The "Obligation"

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Here’s a tip for President Obama: Next time you excoriate tax cheats, try to keep Rep. Charles Rangel’s name out of the discussion. Somehow, it doesn’t further your case. . . . Rangel, of course, knows a thing or two about offshore tax shelters: He’d been operating one for years. The congressman had to fork over nearly $11,000 in back taxes last year after The Post reported that he failed to disclose more than $75,000 in rental income on his Dominican Republic villa. Rangel wasn’t the only tax dodger lauded by Obama. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, too, won praise for “taking far-reaching steps to catch overseas tax cheats.” Takes one to know one, we guess. Geithner, after all, was confirmed despite failing to pay, until nominated, some $43,000 in self-employment taxes. Obama would be wise to tuck those two safely out of sight when he starts talking, as he did Monday, about paying taxes as “an obligation of citizenship.”