Kiss your house goodbye

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Tuesday, September 16, 2003 | Neal Boortz

[JohnHuang2]

A few weeks ago, I wrote about private-property rights. I wrote about the clash between the rights of individual Americans to their property, and the never-ending quest by politicians for more money to spend on their various vote-buying schemes. That previous column didn't generate enough of an outrage, so I'm back to try again. How about listening up this time?

Maybe it would help if I could be more concise. This time, maybe I can make you understand that the very foundation of liberty is under attack.

Just what is the basic foundation of human liberty? Self ownership. It's just that simple. You own your life. If you don't believe that you own your life, then you are admitting that some other person or entity claims that ownership – either in whole or in part.

You will spend part of this life that you own earning money. You will then exchange that money for property. That property, then, represents a part of your life. To deny you that property is to deny you that portion of your life you expended to acquire that property.

Simple, right? Yeah ... so simple even a Democrat could follow it.

Free societies recognize freedom can't exist unless this right to self ownership is recognized. When you are denied your right to your own life, and that which you produce, you are denied your basic liberty.

To protect your liberties, and your right to your life, laws in free societies have always placed strict limitations on the power of government to deprive you of your property. While the law has long recognized the right of the state to seize property, our Constitution limits that power to the taking of private property for public use, and then only with just compensation.

Now, here's the rub. While you might think that a "public use" would be something like a school, a fire or police station or roads and bridges, politicians are developing a completely different definition. In many states a "public use" is defined as nothing more than maximizing the taxes that can be collected on a particular piece of property.

In other words, if a politician figures out your property would generate more tax revenue for government if it was owned by someone other than you, it would then be perfectly OK to use force to seize that property from you and give it to the party who is going to generate the higher tax revenues. You will then be paid for your property based on a bureaucrat's decision on what it is worth, rather than a price negotiated between a willing seller and purchaser.

I first brought this new excuse for the seizure of private property to your attention a few weeks ago writing about Alabaster, Ala. The politicians running this town of 24,000 have decided a new shopping center with a Wal-Mart would be such a wonderful thing for their community ... and especially for sales tax revenues. So, the Alabaster City Council is in the process of seizing the homes of about 11 private individuals so the property can be handed over to the developer for the shopping center.

Today, I bring this up again to tell you about Duncanville, Texas, and the unbridled arrogance of one particular city official. In Duncanville, the politicians have decided to seize the property of Deborah Hodge. They want her house, the pasture, the swimming pool – all of it. They want to hand over the property to a private developer for a Costco. Why? More tax money. The Costco will pay more in taxes than Deborah Hodge and her husband.

Now … listen to this. Kent Cagle is the city manager of Duncanville, Texas. How does Kent Cagle feel about government seizing private homes and then handing the property over to developers who will, in turn, hand over more tax money? Well, apparently Kent Cagle rather likes the idea. Here is what he had to say about the Hodges. Just feeeeel the arrogance: "They don't have the option to say no to us. We have made it clear we want that property. The only thing that will be settled in court is how much we have to pay for it."

That just about says it all, doesn't it? The state of private-property rights in America in 2003. If the government wants another, richer private entity to own your property, you have no option but to say "OK!"

Freedom cannot survive in a society that does not protect property rights. So now you know where the greatest threat to our freedoms resides. Just visit your local city hall.

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[JohnHuang2]

Tuesday, September 16, 2003

Quote of the Day by auntdot

[Pro-Bush]

Who determnes what "fair market value" is?

I can understand if widening the street or something, but for a freakin' auto-mall?..Good frief!

[WaterDragon]

The article is absolutely true. The first thing Stalin did was kill the kulaks (landowners) because they did not want to hand over their property to the State. Stalin knew anyone hanging onto their property would always undermine his power. So, he emptied the prisons (American liberals want the prisons emptied, too) and created from these thugs the first communist police force, the Cheka. The military refused to kill citizens for him but he knew criminals would be more than willing.

State, county and city officials are increasingly using this condemnation of private property to seize it for the state. It is not getting enough attention. You are doing a good thing, JH, by posting these articles. People better wake up. Private property ownership is the very underpinning of every other freedom we enjoy. When that goes, we're enslaved.

[birdsman]

Acctually, this isn't just happening in 1 Texas town. It's heppening throughout the country. They just throw out numbers and say how much more the city could do for the children with the extra tax dollars.

[John Valentine]

This is nothing new. It has been going on for YEARS. I know of a case where several small businesses were forced to move or close when the property where they were located was declared to be a flood plain.

Six months later it was disclosed that the land was destined to be included in a large regional mall, and the whole "flood plain" story was hogwash calculated to get the land cheaper than the developers could have bought it for themselves.

This was part of the services rendered to the developer to get them to locate the regional mall in that particular part of the county as opposed to anouther where the pot could not be sweetnened quite that much.

Of course the taxpayers carried some pat of the can for this, but it was the business owners that were forced out that had to pay the highest price.

[merry10]

Right next to me, a three story apartment complex is going to be built. In the dead of night, the city council decided to rezone the area from industrial to residential. Now a 250 unit complex will go up, adding 500 cars to an already busy street next to an overcrowded school.

[Pro-Bush]

I know it is nothing new, but I hate it none-the-less..corruption amongst developers & city planners must be exposed!

Time for change.

[spodefly]

Before everyone goes off half-cocked, like Boortz has done here, you may want to review an email from Kent Cagle to a poster on this forum from a previous thread on this very subject. Not to downplay the abuses of imminent domain that are occurring around the country, but there is more info to this story that Boortz is telling:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/981262/posts?page=69#69

[fella]

"Ya cann't fight city hall."

[countrydummy]

Excellent Excellent Post!!!!

[nathanbedford]

Many decades ago as a student, when liberal arts colleges still bothered to make a pretense of objectivity, I was involved in a seminar with equal number of professors and students.

Somehow I ended up trying to defend the proposition that property rights were very nearly as important to a free society as were first amendment rights. I will never forget the reaction: Scorn.

In the forty years that followed, all my experience and study has confirmed what were, after all, only the instincts of a callow youth, to be well founded.

The reaction of the PHDs around the semininar table told me volumes about how the left thinks. So one kid, at least, got a lessson that day which endured.

[Swordmaker]

Before everyone goes off half-cocked, like Boortz has done here, you may want to review an email from Kent Cagle to a poster on this forum from a previous thread on this very subject.

The only explanation that Cagle is really offering here is a defense of the misquotation attributed to him... but it still misses the point that siezing private property for PUBLIC use should be limited to PUBLIC use, not for the property to be seized and converted to some other PRIVATE use.

[RippleFire]

bump

[jim_trent]

This is NOT new.

Right or wrong, this has been the rule since the beginning of recorded history. Originally, it was the based on the devine right of kings -- they "owned" all property and just let others live on it in return for payments (taxes). After kings were deposed, it was continued in all other political systems that I know of. From an old Law Book: "The government and its grants are the true source of title to all lands in this country."

BTW, I have never heard the opposite of this being condemned by any of the people who post here. "Squatter rights", "adverse possession", etc. is the exact opposite of condemnation, whereby people can get ownership of land by occupying it without buying it.

[Final Authority]

It happens all the time but it is not only for tax revenue. Politicians become such to use their position of power to convert that to riches. In MA and recently in NH it is about pushing a development through to get a kick-back. This could be cash (dangerous) or cheap vacation property with some cash slipped in as well (much better). I never figured out how an alderman or a city councilor making about $40K can afford a condo at Killington VT and a time share in the Bahamas. Kick-backs by doing the "right thing".

[Cboldt]

See "Poletown" for a bigger example. GM wanted to build a plant, the local government authorities condemned many homes and business, and eventually, the planned development did NOT occur.

No heads rolled, AFAIK.

[RipSawyer]

We are merely less repressed than many other nations, to my knowledge there is no truly free country on the Earth and probably there never has been or will be.

[coloradan]

Read about Iceland in the middle ages: it was quite a bit closer than anything now, including America. David Friedman talks about it in The Machinery Of Freedom. There were many nice features of the society; among other things, one interesting aspect was that being adjudicated the victim of a crime was property, in that if a poor person was wronged by a rich one, the poor one can sue the rich, but can't exactly go out and collect. However, the poor person could sell his claim to a different rich person, disclaiming any future interest in the case, and then the other rich one could collect from the first rich guy; there were no government agents to seize your house, it was all done privately. Another interesting aspect was that one officer of the government would go to a hearing every so often, about once a year or every other year, and recite from memory the entire set of laws. If he missed something, you could object and there was some sanction that I don't recall, but if he missed something and no one objected, the missed law was stricken from the books! Basically, it was a demonstration that one person could know every law they were expected to abide by.

(Eventually, the crime rate rose "so much" that they asked a king to take over. That crime rate was quite a bit less than what is in America today.)

[hopespringseternal]

Before everyone goes off half-cocked, like Boortz has done here, you may want to review an email from Kent Cagle to a poster on this forum from a previous thread on this very subject. Not to downplay the abuses of imminent domain that are occurring around the country, but there is more info to this story that Boortz is telling:

The problem here is that Cagle and all who agree with him are quibbling over irrelevant details. Deborah Hodges may be mind numbingly stupid and greedy, but that doesn't change the fact that Cagle wants to seize her property and give it to another private party. Eminent domain was never meant for that and it is an abuse of power.

Just because the aristocrats are making nice offers today when stealing your property does not guarantee that they will make good offers tomorrow.

[spodefly]

I offered the reply from Cagle as an addition to Boortz's info. It does add some necessary detail. Nonetheless, even from Cagle's email, it is apparent that the road and parking lot aspects of this seizure are a done deal, and all they are left trying to resolve are the aspects related to her giving up her land for Costco, lest she have a 4 lane highway 12 feet from her front door.