Posted on 06/23/2005 7:30:08 AM PDT by Helmholtz
U.S. Supreme Court says cities have broad powers to take property.
Well, now, I'd say that you are forgetting that it takes two to tango, or to make a child.
Tis true that the Norsemen landed in Armorica, attempted to take Paris and failed, settled in Armorica, and were granted a fief there by King Charles in 914 AD, swearing fealty to the King of France.
Tis also true that the Vikings did not have women on their longboats. They were like the Spanish, who sent soldiers into the Americas, not women. That there is a Spanish-speaking and cultured Latin America is because the Spanish men married with the Amerindian women, and the result is neither a Spaniard nor an Amerinidian, but a mestizo. Now cut off Spanish immigration and keep interbreeding over the generations, the Spanish element becomes a smaller remnant of the whole.
The Viking men settled Armorica and became vassals of the King of France in 914. They married French women. All of their children were half "French" (although there is not really such a thing as a French genetic race in the first place. "French" is the constellation of races and cultures that were under the King of France and were eventually united by a common culture and history into a people. The Kingdom was a very early and slower and more imperfect version of the American melting pot of cultures).
Christian religion was the common, uniting thread. The Vikings were not Christians, but their half-French offspring were, thanks to their French mothers.
Now reiterate that cycle for another 152 years, 4 or five generations, until 1066 and the Norman conquest of England.
And remember that new Vikings did not keep on piling into Normandy. What happened to the Vikings in France was the same thing that happened to the Hsiung-Nu and Mongols in China: the male warriors conquered, or took a piece of it, the Chinese or French females married them, and their offspring were of Chinese or French religion and Chinese or French language. Normans spoke French in 1066 and could not speak a lick of Old Norse.
If Viking males had been able to spontaneously reproduce over the intervening 152 years between their oath of fealty to the King of France and their great-great grandsons' conquest of England, had they brought vast boatloads of Scandinavian women, had they managed to preserve their religion, or culture, or even their longboats (the Normans did not invade England using Viking longboats), then you would have a point that Normans were Vikings and not French at all.
But reality is that, genetically, they were perhaps 15% of Viking stock (do the generational math), 85% French, 100% of French religion (and 0% worshippers of Wotan anymore), 100% French speaking (and 0% Norse speaking), their nobles were in the royal lines of France, and they considered France their kingdom, and vied for the crown along with the other French lords.
Certainly there was, and is, a distinctive Norman culture, just as there is a distinctive Breton culture, and Angevine culture, and Alsacienne, and Provencale, and Savoyarde. Indeed, there is no ONE French genetic race or ethnicity. To be French is not, and never was, the same thing as to be Swedish. Sweden is a land and a race and practically a family line. France is a Kingdom of many, many tribes and races that had a common religion, common language (over time), common law, and common King. Une foi, une loi, un Dieu, un Roi. Vikings were invaders from afar who were assimilated. Normans were as French as Parisians and Toulousains, and just as culturally distinctive as each of those three is from the other.
"I think you fail to comprehend the full situation on this issue and your American investments will suffer as a result.
300 million Americans just had the 'American dream' of owning and preserving their property taken from them. Their protections have been stripped away and the Supreme Court specifically condoned the removal of their property protections by other investors or the government so long as the government is compensated. So, how much is any real estate investment worth in America if it can be taken by government fiat without the consent of the seller or fair market compensation?"
You will find my answer unpleasant, although I do not meant to be unpleasant to you personally. Things are what they are.
It is true, as you say, that millions of Americans have had their property protections weakened by this decision of the US Supreme Court.
But the large property developers and wealthy land investment class is not any less secure today than it was the day before yesterday. If one has the money and is a powerful economic actor in America, there is nobody out there who can curry the favor and have his investment condemned. In other words, the owners of the houses that block the expansion of the Costco parking lot are, indeed, now less secure, because if Costco covets that land, it can much more easily induce the local politicians (those who step forward to serve on zoning and planning commissions everywhere are invariably those who are active in the real estate profession in some capacity, who understand the market and the local issues, and who favor development, because it is that sort of person who presents himself and campaigns to obtain such positions) to condemn it and transfer it.
But Costco is not less secure in any way. Because there is nobody bigger than Costco who is going to be able to use this decision to try and wrestle away Costco's store.
So, big real estate developers and enterprises are not, in truth, made any less secure by this decision, because their land is not at risk of being taken by anybody. It is only little people who are cast into the hazard.
Since development will be made easier for the large businesses, this decision offers the prospect of greater ease of building in America, and makes America a more desireable destination for investment dollars to large enterprises. Large enterprises are not in any way threatened by this decisions. Small businesses perhaps, and particulars are, because they can be swept aside more easily.
Really, the decision is abominable for American homeowners, particularly those in the middle and lower classes who do not have the political or business connections to make an attempted raid on their property unrewarding. There will not be any WalMarts going up in Greenwich, Connecticut, anytime soon, for example.
I acknowledge that what I have said about this is really quite reptilian in its coldness. But there is a fundamental tension in America between business interests and individual interests. Most Americans of the right are not wealthy, but are politically aligned with business interests and simply adamantly refuse to acknowledge that their allies do not really have their best interests at heart. With this pro-developer decision, and the refusal to consider closing the US border to the flood of illegal workers, there is a fresh reminder of where, in the end, the leaders of the current political Right will always come down.
Since every proposal I have ever made here as to how to change this dynamic meets here with scorn and ridicule, I will not offer any. I will simply observe that MY investments and operations in America will be enhanced, not hindered, by the decision of the US Supreme Court. YOUR interest in your house is certainly more in the hazard than it was three days ago. If I were a US judge, I would not have done this to you. But your judges DID do this to you. It is now a fact, the law, and it will be exploited by those who are most likely to benefit from it, and least likely to be harmed by it. People like me. If you don't like it (and I certainly would not), then you have to figure out a way to change it.
"Exactly. Imagine you own 2000 shares of a stock. Rumors of a merger are floating around and the stock is shooting up. A week before the merger is announced, the local government steps in and forces you to sell your stock at what you paid, then transfers the stock to an interested party involved in that merger."
Precisely.
Perhaps you are blinded by pride? There are two sides to this sword. So there is a Costco on a lot, what then will stop a Wal-Mart, a housing complex, an office building or any other private entity from using local government to remove one property in favor of another? If all it takes is a local decision by (corrupt) officials all real property will ultimately be obtained, and retained through favor with the government. And this wouldn't necessarily be based on economics. What if the local government was environmentalists, or animal-rights activists, or hikers, or birdwatchers, etc., etc. what would stop them from seizing existing properties via the new, broad definition of Emminent Domain's "public use" for conversion to other uses?
If all real property is controlled by the government and can be redistributed at their will can it be considered private property? I don't think so.
You are a French property investor? So you believe cheeseburgers taste better than cake?
Seems the determining factor is which entity would provide a broader opportunity for taxation, the existing Costco or the new admirer of the property.
You're probably right. You can see it right here.
"As long as they guy's an (R), he's beyong reproach."
Public Use was broadened to include increased tax revenue but it is not exclusive. Seized properties could also be for bird parks, duck ponds, dog pounds, just about anything a local council could define Public Use and benefitting the public to be. The ruling reserves the decision of what constitutes Public Use to local governments, not the Constitution. Ostensibly, whole communities could be forcibly rearrainged to a more favorable composition as determined by the local governments.
Only if we let it die.
"Perhaps you are blinded by pride? There are two sides to this sword. So there is a Costco on a lot, what then will stop a Wal-Mart, a housing complex, an office building or any other private entity from using local government to remove one property in favor of another?"
The wealthier party will always win.
This is a very feral form of the free market, with development rights being the commodity being bid upon.
Small businesses on desireable properties will indeed be removed by the larger bidders. This is happening near to where I sit now, where a small restaurant that has operated there for decades is being fenced in and will eventually be removed, over the objections of the owners, because larger developers need the land space on which to build office complexes and luxury apartments. They could build without this parcel, but they do not want to, and of course the city will side with them, for these restaurant owners cannot possibly compete in the influence game.
There will be such battles even between the larger parties, and since control of land is essentially a monopoly, the larger player will win and get a greater monopoly advantage.
Americans don't like regulations, however, and have worked very hard to take down the barriers to monopolistic practices. Microsoft, after all, won its case in America.
There is a desperate desire to have it both ways, but it cannot be done.
Either money will dictate outcomes, or government will impose laws and regulations that prevent money from being able to have a say in certain things. Weaken government, and you strengthen money interests. When government and money cooperate, you are left in the role of an Indian.
Noble and quite doomed.
My pride has nothing to do with any of this.
I didn't make the law.
And I can't change it.
If you are right, then development projects in America will be reduced by this decision.
But I expect that you will see this decision seized very aggressively in state after state, town after town, and will see a boom of projects. That is my prediction. I don't think it is pride that motivates it. I think it is realism.
"The United States will eventually fly the Communist Red Flag . . .the American people will hoist it themselves."
Nikita Khrushchev at Bucharest, Rumania on June 19, 1962
SOYLENT GREEN IS MADE OUT OF PEOPLE!
I have been saying for some time that the problem with military recruiting is not that it is a rough life being in the army, the problem is that we are losing our freedom - to things like this, and to the selling of "Homeland Security" to the soccer moms that makes the false trade of freedom for incompetent "security."
Would you send your son to risk his life to make it less likely a mall, built on lots confiscated from the people, will be bombed or anthraxed?
What the various county commisioners & zoning board types need to remember is that "arson happens" . Seizing private homes for a public works like a fire station is one thing ,siezing someones home to then turn that land over to a strip mall developer can get your own home burned to the ground .
Besides, the constitution, as written, already prohibits this. In any event there will be a change in the SCOTUS in the near future that will right this.
One can only hope.
Place mark.
If you can find a place to set up Lazland, I'll be there.
Old Mil, I still think legislation will pass. Perhaps not at the federal level but certainly the state level. Check the post today (6/26/05) about Virginia Property Legislation. I agree that pols dont want to back this stuff but sometimes its just too overpowering. I noticed that Freepers and DU's are all on the same side of this issue.
Clearly, the court was high!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.