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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWaPo: Trumps pick of Ben Carson is beyond baffling
IT WAS less than a month ago that a spokesman for retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson told reporters that the erstwhile GOP presidential candidate would not be serving the Trump administration in anything but an unofficial advisory capacity. Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, Armstrong Williams said, hes never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency. On that basis alone, President-elect Donald Trumps announcement Monday that Mr. Carson would be his choice to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development was baffling. Add the fact that Mr. Carson has no relevant expertise whatsoever (secretary of health and human services, the previous job for which the highly accomplished physician was mentioned, might have been a different story) and Mr. Trumps pick goes well beyond baffling.
To be sure, HUDs mission, in large part, is to help the urban poor through administering public housing, distributing rental-assistance vouchers and other programs; Mr. Carsons Detroit boyhood certainly taught him what it is like to grow up poor in a segregated big city and to succeed against the odds. No doubt, too, the half-century-old HUD bureaucracys record is mixed at best, with more than a few scandals involving its various grants and subsidies. In that sense, a Republican administration could be expected to seek someone with fresh free-market-oriented policy alternatives. Mr. Carson, however, comes equipped with little more than the generalities about abolishing dependency that he spouted on the campaign trail. In an op-ed last year, he called new Obama administration regulations linking housing aid to more ambitious neighborhood desegregation efforts government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality and suggested that they would be downright dangerous. As HUD secretary, he would be in charge of federal fair-housing enforcement.
Mr. Carsons nomination is the second puzzling sign about where housing policy might be headed under the Trump administration. The first was Treasury Secretary-designate Steven Mnuchins comment that weve got to get Fannie [Mae] and Freddie [Mac] out of government ownership. It makes no sense that these are owned by the government and have been controlled by the government for as long as they have. That could mean Mr. Mnuchin will argue for a total overhaul of the governments mortgage guarantee business that finally ends the system of private gain, public risk that prevailed before the government took over the failing Fannie and Fred in 2008. Or, it could be interpreted as support for the efforts, so far thwarted by courts and Congress, of hedge funds to make a killing through a Treasury-blessed privatization. Certainly it would help if the next HUD secretary were an expert on the housing market capable of weighing in against the more dubious plans being floated for Fannie and Freddie.
Mr. Carson needs to be given a thorough, searching examination by the Senate over his approach to housing policy, which, though certainly not brain surgery, does present complexities that would challenge a nominee far more experienced than he.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-pick-of-ben-carson-is-beyond-baffling/2016/12/05/9089e604-b32d-11e6-840f-e3ebab6bcdd3_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-d%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.f68a2bd62c53
dhol82
(9,351 posts)so that he and his developer friends can rob the treasury.
pangaia
(24,324 posts)SharonAnn
(13,766 posts)an upper middle-class retirees golf community with HUD money during GOP presidency.
Lots of "free" money for developers. And what you want is someone in charge who doesn't know how the game is played and who doesn't have the skills or experience to uncover it. T and his cronies can steal HUD (our taxes) blind for personal gain.
dhol82
(9,351 posts)and telling him he is just the bestest guy around. They will get a special friend to help him over any hurdles.
BainsBane
(53,001 posts)He looks for people he likes, who he thinks are "great guys." He then looks for a place to put them.
MissKat
(218 posts)Trump is putting in inexperienced people so that liberals will be so busy rushing to the different fires they won't be paying attention to what's going on behind the curtain.
This makes perfect sense if you put it in perspective. Trump is running the long con.
kebob
(499 posts)spanone
(135,633 posts)dembotoz
(16,738 posts)of the agency....
certainot
(9,090 posts)able to do what, who's qualified, who could pass inspection, etc., so he's flailing big time, and listening to advice from fuckups and assholes too.
Dustlawyer
(10,493 posts)not qualified, and now he will take an appointment, should we have any confidence he can do the job?
Rhetorical question.
Solly Mack
(90,740 posts)"a thorough, searching examination" of any of Trump's nominees, that those nominees are then (somehow) more acceptable - more qualified.
Nothing a nominee says during a hearing changes anything they have said or done prior to that hearing, and those hearings are not, in any real sense, an indicator of what they will say and do once they secure the cabinet position.
Nominees obfuscate, constantly maneuvering to avoid answering questions honestly.
Whether from lack of experience or from the accumulated evidence of a career spent undermining the very intent of the cabinet position they are seeking, it won't matter how hard you hit if you still vote to approve a nominee that is unsuited for the job.
Checks and balances are not accomplished when - admittedly trite, but still apropos - a fox is put in charge of the hen-house. Nor is it accomplished when the woefully incognizant is given the nod.
DK504
(3,847 posts)Look at the Fropenfurher's face. He could care less about who he brings in for the cabinet.
MurrayDelph
(5,281 posts)It's typical Republican playbook:
1. Claim that a department they are against doesn't work and should be dismantled and privatized.
2. Put someone completely incompetent in charge of department.
3. Department fails due to incompetent leadership.
4. Republicans yell, "See! This department is worthless!"
5. Push to privatize services performed by this department.
SharonAnn
(13,766 posts)developers (himself and his cronies) make lot s of money for years to come.
JudyM
(29,122 posts)no doubt.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)heaven05
(18,124 posts)he was looking for in the past that he's not a racist pig, that's all. Plus everything said in OP. Carson? Uncle Tom taking scraps from the table of his massa. House 'negroes' got those, you know.