Ben Carson spends $31K w/ tax payer money for dining table in his private office....

ShoelessRye said:
Carson was shocked...SHOCKED...at the price tag and has cancelled the order now.

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Reminds me of David Shulkins excuse when he got busted.
While touring Europe, Shulkin also violated VA policy by accepting free tickets to the women’s finals at the Wimbledon tennis tournament in the U.K., from a private business. That’s a no-no. Shulkin’s aides lied about the gift when the Washington Post came asking, saying VA ethics officials had approved the acceptance of the tickets, when they hadn’t. Shulkin later said he had paid for the tickets himself, also a lie. Meanwhile, auditors turned up bogus-sounding expenses from the trip that they can’t completely account for, such as one charge of $3,825 for parking. Wow, Europe is expensive. Shulkin has made nice by paying back the VA for certain expenses. And he says he’s not resigning.
 
PolishHeadlock said:
Watch there be some kind of nonrefundable deposit so instead of getting a dining room set for $31K they get nothing for $10K
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You might not be far off.

“At the request of the secretary, the agency is working to rescind the order for the dining room set,” Armstrong Williams, Mr. Carson’s business manager and an informal adviser, said on Thursday.

He added, however, that “it might not be possible.”
...
Canceling the order for the custom-made furniture will not be easy, and it is unlikely the government will recoup all its money even if the dining room set is never delivered. It was ordered Dec. 21 from a small Baltimore company.

“He’s not returning the table; he is attempting to cancel the order,” Mr. Williams said. “HUD is a bureaucracy, so everything is complicated. The person they contracted has already spent $14,000 making the table. While his intentions are to cancel it, we have to see what happens.”
​
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/us/ben-carson-dining-table-hud.html

But have no fear Trey Gowdy is on the case -

Representative Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican who is chairman of the Oversight Committee, sent Mr. Carson’s staff a three-page letter on Wednesday demanding an explanation for the purchase of the dining room set, which might have violated a federal law requiring congressional approval for any office renovation expense exceeding $5,000.

Mr. Gowdy is also requesting a formal response to an ethics complaint to the federal Office of Special Counsel, made by HUD’s former chief of administration, Helen G. Foster, the whistle-blower alleging that Mrs. Carson enlisted her help in circumventing the spending cap through an intermediary. Mrs. Foster claims she was demoted and transferred after she refused.

Mr. Gowdy asked the department to provide all emails and documents relevant to Mrs. Foster’s claims and procurement of furniture and other expenses related to the redecorating of the secretary’s office.

Mr. Williams denied Mrs. Foster’s charges and said the secretary had spent less on sprucing up the drab, wood-paneled office than any other HUD secretary in recent history.
​
And let's not forget about this is still a thing -

The investigation by Mr. Gowdy comes a month after Mr. Carson, under pressure from ethics watchdog groups, requested that the department’s inspector general investigate the presence of the secretary’s son, Ben Carson Jr., at HUD-sponsored meetings in Baltimore last summer.

The department’s own lawyers warned Mr. Carson that the attendance of his son, a Maryland-based entrepreneur seeking to do business with the government, posed a serious potential conflict of interest.
​



​
 
ShoelessRye said:
You might not be far off.

“At the request of the secretary, the agency is working to rescind the order for the dining room set,” Armstrong Williams, Mr. Carson’s business manager and an informal adviser, said on Thursday.

He added, however, that “it might not be possible.”
...
Canceling the order for the custom-made furniture will not be easy, and it is unlikely the government will recoup all its money even if the dining room set is never delivered. It was ordered Dec. 21 from a small Baltimore company.

“He’s not returning the table; he is attempting to cancel the order,” Mr. Williams said. “HUD is a bureaucracy, so everything is complicated. The person they contracted has already spent $14,000 making the table. While his intentions are to cancel it, we have to see what happens.”
​
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/us/ben-carson-dining-table-hud.html

But have no fear Trey Gowdy is on the case -

Representative Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican who is chairman of the Oversight Committee, sent Mr. Carson’s staff a three-page letter on Wednesday demanding an explanation for the purchase of the dining room set, which might have violated a federal law requiring congressional approval for any office renovation expense exceeding $5,000.

Mr. Gowdy is also requesting a formal response to an ethics complaint to the federal Office of Special Counsel, made by HUD’s former chief of administration, Helen G. Foster, the whistle-blower alleging that Mrs. Carson enlisted her help in circumventing the spending cap through an intermediary. Mrs. Foster claims she was demoted and transferred after she refused.

Mr. Gowdy asked the department to provide all emails and documents relevant to Mrs. Foster’s claims and procurement of furniture and other expenses related to the redecorating of the secretary’s office.

Mr. Williams denied Mrs. Foster’s charges and said the secretary had spent less on sprucing up the drab, wood-paneled office than any other HUD secretary in recent history.
​
And let's not forget about this is still a thing -

The investigation by Mr. Gowdy comes a month after Mr. Carson, under pressure from ethics watchdog groups, requested that the department’s inspector general investigate the presence of the secretary’s son, Ben Carson Jr., at HUD-sponsored meetings in Baltimore last summer.

The department’s own lawyers warned Mr. Carson that the attendance of his son, a Maryland-based entrepreneur seeking to do business with the government, posed a serious potential conflict of interest.
​



​
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Lol this guy is not capable of making a good decisions

https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-businessmen/business-executives/dr-ben-carson-net-worth/

He is worth $30M and after circumventing rules to spend taxpayer money on a $30k table and getting called out on it his response is to try and fuck over a small boutique business.

He could have just spent his own money on it since he obviously wanted it
 
UPDATE - Ben Carson Lied. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/14/politics/emails-ben-candy-carson-dining-set/index.html

Washington (CNN)Newly released emails cast doubt on claims by Secretary Ben Carson and his spokesman that he had little or no involvement in the purchase of a $31,000 furniture set for his Department of Housing and Urban Development dining room.

Emails show Carson and his wife selected the furniture themselves.

An August email from a career administration staffer, with the subject line "Secretary's dining room set needed," to Carson's assistant refers to "printouts of the furniture the Secretary and Mrs. Carson picked out."

The documents were released following a Freedom of Information Act request from American Oversight, a liberal watchdog group led by former Obama administration officials, and offer a snapshot into how the agency acquired the furniture.

HUD spokesman Raffi Williams initially denied the Carsons had any involvement in the dining set selection.
"Mrs. Carson and the secretary had no awareness that the table was being purchased," he told CNN last month.
​
Learning about FOIA the hard way it seems.

About a week later, HUD received an estimate for $1,100 to repair the chairs, documents obtained by CNN show.

One Newport Dining Table Top (96-144") in Medium Mahogany. The cost of this table is $3,113.00.
Carson referenced this concern in his statement released earlier this month. The furniture, he said, was "characterized as unsafe" and was "beyond repair and needed to be replaced."
​
Even lied about the furniture being "beyond repair".

The newly released emails contradict the expansive denials by a HUD spokesman when CNN first reported this story. The spokesman repeatedly told CNN at the time the Carsons were not involved in the purchase of the pricey dining set.

"New tables, chairs, in that room whatsoever -- zero awareness of this purchase being made," the spokesman said. "Neither one of them knew this purchase was being made. The secretary knew that the table and chairs were old because somebody fell out of a chair once. That's literally it. So they had nothing to do with the purchase, nothing to do with anything around that."

The spokesman, who asked that his name not be used, even denied that Candy Carson had any interest in redecorating the suite.
​
TL:DR - Sec Carson, his wife and their spokeperson all claimed the Carson's had NOTHING to do with the selection - but emails via FOIA show that they personally picked out the $31,000 dining room set for the executive dining room at HUD.

<LikeReally5>
 
ShoelessRye said:


Department of Housing and Urban Development officials spent $31,000 on a new dining room set for Secretary Ben Carson’s office in late 2017 — just as the White House circulated its plans to slash HUD’s programs for the homeless, elderly and poor, according to federal procurement records.

The purchase of the custom hardwood table, chairs and hutch came a month after a top agency staff member filed a whistle-blower complaint charging Mr. Carson’s wife, Candy Carson, with pressuring department officials to find money for the expensive redecoration of his offices, even if it meant circumventing the law.

Mr. Carson is also facing questions on another front. Under pressure earlier this month, he requested that HUD’s inspector general investigate his son’s involvement in a department-sponsored listening tour of Baltimore last summer. Department lawyers had warned Mr. Carson that including Ben Carson Jr., an entrepreneur who does business with the federal government, could create a conflict of interest.

Mr. Carson “didn’t know the table had been purchased,” but does not believe the cost was too steep and does not intend to return it, said Raffi Williams, a HUD spokesman.

“In general, the secretary does want to be as fiscally prudent as possible with the taxpayers’ money,” he added.
...
Department officials did not request approval from the House or Senate Appropriations Committees for the expenditure of $31,561, even though federal law requires congressional approval “to furnish or redecorate the office of a department head” if the cost exceeds $5,000.

Mr. Williams said department officials did not request congressional approval because the dining set served a “building-wide need.” The table is inside the secretary’s 10th-floor office suite.
...
About a month before it was ordered, Helen G. Foster, a former top HUD official, filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, a federal whistle-blower agency, claiming that she had been demoted and transferred after resisting Mrs. Carson’s attempts to get around the $5,000 redecoration law.

The pressure began in January 2017, before Mr. Carson was even confirmed, when HUD’s interim secretary, Craig Clemmensen, told Mrs. Foster to help secure redecorating funds for Mrs. Carson, a frequent visitor to the department’s Washington headquarters who serves as an informal adviser to her husband, the complaint said.

Mr. Clemmensen, acting on Mrs. Carson’s behalf, told Mrs. Foster to “find money” to purchase better furniture for the office — and he quipped that “$5,000 will not even buy a decent chair,” according to the complaint, which was reported by The Guardian newspaper.

​


Drain.
That.
Swamp.
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Trump voters, FUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOU
 
We had a member of parliament in Australia charter helicopter flights to get to a nearby golf course at the coast of $5000. The same minister charged us for a trip through Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos and South Korea for > $40,000.

If I remember correctly there was something similar where toilet seats in parliament cost upwards of $10,000, though I can't find an article on that anymore.

What a fucking crock of shit, it happens everywhere and it is disgusting.
 
Also, very little happens. Sometimes people take a fall, but usually not far, and if they do they are back at the public trough soon enough in some shape or form perhaps on a board somewhere.

Everyone does it and they just publicly tut-tut while backstage they are feasting on the publics money.
 
its almost as if, regardless of colour, when people are given power, they abuse it.
 
sniper said:
Well... can We get a picture of the table atleast? I wanna know where my money is going.
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hqdefault.jpg
 
Does anyone believe these assholes care about doing the right thing for the general public instead of for themselves and their rich buddies when they are wasting lots of taxpayer money on a regular basis? That's what I was thinking when the radio news announced some bank oversight being removed.
 
GSP_37 said:
Does anyone believe these assholes care about doing the right thing for the general public instead of for themselves and their rich buddies when they are wasting lots of taxpayer money on a regular basis? That's what I was thinking when the radio news announced some bank oversight being removed.
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That's what I said election night
 
What happened to greatest collection of White House cabinet ever? Highest IQ ever assembled?
 
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