Yoda's World

The House on "C" Street

Home
Poll: Majority of Americans want to end Bush Tax cuts for the rich
Michele Bachmann
Complaints filed with IRS on Hannity and North charity
GOP Unemployed "insignificant"
GOP to President Obama, its our way or nothing at all
Tea Party death threats mimic Muslim Terrorists
Guns at New Mexico teabaggers tea party
Dick Cheney no longer a chickenhawk, now just a chicken
The GOP purity and purge test
Limbaugh the most influential conservative in America
It smells like socialism
Right wing media always giddy when America loses
LIST OF THE 47 BUSH CZARS
Glenn Beck: The body on the side of the road
HEALTH CARE REFORM
HEALTH CARE
SARAH PALIN
GOPER WORLD
GOP SMEAR AND SPIN MACHINE
GOP POLITICS OF FEAR CARD
THE RIGHT WINGS GOD SQUAD
The House on "C" Street
GOP SENATORS PART OF RELIGIOUS CULT
LA. GOV. BOBBY JINDAL PERFORMS EXORCISM IN COLLEGE
The top 20 Truths about Ronald Reagan
EFCA-Employee Free Choice Act
THE ECONOMY
THE ENVIRONMENT
THE MYTH OF CLEAN COAL TECHNOLOGY
TEXAS TEA, BLACK GOLD, OIL
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
CIVIL LIBERTIES
VETERANS
ETHICS / CORRUPTION
ISRAEL
GOVERNMENT DATA MINING PROGRAMS
THE QUOTES PAGE
HUMOR IN POLITICS
HUMOR IN POLITICS - THE VIDEO'S
HALLIBURTON
WOMEN'S RIGHTS
BUSH AND FASCISM
VOTING FRAUD
An Invention that Could Change the Internet for Ever
WEIRD STUFF
BUSH DESTROYS AMERICA - 2000-2008 ARCHIVES
THIS WEEK IN GOD/ARCHIVES
PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES 2008
CONTACT ME

C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt
Zachary Roth |

Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a loophole that had allowed the house's owners to avoid paying property taxes.

Previously, the house -- despite being home to numerous lawmakers -- had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building's owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home.

Natalie Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Office of Tax and Revenue for Washington D.C., told TPMmuckraker that her office inspected the house this summer. "It was determined that portions of it were being rented out for private residential purposes," she said. As a result, the tax exempt status was partially revoked. Sixty-six percent of the value of the property is now subject to taxation.

According to online records, the total taxable assessment is $1,834,500. The building's owner last month paid taxes of $1714.70 on the property.

A commenter using the name Vince Treacy, posting on a blog run by George Washington Law professor Jonathan Turley, noted in June that the property enjoyed tax exempt status. In a comment yesterday, he wrote:

'Well, at least one complaint just happened to be filed a few months ago, by some anonymous citizen who will remain nameless ""wink, wink," with the taxpayer hotline at the DC tax office.'

The C Street house has lately been the subject of unwanted attention thanks to its role in three GOP sex scandals. Ensign, who reportedly recently moved out of the house, was confronted there last year by his fellow C Streeters, including Coburn, about his affair with a top aide's wife. South Carolina governor Mark Sanford revealed this summer that he had received counseling from the house's denizens over his own randy hijinx with his Argentinean mistress. And the wife of former GOP congressman Chip Pickering has alleged in divorce proceedings that the house was the site of "wrongful conduct" between her husband and his girlfriend.


* This post originally reported, based on online records for the city of Washington, D.C., that C Street is owned by Youth With A Mission (YWAM), an international Christian group, and that YWAM is affiliated with The Family. But YWAM official Ron Boehme told TPMmuckraker that the city's records are inaccurate, and that his group sold the house to The Family in 1989. He also said that YWAM is not affiliated with The Family -- though some reports suggest the two groups have close ties.

lightbluedividerplain.jpg
By Jon Ralston 
July 24, 2009 

“These men were the ones that said what we need to do is get Doug Hampton's home paid for, and we need to get Doug Hampton some money. We need to get his family to Colorado.” --Doug Hampton, former aide to Sen. John Ensign, “Face to Face,” 7/8/09

These men, these men of Christ, these men of C Street, these Family men who always preach morality and occasionally practice infidelity told Sen. John Ensign in February 2008 to give his cuckolded aide money and help him relocate.

So Doug Hampton has asserted. And Jeff Sharlet, who knows more about The Family than any outsider, thinks Hampton is telling the truth, and believes this conclave was grooming Ensign for greatness because of his telegenic presence and upward mobility within the Club of 100.

“I have no reason to disbelieve Doug Hampton,” Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, said Thursday on “Face to Face.” “ When you go to a place like C Street, you become a member of what The Family in their internal documents call ‘prayer cells,’ an outlandish word, but that's their term for it. That's what (Oklahoma Sen. Tom) Coburn and Ensign and (Kansas Sen. Sam) Brownback, all these guys... what it is is a small, private meeting of like-minded men who believe that their prayers are better heard by God if they pray with men of equal status and power.”

The Hamptons never made it to Colorado despite the apparent blessing of The Family. But two months after that meeting at C Street, according to the senator, his parents gave the Hamptons $96,000 as a parting gift for their son’s affair with Cindy Hampton. The Hamptons settled into an expensive house in a tony Summerlin neighborhood, leading a quiet life until Doug Hampton forced John Ensign to publicly acknowledge the affair.

The issue of the payments – and Ensign has refused to provide any evidence that they occurred as he said they did – has become central to the scandal Ensign is trying to contain. Hampton flatly asserted more than once on “Face to Face” that Coburn was there in the C Street room when Ensign was confronted about his affair. There was a “belief from Tom Coburn and many that some restitution needs to take place here,” Hampton claimed.

After the Hampton interview, Coburn at first issued a mild chastisement of Ensign and then came forth with an assault on Hampton, essentially calling him a liar. So based on Sharlet’s experience and research on a group he describes in a book as hiding in plain sight in the corridors of capital power, with fealty to the Family above all else, whom does he believe?

“I think Hampton is telling the truth,” Sharlet said. “I think one clue that Coburn might not be telling the truth is he then comes on and says, 'That guy's lying, basically. But, I'm not going to tell you what really happened. I'm going to maintain this secrecy.'”

The question – or one of them – raised by all of this is whether The Family did not want to jeopardize its big plans for Ensign and decided to help him cover up the affair by suggesting he give the Hamptons some money.

Sharlet finds that perfectly within the outlines of The Family’s behavior.

“The Family, they have this idea that what they're doing, that they're called by God to do is to disciple politicians, is to help them get ready for prime time,” he said on the program. “Take a politician who they believe is chosen by God for his position, and you polish that guy up.”

That guy in this example is Ensign, whom Sharlet met once during his time researching The Family.

“When you look at Ensign's legislative record, it's not terribly impressive,” Sharlet pointed out. “He was a guy I think they appreciated almost more for his superficial qualities….He was not spoken of as an intellectual heavyweight within the Family. I mean, there are ideologues involved with the Family. I think Ensign was much more kind of the figure they liked to cultivate, who is indeed polished. There's no question of that.”

Of course the polish has now rubbed off with the scandalous revelations. And with every day Ensign remains silent, the tarnish gets blacker.

The senator is not being forthcoming about C Street and what went on or about those payments and whether he can prove they were gifts. He’s simply not talking.

Perhaps The Family and God have told him he does not have to.

lightbluedividerplain.jpg

YodasWorld.org is updated each Monday. Some of the items from the previous week are added to the various topic links on the left side of the main page. Links embedded should be good for at least the date posted. After the posting date, link reliability depends on the policy of the linked sites. Some sites require visitors to register before allowing access to articles. Material presented on this page represent the opinion's of YodasWorld.org.
 
Copyright  2000-2011 YodasWorld.org. All rights reserved on original works. Material copyrighted by others is used either with permission or under a claim of "fair use."