Blue Velvet?

Newport dining table, James River

Lot of hubbub about HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson ordering a thirty one thousand dollar dining suite of furniture. Unfortunately it coincides with the White House circulating its plans to slash HUD’s programs for the homeless, elderly and poor, according to federal procurement records.

One of Carson's aides cried foul over the expenditure and reportedly got banished to Siberia. I am not going to get too focussed on the ethics of squeezing the poor while you dine on pheasant on rich mahogany in the big house. Punishing the less fortunate is a hallmark, if not favorite hobby of this administration.

Forget about the fact that the overwhelming percentage of people being helped by the safety net have jobs, but just can't live on the low wages, let's make them eat from special boxes of gruel and make examples of them, humiliate them publicly, because we just know that they are spending their food stamp money living the high life.

David Phoenix Collection

Anyway the Blast is not going to focus on the optics of sybaritic furniture expenditures, we are however going to riff on the utter trashiness of ordering regency chairs covered in blue velvet.

Blue velvet, really? This isn't the canasta room at the mobile home park, or a mob steakhouse on the Las Vegas strip, this is a top government agency.

The whole furniture set puts the ug in ugly in 2018. The 1950's are calling and they want their furniture back. Its a Marcel Breuer designed building, for god's sakes.

From the James River Collection in Medium Mahogany finish

I sell antiques and furniture for a living. Seven thousand plus for this breakfront? I got news for you. I can find something better for about twelve hundred.

I understand that this administration would like to reverse time and take us back to those glorious times before FDR was in office. But getting tasteless furniture more suited to the time of Eisenhower or Hoover is not going to cut it.