Free Republic

Former Obama housing secretary Shaun Donovan says he’d be “the climate mayor,” but his multimillionaire dad, who’s funding his long-shot City Hall bid, is the opposite of an environmental steward. Michael Donovan — who has given $6.8 million through a super PAC, making him the single largest donor in the entire mayoral race — owns three homes, a gas-guzzling private jet, and once destroyed wetlands in front of his $18 million Bridgehampton estate. “If candidates are taking money from polluters, they are making a big mistake because people suffer,” said Maritza Silva-Farrell, head of the New York umbrella environmental group...

If you were president of the United States, would you hire an alleged former spy for Fidel Castro to be ambassador to El Salvador, a country teetering on the brink of hard-core socialism? President Obama just did. On Dec. 9, Obama nominated Mari Del Carmen Aponte to be ambassador to El Salvador, despite the fact that in the late 1990s, the FBI discovered that she was working with Cuban intelligence officers. According to Insight Magazine, "When the FBI eventually questioned her about her involvement with Cuban intelligence, she reportedly refused to cooperate." Why would Aponte escape the Obama administration's scrutiny?...

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa – An early Saturday morning political event on an unusually warm February day might not be the ideal conditions to draw a good crowd. However, 140 Marshall County Republicans packed into the Legends American Grill in Marshalltown to hear their new representative in Congress, Rod Blum, and likely presidential candidate Rand Paul. Most of Rod Blum’s brief remarks focused on his tangle with President Obama’s budget director, Shaun Donovan, last week on Capitol Hill. Iowa’s new First District representative also relayed his controversial first vote in Congress, supporting Daniel Webster over John Boehner for House speaker. Many in...

“We are in the midst of the worst rental affordability crisis that this country has known,” said Shaun Donovan, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. There are now 43 million renter households, or 35 percent of all U.S. households, the highest rate in more than a decade for all age groups, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. That’s 4 million more renters today than there were in 2007. For those aged 25 to 54, rental rates are the highest since the center began record keeping in the early 1970s. Wait a minute. The Clinton Administration wanted to...

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...

In a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan argued that taxes should be raised to support more subsidies for Latinos. “On balance, Latinos are more apt to be tax-consumers rather than tax-payers,” Donovan pointed out. “A robust program of government investment in housing, food stamps, and welfare disproportionately benefits Latinos. The GOP’s plan to cut this spending, on the other hand, would disproportionately hurt Latinos.” Donovan admitted that “making the case for tax hikes is not an easy one. The Republicans have done a pretty good job of making the IRS into...

...Steve Kest, executive director of ACORN, was there. As well as an up and coming rabble rouser, George Goel of the National People's Action Network...Goel was the first to speak. He called for challenging people on the streets. "We need to put feet on the ground,"...When it was ACORN Executive Director Kest's turn to speak, he also said that more militant actions are going to occur. He went even more radical than Goel...

Many cities in the US’s so-called “rust belt” have been in decline for years—losing both jobs and population. Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, Michigan has proposed leveling portions of these cities in order to reach a more optimal balance between living accommodations and needs. “The idea is that rather than continuing to waste society’s resources maintaining unnecessary housing, we demolish the surplus units and move people closer together to gain economies of scale,” Kildee said. While Kildee’s focus is on cities already in a decaying state, the Obama Administration’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, sees a...

Weld District Attorney Ken Buck said Tuesday that he’s leaning toward running for Senate in 2010 against Senate appointee Michael Bennet. However, Buck said he has ruled out running for other offices while on his listening tour around the state. Buck said he likely will file paperwork to run for the Senate seat in April and then will announce his candidacy. He declined to give a date for his announcement. Bennet, a Democrat, was appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter to the Senate after Ken Salazar left his seat to take a position in President Barack Obama’s cabinet. Buck, a Republican,...

In an interview with Parade Magazine, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said the most remarkable thing about climate change. As head of HUD, is climate change really your problem? We need to stop thinking in the traditional silos, the way the federal government usually thinks. We've got to stop thinking about programs and start thinking about places and how they work. The way we plan our cities, towns, and rural areas needs to change.

The Obama administration's efforts to help struggling homeowners will aid "responsible" borrowers, not deadbeats or speculators, Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan said Sunday. President Barack Obama announced the plan Wednesday, saying it will help up to 9 million people keep their homes in a housing market ravaged by foreclosures. But critics, including several leading Republicans and some commentators, said the $75 billion proposal will unfairly help some people at the expense of others. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs acknowledged Friday that some people who made "bad decisions" might end up getting help under the proposal. But Donovan, Obama's secretary of housing...

President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday named New York City's housing commissioner to his Cabinet, turning to a former Clinton administration aide to help deal with an issue at the heart of the U.S. economic crisis. If confirmed by the Senate, Shaun Donovan will lead the Housing and Urban Development Department at a time when the mortgage crisis is being blamed for the financial market turmoil that has dragged the nation into a recession. Obama praised Donovan's record in New York, where he managed a $7.5 billion plan with a goal of putting a half-million New Yorkers in affordable housing. The...