Shaun Donovan
(The jokes write themselves)
Posted on 07/27/2013 9:18:04 AM PDT by whitedog57
HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan gave an interesting speech at the NAACP meeting in Orlando on July 16th.
To be sure, inner city poverty is a serious problem. The public policy question is how to best address this problem. But HUD Secretary Donovan lays the blame on racial discrimination.
The key phrases in his speech are:
“Bottom line: people are being denied their freedom of choice and the benefits of full citizenship. Yet because of the subtle nature of this discrimination, often times, they don’t even know they have been subjected to this abuse.”
“That’s why HUD is enhancing its enforcement techniques by initiating investigations on our own without waiting for individuals to file complaints.”
This reminds me of the Federal government decision to slaughter barred owls … in order to save the spotted owl. The government is picking winners and losers … even for wildlife. So, rather than Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” model, Donovan is adopting the “Father Knows Best” model.
FatherKnowsBest_S2
“Today, it’s about more than just addressing outright discrimination and access to the housing itself. It’s also about giving every community access to important neighborhood amenities that can make a tremendous difference in a person’s life outcome. I’m talking about good schools, safe streets, jobs, grocery stores, healthcare and a host of other important factors. To help families gain this access – HUD is working to strengthen our stewardship of federal dollars to maximize the impact they have on communities in advancing fair housing goals.”
In other words, Donovan is saying the minority neighborhoods are unsafe and have lousy schools (despite the staggering dollars spent). Rather than promoting jobs and economic growth to help minorities, Donovan is suggesting spreading minorities out into affluent areas (specifically suburbs).
He has suggested this approach before. In fact, he suggested building affordable housing in safe neighborhoods with good schools. Such as in Westchester County in New York.
How would Donovan’s plan work? HUD would create maps of housing and racial composition by neighborhood. If a neighborhood (or other metric) does not have the desired composition, the neighborhood/country/state would be punished by withholding Federal funds … and God knows what else.
Rather than adopt this approach, I would suggest that the Obama Administration focus on job creation giving minority households a chance to escape dangerous neighborhoods. Without job and wage growth, how will Donovan’s plan help other than spreading the misery of poverty? I refer to his approach as “Donovan’s Reef” since the economy is stuck on a reef and Donovan just wants to spread the misery of poverty.
“African-Americans,” Donovan said, “are being denied their freedom of choice.”
So, is Secretary Donovan and President Obama advocating redlining? That is, drawing lines around neighborhoods? It is legal for the government to redline neighborhoods but not lenders? Huh?
I suggest that Secretary Donovan read Nobel Laureate James Buchanan’s “The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan.” Donovan’s proposal definitely shows up on the leviathan side of the ledger.
Discrimination by race is unlawful and there are already many laws on the book aimed at discrimination. Inner city poverty, crime and rotten schools are a tragedy, so I admire Secretary Donovan trying to do SOMETHING. But Donovan’s model is an unnecessary intrusion in the free market ,and will likely not solve the problem at hand.
What will help? Economic growth and jobs. And enforcing anti-discrimination laws already on the books.
Big Shaun Donovan!
DONOVANS-REEF
UPDATE: Even the Executive Office of The President of the United States found this interesting. They were on my site of Friday afternoon (and also on my website numerous times).
prez1prez2
Bets on an audit?
See charts of internet usage. SCARY! Hope this guy makes it through the weekend.
Shaun Donovan
(The jokes write themselves)
*** Donovan is suggesting spreading minorities out into affluent areas (specifically suburbs). ***
It has already been done. It is called Section 8 housing and destroyed the areas it has moved into.
South Peoria in Tulsa used to be a nice place to live. The movement of the poor into the area has caused businesses to flee and crime to skyrocket. It is now almost a ghetto area.
Not sure race has aything to do with it. That is, if any group of people acted likfe criminals, animals - wouldn’t normal people tend to avoid such an unsafe environment?
Affordable housing in Bel Air, Ca and River Oaks, Houston and Scarsdale, NY ? That will really happen.
The Democratic [sic] party’s solution to the problem of inner city poverty is to impoverish the entire nation. No wonder leftist extremists claim to be so far beyond us moral and intellectual laggards.
David Butler writes:
“Bring it on, brotherman. Blockbusting goes main line. Give Al Sharpto and Jesse exclusive brokerage on the princincts. I’ll work as sub-broker. Time to get whitey on the move again. I’m talking Detroit City, dude. Millions to be made here! Lets go before the midterms”
It’s the new angle on government social engineering, called “disparate impact” - in other words, no one did anything wrong, no one broke the law, no one denied anyone lawful means to a for-sale listing or a mortgage - but people simply did not move, demographically, to the same places in a “racially diverse” pattern - thus, “disparate impact”.
Earlier an Obama official had a Federal “discrimination” case removed from a court docket, because (a) “disparate impact” was the rationale they were using and (b) they lost the case and were going to lose it on appeal, and (c) they did not want to risk seeing the ruling against them upheld by the higher courts, setting the court precedents that undermine their attempts to continue to use that rationale.
So, true to form, dam the Constitution and the law, the most ideological U.S. administration ever is going to pursue its ideological demands, no matter what.
Audited? Try arrested. Off to Mauthausen with him~!
Donovan is moving beyond taking your neighborhood, now he wants your house. To complete this cycle of fairness, you must be moved to the inner city.
It'll reach SCOTUS eventually, but by then Obama hopes to do as much damage as possible, measured in flowing blood (beatdowns) and rising smoke (black rage).
By then, too, he may have his packed Soviet Court.
There, try that. Does that sound more like Whitey-haters Obama and Jarrett at work?
“It’ll reach SCOTUS eventually,”
“disparate impact” might, but the case I was referring to, the case the Obama admin pulled, will not be the case any SCOTUS appeal will be based on; THAT will have to await suits against Holder’s current activities attempting to use that rationale.
From the article: “Rather than adopt this approach, I would suggest that the Obama Administration focus on job creation giving minority households a chance to escape dangerous neighborhoods.”
But, but, who makes the neighborhoods unsafe? It would be the people who live in them, wouldn’t it?
HUD is using Westchester County, New York as their prototype in “re-engineering society”. Read what Westchester’s county executive, Rob Astorino, is fighting. The biggest hypocrisy is that the left-wing democrats in Westchester love progressive ideas until it means that low-income housing is going to be put right next to their seven-figure mansion in Scarsdale, Pound Ridge, Chappaqua, etc.
HUD used this tactic almost 30 years ago in another Westchester city, Yonkers. A federal judge declared that Yonkers was intentionally segregating its schools because all of the housing projects and section 8 recipients lived in the southwest part of the city. The judge ordered that low-income housing be built in 8 middle class neighborhoods that were deemed as ‘too white’. The result? A massive ‘white flight’ to the northern suburbs which has eroded the tax base and has the city teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
http://www.robastorino.com/issues/affordable-housing-settlement/
Has anybody ever studied the effects of the mass movement of people after Hurricane Katrina?
The flight has ever been true. You screw up a neighborhood by forcing people of different socioeconomic backgrounds to live together it rarely works out. They must have some sort of common values before it works. Living off of government housing and food stamps hardly makes you beverly hills material
Oh yes, the moderate income neighborhood I grew up in was clean and friendly back then. Now it is a slum, filthy, dangerous and not a neighborhood you would want to visit.
The park 3 blocks from my home, where I spent many a summer day playing soft ball or dolls with my friends is now a gang hangout where drug deals are made and there are lots of shootings I am told. Thank you section 8. I no longer live in that city or that state or even that part of the country.
So we have dumbed down our schools and now we are to make all the neighborhoods slums?
There is trash in every race but I think they are happier with their own kind, just as I am. I suppose I am a racist but it is the culture not the color that matters to me. Hasn’t it always been that way? Ask my Irish immigrant ancestors. They got over it.
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