Exactly. It’s still his responsibility, and everybody still hates him for it. And now his wife hates him too.
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Gotta consider the source, though, and the times in which Dickens lived. He wasn’t married long when he wrote this, and I’m not surprised that they split up.
Next excuse: “My dog ate it.”
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The Party of Personal Responsibility.
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Of tax payer money. Fuck yes! As my parents were wont to say often to me, if you want nice things you can save up and buy them yourself.
Also, do you think working class people just don’t have dinning sets?
You know it’s not that kind of cabinet right? Also, I expect Jeffrey Dahmer to eat people. Doesn’t mean I’m on board with it. He’s a public servant paid by the American people. If he wants to live high off the hog, he can buy his own damn hog.
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I will give him credit. If I were to hazard 3 guesses as to what he was going to say was the cause…”my wife wanted it” was in the top 3!
Jackass.
I’m sitting in my Eames lounger with ottoman at this very moment, and I think him spending $31K for his governmental office is insane. I’ve been in plenty of governmental and corporate offices over the years, even some pretty sweet ones. This is criminal, probably literally. Blaming it on his wife, as like the third version? He needs to “resign” immediately. What a fool. Apparently brain surgery, it don’t require much of a brain!
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I understand that this cabinet is not popular but a part of me still wants the office (the role) to command a certain respect, and there are some trappings that go with that. I don’t think it’s inappropriate for a cabinet member to have a nice office with expensive furniture. Part of it’s purpose is to be impressive. Obviously not every public servant’s office needs to be impressive, but some do.
I’m not necessarily suggesting that the office of HUD should shop at IKEA, but last year I was able to buy a very nice new queen size bed, mattress, three sets of shelves, three area rugs, office desk, a couch, and a dresser for about $2500 TOTAL. $5000, even at a nicer store than IKEA, can buy quite a nice dining room set. Keep in mind we’re not talking about the President here. We’re talking about the office of Housing and Urban Development. Super-high-end luxury furniture in their office is insulting.
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Respect has nothing whatsoever to do with furniture, especially not when the admin in question is perpetually shitting on the middle class and the poor, cutting programs left and right, and fucking up policy as they line their own pockets.
Like someone else stated upthread; the man is a millionaire, at the very least; let him buy his own damn “trappings” out of his own pocket.
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I concur with this. While I don’t expect them to shop at ikea because perhaps they need things to be more durable. It really should cost what he was making it out to.
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The thing is, this is HUD. HUD’s mission is primarily to assist the poor and homeless with housing. If there’s any organization where I would consider austerity to be a Good Thing, it’s this. The optics here are especially poor as HUD programs that help millions of (often poor) people like Block Grants, Section 8, FHA, FHEO, and others are under constant threat of being cut or severely defunded.
But, sure, let’s have Ben Carson get a fucking $30k dining set while the many social programs he administers that millions depend on are under threat of getting cut.
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Yeah, the whole ‘tax-payers are paying for this even though the man himself is rich, and the office he occupies is supposed to assist the underprivileged’ thing is somehow lost on our furniture enthusiast comrade here.
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Slate aslo published this defense of Carson. But needlessly contrarian is part of their brand.
Robert Byrd’s tenure in the US Senate lasted longer than some geological epochs. If any position in Washington DC should automatically be accorded a certain level of respect and decorum I’d say it ought to include the most senior statesman in the history of the nation’s top legislative body.
Here’s a picture of Byrd’s D.C. office. I’m no professional decorator, but I doubt any of that furniture cost north of three figures when it was brand new. He could have picked up most of that stuff at a yard sale.
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So, cabinet official’s spouses get to sign purchase orders?
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I read somewhere that the current dining suite was bought in the 60s or 70s, so not so old. The bulk of the furniture surrounding me right now date from the late 1800s to the 1930s.
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Aside from upholstery tacks, nails aren’t commonly used in furniture-making.
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Did he never hear of furniture restoration?
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The government has storehouses full of good furniture.
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Isn’t this the guy that said subsidized housing shouldn’t be a nice place to live?
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It’s nice that you have so much money that $31k for a dining table and chairs doesn’t seem excessive to you. As someone whose annual income is well below $31,000, I say that if someone pays a thousand dollars for a chair, then they are a fool.
Furthermore, you’re badly missing the point. The HUD director’s office already had a 50 year old table and chairs for meetings. It already had “nice” furniture in it, which was perfectly serviceable and not in need of replacement.
Carson and his spouse decided they didn’t like the old stuff because, I don’t know, it didn’t have “eat the poors, ha ha” inlaid on the tabletop in gold leaf. So he pressured his subordinates to break the law by buying new furniture without regard to the spending limit (department heads are allowed $5K for redecorating their offices) and without getting approval from Congress for going over the limit (which they also could have done).
That he broke the law by spending so lavishly on something that was not needed makes the story more viral, but the point is that he broke the law.
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The GOP base, I guess the Trump base really, is this angry stubborn cult that refuses to believe they voted for an idiot who hasn’t hired the best and brightest, but the most venal and self-serving.
They will believe in totally insane conspiracy theories about “pizzagate” and “the deep state”, but the very obvious conspiracy of dunces before them is shrugged off as “media bias.”
“The media shouldn’t report this stuff, it makes Trump look bad.”
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