Posted on 07/06/2005 10:58:40 AM PDT by JZelle
The developers, land speculators and lawyers are pressing ahead with the beleaguered property owners, entrepreneurs and residents of Half Street Southeast, site of the proposed ballpark along the Anacostia River. There is nothing really fair about the process, nothing really joyous about pushing tax-paying citizens off their properties in order to enrich the wealthy, ostensibly for a public good. The hardy urban pioneers descended on this previously forgotten stretch of asphalt wedged between the Navy Yard and South Capitol Street and scratched out a living long before it became the solution of Mayor Anthony A. Williams and a fashionable destination point of those with dollar signs in their eyes. They cleaned the place up as best as it could be cleaned up. They fought the drug dealers and the car jockeys and the petty criminals, and they talked of the recuperative powers of the Anacostia Redevelopment Initiative. They envisioned the day Half Street would be an eclectic promenade drawing visitors and tourists and commerce. But that dream is no more, the project so last summer. Baseball has returned to the city after a 34-year absence, and nothing is going to be allowed to stand in the way of the celebration, not even the previously sacred Fifth Amendment.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
We no longer own any property in this country. We are all tenants of the government.
I read elsewhere that the area where the new ballpark is supposed to be built is the gay bar area of DC. If they thought getting their cars stolen from RFK while on a road trip was fun, wait until the Nationals get a glance at their new neighbors.
Doesn't Italy have absolute property rights?
The evil fools in charge will eventually cause a civil war.
Not while people have their bread and ciruses to enjoy. The Rubicon was crossed years ago.
A bunch of trendoid, freaky deaky, frozen vegetable tranformer types (to paraphrase Curtis Sliwa) just became closet Republicans.
And they thought it was hard to tell their parents about the whole gay thing!
I consider property tax as eternal rent. I am fairly certain that there was a time in the U.S. in which there was no property tax.
If you do not pay your property taxes, see what happens. We need to change our economic system back to where it was, roughly pre-1900. Of course, the welfare state would have to be totally and permanently unplugged. No more government giveaways allowed at ANY level, no freebies for illegal aliens, no multigenerational welfare addicts, and no government grants for TV, "artworks", and etcetera.
A fee-based approach to many services would have to be in effect, as would mass privatization of many public services. Essentially, we would have to roll back government at every level to where it was at in the early 1800s.
I think it would be a good trade-off, as long as private sector institutions (Trusts, Churches, Foundations, family inheritances, etc) and insurance policies (covering use of services) could pick up the slack.
The end result is that we could abolish the property tax once and for all. After that, it would be a bonus if we could have a Constitutional
Amendment making property tax illegal and keep the tax-and-spenders away from Citizens’ land.
The bureaucrats, socialists, communists, liberals, Keynesian economists, all the Apostles of National Debt and Central Bankers (collectively referred to as “They”) would fight this tooth and nail, of course.
Bottom line: “They” believe that the Citizens do not own the land.
"We no longer own any property in this country. We are all tenants of the government."
We own what we say we own.
Governments rule by the consent of the governed.
I do not give consent for a private developer to get rich off my home.
Period.
Bump. Thanks for this post.
For those of us who are deeply concerned with protection of Private Property from improper application of Eminent Domain in contravention of the Original Intent of the Founders in the 5th Amendment's Takings Clause, I am registering a warning or a concern:
I think AG (& potential USSC Nominee) Alberto Gonzales is very weak on Private Property Rights and lacks an understanding of orignainl intent of the 5th Amendment's Takings Clause (Eminent Domain) based both upon some cases when he ws at the texas Supreme Ct. (e.g., FM Properties Operating Co. v. City of Austin, 22 S.W.3d 868 (Tex. 2000))
and, more recently and significantly, upon his NOT having joined in the Kelo case on the side of property owner. My understanding ws that he had sided with the League of Cities against Kelo while WH Counsel.
As some have frequently observed, he certainly believes in a "Living Consitution" and is NOT a strict constructionist or an Originalist, but rather tends toward the Activist side, per National Review Online and others.
He has been sharply ciritcal of Priscilla Owen in some Texas Supreme ct. decisons when they were both on that ct. and he has been quoted as being sharply crticial fo Janice Rogers Brown, including being quoted by People for the American Way in their ultra-leftist propaganda.
Great idea on axing property taxes but it will never happen. Besides, that money's all spent anyway. They're coming up with more ways to screw us all the time. Wait until all the states start charging drivers by the mile. Look at all the fees local governments charge for services that should be covered by taxes. Money is power to these crooks, party affiliation doesn't seem to matter either.
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