Yesterday someone on the BBC, remarking on Holocaust Remembrance Day, described aptly the role many people played in the Holocaust, not just the Germans. To paraphrase, she correctly said that the extermination of Jews and others in Germany was a “pan-European” affair. Translation: you didn’t need to be a card-carrying member of the Nazi party, or even reside in Germany, to be culpable for the atrocities carried out by the Hitler clan. If you aided the Nazis in any way, you aided in ultimately what they did.
Today, the United States is faced with its own fascist leader, and we would do well to remember two things at this stage of the Resistance. One is that fascism, once it takes hold, moves quickly (1939-1945 is a pretty short span of time); and, two is that, because fascism is a fast-spreading cancer, it is best to start resisting it early and strenuously.
Which brings me to this week’s Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee vote to allow Dr. Ben Carson to move closer to confirmation as the head of HUD. Unfortunately, all eleven Democrats on the committee voted for Carson. As members of the progressive left, we did not take this laying down. The Shameful 11, like all of us, are either part of the Resistance or we are not. There may be a time when Donald Trump does something that DEMS can get behind (ha, ha, ha, I hardly think so, but it is possible), but Ben Carson’s nomination is not one of them, no matter what kind of bullshit Senator Elizabeth Warren spews on her Facebook page. Like Senator Warren, my senator, Senator Jack Reed, is also one of the Shameful 11, and he and I have had some words about his horrific vote for Carson following my telephone call to his office.
Here is my response to Senator Reed’s non-explanation to me about his vote for Carson:
“Dear Senator Reed:
Let me reply to your email to me regarding your defense of your vote of the wholly unqualified Dr. Ben Carson as head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. With no housing experience, with no government experience, and with no experience whatsoever in any agency leadership role Dr. Carson does not possess the skills necessary for such a Cabinet position. He does not even remotely possess the essential values one must have to work for HUD let alone captain that ship. I will remind you that in 2015 Dr. Carson in an op-ed piece in the Washington Times was openly critical of President Obama’s efforts to desegregate neighborhoods. This should disturb you. It should disturb you deeply. If you do not know the scope and depth of suffering that has occurred when communities are segregated in the United States—and more often than not, the sufferers have been people of color—let me suggest you read Sundown Towns by James Loewen. Lest you think Sundown Towns is a quaint text of what America used to be like, I suggest you visit the Department of Justice’s press release page, use their search engine, and type in the words “housing discrimination.” There you will find scores—but certainly not all—of the DOJ’s press releases about housing discrimination cases it has pursued in very recent years. I will remind you too that one of the core missions of HUD is to create inclusive communities which are free from discrimination for whatever reason (such as due to race, low-income status, ethnicity, presence of children in a family, etc.).
In your email to me you wrote:
“As your Senator, it is my duty to carefully examine and vet all of the President’s nominees. I take this responsibility seriously, and do my best to be judicious, thorough, and fair.”
Well, Senator Reed, you failed with respect to Dr. Carson. There is no way you could have supported Dr. Carson’s nomination had you been judicious, thorough, or fair. The person you voted for to run HUD is someone who has criticized the Supreme Court for leaving intact a key provision of the federal law banning housing discrimination. Ben Carson doesn’t even pass the smell test to run HUD.
In your email to me you also wrote:
“I won’t hesitate to vote against nominees who I think are unfit for office….”
Yet, you never even tried to explain to me how it is you think Dr. Carson is fit for the office he will assume. I think that omission is telling. I also think you owe your constituents a specific explanation of your vote for Dr. Carson. What is it about Dr. Carson—who, except for his remarks favoring housing segregation and housing discrimination, has been silent on U.S. housing policy—that you find qualifying?
Instead, in your email you veered off-course, steering away from saying anything specific about Dr. Carson’s qualifications and instead wrote:
“I won’t hesitate to vote against nominees who I think are unfit for office, but I have never been an advocate of obstruction for obstruction’s sake…If Senators voted against every Presidential pick of the opposite party, our government would face more difficulties than it currently does.”
When I called your office to express my horror at your Ben Carson vote—because probably unlike you, I have actually sat with someone and listened to their story of housing discrimination victimization—I never once said you should use your voting power to block every presidential pick, or for you to obstruct for the sake of obstructing. If the staff person with whom I spoke when I called your office passed that on to you, she erred. Let me be clear: you should use your voting power to block each and every unqualified cabinet pick. If that turns out be a much higher number of potential cabinet picks than previous administrations, or even all previous administrations combined, so be it. It will say something about our current president’s decision-making vis-à-vis his cabinet choices, but it will not say anything about you being an obstructionist.
I am very concerned that in your email to me you present as more worried about being labelled an obstructionist than someone who must own every vote you make. Much debate can occur about whether or not in the past few decades Democrats have obstructed Republicans too much or too little. What is not debatable is that Republicans control the House, the Senate, and now the White House, and we all will soon experience what that will be like for us. What is also not debatable is that Rhode Island is hardly a so-called purple state. It’s solidly Democrat. I’m not worried about Rhode Island losing a senate seat to a Republican should you continue to jeopardize your political career as senator by displeasing your Democratic base of voters via your voting record. You won’t be replaced by a Republican; but, you can be replaced easily by another Democrat.
I suspect you know this though given your following words (again as quoted from your email to me) whereby you seem to try to distance yourself from your vote for Dr. Carson:
“It is important to note: a vote for a President’s nominee is not an endorsement of all their views, and no one should view it as endorsing the deleterious policy proposals of the new administration.”
No. You voted for Dr. Carson, you own him. With your vote you now share no small portion of responsibility in whatever “deleterious” policies and procedures run out of Dr. Carson’s HUD. You said in your email you will work hard to hold “this President and his cabinet accountable,” which is correct insofar as you, through your vote for Dr. Carson, are accountable for whatever rolls out of HUD during his tenure.
By your vote for a wholly unqualified person, you and the other senators on the Banking Committee failed those communities throughout the United Sates which rely on HUD to be a properly directed agency. This, like all your votes, you own. By your vote for Dr. Carson you have not instilled faith in me that in these anxious political times you have what it takes to resist an administration when it needs resisting (e.g., when it selects an unmistakably unqualified person). Senator Reed, I’m disappointed too that in your email to me you missed an opportunity to explain to me specifically why Dr. Carson, in your view, is qualified to run such a vital federal department. You own your vote, but you have yet to explain it.”
We don’t back down. Left, Right, Center, we hold them all accountable. Every vote, every time.
