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Afternoon Links: Ben Carson Redecorates and Harvard Bets the Farm

By Jim Swift
Published March 1, 2018 11:06pm ET
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Afternoon Links: Ben Carson Redecorates and Harvard Bets the Farm
Ben Carson’s new silverware. Ironically, Ben Carson might not get to enjoy his newly refurbished office at HUD for very long, if recent history is our guide. This from CNN: House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, has asked HUD for records relating to office furnishings since the beginning of 2017. The […]

Ben Carson’s new silverware. Ironically, Ben Carson might not get to enjoy his newly refurbished office at HUD for very long, if recent history is our guide. This from CNN:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, has asked HUD for records relating to office furnishings since the beginning of 2017. The agency’s spending on its furniture came into question after a top HUD career employee says she was pressured to find funds beyond the legal $5,000 limit to renovate Carson’s office. The official, Helen Foster, alleges she was demoted from her job after pushing back on the requests. In a sworn complaint, Foster says a supervisor told her that “5,000 will not even buy a decent chair.”

I beg to differ. My trusty $90 IKEA POÄNG chair has lasted for 16 years. Perhaps Carson should have gone to IKEA.

Speaking of things the West Wing doesn’t really want to have to defend, a special assistant to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Christine Bauserman, has resigned, after CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski’s “KFile” team uncovered inappropriate social media posts.

“The positions expressed by Ms. Bauserman are inappropriate and unacceptable, and they are not consistent with those of the Secretary or the Trump Administration. The Department has accepted Ms. Bauserman’s letter of resignation,” Heather Swift, a spokeswoman for Department of the Interior, told CNN in a statement.

It’s yet another resignation resulting from the KFile team’s dogged journalism. I’ve never met Kaczynski, but we actually attended the same grade school in Cleveland. Heather Swift, whom I’ve met, is no direct relation, while we’re on the subject of disclosure.

GTHCGTH. Apparently, this seemingly nonsensical collection of letters is an abbreviation for Duke fans with special meaning, and one former player has sneaked it onto his vanity plates. The Wall Street Journal reports:

GTHCGTH doesn’t mean much in Houston, where Mr. [Kenny] Dennard lives and works as the managing partner of an investor relations firm. In North Carolina, where he once played college basketball for Duke, everyone knows what those seven letters mean: Go to hell, Carolina, go to hell. Duke basketball fans will scream those words over and over on Saturday in the next edition of one of college basketball’s fiercest rivalries: Duke University against University of North Carolina. Most states don’t allow plates that could be deemed offensive or insulting, and Mr. Dennard worried it might get turned down. So when he applied with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, he fibbed.

I suspect at least one state will revoke a GTHCGTH license plate after this report.

Harvard Bets the Farm. And loses! BusinessWeek has this fantastic story about how Harvard blew $1 billion of its endowment on bad investments.

The university invested in central California vineyards, Central American teak forests, a cotton farm in Australia, a eucalyptus plantation in Uruguay, and timberland in Romania. Harvard has been reevaluating and selling some of those investments, such as part of the Uruguayan plantation it sold to insurer Liberty Mutual last year. “The natural resources portfolio was supposed to be the crown jewel,” says Joshua Humphreys, president of the Croatan Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on sustainable capitalism. “But they were known for taking outsize risks, and those can cut both ways.”

Sometimes people can get pretty reckless with all of that donor money, it seems!

I’m giving up my F22 Raptor. The fine minds at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency have published this gem. You simply must read it, especially this graf:

Yes, it’s hard to accept that, when it comes to the F-22, all I’ll have left are these memories. But every American has to do his part, and I’m doing mine by laying down this weapon. I know the NRA might not like it. And some of the guys in my mountain militia group will see my decision as the beginning of a slippery slope: Today, I’m handing over my F-22. Tomorrow, maybe it’s my ship to shore Tomahawk missiles or my refurbished Mother of all Bombs Bunker Buster. But that’s not what this is about. It’s about me giving up this one weapon, and it’s worth it if it can save a single life (or in the case of my F-22, a hundred or so lives per missile).

Save the date! Join us at the 2018 Weekly Standard Summit. This May 17-20 at the historic Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs, join Stephen F. Hayes, Fred Barnes, and Michael Warren and special guests Bret Baier and A.B. Stoddard as they discuss the future of American politics. Book your tickets now.

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