Free Republic

Taxpayers wrote a $900,000 settlement check to a federal employee to compensate her for once being likened to a “Little Rascals” character by her boss, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group (TheDCNF) has learned. The secret settlement appears to be one of the largest-ever discrimination settlement payouts to an individual federal employee. The payment came after an Equal Opportunity Employment office ruled that the remark was racist and accepted without challenge the claim that it caused nearly a million dollars worth of emotional harm. The offending boss was Mary K. Kinney, then-executive vice president of Ginnie Mae, which is...

Two-hundred years after signing a declaration protecting Americans’ right to pursue life, liberty and property, the stewards of the very government our Founders formed, began stealing all three.The story of why and how our government, through federal agencies like HUD and the EPA implement global law is the story of America’s return to slavery.To understand the importance of the story we must first recognize the importance of property rights.For example, if you own a farm, but another person tells you what to plant, where you can mow, and whom you must have for neighbors, your ownership becomes worthless.  That other...

Brown and Lewis praised the president-elect after the meeting at Trump Tower. They said they primarily spoke to Trump about Brown's Amer-I-Can philanthropy, which aims to keep kids away from gang violence. "We couldn't have had a better meeting," Brown said. "The graciousness, the intelligence, the reception we got was fantastic." Former "Apprentice" star Omarosa Manigault and Cleveland Pastor Darrell Scott, two of Trump's most prominent black supporters, sat in on the meeting. Scott told reporters that the president-elect gave a "verbal commitment" to merge Brown's program with the Trump administration. Throughout the campaign's closing stretch, Trump make direct appeals...

AFFH (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing), President Obama’s most radical regulation, continues to go virtually unmentioned in the campaign. You might think a policy that allows big cities to swallow up and control surrounding suburbs would be widely debated and discussed, especially in an election where the suburbs hold the balance of power. Instead, both presidential candidates make a point of avoiding the issue. Meanwhile, it’s become increasingly clear that AFFH is about a great deal more than housing. In truth, this sweepingly transformative regulation creates levers by which the feds can reach into almost every aspect of local government. In...

Dear Colleagues: As the Secretaries of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Transportation... Today, our agencies are calling on local education, transportation, and housing leaders to work together on issues at the intersection of our respective missions in helping to guarantee full access of opportunity across the country.

Obama is not a fan of America’s suburbs. Indeed, he intends to abolish them. Obama is a longtime supporter of “regionalism,” the idea that the suburbs should be folded into the cities, merging schools, housing, transportation, and above all taxation. One of Obama’s original trainers, Mike Kruglik, has hived off a new organization called Building One America In July of 2011, Kruglik’s Building One America held a conference at the White House. The ultimate goal [] is quite literally to abolish the suburbs. One approach is to force suburban residents into densely packed cities by blocking development on the outskirts...

On June 16, 2009, EPA joined with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U. S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to help improve access to affordable housing, more transportation options, and lower transportation costs while protecting the environment in communities nationwide. Through a set of guiding livability principles and a partnership agreement that will guide the agencies' efforts, this partnership will coordinate federal housing, transportation, and other infrastructure investments to protect the environment, promote equitable development, and help to address the challenges of climate change.

Today's installment of "We're Doomed, We're Doomed!" comes via The New York Times regarding the nomination of Dr. Ben Carson to head up the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Big-city mayors and housing experts are nervous about the idea of a billionaire real estate developer in the White House. Now President-elect Donald J. Trump has picked Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon with no housing experience, as his nominee for secretary of Housing and Urban Development — and high anxiety has set in. As The Times’s Mid-Atlantic bureau chief, I have spent a lot of time in Baltimore, Cleveland and...

Unable to copy and paste from Twitter, for some reason. There's a short statement from Pelosi at the link.

Dr. Ben Carson will be Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the president-elect’s transition team confirmed Monday morning. “Ben Carson has a brilliant mind and is passionate about strengthening communities and families within those communities,” Mr. Trump said in a statement released by his team.”We have talked at length about my urban renewal agenda and our message of economic revival, very much including our inner cities. Ben shares my optimism about the future of our country and is part of ensuring that this is a Presidency representing all Americans. He is a...

The policy will be viewed as punitive and cruel and noncompliance will be widespread. It is incredibly foolish and unkind. The U.S. Department of Homewrecking and Utopian Development (HUD) said it plans to forbid smoking in public housing units to protect millions of low-income tenants from the ridiculously over-hyped effects of secondhand tobacco smoke. The ban will affect more than 940,000 units of housing subsidized by federal taxpayers. “Every child deserves to grow up in a safe, healthy home free from harmful second-hand cigarette smoke,” head HUD honcho Julián Castro said in a statement.

President-elect Donald Trump has selected former GOP presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson as the head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a spokesman for Mr. Carson said. The spokesman, Armstrong Williams, said Mr. Carson was offered the HUD secretary post and has accepted it.

Ben Carson on Wednesday hinted that he would accept a position within President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet. Trump has said he is considering Carson to helm the Department of Housing and Urban Development, citing his former presidential rival's experience growing up in the "inner city." "After serious discussions with the Trump transition team, I feel that I can make a significant contribution particularly to making our inner cities great for everyone," Carson said on Facebook. "We have much work to do in strengthening every aspect of our nation and ensuring that both our physical infrastructure and our spiritual infrastructure is solid,"...

Donald Trump asked Ben Carson to consider serving as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, an advisor to the former Republican presidential candidate said Tuesday. They discussed the potential job at a meeting in the morning and Carson is "seriously considering" it, said the advisor, Armstrong Williams. "It’s a role that plays to Dr. Carson’s passions," he said. Asked what qualifications the retired neurosurgeon has for overseeing housing policy, Williams said: “Dr. Carson has experience with everything. You’d be shocked at the depth of his experience.”

WHOLE TITLE: "I am seriously considering Dr. Ben Carson as the head of HUD. I've gotten to know him well--he's a greatly talented person who loves people!"

Paralysis and “paranoia’’ brought on by US Attorney Preet Bharara’s ongoing corruption probe have come to define Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his administration with just seven days to go in the legislative session, a worried Cuomo ally and others have told The Post.

On the debate stage Monday night, Hillary Clinton smugly repeated the big lie that Democrats have been telling with something close to impunity since 2008. “We had the worst financial crisis, the Great Recession, the worst since the 1930s,” said Hillary. “That was in large part because of tax policies that slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle class, took their eyes off of Wall Street, and created a perfect storm.”

Targeting cities means targeting Democrats When HUD threatens communities with lawsuits and civil rights reviews, don’t expect political affiliations to help. Don’t expect discrimination to erode either. HUD has a different end in mind. Through their Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, the agency uses threats of lawsuits and the withholding of grant funds to control local zoning and land use. In Rockford, IL, the agency even forced the town council to reverse the voters’ decision not to move forward with an affordable housing project.

It is time to recognize that devious bureaucrats and out of control federal agencies are the real enemies of economic mobility (In a bold move, HUD partnered with the Departments of Transportation and Education to create a massive alteration in the way children experience school. The program is designed to help low-income families grow financially. Instead, it accomplishes something much different.) HUD is the ‘gold’ standard of dangerously unchecked bureaucracies. Dangerous because the agency’s zealous moves already threaten property owners’ choices and undermine the authority of local public officials.

Barack Obama is set to finalize a federal rule requiring many women’s shelters to admit men who identify as “transgender,” potentially placing abused women and children at risk of being victimized again. If enacted, all homeless shelters – including battered women’s shelters – that receive federal funding would have to allow people to use the homeless shelter of the sex with which they identify, regardless of their appearance, anatomy, or the “complaints of other shelter residents.” Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julián Castro proposed the so-called “Equal Access Rule” last October. Media outlets say it will become...