I don't like this at all.

[aubunique]

Liberals are for private-property rights, but most own very little.

My take on real-property rights (real estate) is the logically and inherently a person has the right to the space he inhabits. In the natural world, living things have a right only to the territory they can defend. A bug may gain space if a bird eats the bugs around him or he can himself kill the bugs around him.

In the world of today, human beings have created laws to defend OWNERSHIP, something foreign to the natural world.

The first OWNERS were those whose personal strength and personality and familial connections allowed them to increase the amount of land they controlled. As laws were created and societies moved toward democratic rule, the notion of protecting a person's right to own a home and enough land to feed a family became a standard.

However, that idea is abused when one person manages to OWN so much land that others can find none to own, even for the few acres required for subsistence farming or a safe home in a city.

It is great to see people who identify themselves as social conservatives speaking against the taking from the owners of small acreage to benefit the powerful and rich. They certainly don't support the splitting of the land of the powerful and rich to provide those small parcels to the weak and poor.

Such things as the court supported usually are supported by local governments to generate sales tax. The tax money is needed to provide infrastructure for incoming people. The incoming people are needed to help pay the tax. A vicious circle comes with growth.

The owner of a home taken by eminent domain may get more than the place would be worth to anyone but the developer, but he will find that the value of similar property in a place he would choose to live also has had its value raised.

Maybe he can move outside the city and buy the equivalent or better, but then who pays for his time and fuel to commute to work or get kids to school? Who pays for or makes certain old people can get to shop or see a doctor from the greater distance?

[Bill Pup60]

Liberals are for private-property rights, but most own very little.

Aub........

I often agree with a lot you have to say. But you seem to be way off base here. Many of the richest people in America are far left liberals.

My take on real-property rights (real estate) is the logically and inherently a person has the right to the space he inhabits. In the natural world, living things have a right only to the territory they can defend. A bug may gain space if a bird eats the bugs around him or he can himself kill the bugs around him.

In the world of today, human beings have created laws to defend OWNERSHIP, something foreign to the natural world.


Aub.... It's exactly the same in today's worlds of humans. Only (most) of us use agreed upon laws to "defend" our "territory".

The first OWNERS were those whose personal strength and personality and familial connections allowed them to increase the amount of land they controlled. As laws were created and societies moved toward democratic rule, the notion of protecting a person's right to own a home and enough land to feed a family became a standard.

However, that idea is abused when one person manages to OWN so much land that others can find none to own, even for the few acres required for subsistence farming or a safe home in a city.

It is great to see people who identify themselves as social conservatives speaking against the taking from the owners of small acreage to benefit the powerful and rich. They certainly don't support the splitting of the land of the powerful and rich to provide those small parcels to the weak and poor.

Aub....... Did you really mean this??????? This sounds like something straight out of Karl Marx!!
BTW, this has been tried even in relatively modern times by some Marxist governments, all resulting in miserable failure!!!!


Such things as the court supported usually are supported by local governments to generate sales tax. The tax money is needed to provide infrastructure for incoming people. The incoming people are needed to help pay the tax. A vicious circle comes with growth.

The problem with this is that in many cases the growth never comes. Many local governments are extremely corrupt and often inhabited by folks with, shall we say, limited ability to negotiate unless there's a personal advantage, as in a little under the table grease!!! We see this is spades here in Pennsylvania where virtually ALL of the local officials are far left liberals!!!!!!

The city of Pittsburgh has been virtually destroyed by "eminent domain" to take and fund "redevelopment" which has resulted in failure after failure and left the city in ruins!!!!!

The owner of a home taken by eminent domain may get more than the place would be worth to anyone but the developer, but he will find that the value of similar property in a place he would choose to live also has had its value raised.

Maybe he can move outside the city and buy the equivalent or better, but then who pays for his time and fuel to commute to work or get kids to school? Who pays for or makes certain old people can get to shop or see a doctor from the greater distance?

Comments are imbedded in the quote.

[saltydawg]

Yeah, let's talk about the 'public good'

By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
AUSTIN - As one who cares a whale of a lot more about personal rights than property rights, let me leap right into the fray over a Supreme Court decision on the side of the property rights advocates, many of whom I normally consider nut balls. But at least they're more in touch with reality than a majority of the Supreme Court.

The justice who nailed this one was Sandra Day O'Connor, bless her. She wrote in dissent: "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result."

The court ruled 5-4 that local governments may use the power of eminent domain to confiscate private homes and turn them over to private developers who will make more profitable use of them, tax-wise. The case came out of New London, Conn., a city that has lost tens of thousands of jobs and, when the development began in 1998, had an unemployment rate twice that of the rest of the state.

In the late 1990s, the Pfizer drug company decided to build a $300 million research campus next door to 32 acres that the city had acquired after the Navy closed a facility there. The state pledged $7 million to open the waterfront to the public, fill in the flood plain and clean up the area, which has environmental hazards.

The city also came up with a redevelopment plan that includes marinas, parks, private offices, condos and a hotel. But seven of the 90 landowners in the area refused to sell.

The court essentially extended the use of eminent domain -- the right by which the government can seize private property to use for public purposes in exchange for fair market value -- to include more for-profit development.

Well, sure, that sounds just dandy: parks, marina, riverfront walk -- all a lot nicer than some blighted area. "Public purposes" usually means roads, schools, bridges and -- if you are George W. Bush -- a baseball stadium in Arlington. But the five justices in the majority on this decision know little to nothing about local government.

The majority noted that "economic development" has long been considered a public good.

"Jobs, jobs, jobs," is the eternal cry of the economic development lobby, which always stands to profit from whatever abomination is about to be foisted on the public. I'm not arguing that bigger is better or worse -- I'm arguing that local governments are likely to seize on any chance to increase their tax base. We've got places in Texas that beg for prisons, chemical complexes, even nuclear waste dumps.

What it doesn't mean is a better place to live, which I gather is what the Supreme Court majority had in mind with this decision. Those who naively trust local governments to make wise decisions haven't been paying attention. The main difference between the feds and the locals is that it costs more to buy the feds. And I don't like cynics.

Many, many "economic development" decisions are made after an all-expenses-paid jaunt for local officials to the home location of a corporation, or after a pleasant discussion over lunch after a round of golf at a country club. Too cynical for you?

A Wal-Mart brings in more tax dollars than 10 mom-and-pop stores. A chemical plant brings in more than the local shrimpers, especially after it kills off all the shrimp. Just as in Monopoly, your property is worth more with a hotel on it than a house.

Sure, you can get fair market value for your house -- although fair, as was the case with that Arlington baseball stadium -- is often in the eye of the beholder.

If you can convince any elected official in Texas that there is a higher good than "a healthy bidness climate," you let me know about it. The rivers and bays, the aquifers, the air we breathe -- none of that has ever stood in the way of economic development in this state.

People have the most remarkable ability to convince themselves that what they are doing is for the greater good if they also are making a great deal of money out of it. Or as Upton Sinclair put it, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

People excuse this kind of thing by saying, "You can't stop progress." "Progress" of this sort doesn't happen through some inexorable law -- it usually happens because the law and the political system have been bought by huge economic interests. Corporations can file lawsuits and defend lawsuits longer than a normal human can live, and they can make more generous campaign contributions than any seven homeowners will ever be able to come up with.

I repeat: I am not a cynic. But I am a realist.

[saltydawg]

States move to blunt effect of Supreme Court eminent-domain ruling
- By MAURA KELLY LANNAN, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, July 19, 2005

(07-19) 10:52 PDT Chicago (AP) --

Alarmed by the prospect of local governments seizing homes and turning the property over to developers, lawmakers in at least half the states are rushing to blunt last month's U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding the power of eminent domain.

In Texas and California, legislators have proposed constitutional amendments to bar government from taking private property for economic development. Politicians in Alabama, South Dakota and Virginia likewise hope to curtail government's ability to condemn land.

Even in states like Illinois — one of at least eight that already forbid eminent domain for economic development unless the purpose is to eliminate blight — lawmakers are proposing to make it even tougher to use the procedure.

"People I've never heard from before came out of the woodwork and were just so agitated," said Illinois state Sen. Susan Garrett, a Democrat. "People feel that it's a threat to their personal property, and that has hit a chord."

The Institute for Justice, which represented homeowners in the Connecticut case that was decided by the Supreme Court, said at least 25 states are considering changes to eminent domain laws.

The Constitution says governments cannot take private property for public use without "just compensation." Governments have traditionally used their eminent domain authority to build roads, reservoirs and other public projects. But for decades, the court has been expanding the definition of public use, allowing cities to employ eminent domain to eliminate blight.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that New London, Conn., had the authority to take homes for a private development project. But in its ruling, the court noted that states are free to ban that practice — an invitation lawmakers are accepting in response to a flood of e-mails, phone calls and letters from anxious constituents.

"The Supreme Court's decision told homeowners and business owners everywhere that there's now a big `Up for Grabs' sign on their front lawn," said Dana Berliner, an attorney with the Institute for Justice. "Before this, people just didn't realize that they could lose their home or their family's business because some other person would pay more taxes on the same land. People are unbelievably upset."

Don Borut, executive director of the National League of Cities, which backed New London in its appeal to the high court, said government's eminent domain power is important for revitalizing neighborhoods. He said any changes to state law should be done after careful reflection.

"There's a rush to respond to the emotional impact. Our view is, step back, let's look at the issue in the broadest sense and if there are changes that are reflected upon, that's appropriate," he said.

In Alabama, Republican Gov. Bob Riley is drawing up a bill that would prohibit city and county governments from using eminent domain to take property for retail, office or residential development. It would still allow property to be taken for industrial development, such as new factories, and for roads and schools.

In Connecticut, politicians want to slap a moratorium on the use of eminent domain by municipalities until the Legislature can act.

One critic of the ruling has suggested local officials take over Supreme Court Justice David Souter's New Hampshire farmhouse and turn it into a hotel. Souter voted with the majority in the Connecticut case.

Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, South Carolina and Washington already forbid the taking of private property for economic development except to eliminate blight. Other states either expressly allow private property to be taken for private economic purposes or have not spoken clearly on the question.

Illinois state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger, a Republican who is considering a run for governor, said the state's blight laws need to be more restrictive.

"The statutory definition of blight in Illinois is broader than the Mississippi River at its mouth," he said. "They have taken everything from underdeveloped lakefront property to open green-grass farmfields as being defined as blighted."

Action also is taking place at the federal level, where a proposal would ban the use of federal funds for any project moving forward because of the Supreme Court decision. And the Institute for Justice said it will ask the Supreme Court to rehear the New London case, but acknowledged that the prospects of that happening are dim.

"One of the things, I think, that is elemental to American freedom is the right to have and hold private property and not to interfere with that right," Rauschenberger said. "For Americans, it's like the boot on the door. You can't kick in the door and come in my house unless I invite you."

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