DNC speaks to empty College Democrat event

The conference could barely fill the first two rows of seats.

The speakers emphasized the important role Millennial voters can play in the political process by getting out the vote, engaging fellow students on campus, and supporting the objectives of the Democratic Party.

The conference began July 22 and will end this Saturday.

Emphasizing the importance of Millennial voters in upcoming elections, progressive activists spoke to a nearly empty auditorium at the College Democrats of America annual conference on Friday.

Despite offering a full day of activities, speakers like Julian Castro, and campaigning advice from top political operatives, the College Democrats of America were barely able to fill the first couple rows with young attendees.

The speakers emphasized the important role Millennial voters can play in the political process by getting out the vote, engaging fellow students on campus, and supporting the objectives of the Democratic Party. The conference began July 22 and will end this Saturday.

Donna Brazile, Vice Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee and frequent television political commentator, began an unscheduled appearance by thanking “all those who work so hard to ensure that all of our young people, all of our College Democrats, are involved, active, and engaged in the national Democratic Party.”

Brazile encouraged the members of the sparse audience to seek public office while pointing to an empty chair on stage.

“I want you to start thinking about filling this seat,” said Brazile, who said she has been active in politics since childhood and looked forward to the contributions of the next generation.

“I didn’t come here with any talking points, I don’t have a speech, I don’t have a candidate yet, but I do have an empty chair,” said Brazile.

During a panel earlier in the day, Rock the Vote president Ashley Spillane described Millennials as the “Get Sh*t Done Generation” but said that “the current political landscape isn’t that inspiring and people are frustrated with politics.”

“I believe the Millennial Generation is getting sh*t done, they just happen to be doing it outside of the political system right now and we need to be impressing the importance of participating in civics in order to get them more involved in the process,” said Spillane.

Via: Campus Reform

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Castro: In America, geography has consequences

Where you live matters. A child born today in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood in St. Louis can expect to live 18 fewer years than a child born just 10 miles away in Clayton. Why? Because poverty presents obstacles that, too often, prevent families from getting ahead no matter how hard they try.

Imagine you are a child growing up in a struggling community. Your parents might not be able to find good jobs because local businesses are hurting and there aren’t any public transit options that can connect them to the other side of town. Your family can’t afford quality housing so your apartment is full of hazards that are making you sick, resulting in more time in the emergency room and less time in the classroom. You aren’t allowed to play outside because the local playground isn’t safe from crime, impacting your health and well-being.

A ZIP code should never prevent people from reaching their aspirations. That’s why the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has taken an important step to promote greater access to quality, affordable housing for all Americans. We published a final rule updating the process by which local communities use HUD funding to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing — a key provision of the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

When this landmark law was passed 47 years ago, it boldly declared that all Americans deserve an equal chance to access safe, affordable housing near quality schools, transportation and jobs — no matter who they are, what they look like, how they worship or where they are from. As part of this effort, the Fair Housing Act required local governments and states that receive HUD funding to use it to promote fair housing and expand access to opportunities. That’s why we’ve published this rule, to simplify that process and provide better partnership to local leaders working to put opportunity within reach of every resident they serve.

In this age of limited resources, communities are often operating without the data and tools they need to chart the landscape of opportunity in their area and craft locally tailored plans to achieve their goals.

HUD’s new effort will provide these resources. It will empower mayors, county officials, and community members with publicly-open data and tools to eliminate the barriers that block many Americans from getting ahead in life. As a former mayor, I know how valuable these resources are for communities.

During the pilot phase of this effort, local leaders in the Twin Cities region used the information to plan investments in housing and infrastructure where they are needed most. In Chicago, transit agencies are expanding service between high-poverty neighborhoods and job centers. In upcoming years, cities across the nation will be able to use these tools to ensure that every family’s destiny is determined by their effort and talent, not by where they were born.

Via: Detroit News

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Massive Government Overreach: Obama’s AFFH Rule Is Out

Today, HUD Secretary Julian Castro announced the finalization of the Obama administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule. A front-page article pre-emptively defending the move appears in today’s Washington Post. The final rule is 377 pages, vastly longer than the preliminary version of the rule promulgated in 2013. 

AFFH is easily one of President Obama’s most radical initiatives, on a par with Obamacare in its transformative potential. In effect, AFFH gives the federal government a lever to re-engineer nearly every American neighborhood—imposing a preferred racial and ethnic composition, densifying housing, transportation, and business development in suburb and city alike, and weakening or casting aside the authority of local governments over core responsibilities, from zoning, to transportation, to education. Not only the policy but the political implications are immense—at the presidential, congressional, state, and local levels.

 It is a scandal that the mainstream press has largely refused to report on AFFH until the day of its final release. The rule has been out in preliminary form for two years, and well before that the Obama administration’s transformative aims in urban/suburban policy were evident. Three years ago, when I wrote about Obama’s policy blueprint in Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities, the administration’s efforts to keep this issue under the radar were evident. Only last month, an admission of the stealth relied on by advocates to advance this initiative was caught on video. 

Obama has downplayed his policy goals in this area and delayed the finalization of AFFH for years, because he understands how politically explosive this rule is. Once the true implications of AFFH are understood, Americans will rebel. The only prospect for successful imposition is a frog-boiling strategy of gradual intensification. The last day the frog will be able to jump is Tuesday, November 8, 2016. 

Fundamentally, AFFH is an attempt to achieve economic integration. Race and ethnicity are being used as proxies for class, since these are the only hooks for social engineering provided by the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Like AFFH itself, today’s Washington Post piece blurs the distinction between race and class, conflating the persistence of “concentrated poverty” with housing discrimination by race. Not being able to afford a free-standing house in a bedroom suburb is no proof of racial discrimination. Erstwhile urbanites have been moving to rustic and spacious suburbs since Cicero built his villa outside Rome. Even in a mono-racial and mono-ethnic world, suburbanites would zone to set limits on dense development.

Via: National Review

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Obama wants to reengineer your neighborhood

Julian Castro addresses the 2012 Democratic National Convention at the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

This is what you get when you put a community organizer in the White House — he tries to reorganize your community from Washington.

Apparently, President Obama thinks your neighborhood may not be inclusive enough, so he has instructed his Department of Housing and Urban Development to issue a new rule called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, which is designed to force communities to diversify.

According to the Obama administration, in too many neighborhoods “housing choices continue to be constrained through housing discrimination, the operation of housing markets, [and] investment choices by holders of capital.” (Yes, that is a quote from an actual HUD document, not a bad undergraduate thesis on Karl Marx.)

Under Obama’s proposed rule, the federal government will collect massive amounts of data on the racial, ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of thousands of local communities, looking for signs of “disparities by race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or disability in access to community assets.” Then the government will target communities withresults it doesn’t like and use billions of dollars in federal grant money to bribe or blackmail them into changing their zoning and housing policies.

This is not about blocking housing discrimination, which has been illegal since 1968. It is unlawful for someone to deny you a loan or prevent you from buying a home because of your race, creed or color. Socioeconomic status is — and ought to be — another matter. If you want to buy a nice house in the suburbs, you have to be able to afford it. Apparently, Obama thinks that’s unfair discrimination by the “holders of capital.”

Via: Washington Post

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Hillary’s Potential Running Mate Calls Email Inquiry A ‘Witch Hunt’ [VIDEO]

Julian Castro, the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development whose name has been floated as a potential Hillary Clinton running mate, is calling the investigation into Clinton’s Benghazi-related emails a “witch hunt” and a “sideshow.”

“This thing has been studied to death by Republicans and Democrats,” Castro said of Benghazi during an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Several committees including in Congress that have all said, ‘Yes, of course what happened was tragic, but Secretary Clinton was not in any way at fault,’ and what you have here with these emails is basically a witch hunt,” he added.

The State Department Friday released 296 emails Clinton turned over in December related to Libya and the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Clinton sent and received the emails on her personal account, which was maintained on a private server. The email set-up has raised questions over whether Clinton had tried to keep emails she sent as secretary of state secret.

Because of his age — 40 — and his Hispanic heritage, Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, is considered to be an appealing vice presidential candidate on Clinton’s 2016 ticket. Though he denied Sunday that Clinton is considering him for the ticket, earlier this week, former HUD Sec. Henry Cisneros said that Castro was an early favorite.

In his interview, Castro defended Clinton further saying she has “already explained” her email set-up. He also said American voters don’t care “whether somebody had emails or didn’t have them.”

Castro also offered pointed remarks for Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican leading the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

Gowdy “is very intentionally trying to manipulate this witch hunt to play politics,” Castro said.

Asked by CNN’s Jim Acosta whether he sends his government business-related emails on an official account, Castro said “that’s right.”

Via: The Daily Caller

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