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Rep. Charles Rangel paid no mortgage interest on a beach resort property for about 15 years, a lawyer for the powerful House committee chairman said Friday.
The New York congressman’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, told The Associated Press that Rangel got his no-interest deal for the villa in the Dominican Republic because he was an original buyer in the resort development.
The Democratic chairman of the Ways and Means tax-writing committee has come under scrutiny for his vacation property and apartments he rents in his home district of Harlem.
Davis said Rangel failed to report rental income from the resort property on his taxes, but didn’t realize it was necessary because of the way the deal was structured.
Davis said it is unlikely the congressman owes any back taxes under the federal tax code, although he may owe a small amount to New York State, on unreported rental income of about $75,000.
“It is my understanding that over the 20-year time period there is not likely to be federal tax liability by Mr. Rangel because of offsetting depreciation expenses and tax credits. Therefore, whatever amendments might be necessary do not involve the federal tax code,” said Davis.
Republicans call Rangel ethically challenged and have sought to censure the 78-year-old lawmaker. Even an unintentional tax error is highly embarrassing for Rangel, since he chairs the committee charged with updating the nation’s complicated tax code.
News of Rangel’s no-interest mortgage comes on the heels of damaging reports that two other powerful figures in Congress, Senators Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Kent Conrad, D-N.D., got preferential mortgages with lower interest rates through a “VIP” program for friends of former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. Dodd heads the Senate Banking Committee.
Rangel bought the beach house 20 years ago for about $80,000, with a down payment of $28,000. Instead of making payments himself for the property, Rangel used his share of collective rental money generated by the resort to pay down the mortgage, according to his lawyer. But in an arrangement with the developer, Rangel and other early buyers, called “Pioneers,” were not charged interest on such debt.
Rental income from the property was used directly to pay the mortgage, so Rangel never made any mortgage payments himself, Davis said. Only once, in 2001, did Rangel receive money directly, when the company mistakenly wired him $2,000 in rental income rather than applying that, as it had before and after, to the mortgage.
The mortgage debt of slightly more than $50,000 was paid off fully in 2003, Davis said, and rental income was also used later to pay for a $22,000 home improvement project. That second loan did include interest payments totaling about $1,100, the lawyer said.
The congressman’s personal finances have come under scrutiny and spawned a House ethics committee inquiry, leading to a showdown last month on the House floor between Rangel and Republicans.
The ethics committee is examining Rangel’s use of four rent-controlled apartments in Harlem, including one that was used for campaign work. This week, the New York Post raised questions about Rangel’s beach villa, which it dubbed his “cash cow.” The New York Times reported Friday that Rangel failed to report rental income on the property.
Rangel’s lawyer said he received no sweetheart deal or favoritism in purchasing or renting out the beach house, because it was essentially a financial investment made in a real estate development project.
Currently, Rangel owes no money on the property and has about a $700 credit, Davis said.
“He invested $100,000 over 20 years with a net return of .7 percent as of June 2008,” said Davis. “Some cash cow.”
Yet by their accounting, Rangel parlayed a $28,000 down payment into a vacation home worth ten times that or more today – not unheard of over a 20-year period of real estate boom-and-bust cycles, but certainly very fortunate.
I think this is a good sign that the fight left in this country is not gone. Founded on the principles of freedom and individual rights, peaceful ptotest should never be ceased. In St. Paul, the police pulled the plug on a Rage Against The Machine concert meant to act as a protest to the Republican National Convention. As you will see in this video, the crowd supports the band as they opt to do an accapella version of a song as a continuation of their right to peaceful protest. This is America? Should the state or its police be using tax payers’ dollars to shut down peaceful protest? NO
Listen to iNPLACENEWS’ exclusive interview with Rage Against The Machine guitarist and founder, Tom Morello, HERE
Snipers fired on the motorcade for Pakistan’s prime minister on Wednesday as it drove to the airport to pick him up, striking his car window at least twice, officials said. Neither the prime minister nor his staff were in the vehicles.
The assassination attempt comes as Pakistan’s new civilian government – under pressure from American officials – is cracking down on Islamist militants after ousting U.S. ally Pervez Musharraf from the presidency.
At least two bullets hit the front window on the driver’s side of Yousuf Raza Gilani’s limousine on the main highway linking Islamabad with the nearby city of Rawalpindi, officials said.
Zahid Bashir, the premier’s press secretary, said unknown assailants fired “multiple sniper shots” in what he described as a “murder attempt.”
Interior Secretary Kamal Shah said later Wednesday, however, that the vehicles were attacked on their way to the airport to pick up the prime minister, who had been in Lahore, and that Gilani’s plane had not even landed yet.
“The driver reached Islamabad airport, but the prime minister or his staff was not traveling in the vehicles,” Shah said.
Television footage showed Gilani’s black Mercedes parked at his office in the capital with two impact points clearly visible on the driver’s window. The glass was cracked but intact.
Information Minister Sherry Rehman also confirmed that Gilani was not in the motorcade at the time and was safely back in Islamabad.
The attack was the second apparent assassination attempt in Pakistan in quick succession.
Shots were fired last week at a car carrying Lynne Tracy, the top U.S. diplomat in Pakistan’s troubled northwest, as she was headed to her office in the city of Peshawar. No one was hurt in that shooting.
On Wednesday afternoon, plainclothes police with a dog searched for clues on a small hill from which they believed the shots were fired at the premier’s car. They gathered snack wrappers and juice cartons and took them away from beneath a huge portrait of Pakistan’s founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, which greets travelers arriving in the capital.
The road was temporarily blocked, with traffic jammed in both directions.
Four workers for a company that is involved in a construction project on the road said they heard no shots and were not aware anything had happened until police arrived.
“We were working here, and the police came and questioned us,” said Mohammad Zada.
Another worker, Shah Zeb, said he had been making his afternoon prayers when the incident occurred, and when he returned, “Police grabbed me. They searched me.”
Pakistani political leaders have repeatedly faced the threat of assassination.
Musharraf, who was despised by militants for allying with Washington after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, escaped at least four attempts on his life. In December, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto died in a gun-and-bomb attack during an election rally two months after returning from exile.
Article by Nahal Toosi with contributions from Munir Ahmad and Zarar Khan
Half a dozen Blackwater Worldwide security guards have gotten target letters from the Justice Department in a probe of shootings in Baghdad that killed 17 Iraqis, The Washington Post reported.
The Blackwater guards are caught up in the investigation of shootings that took place last September when a Blackwater team arrived in several vehicles at an intersection in Baghdad where shooting erupted, leaving numerous Iraqis dead and wounded.
The Post described the six guards as former U.S. military personnel, but did not identify them by name.
Attributing its information to three sources close to the case, the Post said that any charges would be brought against the guards under a federal law used to prosecute cases referred to the Justice Department by the Pentagon for crimes committed by military personnel and contractors overseas.
Target letters often are a prelude to indictment.
The Post story appeared on the newspaper’s Website Saturday night.
The shootings began when a Blackwater convoy, which was responding to a Baghdad car bombing, entered the Nisoor Square traffic circle.
Blackwater says the convoy was ambushed by insurgents, touching off a firefight. Iraqi witnesses, however, described an unprovoked attack in which security guards fired indiscriminately, killing motorists, bystanders and children in the square.
Jackson Browne doesn’t want John McCain running on anything fueled by his lyrics. The singer-songwriter sued McCain and the Ohio and national Republican committees in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Thursday, accusing them of using his song “Running on Empty” without his permission.
The lawsuit claims the song’s use was an infringement of his copyright and will lead people to conclude he endorses McCain. The suit says Browne is a lifelong liberal who is as well-known for his music as for being “an advocate for social and environmental justice.”
The advertisement mocks Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s contention that if U.S. drivers got regular tuneups and drove on properly inflated tires, they could save the same amount of oil that would be gained by offshore drilling. According to the suit, “Running on Empty” plays in the background of the ad criticizing the remarks.
Robert Bennett, chairman of the Ohio party, said the ad was pulled when Browne objected. He called the lawsuit a “big to-do about nothing.”
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers disavowed the ad, saying it wasn’t a product of the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign.
Browne’s lawsuit contends the Ohio Republican party released the ad on behalf of McCain and the RNC. The RNC did not return a phone call seeking comment.
The suit notes that other musicians, including ABBA and John Cougar Mellencamp, have asked McCain to stop using their work.
Browne’s attorney, Lawrence Iser, called the ad’s use of the song “reprehensible.”
The 59-year-old singer claims his reputation has already been damaged and is seeking more than $75,000 in damages.
Browne released “Running on Empty” – the song and an album by the same name – in 1977. According to the lawsuit, the album has sold more than 7 million copies.
Browne’s financial success has aided Democratic candidates over the years. Campaign finance records show he contributed $2,300 to Obama’s presidential campaign last year and $2,000 to the Illinois senator’s campaign coffers in 2004.
Still sore from an epic primary battle, some of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s supporters aren’t buying the unity theme planned for the Democratic National Convention.
They weren’t mollified when nominee-in-waiting Barack Obama gave prime-time speaking slots to Clinton and her husband, the former president. Instead, they’re itching for a fight and plan to wage one in Denver.
One group intends to paper the city with fliers, promote a video detailing what they contend were irregularities in the nominating process and unleash bloggers to give their take on the proceedings. Another group has purchased newspaper advertisements demanding that Clinton be included in a roll-call vote for the nomination. Obama and Clinton announced Thursday that there will be such a vote.
“I am a very realistic woman,” said Diane Mantouvalos, co-founder of the Just Say No Deal Coalition. “I don’t think that anything is going to change, but I do think it is important to be heard, and this is our way of doing it.”
Some of the disaffected Clinton supporters are open to supporting Obama; many are not.
Obama needs Clinton’s supporters to beat Republican John McCain. Polls show that he has won over most of them. But some simply don’t like Obama or still feel Clinton was treated unfairly during the primaries.
These groups are not affiliated with Clinton, who has endorsed Obama and campaigned for him. Representatives from the Clinton and Obama campaigns said they are working to unify the party because Obama will champion issues important to Clinton supporters, such as reforming health care, improving the economy and ending the war in Iraq.
“Senator Clinton understands and appreciates that there are supporters who remain passionate, but she has repeatedly urged her supporters to vote for Senator Obama,” Clinton spokeswoman Kathleen Strand said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took a swipe at the Clinton diehards Wednesday.
“I think Hillary Clinton has been very gracious,” the San Francisco Democrat told Bay Area talk show host Ronn Owens. “I think some of her supporters have been less than gracious.”
Nevertheless, many Clinton activists plan to voice their discontent in Denver.
Mantouvalos, a Miami public relations consultant, said her network is renting a 5,000-square-foot loft in Denver for its bloggers. Another outfit called The Denver Group is planning a reception the evening Hillary Clinton speaks at the convention. The group has been pushing for Clinton’s name to be placed in nomination.
In announcing that her name will be placed in nomination, Clinton said she hopes the vote will unite the party and lead to an Obama victory in November.
Heidi Li Feldman, co-founder of The Denver Group, said the roll call vote is necessary for Obama to get her support. But, she said, it’s insufficient.
“The only way a Democratic Party will have the credibility to elect a Democrat in November is if the party uses a legitimate process to choose its nominee,” said Heidi Li Feldman, co-founder of The Denver Group. “We are not per se a Clinton support group, we are a Democratic Party get-your-act-together support group.”
The movement has grown on the Internet, where bloggers and readers complain that Clinton was cheated out of the party’s nomination. The Web site for Just Say No Deal links to dozens of other sites criticizing Obama or supporting Clinton.
Some accuse Obama of manipulating party caucuses for extra delegates while others complain that Clinton was the victim of sexist party leaders or was mistreated by the media. Many vent over the way the party divvied up delegates from the Florida and Michigan primaries, two states that were punished for violating national rules and holding their contests early.
With the agreement of all Democratic candidates, the states were initially stripped of all their delegates for violating party rules by holding early primaries. None of the candidates campaigned in the two states, but Clinton won the two primaries and thereafter tried to get all the delegates seated.
The national party reinstated the delegates in May, but gave each a half vote. And it awarded Obama some Michigan delegates, although he had taken his name off that ballot because of the party’s initial decision.
With the nomination clinched, Obama said this month that he would seek to give both delegations full voting rights.
At the very least, the activists want Clinton’s name put in nomination, with a full roll-call vote. Some won’t be satisfied unless Clinton is declared the nominee – an unlikely prospect. Others would be happy if Clinton were asked to run for vice president – also unlikely.
Feldman, a Georgetown University law professor, said she is a loyal Democrat who won’t vote for McCain, but Obama hasn’t won her support. Will Bower, co-founder of the Just Say No Deal Coalition, said he would only support the Democratic candidate if her name is Clinton.
“I have been voting Democratic for 18 years. I only voted for Democrats, from dog catcher to president and everything in between,” said Bower, who lives in Washington. “I will be voting for someone other than Barack Obama come November.”
He’s a tiny torero, a bullfighter with a baby face. But 10-year-old Michelito has become the symbol of a debate much bigger than himself. French anti-bullfighting campaigners say the boy, who came from Mexico to perform, is risking his life in the ring. Local authorities in southern France canceled two demonstrations where he was set to appear. Other performances have gone ahead, with Michelito – who has big brown eyes and a floppy bowl cut – showered with flowers by fans.
It’s all part of a bigger battle: French animal rights groups vs. bullfighting, which is a tradition in southern France as in neighboring Spain, and which has a small but passionate French following.
For Michelito Lagravere, the passion started young, about as soon as he could walk. Born in Mexico to a Mexican mother and a French bullfighting father, he started playing at being a torero – using a dish towel as a cape – when he was just a tot, his father said.
He was 4 years old the first time he faced off against a month-old calf. Now 10, he has fought about 60 animals to the death, his father said. Videos on the Internet show him in the ring with injured, staggering calves – not to mention Michelito being trampled.
“Am I afraid?” asked his father, Michel Lagravere. “I’m afraid like all fathers are afraid for their children. … It’s like all other sports. It’s more dangerous than playing chess, if that’s considered a sport. But I don’t think it’s more dangerous than horseback riding and riding competitions.”
In Mexico, bullfighting is governed by a network of local regulations. According to rules in Mexico City, the age of bulls is established – most have to be between 3 and 6 years old – while there is no mention of age limits for bullfighters. Younger bullfighters tend to face smaller bulls and calves.
The lack of age limits and trend toward younger bullfighters has drawn young aspirants from abroad to Mexico, including one Spanish bullfighter, Jairo Miguel, who was nearly gored to death last year at age 14 when a 910-pound bull rushed him at top speed and punctured his lung.
Michelito’s career apparently caused little stir until he came to southern France this summer to take part in nonprofessional demonstrations by bullfighting schools.
In France, children are not allowed to become professional bullfighters until age 16, said Andre Viard, president of the National Observatory of Bullfighting Cultures.
Beatrice Brethes, who runs a bullfighting school in France where Michelito performed, said Michelito and other children participating in the demonstrations are paired with smaller animals – calves ranging from 9 months old to a year, and weighing no more than 150 pounds.
She said no bulls have been killed in the children’s demonstrations. While there are no French laws that would prevent a child from fighting an animal to the death or from facing off a grown bull, organizers said they would not let that happen.
Claire Starozinski of the Alliance Anticorrida, meanwhile, has filed legal complaints in towns where Michelito was scheduled to perform. She argued that his shows broke French labor code, which bars children under 16 from “jobs that endanger their lives, health or morality.”
“This boy is a professional in his country,” she said. “He killed his first animal at 6. He already has scars … You don’t teach a child to kill at age 6. The role of a parent is to protect their child. These parents are not protecting their child; they are making him take risks.”
Under pressure, the town of Fontvieille canceled Friday’s show out of fear for the boy. Organizers tried to move it to nearby Arles, but local security officials ruled that the arena was not up to standard.
The assistant mayor of Arles who handles bullfighting, Jean-Marie Egidio, said the city was puzzled by that ruling, which was later overturned. Michelito was performing Thursday in Arles, his last show in France before he heads home to Mexico.
As his father says: “I think he has a really great career ahead of him.”
A man who authorities said was keeping weapons and military-style gear in his hotel room and car appeared in court Thursday on charges he threatened to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Raymond Hunter Geisel, 22, was arrested by the Secret Service on Saturday in Miami and was ordered held at Miami’s downtown detention center without bail Thursday by a federal magistrate.
A Secret Service affidavit charges that Geisel made the threat during a training class for bail bondsmen in Miami in late July. According to someone else in the 48-member class, Geisel allegedly referred to Obama with a racial epithet and continued, “If he gets elected, I’ll assassinate him myself.”
Obama was most recently in Florida on Aug. 1-2 but did not visit the South Florida area.
Another person in the class quoted Geisel as saying that “he hated George W. Bush and that he wanted to put a bullet in the president’s head,” according to the Secret Service.
Geisel denied in a written statement to a Secret Service agent that he ever made those threats, and the documents don’t indicate that he ever took steps to carry out any assassination. He was charged only with threatening Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, but not for any threat against President Bush.
Geisel’s court-appointed attorney declined comment. The charge of threatening a major candidate for president or vice president carries a maximum prison sentence of five years.
The Obama campaign declined comment Thursday on the alleged threat.
In the interview with a Secret Service agent, Geisel said “if he wanted to kill Senator Obama he simply would shoot him with a sniper rifle, but then he claimed that he was just joking,” according to court documents.
A search of Geisel’s 1998 Ford Explorer and hotel room in Miami uncovered a loaded 9mm handgun, knives, dozens of rounds of ammunition including armor-piercing types, body armor, military-style fatigues and a machete. The SUV, which has Maine license plates, was wired with flashing red and yellow emergency lights.
Geisel told the Secret Service he was originally from Bangor, Maine, and had been living recently in a houseboat in the Florida Keys town of Marathon, according to court documents. He said he used the handgun for training for the bail bondsman class, had the knives for protection and used the machete to cut brush in Maine.
In the affidavit, the Secret Service said Geisel told agents that he suffered from psychiatric problems including post-traumatic stress disorder, but he couldn’t provide the names of any facilities where he sought treatment.
A judge ordered Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to jail Thursday for violating the terms of his bond in his perjury case by making a city business trip to Canada and not informing the court.
The mayor, who is accused of lying under oath in a civil case and faces eight felony counts, made the trip last month without telling the court in advance, leading the county prosecutor’s office to request Kilpatrick be punished.
Only minutes earlier, the mayor offered an apology to the court, telling District Court Judge Ronald Giles that for seven months, “I’ve been living in an incredible state of pressure and scrutiny.”
But Giles sent the mayor to jail anyway, telling him he would have given any defendant the same treatment.
“What matters to me though is how the court overall is perceived and how if it was not Kwame Kilpatrick sitting in that seat, if it was John Six-Pack sitting in that seat, what would I do? And that answer is simple,” he said.
Circuit Court Judge Thomas E. Jackson said he wouldn’t hear an appeal by Kilpatrick’s lawyers until 9 a.m. Friday, meaning the mayor was to spend the night in jail.
The mayor’s chief of staff, Kandia Milton, will run the city while Kilpatrick is in jail, mayoral spokeswoman Denise Tolliver said.
Earlier Thursday, Kilpatrick waived his right to a preliminary hearing and will head to trial on perjury and other criminal charges that could land him in prison for up to 15 years.
Lawyers for the mayor and ex-Chief of Staff Christine Beatty asked Giles to waive next month’s preliminary examination. The criminal case now heads to Wayne County Circuit Court for trial.
Kilpatrick and Beatty are charged with perjury, misconduct and obstruction of justice. They are accused of lying about having an intimate relationship and their roles in the firing of a police official.
Both deny the charges.
Kilpatrick and Beatty denied under oath during a civil trial last year that they had a romantic relationship in 2002 and 2003.
But excerpts of sexually explicit text messages recovered from Beatty’s city-issued pager and first published in January by the Free Press contradicted their testimony.
Giles asked the defendants during Thursday morning’s hearing if they freely agreed to waive their rights to a preliminary exam and both said they did.
The judge then set a circuit court arraignment date of Aug. 14.
The preliminary exam – a hearing where a judge determines whether there’s probable cause to hold a trial – had been set for Sept. 22.
After the issue of the preliminary examination was concluded, Assistant Wayne County’s Prosecutor Robert Moran then asked Giles to punish Kilpatrick over the trip to Canada.
The mayor went across the border last month to push the sale of the city’s half of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.
Kilpatrick was required to alert the court of all travel plans.
Moran asked Giles to modify Kilpatrick’s bond because of what he called a “flagrant” violation.
After a short recess, Kilpatrick stood and apologized to Giles, saying it wouldn’t happen again.
The judge then ordered a recess and came back with his decision. Kilpatrick stared directly at the judge with his hands clasped near his face as Giles announced his decision.
“I think it’s the most extreme measure he can take. I don’t agree with him,” defense lawyer James Thomas said.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy charged Kilpatrick and Beatty less than two months after the Free Press published excerpts of the text messages. Fingerprinted with their booking photos broadcast across the country, the pair were accused of lying under oath about their relationship and about their roles in the firing of a police official.
More text messages released in April revealed the evolution of flirty and sexually explicit exchanges to professions of love and promises of marriage.
Kilpatrick and his high-priced team of attorneys have questioned the authenticity of those and other text messages, while fighting battles on several legal and political fronts.
A split city council voted in February to ask Kilpatrick to step down. The nine-member group later asked Gov. Jennifer Granholm to remove the mayor for misconduct and plans to hold forfeiture of office proceedings against him.
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