Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz

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johnkarls
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Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz

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Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz - Pres. Obama’s 2015 HUD Rule Aimed At The Suburbs


A. INTRODUCTION

Question A-1

Did our focus book fail to offer any “silver bullet” recommendations because Prof. Jackson claimed that “making dramatic changes in people’s networks is likely a losing battle” – pointing out that “large-scale social engineering has a history of disasters” and offering only a handful of modest suggestions?

Answer A-1

Yes, our focus book failed to offer any “silver bullet” recommendations.

Question A-2

Did Q&A-19 of the First Short Quiz “respectfully suggest” that there are at least two ways of making dramatic changes in people’s networks and comparing them would be the subject of this “Second Short Quiz” --

(1) Our 6/3/2020 Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign entitled “Addressing the Cause of Racism (vs. a Mere Symptom)” which called for educating the children of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste in “magnet schools” whose excellence in terms of faculty, programs, facilities, etc., would cause affluent parents to want their children to attend even though their admittance and continued enrollment would be conditioned on the affluent parents and their child tutoring and mentoring a classmate from America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste. Details are available at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1925&sid=83ae0f4e3 ... 41b769b5de.

(2) President Obama’s 7/16/2015 HUD Regulation which appeared to be aimed at forcing suburbs to construct “affordable housing” (aka “low-income housing”). It was repealed by the Trump Administration on 8/7/2020.

Answer A-2

Yes. [Q&A-19 also invited everyone to think about whether there are any other ways to make dramatic changes in people’s networks.]


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B. OUR 6/3/2020 E-MAIL CAMPAIGN FOR FEDERAL “MAGNET SCHOOLS”

Question B-1

Was our proposal modelled on a PRIVATELY-FUNDED “magnet school” program that would have served 10 million inner-city children if A SINGLE ONE OF THE 21 top governmental officials starting with President Obama and 43 news-media superstars had been willing to “lift a single finger” vis-à-vis a lawsuit against 15 of the world’s largest financial institutions for which the “question presented for review” in the petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to accept the appeal was –

“Can state court judges order their decisions which they know are diametrically-opposed to well-settled law, not to be published or cited (a strategy labeled ‘the segregated toilet’ in correspondence with 51 inner-city clergy who represent the 10 million inner-city children who have been disclosed from the outset as the ‘real parties at interest’ in this law suit) in order to flush away the rights of the 10 million inner-city children without disturbing the rights of first-class American citizens -- without violating the ‘Equal Protection of the Law’ requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?”

Answer B-1

Yes.

There are many legal opinions, letters, etc., pertaining to these lawsuits posted in Sections 4 and 5 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org entitled “Inner-City Holocaust and America’s Apartheid ‘Justice’ System (In Honor of Jonathan Kozol and In Memory of John Howard Griffin).

Question B-2

Was the TO-BE-PRIVATELY-FUNDED “magnet school” program to be part of the “I Have A Dream”® Foundation?

Answer B-2

Yes. Please see my correspondence of 3/22/2010 with an old friend, Peter Fishbein, who at that time was the Co-Chair and General Counsel of the “I Have A Dream”® Foundation and, in particular, the penultimate paragraph of that e-mail and the attachment following it. The correspondence is available at viewtopic.php?f=211&t=754&sid=88f380679 ... 584e8349fb.

Question B-3

Are “magnet schools” designed to have such superior faculty, programs, facilities, etc., etc., that suburban parents will still want their children to attend even though there is a high percentage of inner-city children?

Answer B-3

Yes.

Question B-4

Indeed, did our 6/3/2020 e-mail campaign make the point that if it were implemented at the university level, Harvard could probably push well past the 50%-minority level which is usually the barrier beyond which affluent parents typically lose interest – with affluent parents still clamoring to have Harvard admit their children despite a MAJORITY of its student body being African-American children?

Answer B-4

Yes.

Indeed, Harvard is currently being sued vis-à-vis its undergraduate admissions program (SFFA vs. Harvard which is currently pending in the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals) though there is no indication that Harvard’s undergraduate student body comprises a MAJORITY of African-American children. [Harvard presented evidence in the trial court that if the SFFA admissions formula had been used, Harvard’s undergraduate student body of 6,600 would have contained more than 1,000 fewer African-Americans with no indication of how many would have remained. BTW, each year Harvard receives more than 40,000 applications for fewer than 2,000 positions in its freshman class.]

Question B-5

Did the “I Have A Dream”® Foundation oversee in the 1990’s 178 programs in 51 American cities, each of which programs adopted an entire third-grade class of an inner-city school (or third-grade cohort in a public-housing project), providing each child with a tutor and a mentor through high school graduation with a guarantee of college tuition?

Answer B-5

Yes.

Question B-6

Once it was realized that the tutors and mentors had become de facto surrogate parents who could inspire the Dreamers to take advantage of their opportunity, were those IHAD programs in the 1990’s typically able to achieve 90% H.S. graduation - college matriculation rates despite the class just ahead and the class just behind each Dreamer class typically experiencing SINGLE-DIGIT high-school graduation rates?

Answer B-6

Yes.

Question B-7

Did the U.S. Supreme Court refuse on 10/4/2011 to accept the appeal described in Question B-1 because the 21 top governmental officials starting with President Obama refused three requests to file amicus curiae briefs and 43 news media superstars refused three requests to “shine a light” on what was going down – when each of the governmental officials and news media superstars knew that any one of them “lifting a single finger” might have been sufficient to save the 10 million inner-city children from “a fate worse than death”???

Answer B-7

Unfortunately!!!

Question B-8

Accordingly, did our 6/3/2020 e-mail campaign to the two presidential candidates (details at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1925&sid=8f8b29966 ... f1e67abdc3) request each to support the creation of Federal Magnet Schools to serve each of the children of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste? Did we recommend that the admission and continued enrollment by a child of affluent parents be conditioned upon the affluent parents and their child mentoring and tutoring a classmate from America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste? Did we recognize that to accommodate all of the children of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste, the Federal Magnet Schools would have to serve 60% of America’s entire K-12 student population?

Answer B-8

Yes. Yes. Yes.


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C. PRES. OBAMA’S 2015 HUD RULE AIMED AT THE SUBURBS

[The 101-page Adobe.pdf file containing the text of the 2015 HUD Rule is available via the internet from the U.S. government’s Federal Register
at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR- ... -17032.pdf.]

Question C-1

Does the first paragraph of the HUD Rule text say that the Fair Housing Act “in conjunction with other statutes, directs HUD's program participants to take significant actions to overcome historic patterns of segregation, achieve truly balanced and integrated living patterns, promote fair housing choice, and foster inclusive communities that are free from discrimination”?

Answer C-1

Yes.

Question C-2

Does the first paragraph of “The Executive Summary” (also located on the first page of the HUD rule text) say that the legislation “provided, through the duty to affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH), for meaningful actions to be taken to overcome the legacy of segregation, unequal treatment, and historic lack of access to opportunity in housing” but HUD had theretofore only required participants in HUD programs to undertake an analysis of impediments to fair housing that was generally not submitted to or reviewed by HUD?

Answer C-2

Yes.

Question C-3

Did the new 2015 HUD Rule (quoting from the Summary of Major Provisions of the Rule on the second page of the HUD rule text) –

a. Replace the AI with a more effective and standardized Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH) through which program participants identify and evaluate fair housing issues, and factors contributing to fair housing issues (contributing factors);

b. Improve fair housing assessment, planning, and decisionmaking by HUD providing data that program participants must consider in their assessments of fair housing—designed to aid program participants in establishing fair housing goals to address these issues and contributing factors;

c. Incorporate, explicitly, fair housing planning into existing planning processes, the consolidated plan and PHA Plan, which, in turn, incorporate fair housing priorities and goals more effectively into housing, and community development decisionmaking;

d. Encourage and facilitate regional approaches to address fair housing issues, including collaboration across jurisdictions and PHAs; and

e. Provide an opportunity for the public, including individuals historically excluded because of characteristics protected by the Fair Housing Act, to provide input about fair housing issues, goals, priorities, and the most appropriate uses of HUD funds and other investments, through a requirement to conduct community participation as an integral part of the new assessment of fair housing process.

Following which the Summary explained -

“This new approach is designed to empower program participants and to foster the diversity and strength of communities by overcoming historic patterns of segregation, reducing racial or ethnic concentrations of poverty, and responding to identified disproportionate housing needs consistent with the policies and protections of the Fair Housing Act. The rule also seeks to assist program participants in reducing disparities in housing choice and access to housing and opportunity based on race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or disability, thereby expanding economic opportunity and enhancing the quality of life.”

Answer C-3

Yes.

Question C-4

Did the 2015 HUD Regulations require in Sec. 5.162 (entitled “Review of AFH” – aka “Review of Assessment of Fair Housing”) – which appears on page 88 of the 101-page Adobe.pdf copy of the text of the regulations available for download just before Question C-1 – that the plan must be approved by HUD or the jurisdiction will not be permitted to participate in HUD programs?

Answer C-4

Yes.

Question C-5

Does Sec. 5.162 also provide that jurisdictions will not be permitted to participate in HUD programs if, at any point thereafter, they fail to comply with their plans that were approved by HUD?

Answer C-5

Yes.

Question C-6

Are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac HUD programs that buy mortgages on the secondary market, pool them and sell them as “mortgage-backed securities” to investors on the open market? Are virtually all mortgages bundled into mortgaged-backed securities by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac?

Answer C-6

Virtually all mortgages in America are bundled into mortgage-backed securities by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

[The term “mortgage-backed securities” means that Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac borrows from investors with collateral (similarly to the way you or I would take out a mortgage, which is borrowing money with collateral, viz. your or my home). Our mortgage loans are debt from our viewpoint, but they are ASSETS from the viewpoint of the lenders. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy virtually all of those ASSETS from the original mortgage lenders and then replenish the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bank accounts by BORROWING an equivalent (or greater) amount from investors with the collateral being a bundle of the ASSETS Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac has just acquired.]

The official name of Fannie Mae is The Federal National Mortgage Association and the official name of Freddie Mac is The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Association.

Fannie Mae was founded in 1938 by the U.S. Government as part of The New Deal.

Since 1968, it has been a publicly-traded corporation.

Freddie Mac was created in 1970 to expand the function served by Fannie Mae. It was created by the U.S. Government as a publicly-traded corporation.

During the 2008 financial meltdown in which the value of mortgages as assets of the lenders was severely impaired, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were “bailed out” by the Federal Government.

The argument for bailing them out was that they had been created by the Federal Government, and that their official names (The Federal National Mortgage Association and The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Association) made the public that loaned them money backed by their mortgage ASSETS think the public was making loans guaranteed by the Federal Government.

Whether or not you think those arguments persuasive, the Federal Government bailed out both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on 9/7/2008 by putting both under the protection of the Federal Housing Finance Agency which, this time as “Federal” in the name suggests, is indeed a U.S. Governmental agency.

Technically, the Federal Housing Finance Agency was created on 7/30/2008 in order to fuse together three existing HUD programs (the Federal Housing Finance Board, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight and HUD’s government-sponsored enterprise mission team – read “government-sponsored enterprise” as meaning Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac).

And technically, the Federal Housing Finance Agency was created only 5.5 weeks before its dramatic takeover of three HUD programs on 9/7/2008 as an INDEPENDENT federal agency similar to the Federal Reserve.

In September 2019, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled “en banc” (“en banc” means the whole court reviewed the original opinion of its three-judge panel) that the INDEPENDENT federal agency status of the Federal Finance Agency is unconstitutional.

The case is currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Affirming the Fifth Circuit opinion would have the practical effect of folding the Federal Finance Agency back into HUD as a formal matter (vs. a “dotted line” relationship to HUD on organization charts).

Sorry for such a long essay, but there are legal technicalities even though the Obama Administration routinely ignored legal technicalities in many fields.

Question C-7

Would any suburb be able to survive (except perhaps a suburb occupied solely by billionaires who can pay cash for their mansions) without Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac bundling of its mortgages into “mortgage-backed securities”?

Answer C-7

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question C-8

Is deprivation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac support one of the penalties that a suburb refusing to comply with the 2015 HUD Regulation would have experienced if the regulation had not been revoked on 8/7/2020?

Answer C-8

So it would appear!!! [Since the Obama Administration routinely ignored legal technicalities in many fields and never hesitated to ride roughshod over such technicalities.]

HOWEVER, the Obama Administration did NOT have enough time to demonstrate how badly it would have treated recalcitrant suburbs because the HUD rule aimed at the suburbs (its 101-page text in Adobe-pdf format is available for download just before Question C-1) was not promulgated until 7/16/2015 so the Obama Administration had only 18 months before leaving office to begin the lengthy proceedings against the suburbs (including the time for suburbs to formulate plans, for the required public hearings on those plans, etc., etc.).

[The Trump Administration suspended enforcement of the HUD rule upon taking office and formally revoked it on 8/7/2020.]

NEVERTHELESS, it would probably be fair to infer from the universal uproar from the suburbs that the Obama Administration was going to employ every strategy at its disposal (whether actually or only arguably at its disposal) to force the suburbs into submission.


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D. THE “CARROT” OF OUR PROPOSAL AND THE “STICK” OF PRES. OBAMA’S HUD RULE

Question D-1

Did our proposal comprise a “carrot” that would entice affluent parents to have their children attend school with children of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste?

Answer D-1

Yes.

Question D-2

Was our proposal DESIGNED FOR SUCCESS because each child of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste would be tutored and mentored by a classmate of affluent parents and those parents?

Answer D-2

Absolutely.

Question D-3

Did Pres. Obama’s approach comprise a proverbial “stick”? Perhaps even a “cudgel”?

Answer D-3

Yes. Yes.

Question D-4

Was Pres. Obama’s approach even designed to provide the children of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste with a decent education?

Answer D-4

Please read on Q&A D-5 through D-7.

Question D-5

Even if Pres. Obama’s approach forced a jurisdiction to build low-income housing, was there anything in Pres. Obama’s program that would have even resulted in children of America’s 30% Permanent Under-Caste attending the same schools as children of their affluent neighbors?

Answer D-5

No.

Question D-6

What is “tracking”? What is “special education”?

Answer D-6

Tracking, per education theory, is putting children who are in the same grade into separate classes depending upon ability. “Special education,” per education theory, is putting children with special needs (e.g., “attention deficit disorder” or ADD, etc.) into separate classes.

UNFORTUNATELY, when Yours Truly was the volunteer treasurer of the national “I Have A Dream”® Foundation in the 1990’s which oversaw 178 programs in 51 American cities as described above, our “Dreamers” had often been dumped into “Special Ed” classes WITH NO TESTING – sometimes even being told “You are no good, so we are putting you together with everyone else who is no good UNTIL YOU DROP OUT”!!! And the first thing the sponsor of a new IHAD program often had to do was get her/his Dreamers out of Special Ed and into regular classes!!!

Question D-7

Even if every child living in a jurisdiction’s low-income housing projects did go to school in the same building as children of their affluent neighbors, what is to say that the children from the low-income housing projects would NOT all be “tracked” by isolating them in “special ed” classes?

Answer D-7

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question D-8

Why do you think Pres. Obama appeared to want to use a stick/cudgel approach apparently designed to cause hate and discontent? And designed to bring about so little success, if any?

Answer D-8

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question D-9

Why do you think Pres. Obama opposed PRIVATE FUNDING for saving 10 million inner-city children from “a fate worse than death”?

Answer D-9

Yours Truly was recently asked this question. His answer is available at viewtopic.php?f=598&t=1951&p=2664&hilit ... b1b6#p2664.

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