Posted on 06/23/2005 7:30:08 AM PDT by Helmholtz
U.S. Supreme Court says cities have broad powers to take property.
"I think you are going to see Waco style confrontations with ordinary Americans and innocent people are going to be hurt or killed."
The first innocent Americans likely to be killed will be that dear old couple in New London, Connecticut, who are over 80, been married 50 years, and always lived in the same house.
When you deracinate very old people, they usually die rather quickly.
Forcing them from the only home they have ever known as a married couple for over half a century will almost surely kill them.
Will that be sufficient to block the application of eminent domain?
Of course not.
How is this any different than Mugabe's latest 'urban renewal' project?
So a rich person can tear down your house, kick you out on the street, for pennies on the dollar and build a revenue propery just so the city can get a few more tax dollars that a rich developer can write off.
This is the most patently abusive and unfair judgement I have ever seen.
I'll answer this way, and it will offend some.
The next mass of people to die at the hands of their own government may well be the citizens of our naton.
When that happens, it won't be conservative principles that causes it, but many a good (what they honestly think themselves to be) conservative will think the government that is savaging it's citizens, is doing the right thing.
The citizens of any nation will only tollerate so much. What our government is doing today, is so far over the line that I'm surprised it hasn't happened before now.
In the time of this nation's birth, there was perhaps 10 to 25 percent of the problems with the British that we experience with our own government today.
Our nation is handing over our wealth with glee. It's savaging the territory of the United States by flooding it with pennyless leaches. It is destroying the abiliity of honest hard working laborors to earn a living. It is basicly replacing the long term citizen, with people who will be pleased to accept one third of the promise of our forefathers.
Never in the history of this world, has a people had so much, and it's government been so hell bent on destroying their last dream.
Your posited paradigm of France as a veritable Elysian Field of privacy is a bit much. When I was on the road in France, a jendarme or whatever you call them, stopped me for no apparent reason, and asked for my passport and where I was going and why, all in French of course. It was a rather laborious conversation. The cop was not nasty, just very firm and nosey. That has never happened to me in the States, ever. One might wonder if the vaunted privacy rights you assert only apply to Frenchmen in France, but since I was in Normandy, where the French tend to be of white bread Anglo Saxon stock, in appearance I think I fit in rather well. And of course, my passport was required to be presented in every hotel I checked into.
By the way, are the French as incorrigible as they used to be as tax cheats? Just curious. You seem to have alluded to that when chatting about the extra curricular benefits "privacy" of papers and all that. I don't like tax cheats.
By the way, what limits France from regulating whatever they want? My impression, is that it France is regulation city. Granted, the Germans are worse.
I was in a grocery market today, with two incompetent Anglos behind the meat counter. I observed that what the place needed were some more of those competent hard working Mexicans, like in some other markets in the neighborhood. The three ladies languishing with me in line agreed with me. The thing in some sectors, is that one gets so much more bang from the buck with some of these Hispanics. The odd thing is that this market chain, Stater Bros, did not and could not, endure the market strike (because it is based only in only parts of Southern California), and just signed on the dotted line with the union, so it has the highest wage scale in the industry. All very odd.
Why does renting look better? After your slumlord lets the stucco crack, it's blighted and you're looking for another place to live.
As a homeowner you are an immobile target. A renter has flexibility and does not suffer the same exposure.
I have asserted no hate.
Nor am I "of the left".
You're starting to sound like a character out of an Anne Rice novel. Lestat, is that you?
You know Torrie, the truth hurts. Unions have devistated certain sectors. When your job is guaranteed, there's no impetus to put out the caliber of work that others would, to keep the job.
If the guy is that bad, I'd buy my meat somewhere else. When leaving for the last time, I'd tell the market owner how much I spent there over the years, as accurate as possible. Then I'd inform them this was the last time they'd see me.
Actually I discussed it with the manager, and said I tolerated it as a sociological exercise, observed that most of those in the market were females over 60, with apparently time on their hands. I also did it because I am doing a real estate transaction with the top management of Stater Bros, and plan to pen an email to them. I did it because it gives me personal satisfaction in doing so. I found it all rather fascinating. The retail industry is in many ways quite fascinating to me.
Now let me see...
Just how does that Declaration of Independence go?
Is it time to do it again?
This ruling is looking more and more like a reaffirmation of the Dayton Mining v. Seawell (1876) case that the ruling cited.
Obviously, if ED is invoked haphazardly, officials should be thrown out on their ear. What's to say that couldn't OR wouldn't happen if some houses were taken for a Wal-Mart? I know I'd fight like hell.
"So a rich person can tear down your house, kick you out on the street, for pennies on the dollar and build a revenue propery just so the city can get a few more tax dollars that a rich developer can write off.
This is the most patently abusive and unfair judgement I have ever seen."
So long as the town council agrees to condemn and turn the property over to the person who will make a "higher use" of it (in other words: increase tax revenues) the effects will be precisely as you say.
I agree that the law is unfair.
I believe that homes, in particular (there can be a lower standard for commerical properties, vacant land, farm land) should have a much higher standard that should have to apply before they can be condemned and taken.
But what I believe is not writ in America, or France, or anywhere else (including my own house, at least when my wife is present, though that be the universal law when dealing with the unfair sex).
You are probably overstating the reach of this decision as precedent, particlarly with the Kennedy concurrence (only 4 votes without it), and thus the words of the decision by the the 4 are not precedent, but that is a detail.
Perfect storm?
It's comforting to know that with the possible ChiCom purchase of Unocal, that we won't be able to pay for gas for the car that we'll have to live in after we are kicked out of our homes!
"In my opinion, what you need to do to be more effective on this forum, as opposed to being a lightening rod, is to supress that French hauteur a yours a bit more. Maybe it comes from having noble blood or something, and therefore being genetically more fit to lead. You remember that posts of yours don't you?"
Oh dear!
Well, of course I remember my posts.
If I am a "lightning rod", I do not have that sense. I receive many FreepMails thanking me for my contribution and perspective. Everyone is probably of noble blood, were one to go back far enough. I have presented things from an unabashedly French perspective, but focused on the structure of laws and how things come out. This has been characterized as "hate" but that is absurd. Or rather, it is projection. I have expressed no hate. But I am hated, by some, and am a lightning rod by the simple fact of being French. Anyway, I do not so much worry about "being effective". I have learned on my travels that the only real effectiveness and power that I - or anybody else - has is either positional, which is to say: derives from legal authority, or economic, which is to say: derives from the fact that I have money and others are willing to please me in order to get some of it.
"Your posited paradigm of France as a veritable Elysian Field of privacy is a bit much. When I was on the road in France, a jendarme or whatever you call them, stopped me for no apparent reason, and asked for my passport and where I was going and why, all in French of course. It was a rather laborious conversation. The cop was not nasty, just very firm and nosey. That has never happened to me in the States, ever. One might wonder if the vaunted privacy rights you assert only apply to Frenchmen in France, but since I was in Normandy, where the French tend to be of white bread Anglo Saxon stock, in appearance I think I fit in rather well. And of course, my passport was required to be presented in every hotel I checked into."
No, France is not a paradise of privacy. There are national identity cards, and when you are in public, the authorities can indeed demand to see your papers. When you check into a hotel, of course, you must show your passport because that information is entered into Interpol, so that the police can track the location of all foreign travellers in Europe. But I was not referring to all privacy in all cases. I focused on the specific case of the house. Your home IS more protected in France than in America. It cannot be taken so easily. Likewise, your privacy is more protected against the intrusion of other private people or the media. Likewise in the case of lawsuits. Obviously when you are out driving on the road, the authorities can stop you and ask for your papers. Usually they do not. France is not an Elysian Field of privacy. But on things that are particularly bad in the USA law, France is more private.
"By the way, are the French as incorrigible as they used to be as tax cheats? Just curious. You seem to have alluded to that when chatting about the extra curricular benefits "privacy" of papers and all that. I don't like tax cheats."
The bigger taxes in France cannot be cheated upon. The TVA is added into purchases. This cannot be gotten around. The habitation tax cannot be gotten around. Nor can the social charges that are taken from a salaried worker's paycheck. It is in the form of cash payments that there is tax cheating in France. Probably the greatest tax cheating is on the wealth tax. In theory, persons of great wealth are supposed to pay a tax based upon their net worth each year, including their artwork, jewels, antique furniture: all things of value. There is, perhaps, a tendency among such fortunate people to not desire to list all of their ancestral jewels and paintings and books and furniture of value so that it can be assessed and taxed. For less well off people, there is the television tax. There is, perhaps, a tendency among people not to pay the tax on their televisions. And there is, perhaps, a reliance among such people on the fact that the authorities can only with extreme difficulty gain access to the interior of a private residence.
One of the hallmarks of a sane code of taxation is that it should not be too difficult to administer nor to enforce, but also that the temptations to cheat should not be so obvious.
I, of course, do not know a soul who cheats on his taxes in France. Nor, I expect, does anyone else. Certainly if a person did do such a thing, he would never admit to it, so how would one ever know?
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