Free Republic

“Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.”These were the infamous words President Barack Obama used to scold congressional Republicans just three days after his inauguration in 2009, foreshadowing how he would approach policymaking for the next eight years.Rather than listening to and trying to work with Republicans, Obama governed through brute force—with his “pen and phone” more often than with the consent of Congress—guided by the dictates of his progressive ideology rather than the interests of the American people.In virtually every policy area—from health care and immigration to the deployment of American troops and the...

Mary Kinney quietly retired last year as Ginnie Mae’s chief operating officer after officials there paid $900,000 to settle a subordinate’s racism complaint against her, then cashed in on her public service experience to land a position in a firm that uses minority status to win non-competitive government contracts. Kinney — who is caucasian — also claimed the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) picked her for its most prestigious employee award in 2015, after it found out about conduct it called “utterly humiliating” and “race denigrating” toward blacks and determined that “discriminatory malice permeated her mindset.” But HUD...

Lost in the tumult over Islamic port deals and Katrina video capers is the recently released -- and willfully ignored -- Barrett Report. David Barrett, you'll recall, is the independent counsel appointed in 1995 to investigate allegations of impropriety against President Clinton's Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros. Mr. Barrett found his path mined by the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service and President Clinton's attorneys, even after Mr. Clinton departed the White House. He prepared 18 felony indictments against Mr. Cisneros but had to settle for a guilty plea on a misdemeanor charge (lying to the...

Lost in the tumult over Islamic port deals and Katrina video capers is the recently released -- and willfully ignored -- Barrett Report. David Barrett, you'll recall, is the independent counsel appointed in 1995 to investigate allegations of impropriety against President Clinton's Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros. Mr. Barrett found his path mined by the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service and President Clinton's attorneys, even after Mr. Clinton departed the White House. He prepared 18 felony indictments against Mr. Cisneros but had to settle for a guilty plea on a misdemeanor charge (lying to the...

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Dr. Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development-designate, told a story. He said his mother was a domestic who cleaned beautiful homes. One day she asked him if he would rather live in those nice houses or the house in which he and his brother lived in Detroit. She told him that only he could decide the type of home he would eventually live in by how much he studied in school and the choices he made for his life. Thus motivated, Carson said he went from last in his class to first,...

During his confirmation hearing Thursday, Ben Carson repeatedly refused to guarantee that money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development would not go to benefit President-elect Donald Trump or his family. “Among the billions of dollars that you will be handing out in grants and loans, can you just assure us that not one dollar will go to benefit either the president-elect or his family?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) asked. “I can assure you that the things that I do are driven by a sense of morals and values,” Carson responded. “And therefore I will absolutely not play favorites...

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.”