Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Lying is Better Than Contract Steering???

HUD Policy is Another Fad that Will Lead Nowhere

A few weeks back, I published a letter in the Plain Dealer about the Department of Housing and Urban Development's offensive and stupid policy of focusing all their attention on long term homeless people to the detriment of all other homeless populations. There is so much to discuss with this policy, but in the interim a lot has happened at the Coalition and with HUD. We will postpone this discussion for now. The most amazing thing happened at HUD in the last few days. The HUD Secretary said at a conference that he cancelled a contract because the contractor said something negative about President Bush. Aside from the fact that this is illegal, it is dramatic expansion in the new policy of intolerance of any dissension. First, the entire Executive Branch was silenced with the threat of polygraphs and prosecutions. The media were criticized for questioning power in a time of war. Now, contractors cannot even speak freely.

When newspapers started raising concerns about the legality of this story, the Department said it was just a story that did not actually happen. What if Nixon had thought of this strategy--cop to a lie in order to cover-up the crime? His presidency might have survived by just admitting to a lie to divert attention from the break in and the hijacking of the government. I hope that this posting and statement does not get our small HUD contract pulled.

Brian
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.

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