“Surprisingly, they don’t speak Spanish,” one insider told me. “They are cramming with Rosetta Stone.” (A spokesman for Julián denies he is studying Spanish.)

You may not have heard of Julián Castro, currently secretary of housing and urban development, but you will. Hillary Clinton has him near the top of her list for the veep slot on her ticket. It makes sense: he’s Hispanic, hard left, and the product of an elite education (Stanford, Harvard Law). So serious is the possibility that Page Six reports of him (and his brother Joaquín):

Julian was mayor of San Antonio before he became secretary of HUD, which makes him a highly experienced chief executive, adding to his veep luster, especially since Hillary is not exactly in the prime of health. His presence on the Dem ticket could really drive Hispanic turnout.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Castro has big plans already. Paul Sperry reports in the New York Post:

Hillary’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. The scheme involves super-sizing vouchers to help urban poor afford higher rents in pricey areas, such as Westchester County, while assigning them government real-estate agents called “mobility counselors” to secure housing in the exurbs. 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. It’s all part of a grand scheme to forcibly desegregate inner cities and integrate the outer suburbs.

Understand that this means that fewer people will be taken out of truly horrible housing, because money will be directed to enable people to locate in upper-class suburbs, where most of the housing is luxury-class. The fact that people work hard, earn money, and locate in enclaves of wealth, safety, and privacy is intolerable to the likes of Obama and Castro. They must be forced to have neighbors who on their own could not afford such digs.

Castro is bringing down the hammer to smash resistance:

Anticipating NIMBY resistance, Castro last month threatened to sue suburban landlords for discrimination if they refuse even Section 8 tenants with criminal records. And last year, he implemented a powerful new regulation — “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” — that pressures all suburban counties taking federal grant money to change local zoning laws to build more low-income housing (landlords of such properties are required to accept Section 8 vouchers).

The rationales for this program are ludicrous:

The document argues that larger vouchers will allow poor urban families to “move into areas that potentially have better access to jobs, transportation, services and educational opportunities.” In other words, offering them more money to move to more expensive neighborhoods will improve their situation.

Rich suburbs typically have very little public transit, and few jobs (other than for maids and yard maintenance). The type of employers who hire low- and semi-skilled labor do not locate in Scarsdale, Beverly Hills, or Palo Alto. This type of program is a proven failure:

President Bill Clinton started a similar program in 1994 called “Moving to Opportunity Initiative,” which moved thousands of mostly African-American families from government projects to higher quality homes in safer and less racially segregated neighborhoods in several counties across the country. The 15-year experiment bombed. A 2011 study sponsored by HUD found that adults using more generous Section 8 vouchers did not get better jobs or get off welfare. 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. “Males…were arrested more often than those in the control group, primarily for property crimes,” the study found.

It is all a scheme to punish the wealthy by moving into their neighborhoods the type of people they worked hard to escape.

The kicker:

Ironically, Hillary’s own hometown of Chappaqua is fighting Section 8 housing because of links to drugs and crime and other problems.

Castro does not need congressional action to implement his plans. That’s another scandal – the congressional delegation of power to federal bureaucrats. But my guess is that Castro may restrain himself, lest his program become an election issue. Trump’s the kind of guy who would not be cowed into silence over fears of being called racist.