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Property Rights Died Yesterday (Bob Lonsberry)
http://www.lonsberry.com/writings.cfm?story=1687 ^ | June 24, 2005 | Bob Lonsberry

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


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: eminentdomain; kelo; lonsberry; property; propertyrights; scotus
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To: jpsb
I expect a massive move to a third party, I expect a complete house clening in DC and I expect a new SC. I do not expect mass violence. We still get to vote, and we can unelect the fools and idiots that currently rule us.

It would take at least a dozen years (more likely 20-25) before any appreciable difference would happen. As SCOTUS, the 9th Circus and various lieberal judges prove day in and day out, you can pass all the laws you want, and as long as they're there, they'll strike them down.

81 posted on 06/24/2005 8:46:59 AM PDT by steveegg (Only to a MARXIST is a VOTE considered a POWER GRAB. (thanks Seaplaner))
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To: steveegg

Perhaps, but it was their only hope. The homeowners were going against 200 years' of precedence, and while you can argue it's wrong, the odds are against you in overturning that much law.


82 posted on 06/24/2005 8:48:51 AM PDT by LS (CNN is the Amtrak of news)
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Meanwhile, every piece of property stolen through eminent domain should contain a big honkin' sign that says: This Business has been brought to you through Eminent Domain. Let potential patrons KNOW and see how profitable that business will be.
83 posted on 06/24/2005 8:53:26 AM PDT by hobson
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To: LS

You will make a very fine serf.


84 posted on 06/24/2005 8:58:14 AM PDT by jpsb (I already know I am a terrible speller)
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To: jigsaw

Boob Loonsbury is an idiot. He's pro-property rights here, but not when it comes to seizures via the drug war.

Besides the fact that he said he's endorsing and voting for Chuck Schumer (?!). This guy is a clown.

ugh


85 posted on 06/24/2005 8:59:56 AM PDT by t_skoz ("let me be who I am - let me kick out the jams!")
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To: sauropod

read later


86 posted on 06/24/2005 9:00:41 AM PDT by hellinahandcart
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To: LS

bump


87 posted on 06/24/2005 9:00:43 AM PDT by Jason_b
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To: steveegg

I don't think so, let say that by some miracle the Conitutional party takes power in DC. I would expect impeachment hearing of clearly out of control judges to being immediately. It can happen, all that is needed is to vote CP.


88 posted on 06/24/2005 9:00:48 AM PDT by jpsb (I already know I am a terrible speller)
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To: jigsaw

Sort of interesting...AMC is showing WILD RIVER this morning. Those mountain folk sure didn't want to give up their land to the TVA.


89 posted on 06/24/2005 9:03:33 AM PDT by YaYa123 (@Art Imitating Life, Imitating Art, Imitating Life.com)
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To: LS
There has NEVER, EVER, been "absolute property rights" in American, and quite the contrary, we established "squatter's rights" and property taxes specifically to DENY large landholders such "absolute" rights. In America the theory was always DEVELOPMENTAL rights superceded "absolute" rights. That's why squatters could claim land that a "baron" had not visited in 7 years to throw them off of---because he wasn't using it or developing it. Likewise, prop. taxes were a REVOLUTIONARY concept designed to make people give up land they weren't using.

I am not all that familiar with the underlying case, but it was my understanding the property owners were living on the property to be taken. If that's the case, the above is not relevant.

The legal arguments here were absolutely wrong-headed in my view. The homeowners could have won, but they needed an approach that emphasized that PRIVATE OWNERSHIP is in the "public good" and that having a mall built would have HARMED the "public good" and given evidence to prove it.

Again, my knowledge of the underlying case is limited but my understanding is that the the properties to be condemned not for a mall, but to provide another person a more expensive private residence. If this is the case to this case is indeed precedent-setting.

90 posted on 06/24/2005 9:08:29 AM PDT by CharacterCounts
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To: steveegg
"The furtherment of "'Smart' Growth" is exactly why SCOTUS took this case."

Exactly!

91 posted on 06/24/2005 9:14:06 AM PDT by spunkets
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To: jpsb

Thank you, but them's the facts. I note you did not refute them.


92 posted on 06/24/2005 9:19:50 AM PDT by LS (CNN is the Amtrak of news)
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To: CharacterCounts

Hmmm. I thought it was for a mall/business.


93 posted on 06/24/2005 9:20:51 AM PDT by LS (CNN is the Amtrak of news)
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To: LS

I was incorrect. It was for Pfizer.


94 posted on 06/24/2005 9:32:15 AM PDT by CharacterCounts
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To: LS
"The homeowners were going against 200 years' of precedence"

Not that I know of. All the cases you've mentioned so far involve folks doing as they see fit on their own property, or involve adverse possession. Those Mill cases you mentioned somewhere are no longer precedent, because volumes of law have been enacted to correct the errors contained. Navigable waterways are public and lesser bodies, or flows are governed by various govm't bodies. The rule for navigable waterways is that public use gets first priority, commercial second.

Public use has been the key for the use of eminent domain, not the benefits to public good as far as competing use claims. That the matter involves that contention now is just a manifest fact of how much socialism has replaced the prior condition of Freedom that existed. Serfdom is now the rule. The courts action blessed the fascist planning scheme known as Smart Growth, the establishment of the manor.

95 posted on 06/24/2005 9:42:48 AM PDT by spunkets
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To: spunkets
"volumes of law have been enacted to correct the errors contained"

They have? Better tell that to Thomas. He cited them as the basis for law yesterday---except he argued they were misapplied. But he did NOT say there was ever any "correction."

My point stands: if the language isn't sufficient to win the case, it's time to change the grounds of your argument.

96 posted on 06/24/2005 9:56:27 AM PDT by LS (CNN is the Amtrak of news)
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To: LS
"They have? Better tell that to Thomas. He cited them as the basis for law yesterday---except he argued they were misapplied. But he did NOT say there was ever any "correction."

Misapplied... The focus is fed law and the Constitutional meaning of the sole, explicit justification for property rights taking under the 5th Amend.

Bottom line from the dissent:

"If such “economic development” takings are for a “public use,” any taking is, and the Court has erased the Public Use Clause from our Constitution, as Justice O’Connor powerfully argues in dissent.

What the Court has erased was the precedent.

97 posted on 06/24/2005 10:37:29 AM PDT by spunkets
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin

The 2nd Amendment.


98 posted on 06/24/2005 10:48:58 AM PDT by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It!)
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To: spunkets
"Today’s decision is simply the latest in a string of our cases construing the Public Use Clause to be a virtual nullity, without the slightest nod to its original meaning. In my view, the Public Use Clause, originally understood, is a meaningful limit on the government’s eminent domain power."

From the dissent: Justice Clarence Thomas on the matter.

99 posted on 06/24/2005 10:50:41 AM PDT by spunkets
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To: jigsaw

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1429877/posts

My thoughts. There is also a petition for impeachement going around. We should all sign it.


100 posted on 06/24/2005 10:51:56 AM PDT by traviskicks (http://www.neoperspectives.com/canadahealthcare.htm)
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