Ben Carson at HUD

At New York, Alec MacGillis describes the Department of Housing and Urban Development under Ben Carson:

[T]here were the clock-punching lifers, the “Weebies” (“We be here before you got here, and we be here after you’re gone”), who recognized a chance to start mailing it in. “It’s ‘I can now meet people for a drink at five,’ ” said Tregoning. Or, as a supervisor in one branch office put it: “As a bureaucrat, HUD’s an easier place to work if Republicans are in charge. They don’t think it’s an important department, they don’t have ideas, they don’t put in changes.” Left unsaid: that such complacency was an unwitting affirmation of the conservative critique of time-serving bureaucrats.

To the extent that the new leadership was providing any guidance at all, it was often actively discouraging initiative on the part of employees. Shortly after the inauguration, a directive came down requiring employees to get tenth-floor approval for any contacts outside the building — professional conferences, or even just meetings with other departments. Ann Marie Oliva, a highly regarded HUD veteran who’d been hired during the George W. Bush administration and was in charge of homeless and HIV programs, was barred from attending a big annual conference on housing and homelessness in Ohio because, she inferred, some of the other speakers there leaned left.

The department leadership was also actively slowing down new initiatives simply by taking a very long time to give the necessary supervisory approvals for the development of surveys or program guidance. In some cases, this appeared to be the result of mere negligence and delay. In other cases, it appeared more willful. For one thing, there was the leadership’s strong hang-up about all matters transgender-related. The tenth floor ordered the removal of online training materials meant, in part, to help homeless shelters make sure they were providing equal access to transgender people. It also pulled back a survey regarding projects in Cincinnati and Houston to reduce LGBT homelessness. And it forced its Policy Development and Research division to dissociate itself from a major study it had funded on housing discrimination against gay, lesbian, and transgender people — the study ended up being released in late June under the aegis of the Urban Institute instead.

More upsetting for many ambitious civil servants than the scattered nays coming from the tenth floor, though, was the lack of direction, period. Virtually all the top political jobs below Carson remained vacant. Carson himself was barely to be seen — he never made the walk-through of the building customary of past new secretaries. “It was just nothing,” said one career employee. “I’ve never been so bored in my life. No agenda, nothing to move forward or push back against.

Just nothing.”

Carson and Unsuccessful Cabinet Nominations

The Senate lists rejected and withdrawn Cabinet nominations.  At the bottom of this page are the seven that have failed during the past 30 years, and I add the reasons for the failure.  All involved questions of about ethics or personal misconduct.  (Kerik later went to prison on other charges.)

In this light, the greatest danger to Ben Carson's nomination as HUD secretary is not his total lack of experience, but his dubious friendships and business connections.

In January 2015, National Review's Jim Geraghty raised questions about his ties to Mannaatech,a nutritional supplement company.

In November 2015, Michael Biesecker and Eileen Sullivan reported at AP:

Ben Carson has called for harsh criminal penalties for health care fraud, but the Republican presidential candidate and his wife also have kept millions invested with a close friend who admitted defrauding insurance companies, according to an Associated Press review.

Pittsburgh dentist Alfonso A. Costa pleaded guilty to a felony count of health care fraud after an FBI probe into his oral surgery practice found he had charged for procedures he never performed, according to court records.

Though the crime carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison, Costa was sentenced to house arrest and probation after Carson helped petition a federal judge on behalf of the man he described as "one my closest, if not my very closest friend."

In February of this year, David A. Graham reported at The Atlantic:

For months, reporters and political operatives (including me) have been pointing out that Ben Carson’s campaign bears many of the hallmarks of a political scam operation. Now Carson seems to agree. On CNN on Tuesday, Carson discussed his year-end staff shake-up:

“We had people who didn't really seem to understand finances," a laughing Carson told CNN's Poppy Harlow on "CNN Newsroom," adding, "or maybe they did—maybe they were doing it on purpose."

It’s a remarkable statement—especially because he’s so blithe about it.

Carson has taken in incredible amounts of money during the race. His campaign has raised more than any other Republican presidential rival, though they’ve raised more when super PACs are included. But he’s also spent more than any of them, so that despite his prolific fundraising, he has barely $4 million in cash on hand.

=========================================================
Name: John G. Tower
Nominated by: George Bush
Nomination Position: Defense
Date Nominated: January 20, 1989
Date Rejected: March 9, 1989 Vote: 47-53

Reasons: drinking, conduct toward women, financial conflicts 

Name: Zoe E. Baird
Nominated by: William J. Clinton
Nomination Position: Attorney General
Date Nominated: January 21, 1993
Date Withdrawn: January 26, 1993
Reason:  Undocumented household employee
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Anthony Lake
Nominated by: William J. Clinton
Nomination Position: Director, CIA
Date Nominated: January 9, 1997
Date Withdrawn: April 18, 1997
Reasons: policy disputes, financial issues
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Hershel W. Gober
Nominated by: William J. Clinton
Nomination Position: Veterans Affairs
Date Nominated: July 31, 1997
Date Withdrawn: October 27, 1997
Reason: sexual misconduct allegations
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Linda Chavez
Nominated by: George W. Bush
Nomination Position: Labor
Date Nominated: January 3, 2001
Date Withdrawn: January 9, 2001
Reason: undocumented household employee
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Bernard Kerik
Nominated by: George W. Bush
Nomination Position: Homeland Security
Date Nominated: December 2, 2004
Date Withdrawn: December 10, 2004
Reason:  undocumented household employee
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Tom Daschle
Nominated by: Barack Obama
Nomination Position: Secretary of Health & Human Services
Date Nominated: December 11, 2008
Date Withdrawn: February 9, 2009
Reason: tax issues

The Lucifer Refererence

Last night, Ben Carson said at the GOP Convention:

One of the things that I have learned about Hillary Clinton is that one of her heroes, her mentors, was Saul Alinsky [CROWD BOOES]. Her senior thesis was about Saul Alinsky. This was someone that she greatly admired and that affected all of her philosophies subsequently. Now, interestingly enough, let me tell you something about Saul Alinsky. He wrote a book called “Rules For Radicals”. On the dedication page, it acknowledges Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom. Now think about that. This is a nation where our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, talks about certain inalienable rights that come from our creator. This is a nation where our Pledge of Allegiance says we are “one nation, under God”. This is a nation where every coin in our pocket and every bill in our wallet says “In God We Trust”. So are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer? Think about that.

Where does this reference come from?  The opening pages of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals includes this epigraph from Alinsky himself:

“Lest we forget at least an over the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins - or which is which), the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer.”

(Other epigraphs on the page are from Hillel and Thomas Paine.)

A 2014 survey found that Republicans were significantly more likely to say that Satan causes most evil in the world, a reflection of religiosity in the GOP

Ryan, Rubio, and the Republicans

From The Economist:

FOR months the Republican Party has seemed more like a casting agency for pantomime characters than a serious political force. Its presidential primary race has been dominated by two men who have never held elected office. One is a bragadocious bully whose most celebrated idea is the construction of a “a beautiful wall” along the country’s southern border; the other is a Bible-thumping neurosurgeon who believes America is living in a “Gestapo” age and has a “psychopath” for a president. In the House of Representatives a small group of arch-conservatives, for whom compromise is apostasy, defenestrated their Speaker for refusing to shut down the government in order to stop public funding for Planned Parenthood, a health-care organisation that also provides abortions.

Yet in the past couple of weeks something has changed. Serious people are on the rise. Paul Ryan, the newly installed Speaker, is both widely admired among conservatives and known for his policy expertise. Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, is climbing up the presidential primary polls, leading the field on prediction markets and picking up endorsements from other politicians and backing from donors apace. Plenty could still go wrong, but one year from election day, many Republican grandees have a new spring in their step. They reckon that a non-crazy candidate could become their party’s nominee. And with a plausible presidential candidate and strong leadership in Congress, a clean sweep in 2016—winning the White House and retaining control of both Houses of Congress—might be possible after all.

John Oliver Joins the War Against Fake Quotations

Many posts have discussed fake quotations from Lincoln, Jefferson, Tocqueville, and others.

Dieter Holger writes at Inquisitr:

John Oliver can’t stand fake quotes. On Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, the comedian blasted presidents and presidential candidates for saying quotes that founding fathers and historic politicians never said.

Oliver pointed to an October 5 interview with Ben Carson on Fox News, where the presidential candidate cited a false Thomas Jefferson quote on gun control.
“Thomas Jefferson himself said,” Carson said on Fox News. “‘Gun control works great for the people who are law-abiding citizens and it does nothing for the criminals, and all it does is put the people at risk.'”

Carson really cited a quote from Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria that was copied by Jefferson into his law school notebook. According to the Thomas Jefferson Society, the wrongly cited Beccaria quote is “spurious” since it’s not clear that Jefferson agreed or disagreed with Beccaria’s words.

“You cannot give people credit for things they copied into notebooks,” Olivers said. “Otherwise my teenage self would claim credit for the Pythagorean Theorem and most Smashing Pumpkins lyrics.”

...

In response to all the fake quotes, Oliver has created the website DefinitelyRealQuotes.com. There you can generate all sorts of fake (but entertaining) quote memes that are improperly attributed to historical figures.

“It seems we have a decision to make,” Oliver said. “Either we care about the accuracy of quotes and make sure they’re correctly sourced. Or, we don’t care at all.”