Court: Obama Loses Flat-Roofed Housing Discrimination Claim

Back in June, I wrote a blog  entitled: 'Obama Is Losing In The Courts Like Never Before'.  In it, I pointed out that, in previous Administrations, the average win rate in the courts was about 70%.  Nearly the opposite has happened under President Obama, with his Administration losing two-thirds of the cases that go to court.

The reason for this is simple.  Obama and his ideologically driven people seem to think they can take existing laws and interpret them in ways that were never intended by Congress.  In other words, create new legislation through reinterpretation; thus, bypassing Congress completely.

Obama's latest loss had to do with his Housing and Urban Development's reinterpretation of the federal Fair Housing Act.  They argued that Allstate Insurance, by refusing to insure flat-roofed houses, was practicing discrimination because they were disproportionately not insuring minorities since a higher percentage of those homes were owned by minorities.

First of all, the intent of the the Fair Housing Act was to prevent intentional and widespread discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or religion when someone was either buying  or trying to finance a home.  But, Allstate's supposed discrimination was not intentional.  It was a business decision based on the fact that flat-roofed homes carry an inherently high insurance risk.  Flat roofs leak more frequently than other types.  As a result, they have higher incidents of water damage, mildew and mold.  Often, the damage is inside walls resulting in the entire wall being replaced.  They may also sag and, as a consequence, have a high rate of collapse after extremely heavy rain and snow fall.  Surprisingly, they also have a higher burglary risk. As a result, they have low market values because most people don't want to deal with all the problems, and the high cost of insuring and/or  maintaining a flat roof.

So, the unreasonableness of this racial bias claim was why a U.S. District Judge had no other choice to side with Allstate against Obama.  This is, as noted before, very typical. For example, the Obama Administration is now trying to expand the scope of the Clean Water Act in order to control wells, ponds and marshes; even on private lands.  But, the intention of the Clean Water Act was to only have federal environmental say over navigable waters.  Waters that provide a channel for commerce and transportation of people and goods.  So, I am quite sure that this, too, will wind up in our courts with another smack down by Obama's out-of-control regulations.

References:

Obama Is Losing In The Courts Like Never Before: http://cuttingthroughthefog.blogspot.com/2014/06/obama-is-losing-in-courts-like-never.html

Court rejects Obama housing bias rule as 'wishful thinking': http://news.yahoo.com/u-court-rejects-obama-housing-bias-rule-wishful-215306404.html

If your house has a flat roof, or even if some of its roof is flat, it can complicate insurance arrangements: http://www.gocompare.com/home-insurance/flat-roof-home-insurance/

Clean Water Act Expansion Draws Ire From GOP As White House Prepares To Regulate Waterways: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/04/clean-water-act-expansion_n_5088723.html

Democrat Pollster Slams Gallup For Under-Polling Minorities

In a lengthy analysis that was published in the left-leaning Huffington Post, Democrat pollster, Mark Blumenthal, concluded that the Gallup polls were flawed and biased against President Obama because the Gallup organization always under-polls minorities.

Of course, the only reason that Blumenthal went through that analysis, in the first place, is because he's upset with the fact that Gallup has a tendency to show low approvals of "his" president.  This, unlike, all those other polls, from left leaning news agencies, that always show Obama in a much better light.

But, let's assume Blumenthal's analysis is correct and, in fact, the Gallup polling is too white in its results.   The real question, then, is whether or not they are biased against Obama.  To me, the only real answer to that question is how Gallup polled in the last presidential election in 2008; since, as of right now, we have no other way to confirm or discredit the polling results.  We get that answer from RealClearPolitics who conveniently summarized all of this nation's final polling prior to the presidential election.  When we look at the results, we find that Gallup was actually the outlier; predicting that Obama would win 55% to 44% over McCain. Except for Reuters/C-span/Zogby poll, which gave Obama a 54% win factor, every other polling organization put him below 53% in winning the election.  The actual results were that Obama won handily over McCain; 52.8% to 45.6%.

Obviously, the 2008 final numbers showed that Gallup was actually biased towards Obama; despite their typical under-polling of minorities. I'm quite sure Blumenthal was very happy with Gallup's 2008 position.  But, now, he's critical and wants to discredit them.   Blumenthal, like most political strategists and pollsters, know that negative polling can cause some of our electorate to switch their votes to the one who's winning.  So, in typical leftist fashion, I guess Blumenthal thinks it's time to kill the messenger.

Sources for this blog entry:

Mark Blumenthal's "Race Matters: Why Gallup Poll Finds Less Support For President Obama"

Election 2008 National Head-to-Head Polls: Final Results