It has gotten little national attention, but the greatest example of Obama Administration overreach may be occurring in New York City’s leafy northern suburb, Westchester County, where I live and do some work.
The scope of what the Obama Administration is doing in Westchester to achieve its warped and misguided utopian vision of racial balance in American communities is nothing short of Orwellian. And Westchester is not where this social engineering stops. It is where it starts.
By its own admission, The Obama Administration — HUD and the Justice Department specifically — is using Westchester County as a test case to see if it can sue localities they deem too “white” nationwide into scrapping long-held zoning laws to forcibly integrate neighborhoods, on the taxpayer’s dime, regardless of cost, practicality, or justification. HUD and Justice want to determine exactly how white, black, Hispanic, and Asian communities across the U.S. should be.
Facts are irrelevant. Westchester County, according to the 2010 Census, is one of the most diverse counties in America. It is the fourth most-diverse county in New York State – as diverse as Manhattan. If it were a state, Westchester would be the 7th most diverse in Hispanic representation and the 14th most diverse in African-American representation in the U.S., according to a powerful op-ed defending the County and its residents published by Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino in today’s Journal News. (Full disclosure: Astorino is a client, but I write as a private citizen on this blog.)
The Obama Administration says it wants to drill deeper than the County level, though. It wants to see towns and villages forced to build and pay for minority-marketed housing in certain ZIP Codes, communities, and individual neighborhoods. If that means suing localities to nullify zoning laws, so be it. The value of the pre-existing housing is irrelevant – rather it is entirely relevant — HUD wants publicly-built housing exactly there, in those affluent communities. And along with this housing must come public transportation, whether it is currently there or not.
If you don’t believe me, read in detail this May 13th letter from HUD to the Office of the Westchester County Executive. It is chilling in its demands.
To suggest that Westchester communities are racist is preposterous, especially in this day and age. Expensive yes; racist no. Anyone would sell a home to anyone at or near market price. There are people of every ethnic and religious background throughout the county. My community, for example, is 35% Hispanic, according to the latest Census numbers, and I challenge anyone to find a better place to live and raise a family in America. Diversity is one of the reasons we moved there in the first place.
The Obama Administration got its hooks into Westchester after a left-wing “social justice” organization called “The Anti Discrimination Center” (ADC) accused the county of not considering race in administering federal HUD money. The group sued along with the Justice Department, and Westchester’s former County Executive, Andy Spano, and the County Legislature settled with the Feds to avoid a big public fight at re-election time. Here is that settlement.
Westchester County, under Astorino, has been diligently working to comply with the settlement signed under the former County Executive. But HUD moves the ball farther at every turn, demanding things well beyond the scope of the original settlement. Locations chosen are not good enough; two bedroom apartments are insufficient. Anything near a train station is apparently stigmatizing. The County needs to prepare lawsuits against its villages and towns. Housing cannot be marketed to minorities already living and working in the county. Only some of it can go to seniors.
And get this – to me this to me is the craziest part – the tiny ADC got a finders fee greater than $7 million for bringing the case to the Feds. Seven million dollars. Those beady-eyed radicals must be scouring the country for other such lucrative opportunities. Whether you live in Westchester County, New York; Fairfield County, Connecticut, or Cuyahoga County, Ohio, watch your back. Because Big Brother is coming for you next.
I can’t wait…no…let me rephrase that…I absolutely can’t wait until a Republican gets elected as President to see how every single Republican and Tea Partier explains away all the decisions the person makes within the first term of their office. We sit back and “bash” a person or party on what they have done over the past 3 years, when in reality I never heard a word from any of the Republicans over the entire 8 years Bush plowed us into debt, lied about why and rigged all spending to benefit his “good ole boys”. JUST SAYING…I can’t wait! For all those who call him the most “God-less” President they have seen in their lifetime…I don’t understand that statement. This from those who want to eliminate social reform or social spending. From those who want to decrease the size of the government, but bitch when unemployement levels go up due to down sizing government jobs…LOL. Make up your mind please…but when you do…make sure you cover your ass for the Republican that enters after Obama. You’re going to need a whole lot of KY Jelly to wiggle out of those decisions and ramifications. JUST SAYING!!!
Nice scathing diatribe, Daniel. I’m an old friend of Billy’s and we spend a lot of time wondering how the other one ended up on THAT side of the aisle. There’s a good chance Obama doesn’t get reelected and that’s a shame because he’s clearly a good man who cares deeply about what’s good for the American people. And he is so obviously a better president than any of the last five R presidents (Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, Bush – what a motley crew). What seems really likely is that a huge slate of incumbents lose office in 2012, including a bunch of freshmen in the House. People are just angry at the high unemployment rate and no matter who is in office their job is in jeopardy.