THE CHURCH MILITANT
Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse.
TO NEW WORLD ORDER DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE
Published on Jun 7, 2016
Prepare for the main event. Hillary Clinton has by most accounts clinched the Democratic Presidential Nomination. Dragging her mountainous pile of scandals into the last round to possibly make her the next President of The United States. Hillary’s rise to the White House is akin to Richard Nixon in reverse.This is the same woman who recently gave a speech on Income Inequality wearing a $12,000 Armani Jacket. The same woman who, according to a Secret Service account, punched Bill Clinton so hard, she gave him a black eye. Granted... Bill probably deserved it, but that is only one clear example of the temperament that could quite possibly have access to 1,750 active nuclear warheads.
And the Secret Service desperately wants Americans to know, that the real Hillary Clinton is a monster.
According to Page Six Secret Service agent Gary Byrne writes in his new tell all book that Hillary repeatedly screamed obscenities at her husband, Secret Service personnel and White House staffers — all of whom lived in terror of her next tirade.
Secret Service agents had discussions about the possibility that they would have to protect Bill from his wife’s physical attacks, Byrne writes, and the couple had one “violent encounter” the morning of a key presidential address to the nation.
Will Hillary spend the first 100 days of her Presidency pardoning herself and permanently silencing her husband’s accusers? Simultaneously, Sicking the IRS and the FBI on their enemies. Here are just a few of the unanswered scandals that will surface yet again when Hillary is President courtesy of World Net Daily.
Vince Foster’s 1993 death. Benghazi. Whitewater. Emailgate. Chinagate. Travel gate. Pardon gate. The Clinton Body Count. Where 91% of The Clinton Foundation’s money really went. Hillary’s Assistant Muslim Brotherhood tied Huma Abedin's involvement with the Saudis to establish a Muslim America. And we would be here all day if I kept going.
But it appears stealing the Democratic Presidential Nomination is child’s play to the career criminal known as Hillary Clinton. The Clinton’s attempted to loot the White House when Bill's term ended as El Presidente. The Clinton’s tried to take $190,000 from the Presidential mansion and "According to the General Accounting Office, the cost of the White House vandalism reached about $14,000 and included $4,850 to replace computer keyboards with damaged or missing “W” keys. The agency said some of the destruction was intentional, including glue smeared on desks, broken furniture, offices full of trash and graffiti in a men’s restroom stall that disparaged Bush. There were also missing doorknobs, medallions and office signs."
Is there any question that Hillary will sign away any remaining sovereignty the United States has left to her globalist overlords? Acting as the clean up crew for Obama's two term facade of a Presidency. Carrying on the Bush Presidency’s unyielding New World Order disintegration of the U.S. Constitution.
If the Christian orthodox view that there is one true God is still held by Southern Baptists, the behavior exhibited by Russell Moore, President of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission seems to seriously undermine its claim.
By now you may know that Moore, via the ERLC, has aligned the SBC in support of Muslims in Bernards, New Jersey who are appealing the township’s denial of their permit to build a mosque. Moore, as a member of the Board of Directors of The Becket Fund For Religious Liberty, has joined hands with Muslims for the claimed nobility of ensuring religious freedom in America. For Moore, it seems, God reigns not from a throne in heaven, but one more closely resembling a marble edifice of justice in our nation’s capitol.
If you take a moment to review the cases handled by Moore’s buddies over at The Becket Fund, you’ll find an array of endeavors in support of what has become nothing less, for Moore, at least, the continued pursuit of the worship of the idol of religious liberty. From standing with the Little Sisters of The Poor in their Supreme Court case over mandated pro-choice elements of ObamaCare to defending an incarcerated Muslim’s rights to grow a beard, the firm engages in a wide array of religious freedom defenses with no regard for which god’s worship is being bolstered.
With regards to the amicus brief onto which Moore penned his support for the New Jersey mosque, he has also linked the SBC with organizations following, as Joshua wrote, “foreign gods.” Consider the offering plate passing before you with an appeal to give so that your cooperating SBC church can pay Moore to align with – as he has done – the following:
Interfaith Coalition on Mosques
International Society for Krishna Consciousness
Muslim Bar Association of New York
New Jersey Muslim Lawyers Association
Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund
Sikh Coalition
Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of New Jersey
The ecumenical spirit of tolerance in America today demands such unholy alliances. Such are the things that Moore, with seemingly no regard for defending the worship of the one true God, supports by his board membership on a firm with no orthodox convictions, unless “worship whatever you want” may be considered “orthodox.”
Southern Baptists often seem thoroughly oblivious to what is being done in their name – via their tithes and offerings – by Moore. Perhaps, though, some vocal Southern Baptists with denominational visibility are taking notice. Moore’s behavior seems to be ruffling the denominational feathers of lauded unity within the ranks.
In his June 6, 2016, editorial, Gerald Harris, Editor of The Christian Index, the SBC newspaper for Georgia Baptists, penned an opinion entitled, “Do Muslims Really Qualify For Religious Freedom Benefits?” In citing Georgia’s 10th District U.S. Representative, and former Baptist pastor, Jody Hice, Harris posits the query as to whether Islam even qualifies as a religion itself.
Hice says, “Most people think Islam is a religion; it’s not. It’s a totalitarian way of life with a religious component. But it is much larger. It’s a geopolitical system that has governmental, financial, military, legal, and religious components.”
In his editorial, Harris highlights another quote by Hice in which the legal, geopolitical element is the decided intent of some Muslims. “This is not a tolerant, peaceful religion even though some Muslims are peaceful. Radical Muslims believe that Sharia is required by God and must be imposed worldwide.”
Harris summarizes his concerns that ought to be given due consideration by Moore:
“When we engage in a crusade to grant political Islam all the rights and privileges of other religions, we are not engaged on a level playing field. We are not comparing apples to apples. The more leniency we give in the present to Muslims who may desire Sharia Law, the less freedom we will be giving in the future to ourselves.”
If you’re like me, a pew-sitting, but Bible-reading, Southern Baptist in America, such an understanding of Islam’s goal for Sharia on a global basis is not only intolerable from a nationalistic basis; it’s a usurpation of our allegiance to the law of the one true God. How can a Southern Baptist agency possibly be in concert to help build a facility where the worship of a civilization-destroying “foreign god” will occur, and the tenets of their twisted system of Sharia will be taught?
Whether or not Islam qualifies for religious freedom in America may be, frankly, irrelevant. The question is, should Southern Baptists be actively supporting them as they seek to worship their false god?
For the ERLC, though, blinded by the idyllic hopes placed in a god enthroned in D.C. halls of justice, the necessity of unrestricted alliances in the increasingly hallowed name of religious liberty is clear. How can we possibly demand exclusivity? Even though our nation was born from a desire of devout worshippers of the Christian God seeking asylum from persecution, and even though our founding documents are clearly replete with Scripture-drawn truths, Moore, and the ERLC have succumbed – eagerly it seems – to the ecumenical spirit of the age. We must support others so they will support us. We’re in this together. In this case, though, the “god” of our legal ally is not the God of our true worship. In fact, we find ourselves in alliance with the very enemy of our God.
Lest you think this unbiblical spirit of ecumenism is merely a Southern Baptist foible, it is moving with increased vigor throughout the evangelical world, where doctrinal, orthodox convictions are being relegated to back seats, or even out the doors. In May 2016, an Anglican church in Melbourne offered the use of its parish to local Muslims after their mosque was burned to the ground.
That such things are occurring in a world that is accelerating with ever greater velocity to a Noahic level of depravity is no surprise. That Southern Baptists would engage in an endeavor with the spirit of “imagine no religion” is quite another thing. Given such unholy alliances, the ERLC could hardly be chastised if they changed their logo to the more appropriate-to-it’s-behavior, and increasingly ubiquitous, “COEXIST” bumper sticker.
To be sure, the quest for, and defense of, religious liberty is not one that should go unattended. Southern Baptists, alongside other orthodox Christian denominations, ought vigorously speak up in the face of what is an enemy-inspired onslaught against the worship of our one true God. But in so doing, we must be cautious that our defense of a temporal freedom does not become merely the replacement of God with an idol of our own legislated making, that of religious liberty.
God has never been bound by the laws of governments. He institutes those governments. He ordains those authorities. Worship due Him has never been dictated by the legislated permission of our human institutions. Such was the very thing that prompted those first faithful Europeans to set foot on American shores, seeking escape from unbiblical government demands – especially those invoking ecclesiastical compliance.
There are no new shores for authentic believers to set sail towards. But no such shores are needed. What is needed is to heed the words of Joshua to the young, elect nation of Israel.
Then Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the LORD, to serve him.” And they said, “We are witnesses.” He said, “Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD, the God of Israel.” And the people said to Joshua, “The LORD our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey.” Joshua 24:22-24
Southern Baptists and orthodox Christians in America need to “put away the foreign gods” and alliances with those who worship them. If you love America more than you love God – even if you claim to be a Christian – you’ll find that exhortation unpalatable as you attempt, like Moore, to reconcile worship of the god of religious liberty alongside the God of Scripture. But, for those of us who believe His Word, know His power and sovereignty and understand what is happening in the world, there is but one choice … “His voice we will obey.”
The SBC is merely days away from its annual meeting. Pray that the imperative question from Joshua is repeated in St. Louis. “Choose this day whom you will serve.”
Somebody ask Russell Moore if he will continue on a path that makes undistinguished our God and our faith from the pluralistic presentation to the world he creates by unholy alliances. Must we hand-hold with evil for our God to prevail?
Will we choose to serve, trust, and obey the God who rules from His throne in heaven, or will we continue to join hands with foreign gods as we worship an idol enshrined in marble halls of Washington? What witness do we wish to give to a dying world? One that relies on tenuous legislated freedoms from a wicked government … or one that stands boldly, even if alone, on the power of the one true God for authentic liberty and eternal salvation?
Indeed, what is our Gospel witness worth these days in the SBC?
The Baptist Press just released the Annual Church Profile report for 2015. The article opens with the decidedly Scripture-oblivious words, “Southern Baptists may find cause for hope in the latest Annual Profile Report. The Southern Baptist Convention added more churches in 2015, due mostly to church planting efforts.”
Really?
Look. I love the Southern Baptist Convention, but I can assure you that the very last thing I have any concern about is finding “cause for hope” in anything the SBC does these days. My hope, my assurance, lies in quite a different place. The SBC would be wise to start placing their own hope – and obedience – in the same place.
Here’s the news. Inclusive of this latest statistical data, since 2002 the SBC has lost nearly one million members (952,972). Some of those lost were, of course, already “lost” before they temporarily planted themselves in an SBC pew. Some of them were given false absolution, granted full church membership, and promised “Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” because they repeated some prayer or walked some aisle. That message apparently didn’t work out and they walked.
Others, no doubt truly regenerate, were driven to find more (authentic) Gospel-friendly shores where Scripture isn’t merely given the lip service of sufficiency but is actually believed, preached and taught.
(Here’s a thought. Why don’t we charge LifeWay Research with the task of tracking down every departing soul from our midst and find out why they left? Perhaps, like the real Gospel is to a fallen world, that truth might just be too divisive for the SBC intelligentsia.)
From 2014 to 2015, the SBC lost over 200,000 members. (204,409) Well yeah, but, here’s the great news! We planted another 294 new churches! Yippee! Give Kevin Ezell a raise! (Ezell is the President of the North American Mission Board.) Proving Christ right, but not knowing it, the SBC is perhaps the leader in building more churches while simultaneously losing more members than any other “We will build the church” denomination on the planet.
Read in a different, far less than self-aggrandizing light, here’s what the latest ACP report reflects. In 2015, for each new church planted by the SBC, 695 members were LOST from the membership rolls. That ratio is worse even than 2014 over 2013, when nearly 632 left the ranks per new church plant. But it’s only in the bureaucratic aristocracy of upper echelon SBC-dom that any “cause for hope” might be proclaimed.
(Build one church = Lose 695 members!!! Whoever cast this vision of lunacy … can we puh-lease lose him from our leadership? Make a note, please. I am not opposed to church planting. Not at all. I’m opposed to churches that do not preach and teach the actual Truth of Scripture. Clearly those are the majority in the SBC.)
It is disobedience to the Word that produces the epic unbuilding of the church that the church planting wizards and faux gospel pastors of the SBC are able to accomplish in massive annual numbers. It takes a decided effort and an intentional disregard of the problem – viewed in a purely Biblical light – to tolerate the fact that vision-casting, seeker sensitive, felt needs, purpose-driven drivel is a failure. It’s a failure precisely because it is all unbiblical.
Eventually, folks realize what’s being sold from the pulpit is nothing less that Christianized charlatanry, aimed at keeping pew sitters happy, engaged, and, of course, giving. But what’s being hurled from the dais, from the big screens behind it, or via “worship” tunes wailing from stage speakers, is a doctrine-free, Bible-lean course that will not feed authentic sheep. And the entertainment of the goats from it isn’t working too well either.
(To be sure, the follies and failures of the SBC’s “let’s build the church” endeavor are assuredly not impacting the “true” church. It’s just a tragedy that the SBC has moved so far from Scripture that it has become blinded to its own errors.)
The Bible is actually pretty clear. (Perspicuity … it’s part of the doctrine of Scripture, FYI) The church exists to edify the sheep. The real sheep, authentically regenerated by the Spirit of God and not by the incantation of a nonsensical, non-Scriptural prayer, must be fed the Word. In turn, those sheep share the Gospel.
Yet, in the Baptist Press article, Thom Rainer, President of LifeWay, says “While a decrease in baptisms is very disappointing, we don’t take for granted 295,000 baptisms. We should rejoice with each of those individuals who chose to follow Christ.”
(Umm, last time I read the Bible, it says salvation belongs to the Lord. I can’t “choose” it, regardless of how hip, slick, and emotionally-manipulative the worship “experience” is. Regardless, far more are choosing to leave than choosing to stay. Somebody must be getting the words wrong to that salvation-inducing sinner’s prayer, I guess.)
Since the goats that have been ushered into pews don’t actually eat sheep food, SBC churches have changed the menu. (Warning: Eating this diet of disobedience will result in massive bloodletting … of members from the ranks!)
The SBC has taken upon itself the task Christ reserved for Himself. “I will build my church.” He didn’t mention light shows, monotonously-lyric-ed praise music, and “its-all-about-you” sermons as tools He would employ. He said “the gospel is the power of God for salvation” and then charged His sheep to go proclaim it.
If the cooperating member churches of the SBC would jettison tolerance for “other” gospels, stand firmly against false teaching, preach and teach actual Scripture, a funny thing will happen. Christ will, indeed, build His church.
The mission we’ve been given in Scripture is only capable of being accomplished by the method we’ve been given in Scripture. Scripture is sufficient because our God is sufficient. He has decreed the mission and the method. Too bad the SBC doesn’t believe it will work.
Like I said, I love the SBC. But it in no way resembles anything close to the “true” church that Christ is building. I just pray that we’d be obedient to the sufficiency of Scripture so that our image might just change to look a little bit more Christ-like. Who knows? Souls might actually be saved along the way. After all, Jesus promised that very thing.
As it stands, though, the frustrated flock of genuine sheep sitting in SBC pews best be on the lookout for further tourniquet-tightening methodologies from the ivory towers of the SBC to stem the hemorrhaging. Apparently, they just don’t have a copy of the Scriptures.
The purpose-driven downgrade continues …
(The downgrade, by the way, is not the loss of members. The downgrade is the loss of Scripture. The epic membership decline is the evidence of it.)
Further stats on the downgrade may be found HERE and HERE and HERE. _______________________________________________________
Southern Baptists lost 200,000 members over the past year
NEW YORK — The Democratic mayor of New York City has launched a citywide ad campaign in recognition of “LGBT Pride Month” that touts the city’s policy requiring that citizens be permitted to use the restroom that correlates with their “gender identity.”
Mayor Bill De Blasio and the New York City Commission on Human Rights announced the campaign on Monday, which will include print ads and videos that will appear on subway cars, bus shelters, phone booths, and in newspapers and various social media placements.
“Use the restroom consistent with who you are,” the ads read, featuring photographs of transgendered residents. “Look past pink and blue.”
The advertisements also advise, “In NYC, it’s the law. No questions asked.”
“New York City has long been a leader in the fight for LGBTQ equality, and these ads are further evidence of the City’s unwavering support of our diverse communities,” De Blasio said in a statement. “While other cities and states are legislating intolerance and taking away individuals’ right to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity, we are proudly standing with our transgender and gender non-conforming New Yorkers.”
As previously reported, De Blasio signed an executive order in March that allows men who identify as women and vice versa to use city-owned restroom facilities and locker rooms in accordance with their preferred identity. It applies to both transgender and “gender non-conforming” persons, the latter of whom are defined as those “who do not follow other people’s ideas or stereotypes about how they should look or act based on the female or male sex they were assigned at birth.”
In December, the New York City Commission on Human Rights also announced new guidelines under the city’s Human Rights Law that imposes fines on employers who use masculine pronouns for male workers who wish to identify as women and vice versa.
Its interpretive guide includes a prohibition on “[i]ntentionally failing to use an individual’s preferred name, pronoun or title,” such as “repeatedly calling a transgender woman ‘him’ or ‘Mr.’ when she has made it clear that she prefers female pronouns and a female title.”
The guidelines further state that employers “should not limit the options for identification to male and female only,” as “[s]ome transgender and gender non-conforming people prefer to use pronouns other than he/him/his or she/her/hers, such as they/them/theirs or ze/hir.”
Violations could result in penalties up to $125,000 and up to $250,000 for transgressions of the law that are considered to be “willfull, wanton or malicious conduct.”
But not everyone is supportive of the national push to allow men in women’s restrooms and vice versa. In his blog “America, Look Up,” Pastor Bryan Ridenour commented on the Obama administration’s recent mandate that public schools allow students to use the restroom that correlates with their “gender identity.”
He pointed to Scripture’s exhortation in 2 Timothy 2:22, which reads, “Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”
“Instead of fleeing evil, our world chases after it like a moth to a flame,” Ridenour wrote. “Opening the door of our bathrooms and locker rooms to all genders or gender identities opens another Pandora’s Box in our already sin sick world.”
D-DAY: IS THIS WHAT WE FOUGHT FOR? BY LEE DUIGON SEE: http://www.newswithviews.com/Duigon/lee358.htm; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Just a few days ago was the anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944: 72 years ago. To many it was “the longest day.” To many more, their last. But on that day the free peoples of the West, commanded by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, landed on the shores of Fortress Europe to wrest it from the hands of Adolf Hitler.
We wake as from a dream into the present time.
Shortly before the D-Day anniversary, Michelle Obama made a speech to graduating seniors at City College of New York. The president’s wife reminded the graduates, “I wake up each morning in a house built by slaves.” She means the White House. Violins, please.
Slavery in the United States ended 151 years ago. Michelle Obama vacations in Hawaii, Martha’s Vineyard, and toney ski resorts. She jets all over the world, accompanied by her entourage—hairdresser, wardrobe serfs, chef, yes-men, yes-women, and Heaven knows what else—and stays at the costliest luxury hotels, rooms for thousands of dollars a night. You could pay your mortgage several times over with what she spends on shoes and shiny objects.
And the beauty of it is, Michelle doesn’t spend a dime of her own money for any of it. No—she spends your money, that you worked for: public money raised by taxes.
But she—when she’s not staying at a five-star resort—wakes up each morning in a house built by slaves.
There are no more slaves here, unless you count the taxpayers
Donald Trump likes luxuries, too. The difference is, he pays for his and you pay for Michelle’s.
But the president’s wife was trying, in her speech, to make a bigger point than that. She encouraged the graduates to rejoice because “the American dream” is still alive—her version of it. Our old version of it, if it lives at all, is on life support.
What is her “American dream”? If I read the speech aright, it has something to do with tons of people swarming into America from every country in the world, all refusing to assimilate, all speaking their own mutually unintelligible languages, all united by only one thing: the paternalistic rule of an ever-growing, power-seeking government. As another Democrat put it, four years ago, “The government is the only thing we all belong to.” By “belong to” they mean “owned by.”
Would you have waded ashore onto Omaha Beach, with shells and bullets flying all around you, and land mines planted everywhere, for that?
Meanwhile Michelle’s hubby occupies himself with the task of “fundamental transformation” of America—most recently taking the form of giving grown men free access to women’s public rest rooms. Wow. Let’s scale those cliffs, men, with Germans shooting at us all the way up, for that. “You are whatever you call yourself!” No matter how ridiculous it is. Let’s storm Rommel’s pillboxes for that.
D-Day ought to be a national day of mourning for what we’ve permitted our country to become. In one lifetime we’ve gone from Eisenhower to Obama. If that’s not cause for mourning, what is?
But more than mourning, it ought to move us to repentance. The God who preserved our country through terrible dangers, and crowned it with prosperity, peace, and stability, is waiting for us to turn to Him again—not to the swollen government, in hopes of special favors and big chunks of other people’s money, not to a lot of blithering “scientists” trying to scare us into further submission with threats of Climate Change, not to rich-as-Croesus liberals who climb out of their private jets to moan about “income inequality” and promise to fix it if only we give them much more power.
Not to any of those idols and false prophets, but to Him: who made the heavens and the earth, and gave us His only begotten Son, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of all the world.
That’s worth dying for. And living for.
The other stuff is only garbage.
I have discussed these topics, and others, on my blog, http://leeduigon.com, throughout the week. Please stop by and read! All it takes is just one click to get you there.
But the battle is far from over. And Americans still have many tools at their disposal to block the scheming. For instance, the “Affirmatively Further Fair Housing” plot is contingent on successfully bribing local officials into compliance. As more than a few analysts have observed, that means cities and communities can easily reject the plan. Simply stated, all they have to do is refuse to accept unconstitutional bribes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). If the bribes (disguised as “grants” and so on) from a bankrupt Uncle Sam are refused, the strings they come attached with are null and void, leaving Washington, D.C., bureaucrats with no leverage. Some cities are already leading the way.
Separately, state governments can and should stand up to the agenda as well. Among other tactics, lawmakers can use the power of nullification to prohibit cities and towns from becoming federal agents in Obama's quest to re-shape America via anti-constitutional housing policy. Nullification has been used by American states since the 1700s to resist unconstitutional activities, including the “Fugitive Slave Act” purporting to require the return of runaway slaves. The powerful tool promoted by America's Founders remains relevant and in use today — including by liberals in states such as Colorado, which voted to nullify federal and international prohibitions against marijuana.
Leading the charge to quash the Obama administration's lawless AFFH program at the federal level was U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), one of the leading advocates of liberty and constitutional government in Congress. Last month, Senator Lee proposed an amendment to the Senate Transportation and HUD appropriations bill that would have defunded Obama's AFFH edicts and their implementation by the federal Leviathan. It was a simple vote that would have definitively shut down the scheme to relocate government-funded housing projects to middle-class suburbs. And in a passionate speech on the Senate floor, Lee explained why it was so urgently needed.
“Proponents of AFFH, including President Obama, claim that it fulfills the original purpose and promise of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. But the truth is, HUD’s new housing rule isn’t the fulfillment — but a betrayal — of the Fair Housing Act of 1968,” Lee told his colleagues. “The original intent of the Fair Housing Act was to protect the God-given right of individuals and families — no matter their skin color or ethnicity — to buy and rent homes where they please. By contrast, the explicit purpose of HUD’s new rule is to empower federal bureaucrats to dictate where a community’s low-income residents will live. This is not what 'progress' looks like, Mr. President.”
Lee also outlined how the Obama HUD edict would purport to empower D.C. bureaucrats to run roughshod over local communities and their elected officials. “If any aspect of a community’s housing and demographic patterns fails to meet HUD bureaucrats’ expansive definition of ‘fair housing,’ the local government must submit a plan to reorganize the community’s housing practices according to the preferences and priorities of the bureaucrats,” he explained. “Critics of AFFH often say — as I have said — that this rule turns HUD into a National Zoning Board with the power to unilaterally rewrite local zoning laws and land-use regulations in every city and town in America.... Under the new rule, HUD doesn’t replace local Public Housing Authorities — it conscripts them into its service.”
“To make matters worse, this new rule will end America’s unique — and uniquely successful — commitment to localism and diversity,” Lee continued, adding that neighborhood-level construction decisions would now be subject to the “whims” of future presidents. “If this past year has not yet done enough to give you pause about handing over such power to the Executive Branch, you’re not paying close enough attention.” He also expressed hope that lawmakers in the House — where GOP leadership has already caved to Obama on this issue (and practically every other) on multiple occasions — would pass a similar measure again in the near future.
Instead of voting to protect their constituents and defend the Constitution, which they all swore an oath to uphold, establishment Republicans joined with Senate Democrats to quash Lee's amendment. In its place, lawmakers did overwhelmingly support a weaker amendment — described as “toothless” by critics — that was offered by Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a liberal establishment Republican. Under the Collins amendment, HUD may not directly force local authorities “to undertake specific changes to existing zoning laws.” But as Lee explained, the Collins measure would allow the “underhanded and subversive” mechanics of the AFFH to continue.
In fact, the amendment was beyond toothless, because it tackled the non-existent problem of Obama's HUD being able to force local governments to take particular actions or adopt particular policies. In reality, neither HUD or HUD Secretary Julian Castro have, or have ever had, the authority to compel local governments to do anything. Instead, the AFFH scheme relies on federally funded bribes and the threat of lawsuits to impose HUD's schemes on local communities — something the Lee amendment would have tackled head on, but which the Collins amendment ignores and enables.
The Collins amendment passed by huge margins, with 87 in favor versus just nine against, showing that a national zoning board is incredibly bad politics, even for extremist Democrats. The Lee amendment, by contrast, which would have actually stopped Obama's HUD from re-engineering American communities for sinister “progressive” purposes, was defeated by establishment Republicans and Democrats. More than a few analysts and commentators concluded that the Collins amendment was in fact a cheap and transparent ploy aimed at providing political cover for pro-Obama Republicans to bankroll Obama's AFFH scheme with federal tax dollars. And there can be little doubt about it.
Critics were outraged. “Americans wonder what is going wrong with the system in Washington, D.C. where Senators seem more interested in playing paddy cake with President Obama and his radical agenda rather than standing up and fighting it,” said a statement by Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning, who supported Lee's measure to de-fund Obama's schemes bribing local governments for “racial and income gerrymandering zoning requirements.” “Unfortunately, too many of [Lee's] Republican colleagues were more afraid of the race hustlers who seek to put low income high rise apartments into middle-class neighborhoods.”
Others vowed to keep fighting despite the failure of Lee's amendment. Property-rights attorney Ethan Blevins with the College of Public Interest Law at the Pacific Legal Fund, for example, vowed to use legal action. “Perhaps Senator Lee’s amendment will get another chance once people begin to feel the impact of the AFFH rule,” he said, citing government-engineered changes in home prices, neighborhoods being re-shaped, communities getting sick of “mummification by red tape,” and people realizing that “the strings attached to federal money end in a noose.” However, in “the meantime,” Blevins said, the Pacific Legal Fund “won’t hesitate to resort to the courts to do what the Senate cannot.”
The New American first reported on Obama's plan in 2013, long before it became a major political flash point in the administration's war on America. Among other schemes, the HUD decree makes billions of dollars worth of funding to local governments contingent on the communities accepting federal control of their policies. That means neighborhoods must be re-zoned along income and racial specifications developed by the federal executive branch, rather than the wishes of local communities. It is basically extreme social-engineering on a national scale to further Obama's “fundamental transformation” of America.
The plan also deliberately ignores state lines in favor of “regions.” The people of Dubuque, Iowa, found this out the hard way when the Obama administration coerced local officials into recruiting welfare recipients from Chicago to live in its tax-subsidized low-income housing. The outrageous policy — and its disastrous effects, not to mention the assault on traditions of local self-government and state boundries — was outlined in areport by the Public Interest Institute last year. And that is just the beginning of what Obama and his allies have planned.
Aside from the fact that the U.S. Constitution delegates no authority over housing policy to the federal government, making the entire HUD bureaucracy unconstitutional, the evidence also suggests that the HUD “Community Development Block Grant” bribes used to advance AFFH are a massive failure. Indeed, according to a study by the Reason Foundation, the flow of taxpayer dollars has primarily benefited cronies and special interests, while doing basically nothing to reduce poverty. So taxpayers are being unconstitutionally bilked out of almost $15 billion a year to shower on crony capitalists. Now Obama wants to use the handouts to help re-shape America too — and, presumably, to transform the demographics of America's state legislative and congressional districts.
In fact, even the federal government's own studies show that the radical “housing diversity” machinations being pushed from D.C. have failed miserably to accomplish the feds' own stated objectives. “A 2011 study sponsored by HUD found that adults using more generous Section 8 vouchers did not get better jobs or get off welfare,” reported Paul Sperry in the New York Post. “In fact, more went on food stamps. And their children did not do better in their new schools. Worse, crime simply followed them to their safer neighborhoods, ruining the quality of life for existing residents.”
It is time for the American people's elected representatives to put a stop to Obama's AFFH scheme, as well as the broader “fundamental transformation” of America that he has helped oversee. The agenda is unwise, unconstitutional, unaffordable, and dangerous to American traditions and liberty. It must be stopped and reversed.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
If you’re living in a neighborhood of mainly “whites,” or Christians, or non-refugees, or middle-class income earners, or traditional man-woman households, and your town or city receives federal dollars, say goodbye to the neighborhood as you have known it.
That’s because last July, the Obama Administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) finalized a new “fair housing” rule called “affirmatively further fair housing choice” (AFFH), which will begin to be enforced nationwide in 2019.
As explained by Ed Gramlich of the National Low Income HousingCoalition, in “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing: Final Regulations,” the new rule is an addition to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibits housing discrimination against the “protected classes” of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or disability, by requiring “program participants” to“affirmatively further fair housing” by taking steps “to actively overcome historic patterns of segregation“.
“Program participants” are defined as “jurisdictions” (towns/cities/counties/states) and public housing agencies (PHAs)that receive federal funds for housing and urban development, which in practice means every neighborhood in the US, for is there a town or city or county or state that doesn’t receive federal dollars for housing and urban development?
Translated into plainer English, that means if your town/city/county/state contains sections and neighborhoods that lack blacks, Muslims, LGBTs, Mexican illegals, Syrian refugees, and the mentally ill, the assumption is that the homogeneity is a result of discriminatory housing practices. And if your town/city/county/state gets federal dollars for housing and urban development — which means everywhere in the U.S. — then your local government is required to “desegregate” and break up your neighborhood’s offensive homogeneity.
In the preamble to the rule, HUD stresses that “the new AFFH approach does not mandate specific outcomes. Rather, it establishes a standardized fair housing assessment and planning process to give program participants a more effective means to affirmatively further the purposes of the Fair Housing Act.” Blah, blah, blah.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN
(1) HUD will provide each “program participant” (henceforth, I’ll call it “your town”) with the following:
Data on housing in your town and the surrounding region.
The new “affirmatively further fair housing choice” (AFFH) rule that provides “a standard framework” for program participants to use to identify and examine “fair housing issues” and the underlying “contributing factors” that cause any housing discriminatory issues. A “fair housing issue” is defined as “a condition that restricts choice or access to opportunity, including:
Ongoing local or regional segregation, or lack of integration.
Racial or ethnic concentrations of poverty.
Significant disparities in access to opportunity.
Disproportionate housing needs based on the “protected classes” of race, color,
national origin, religion, sex, familial status, or disability.
Evidence of illegal discrimination or violations of civil rights laws, regulations, or guidance.
(2) Your local government then uses the data to assess whether and how “fair” the housing is in your town; identify neighborhoods lacking “fair housing”; and set “fair housing goals and priorities”. All of that should be submitted to HUD in an “Assessment of Fair Housing” (AFH), the development of which requires “public participation”.
(3) HUD receives, reviews, and decides whether to accept your town’s AFH.
(4) If accepted, your town must “certify (pledge) that they are affirmatively furthering fair housing choice” by incorporating its HUD-approved AFH into its Consolidated Plan (ConPlan) and Public Housing Agency (PHA) Plan. Specifically, this means, your town must “take meaningful actions” to “address significant disparities in housing needs and in access to community opportunity” by:
“Replacing segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns.”
“Transforming racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity.”
“Fostering and maintaining compliance with civil rights and fair housing law.”
Removing “obvious impediments” to “fair housing,” such as “refusing to rent to families with children,” lack of large rental units, zoning that limits multifamily housing, and “insurance practices that reinforce segregated housing patterns” (whatever that means). See “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice“.
(5) HUD will “monitor” your town’s “compliance” to the new “fair housing” rule by requiring your local government to submit an Annual Performance Report of its ConPlan (called CAPER), wherein your local government must:
Summarize the “impediments to fair housing” in your community;
Describe the actions taken in the past year to overcome the effects of those “impediments”.
(6) Your town must submit a new AFH every 5 years, which will result in a new ConPlan and PHA Plan.
WHEN NEW RULE WILL BE ENFORCED
HUD says “Most program participants will not be required to use the new AFFH system until 2019.” The exact timing or due date for a “program participant” to submit an “Assessment of Fair Housing” (AFH) depends on:
Whether the “jurisdiction” (town/city/county/state) receives less or more than $500,000 in federal funds;
Whether the public housing agency has less or more than 550 public housing units and vouchers.
If you thought Agenda 21 is bad, this new “fair housing” rule is Agenda 21 On Steroids, and it will wreak havoc in neighborhoods and communities across America. And yet, not a word from Congress or the useless media.
Hussein Soetoro Strikes Again At Further Freedoms Through AFFH Which the House and Senate Passed
Even with a majority Republican House and Senate, establishment Obama-loving GOP members have voted to remove further rights of citizens using our own tax dollars.
Friends, this is where the final blow to liberty and freedom, outside of quashing Christianity, will occur – in our own city councils, county commissioners and local elected officials. It works very simply, in disguise, and enticing to local officials. TheNew Americanexplains, "the 'Affirmatively Further Fair Housing' plot is contingent on successfully bribing local officials into compliance." These bribes take the form of unconstitutional "grants" and other funds coming from the federal government's unconstitutional agency, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, giving the agency and the federal government the upper hand in "planning."
However, there is a remedy. It is called nullification. If no other link is read, the link for nullification is a must read by everyone. The States can simply nullify this unconstitutional housing project to "prohibit cities and towns" from morphing into agents of the federal government. Nullification is the rightful course against unconstitutional legislation going back to the 1700s. For those who question nullification in this day and age, remember, liberals, LIBERALS, used it in states like Colorado to nullify "federal and international prohibitions against marijuana."
Likewise, local governments can refuse to accept money in the form of unconstitutional grants and funds from HUD. This leaves the long arm of the lawless in Washington, DC, with zero leverage over local governments and officials. This is probably the simplest way to thwart this forced change. States have long since sold out to be subjects of the federal government.
One Republican who led the way against this latest lawlessness by the Obama administration is Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). He proposed an amendment to the Senate Transportation and HUD appropriations bill that would have defunded Obama's AFFH dictatorial decree and implementation by HUD.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Lee explained how this edict works, what is violated, and how this amendment would prevent it.
Here’s how the rule works.
AFFH requires cities and towns across the country to audit their local housing policies, under close supervision by HUD regulators, who may have never have lived anywhere near there.
If any aspect of a community’s housing and demographic patterns fails to meet HUD bureaucrats’ expansive definition of “fair housing,” the local government must submit a plan to reorganize the community’s housing practices according to the preferences and priorities of the bureaucrats.
Critics of AFFH often say – as I have said – that this rule turns HUD into a National Zoning Board with the power to unilaterally rewrite local zoning laws and land-use regulations in every city and town in America.
But that’s not quite how the rule works, and it’s why Senator Collins’ amendment would not do anything to prevent the implementation of AFFH.
In the 10 months since the rule was finalized, it has become clear that the mechanics of AFFH are much more underhanded and subversive than critics have often claimed.
Under the new rule, HUD doesn’t replace local Public Housing Authorities – it conscripts them into its service.
Mr. President, this gets to the heart of the difference between my amendment and the amendment offered by my colleague, Senator Collins.
The danger of AFFH is not that HUD will direct local governments and public housing authorities to make specific changes to their zoning policies. It will just threaten them, by tying obedience to federal Community Development Block Grants.
...
Traditionally, local officials have been free to use their CDBG grant money according to their community’s needs and priorities. But under AFFH, HUD officials will withhold a local government’s CDBG funds unless that local government adopts HUD’s preferred housing policies.
This comes down to Americans being able to retain the choice in where they live. Lee explained:
As currently written, it permits the Department of Housing and Urban Development to proceed in the implementation of its radical new regulation, the insultingly misnamed “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule,” or AFFH.
Proponents of AFFH, including President Obama, claim that it fulfills the original purpose and promise of the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
But the truth is, HUD’s new housing rule isn’t the fulfillment – but a betrayal – of the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
The original intent of the Fair Housing Act was to protect the God-given right of individuals and families – no matter their skin color or ethnicity – to buy and rent homes where they please. By contrast, the explicit purpose of HUD’s new rule is to empower federal bureaucrats to dictate where a community’s low-income residents will live.
This is not what “progress” looks like, Mr. President.
AFFH not only grants unprecedented new powers to HUD that were not contemplated by – and have no legitimate basis in – the Fair Housing Act of 1968, but it will ultimately hurt the very people it purports to help: public-housing residents – especially African-American public-housing residents – who too often find themselves trapped in dysfunctional, broken neighborhoods.
To make matters worse, this new rule will end America’s unique – and uniquely successful – commitment to localism and diversity, and make neighborhood-level construction decisions subject to the whims of future presidents.
If this past year has not yet done enough to give you pause about handing over such power to the Executive Branch, you’re not paying close enough attention.
So, instead of housing and neighborhood planning being left to local governments who know the needs of their area better than Washington bureaucrats, the bureaucrats would then dictate to local governments the planning. How does that work out for the population? Again, Lee provided an appropriate example that fell on deaf ears.
Predictably, proponents of the rule claim that this will be a collaborative process, with local-government officials in the driver’s seat while the bureaucrats at HUD merely provide “support” and “guidance.” But the 10-month track record of AFFH suggests that the opposite will be true.
In fact, I have already heard from the Housing Authority of Salt Lake County predicting that the costs of complying with AFFH will stretch their already-thin resources, add hundreds of hours of bureaucratic paperwork to their workloads, and eliminate their autonomy to determine the best ways to provide adequate low-cost housing to their community.
...
The history of Chicago is instructive here.
In the 2000s, Chicago’s city government demolished many of its public-housing facilities without a plan to replace them.
Those with the resources and wherewithal to choose where to live moved to places where housing is cheap and economic opportunity is plentiful. But the less fortunate were relocated to more remote, less prosperous towns, like Dubuque, Iowa, at the behest of – who else – the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In 2008, the city of Dubuque was struggling to meet the needs of its own public-housing residents. Yet in stepped HUD, declaring that the city’s housing policies would fail to meet the agency’s fair-housing standards – and that, therefore, the city would be ineligible to receive federal funding from HUD – unless the local government actively recruited Section 8 voucher holders from Chicago.
Unwilling to lose access to federal funding on which the city had come to rely, the small Iowan town acquiesced to HUD’s demands.
This imposed an enormous administrative burden on the city’s resource-strapped housing agencies, but HUD’s real victims were Chicago’s public-housing residents who were forcibly displaced to an unknown town 200 miles from the city they used to call home.
As we see in the example, state boundaries are totally ignored and replaced with "regions" that clearly cross state lines. In other words, bypass of the State government occurs, violating the Tenth Amendment, in favor of the Washington, DC "region" platform. Lee's amendment would have effectively defunded this travesty and stopped its implementation.
According to Lee, "... low-income families are not statistics to be managed by distant bureaucrats – they’re human beings, our neighbors in need, who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect."
Under the Collins amendment, HUD may not directly force local authorities “to undertake specific changes to existing zoning laws.” But as Lee explained, the Collins measure would allow the “underhanded and subversive” mechanics of the AFFH to continue.
How did this atrocity come to pass? It's very simple really and best explained by Rick Manning, President of Americans for Limited Government.
“Americans wonder what is going wrong with the system in Washington, D.C. where Senators seem more interested in playing paddy cake with President Obama and his radical agenda rather than standing up and fighting it,” said a statement by Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning, who supported Lee's measure to de-fund Obama's schemes bribing local governments for “racial and income gerrymandering zoning requirements.” “Unfortunately, too many of [Lee's] Republican colleagues were more afraid of the race hustlers who seek to put low income high rise apartments into middle-class neighborhoods.” [emphasis mine]
And, this is the true issue as stated by Manning – race hustlers seeking to disrupt all middle-class neighborhoods by putting low income high rise apartments in their midst.
The issue at hand boils down to freedom and constitutionality. The Constitution grants no authority to the federal government over housing or the movement of people. What authority not granted to the federal government becomes the authority of the States or the people, respectively – the Tenth Amendment. Individuals are free to choose where their live, in what type of dwelling they live and how they live based on their income. Cities and localities create ordinances on dwellings and initiate zoning laws in order to protect property values of the citizens who live there.
Besides being unconstitutional and HUD being an unconstitutional agency, the New American indicates "the evidence also suggests that the HUD 'Community Development Block Grant' bribes used to advance AFFH are a massive failure."
According to a study by the Reason Foundation, the flow of taxpayer dollars has primarily benefited cronies and special interests, while doing basically nothing to reduce poverty. So taxpayers are being unconstitutionally bilked out of almost $15 billion a year to shower on crony capitalists. Now Obama wants to use the handouts to help re-shape America too — and, presumably, to transform the demographics of America's state legislative and congressional districts.
In fact, even the federal government's own studies show that the radical “housing diversity” machinations being pushed from D.C. have failed miserably to accomplish the feds' own stated objectives. “A 2011 study sponsored by HUD found that adults using more generous Section 8 vouchers did not get better jobs or get off welfare,” reported Paul Sperry in the New York Post. “In fact, more went on food stamps. And their children did not do better in their new schools. Worse, crime simply followed them to their safer neighborhoods, ruining the quality of life for existing residents.”
The failure of Lee's amendment to pass does not mean the fight is over as others, like property-rights attorney Ethan Bevins with the College of Public Interest Law at the Pacific Legal Fund, vow to keep fighting by using legal action. According to Bevins, once the people start feeling the effects of Hussein Soetoro's AFFH in the form of "government-engineered changes in home pricing, neighborhoods being reshaped, communities getting sick of 'mummification by red tape,' and people realizing the strings attached to federal money end in a noose," Lee's amendment might stand another chance at passage. Bevins stated the Pacific Legal Fund will not hesitate "to resort to the courts to do what the Senate cannot."
It's time to face facts here. The War on American Citizens is here, now, and has every intention of escalating. Our elected officials in Washington, DC, are bought and paid for by special interest, the wealthy, and blackmailed by one Hussein Soetoro to eradicate every last bastion of freedom, liberty and unalienable God-given rights of the people. It is a move toward totalitarianism not seen since the Bolshevik revolution resulting in the installation of communism in the land of Russia and Mao Tse Tung's revolution producing dictatorial communist rule of China. If you are unfamiliar about what happened during those historical events, do some research – millions were murdered by their own government, millions starved to death, and the people were herded wherever the government wanted them to go; they owned nothing, had zero freedoms and worked in jobs the government dictated. Everyone was equally miserable except for the controlling political elite and wealthy.
While some may be perfectly content with the "nanny police state," many are not. The point of no return is almost upon us. What we choose now, will determine what fate will await our posterity and what we will choose to leave them. Anyone who thinks the situation will be different here than in Russia or China does not understand the evilness that absolute power can generate. While the majority of people may think their idea of "equality" will be the norm should the farce of communism overtake this nation, they would be wrong, as it is what the "ruling elite" think is equal for the people, excluding them, that will be prevalent.
Sometimes it is easier to "cut out the tumor" than it is to try to eradicate it with chemotherapy or radiation. For once the big offense has been removed, the smaller fragments can be managed with the smaller measure.
Limbaugh: Obama Is Trying To Punish Suburbs By Encouraging Affordable Housing
Published on May 9, 2016
RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST): [President Barack] Obama’s last act is to force suburbs to be less white and less wealthy. Hillary [Clinton]’s rumored running mate housing Secretary Julian Castro is cooking up a scheme to reallocate funding for Section 8 housing to punish suburbs for being too white and too wealthy. Now, this may be Julian Castro, but this all started with Obama. The scheme involves supersizing vouchers to help the urban poor afford higher rents in pricey areas, such as Westchester County in New York while assigning them government real estate agents called mobility counselors to secure housing in the ex-urbs. Julian Castro plans to launch the Section 8 reboot this fall, even though a similar program tested a few years ago in Dallas has been blamed for shifting violent crime to affluent neighborhoods. Exactly what happens. It’s by design. It’s payback for people that moved to the suburbs from the city. It basically is transferring that which they left to where they now live. It is all part of a grand scheme to forcibly desegregate inner cities and integrate the outer suburbs. Castro, Julian Castro, last month threatened to sue suburban landlords for discrimination if they refuse Section 8 tenants with criminal records. This is no different, except, it’s actually a deeper scale. It’s no different than – you better believe it, it’s already happening. Dallas was a proving ground. It was judged to have worked by virtue of the – you have to bring them into your neighborhood, you have to build housing that’s so-called affordable for them to live in right next to people in whatever neighborhoods, however you want to describe them, affluent or whatever. Yeah, it’s by design, nuts on purpose. And they tried it in Dallas, and the crime rate skyrocketed with the introduction of people with no jobs, and it was judged to be a success. So now they’re doing it in Westchester County, which has long been a test market of this. It’s not new, it’s just now being written about for the first time here in the New York Post. Castro last month threatened to sue suburban landlords for discrimination if they refuse Section 8 tenants with criminal records. We told you about this last week. You have to rent to somebody – we’re going to get rid of, in fact, the term “criminal,” and we’re going to get rid of the term “felon.” This will facilitate them being hired by mandate or given affordable so-called places to live by mandate. And this is going to survive long after Obama is out of office unless somebody does something about it. It’s happening under the radar. Look, on a deeper scale, it’s no different than you run a bakery and somebody walks in. I’m getting married, I’m gay, I want you to bake a cake. Sorry, not our values. OK, fine. We’re going to sue you and put you out of business. You’re a photographer, same thing. We’re having a gay wedding, want you to take pictures. Sorry, religious beliefs say I can’t do that. Well, you’re going to pay. We’re going to sue you out of existence. Same thing here. If you will not permit Section 8 tenants, felons and so forth with criminal records to move in to your neighborhood, we’re going to sue you. I hope he fails. This is the chip on his shoulder.
