Charlie Rangel: More Equal Than You

No one should be surprised that House Ways and Means Commitee chairman Charlie Rangel doesn't abide by the rules he writes for everyone else. His tax fraud and gaming of New York's socialist and morally bankrupt rent control system is par for the course for parasites like him. He's a typical member of a ruling class that feels divinely entitled to be what us mere mortals would consider hypocritical. Rangel has accumulated his assets through demagoguery and the force of his position, not through ingenuity and voluntary trade. He's done this mostly through racial extortion and giving his Harlem constituents just enough stolen taxpayer money to keep them poor and beholding to him.

That's why it's also not surprising that he's a long time friend and admirer of Fidel Castro, the longest ruling warden of the largest prison in the Western Hemisphere. As a matter of fact, Rangel supports just about anyone who opposes liberty in favor of the anointed dictatorship he would have America aspire to. Some reminders of who Rangel really is:

**Rangel joined six New York Democrats in opposing a House resolution of support for pro-democracy advocates and dissidents in Cuba. Rangel angrily dismissed the activists as "insurgents," condemned a policy of "dealing with dissidents," and complained that American legislators "refuse to give the [Cuban] government the respect that it deserves."

**In February of 2005, Rangel proclaimed that it was discriminatory to label groups like Hezbollah "Islamic terrorists." "To call it Islamic terror is discriminating, it's bigoted, it is not the right thing to say," Rangel said.

**When Castro toured Harlem in October of 1995, Rangel greeted him with a bear hug and joined in a prolonged standing ovation for the visiting dictator.

**When the Republican-led Congress pushed for tax relief in 1994, Rangel denounced the plan as a form of modern-day racism. "It's not 'spic' or 'nigger' anymore," Rangel raged. "They say, 'Let's cut taxes.'" Similarly, when Republicans sought to reform a bloated and abused welfare system through budget cuts, Rangel remonstrated that the planned reforms were beneath even Nazi Germany. "Hitler wasn't even talking about doing these things," he insisted.

**In 1995, Castro made a smash return to Harlem, basking in the adulation of black New Yorkers, and receiving that embrace from Charlie Rangel. He spoke at a Baptist church, where the throng screamed “Fidel! Fidel! Fidel!” and “Viva Cuba!” Said Castro to his flock, “As a revolutionary, I knew I would be welcome in this neighborhood.” He used the occasion to denounce conservative attempts to scale back affirmative action — not that he himself would ever practice any.