Posted on 10/21/2013 11:10:26 AM PDT by jazusamo
Video at link.
Arizona is defying a federal order to eliminate apartments for deaf seniors at a housing complex built specifically -- for the deaf.
"I think it's about the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a while," said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who attempted to negotiate the impasse. "There are a lot of stories of out-of-control regulators, but this just seems to be going to the extreme."
A 2005 federal study found that the U.S. had virtually no affordable housing for the deaf. So the federal government helped build Apache ASL Trails, a 75-unit apartment building in Tempe, Ariz., designed specifically for the deaf. Ninety-percent of the units are currently occupied by deaf and deaf-blind seniors.
But now, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development says Apache ASL Trails violates civil rights law -- because it shows a preference for the hearing-impaired.
"A preference or priority based on a particular diagnosis or disability and excluding others with different disabilities is explicitly prohibited by HUD's Section 504 regulations," says a HUD memo about the project. "There is no legal authority contained in any of Apache Trails funding to permit such a priority or preference."
HUD is threatening to pull all federal housing aid to Arizona unless it limits the number of hearing-impaired residents to 18 people. The agency would not forcibly remove current residents, but wants many of their units to be blocked off to deaf residents in the future once they leave.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Big government program out of control? Gosh, how did that happen? Tsunami? ATM machines? Bush’s fault? Racism?/s
While I know that there are Constitution-respecting patriots in Arizona, with respect to Obama guard dogs like RINO John McCain, I have recently concluded that Arizona is all mixed up where state sovereignty issues are concerned.
Here's the laundry list concerning Apache ASL Trails housing. (Are you ready for this?)
Not only have the states never granted the federal government the constitutonal authority to regulate, tax and spend for public housing and public urban development purposes, but consider the following. Even if Congress had the constitutional authority to regulate housing, the Founding States made the Constitution's Sections 1-3 of Article I to clarify that all federal regulatory powers are vested in the elected members of Congress. So Congress has a constitutional monopoly on federal legislative powers whether it wants it or not.
So the only reason that I can see that state lawmakers say "How high?" when the unelected bureaucrats of constitutionally undefined federal agencies like HUD and EPA shout "Jump!" with respect to accepting constitutionally indefensible federal funding is this. Arizona's lawmakers, for example, are as clueless about the federal government's constitutionally limited powers as the citizens who elected them to office must be.
Next ...
Regarding the federal civil rights laws that HUD is concerned about, Section 1 of the 14th Amendment clarifies that the only power that Congress has to make civil rights laws is when such laws reinforce existing constitutonal protections and immunities. But since the states have never delegated to Congress, via the Constitution, the speciific power to address healthcare, constitutionally undefined HUD is actually trying to force Arizona to comply with constitutionally indefensible federal laws.
But wait! There's more!
Note that Justice John Marshall had officially clarified that Congress is prohibited from laying taxes in the name of state power issues.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." --Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
So since public housing is actually a 10th Amendment-protected state power issue, the federal funds that "pro-state sovereignty" Arizona lawmakers accepted to help build Apache ASL Trails arguably should have never left the state in the first place. So why didn't Arizona lawmakers protest when they see Congress stealing from taxpayers in the form of constitutionally indefensible federal taxes when they accept federal funds that Justice Marshall had clarified in general that Congress cannot justify laying taxes for under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers?
I suppose that Arizona state lawmakers can argue that they were just trying to recover stolen state revenues.
Are we having fun yet?
What a mess! :^(
Ditto to Jazusamo’s comment: The Feds want to throw these hearing impaired out of their residences, unbelievable but not surprising.
I remember when the former Democrat Mayor of Toledo, Ohio proposed moving the deaf into houses along the runways at the Toledo Airport when locals began pushing for noise abatement.
Seriously, is the Obama administration targeting the weak, elderly, handicapped, young children, and the sick by being especially cruel to them?
Do they get together on weekends with cages of small animals and hold “stomping” parties? Play tennis with mice? Burn kittens in bonfires?
What is up with sick people like them?
Typical Feds, one hand doesn’t know who the other hand is doing.They know exactly what they're doing...to Arizona.
The Feds want to throw these hearing impaired out of their residences, unbelievable but not surprising.
Ah, but if they were deaf muslim seniors....
This is another of the endlessly accumulating reasons why socialism sucks.
USSA nanny state on overdrive.
Nanny State PING!
Thanks for the ping!
This reminds me a lot of what happened in my community. The city built a complex for low-income seniors, focusing on the frail elderly. Feds say you can’t discriminate due to age and younger disabled people need to be allowed in. City already has a similar facility for disabled and says they are equivalent and frail elderly should be safe from younger disabled.
It doesn’t fly and the city has to put people with disabilities like drug abuse and serious mental illness in the same building as poor, frail elderly with predictable results.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.