{"id":8536,"date":"2006-09-22T11:30:24","date_gmt":"2006-09-22T15:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8536.html"},"modified":"2006-09-22T11:30:24","modified_gmt":"2006-09-22T15:30:24","slug":"time-for-alphonso-jackson-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/time-for-alphonso-jackson-to-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for Alphonso Jackson to go"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following up on yesterday’s item<\/a> about Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson and his apparent penchant for letting politics dictate the grant process, it looks like Bush’s cabinet secretary has a real problem on his hands.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, an initial news report<\/a> indicated that HUD’s inspector general found that Jackson “urged top aides to take contractors’ politics into account when handing out grants and deals,” but did not find any “direct evidence” that favoritism actually occurred.<\/p>\n

A lot of us would like to get more details from the HUD report itself, but the inspector general’s office said it would not release the full, 340-page report. (Gotta love that Bush administration respect for transparency in government.) The Dallas Business Journal has filed a FOIA request to obtain it, but in the meantime, ThinkProgress has obtained<\/a> the executive summary.<\/p>\n

As it happens, yesterday’s news looked bad for Jackson. Today’s news looks much worse.
\n<\/p>\n

* “During the investigation, Secretary JACKSON’s Chief of Staff, as well as the HUD Deputy Secretary testified that, in a senior staff meeting, JACKSON had advised senior staff, to the effect, that when considering discretionary contracts, they should be considering supporters of the President<\/b>, language consistent with the remarks made by JACKSON in Dallas, Texas, on April 28, 2006.”<\/p>\n

* “Investigation did disclose some problematic instances involving HUD contacts and cooperative agreement grants, in particular, the cooperative agreement award issued to Abt Associates…was blocked for a significant period of time due to Secretary JACKSON’s involvement and opposition to Abt. Secretary JACKSON’s Chief of Staff testified that one factor in JACKSON’s opposition to Abt was Abt’s political affiliation<\/b>.”<\/p>\n

* “Secretary JACKSON’s Chief of Staff also identified other instances of Secretary JACKSON intervening with contractors whom he did not like. Reviews of political contributions indicated these contractors had Democratic political affiliations<\/b>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given this, resignation shouldn’t even be open to debate. Jackson has to go.<\/p>\n

Indeed, at the risk of sounding over-dramatic, Jackson probably committed a felony or two. He doesn’t need a press secretary to help spin the facts; he needs a lawyer to start preparing a defense.<\/p>\n

I’m routinely disappointed by what constitutes a big political story, but this is a genuine scandal that could revive the “culture of corruption” story quite nicely. Hint to Dems: this one’s easy and there’s no reasonable defense. It’s a slow, hanging curve, right over the middle of the plate….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following up on yesterday’s item about Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson and his apparent penchant for letting politics dictate the grant process, it looks like Bush’s cabinet secretary has a real problem on his hands. Yesterday, an initial news report indicated that HUD’s inspector general found that Jackson “urged top aides to take […]<\/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-8536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8536","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=8536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}