{"id":7377,"date":"2006-05-11T09:10:15","date_gmt":"2006-05-11T13:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7377"},"modified":"2006-05-11T09:10:15","modified_gmt":"2006-05-11T13:10:15","slug":"alphonso-jackson-in-full-retreat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/alphonso-jackson-in-full-retreat\/","title":{"rendered":"Alphonso Jackson in full retreat"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this point, I’d be very surprised if [tag]HUD[\/tag] [tag]Secretary[\/tag] [tag]Alphonso Jackson[\/tag] is able to keep his job<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[tag]Housing and Urban Development[\/tag] Secretary Alphonso [tag]Jackson[\/tag] apologized yesterday for telling a Dallas business group that he had rejected a HUD contract because the contractor had criticized President [tag]Bush[\/tag].<\/p>\n

Jackson said he made up the story. “I deeply regret the anecdotal remarks I made at a recent Texas small-business forum and would like to reassure the public that all HUD contracts are awarded solely on a stringent merit-based process,” Jackson said in a statement. “During my tenure, no contract has ever been awarded, rejected, or rescinded due to the personal or political beliefs of the recipient.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yesterday, the story unfolded quickly and forcefully. Jackson is now under investigation<\/a> from the HUD Inspector General’s office and his spokesperson, Dustee Tucker, who offered several contradictory explanations<\/a> for Jackson’s bizarre comments, is now suddenly on “scheduled leave<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

According to the official story, Jackson fabricated a detailed discussion that never happened. Asked whether the secretary had informed the audience that the story was not true, HUD spokesman Jereon Brown said, “I don’t think he highlighted it<\/a>.” (Maybe Jereon Brown might need some “scheduled leave,” too.)<\/p>\n

But even if we accept Jackson’s latest version of the truth at face value — we shouldn’t, but let’s, just for the sake of discussion — I’m still at a loss to explain why<\/i> the HUD secretary said what he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So why did Jackson make up such a story? Jackson was speaking to the Real Estate Executive Council, a consortium of minorities in the real estate industry. According to his spokesperson, Dustee Tucker, he was “trying to explain to this group how politics works in D.C.” Tucker said he was trying to send the group a “message.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And what “message” would that be, exactly?
\n
\nAccording to Jackson’s initial comments, HUD can and should deny contracts to those who criticize the president. He insisted that “logic” demands such a course, and concluded, “That’s the way I believe.” Now Jackson says he wouldn’t do that and that his conversation was “anecdotal.” (I still don’t think HUD knows what that word means.)<\/p>\n

So was the “message” one of coercion? HUD doesn’t deny contracts based on politics, but it might? Dustee Tucker said Jackson was “trying to explain to this group how politics works in D.C.” In other words, according to HUD, Bush’s cabinet secretary told the Real Estate Executive Council, “It’s a nice government contract you have here; it’d be a shame if something happened to it.”<\/p>\n

In this sense, Jackson’s “apology” is more than just unpersuasive; it’s incoherent. It’s not even clear what Jackson is apologizing for<\/i>.<\/p>\n

If reality still has any relevance in DC at all, Jackson’s [tag]resignation[\/tag] is a foregone conclusion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this point, I’d be very surprised if [tag]HUD[\/tag] [tag]Secretary[\/tag] [tag]Alphonso Jackson[\/tag] is able to keep his job. [tag]Housing and Urban Development[\/tag] Secretary Alphonso [tag]Jackson[\/tag] apologized yesterday for telling a Dallas business group that he had rejected a HUD contract because the contractor had criticized President [tag]Bush[\/tag]. Jackson said he made up the story. “I […]<\/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-7377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7377","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=7377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}