President Trump is ending the Obama-Biden regulation to rezone neighborhoods along income and racial guidelines

President Donald Trump is ending the 2015 Obama-Biden era regulation Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation, and has removed requirements that more than 1,200 cities and counties make changes to local zoning in order to qualify for $3 billion of annual community development block grants.

Appearing at the White House Rose Garden on July 14, President Trump called enforcement of this regulation was a “key element” of former Vice President Joe Biden’s platform for president, saying it would “abolish the suburbs…”

According to Biden’s campaign website, “Biden will implement the Obama-Biden Administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule requiring communities receiving certain federal funding to proactively examine housing patterns and identify and address policies that have a discriminatory effect.”

Trump explained, “Enforce Obama-Biden’s radical AFFH — that’s the AFFH regulation that threatens to strip localities of federal affordable housing funds unless they change their zoning laws to fit the federal government’s demands.  So what you have — I mean, I’ve been watching this for years in Westchester, coming from New York.  They want low-income housing built in a neighborhood.”

But with changes to the rule released in January, the zoning mandates have been repealed. Trump said, “I’m ending that rule.  I’m taking it out, so — I spoke with Ben Carson the other day.  We’re going to be taking it out.  I’ve watched that whole thing go, and now they want to make it twice as bad in the suburbs — in the suburbs. Mothers aren’t happy about that.  Fathers aren’t happy about that.  They worked hard to buy a house, and now they’re going to watch the housing values drop like a rock, and that has happened.  It dropped like a rock.  So we’re not going to do that; we’re going to do the exact opposite.”

Under the new rule that was finalized by the Trump administration on Jan. 14, “Jurisdictions are free to choose to undertake changes to zoning or land-use policies as one method of complying with the AFFH obligation; however, no jurisdiction may have their certification questioned because they do not choose to undertake zoning changes.”

This differed drastically from the original 2015 regulation had included an explicit requirement calling for changes to local zoning, stating, “This final rule, and Assessment Tools and guidance to be issued, will assist recipients of Federal funding to use that funding and, if necessary, adjust their land use and zoning laws in accordance with their existing legal obligation to affirmatively further fair housing.”

At the time, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives adopted an amendment by U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) to defund implementation of the regulation. Later, a more moderate provision by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) passed the Senate easily 87 to 9 in 2016 that barred the regulation from being used to affect local zoning.

The Collins amendment was eventually included in the 2017 omnibus, the 2018 omnibus, the 2019 omnibus, and the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020, stating: “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to direct a grantee to undertake specific changes to existing zoning laws as part of carrying out the final rule entitled ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing’ … or the notice entitled ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Assessment Tool’…”

Now, there are plenty of non-discriminatory reasons why cities wouldn’t want the federal government to interfere with local zoning. For example, it might result in property values declining. Or, conversely, because demand for property would remain high in densely populated areas, changes to zoning might still result in high prices, thereby mitigating the effects of reform to make housing more affordable.

In 2018, I personally submitted comments to the Department of Housing and Urban Development noting Congress had explicitly barred implementation of AFFH as written and that, to comply, the regulation would have to be rewritten to remove the zoning requirements and making any changes voluntary.

The Department found further legal justification for revising the AFFH rule to remove zoning mandates under 42 U.S. Code § 12705(c)(1), which states, “the adoption or continuation of a public policy identified pursuant to subsection (b)(4) [which includes local zoning ordinances as a potential barrier to affordable housing] shall not be a basis for the Secretary’s disapproval of a housing strategy…”

This provision, per HUD, “prohibits HUD from disapproving consolidated plans because a jurisdiction adopts or continues zoning ordinances or land-use policies.” Meaning funds cannot be denied on the basis of a city or county’s lack of a plan to change zoning.

Of course, a future Biden administration might not see things the same way. Therefore, the President ought to press Congress to continue including the Collins amendment in future appropriations bills to prevent the federal government from dictating local zoning policy. In the meantime, President Trump on his own is ending federal dictates and restoring local government control over zoning — the way it should be.

SOURCE 






Leftists’ War to Cancel American History

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week reached a new low in recklessness, even for her. She dismissed as no big deal the toppling of a Christopher Columbus statue by a mob who then tossed it into a nearby harbor in her hometown of Baltimore. "People will do what they do,” Pelosi said. “I don’t care that much about the statues.” Pelosi evidently doesn’t care much about mob rule either.

Most Americans do care about preserving the statues and other monuments dedicated to our nation’s heroes. Most Americans certainly do not believe that mobs should decide who does or does not deserve to be honored as part of America’s heritage. But leftists don’t trust the American people. The cancel culture crowd think they are entitled to cancel the American story of great progress towards a more perfect union and replace it with their own alternative of dystopian fiction. According to CNN anchor Don Lemon, for example, young people "have asked for decades" for the removal of certain statues and now "the chickens are coming home to roost." Lemon said that Americans for too long have been taught “propaganda” and added that "some things you have to un-learn so that you can become a better citizen." That sounds like what the Chinese Communists were saying during their cultural revolution.

Christopher Columbus is on the left-wingers’ hit list. No longer are elementary school students introduced to the rhyme that generations of students before them had recited, "In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Leftists demand that school curricula portray Christopher Columbus’s forays to the “New World” as the original sin of colonialist exploitation of indigenous peoples living in a heretofore untouched ‘paradise.’ Leftists’ stereotyping of Columbus as an evil imperialist motivated solely by greed and lust for power over hapless indigenous people is the false mirror image of their outrageous attempt to delegitimize the United States itself as the embodiment of white supremacy.

Human bondage already existed on the islands that Columbus visited, as well as cannibalism – not exactly an indigenous peoples’ ‘paradise.’ Moreover, acknowledging Columbus’s far from spotless record in how he treated the people he encountered in the lands he explored does not negate the historic importance of what he accomplished. Columbus deserves to be honored as a courageous visionary who set in motion by his explorations a chain of events that would lead ultimately to the creation of the world’s leading beacon of hope, opportunity and freedom.

The iconoclasts of the far left also demonize our nation’s founding fathers - their reputations trashed, and statues toppled or defaced. They were just a bunch of slave-owning white supremacists who should be reviled, not revered, according to the far left narrative.

Like Christopher Columbus, our nation’s founding fathers were neither saints nor devils. They were complex human beings who were imperfect to be sure. However, the founding fathers were visionaries who put into practice the principles of the Age of Enlightenment based on reason and science rather than superstition and divine right of kings. They had the wisdom and foresight to design a flexible system of self-government that could progress over time and move closer towards full realization of the nation’s founding ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Moreover, contrary to the far left narrative, not all the founding fathers were diehard slaveowners. John Adams, for instance, never owned any slaves. Benjamin Franklin’s two slaves were freed during his lifetime. He became the president of an abolitionist group called the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.

George Washington remained a slaveowner during his lifetime but arranged in his will for his slaves to be freed after his death. Towards the end of his life, Washington wrote, "The unfortunate condition of the persons, whose labour in part I employed, has been the only unavoidable subject of regret.” He expressed some sympathy for the emerging abolitionist cause and indicated that he would support the elimination of slavery if done through the legislative process.

Alexander Hamilton supported the idea of freeing those slaves who joined the Continental Army. Having emigrated to America from a Caribbean island where he observed slavery firsthand, he would later write that there was no reason why “one man should exercise any power or pre-eminence over his fellow-creatures. . . unless they have voluntarily vested him with it.”  But leftists today do not think that is good enough. They have even recently demanded the cancellation of the highly acclaimed musical ‘Hamilton,’ which depicted the life of the immigrant Alexander Hamilton, after it was shown on Disney+. Leftist critics bemoaned the musical’s romanticizing of Hamilton and the other founding fathers, and its glossing over their association with slavery. Hamilton did not own any slaves himself. However, his “sins” apparently included working for a slave-trading firm as a teenager before he emigrated to America and the fact that he married into a prominent New York slaveholding family.

#CancelHamilton" trended on Twitter after the musical’s showing on Disney+. Even a musical honoring diversity and the contribution of immigrants to American history is suspect because it dared to also honor America itself and its founders. Instead of defending what he was trying to do and pushing back against the expanding cancel culture, the show’s creator, Lin Manuel-Miranda, apologized. “That we have not yet firmly spoken the inarguable truth that Black Lives Matter and denounced systematic racism and white supremacy from our official 'Hamilton' channels is a moral failure on our part,” Manuel-Miranda said in a groveling video. "As the writer of the show, I take responsibility and apologize for my part in this moral failure."

Thomas Jefferson is the leftists’ favorite founding father punching bag, representing to them the preeminent white supremacist hypocrite among the founders. True, Jefferson did enslave more than six hundred people during his lifetime while publicly condemning slavery as contrary to the laws of nature that he espoused in the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson held on to his slaves for his personal benefit even as he tried in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence to incorporate a specific paragraph denouncing slavery introduced by the British to the American colonies. Jefferson was unsuccessful because the Southern colony delegates insisted on its removal as a condition for supporting the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson endorsed the principle of gradual emancipation without setting an example himself in his lifetime. All of that can be legitimately discussed, however, without throwing Jefferson’s positive legacy into the dustbin of history. Thomas Jefferson’s personal shortcomings do not erase the fact that his more noble self was able to set down the principle of equality and inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that remain our nation’s North Star. Martin Luther King recognized this when he said that the words of Jefferson and the other “architects of our republic” were a “promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”

The cancel culture leftists want to destroy Americans’ liberties. In order to do so, they must delegitimize the America created by our founding fathers. They must destroy the symbols that generations of Americans have grown up revering. They seek to turn American history into the dark chronicle of horrors for which the ‘white supremacist oppressor’ class must be punished and atone. All freedom-loving Americans should stand up to these destructive mobs and cancel out their cancel culture hatred of the values we hold dear.

SOURCE 





Reclaiming the Brainwashed Generation

As with legions of others in his generation, my nephew has been brainwashed by years of less-than- honest educators. When it comes to U.S. history, he knows precious little about the Constitution and proclaimed that he “doesn’t care much about the Constitution,” which actually protects him every day.

He claims that it is an old document and that while some parts of the Constitution might be good, “some parts are awful.” In a vigorous email exchange, when I asked him to identify an awful part, he took a long time to reply. Then he referred to slaves in the South being counted as 3/5th in voting – an issue which many people routinely misunderstand.

200 Years of Getting it Wrong

In yesteryear, as today, states with greater populations were allotted more representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives. Southern states wanted all slaves to be counted, but still to be treated as slaves, and not allowed to vote.

Combining resident white voters and resident slave non-voters would give pro slave states more representatives in Congress and thus more power to perpetuate slavery. Anything that the North could do to reduce the head count of slaves diminished the power of the pro slavery lobby. Ergo, the compromise to reduce the slave head count to 3/5th was an anti-slavery move.

The measure was not introduced to degrade the slaves as if they were 3/5th human. They were already degraded; they were slaves, for crying out loud! As Glenn Beck describes this situation in his book, Arguing with Idiots, northern states regarded the compromise as the only way to eventually end slavery. To be clear: 3/5ths of a person was not the value of a slave's life. It was the value counted in the U.S. Census.

A man named Gouverneur Morris assisted James Madison in drafting the provision. Morris was a contributing author to large sections of the Constitution. He described slavery as "a nefarious institution, the curse of heaven on states where it prevailed." In fact, Morris opposed the 3/5th compromise because he felt that it would enable the southern states enough representation to indefinitely maintain slavery. He believed that 1/40,000 was a more equitable measure for census purposes.

Slowly and Carefully

The 3/5th compromise represented a forward-thinking act by the anti-slavery faction to keep slaveholding states from wielding too much power. Still, my nephew and others who view the U.S. Constitution with contempt, refuse to understand the truth. Even when you carefully explain the scenario to them, the next day they revert to their reflective notion that the provision was passed to degrade slaves and that the U.S. Constitution is a piece of crap. How can one find common ground with such people?

If only my nephew were an isolated case. He's part of a generation that simply has no idea about America's contribution to the world, past and present. Unduly influenced by teachers and professors on a mission to propagate their Leftist views, my nephew has little if any objectivity when it comes to assessing the parts played by nations throughout the world. He doesn't know that the UK and the U.S. were the global leaders in ending the slave trade.

He doesn't know that Communism is responsible for 104 million deaths from 1917 to the present. Most amazingly, he doesn't know that every day people from around the globe risk everything they have to make it to the U.S., while virtually no one wants to leave.

The Brainwashed Generation Can Escape

Is he and his generation so far gone that they cannot be retrieved? That would be a shame. Fortunately, encouraging signs increasingly appear on the horizon. Brandon Straka, a gay man, realized that the mainstream media was feeding a non-stop series of lies to him. “Once upon a time, I was a liberal,” Straka said in 2018 to TV host Jeanine Pirro.

“For years now,” he told Pirro, “I have watched as the Left has devolved into intolerant, inflexible, illogical, hateful, misguided, ill-informed, un-American, hypocritical, menacing, callous, ignorant, narrow-minded and, at times, blatantly fascistic behavior and rhetoric.” Ultimately, Straka created #Walkaway helping thousands of followers to see the light.

Other people have launched other movements. Hope is on the horizon. My nephew might be redeemable.

SOURCE 





Museum’s Racist Material on ‘Whiteness’ Wasn’t Its First Instance of Bias

One would reasonably expect to learn about history at a history museum. Unfortunately, at some museums, it seems you’re increasingly likely to receive an ideological sermon instead.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture recently created an online portal called “Talking About Race.”

It was doing that, the museum said, to promote conversations about race that begin with “honesty, respect for others, and an openness to ideas and information that provide new perspectives.”

On that page was a since-deleted graphic on “whiteness” that was not only offensive to, well, pretty much everyone, but was also quite racist.

“White dominant culture, or whiteness, refers to the ways white people and their traditions, attitudes, and ways of life have been normalized over time and are now considered standard practices in the United States,” the graphic read. “And since white people still hold most of the institutional power in America, we have all internalized some aspects of white culture—including people of color.”

And what are those “aspects of white culture”?

There were some negative ones, like “master and control nature,” and the hilarious “steak and potatoes; ‘bland is best.’”

But there were countless others that simply seemed like good life practices, regardless of one’s skin tone, things such as “self-reliance,” “adherence to rigid time schedules,” “delayed gratification,” and commitment to the “nuclear family.”

Elsewhere on the web page, the museum labels “white supremacy” as an ideology in which white people are deemed “superior to nonwhite people.”

But the graphic, likely unintentionally, seemed to be promoting white supremacy by insinuating that nonwhite people are lazy, irresponsible, and perhaps have internalized “whiteness” qualities such as being “polite.”

After the chart was spotted and posted by Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams on Twitter, an online backlash prompted the museum to remove it and apologize.

“It is important for us as a country to talk about race. We thank those who shared concerns about our ‘Talking About Race’ online portal. We need these types of frank and respectful interchanges as we as a country grapple with how we talk about race and its impact on our lives,” the statement said, according to the Miami Herald. “We erred in including the chart. We have removed it, and we apologize.”

Despite the apology, one wonders how such a graphic was deemed appropriate to put up in the first place.

Of course, the website still contains incessant attacks on “white privilege” and references to the book “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism” by author Robin DiAngelo.

“White fragility,” according to Columbia University associate professor John McWhorter, who is black, is “about how to make certain educated white readers feel better about themselves” and actually promotes a “dehumanizing condescension toward black people.”

It’s infuriating that the Smithsonian or any other publicly funded museum would promote such material. But this sort of bias is becoming increasingly common.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture has been embroiled in controversy and accusations of bias before.

When it opened in 2016, it failed to feature an exhibit on the career of Justice Clarence Thomas, currently the only black man on the Supreme Court. The museum initially only paid tribute to Anita Hill, the woman who leveled unproven accusations of sexual harassment against him.

What the latest incident, with the “whiteness” graphic, makes clear is how public memory and history should not simply be left to museums.

Many of those calling for the removal of “offensive” statues—which these days seems to include pretty much all of them—have suggested relocating them to museums.

But how can Americans trust museums to faithfully present history and not simply foist primarily hard-left political views on those who visit them or use their materials?

We see a similar problem with The New York Times’ so-called 1619 Project, which won a Pulitzer Prize. History is bent and distorted to fit a political narrative. It’s not about education, but re-education and indoctrination.

It’s clear that American institutions—whether they are our schools or national museums—are being used as vehicles to promote “critical race theory” and other divisive doctrines.

This radical transformation is accelerating. That’s why it’s essential for Americans who still believe in the truth to inform themselves and be willing to question and confront those who are cynically promoting this cultural revolution, which if left unchallenged will tear the country apart.

SOURCE 

********************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
`
************************************