports that a judge as temporarily halted the plan, which was to go into effect Tuesday (yesterday).

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Hawaii’s government must continue providing lifesaving dialysis and chemotherapy treatments to Pacific island migrants suffering from kidney disease and cancer.

U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright granted a temporary restraining order preventing the state from instituting a new, limited health insurance program intended to save $15 million. The new health program was scheduled to start Tuesday.

Now, it is possible that the injunction is due to the fact that there was little or no notice for this shift in policy, and that the state will be allowed to continue with it’s plan of letting people die to save some cash.  It’s possible, but I hope not.

And if this isn’t a sign of what will eventually happen under a federal plan, I don’t know what is.

But don’t mention Death Panels…  Thay’re just a construction of those fear-mongering Palinites.