What is a servant? This is a perfectly good question that should have a simple answer; except when it comes to politics. The word "
servant" is from an Old French noun meaning to attend or wait upon. A trusted servant was (and still is) a valuable commodity. Servants ran the household, reared children and in many instances preserved the fortune of the family. Because of the position of trust they enjoyed, some were treated almost as members of the family.
In this sense, who are our public servants? Who are those who attend to and serve the citizens of the United States? The following photographs illustrate the heart of true public servants.
During the snowstorm that blanketed the Atlantic States recently, Washington, DC, shut down due to the inclement weather. Except for these young men - those entrusted with guarding the Tomb of the Unknown. They stand watch 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year without regard to any factor. In my opinion, the sense of duty instilled in the young men and women serving in our nation's armed forces is without parallel in the world.
Duty
Honor
Sacrifice
Trust and fidelity to the highest standards of conduct must be an integral component of public service. This is what we have come to expect from our public servants. And for this, we rightfully owe them our gratitude and our respect. And it should always be thus. Our sense of propriety demands it, our public institutions will fail without it.
Except for Congress. For centuries our politicians have been the brunt of jokes and scorn. Why? Because most of what they do is either meaningless, self aggrandizing or an out and out raid on the taxpayer's money. The only thing that's changed is the degree to which the American public has assumed the worst and refuses to be outraged at the shenanigans and goings on in the Nation's Capitol.
Part of this is that special interests have schemed with members of Congress to share in the public booty that is stolen from taxpayers. As co-conspirators of the largest transfer of wealth in modern history, they cannot point a finger at those members of Congress who, more egregiously than others, lie and steal for their own personal enrichment.
Like Charlie Rangel:
Rep. Charles Rangel, the influential chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, was publicly admonished by the House ethics panel Thursday for taking trips to the Caribbean that were paid for by private corporations.
Rangel, a New York Democrat and 39-year veteran of Congress, has been at the center of multiple ethics probes. At a Capitol Hill news conference, he said that he was "disturbed" by the result of the panel's eight-month investigation and that he would let the "community make its own judgment."
Now that is special. After pissing away tax money bribing bringing home the bacon stealing cheating lying serving the public for almost 40 years, good old Charlie will let the "community make its own judgement." I'd much rather see a jury do that.
The committee has not released the results of its investigation into other alleged ethics violations by Rangel, including failing to disclose rental income on his villa in the Dominican Republic.
Of course not. They'd rather cover his lying ass by waiting until future chaos generated by Obozo, Reid and the Botox Express over health care creates a heavy fog over these crimes. In a few weeks everyone will be so terrified over Satan's Community Organized Health Insurance Plan that Rangel's problems will not register on the citizens' outrage radar. In his home district that radar was taken down, crated and shipped to Kenya where it tracks reporters looking for Obozo's birth certificate.
By time the tax fraud hits the news cycle on some distant Friday evening, the public will be in panic mode buying aspirin, band aids, sanitary napkins and suppositories. You heard it here first - buy stock in Boehringer-Ingelheim, the German manufacturers of Dulcolax.
Pick your poison, because if the Dems and RINOs have their way there'll be a burning and itching throughout this land that will make Moses' dealings with Pharaoh seem like a mosquito bite.
But Charlie has a perfectly good explanation for those pesky tax thingies.
"Common sense dictates that members of Congress should not be held responsible for what could be the wrongdoing or mistakes or errors of staff unless there's reason to believe that member knew or should have known," Rangel said Thursday evening.
Buying and selling property on a corrupt Caribbean island. Check! Tax evasion. Check!
Stashing away God Only Knows Where This Moola Came From in a couple half million dollar accounts. Check!
That's what staff is for! His staff also ate his homework and probably contributed to Rangel's other legal problems:
The trips are not the only problem for Rangel. The committee still is looking at the congressman's use of official stationery to raise money for a college center in his name as well as his belated financial disclosure of hundreds of thousands of dollars in previously unreported assets and income. Those included a federal credit union account worth between $250,001 and $500,000; a Merrill Lynch account between $250,000 and $500,000; tens of thousands of dollars in municipal bonds and $30,000 to $100,000 in rent from a residential building in New York.
And that's only the accounts that federal investigators managed to kick up. It seems a little strange that everyone in the US lost their 401k last year except Congressman Charlie Rangel, don't it?
Will Rangel be forced to remove himself from Congress like former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay? DeLay was indicted and forced to resign in 2005. Funny thing, a judge threw out those charges that Ronnie Earle, the democrat DA who indicted DeLay, took six grand juries to impose.
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