Posted on 07/30/2013 5:03:16 PM PDT by neverdem
The consensus response to President Obamas Knox College speech on the economy is that the administration has been reduced to pushing a menu of stale and timid policies that, in any case, wont be enacted. But what if the administration isnt actually out of ideas? What if Obamas boldest policy initiative is merely something hed rather not discuss? And what if that initiative is being enacted right now?
A year ago, I published Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. There I described the presidents second-term plan to press a transformative regionalist agenda on the country. Early but unmistakable signs indicate that Obamas regionalist push is well underway. Yet the president doesnt discuss his regionalist moves and the press does not report them.
The most obvious new element of the presidents regionalist policy initiative is the July 19 publication of a Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to affirmatively further fair housing. The apparent purpose of this rule change is to force suburban neighborhoods with no record of housing discrimination to build more public housing targeted to ethnic and racial minorities. Several administration critics noticed the change and challenged it, while the mainstream press has simply declined to cover the story.
Yet even critics have missed the real thrust of HUDs revolutionary rule change. Thats understandable, since the Obama administration is at pains to downplay the regionalist philosophy behind its new directive. The truth is, HUDs new rule is about a great deal more than forcing racial and ethnic diversity on the suburbs. (Regionalism, by the way, is actually highly controversial among minority groups. There are many ways in which both middle-class minorities in suburbs, and less well-off minorities in cities, can be hurt by regionalist policiesanother reason those plans are seldom discussed.)
The new HUD rule is really about changing the way Americans live. It is part of a broader suite of initiatives designed to block suburban development, press Americans into hyper-dense cities, and force us out of our cars. Government-mandated ethnic and racial diversification plays a role in this scheme, yet the broader goal is forced economic integration. The ultimate vision is to make all neighborhoods more or less alike, turning traditional cities into ultra-dense Manhattans, while making suburbs look more like cities do now. In this centrally-planned utopia, steadily increasing numbers will live cheek-by-jowl in stack and pack high-rises close to public transportation, while automobiles fall into relative disuse. To understand how HUDs new rule will help enact this vision, we need to turn to a less-well-known example of the Obama administrations regionalist interventionism.
In the face of heated public protest, on July 18, two local agencies in metropolitan San Francisco approved Plan Bay Area, a region-wide blueprint designed to control development in the nine-county, 101-town region around San Francisco for the next 30 years. The creation of a region-wide development planalthough it flies in the face of Americas core democratic commitment to local controlis mandated by Californias SB 375, the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008. The ostensible purpose of this law is to combat global warming through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. That is supposedly why Californias legislature empowered regional planning commissions to override local governments and press development away from suburbs into densely-packed urban areas. In fact, the reduction of greenhouse gases (which Plan Bay Area does little to secure) largely serves as a pretext for undercutting the political and economic independence of California suburbs.
Essentially, Plan Bay Area attempts to block the development of any new suburbs, forcing all population growth over the next three decades into the existing urban footprint of the region. The plan presses 70-80 percent of all new housing and 66 percent of all business expansion into 150 or so priority development areas (PDAs), select neighborhoods near subway stations and other public transportation facilities. This scheme will turn up to a quarter of the regions existing neighborhoodsmany now dotted with San Franciscos famously picturesque, Victorian-style single-family homesinto mini-Manhattans jammed with high-rises and tiny apartments. The densest PDAs will be many times denser than Manhattan. (See the powerful ten-minute audio-visual assault on Plan Bay Area at the 45-55 minute mark of this debate.)
In effect, by preventing the development of new suburbs, and reducing traditional single-family home development in existing suburbs, Plan Bay Area will squeeze 30 years worth of in-migrating population into a few small urban enclaves, and force most new businesses into the same tight quarters. The result will be a steep increase in the Bay Areas already out-of-control housing prices. This will hit the poor and middle class the hardest. While some poor and minority families will receive tiny subsidized apartments in the high-rise PDAs, many others will find themselves displaced by the new development, or priced out of the local housing market altogether.
A regional plan that blocks traditional suburban development, densifies cities, and urbanizes suburbs on this scale is virtually unprecedented. Thats why the Obama administration awarded the agencies behind Plan Bay Area its second-highest Sustainable Communities Grant in 2012. Indeed, the terms of the administrations grant reinforce the pressure for density. The official rationale behind the federal award is encouraging connections between jobs, housing, and transportation.
That sounds like a directive to locate new residentspoor and minorities includedin existing prosperous communities. In fact, HUDs new emphasis on connecting jobs housing and transportation does more. In practice, bland bureaucratic language about blending jobs, housing, and transportation pressures localities to create Manhattan-style priority development areas. The San Francisco case reveals the administrations broader intentions. Soon HUD and other agencies will begin to press localities directly, rather than through the medium of Californias new regionalist scheme. Replicating Plan Bay Area nationwide is the Obama administrations goal.
The Enactment of Plan Bay Area was wildly controversial among those who managed to learn about it, yet went largely unnoticed in the region as a whole. One of the chief complaints of the plans opponents was the relative lack of publicity accorded a decision with such transformative implications. Critics called for a public vote, and complained that the bureaucrats in charge hadnt been elected.
Another theme of critics was that the fix seemed to be in from the start. Input was largely ignored, opponents claimed, and public forums offered only the illusion of consultation. Although its gone largely unreported, that accusation is far truer than even the opponents of Plan Bay Area realize.
Heres where the Obama administration comes in. Not only does acceptance of the administrations $5 million grant make it next-to-impossible to de-densify Plan Bay Area, but the grant itself helps to fund grassroots supporters of the planleftist groups dedicated to radicalizing the scheme still further.
The administrations sustainable communities grants generally require recipients to partner with local leftist community organizations. Opponents of Plan Bay Area often outnumber supporters at public meetings. Yet such supporters as are presentgroups like TransForm, the Greenbelt Alliance, Marin Grassroots, and East Bay Housing Organizationare funded[PDF] (or slated to be funded)with the help of the same federal grant that backs up the bureaucrats in charge.
Press accounts of the Plan Bay Area controversy generally say nothing about the financial interest that non-profit grassroots organizations have in passage of the plan, or about pressures on the bureaucrats in charge to maintain their government-mandated partnerships with these community organizations. So when opponents of Plan Bay Area complain about officials simply going through the motions of public consultation, theyre right. The deck is stacked, the fix is in. By way of the federal grant, many of the grassroots groups that support Plan Bay Area are actually partners of the decision makers (the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments). The Obama administrations role in all this, while generally unnoticed, is substantial.
If you complain that the regional bureaucracy behind Plan Bay Area undercuts democracy and local control, youll be told that local governments retain full authority over land-use within their jurisdictions. In reality, Plan Bay Area subverts that control, and the Obama administration plays a role here as well. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (one of the two agencies in charge of Plan Bay Area) doles out state and federal transportation assistance. Now that Plan Bay Area has been formally approved, MTC can withhold billions of dollars in federal aid from suburban jurisdictions that refuse to densify, leaving local bridges and highways in disrepair. One of the core goals of the Obama administrations Sustainable Communities Initiative is to use federal transportation aid as a stick to force regionalist planning on unwilling suburbs.
Recalcitrant suburbs can also be brought to heel by lawsuits claiming violations of federal fair housing law. Californias SB375 facilitates such suits by placing the burden of proof on local jurisdictions accused of housing discrimination. Such legal claims are often brought by leftist community organizations of the type currently funded through the Obama administrations grant.
When criticism of Plan Bay Area reached a crescendo in suburban Marin Countythe center of public opposition to the planthe bureaucrats pared back their demands for densification in a few resistant municipalities. Obamas HUD responded by charging that failure to assign more multifamily housing to suburban jurisdictions could violate federal fair housing law. So what looks like a softening of Plan Bay Areas demands on a few suburban municipalities may ultimately be reversed. By publicly declaring suburban non-cooperation with Plan Bay Area a potential violation of federal housing law, and by funding organizations that could sue to bring resistant suburbs into compliance, the Obama administration is serving as a key enforcer of this controversial scheme.
All of which returns us to HUDs controversial new regulation expanding the obligation of recipients of federal aid to affirmatively further fair housing. When HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced that rule change, he acknowledged that it wasnt really focused on preventing outright discrimination and access to the housing itself. The Obama administration is using traditional anti-discrimination language as a cover for a re-engineering the way we live. The real goal is to Manhattanize America, and force us out of our cars.
The Plan Bay Area precedent makes it clear that HUD will use data on access to housing, jobs, and transportation to press densification on both urban and suburban jurisdictions. With the new HUD rule in place, municipalities will be under heavy pressure to allow multifamily developments in areas previously zoned for single-family housing. The new counting scheme, which measures access to housing, jobs, and transportation, will simultaneously create pressures to push businesses into the newly densified areas, and to locate those centers near transportation hubs. In effect, HUDs new rule gives the federal government a tool to press ultra-dense Plan Bay Area-style priority development areas on regions across the country.
HUDs new rule also allows the creation of regional housing consortia. Although the choice to join such regional housing partnerships would technically be voluntary, the administration will be able to use the same combination of legal threats and funding leverage weve seen in San Francisco to pressure municipalities to join the consortia.
Over the next few years, select Regional Planning Grants funded under the Obama administrations Sustainable Communities Initiative will be issuing regional development plans guided by the same philosophy that informs Plan Bay Area. So even in states without California-style regionalist legislation in place, a federally-funded structure with the potential to override local control, block suburban development, and force densification will be created. The Obama administrations goal is to use legal and financial carrots and sticks to press Plan Bay Area clones on regions across the country through its federally-funded Regional Planning Grant program. The new HUD rule will be folded into this broader strategy. (I lay out the structure, philosophy, and history of that strategy in Spreading the Wealth.)
When Secretary Donovan announced the sweeping new HUD rule, he said: Make no mistake: this is a big deal. Hes right. Yet the mainstream press has ignored the change, as well as the broader story behind it. Recognizing the politically explosive nature of its regionalist plans, the Obama administration does little to connect the dots for the public at large. Above all, the president himself avoids this issue, although its deeply embedded in his administrations policies.
Obama isnt actually out of bold ideas. Theyre simply too controversial for him to discuss. The time has come for a national debate on the Obama administrations regionalist policies.
“We have nothing to fear with Barack Obama in the White House”
As unpopular Michael Savage is to some, he made a prediction early in the bam years that we’d enter a Doctor Zhivago stage where you fill in a questionnaire as to your home square footage, number of rooms, unused areas etc, and they’d be reassigned as living quarters for the indigent. I think we’re going there fast.
Just part of the UN’s Agenda 21. Once the majority of the population is urbanized, they will have total control at their fingertips: water, food, electric, utilities, security, etc. Peasants get rowdy and the electric or water goes of for a couple of days. I think the movie “Soylent Green” paints a good representative picture of what life will be like.
Stealth implementation of Agenda 21. I’m surprised this article didn’t mention it.
This isn’t Obama’s initiative; this is Agenda 21, which has been in the works since 1992.
Nobody in the press bothered to ask just what the hell that meant.
In Russia several families would share an apartment.
Obama is a urban community organizer, in order to
“transform” the nation the only way he knows how
is to turn it all into innercity ghettos.
That sounds a bit more accurate to me.
However, this is not happening. Obama is crowding people into mega cities at a time when the global birthrate is collapsing, when Mexican immigration is nearly halted, our own birthrate has fallen below replacement level, and we have more land set aside for wildlife than ever before.
This is why I am becoming a fan of John B. Calhoun, whose experiments in population density can explain a lot of our current problems in society, because there aren't a lot of rational reasons for all this.
Agree, but I don’t think Obie’s new BFF Johnny Mac would.
The Census Bureau is pushing an "American Community Survey" right now, which I believe is sniffing around that very topic.
Here's an updated Keepers of state ping lists
Alabama Jemian
Alaska Jet Jaguar
Arizona
Arkansas mosaicwolf; ConservativeMan55
California
Colorado george76
Connecticut RaceBannon
Delaware imardmd1
District of Columbia BufordP; trooprally
Florida Joe Brower
Georgia FreedomPoster
Hawaii
Idaho GOP_Raider
Illinois 1010RD
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky SLB; RonPaulLives
Louisiana cajunconservative
Maine
Maryland Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Massachusetts
Michigan cripplecreek
Minnesota MplsSteve
Mississippi WKB; Islander7
Missouri JustAnotherJoe
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada Las Vegas Ron
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico CedarDave
New York neverdem; The Mayor
North Carolina Constitution Day; TaxRelief
North Dakota
Ohio Las Vegas Dave
Oklahoma 2Jedismom
Oregon Salvation
Pennsylvania P.O.E.
Rhode Island
South Carolina SC Swamp Fox; upchuck
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas Texas Fossil; Windflier; texas booster
Utah
Vermont
Virginia Perdogg
Washington Baynative
West Virginia
Wisconsin afraidfortherepublic
Wyoming
You can find the list at the bottom of my homepage.
The Chicagoization and Detroitification of America continue “Forward! full speed backward.
GA ping. This is an important article. The Atlanta Regional Commission is one of the unelected governmental groups the pols are using to foist this nonsense off on us.
SFL
FUBO is so easy to say, yet so fitting.
Workers of the world, unite! Throw off your communist oppressors!
Obama is crowding people into mega cities at a time when the global birthrate is collapsing,
I meant to say Soylent Green will reflect the probable conditions of the peasants (us) in the mega cities. Won’t make any difference of the cause of the high density only the results of the high density living. A note, NYC is planning to approve the construction of 700,000 325 sq ft apartments for the modern urban resident. These have no full kitchens and residents are expected to eat most of their meals out. Think about it if they force people out of the rural and suburban areas into cities with millions of these type residences.
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