19 The Real Game of Missing Money aging the political necessity of keeping the money flowing out the back door. This engendered multiple personality disorder management of the first order—with Kemp giving me an order to do something and then ordering one of my deputies in confidence to make sure I failed. He demanded that people be fired or framed arbitrarily, which I would not do—and he would insist that I take responsibility for whatever their supposed foible was. I received complaints that my skirts were too short and that my house was bigger than his house—he would not come over if invited as he would “find it castrating.” My greatest offense, however, did not come directly from me. The word got around Washington that if you wanted anything accomplished in the operations at HUD, you had to see Fitts, not Kemp. There was a great deal of truth to that statement. Kemp’s refusal to learn the operations or respect the laws and regulations that bound the bureaucracy, and his attempts to over- ride the complexity with temper tantrums and bullying had inspired a backlash of passive-aggressive behavior. One particularly long temper tantrum was laced with the comment, “The law? The law? I don’t have to obey the law. I report to a higher moral authority!” Whatever “get-out-of-jail-free card” Kemp had, the people who worked for him did not share it. This period provided me with tremendous insight on the media. I was dealing at the heart of the cash and credit flows involving hundreds of billions of dollars of government resources that were driving trillions in the capital markets. What was happening in the financial flows was entirely divorced from what was being described in the national and global media. The numbers did not lie, but the nightly news did. More important were the material omissions of what was not discussed. At one point, a top investigative reporter from the New York Times contacted HUD, requesting per- mission to write a policy piece about the work I was doing. She had heard about it from members of the OMB team. After some resistance from the Secretary’s office, she proceeded with the piece. She then proceeded to run into resistance for weeks from her editor who kept asking her to run down false rumors about me and my operation. Finally, she submitted the story, only to receive a call from the print shop in New York. The editor was changing the article under her byline without telling her—adding in things that were not true. She reported this to the New York leadership. The result was that she resigned from the New York Times and never worked as a reporter again. I found out later that the source of the false stories—the person who had lobbied the Washington editor for weeks—was Roger Stone, then a partner at Black, Manafort & Stone, a lobbying firm rumored to be the ultimate in “swamp critters.” I assume he was acting on behalf of Kemp and his staff. When the Bush Administration went to war with Iraq, it was time for me to go. I left convinced that for communities to work, taxpayers, small businesses, and entrepreneurs would need to build private data, systems, and economics. Get the federal government out—and keep it out. New technology meant entrepreneurs and markets could help create higher learning metabolisms and productivity in communities. We could end poverty without spending government resources— indeed, we could lower taxes. I did not yet understand that pouring government subsidies and loans into places was often about central control and private profits, not about sound investment. As long as you could print mon- ey, let the party and the waste roll on. Related Resources: Videos: · C-SPAN – HUD Reform Press Conference https://video.solari.com/video_listing/hud-reform/ · C-SPAN – Housing for America’s Future https://video.solari.com/video_listing/c-span-housing-for-americas-future/