Source:
AP via Yahoo NewsQuestions Remain About Housing Secretary
Saturday October 20, 3:25 am ET
By Pete Yost, Associated Press Writer
Probe in 2006 Shows a Combative Housing Secretary Defiantly Defending Contractor Contacts
WASHINGTON (AP) -- During an investigation of his conduct last year, Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson defiantly defended his interaction with federal contractors doing business with the Housing and Urban Development Department.
Jackson survived that investigation, but now he faces a new one stemming from the same forceful style that got him in trouble the first time.
The FBI and HUD's inspector general are examining Jackson's ties to a friend who was paid at least $392,000 in federal money after Jackson passed along the man's name for a job as post-Katrina construction manager at the Housing Authority of New Orleans.
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Always outspoken, whether talking race or politics, Jackson triggered the inspector general's inquiry last year when he told a minority group of commercial real estate executives in Dallas that he had revoked a contract because the applicant who thanked him said he didn't like Bush.
"He said, 'I have a problem with your president,'" Jackson told the crowd. "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.' ... He didn't get the contract."
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The IG probe concluded after a four-month inquiry turned up no evidence of a canceled contract.
Yet the IG's report also found what it called "some problematic instances" involving HUD contracts and grants, including Jackson's opposition to money for a contractor whose executives donated exclusively to Democratic candidates.
Read more:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071020/housing_secretary.html?.v=2
Suffice it to say, Alphonso Jackson is 'different.'
I'll never forget how, during the 2004 election, he said he was advising the Bush/Cheney campaign to basically forget about older blacks, and concenrate their efforts on younger Blacks who didn't grow up during the civil rights era. He contended that older Blacks had been "conditioned" by Jesse Jackson on who to vote for.
And he said "You can't rise as a class. You have to rise individually. It's what many of the civil rights-era people don't understand." Huh? Forgive me, Mr. Jackson...for wanting my ENTIRE community to rise. Forgive me for thinking it's not just about me..but it's about whether the entire African-American community is doing well.