Posted on 11/11/2002 1:36:55 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Now that the Republicans have full control of the presidency and both houses of Congress for the first time in 60 years, we will find out whether the party practices what it preaches.
One of the principles to which Republicans have paid lip service over the last 25 years is property rights. But is that commitment real?
One man eager to find out is a very wealthy businessman in California who has used his wealth to support mostly Democrats over the years. His name is Angelo Tsakopoulos.
His reward for all that political involvement – millions of dollars worth – has been to be told by his government that he can't farm his land the way he wants, he can't run his ranches the way he wants and he can't develop his properties the way he wants.
The latest example is a Ninth Circuit Court ruling prohibiting him from "deep plowing" former pastureland into farmland suitable for vineyards and orchards.
Why? Because plowing equals pollution, says the government.
The land in question contains "seasonal hydrological features, such as vernal pools and swales" that would be affected, the government maintains, by plowing. In layman's terms, the land is wet part of the year – swampy. Plowing might endanger those swamps and the little sea monkeys that live in them.
Tsakopoulos, unlike most farmers and ranchers in his predicament, has the money to take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court – and is doing so.
But, interestingly, President Bush's Justice Department has filed briefs opposing Supreme Court review. Justice claimed it was correct to find that plowing equals pollution.
Now, I don't like Tsakopoulos. I don't like the causes he supports. I don't like the politicians he funds. But that's not the point. This is his land. What he wants to do with it is of no concern to the government. What he wants to do with it is of no concern to his neighbors. What he wants to do with it is not pollution – it is improvement.
Turning over soil is not pollution. Pollution is adding something injurious to the environment. If turning over soil is pollution, agriculture in this country is in deep trouble.
Maybe you think Tsakopoulos is getting his just deserts. Maybe you don't feel a bit sorry for him. Maybe you think the Bush administration should stick it to him for supporting Democrats.
This is very shortsighted and dangerous thinking. Because property rights should not be used as a political football. Property rights are the basis for our very freedom in this country. If any man's property rights are threatened, all of our property rights are threatened. If the government can arbitrarily reduce the value of Tsakopoulos' land, just think what it can do to you.
As the Bush administration gets ready to reorganize with new support for its political agenda in the House of Representatives and the Senate, it would be wise to consider the case of Angelo Tsakopoulos – and all the other farmers and ranchers out West who are losing their rights to work their land.
It's time for the Republicans to live up to their rhetoric in support of property rights. It's time to get the federal government's nose out of other people's business. It's time to rethink the volumes of rules and regulations crafted to trip up just about any property owner. It's time to renew our national commitment – our constitutional commitment – to property-owners' rights.
The government has proved over and over again it is a lousy steward of natural resources. Individual property owners, with their own stake in the value of their land, have a much better track record.
This is not the Soviet Union. Nor do we want America to go the way of the Soviet Union. It's time for the government to back off – sell off the land it has been accumulating at astonishing rates and at great expense to the taxpayer, repeal the Endangered Species Act and a thousand other pieces of obnoxious legislation meant to control people rather than to protect the environment, and dump all those judges who sit over the people so contemptuously and piously like those in the Ninth Circuit.
This is his land. What he wants to do with it is of no concern to the government. What he wants to do with it is of no concern to his neighbors.
The below post was to a anti-tobacco/anti-property rights thread:
It's irrational and often dishonest to put forth that a person can assign or give to a person, group of persons or government a right he doesn't himself possess in the first place.
No person has the right to barge onto another person's property uninvited. Nor does a person have the right to "camp" or take up a seat on another person's property once the property owner has asked the person -- whom the property owner invited in the first place -- to leave. Who is to say when a person is uninvited? The property owner. Who is to say when an invited guest has overstayed their welcome? The property owner.
That law, if you will, is universal. It's objective law. Objective laws exist beyond the reach of man-made law or political-agenda law or media agenda or media bias. That is, objective law regarding access to property and who holds the right is valid on all property at the property owner's discretion.
The American news media proclaims from on high that the individual belonging to this group of people and that group of people and all manner or segments of individuals that can be corralled into a group have, as an individual member of said group, the right to barge in uninvited, and when invited, the right to overstay his or her welcome.
That communitarian agenda is proclaimed form on high to protect the "little guy". The little guy being an individual of any special interest group. Special interest groups that self-proclaim to have rights that as separate individuals no person in the group has the right to impose on another individual.
It's the rule of tribalism -- tyranny of a majority over the individual. It's a form of terrorism inflicted on the individual that if the individual doesn't bow to the tribe's irrationality, dishonesty and mysticism he or she will become the tribe's next victim. There in lies the underlying motive and cause of almost all politicians, bureaucrats, mainstream news media "personalities" and many academics: to undermine honesty.
Dishonesty, mysticism and irrationality are the problem/cancer that terrorize the little guy.
* * *
Politics suck. Politics suck objectivity out and insert irrationality in. Sometimes a small error will be compounded over and over until it becomes a massive problem. In mid-term and presidential elections tens-of-millions of people vote for the lesser of evils despite that it still begets evil. How can so many people thinking they're right be so wrong?
The tide is turning; the pendulum is swinging the other direction. Reality asserts as sure as honesty outlives the lie. It always has and always will. In politics, democrats are but the first party in the pendulum's path to be defeated in their irrationality and dishonesty.
Would that it were so. I see the pendulum slowing slightly in its leftward swing a little, but that is a long way from swinging the other direction.
The Republicans have both legislative and executive branches for the first time since long before my time, but there are enough RINOS and milquetoasts in there to keep the media at bay and do the right thing.
I'm cautiously optimistic, but, like a lot of others, I'll believe it when I see it.
Would that it were so. I see the pendulum slowing slightly in its leftward swing a little, but that is a long way from swinging the other direction.
It's not a pendulum swinging from right (conservative, Republican) to left (liberal, Democrat), or vise versa. It is a pendulum swinging away from dishonesty, irrationality and mysticism moving toward honesty, rationality and objectivity. It just so happens that in politics, democrats are and will be but the first party in the pendulum's path to be defeated in their irrationality and dishonesty.
In case you missed the salient point: politics suck objectivity out and insert irrationality in. Politics is not the solution. Politics is the problem. Yet politics is still but a symptom of the cancer. Loss of objectivity can lead a person to believe that the pendulum swing is from Republican to Democrat or vise versa (the symptom) rather than the real, valid Pendulum motion is from dishonesty/irrationality/mysticism to honesty/rationality/objectivity (the cure). No matter which political party may be the lesser of evils or greater of evils at any given time, all evils are in the pendulums path of restoring honesty, rationality and objectivity.
Dishonesty, mysticism and irrationality are the problem/cancer that terrorize the little guy.
Gingrich and Lott zapped the very same agenda in '95. - Hastert is very pro government, anti-freedom.
GWs brother Jeb is singlehandedly in the process of ruining my community because he bedded the rich and powerful Greens. I've pretty much shut up about it because around here you love the Bushes or suffer the consequences. Never mind that an entire community of good people (who I care about deeply) are being desroyed in a wholesale fashion.
And just the opposite is true. Stop paying your property taxes for about 3 years and see who owns your property!
And every single politician in my chain of representation, regardless of party, has signed up with them.
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