you dont own anything

[george]

today the supreme court decided that LOCAL governments have the right to sieze your property (land) and turn it over for use as commercial space.

wonder how many small communities are going to be hurt by this crock of shit decision.

[AChimp]

You could start a home business and say that it's already commercial. ;)

[mburbank]

See, now, I don't have a problem with not owning anything. Jesus said we don't own anything. So did Buddah.

My problem is with the Government owning everything and running it as a for profit business.

Say, could me local government now take over the coal burning power plnt and shut it down? That would be cool.

[ziggytrix]

fucking bullshit. real americans should not stand for such tyranny. >:

[KevinTheOmnivore]

It's a good thing the news isn't wasting our time with this. Hey, Tom Cruise is in love everybody!!!! :party

[El Blanco]

The case in question is New London, Connecticut. And this power has been around for a long time. The railroad barons used it in the 19th century.

I disagree with the descision, but I see where they are coming from.

NL is going down the economic crapper. The descision is meant to let bussinesses build factories and such (hopefully) in order to bring jobs and economic growth to a town that desperatly needs both.

To call this tyranny or some sort of government bowing to corporations is just a little too simplistic.

This is screwing over a group of people in order to save a larger group of people.


And, kids, do we all know what this is called?

Thats right. Democracy.

[kahljorn]

that's how they work, though. They simply find an injustice to "Alleviate", get people all worked up by it and show them why it needs to be done, then create laws that allow them to abuse anybody they please. Patriot act. That one tax thing

[ItalianStereotype]

this has been around FOREVER. it's a leftover from the old British Imperial system. my family used to own the land around Wall Street, but the government seized the property early on. I'm not sure if it was the British or the early American government that did it though.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

It's refreshing to see that the so-called conservatives of the board have such great faith in the entrepreneurial capabilities of government. :rolleyes

Taking land from people with the hope of helping lots of people isn't called democracy, it's called speculation, and it's being done at the expense of real people, as oppsed to the hypothetical ones who might benefit from the factory that gets built there (and we ALL know that a company with tax breaks out their asses will save New London, I mean, look at upstate NY! :rolleyes).

[kahljorn]

YEA! >:

[El Blanco]

I said I disagreed with the descicion. But, I also realized why it was made.

So, you think because it can be abused, NL should be left to rot away? Don't the people of the town have the right to try and save themselves? How else does that happen without a bussiness coming and expanding, bringing jobs with it?

[ziggytrix]

Don't the people in those houses have a right to own property? I guess the bit that bugs me most is are these people really getting what they would need to cover moving expenses, an equitable home elsewhere, or are they getting screwed over because the houses won't appraise for shit anyway?

The 5th Amendment says they get "just compensation" but some of these land use "purchases" aren't just, and there is no appeal, no negotiation, and it just makes me mad. :(

[KevinTheOmnivore]

What exactly are you trying to save? Isn't it counter-productive to make the very people you hope to help homeless?

The policy is a perversion of the 5th amendment, among other things. Is that spot the absolute only location that such a factory might go? Furthermore, on a bit of a tangent, couldn't policy makers use this crap as a way to kick people out of their homes and build sporting arenas?? I mean, regardless of the fact that most studies show arenas provide very little for the community, couldn't the "public good" be left open to horrid interpretation by this ruling....?

[KevinTheOmnivore]

And in response to this.....

this has been around FOREVER.

Right, and it had previously been challenged, hence the case going to the highest appellate court in the land. This ruling has given the policy a legal leg to stand on, thus you'll probably see it utilized a lot more often now. Which, btw, sort of sucks.

[El Blanco]

Don't the people in those houses have a right to own property?

Yes, which is the primary reason I disagree with SCOTUS.

I guess the bit that bugs me most is are these people really getting what they would need to cover moving expenses, an equitable home elsewhere, or are they getting screwed over because the houses won't appraise for shit anyway?

Thats the other reason

What exactly are you trying to save? Isn't it counter-productive to make the very people you hope to help homeless?

7 homes vs the whole area. Many vs the few. Democracy at its best.

[The One and Only...]

Just another peg against government if you ask me.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Again with the terrible comparison.

1. This ruling isn't going to hurt just 7 homes.

2. I'm not sure what definition of "democracy" you're working with, but I'm pretty sure having the SCOTUS play with the bill of rights in order to justify screwing 7 families out of their homes isn't democracy. Again, we're talking about real people getting really screwed for the sake of hypothetical people who might get a job at this factory, which might stay there for more than ten years if the tax breaks are right.

[El Blanco]

How was the desicion made before ity got to SCOTUS? Did the city council(elected officials) decide it?

1. This ruling isn't going to hurt just 7 homes.

Actually, ya. This ruling has been stated to be for this specific case only. Its not going to be used as precedent to increased ED. The notes of the Justices state this.

Again, we're talking about real people getting really screwed for the sake of hypothetical people who might get a job at this factory, which might stay there for more than ten years if the tax breaks are right.

We are also talking about a real town with more than 7 real people that is going down the shitter.

[Emu]

Am I the only one who finds SCOTUS to be an hilarious word?

[Rez]

I said I disagreed with the descicion. But, I also realized why it was made.

So, you think because it can be abused, NL should be left to rot away? Don't the people of the town have the right to try and save themselves? How else does that happen without a bussiness coming and expanding, bringing jobs with it?

the supreme court should have refused point blank to even take the case. the connecticut court already ruled in favor of the local governement, why bring it to the US supreme court for them to make it a NATIONAL PRECEDENT? something that now all local governments can point to to justify why a Target is needed?

i think this is the first time i ever agreed with rhenquist, thomas, AND scalia.

wierd.

EDIT:


Actually, ya. This ruling has been stated to be for this specific case only. Its not going to be used as precedent to increased ED. The notes of the Justices state this.

oh.
out of curiosity where did you find it? i actually slogged through a lot of that shit because i couldn't believe myself, but i didnt see anywhere that this was not meant to set a precedent.

[Big Papa Goat]

This is screwing over a group of people in order to save a larger group of people.


And, kids, do we all know what this is called?

Thats right. Democracy.

Isn't liberal democracy about safeguarding individual rights? A towns prosperity isn't an issue of individual rights by any reasonable extent, so according to what I thought the American conception of democracy was, the government shouldn't be limiting the rights of any individuals for that purpose.
Not that I really agree with that kind of liberal stance on this kind of issue, in principle I think it's alright for a government to limit individual rights for the good of the community.

[Zhukov]

Maybe a better law would be to take unused land from corporations and give it to the local community?? :lol

[Emu]

I finally get your sig, Zhukov. :lol

[hammered_soul]

today the supreme court decided that LOCAL governments have the right to sieze your property (land) and turn it over for use as commercial space

Imagine no possesions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...


We're getting closer

[ziggytrix]

http://www.trinityrivervision.org/index.asp

Their doing a similar thing in Ft. Worth, but so they can move a river and sell the seized land to developers. A family owned foundry that is run by some friends of ours is one of the businesses being moved out to make room for this. An 80 year old family business is just being written off and 20 people are gonna lose their jobs, unless you know a construction agency that will build a new iron foundry for $10,000 (fed guidelines limit compensation to this amount for a business).

It's disgusting. And they do it all under the pretense of developing the city, but if you follow the money, you'll find most of it going to a few people or businesses. >:

[kellychaos]

Let's say the government allows you to remain and said factory gets built around you. Your property value goes down and you suffer when you could have relinquished your home at fair market value if you had went along with the plan from the jump street. You can stop the machine, man!

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Okay, so Fund does in fact pull the race card in this op-ed, so to speak. But I think he makes a solid point, and pretty clearly disputes the notion that the Kelo case sets absolutely no precedent for other land seizures throughout the country.

It's also important to point out the bi-partisan coalitions this has created. It's certainly worth noting, I mean heck, I'm posting an article by John Fund. ;)

http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110006941

Property Rights Are Civil Rights
Opposition to the Kelo decision crosses racial and party lines.

Monday, July 11, 2005 12:01 a.m.

In 1954 the Supreme Court declared in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. But that same year it also ruled in Berman v. Parker that government's power of eminent domain could be used to seize property in order to tear down "blighted" areas.
It soon became clear that too often urban renewal really meant "Negro removal," as cities increasingly razed stable neighborhoods to benefit powerful interests. That helps explain why 50 years later so many minority groups are furious at the Supreme Court's decision last month to build on the Berman precedent and give government a green light to take private property that isn't "blighted" if it can be justified in the name of economic development.

Within a week of the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Kelo v. New London, Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and the longest-serving member of the Congressional Black Caucus, pronounced himself "shocked" to be joining with conservatives in backing a bill to bar federal funds from being used to make improvements on any lands seized for private development. He noted that the NAACP, Operation PUSH and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights all believe "this court opinion makes it too easy for private property to be taken and [this is a practice] that has been used historically to target the poor, people of color and the elderly." The measure blocking federal funds passed the House by 231-189. A companion resolution condemning the Kelo decision was approved 365-33. Only 10 of the 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus and only two members of the Congrssional Hispanic Caucus voted against the latter measure.

Many Democrats who used to scoff at conservative fears about activist judges are now joining their barricades when it comes to eminent domain. "In a way this ruling is about civil rights because it interferes with your right to own and keep your property," says Wilhelmina Leigh, a research analyst with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. "It means you have to hope and trust in the goodness of other human beings that if you buy real estate that you will be allowed to keep it." Few appear to be willing to trust government on this issue, which is why the Kelo decision has touched off such a populist reaction against it.

Martin Luther King III, a former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, says that "eminent domain should only be used for true public projects, not to take from one private owner to give to another wealthier private owner." In 2001 he joined with the free-market Institute for Justice (which represented the Kelo plaintiffs) to stop the state of Mississippi from uprooting homeowners to make room for a Nissan truck factory. After he compared the state's actions to "a giant stepping on a grasshopper," public opposition to the taking mounted. The state finally announced that Nissan had come up with a way to redesign its facility so that the homeowners wouldn't have to leave.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor warned in her Kelo dissent "all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded." She added that the decision's effect is to "wash out any distinction between private and public use of property--and thereby effectively to delete the words 'for public use' from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment."





In her outraged dissent, Justice O'Connor failed to note that the Supreme Court's erosion of property rights began a long time ago. Before the 1954 Berman decision, with some exceptions, private property could be taken through eminent domain only for public uses. In Berman, however, the court declared the words "public use" to mean "public purpose," as defined by local officials. Soon the definition of "blight" became highly elastic, as governments began condemning working- and middle-class neighborhoods simply because they were desired by private interests. As Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his dissent in Kelo: "Of all the families displaced by urban renewal from 1949 through 1963, 63 percent of those whose race was known were nonwhite, and of these families, 56 percent of nonwhites and 38 percent of whites had incomes low enough to qualify for public housing, which, however, was seldom available to them."
The definition of a "blighted" area eventually became so expansive that it 1981 the Michigan Supreme Court allowed the city of Detroit to raze a stable neighborhood called Poletown to make way for a General Motors plant. The Michigan Supreme Court finally repudiated that decision last year, in a ruling that noted that property rights would no longer exist in America if cities could simply take property when they found a use that yielded higher taxes or other benefits.

By contrast, the U.S. Supreme Court has now decided not to overturn its Berman precedent and indeed has expanded the deference it gives to local governments to determine what "public use" means. But states and localities are free to take their own steps to preserve private property rights. Nine states--Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Montana, South Carolina and Washington--already forbid the use of eminent domain for economic development except in narrow circumstances. The Institute for Justice has launched a $3 million "Hands Off My Home" campaign to convince other states to join them. In Georgia, Gov. Sonny Perdue is demanding a full review of eminent domain. The Texas Legislature has already debated a constitutional amendment that would ban the use of eminent domain solely for economic purposes.

No one argues that struggling cities or states don't have a right to improve themselves through redevelopment. But the new civil-rights coalition forming in reaction to the Kelo decision says that need can't justify land seizures from which politically connected players stand to gain at the expense of individual civil rights. If the half-century since Brown v. Board of Education has taught us anything, it is that some rights are and must remain nonnegotiable.


Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[sadie]

if i don't own anything, why do i have to fork over all this money every month? >:

[ziggytrix]

if you owned something, you wouldn't still be paying for it sadie. sounds more like a bank owns something.

[marmielake]

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45029

[sadie]

to not own anything, i sure do have a lot of stuff. >: