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Last edited Tue Aug 22, 2017, 04:15 PM - Edit history (1)
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a57148/ben-carson-hud/This Story About Ben Carson's Role in the Trump Administration Is Damning
Read the whole thing, and encourage others to do the same.
By Charles P. Pierce
Aug 22, 2017
The irreplaceable Alec MacGillis has turned up at New York magazine with a look inside the abandoned hazardous waste facility into which Dr. Ben Carson has transformed the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That this is deliberate seems beyond question. It begins with an anecdote in which former secretaries of the department take Carson out to dinner to see precisely how much plastique he was planning to plant under their mutual legacies.
It gets really weird after that.
Kasper, the holder of an M.B.A. from NYU's Stern School of Business, took her new management role seriously, asserting herself as the final arbiter in the absence of a confirmed secretary. This led to friction both with career housing-policy experts and with Carson loyalists, notably Singleton, who had also been hired on. At meetings, Singleton said, Kasper was often "misrepresenting" herself as standing in for Carson. "I made it clear, 'You don't speak for Dr. Carson.' She said, 'Well, the White House ' " To which Singleton said he responded, "I get what the White House has selected, and I respect that, but he's the secretary and you need to make sure you understand that." That friction lasted only so long. In mid-February, an administration "background check" on beachhead-team hires turned up an op-ed critical of Trump that Singleton had written for The Hill before the election. Security personnel came to notify him that it was time to go.
From the beginning, it was clear that this administration thought of HUDand, by extension, the millions of Americans who are its clientsas an annoying afterthought filled with people who didn't vote the right way. So, it put Carson, the man who thought the pyramids had been built as triangular siloes, in charge all federal housing projects. And it surrounded him with people who were equally dim. Morale spiraled in.
This is a shrewd observation by MacGillis of the general approach to government that conservatives have followed ever since Ronald Reagan gave them the green light in his 1981 Inaugural Address. Hell, it's what they've been doing to the Affordable Care Act ever since it passed. You sabotage a law, or a policy, or an entire department and, when it breaks down, you point and say, "See, government doesn't work."
"By the time I left, almost 90 percent of our budget was to help people stay in their homes," Shaun Donovan told me. "So when you have a 15 percent cut to that budget, by definition you're going to be throwing people out of their homes. You're literally taking vouchers away from families, you're literally shutting down public housing, because it can't be maintained anymore."
Read the whole thing. Make it Tuesday's daily downer.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/ben-carson-hud-secretary.html
Is Anybody Home at HUD?
A long-harbored conservative dream the dismantling of the administrative state is taking place under Secretary Ben Carson.
By Alec MacGillis
Ilsa
(61,695 posts)MineralMan
(146,308 posts)especially those dealing with social issues. Trump and his merry band of thieves and scoundrels are aiming at cutting back on all Executive Branch agencies and Departments that actually serve people rather than businesses. Through neglect and budget cuts, the plan is to demolish them slowly by not allowing them to do the work they are supposed to do.
The first step is to fail to fill upper level management positions that are vacant. Without direction, those who fall under those positions won't really be able to do much. Then, budget cuts will slash jobs, starting at the management and supervisory levels, further reducing the ability of the rest of the staff from accomplishing anything. From there, the cuts will be to the rank and file positions, until the agency or department is toothless and non-functional.
That's the plan, and it's well underway.
negoldie
(198 posts)Under fund the program. Declare it doesn't work. Privatize it.
FSogol
(45,485 posts)madaboutharry
(40,211 posts)will need to spend the entire 4 years rebuilding America after this demolition derby is over.
GentryDixon
(2,950 posts)there won't be another Democratic President.
volstork
(5,401 posts)We have a winner!
Mike Nelson
(9,955 posts)... Hillary won handily - and her message was clear.
Initech
(100,076 posts)Of this assumes we'll still have a country left in 3 years. Thanks Koch Brothers!
progressoid
(49,990 posts)SharonAnn
(13,773 posts)Javaman
(62,530 posts)and is letting others run roughshod over him.
aka a typical tRump toadie.
nolabear
(41,963 posts)that a surgeon of Carson's prominence almost always became head of a department, but he had not, and for good reason.
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)so they can implement tax cuts for the rich.
Same old republican shit, only on steroids.
Freethinker65
(10,021 posts)Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,760 posts)Gleefully, purposefully destroying everything that helps anyone but the super wealthy.
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)0rganism
(23,954 posts)already in progress in some states, iirc
madamesilverspurs
(15,803 posts)When I recertified earlier this year I asked the local office if they had any sense of possible changes coming from the new administration. Their answer: "We're not optimistic."
.
MontanaMama
(23,314 posts)and weaken our institutions and society to the point where we are completely vulnerable. All 45 has to do is hang in there long enough for the trolls he has hired to run the administration's departments into the ground. Meanwhile, the MSM is still wetting their pants over what Steve Bannon may or may not be doing over at Breitbart. Russia doesn't even need a key to our back door any more because it is wide open and swinging in the wind.
Hekate
(90,686 posts)mcar
(42,331 posts)Marcuse
(7,482 posts)*45 is still in the construction business.
pat_k
(9,313 posts)Beware being distracted by the "Trump show."
His words are outrageous. They grab headlines -- rightfully so. But they also draw our attention away from the destruction being wrought by the people he's put in control of the levers of power within the executive branch (people who are at best incompetent, at worst the embodiment of evil).
The legislative branch is our voice; our will. The executive branch implements our will. The destruction of executive functions is the destruction of our power to make our will manifest. Even with the dysfunctional electoral system, we have been able to make our voices heard. DT has not been able to make legislative advances. But they are dismantling essential executive functions, and in so doing, they thwart our will and render us impotent to do anything about it. We need to focus on figuring out ways to stop or slow what they are doing. We can't do that if we are too distracted by the "Trump show."
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=9499252
lastlib
(23,233 posts)oasis
(49,387 posts)his final 2020 "heave ho" along with his sorry boss.
rocktivity
(44,576 posts)filled with people who didn't vote the right way. So, it put Carson...in charge..."
rocktivity
dalton99a
(81,488 posts)Scurrilous
(38,687 posts)seaglass
(8,171 posts)behind the scenes and is the reason Repubs are doing NOTHING about the Trump shitshow. They are getting what they want.
DeminPennswoods
(15,286 posts)the towel. As a retired career federal civil servant, this offends me no end.
Stryst
(714 posts)It'll take a few years for the shockwaves to really pass through the lives of the people who use it, but homelessness is going to spike. Now there's a manufactured problem, a guaranteed problem, to pass onto the Dem who takes the white house next.
niyad
(113,306 posts)WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)in Jersey City.
She is in public housing on Kennedy Blvd---legally blind/glaucoma; needs a walker; aged 75; going through bankruptcy.
She could possibly move in with her daughter in rural PA near Scranton, but she would lose so very much---friends; trips to stores; her other daughter and grandchildren in NJ who actually need HER help; Sunday Mass in the building; Bingo; IOW, a social life.
Trump and especially MULVANEY GIVE EVIL A BAD NAME.