High standards

All that "change" in Washington apparently doesn't include higher ethics standards.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Friday he won't step down as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, despite being admonished by a House ethics committee for violating rules by letting corporations pay for his Caribbean trips.

Getting cited for violations by an internal House ethics investigation isn't easy. Yet Rep. Rangel blithely asserts the ethics report "exonerates" him because it says there is no evidence he knew the trips were sponsored by corporations including Citigroup, Pfizer, American Airlines, AT&T, Verizon, Macy's, and IBM.

Actually, the report says his staff knew who paid for the trips. They sent the congressmen numerous memos reminding him who was paying for the trips. But the congressman says he's in the clear, because he simply failed to read the memos!

That's quite a standard.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., sidestepped a question on the New York Democrat's chairmanship Thursday, while noting that Rangel remains under investigation on various other alleged ethics lapses. "We'll just see what happens next," Pelosi told reporters.

Ah. So a congressman is actually more likely to keep a prestigious chairmanship if those with ethical charges to bring against him are being told "the line forms at the rear"?

What's it going to take? Two out of three? Five out of nine?

Rep. Rangel chairs the committee that writes the tax rules for everyone else in America. Yet "still under investigation" are charges that he failed to report assets including a federal credit union account worth between $250,001 and $500,000; a Merrill Lynch account valued between $250,000 and $500,000; tens of thousands of dollars in municipal bonds; and $30,000 to $100,000 in rent from a multifamily brownstone building he owns in New York.

Rangel is also being separately investigated for an alleged failure to pay federal taxes on rental income from a Dominican villa and on his use in New York of apartments provided by a Manhattan developer.

But don't worry. If you, the average taxpayer, fail to report the odd million dollars in assets and income, surely you can get the same "pass" that his Democratic brethren are granting 40-year-congressman Charles Rangel.