By AJ Kern If you agree with President Obama's fundamental transformation of America from a free republic, where historically "We the People" have a voice, toward socialist-styled globalism, you're going to love his strong-armed use of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Unless, of course, it affects your neighborhood. On July 16, HUD provided its overreaching final version of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule known as AFFH. Claiming to further the purposes and policies of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, HUD will dangle federal dollars as an incentive to direct communities 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." In other words, communities must accept HUD's brand of racial integration by building low-income housing in America's neighborhoods following new stringent federal zoning requirements or lose eligibility for community development block grants -- federal funding to which communities have become addicted. Sound familiar? Think of the federal government's carrot-and-stick approach offering No Child Left Behind waivers in exchange for adopting Common Core standards. Ask your friends in education how those standardized tests, intrusive surveys, and massive data collection are helping students? Accompanying the side dish of diversity, HUD will provide complementary demographic data tables assisting bureaucrats in identifying jurisdictions and regions guilty of egregious violations of segregated housing patterns, which will be remedied by a federal template racial rezoning map, replacing locally controlled land use and zoning laws. Hello Sartell! No need for a citizen driven comprehensive plan or those pesky local land use planning boards. And given that citizens are limited to five minutes of input during most city and county board meetings, taxpayers will hardly notice a difference until their property values drastically decline while taxes simultaneously increase to fund the infrastructure and bureaucracy necessary for compliance. Ah yes! Utopia! Who doesn't dream of living in a community where the federal government dictates the size of property lots, heights of buildings, greens space designations, type of homes, where homes are built and who may live in them. How could this happen you ask? Well, while you were paying attention to the U.S. Supreme Court decisions on Obamacare and same-sex marriage, a third decision granted the federal government the right to coerce neighborhoods to integrate based on racial quotas. The 5-4 court ruling in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project determined that housing policies that are not intentionally discriminatory can nonetheless be discriminatory because they have "disparate impacts" or adverse impacts on minorities, refugees and immigrants. Recall the U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Government agencies forced desegregation by bussing students to assigned schools using racial quotas. Unquestionably a costly failure. Regardless of past lessons, zoning and discrimination are apparently the same; social engineering intended to force diversity may actually reduce the availability of low-income housing and slow housing development in all neighborhoods. Stanley Kurtz, author of "Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities," wrote in National Review, "AFFH obligates any local jurisdiction that receives HUD funding to conduct a detailed analysis of its housing occupancy by race, ethnicity, national origin, English proficiency, and class. Grantees must identify factors (such as zoning laws, public-housing admissions criteria, and "lack of regional collaboration') that account for any imbalance in living patterns. "Localities must also list "community assets' (such as quality schools, transportation hubs, parks, and jobs) and explain any disparities in access to such assets by race, ethnicity, national origin, English proficiency, class and more. Localities must then develop a plan to remedy these imbalances, subject to approval by HUD." Bottom line: Communities should reject even one single dollar from HUD. Another bonus by forcing low-income housing into America's suburbs is the affect it will have in shifting Republican-leaning neighborhoods into new Democrat voting regions. Remember, the end justifies the means!

By AJ Kern Having unfettered access to lawmakers, corporate lobbyists come bearing gifts and influence, drowning out the voices of constituents. The symbiotic marriage between corporations and politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, wreaks havoc on the American worker. Witness two recent issues: the H-1B visa program and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Arrogantly ignoring the destruction left in the wake of a kaleidoscope of temptations, corporate contributions to political elites solidify politicians' barricades against would-be challengers, while corporate giants exploit cheap labor provided by immigration and refugee resettlement policies. And, if you thought the highly skilled technologically educated American workers were safe ... guess again. Corporations, through the H-1B visa program, are displacing technically skilled Americans with cheaper foreign workers as well. These positions generally include occupations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The H-1B program was intended to allow companies to fill positions that could not be filled by qualified Americans. Additionally, U.S. workers' wages and working conditions were not to be adversely affected by the program. To qualify for an H-1B visa, foreign nationals seeking temporary U.S. employment must have a bachelor's degree or equivalent and qualify for the prevailing wage for such a position. It's not a huge leap to foresee abuses by corporate lawyers who would, without a doubt, find loopholes. In 2002-03, under Gov. Jeb Bush, information technology workers at Siemens in Florida not only lost their jobs but were required to train their replacements from India-based Tata Consultancy Service. Train your replacement and don't publicly complain about it or lose your severance package. Sounds like blackmail to me, but what do I know? In 2003, when she was a senator, Hillary Clinton attended the grand opening of Tata's satellite office in Buffalo, New York. More recently, Southern California Edison, the largest utility company in California, used Infosys -- based in Bangalore, India -- and Tata to replace 400 IT employees. In October, Walt Disney laid off about 250 IT employees who were also required to train their foreign replacements provided by India-based HCL America. How do American companies circumvent laws forbidding displacement of American workers? Technically, H-1B visa workers are supplied to American companies as subcontractors through shell companies who employ them (e.g. Tata). Protections intended for American workers, applicable to employees, are not applicable to subcontractors. It's how workers are classified. FWD.us, a super PAC created by corporate royalty including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, lobbies to increase high-tech cheap foreign labor through a feel-good movement "Immigration Heritage Month," which critics cynically dubbed "Cheap Foreign Labor Movement." And it's working! Republicans Bush, Marco Rubio and Orrin Hatch -- arm-in-arm with democrats Amy Klobuchar, Chris Coons, Richard Blumenthal and even Hillary Clinton -- press for increasing numbers of H-1B visas. Odd political bedfellows also battle over the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership. I never thought I would agree with Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but so does Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions. Both have read TPP and believe it would undermine U.S. sovereignty. Sessions asserts immigration and globalization are lowering American wages and employment. Did Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer at least scan the highly-secretive TPP document he aggressively supports? According to Citizen.org, TPP isn't only about trade. Of the 29 draft chapters, only five deal with trade. "One chapter would provide incentives to offshore jobs to low-wage countries." And, letting no good deed go unpunished, "Our federal, state and local policies would be required to comply with (international) TPP rules." President Obama, the majority of congressional Republicans and corporate giants have been successful in passing the Trade Promotion Authority, also known as "fast-track," which doesn't guarantee approval of TPP, but prevents Congress from amending any deal negotiated by the president. Only time will tell how trade agreements made by Obama will affect income inequality and the American worker. Like a replay of a bad movie -- "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." Only, the characters have changed to protect the guilty.

By AJ Kern If Gov. Mark Dayton had his way, every 4-year-old in Minnesota would have access to a free, universal "school-based" preschool program established with a mere $348 million. We've gone from implementing a scholarship program targeting at-risk 4-year-olds in 2013, universal all-day kindergarten in 2014, to tantrum-level urgency to implement free universal preschool. Yet in 2013, Minnesota Department of Education reported 72.8 percent of children were prepared to enter kindergarten. Nearly 73 percent of Minnesota children prepared for kindergarten is hardly a crisis justifying an inflated agenda. While there arguably continues to be much room for improvement for K-12 students in reading, math and science, not to mention the perplexing eternal achievement gap, placing 4-year-olds into a structured educational institution as the solution to educational woes defies logic. Progressively expanding demands on public schools simply doesn't make dollars and sense. Literally! Universal preschool would require new classroom space, teachers, teaching assistants, transportation, books and materials through questionably long-term sustainable budgets. Let's not forget the escalating demands on schools for English Language Learner programs costing millions statewide. The ground swell of support behind all-day kindergarten largely sprouted from a Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank report by Art Rolnick and Rob Grunewald who, at the time, touted a return on investment for Early Childhood Development Programs as high as $16 to $1. Rolnick's estimated ROI was largely based on reduced costs by lowering lifetime incarceration rates from 50 percent to 25 percent for a specific demographic in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a demographic subjected to dire circumstances and an environment of abject poverty and crime. These returns don't extrapolate to the population of Minnesota at large. And, Rolnick, who was key in passing universal all-day-K, apparently agrees, writing in a recent MinnPost commentary, "the Dayton administration is now proposing to take a much less effective and much more costly approach. Instead of targeting efforts on at-risk children, generating an extraordinary public return, the state would subsidize all children (families at all income levels), generating little return for a large portion of that investment." Why didn't the same logic apply when Rolnick was cheerleading for all-day K? As Rolnick abandons ship on Dayton's universal preschool push, who is left to carry the water? The teachers union and other organizations having something to gain by expanding public schools influence over children and families? Grover J. Whitehurst, former director of the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education, questioned the findings of 10 so-called "scientifically-based" studies used in supporting the expansion of ECDP, including research central to Rolnick's ROI estimates. Whitehurst concluded, "The best evidence raises serious doubts that a large public investment in the expansion of pre-K for 4-year-olds will have the long-term effects that advocates tout." Rolnick came to the same conclusion in a May 2003 paper. "Many of the initial studies of ECDPs (Early Childhood Development Programs and Services) found little improvement; in particular, they found only short-term improvements in cognitive test scores." Supporters of ECDPs are caught up in the echo chamber. Research findings are grossly exaggerated and circular, referencing back to the same handful of studies. John Ioannidis, "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False," found research often reflects consensus expectations rather than real findings. Opponents of universal pre-K point to research, as well, identifying "fade-out" by third grade. The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children & Families, 2012 Head Start reported "There were initial positive impacts from having access to Head Start, but by the end of third grade there were very few impacts found." High-quality programs may simply mean a high-intensity academic focus, which is counterintuitive for 4- and 5-year-olds. Children at this age learn by playing, not by being forced to sit patiently, given instruction until they're bored to tears. Care to ask a 4-year-old what they want? It's probably "mommy," not "teacher."