5.09.2006

Kiss der fuhrer's boots if you want that contract

The Dallas Business Journal has a helluva story today about how Dubya’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Alphonso Jackson, is now openly denying government contracts to anyone who does not like his boss.

Here is the excerpt:
“Once the color barrier has been broken, minority contractors seeking government work may need to overcome the Bush barrier. That’s the message U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson seemed to send during an April 28 talk in Dallas. Jackson, a former president and CEO of the Dallas Housing Authority, was among the featured speakers at a forum sponsored by the Real Estate Executive Council, a national minority real estate consortium. After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor. ‘He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years,’ Jackson said of the prospective contractor. ‘He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something … he said, ‘I have a problem with your president.’ ‘I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t like President Bush.’ I thought to myself, ‘Brother, you have a disconnect — the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn’t be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don’t tell the secretary. He didn’t get the contract,’ Jackson continued. ‘Why should I reward someone who doesn’t like the president?’”
This is unbelievable. If memory serves, this country has a First Amendment, no matter how hard Dubya and his minions have tried to crush it. It seems to me that federal contracts were never supposed to be denied to people based on their political beliefs. But, then, this is the Bush era - an era where obeying laws is selective and ethics are but a memory.

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