According to the Bush "administration," the number of homeless Americans dropped about 30 percent from 2005 to 2007. The Bushies have a facially plausible explanation, but I'm dubious. Do any Kossacks have the expertise to separate the information from the propaganda?

Details after the jump.

WHY IS IT SO EASY TO FORGET? Why is it that we can lose our compassion for ppl so easily? As easy as a new more glammed-up headline coming across our television...that's how easy it is. I don't only blame us but I blame the MSM who constantly bombard us with mind numbing articles ripe with sterotypes, war/hate mongering phrases and pundit opinions that DO NOT INFORM US OF THE REALLY IMPORTANT ISSUES! HUD in LOUSISIANA is spending $762 million in taxpayer funds to tear down over 4600 public housing subsidized apartments.

I hope that this is the first of many attempts by those of us who have been working for change for decades to begin a discussion of what real change could mean.  For those of us working at the community level we are hoping that a new democratic administration under President Obama will represent a shift in financial priorities of course but we all know that money alone will never solve the problem.  Housing and health care are on everyone's mind these days because middle America is hurting but lower income people, people living at the edge, communities and elected officials deal with housing and health care all the time.  We all welcome the big picture change we have talked about now for months, but let's talk about what change will really mean for those of us working in the real world.

By Sandra S. Park, staff attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project

This April, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, the federal law prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability. April is also Sexual Assault Awareness Month, giving us an opportunity to examine the often-overlooked intersection between fair housing rights and the needs of women who experience sexual assault and other forms of gender-based violence.

George Bush was booed for his final Opening Day trip.

While the next President of the United States was cheered wildly by a crowd of 22,000:

Obama took up Pat Buchanan's dare for him to go to the White blue-collar towns of Pennsylvania who were supposedly shafted by Affirmative Action. By contrast, Bill Clinton drew only 6,000 people to his rally recently.

Today less than two weeks after Senators Chris Dodd and Patty Murray called for Bush to fire corrupt HUD secretary Alphonso Jackson, he resigned effective April 18.

According to two government sources who work on housing issues, Jackson was called last Monday to the White House, where top Bush administration aides discussed his ability to continue to lead the agency. The sources requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

That meeting came three days after two senior Senate Democrats called on Bush to oust Jackson. Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.) and Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) advised the president that his secretary's refusal to answer lawmakers' questions made him unable to lead the $35 billion agency. A White House spokesman replied that Bush continued to have confidence in Jackson.

Jackson's statement tiptoes around the questions of why he's resigning.

There are times when one must attend more diligently to personal and family matters. Now is such a time for me.

Staying out of jail could be described as a 'personal matter' to some, I suppose. Anyway, Jackson dodged questions at his announcement, which has sort of been his specialty in his four turbulent years at HUD. So maybe we should point out some of the things this Bush crony from Texas has avoided explaining during his tenure.

In 2004, a few weeks after being confirmed as HUD secretary, Jackson assured a House committee that poverty “is a state of mind, not a condition.” In September 2005, Jackson predicted that ''New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again."

George Bush didn't fire Jackson for the callous remarks.

In 2006 Jackson bragged to a real estate conference that he cancelled a contract because the contractor dared to criticize George Bush. Jackson later said that he had lied about canceling the contract. When the HUD Inspector General investigated the statement, it turned out that Jackson made a habit of trying to politicize HUD contracts.

An inspector general's report charges that top U.S. housing official Alphonso Jackson urged staff members to favor friends of President Bush when awarding Department of Housing and Urban Development contracts. But investigators so far have found no direct proof that Jackson's staff obeyed.

His chief of staff told investigators that Jackson, the HUD secretary, "personally intervened with contractors whom he did not like . . . these contractors had Democratic political affiliations," says the report...

Bush did not fire Jackson.

In 2006 and 2007, HUD awarded a series of contracts in which Jackson had egregious conflicts of interest. In one case, a $127 million contract to redevelop New Orleans went to a group one of whose members owed Jackson hundreds of thousands of dollars. Other large contracts went to close friends of Jackson. The Secretary also retaliated against one HUD official who refused to play along. The HUD Inspector General, the FBI, and a federal grand jury have been investigating Jackson's actions for at least half a year. However the White House said that Bush "expects that the investigation will clearly establish that he did nothing improper or unethical."

Bush did not fire Jackson.

In September 2007 HUD stripped tens of millions in funds from Philadelphia's public housing authority, evidently because it refused to hand over a $2 million property in Philly to one of Jackson's friends. As Kagro X commented when the story broke:

Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow Americans, the philosophy of governance of your modern Republican Party. If someone gets between your cronies and their profits, make them miserable by punishing the poor people charged to their care.

It works, because some people actually care about doing the jobs they're supposed to do, and it does make their lives "less happy" when they can't. But not Republicans. They think people are only "less happy" when they get less dollars.

George W. Bush and his Republicans -- and most specifically in this regard, Karl Rove -- have made it an affirmative goal to convert your federal government into their own personal big stick, designed to perpetuate their power (the "permanent majority") and enrich themselves...

They did it under color of law, knowing full well that because they occupied the right offices, any courts asked to look into their schemes would have to assume they were entitled to deference designed into the system to protect people who are ordinarily and under normal circumstances are presumed to actually have the public interest at heart.

Jackson, encouraged to think he was unaccountable by the way Bush had covered for him over the years, dug in his heels.

At a congressional hearing this month, Jackson repeatedly refused to answer questions about the Philadelphia redevelopment deal.

And so at long last, when intense pressure from Senators Chris Dodd and Patty Murray forced Jackson out, it was no surprise that Bush lauded him as "a great American success story" (which is a distinction he shares, curiously, with another minority Cabinet member, Carlos Gutierrez).

As both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton noted today, Jackson's sudden disappearing act comes in the midst of a great mortgage-foreclosure crisis that falls most heavily upon the nation's poor. Shame we did not fire Bush earlier when we had the chance.

ProgressiveSouth has further thoughts on Alphonso Jackson's "sordid past".

UPDATE: Please recThanks for rec'ing this -- I think we've just been given a golden political opportunity to change the debate back onto the corruption of Bush politics, of which John McCain is a natural extension. Also, we'll be doing follow-up coverage at Facing South, where we've been tracking Jackson for his role in derailing post-Katrina plans for affordable housing.MORE UPDATE: Other outlets are confirming the news.

This is huge news. Aside from bad ideology and policy, sheer corruption has undermined the ability of this administration to address the issues facing this country, in this case the housing crisis.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

WaPo:

After Philadelphia's housing director refused a demand by President Bush's housing secretary to transfer a piece of city property to a business friend, two top political appointees at the department exchanged e-mails discussing the pain they could cause the Philadelphia director.

"Would you like me to make his life less happy? If so, how?" Orlando J. Cabrera, then-assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, wrote about Philadelphia housing director Carl R. Greene.

"Take away all of his Federal dollars?" responded Kim Kendrick, an assistant secretary who oversaw accessible housing. She typed symbols for a smiley-face, ":-D," at the end of her January 2007 note.

Cabrera wrote back a few minutes later: "Let me look into that possibility."

The e-mails, obtained by The Washington Post, came to light as a result of a lawsuit provoked by HUD's decision last September to strip the Philadelphia Housing Authority of as much as $50 million in federal funds. In December, it declared the agency in violation of rules that underpin its ability to decide precisely how it will spend federal housing funds. Kendrick was the official who formally notified the authority that she had found it in violation.

Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow Americans, the philosophy of governance of your modern Republican Party. If someone gets between your cronies and their profits, make them miserable by punishing the poor people charged to their care.

It works, because some people actually care about doing the jobs they're supposed to do, and it does make their lives "less happy" when they can't. But not Republicans. They think people are only "less happy" when they get less dollars.

George W. Bush and his Republicans -- and most specifically in this regard, Karl Rove -- have made it an affirmative goal to convert your federal government into their own personal big stick, designed to perpetuate their power (the "permanent majority") and enrich themselves. And this is how these sick fucks have destroyed our military, made the United States a pariah among nations, bankrupted the country and looted the Treasury, hopelessly corrupted our system of justice, and shredded the documents enshrining the rule of law.

And they did it all from behind mahogany desks, wearing business suits, and cynically pointing to the officious-sounding titles supposedly earned at the ballot box. They did it under color of law, knowing full well that because they occupied the right offices, any courts asked to look into their schemes would have to assume they were entitled to deference designed into the system to protect people who are ordinarily and under normal circumstances are presumed to actually have the public interest at heart.

HUD has argued publicly that this decision was not related to the demands by HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson that Greene turn over a $2 million vacant city lot to Kenny Gamble, a friend of Jackson's. HUD officials have said that Greene was not punished for his defiance.

But Greene and the Philadelphia authority have accused HUD and Jackson in a lawsuit of fabricating problems in the authority's performance as a way to retaliate against Greene.

The e-mails suggest that HUD leadership sought to punish Greene by threatening the authority's funding. What is not explicitly said in the e-mails is why.

The authority recently told a federal judge in Philadelphia that HUD's "capricious" decision would cost the authority $50 million, raise rents for most of its 84,000 low-income tenants and force the layoffs of 250 people. The judge agreed to temporarily stay HUD's finding of a violation. The judge has said the authority can question some key HUD leaders under oath but not Jackson.

Can't prove it! And even if you can, you can't prosecute! That's the George W. Bush legacy.

Despite Bill O'Reilly's ignorant denials, a community of around 200 people sleep in pup tents and makeshift shelters under the I-10 on Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans, just steps from tourist hotels on Canal Street.

The failure of  the Times Picayune to seriously address the ongoing criminal investigation of  HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson provides cover for what may well be the illegal awarding of so-called redevelopment contracts tied to the demolition of  public housing in New Orleans. We will protest the lack of coverage at 4pm, Thursday, February 28, at the Times Picayune Building, 3800 Howard Ave., New Orleans, La.  

How selfish of me to be trying to drag the reader from some lovely spiked eggnog to the nitty gritty of the struggles of others.

My only rationalization is that Christmas is approaching.  The whole damned story was about Mary and Joseph not being able to get a room when she was about to have her baby.  I believe at the time they were traveling back to Joseph's hometown for some registration or other.  (What's that cool French phrase that means, "the more things change ..."? Cestdelamemchanceorsomethinglikethat.)

So with that admittedly self-serving rationalization, I continue with a story that has grown more and more interesting to me, the public housing issue in New Orleans.

An aerial view of Pontchartrain Park from the early 1950s.  The area in the top left corner is Camp Leroy Johnson, an army supply depot.  That land was turned over to the University of New Orleans in the 1960s, and is now the university's East Campus.  On the right, jutting out into Lake Pontchartrain is Lakefront Airport (NEW).  The top left corner of the undeveloped area is now the campus of Southern University in New Orleans.  The drainage canal separating the park from the rest of Gentilly on the left is the Florida Avenue canal.  Next to the canal are the tracks for the Southern Railroad.  They head from in town, curve right then travel east across the Industrial Canal and out to the train bridge across the lake that runs parallell to US90 and I-10.  The canal and the train tracks make for a significant geographical boundary between the established part of Gentilly on the left and the new Pontchartrain Park subdivision on the right.

And the legacy of Katrinacontinues

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Police used chemical spray and stun devices Thursday as dozens of protesters seeking to halt the demolition of public housing in New Orleans tried to force their way through an iron gate at City Hall.

And the pictures aren't pretty. But it's about more than simple protest:

The City Council vote is a critical moment in a protracted fight between the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and residents, activists and preservationists.

HUD wants to demolish the buildings, most of them damaged by Hurricane Katrina, so developers can take advantage of tax credits and build new mixed-income neighborhoods.

The council's approval of the demolition is required under the city's charter.

You can go back and search my entries: I hate bush, but proceeding with the demolition of the Hano housing is just about the only thing I agree with what his adminsitraiton is doing.

In his song "Rednecks," Randy Newman sums up David Vitter's position on public housing in New Orleans.  Vitty-cent has risen in opposition to a housing bill proposed by his senate colleague, Mary Landrieu.  Landrieu's bill would require a one-to-one replacement of public housing units.  Tear down a unit, it has to be replaced by a new one.  

Almost two and a half years ago, two disasters struck the beautiful city of New Orleans: one an act of nature, the other the fault of man.  Although we all refer to this combination as Hurricane Katrina, in fact, the city might have withstood that Category 5 wind and water storm were it not for the failure of the levees that were to protect the city from the grinding and powerful surge of water following the hurricane.

Almost two and a half years later, large portions of this once-great city of the Delta remain in ruins, abandoned by the federal government and the national news media.

This must stop.

In the midst of the decision of the New Orleans City Council to not actively oppose the demolition of several HANO-HUD (Housing Authority of New Orleans-US Dept of Housing and Urban Development) public housing projects, many people are obviously upset.  And rightfully so, because the residents of those projects were literally packed up and shipped off to Texas.

Now those folks want the right and means to come home.  But is there a home for them to return to?

We may soon see another Bush administration member retire to spend time with his family -- or at least his defense team.  TPMmuckraker reports that a grand jury is investigating the accuracy HUD Secretary Alfonso Jackson's statements that he may have illegally used his government agency for partisan campaigning purposes.  There appears to be a variety of reasons to investigate Jackson.  More after the jump.