Racial profiling Congressional Black Caucus? True or false?

Written by Biloxi

From the story that broke on Office of Congressional Ethics charges on Rep. Maxine Waters yesterday, there has been talks that there is a political motives behind the ethic charges of Waters as well as Rep. Charles Rangel to bring down the turnout of African-American votes in critical areas. This was echoed by Rev. Al Sharpton.

From WSJ:

“Is this designed to make our community less than enthusiastic?” Sharpton asked. “Is the politics of this to bring down the turnout of the black vote in critical areas because they’re being convinced that people are only using their votes for selfish motives?”

Now,  Rep. Maxine Waters wants ethic charges made public. From Politico, Rep. Waters made two demands according to sources: Release the full document charging her with breaking House rules and finish her trial before the November elections.

I did some research and found that there are other African-American lawmakers who are members of the Congressional Black Caucus that are under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics. Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III of thegrio wrote:

Political watchdog organizations such as the National Legal and Policy Center, the Landmark Legal Foundation, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government have all made requests to the OCE to investigate members of congress for ethics violations. The interesting data point to consider is a disproportionate number of the active OCE investigations focus on members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).




According to Dr. Ronald Walters, "it is curious ... that in over 30 of the probes the new Office of Congressional Ethics was considering, the only active investigations were on black Congresspersons." It's not that CBC members Rangel, Waters, Laura Richardson (D-CA), Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI) and others, have or have not done any thing wrong, only the proceedings will determine that. What is interesting is how the allegations of ethics violations brought against white congressional members such as Reps., Pete Visclosky (D-IN), Alan Mollohan (D-W.VA), Jim Moran (D-VA), Eric Cantor (R-VA), or Jane Harmon (D-CA) have been disposed of differently with the case against Sam Graves (R-MO) being thrown out. Right may be right, but wrong appears to be questionable.

By the way, Rep. Richardson was cleared of her dealings and didn't benefit from Washington Mutual [which is now owned by JP Morgan Chase] that canceled the sale of a foreclosed home she owns in Sacramento CA.


And there are others. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Congresswoman and mother of the convicted ex-Detroit Mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick was under investigation for receiving improper gifts in travel to Caribbean conferences 2007 and 2008. And more investigated for travel reported in last year in  MLive.com:
Congressman Donald Payne of New Jersey; Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and Donna Christensen, the delegate from the U.S. Virgin Islands.

So, is there more to what Rep. Waters is claiming? It's no big secret that the Congressional Black Ethics have had meetings and visits with President Obama. Clearly, all of the members of Congress suspected of wrong doing must be investigated for ethic violations. Of course, there are other members of Congress who are Republican that are being investigated by the ethic committee. The question is that are those individuals going to be charged? And if so, when? When those individuals going to have trial in the fall. If another shoe or shoes drop again by the OCE of another ethic charge by another Democratic lawmaker, this certainly will question people of the timing of charges of Rangel and Waters and the timing of the trial which is not far away from the November election.