The Cuomo Doctrine Lives
Bovard, James
But the main actors became the predictable lawyers' groups-the Naderite New York Public Interest Research Group, the foundationsponsored New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, and the 25-year-old...
...and $1,815 a month in San Francisco...
...And even that bare majority goes only so far-before Justice O'Connor gets squeamish...
...others say that government only has a limited role in solving these complex problems and would totally rely on the private sector...
...HUI) will pay up to $1,680 a month for welfare recipients to live on the island of Maui, $1,689 a month in Fairfield, Connecticut...
...Yet even as activist lawyers pose as energy experts, the old-line environmental groups are quietly standing apart...
...Sen...
...One, the Down Payment Assistance Initiative, will spend a billion dollars over five years to subsidize downpayments for poor people to buy homes...
...In a time "when a lot of departments have seen cuts in their budget," Martinez bragged in March, "the HUD budget will be increased by over $2 billion and, in fact, it will be a real growth in the budget of 6 to 7 percent...
...Vacant, boarded up HUD-owned homes have a negative effect on neighborhoods," the Inspector General noted, "and the negative effect magnifies the longer the properties remain in HUD's inventory...
...The club is supporting Calpine's proposed 600-megawatt generator in San Jose-against the opposition of both the City of San Jose and Cisco Systems...
...This from the head of an agency renowned for turning many American urban neighborhoods into hellholes...
...The Bush administration itself views the prohibition as unalterable...
...The prohibition on funding for "indoctrination" or "proselytizing" is a real problem for the faith-based initiative...
...Congress will now focus on measures to encourage greater private donations to such groups...
...In 1993, the Court held that the First Amendment was no bar to the provision of a tax payer-funded sign-language interpreter for a deaf student attending a Catholic school, even though the interpreter would follow the student into religion classes (Zohrest v. Catnlina Foothills Se/wel District...
...Meanwhile, Under Cuomo, HUD laid off many employees who handled defaulted FHA homes and the number of HUD homes sitting vacant rose sharply...
...complains that HUD's negligence in selling foreclosed homes in Baltimore contributes to "the destabilization of neighborhoods...
...20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR May 2001 Defunding God Taking the faith out of faith-based from British Labour Party leader Tony 13lair...
...This will, in many cases, treat the dependent poor better than the working-class poor who struggle to save for their own downpayments...
...another form of old-fashioned block busting...
...In 1995...
...In an interview with Bond Buyer magazine recently, Martinez blabbed: "Some believe that the answer to meeting our social needs is to rely solely on the federal government...
...We've got to take a deep breath...
...The failure of school administrators to plan ahead somehow not only nullifies the rights of property owners, it justifies squeezing Florida builders to donate school land in exchange for "permission" to build houses...
...In the first press briefing on the faithbased initiative, Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer reassured reporters: "I think the American people recognize we need to be sensitive that there is no Constitutional hair-splitting on this issue is childish...
...He boasts that the Bush budget proposal called for 30,000 new Section 8 vouchers, an expensive attempt to buy welfare recipients into the middle class-if not the upper-middle class...
...It is true that over the past decade the Court has become more accommodating toward government funding of religious institutions...
...the resulting devastation from defaults and abandoned homes helped depopulate Detroit, Philadelphia, and other cities...
...Proudly announcing a decision to limit residential development on November 28, Martinez sounded positively Clintonian: "Our children really have to come first...
...Because they require access to both high-voltage lines and natural gas pipelines, the new generators must be located near existing electrical substations or heavily wired industrial sites...
...On March 20, HUD announced a 25 percent increase in the loan limits the Federal Housing Administration provides for construction of multi-family housing...
...These facilities have been exclusively sited in neighborhoods that are disproportionately disadvantaged and disproportionately made up of low-income people and people of color," said Matt Stanislaus, vice president of the Environmental Justice Alliance...
...combined-cycle gas generators since the early 1990s," says Carl Pope, national executive director...
...Clustered together...
...We believe the peaking problem can be solved by exercising price controls...
...Section 8 housing often leads to poverty pockets where juvenile delinquency, crime and other social problems fester," the Pittsburgh PostGazette reported in 1999...
...Every time you build one of these clean new plants, you can back out two old ones...
...Under Bush the Younger, HUD has moved left...
...That was enough to pull the New York Times into their corner...
...They're cheaper and cleaner...
...The Sierra Club-now coping with rotating blackouts in San Francisco-has taken a similar tack...
...Barbara Mikulski (D-Md...
...A flood That was enough to pull the New York Times into their corner...
...Power plants are racist...
...We've got to think about the quality of life that we're experiencing and where we're taking it...
...Instead...
...We love solar and wind but we also recognize that some new gas plants are going to be necessary...
...Given all the constitutional objections raised by the ACLU and others against the direct funding proposals, the delay is justified...
...Justice Thomas's opinion strained to loosen past restrictions: "If the religious, irreligious and areligious are all alike eligible for government aid, no one would conclude that any ]religious] indoctrination that any particular recipient conducts has been done at the behest of the government...
...The majority does not think the "attribution of indoctrination" is so "relative" that the Court can ignore public funds sponsoring religious instruction...
...Skyrocketing construction costs have resulted in a virtual halt in the building of multifamily homes across America," Martinez declared.Yet taking a play from Al Gore's campaign, he is also signaling that HUD will support local and state government's "growth management" programs, a euphemism for sweeping new restrictions on building and land use...
...Under Martinez, HUD is set to expand, not reform...
...We are in no danger whatever of having a narrow religious orthodoxy imposed by government, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR May 2001 21...
...Amazingly, the Sierra Club is also pushing a natural gas pipeline at Prudhoe Bay to bring out more gas...
...Last year, for instance, the Court approved a Louisiana school aid program that gave computers to parochial as well as private schools (Mitchell v. Helms...
...Martinez borrows his political rhetoric not from Ronald Reagan but "You mean there's a faster track...
...But the main actors became the predictable lawyers' groups-the Naderite New York Public Interest Research Group, the foundationsponsored New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, and the 25-year-old New York Environmental Justice Alliance...
...We've been supporting the new ndrew Cuomo, Clinton's second HUD secretary, boasted about securing hefty budget increases, stretched agency power in every direction, and left a trail of waste that nearly overwhelmed both the General Accounting Office and the HUD Inspector General...
...The alternative was to start digging up the streets," says Leary...
...All these cases, however, were decided by the slimmest of margins, rallying a mere five justices and provoking firm dissents from the other four...
...Out-oftown landlords often let the property deteriorate because they receive guaranteed rent from the federal government...
...In a city where 60 percent of the population is black or Hispanic, it isn't at all surprising that some of these generators ended up near "people of color...
...The new power plants are twice as efficient as the old ones...
...In 1997...
...We could return to the very relaxed constitutional standards followed by courts before World War II, with no harm at all...
...Sobered by the California experience, some older environmental groups are taking a new approach...
...It comes on top of all the other federal programs and mandates to subsidize low-income home buyers...
...For the attribution of indoctrination is a relative question...
...Nevertheless, under current case law, the critics have a point.The admin I think the president has outlined a third way, a better way...
...This should come as no surprise to Bush since Martinez, as chairman of the government of Orange County, Florida, last year championed a de facto moratorium on new residential construction simply because public schools were overcrowded...
...We had a long talk with Governor Pataki and he convinced us not to oppose it," said Ashok Gupta, senior economist at the Natural Resources Defense Council...
...The Cuomo Doctrine Lives Vacant houses, bad loans: Bush's urban policy threatens the working poor BY JAMES BOVARD THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR May 2001 19 of home defaults will follow if the economy fails...
...Their complaint...
...People who live near power plants or industrial areas are often poor or working-class...
...Martinez is already publicly positioning himself as a champion of his agency-as opposed to American taxpayers...
...Despite the pending electricity crisis, the generators were soon being opposed in court...
...Higher loan limits will expand the FHA's portfolio of bad loans...
...His contempt for property rights puts him squarely in the CisnerosCuomo camp, in sharp contrast to the vision of HUD Secretary Jack Kemp, under Bush the Elder In 1991, Kemp's Advisory commission on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing reported that zoning and other restrictions add up to 35 percent to the price of a new home.The Commission stressed that the government must cease stifling the private sector's ability to provide better housing...
...The goal for a national organization like this can't be to stop everything," says Gupta...
...What's going to get us there is the technology...
...the Court held that it would improperly burden free speech for a public university to deny funding to a student-run magazine devoted to evangelical Christianity, when the same student activities fund was giving money to other student magazines (Roseu(ierger V. University (of Virgiiria...
...rap band memorializing the program's street image, recently dubbed itself "Section 8 Mob...
...the Court directly repudiated an earlier ruling to allow the New York public school system to send remedial reading teachers into Catholic schools, rather than requiring the students to seek remedial services at an outside, "neutral" location (.Agosrini v. Felton...
...Any family or person with less than 80 percent of the median income for their area is eligible for Section 8. The criminal inclination of some Section 8 recipients has sparked fierce protests...
...We are in no danger whatever of having a narrow religious orthodoxy or a sectarian preference imposed by any government...
...After just a few weeks in office, Martinez and the Bush administration have proposed several more programs...
...We do care about the environment but we like to stick to the facts...
...And so, despite the pending electricity crisis, the generators were soon being opposed in court...
...One may think-as I do-that most of the constitutional hair-splitting on this issue is childish and unnecessary...
...Justice O'Connor, along with justice Breyer, relied on safeguards to ensure that the computers would not be used for religious instruction...
...initiatives BY JEREMY RABKIN S mate leaders have decided to postpone action on the most controversial part of President Bush's new "faith based and community initiative"-the part that would offer expanded federal funding for social services run by religious groups...
...The Power Authority [should] return to the neighborhoods, reopen discussion on where to put the turbines and begin building broader public support ...ensur[ing] that the generators do not disproportionately affect poorer neighborhoods...
...Unfortunately, Mel Martinez, the multi-millionaire former personal injury lawyer whom Bush named as HUD secretary, is taking up where Cuomo left off...
...But only three other justices (Rehnquist, Scalia, and Kennedy) signed on...
...A Great Society program called Section 235 similarly awarded homes to welfare recipients...
...Do compassionate conservatives want to solve urban problems or just recycle liberal rehtoric and boost spending for failed programs% istration's efforts to meet these objec tions could do much harm to some of the very programs it has set out to help...
...We've got a situation where you're pumping clean fuel back into the ground so you can bring out something dirtier-oil...
...It is difficult to image a more ominous start for an appointee in a conservative administration...
...And even the four conservatives can't quite bring themselves to say that government sponsorship of "indoctrination" is altogether a non-issue...
...Yet the Bush administration has done nothing to fix Section 8 before expanding it...
...One D.C...
Vol. 34 • May 2001 • No. 4
