Posted on 12/05/2016 3:53:06 AM PST by usafa92
Dr. Ben Carson will be Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the president-elect’s transition team confirmed Monday morning.
“Ben Carson has a brilliant mind and is passionate about strengthening communities and families within those communities,” Mr. Trump said in a statement released by his team.”We have talked at length about my urban renewal agenda and our message of economic revival, very much including our inner cities. Ben shares my optimism about the future of our country and is part of ensuring that this is a Presidency representing all Americans. He is a tough competitor and never gives up.”
Carson heavily hinted at the HUD position in a Facebook post days earlier, writing, “After serious discussions with the Trump transition team, I feel that I can make a significant contribution particularly to making our inner cities great for everyone.”
“I am honored to accept the opportunity to serve our country in the Trump administration,” Carson was quoted as saying in the statement released Monday. “I feel that I can make a significant contribution particularly by strengthening communities that are most in need. We have much work to do in enhancing every aspect of our nation and ensuring that our nation’s housing needs are met.”
Carson, who has never held elected office and failed earlier this year in a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, speculated to Fox News before Thanksgiving that Mr. Trump’s consideration for the HUD position was in part due to Carson’s upbringing.
“I grew up in the inner city and have spent a lot of time there, and have dealt with a lot of patients from that area and recognize that we cannot have a strong nation if we have weak inner cities,” he said Tuesday.
The 65-year-old has no previous policy experience in the field of urban development.
Carson, who was raised in an impoverished area of Detroit, later rose to prominence as a renowned neurosurgeon who drew national political attention this year when he ran in the Republican primary race earlier this year.
While his presidential campaign was short-lived, Carson has continued to make headlines with his early endorsement of Mr. Trump, and his advisory role with the president-elect.
In September, Mr. Trump toured Carson’s boyhood neighborhood in Detroit with the retired doctor by his side. During that trip, the then-GOP nominee pitched African Americans on his plans for inner cities and promised a “civil rights agenda for our time.”
Carson’s role in the coming administration was unclear as late as last week. Even the neurosurgeon’s longtime friend and adviser, Armstrong Williams, told The Hill that Carson wasn’t interested in running a government agency because he’d never served in a federal capacity.
“Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency,” Armstrong said Tuesday. “The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.”
Agreed. Rather than not putting someone in the position, I like the idea of President Trump naming Dr. Ben Carson, having him work on the problem, and then declare victory and disband HUD.
“So HUD is now in the role of psychologist/social worker?”
Sure,why not? Good way to cut their BS mission creep and $50 billion budget, say maybe down to $1 billion for some psychologists and social workers.
Surgeon General is a purely symbolic position whose entire office has a total annaul budget of only $3 million. Only the Secretary of the Department of Dog Catchers has less power.
As CEO of HUD, Carson’s job will be to set policy and communicate it to stakeholders. Who would be better for that job?
It will be interesting to see who Carson picks to head up the operations side of the HUD business.
HUD mission statement
HUD’s mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. HUD is working to strengthen the housing market to bolster the economy and protect consumers; meet the need for quality affordable rental homes; utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life; build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination, and transform the way HUD does business.
No, actually, I think that a finance guy would be best.
Wow, “build” huh?
I do not think ‘black’ has anything to do with it. Carson is a man Trump has come to respect and appreciate. I also know that Dr. Carson (and others) have had a profound impact on P.E. Trump’s Christian growth and development.
If Trump doesn’t name any blacks to his cabinet there will be hell to pay. I think they mutually like and respect each other at this point, and Carson’s support was valuable to Trump through the campaign.
But he also checks an important box. That IMO is why Carson’s acceptance of the nomination is especially valuable.
Jack Kemp?
Jack Kemp was a brilliant and articulate advocate of free enterprise economics and limited government. He fought against exactly the same job killing tax and regulatory insanity that Trump is now vowing to eliminate.
If Jack Kemp had a failing it was that he was a bit ahead of his time and was out maneuvered by centrists in the Reagan administration. In the early 1980s it was Kemp who had Reagan’s ear on economic policy - and his advice was right on the money.
It was a heartbreaking time though, waiting for an economic boom that Kemp correctly predicted but which was unfortunately delayed a decade by the ill-advised phasing in of the tax cuts. Bill Clinton got to reap the benifits, confusing the debate over economic policy for decades - the democrats still think Clinton was such a wise and clever fellow. Give me a break.
Kemp strongly advised against phasing in the tax cuts because investors will naturally delay all transactions for years if necessary until the rates are at their lowest. This halt in capital investment was the exact opposite of the intended “supply side” effect that Reagan’s tax cuts were designed to produce, prolonging the recession and discrediting Kemp and his ideas.
As HUD secretary, Kemp came up with one of the most brilliant political ‘bait and switch’ schemes of all time, known as enterprise zones. Cloaked as social welfare programs and government giveaways, these zones won the support of democrats by targeting poor and underprivileged minority nieghborhoods. These impoverished neighborhoods were exempted from all major of tax and regulatory compliance, so they appeared as leftist government welfare programs.
Really, they were laboratories of free enterprise, which proved once and for all that even the poorest and least educated (or rather, especially the poorest and least educated) were far better off without the government’s “help”.
I believe Kemp’s enterprise zones did much to further the cause of limited government conservativism.
Later in his career, I’ll admit he seemed to have lost heart and had no fight left. He took some confusing positions, as I recall, and he and Dole made a less than inspiring pair.
But I loved Kemp ever since I heard him speak at the Financial Executives Institute in Philadelphia in 1980. He had a keen wit, and could articulate conservative economic principles and policy better than anyone around at the time.
Everyone was sure he’d be picked as Reagan’s VP - there were even Reagan Kemp bumper stickers for sale in 1979 - I had one on my car.
If you want to appreciate Trump’s great job so far in picking his cabinet, just imagine (or remember) how we felt when Reagan picked Bush instead of Kemp! What a let down that was.
Trump does not have quite the paternal gravitas and warmth that Reagan had, but he is not letting us conservatives down - he seems more conservative by the day.
Carson would make a decent Surgeon General. I might even understand him being given a position in HHS. But by what stretch of the imagination is he qualified to run HUD? He probably knows as little or less about city planning than you or I do.
Look what qualified andy Cuomo did.
Just because liberals pick unqualified people to run things doesn’t mean that our side needs to do the same.
He was almost certainly right, but if that's the case, what the hell was the guy doing running for President? If he has doubts about his ability to run a Federal department or agency, why was he so assured that he could function well in America's highest office? Most likely the low bar set by Obama caused everyone and his brother to think that he ought to be President.
“Dr Carson’s mission would be to educate and encourage the reversal of this trend, showing people they CAN leave the projects and find a true upward trajectory in life.”
“Dr Carson is 65 years (not enough years left on the ol Earth) old and no way no how will he be able to reverse these savages way of thinking”
Arguably, he is the single best person available today to do this, for the inner city black community. He has already been doing it for decades, and has exceptional credibility with the target audience.
He is respected - even loved - by many in the inner city black community, including leaders who are otherwise staunch Democrats. He has always preached a conservative, Christian approach to fighting poverty.
While Dr. Carson’s fame grew as a neurosurgeon - based on his results, rather than his race - he dedicated a lot of his personal time to give back to other inner-city kids (especially blacks). He focused on encouraging them them to get good grades, work hard and stay out of trouble. He started a charity, the Carson Scholars Fund, to help talented kids get advanced education. He pushed private efforts to get more and better books into inner-city school libraries.
He is a committed conservative leader, who can walk into any black church in any American city, be welcome, and draw a crowd (except the sham Marxist front groups like “Reverend” Wright’s).
In my opinion, he is the best messenger available to preach social and economic conservatism to the inner-city black community.
Ben Carson’s own words:
We the people—not government—should take care of indigent:
Q: How do you reconcile the traditional Christian value of “caring for the least of these,” and the GOP stance against welfare?
CARSON: My stance is that, we the people have the responsibility to take care of the indigent in our society. It’s not the government’s job. You can read the constitution all you want, it never says that it is the government’s job and I think where we’ve gotten confused. In the old days of America, if it was harvest time and the farmer fell down and broke his leg, everybody pitched in and harvested his crops for him. We have a history a taking care of each other. Starting in the 1920’s, the government started getting involved in everything. It kept growing, metastasizing. By the time we got to the 1960s, LBJ was saying, “we, the government, are going to eliminate poverty.” $19 trillion later, 10 times more people on food stamps, more poverty, more welfare, broken homes. Everything is much worse. And that’s because it’s not their job. It’s our job.
Source: 2016 CNN GOP Town Hall in South Carolina , Feb 17, 2016
Give poor people opportunity to not be poor people:
I do care about the poor people. And in the system that we’re putting together, there will be a rebate for people at the poverty level. But I also want to emphasize the fact that as we get the economy moving, and I hope I get a question about how do we get the economy moving, there will be a lot more opportunities for poor people not to be poor people because this is America. This is the land of dreams. And our policies should be aimed at allowing people to realize that dream.
Source: Fox Business/WSJ Second Tier debate , Nov 10, 2015
Get rid of dependency; that’s true compassion:
Tea Party favorite Dr. Ben Carson kicked off the Conservative Political Action Conference, telling an attentive audience that the next President must “get rid of dependency” that some Americans might have on the U.S. government.
“We need to understand what true compassion is to reach out to individuals who think that being dependent is reasonable as long as they feel safe,” said Carson, the first speaker to address this year’s annual keynote conservative conference. “It’s not compassion to pat them on the head and say, ‘There, there, I’m going to take care of all your needs, your health care, your food.’ That’s the opposite of compassion.
“I’m not interested in getting rid of a safety net, I’m interested in getting rid of dependency,” Carson said, prompting one in a series of raucous rounds of applause.
Source: N. Y. Daily News: 2015 Conservative Political Action Conf. , Feb 26, 2015
Charities better at providing for needy than the government:
He railed against the government’s lack of forethought to deal with the national debt. “We’re not planning for the future,” Carson said. “If we continue to spend ourselves into oblivion, we are going to destroy this nation.” He also said the government is treating corporations “as enemies” and that corporate taxes should be lowered to encourage growth. “Corporations are not in business to be social-welfare organizations; they are there to make money,” Carson said.
Charities, he added, are better at providing for the needy than the government. “Nobody is starving on the streets. We’ve always taken care of them,” Carson said. “We take care of our own; we always have. It is not the government’s responsibility.”
Source: 2013 Conservative Political Action Conf. in Baltimore Sun , Mar 17, 2013
Those who don’t want to work? They are on their own:
The issue of how to handle able-bodied individuals who simply do not want to work has three practical solutions:
Tell those who don’t work that they are on their own.
Take from those who have something and redistribute it to the individuals who aren’t working.
Borrow from a 3rd party in order to take care of the nonworking individuals and leave the debt to future generations.
Logically, with solution 1, the individual who isn’t working clearly either starves or finds a job. What about solution 2? In this case, those who are forcibly constrained to support the individuals who aren’t working eventually lose interest in working themselves, since the fruits of their labors are being confiscated. This, in turn, leads to even more individuals who aren’t working. What about solution 3? These investors are unlikely to extend credit indefinitely. Thus solution 1 is the only one that stands the test of logic and is the one upon which we should concentrate.
Source: America the Beautiful, by Ben Carson, p. 88-89 , Jan 24, 2012
Government entitlements compete with private-sector charity:
It is very difficult to travel to any community in our nation and not find charitable organizations specifically created to aid the indigent citizens of that community.
Our government used to fully understand the role of private-sector charitable organizations in ameliorating the plight of the poor. This is why the government offered tax deductions and exemptions for churches and other charitable organizations. Today the government actually competes with many of these private-sector charities while still offering them tax deductions. How does this wasteful duplication benefit government or us, its citizens? Certainly by creating huge government entitlement programs, the size and power of the government increases dramatically. Before long, people generally depend on government for everything from health care and education, to a comfortable retirement, instead of looking to government for the basic protection of life and property, as well as providing public roads and public safety.
Source: America the Beautiful, by Ben Carson, p. 91 , Jan 24, 2012
Eradicate poverty by providing education and requiring work:
The Bible makes it clear that we have a responsibility to be kind to the poor among us. [But] America did not become a great nation by encouraging people to feel sorry for themselves and seek handouts from others
If we really want to eradicate poverty, we should allocate significant resources and personnel toward providing education and opportunity for the poor. And if we are to provide assistance to our able-bodied citizens, it should be attached to a requirement for work or acquisition of education and/or skills.
If they have to work anyway, many people will put real effort into finding the kind of job they want as opposed to collecting unemployment benefits and being assigned to work they consider undesirable. Some conservatives would say that we should leave such people on their own to sink or swim because we cannot afford to keep supporting them, while some liberals would say that these people already have enough problems and that it would be unfair to require anything of them. I reject both
Source: America the Beautiful, by Ben Carson, p.176 , Jan 24, 2012
Some people here think that reconstructing skulls for babies attached at the head after separation does not qualify as construction experience. I beg to differ.
Well this will be a real mess compared to the current team of "experienced" professionals that have been in charge of this for the last few decades......../S
You sir do not know what you are talking about. He is an expert at reconstructing skulls of babies joined at the head. Building an apartment building is much easier.
100% agree. I’m getting a kick out of all the armchair quarterbacks saying Ben should be SG. Do they have any idea how insignificant that position is and how insulting it would be to Ben to even offer him that?
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