Former longtime US legislature Charles Rangel dies at 94 | Today news

The former American rep. Charles Rangel of New York, an outspoken, gravel-voting Harlem democrat who spent almost five decades on Capitol Hill and was a founding member of the Black Caucus congress, died on Monday at the age of 94. His family confirmed death in a statement provided by City College in New York Spokier Michelle Stent. He died in a New York hospital, Stent said. He is a veteran of the Korean War and defeated legendary Harlem politician Adam Clayton Powell in 1970 to begin his congressional career. During the next 40-plus year, he himself became a legend-a founding member of Congress Black Caucus, Dean of the New York Congressional Delegation, and in 2007 the first African American chaired the Mighty Ways and Means Committee. He retired from the committee amid an ethical cloud, and the house censored him in 2010. But he continued to serve in the congress until his retirement in 2017. Rangel was the last surviving member of the gang of four – African -American political figures who had great power in New York and state politics. The other was David Dinkins, the first black mayor of New York; Percy Sutton, who was president of Manhattan; and Basil Paterson, a deputy mayor and New York State Secretary. Few could forget rank after hearing him talk. His distinctive gravel-tinted voice and wry sense of humor were an unforgettable mix. The voice – one of the liberals in the house – was the loudest in contrast to the war in Iraq, which he branded a ‘death tax’ on poor people and minorities. In 2004, he tried to end the war by presenting a bill to restore the concept of the military service. Republicans called his bluff and brought the bill to a vote. Even rank voted against it. A year later, Rang’s struggle over the war became bitterly personal with the then Vice President Dick Cheney. Rangel said Cheney, who has a history of heart problems, may be too sick to do his work. “I want to believe that he is sick rather than just moody and angry,” Rangel said. After several such oral Jabs, Cheney struck back and said Rangel “lost it.” The Charismatic Harlem Legislature rarely supported a fight after he first entered the house in 1971 as a kind of dragon, with an unnamed Powell in the Democratic Congress in 1970. Rangel became leader of the most important home tax writing committee, which has jurisdiction on programs, including Social Security and Medicare, after the 2006 election in 2006, when Democrats finished 12 years of Republican control over the room. But in 2010, a home ethics committee held a hearing on 13 counts of alleged financial and fundraising misconduct on issues of financial revelations and the use of congress resources. He was convicted of 11 ethical offenses. The house found that he did not pay tax on a holiday villa, filed misleading financial disclosure forms and was improperly asked for a university center of corporations with business before his committee. The house followed the recommendation of the ethics committee that it was censored, the most serious punishment of eviction. Rangel looked after its voters and sponsored empowerment zones with tax credits for businesses moving to economically depressed areas and developers of low -income housing. “I’ve always been committed to fighting for the guy,” Rangel said in 2012. Rangel was born on June 11, 1930. During the Korean War he deserves a purple heart and a bronze star. He would always say that he measured his days, even the upset, around the ethical scandal, by the time in 1950 when he survived to be wounded, as other soldiers did not make it. It became the title of his autobiography: “And I haven’t had a bad day ever since.” He is a fallout at high school and went on the GI Bill at University and degrees at the University of New York and the St. John’s University Law School.