HUD Secretary Ben Carson proposes tripling the rent for the poorest Americans.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson on Wednesday will propose tripling the amount the poorest households are expected to pay for rent as well as encourage those receiving housing subsidies to work, according to the administration’s legislative proposal obtained by The Washington Post. 

The move to overhaul how low-income rental subsidies are calculated would affect more than 4.5 million families relying on federal housing assistance. The proposal legislation would require congressional approval. 

Currently, tenants generally pay 30 percent of their adjusted income toward rent or a public housing agency minimum rent -- which is capped at $50 a month for the poorest families. The administration’s legislative proposal sets the family monthly rent contribution at 35 percent of gross income or 35 percent of their earnings working 15 hours a week at the federal minimum wage. Under the proposal, the cap for the poorest families would rise to approximately $150 a month, three times higher than the current minimum. 

The Trump administration has long signaled through its budget proposals and leaked draft legislation that it seeks to increase the rents low-income tenants pay to live in federally subsidized housing.

Okay well I would essentially expect this kind of thing from Donald Trump, after all he made his bones by evicting poor black folk from their homes.

But Ben Carson is a self described Christian who also happens to be black.

Carson's mother also took a job as a domestic worker for a time and he was forced to share a home with his extended family when things got tough.

It boggles my mind that people like this do not seem to have the capacity to empathize with others once they become Republicans.

It is as if the price for joining the GOP is to surrender your compassion.

Right after the RNC came under pressure for paying Trump's legal fees, they suddenly decided to pay an exorbitant amount of rent to Trump properties.

Hey, they stopped paying my legal fees. What more do you want?

Courtesy of CNBC: 

Soon after the Republican National Committee came under pressure for paying legal bills for President Donald Trump and his eldest son in the special counsel's Russia probe, it started covering expenses for the president's re-election campaign. 

The RNC is using campaign funds to pay Trump's company more than $37,000 a month in rent, and to pay thousands of dollars in monthly salary to Vice President Mike Pence's nephew, John Pence, party officials confirmed this week. The rent pays for office space in the Trump Tower in New York for the staff of Trump's re-election campaign. John Pence is the Trump campaign's deputy executive director. 

Campaign finance experts who spoke to CNBC said this type of spending by a party committee on behalf of a campaign is highly unusual but legal, and it appears the RNC disclosed it correctly.

"This is permissible and it's being reported properly, but why they are doing it is a mystery," said Brendan Fischer, senior counsel for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. "One would think the RNC could be spending their money more effectively right now on the 2018 campaign, rather than spending it to pay Trump's rent." 

So far, the party has spent more than $290,000 to cover the Trump campaign's expenses since September, the first month it paid the Trump Tower rent or Pence's salary. Before then, both expenses had been paid directly by the Trump campaign.

So the RNC stopped paying Trump's legal fees, and then just suddenly started paying the Trump campaign's rent at a Trump property?

Wow! What a coinky dink!

My favorite part of all this is that in Trump world this seems to be considered super sneaky and virtually undetectable. 

I suddenly have the feeling that Robert Mueller is having very little difficulty building a money laundering case against Donald Trump and his minions.