Corruption Watch: HUD Secretary Resigns

Filed under: Corruption, Ethics — Claudia, Assistant Editor on March 31, 2008 @ 6:25 pm CEST

The Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Alphonso Jackson, became the upenteenth Bush Administration official to resign today. He cited tending to “family and personal matters” (of course) but the consensus is that it has more to do with the housing crisis and ethics investigations. From the LA Times for instance:

The investigation into Jackson began in 2006, after he publicly disclosed that he had revoked a contract because the vendor told him he did not like President Bush. Amid an inspector general inquiry, Jackson told investigators that he had misspoken

Someone needs to come up with a word for “lying or otherwise saying something I’ll soon come to find politically toxic” OTHER than misspeaking, if only for the sake of originality.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

PoliGazette encourages comments from all viewpoints, especially those that disagree. Comments submitted must, however, adhere to the following standards. Comments that violate these standards may be edited or deleted without notice at the sole discretion of the editors. Commenters who repeatedly or egregiously violate these standards or who attempt to argue publicly with editors regarding the comments policy may be banned from commenting further.

(1) Comments should address the substantive content of the post. Comments that repeatedly or willfully misrepresent the content of the post or of others' comments are not welcome. Comments that respond to something other than which the contributor or commenter may have said are irrelevant and should not be posted.

(2) Comments should avoid use of vulgar language as well as racial, ethnic, or religious slurs.

(3) Comments should not personally attack the character, personal integrity, or professional reputation of any PoliGazette contributor or of other commenters.

(4) Comments should reflect the contributions of the commenters themselves and should not include extensive cut-and-paste reproductions of others' words except insofar as necessary to supplement the commenter's own arguments. Link spam, trackback spam, and propaganda spam will be instantly deleted.

Questions or challenges to these policies or their application should be directed to the editors by email.

1 kritter

March 31, 2008 @ 6:23 pm CEST

Someone want to remind me again how the Bush administration came in and cleaned up Washington after the sordid Clinton years???

2 kritter

March 31, 2008 @ 6:24 pm CEST

BTW, quality family time is highly underrated.

3 Tully

March 31, 2008 @ 6:44 pm CEST

Somehow the articles referenced seem to omit the fact that the IG investigations cleared Jackson of the criminal allegations.

One should always take with a grain of salt innuendos coming from opposition committee members who start investigations that force someone out of office, even when the investigations uncover no actual prosecutable wrongdoing. Guess what? Turn enough crap-rain on anyone and they’ll leave, whether they’re guilty of anything or not.

Allegations and innuendo from the opposition fail to impress–only indictments and convictions really impress. Wanna compare Clinton-era indictments and convictions against Bush-era indictments and convictions? That could be fun. We could start with the Smaltz investigation! Or is that giving the Clinton admin too big a lead right there?

4 Lyn

April 1, 2008 @ 3:08 pm CEST

This is not President Bush’s fault. This is due to the personal failings of Secretary Jackson.

The Secretary of HUD position has long been a place for the President - any President - to park a minority in his cabinet.

HUD has never been productive. It deals in spending/wasting lots of federal tax money on housing and "development" in black neighborhoods. Why are people so surprised that this leads to corruption?

Want to end corruption at HUD? Stop housing subisidies, stop Section 8, stop "community development block grants," and GET RID OF HUD.

5 kritter

April 1, 2008 @ 5:28 pm CEST

Presidents are usually held responsible for actions taken by their Cabinet members. Clinton was held responsible for the corrupt actions of Mike Espy, by many on the right, so I don’t think Bush should be any different. Its a matter of judgement.

Even candidates are held responsible for less than stellar appointments- as Rudy lost support because of his relationship with Bernie Kerik, and Obama has been taken to task for giving Rev Wright a position with his campaign.

Bush could have fired Jackson months ago, when the allegations surfaced, as I’m sure he could have predicted that they would cause a big distraction in dealing with the housing crisis.