Daily Inspiration Quote by Alphonso Jackson

A cabinet secretary praising federal workers sounds like boilerplate, until you clock the defensive posture baked into the first clause: "But I do know this". Jackson isn’t opening a valentine; he’s counterpunching. The line reads like a rebuttal to an accusation already hanging in the air - that government is bloated, lazy, and staffed by clock-watchers. By framing his certainty as hard-won over "two and a half years" at HUD, he borrows credibility from proximity. He’s not citing a report or a slogan. He’s saying: I’ve seen the machinery up close, and the stereotype doesn’t match the people turning the gears.

The phrase "some of the best workers in the world" is intentionally extravagant, less a measurable claim than a morale move. It inflates the dignity of civil service precisely because that dignity is routinely discounted in American political culture. The subtext is managerial as much as rhetorical: a secretary cannot execute policy without buy-in from career staff, and public respect is a resource. Praising workers is a way to recruit them into the administration’s mission and to signal protection against the easy scapegoating that follows bureaucratic failure.

Context matters: HUD is a punching bag agency, perpetually blamed for housing crises it can’t fully control and scrutinized for patronage, waste, and slow delivery. Jackson’s insistence on "Federal Government" (not just HUD) widens the frame, trying to rehabilitate the entire idea of public work. It’s a small act of narrative resistance: if the state is to solve problems, the people inside it have to be seen as capable - not as the joke.