The Washington Post suggests so:
After Philadelphia's housing director refused a demand by President Bush's housing secretary to transfer a piece of city property to a business friend, two top political appointees at the department exchanged e-mails discussing the pain they could cause the Philadelphia director.
"Would you like me to make his life less happy? If so, how?" Orlando J. Cabrera, then-assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, wrote about Philadelphia housing director Carl R. Greene.
"Take away all of his Federal dollars?" responded Kim Kendrick, an assistant secretary who oversaw accessible housing. She typed symbols for a smiley-face, ":-D," at the end of her January 2007 note.
Cabrera wrote back a few minutes later: "Let me look into that possibility."
The e-mails, obtained by The Washington Post, came to light as a result of a lawsuit provoked by HUD's decision last September to strip the Philadelphia Housing Authority of as much as $50 million in federal funds. In December, it declared the agency in violation of rules that underpin its ability to decide precisely how it will spend federal housing funds. Kendrick was the official who formally notified the authority that she had found it in violation.
The emails could be a joke--it does sound like the sort of thing I've joked about from time to time. But that doesn't answer the question of what the hell the HUD secretary was doing demanding that the city of Philadelphia transfer property to a friend.
Carl Greene...*shudders*
The city of Philadelphia would be a lot better off if that man had less power. I'm fully behind Orlando J. Cabrera with this one!
Bureaucrats casually trading ironies is far less plausible than their casually trading favors and destroying people's lives.
What are you, Rip Van Winkle? Have you been asleep for the past 7+ years? Those emails aren't a joke. You see what the end result was, right? I know you hate any kind of social spending, but lets be serious.
Stephen:
Are you from Philly? Do you live there?
Is this even news, at this point?
Unrest in Middle-East
Famine and Godawful Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Repression and Insane Economic Growth in China
Corrupt and Venal Actions by Bush Administration
These aren't news, they're just statements about the general state of the universe, like "Summer days in DC are hot" or "water flows downhill."
I'm with JKc: "would you like me to break his legs for him?" could be a joke, but when somebody comes along and actually breaks the guy's legs, it becomes much less likely that it was a joke.
Doesn't sound like a joke overall. However, Kendrick may have thought of it as a joke. The underlying attempt to transfer a property to a friend sounds like straight-faced corruption, however.
Sounds like the standard kind of stuff you get when people who hate government are running the government.
Steve Roth: What evidence do you have that any of these clowns hate government. Has the size of government, its budget or its power decreased under their rule? They campaign on hating government sometimes (when they're not campaigning on how government can give you money/keep the scary terrorists at bay/teach the right morality to everyone), but this is as sincere as Stalin's deep commitment to the well being of the worldwide proletariat.
Only one simple phrase is needed to determine whether or not a jocular expression of corrupt behavior among public officials was mere gallows humor, or the beginning of malfeasance: "The City of Philadelphia".
Joe Klein's conscience:
I'm from there, but I don't really live there anymore. But I do have a personal axe to grind with this man -- he fired someone I knew very well at the Philadelphia Housing Authority for obviously nepotistic reasons. A true "one-armed bandit."
Legally whenever an agency does not comply with the requirements of a governmental entity, the logical result is to stop funding the agency. While the language of the emails may be offensive to some, there is a legally legitimate reason to de-fund a non-compliant entity.