Free Republic

Is that what we’re calling it now? Let’s see if I have this straight. When men and women and children were kidnapped from their villages and separated from their families and packed into rickety ships for months at a time to be traded for tobacco and cotton and cloth and grain, that was immigration? When people were branded with hot irons like cattle on a ranch so that ownership of one human being by another human being would not be in dispute, that was immigration? When women were raped for no other reason than that it was Tuesday, or Friday...

Massachusetts' very own profile in courage - U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren - Thursday voted against the only African-American nominee to Donald Trump's Cabinet, Ben Carson, who was confirmed as secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The funny thing is that Warren was pretty much OK with voting in favor of the former neurosurgeon back when his nomination was being considered by the Senate Banking Committee - a mere five weeks ago. In fact, at the time Warren wrote an extensive Facebook post, defending her support for Carson even though "he is not the nominee I wanted." "But 'the nominee I...

Carson earned much-deserved admiration when he famously spoke truth to power to expose the evils of Obamacare Former presidential contender and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was sworn in today as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development after being confirmed 58 to 41 earlier in the day by the United States Senate. Also today, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry was confirmed as energy secretary 62 to 37 and sworn in.

Carson in, racists outed.

Ben Carson is now officially confirmed as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, following the Senate vote Thursday morning. The approval locks in one of the few remaining cabinet members left to be approved. The Senate floor voted the day before on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of Carson, passing the vote 62-37. The significant majority vote gave Carson a likely green light to be confirmed on Thursday. Despite a controversial start to his nomination, it turned out to be all bark and no bite as his hearing went fairly smooth. The former neurosurgeon...

Programs like Joseph Project, the Miss Mary Project create real sustainable success that can blossom into prosperity and change lives. If HUD will use their vast communications network to support those community efforts, we will shrink poverty Since the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has expanded its mandate to enforce these laws by labeling everything that is not equal, from the educational experience and housing, to the relative wealth of your residential zip code, as discriminatory.

Much of AFFH is buried in regulatory law Yes, President Trump can halt HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing program even before Dr. Carson is confirmed. If you follow the news, you probably noticed that President Trump is moving quickly on his campaign promises. You have also probably noticed that the Senate opposition is slow-walking his cabinet appointments to make it harder to for the president to address regulatory actions.

“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.