Posted on 06/24/2005 5:41:24 AM PDT by jigsaw
Freedom died yesterday.
The freedom understood and fought for by the Founding Fathers collapsed in a heap, its throat slit by big-government liberals on the Supreme Court.
It was the case of Kelo v. City of New London. It threw the notion of property ownership on the bonfire of history.
And we and our children will live to mourn the day.
It's a simple concept to explain: The government can take away your land and give it to someone else.
Period.
That's what it's about. The five liberal members of the Supreme Court have decided that you have no fundamental right to own property, you may only do so at the whim of the mayor. Or town board or village trustees or county executive. If at any time your local municipal leaders decide that they want your land to be used by someone else, you can kiss it good bye.
The case in question involved a neighborhood in Connecticut. People had lived there a long time, a real long time. It was where they'd been raised and where they'd raised their families. But somebody with big money came in and wanted to bulldoze the homes and put up a hotel. A real swanky hotel. Big, big money.
But the homeowners didn't want to sell.
So the developer went to the city and mentioned how much more tax money would flow in if he had his hotel in place of those homes and the city -- suddenly a fan of big development -- told the homeowners they had to sell. The city used the power of eminent domain -- previously only used to make way for public projects -- to condemn land and evict homeowners so that the developer could get the land.
And the Supreme Court yesterday said that is OK.
The Supreme Court said that the municipal interest in making more money was more important than the private interest in owning property. Government growth is more important than personal liberty.
That declaration, by that court, is a milestone in the decline of American freedom. This is a dramatic and fatal leap into the abyss of governmental oppression.
And it is a repudiation of the Founding Fathers and their belief in the essential nature of property ownership. They believed that the only truly free person was the person who was free to own and bequeth property. It was essential to their understanding and definition of freedom. This was based in the experience of generations in Europe, often in situations where property was only used with the permission of a prince or king.
One of the appeals of emigration to America was the ability to own land -- not just because it was available, but because it was allowed. In America, anyone who could pay a mortgage or stake a claim could be a landowner -- he could create his own little kingdom, him home could be his castle.
But that is over now. At any point a majority of members of your village board or city council -- or the mayor -- decide that they want to use your land for something, you're gone. Period. If they decide -- on criterion of their own selection -- that the government would be better off if you were displaced, you are displaced.
Think this through.
Say your family has had a little cottage on a lake for years and years. Just a tiny thing your grandfather built for summer weekends. Let's say a developer comes in and wants to put up some giant rich-guy mansion on that land. All that developer has to do is go to the town board and explain that his development will pay far more in taxes and be far better for economic development than your family cottage. At that point your land is condemned, you will be paid a "market rate" and the bulldozers will come in.
And to hell with your right to own land.
Same thing happens if you're a farmer and some developer wants to put in a sub-division on your land. You don't want to sell, you want to keep farming, your family's owned this land for generations. Well, you're screwed. A sub-division pays much more in taxes, and helps economic growth, and the local idiots on the city council can take your farm without blinking an eye.
Say you've had a little gas station on the corner of a busy intersection for years. It's how you make your living. All the traffic supplies you a steady stream of customers. You've got a good location. Under this new ruling, some other business can come in and have you thrown off. Say it's a bigger gas station, or a nicer one, or if it's an office complex or a big restaurant, or anything city hall thinks is better or more lucrative than your business. You can, against your will, have your property taken from you. Sure, you get paid, what they decide is fair, but your business goes out of business. Your livelihood is gone.
Your neighborhood could be wiped out by plans for a shopping mall, your old home could be demolished to make way for someone else's new home, your dream could be destroyed to further the government's profit.
Your village or town board, your city council, your county executive or city mayor, controls the ownership of all the property in your town. So you better not tick them off, and you better hope that no screwballs run for office and win. You better hope that the developers don't pack the boards and you better hope that these "smart growth" people don't take over.
Smart growth? That's the thing where Democrats want to control all development centrally, limiting where people can live and how many roads will be built. It is a subversion of live-where-you-want-to-live into live-where-we-tell-you. This ruling gives those central planners the authority to impose smart growth, not just going forward through zoning, but retroactively through the condemning of property.
Simply put, your home is your home only as long as the government says its your home.
But the moment somebody with pull covets your home, business or property, it's gone.
You do not have the right to own property. Not after yesterday.
It went away.
The Fifth Amendment says "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Nowhere in there does it authorize the taking of private property for private use. The Constitution doesn't authorize it, but now the Supreme Court does.
Which makes two things very important: Who gets appointed to the Supreme Court.
And the Second Amendment.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2005
A widow has an undeveloped property as an investment from her late husband. A judge rules that a developer can develop houses on it to increase property taxes to support the local schools. The widow is given the minimum amount for the land and the developer puts a house on the land.
A year later, the city fathers decide that they want a huge mall to get revenue for their local sales tax. The Widows home and all the other homes in that area are given to the Project Managers of the Mall. The homeowners are given the minimum values of their homes.
A year later, the State decides that the mall is environmentally unsafe and writes a bill to have it turned into a environmentally friendly wetland. The mall is razed and the roads around it. The businesses in the mall are given the minimum value for their property and the employees are fired.
Brave new world huh?
I have a better idea.....lets take the homes of each of the liberal supreme court judges for some developement, and see how they feel about their ruling then.
This land is my land
This land ain't your land
If you don't get off
I'll blow your head off
I got a shotgun
And you ain't got none
This land is private property
It is actually more likely that the government will use this to knock down grocery stores to make way for communist style apartmeent blocs to house said little old ladies.
Sad to say, but with 3 years of GWB and Rinos and Liberals, left and possibly 2 appointments to the bench, I see things getting worse, not better
Yes! Someone posted that on another thread. Good idea!
Churches are non-tax paying properties. Under this ruling, cities now have the okay to condemn churches under eminent domain and replace them with office buildings.
Same would go for charitable organizations - boy scout camps, Salvation Army.
I didn't see the other post....it just makes sense to me to hit them between the eyes with their own ruling to really get their attention. After taking their land, then we should go for people like Soros and all the big mouth communist dems
OK.. I'll join up.
And they sit in their cloistered, mahogany paneled rooms and come down from on-high from time to time and spew THIS anti-Constitutional crap, that even a properly educated 7 year-old would know goes against every tenant of American law and Culture?
I'm thoroughly disgusted.
My post would get pulled if I recommended a remedy to this ruling.
I don't lump the President with the RINOS and liberals. He has enough on his back. He deserves your prayers. PRAYER PING!
We have alot of our $ tied up in real estate. Time to post bogus leins on them.
I pray he gets his head out of his A@#$%. He seems like a shadow of what he once was.
The libs on the Court are gobbling up every bit of our freedom while they still can. They know their numbers will soon be altered. I keep thinking it can't get any worse but it does.
Serious issues like this one can be reversed with a Constitutional Amendment (I think) - I know, everyone thinks their issue is serious. This one is - it means any developer can enrich himself at your expense.
Leaving aside the issue of property rights, there would be some case for this if most new development even pretended to be an improvement - but more strip malls etc. we don't need.
And that doesn't even touch on the payoffs that already go on at city hall to get "things approved."
Or what about this scenario: your property is confiscated and after it's torn down and the foundation for the "improvement" has been poured, the developer suddenly goes belly up - with their gambler mentality and penchant for being over-extended this happens all the time.
It isn't only that these judges are libs or don't believe in private property - they really don't understand how real life proceeds.
Sorry for the incoherence - just a collection of thoughts generated by this latest "vehicle for mischief" on the part of the what is supposed to be our most supreme court.
The 26th of June in the year 2005 CE -- a black day for freedom, a black day for the US of A.
My tagline says it all.....
Looks like the great experiment called America is failing.
Right to bear arms wont last long...
That's a damn good idea.
This most recent SCOTUS decision, along with one a few years ago where the court decided that a property owner of beach front property was not due any compensation when new government imposed development restrictions made his property worthless, have basically destroyed anyone's right to private property. We have now achieved true socialism when the government can evict us from our homes and give them to someone else.
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