{"id":7366,"date":"2006-05-10T09:10:01","date_gmt":"2006-05-10T13:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7366"},"modified":"2006-05-10T09:10:01","modified_gmt":"2006-05-10T13:10:01","slug":"new-hud-defense-alphonso-jackson-lied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/new-hud-defense-alphonso-jackson-lied\/","title":{"rendered":"New HUD defense — Alphonso Jackson lied"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, we learned that [tag]Housing and Urban Development[\/tag] Secretary [tag]Alphonso Jackson[\/tag] recently spoke at a public forum and explained that he denied funding to a qualified minority contractor because the contractor said he didn’t like [tag]Bush[\/tag]<\/a>. In fact, Jackson went into considerable detail<\/a> about the incident, explaining that the contractor worked in the advertising industry, and was selected because he was on the General Services Administration list and gave HUD officials “a heck of a proposal.”<\/p>\n

Asked for more details, HUD spokesperson [tag]Dustee Tucker[\/tag], who attended Jackson’s speech, said the agency didn’t have a record of the contract because “it was not awarded per what the secretary said<\/a>.” Tucker added, “It was probably all verbal at that point.”<\/p>\n

By the end of the day, however, Tucker had come up with a different story: [tag]Jackson[\/tag] made the whole thing up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dustee Tucker, a spokeswoman for Jackson, told the Dallas Business Journal Tuesday that Jackson’s comments at his April 28 speech were purely “[tag]anecdotal[\/tag].”<\/p>\n

“He was merely trying to explain to the audience how people in D.C., will say critical things about the secretary, will unfairly characterize the [tag]president[\/tag] and then turn around and ask you for money,” Tucker said. “He did not actually meet with someone and turn down a contract. He’s not part of the contracting process.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmm. First, this may be the only time in recent memory that a cabinet press secretary used the “he’s lying” argument as a defense<\/i>. Second, I don’t think Dustee Tucker knows what “anecdotal” means. Third, for a conversation that never actually occurred, Jackson sure did go into a lot of detail, without bothering to mention that he was making the whole thing up. And fourth, Tucker’s second response (the story is bogus) doesn’t exactly work with her first response (the story is real, but the contract was merely “verbal”).<\/p>\n

This one’s not over yet. Sen. Frank [tag]Lautenberg[\/tag]<\/a> (D-N.J.) has called for Jackson to resign and will contact the HUD inspector general’s office this morning to demand an investigation. Sen. Joe [tag]Lieberman[\/tag]<\/a> (D-Conn.) wants an investigation, too. In the House, Reps. [tag]Henry Waxman[\/tag] (D-Calif.) and [tag]Barney Frank[\/tag] (D-Mass.) believe Jackson may have broken the law and have demanded that Jackson release all the documents<\/a> related to the advertising contract discussed in his April 28 speech.<\/p>\n

And just as an aside, there can only be so many DC-based, minority-owned advertising firms that applied for a [tag]HUD[\/tag] [tag]contract[\/tag] over the last year. Maybe some intrepid reporter can start working the phones?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, we learned that [tag]Housing and Urban Development[\/tag] Secretary [tag]Alphonso Jackson[\/tag] recently spoke at a public forum and explained that he denied funding to a qualified minority contractor because the contractor said he didn’t like [tag]Bush[\/tag]. In fact, Jackson went into considerable detail about the incident, explaining that the contractor worked in the advertising industry, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}