Alphonso Jackson: Profoundly Unethical Whether He Lied Or Not
Alphonso Jackson: Profoundly Unethical Whether He Lied Or Not
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Alphonso Jackson is now telling the truth. (And we have serious doubts.) Through his spokesperson, Jackson now says his original story about canceling a contract because the contractor criticized Bush was a fabrication.
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.”
Whether the story was true or not, the “message” was clear. If you are critical of President Bush you won’t be receiving contracts from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Trying to intimidate people with this kind of rhetoric is deeply unethical. Jackson is being entrusted with public funds. He has an obligation that those funds are spent for the public’s maximum benefit, not to reward those who have the same political beliefs.
Whether Jackson’s story was true or not, serious ethical improprieties are involved. This is not about a gaffe or gossip. (Nevertheless, that’s exactly how the Washington Post treated it, relegating it to Al Kamen’s column.) It’s about the fundamental obligations of public officials. It’s time for the rest of the media to follow the lead of the Dallas Business Journal and the Dallas Morning News and start taking it seriously.
UPDATE: More on the story from Georgia10 at DailyKos.
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President Bush to HUD’s Alphonso Jackson:
May 10th, 2006 at 11:44 am“Scratch my back, I’ll rub your bald head.”
Just got to say this:
An unethical repuke! Who’d a thunk it.
May 10th, 2006 at 11:45 amI believe this is an attempted diversion from the Hookergate scandal! This is NO way as important as CIA agents and GOP Reps having sex and booze parties!
May 10th, 2006 at 11:50 amHe’ll be receiving a medal any day now.
May 10th, 2006 at 11:52 amIt is interesting that he felt the need to send this “message”.
May 10th, 2006 at 11:53 amThis guy is so stupid. I mean all he has to do is contact someone crony in the FBI and get the voting records of the contractors and the list makes itself. No need to send a “message”. I mean come on these guys gotta get together to learn how to use the system that has been created.
May 10th, 2006 at 12:04 pmAlphonso Jackson,
May 10th, 2006 at 12:07 pmResign before you embarrass yourself any further.
Thank you.
This regime has a Dusty, Dustee and Scooter, not to mention the pet nicknames doled out by Bush. It’s time for serious adults to take over.
May 10th, 2006 at 12:13 pmDoes that mean the President of Iran will be excluded from receiving public funding from the US gov for Iran’s nuclear enrichment program?
Then there’s this.
At a thirty-one percent approval rating, 69 percent won’t be getting any contracts.
May 10th, 2006 at 12:15 pmOh, OK…so the new government guidelines allow all employees to make up stories to make their points…yea that’s gonna be real effective. Apparently the second rule is you don’t have to admit it is a made up story until someone quotes you…only then do you have to say…”woops, not a real event”.
I’m waiting for the third new rule…the one that says if you are the President you accept the first and second rules as legitimate by refusing to fire Jackson. I love watching us go from cronyism to corruption to anarchy…I’m preparing my own fake stories because I would hate to be left out of the fun.
more observations here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
May 10th, 2006 at 12:16 pm#4, Not just any medal, either. He’ll get the Distinguished Service Medal along with the cherished Freedom Medal like Tenet.
May 10th, 2006 at 12:19 pmApparently the criteria for these medals is “I don’t care what you did. It’s what you say
and how well you kiss Bush’s ass that counts.”
I heard the medal weighs 7.5 pounds and is solid gold.
No, wait; it’s 7.5 oz and can be found in a Cracker Jack box.
Alsphonso Jackson was awarded the Golden Lawn Jockey award by the Alabama Ku Klux Klan back in 2004.
-GSD
May 10th, 2006 at 12:26 pmJust more “catapulting the propaganda” I suppose.
May 10th, 2006 at 12:45 pmI am so sick of Bush and the federal government acting only to “send a message”. The business of government is not just messages! Some of it is actual “governing”. During and after Katrina, all the federal government sent were messages – that’s why the scale of the disaster was so great. Sometimes the people needed aid, not just messages.
May 10th, 2006 at 12:52 pm#11 – Could it weigh 7.5 pounds and sing on a wall plaque? ;)
May 10th, 2006 at 12:53 pmIf Jackson did what he first claimed, he should be ousted.
May 10th, 2006 at 12:57 pmIf he was lying, then he deserves no less than an official reprimand and an investigation to see if he has done anything like that in the past. Why was it so close in his mind that he said it?
Oops. He forgot the dictatorship has not yet been fully implemented. Once Bush is crowned king and all dissenters are put in internment camps, he will be free to say that sort of thing. Until then, just keep this under your hat, okay?
May 10th, 2006 at 1:19 pmAs usual some quick think aid decided to put out a story that doesn’t add up. These guys sweat by their honesty, yet you can’t trust them any more than you can trust a fox in a hen house. I’d like to see an honest politician for once in my life time, but the words honest and politician don’t even belong in the same sentence. I’m sick and tire of them blow hard Republican going around attacking everyone who doesn’t agree with the President.
They act as if you are being disloyal to the King of something. I know they think George is King, but his reign of division, mistrust and lies will be over soon. I personally liked this President until he started lying about everything. If he believes he is right, then he shouldn’t have to leak and lie.
As expected, he doesn’t fire this jerk for threatening to pull funds from anyone who doesn’t support this administration. Mr. Jackson needs to realize that federal taxes are paid by Democrats too and we have something to say about our money. After all as the President is fund of saying, ‘That money belong to the American People’ not politicians. I guess if I called Mr. Jackson and told him I worshipped the President, I could get a billion dollars in HUD Money.
May 10th, 2006 at 1:22 pmDon’t forget this angle, raised by a reader at TalkingPointsMemo.com:
May 10th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
To be honest, the idea that he was trying to send a message to potential future contractors makes more sense than him actually rescinding a contract from a developer after he expresses his dislike for Bush.
I only say this because, the story Jackson told-or rather, HOW he told it-was so poorly constructed that it sounded like someone who was either making something up out of whole cloth, OR trying to embellish an existing story on-the-fly.
Either way, he’s an idiot. As has been pointed out, if he was telling the truth THEN, then be broke the law. If he’s telling the truth NOW, he was trying to intimidate people trying to do business with the government by implicitly saying “How much tax dollars you get depends on how much you stand by Dubya.” They are both reprehensible behaviours for a man in public office. The “explanation” is just as douchey as the story that came before it. There is no way-I repeat NO WAY-to put a nice face on this issue, and he should be forced to resign or be relived of his position. Hell, Bush should essentially fire him just so that, for a nice change of pace, he looks like he’s actually cracking down on improprieties within the Administration. Yeah I know, pipe dreams, but it makes sense to me…
May 10th, 2006 at 1:26 pmit is obvious he was fishing for a bribe, only in a corrupt administration would we not have him removed immediately. “I’m lying about what I lied about” is not a very good defense for a 4 year old
May 10th, 2006 at 1:51 pmAnother scandal and we continue to laugh. You cannot help it because of the level of absurdity. But at what point do we stop laughing? When do the consequences meet the criteria of “serious concern”?
I would have thought it was when deaths occurred. But thousands of americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died and yet we still laugh. Then an american city is lost, New Orleans, and people die and become forgotten and we laugh at the incompetence that allowed such.
The country is bankrupt (yes, the technical definition is debt beyond means or ability to repay), the ranks of the “poor” are increasing, our parents and grandparents are being abandoned and being left to decide between “food” and other luxuries such as utilities and medicine, and we continue to laugh.
We laugh at the president. We laugh with the president. We laugh at the hate-mongers and the “religious” elitists. We laugh at the racists and homophobes and we laugh at the exploitation of others. We laugh at starvation. We laugh at murder.
I challenge anyone to explain why all of this is so funny that our laughing at it makes it okay and acceptible. I would also like to know what the definitive point is that we need to reach when it all stops being funny and we become serious. Lastly, I would like the answer to the question of – “When did evil become amusing?”
May 10th, 2006 at 1:59 pm“Anecdote” is not a synonym for “fable”, “parable”, “threat”, “lie”, “falsehood”, or “untruth”.
In Jackson’s original “story” (the first one) bad triumphs over good, a corrupt official punishes a qualified applicant and deprives the government of a needed service. If Jackson’s followup claim/”story” is true, and the point of his original “story” was to illustrate how government contracts are routinely awarded in DC, it is an even more damning indictment of the current government in DC. Instead of revealing an instance of unethical behavior on the part of one government official, it indicts all government officials as practicing unethical and punitive behavior with regard to awarding contracts and depriving the government of needed services by qualified applicants.
May 10th, 2006 at 2:00 pmWhat’s so shocking to me about this isn’t that he lied about this, but that LYING ABOUT IT IS GOING TO GET HIM OUT OF TROUBLE. “That? I said, that? Well, it’s okay, because I’m a goddamned liar. Ask anyone. Here, look at my pants? See how they are on fire? That’s why I shouldn’t be investigated, shitcanned, or expected to make an apology–because I’m a liar in charge of your tax dollars. Thank you and good night.”
May 10th, 2006 at 2:02 pmUncle Tom?
May 10th, 2006 at 4:42 pmCould it weigh 7.5 pounds and sing on a wall plaque? ;)
Comment by Zookeeper — May 10, 2006 @ 12:53 pm
Funny :)
But, in this case, could we mount the fisherman on that plaque instead of the fish???
May 11th, 2006 at 7:55 am[...] The Washington Post editorial board takes HUD Secretary Jackson to task today over his “anecdotal†story about issuing contracts based on political views: “Either Mr. Jackson broke the law and then lied about it, or he lied that he had broken the law. Which of those actions makes him fit to be secretary of housing and urban development?†[...]
May 12th, 2006 at 9:00 amthis is what happens when a political hitman like Karl puts a political hack in every office from FEMA to HUD to 14th Undersecretary of Concessions at Smokey Mountain National Park.
November 20th, 2006 at 7:34 amVery entertaining issue. I haven’t heard of this one. It will be necessary to visit you on a thicket!
December 8th, 2006 at 5:16 amThis is a great article. I am new to your blog and i like what I see. I look forward to your future work.
December 12th, 2006 at 4:51 amI’ve taken a quick look at your postings, which are very interesting. Lots of material and ideas! Congrats on being so focused!