Free Speech Make Way; Here Comes Obama-style Regionalism
1st April 2016
BLUF: A Democrat administration in Westchester County, NY, colluded with HUD to accept 750 ‘affordable’ (i.e. full of NAMs) housing units in the county. Now, however, the current Republican is pushing back and refusing to Get With The Program. Hence, the HUD bureaucrat in charge of the scheme is trying to get a court to shut him up.
As Stanley Kurtz explains, the Federal Monitor’s attempt to silence Astorino comes in the form of a report filed on March 17 in federal court. The report claims that Astorino has spread false information about Westchester County’s housing settlement and about the efforts and intentions of HUD and the Federal Monitor himself.
As a remedy, the Federal Monitor seeks “the removal of press releases inconsistent with the declaration and findings” written by the Federal Monitor. He also calls for the hiring of “a public communications consultant that will craft a message and implement a strategy sufficiently robust to provide information broadly to the public that describes the benefits” of what HUD says it is trying to accomplish.
In effect, the Federal Monitor is asking a court to order Astorino to stop criticizing Obama’s HUD and start advertising HUD’s own views. I agree with Kurtz that “this is truly Orwellian stuff, a frightening demonstration of how the expansionist regulatory state ultimately chokes off political speech itself.”