Free Republic

Hey, take a look at what I found on the EPA's website (Yes, I have a life. Really. I do. Promise.): ********************************** "Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. Fair treatment means that no group of people should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or policies. Meaningful involvement means that: (1) people have an opportunity to participate in decisions about activities that may...

I have heard that the government has started selling lots of foreclosed homes to government approved real estate management firms or property liquidators. 1. Where is more information on this process? 2. Who is getting to bid on lots of homes, how do we find out who is awarded the properties? 3. What are the long term ramifications of this?

Actual title is : It’s baaack! The plan to kill talk radio. Group advising White House wants to restore controversial policy An organization that helped to craft President Obama’s environmental policies has recommended the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, purportedly as a method of silencing critics of the theory of global warming. The Presidential Climate Action Project, or PCAP, last year released an extensive list of recommendations for the White House in a 75-page paper entitled, “Building the Obama Administration’s Climate Legacy.” Primary among the PCAP’s recommendations is that the Department of Energy should join the U.S. Department of Housing...

Last year, we told you about a proposed rule from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regarding equal access to HUD housing programs regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Among the key requirements of the rule is a prohibition on inquires regarding sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as a prohibition on using sexual orientation or gender identity as grounds for decision-making in Federal Housing Administration (FHA) programs. Additionally, the rule brings the definition of “eligible families” into the 21st century by including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT). This afternoon, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan...

What might cause the New York Times editorial board to find, in New York’s suburban Westchester County, an example of “a struggle for racial integration [that] is neither bygone nor exclusively Southern”? Why might “county leaders [be] stonewalling federal authorities over a longstanding housing desegregation case”?More or less, a Republican executive in a deep blue district. Over the past two years, county executive Rob Astorino has garnered widespread attention and praise for defending his county against racially tinged federal overreach in a mundane affordable-housing case, while also reducing the onerous costs of county government.In recent decades, Westchester’s wealth has...

-Hakim Ouansafi, chairman of the Muslim Association of Hawaii and a longtime executive in the hotel industry here, has been selected as the newest head of the state’s public housing agency. The board of the Hawaii Public Housing Agency is scheduled to vote on Ouansafi’s appointment tomorrow. His selection must also be approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. If approved, Ouansafi, 47, would be the ninth executive to serve at the top of the troubled agency in 14 years.

Full Title: Government Pamphlet Taught Banks How To Finance A $70,000 Home With A $500 Downpayment A government publication offering banks guidance on "community development" urged banks to offering low-income borrowers loans with many of the features now deplored as irresponsible and lax lending. The two-volume set uncovered by Clusterstock was titled EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FINANCE/COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT RESOURCE GUIDE.

What you’re about to read is a real blood-boiler. Mortgage meltdowns and housing bubbles don’t cause themselves, they are caused. The root cause of our current housing mess was massive government intervention that went horribly wrong. In previous columns, we covered the early precipitating causes. Now, let’s stroll back to the latter half of the 1990s decade. The Clinton Administration had already hot-wired CRA and HUD to extend home ownership to all citizens, regardless of their creditworthiness. Congress and the Federal Reserve then jumped on the bandwagon. This activism caused mortgage standards to be relaxed across the industry. Clinton juiced-up...

Today's adjustment to the government's HARP program to get anything with a pulse as close to the discount window as possible was not the only proposal to revive the moribund US housing market. According to a new proposal by HUD, beginning this month and continuing for a year, anyone with a just $100 will be allowed to buy a HUD-owned REO home. In essence: the new buyer is merely taking over the mortgage payments in a repeat of what happened in 1970s New York along the Central Park West corridor. Granted for now it is stricly limited to only... 28...

As we all expected, the occupy Wall Street movement is fake and contrived like most things the socialist democrats do. The crowds are a fraction of what Tea Party organizations draw and they obviously do not represent 99-percent. The “occupy insert city here” movement is a bitter faction of radical communists who want to overthrow the very fabric of American society, plain and simple.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday supported President Barack Obama's proposal to tax millionaires and corporations at a higher rate to pay for a jobs program. Cuomo initially declined to comment during a Monday press conference on Obama's proposal until he received "specifics." Hours later, Cuomo urged Congress to support the Democratic president's proposal. Cuomo killed a state proposal by his fellow Democrats in the Assembly earlier this year that would have increased the income tax on wealthier New Yorkers. He said it would hurt the economy and chase wealthier New Yorkers and employers to neighboring states.

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will award Chicago $30.5 million to redevelop the Woodlawn neighborhood on the city's south side. The grant is part of HUD's Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, a plan to bring affordable housing, safer streets and better schools to distressed neighborhoods. Under the program, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago have received a total of $122 million

Four teenagers were wounded Tuesday night in a drive-by shooting in the city's WestWoodlawn neighborhood on the South Side, officials said. The scene of the shooting is just blocks fromWoodlawn Center South, where Mayor Rahm Emanuel is scheduled to meet later today with U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan, Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Bobby Rush to discuss a program to revitalize the blighted neighborhood.

Time after time, we have found that this administration cares not one whit about following basic laws. What does it mean for Congress to pass and the president to sign a law banning a corrupt organization and its affiliates from receiving federal funds? Apparently the Obama administration could care less. As you will recall, the Obama Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded a grant of $79,819 to ACORN spin-off Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA), despite the fact that Barack Obama signed the ACORN funding ban in October 2009. (And despite the fact that the organization was nailed...

OPINION AUGUST 18, 2011 Raising Hell in Subsidized Housing Section 8 rental subsidies have long helped ruin neighborhoods. Obama administration policies are making things worse. BY JAMES BOVARD Section 8 rental subsidies have long been one of the most controversial federal social programs. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under the Obama administration is making a troubled program worse. In the 1990s, the feds were embarrassed by skyrocketing crime rates in public housing—up to 10 times the national average, according to HUD studies and many newspaper reports. The government’s response was to hand out vouchers to residents of...

Just when you thought you might sleep better at night, with only worries about feeding your family, keeping your job and home in a terrible economy, the debt ceiling just raised to $2.8 trillion, the United Nation’s “Sustainability” Agenda 21 marches on with the help of a myriad of private and governmental organizations nationwide dedicated to the “fundamental change” of America as we know it. The HUD Secretary just announced on July 28, 2011 the availability of $95 million to support “sustainable local initiatives” through the fiscal year 2011 Regional Planning and Community Challenge Planning Grant Programs. It seems like...

State attorneys general are negotiating to give major banks wide immunity over irregularities in handling foreclosures, even as evidence has emerged that banks are continuing to file questionable documents. A coalition of all 50 states' attorneys general has been negotiating settlements with five of the biggest U.S. banks that would include payment of up to $25 billion in penalties and commitments to follow new rules. In exchange, the banks would get immunity from civil lawsuits by the states, as well as similar guarantees by the Justice Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development, which have participated in the talks.

As a tactic for generating federal subsidies, "bait and switch" works. Case in point: The now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. The blogosphere has been alive during the past week over the release this past March by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) of a grant of nearly $80,000 to Affordable Housing Centers of America, which until 18 months ago operated as ACORN Housing Corporation. Though the grant was a carryover from fiscal year 2010, the revelation notwithstanding raises the possibility that the Obama administration is ignoring a 2009 congressional ban on...

President Obama’s favorite La Raza group has teamed up with a federal agency to promote one of the administration’s many government cash giveaways with Spanish ads encouraging Latinos—possibly illegal immigrants—to apply for free U.S. taxpayer dollars.The new campaign warns Hispanics that time is running out to get up to “$50,000 in help” from Uncle Sam to pay their mortgage, past due charges, taxes, insurance and even legal fees associated with their home. The money is being disbursed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as part of a billion-dollar Emergency Homeowner Loan Program (EHLP).In 2008 the agency revealed...

Why is Obama apparently defying federal law by funding ACORN? Judicial Watch discovered the administration is flouting the will of Congress by giving federal money to ACORN.Obama's HUD  gave a $79,819 grant to the largest branch of the ACORN tree, ACORN Housing Corp. . AHC filed papers last year legally changing its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America. Worse yet, the grant funds a political agitation and indoctrination program. Here's HUD's euphemistic description of the program: Education and Outreach Initiative grants (EOI) - HUD awarded $6.8 million to organizations that educate the public and housing providers about their rights and obligations under federal, state,...