12-17-05
-- The Third Blog. Eminent Domain and other
topics of interest.
Well,
last week, we were talking about several interesting things,
but the keystone was this notion of the Judiciary, and the Supreme
Court, and how that in fact the Constitution did NOT actually grant the
Courts the power to create laws or revoke them.
And we talked about the power in the hands of just 9 men and women,
and how important it is to keep them in careful and independent balance in
order to protect ALL of our rights on both sides of the political isle.
So
this week, let's talk about when sometimes that goes terribly, terribly
wrong, as it did just recently in an astonishing Supreme Court Decision
which clearly goes entirely against the constitutional guarantees given us
by the Fifth Amendment. The
Fifth Amendment states, in part, that "…No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use,
without just compensation." This
ability of the government to seize private property is called Eminent
Domain, and on June 23rd 2005 the Supreme Court made one of the
most profound reversals of constitutional law in recent history when it
effectively changed the definition of public use to "pretty much
anything any local government wants to happen".
The
Institute for Justice attorney Dana Berliner sums up the situation: this
way:
"If
jobs and taxes can be a justification for taking someone's home or
business, then no property in America is safe. Anyone's home can create
more jobs if it is replaced by a business, and any small business can
generate greater taxes if replaced by a bigger one."
The
June 23rd decision
was called Kelo v. The City of New London, and basically, it went that New
London wanted to turn a part of the city into a nice new research facility
for Pfizer, the global drug company.
They needed 90 acres for this gigantic new facility, and much of
that 90 acres was currently occupied.
So, the city went about buying the occupied properties from
everyone they could, but 15 homeowners refused to sell.
Some of them had been in these homes all their lives, some of the
family homes had been owned by the family for over 100 years.
They did not want to give up their homes for some industrial park.
Well, the city decided that if they wouldn't sell, the city would
condemn their homes and force evictions of the 15 homeowners, who would be
"compensated" for their properties.
Of course, the homeowners responded with a lawsuit to prevent that,
which went all the way to the Supreme Court.
And
then, those 9 men and women, or at least the majority of 5 of them, lost
their minds. And they sided with the city, despite the guarantees of
the Fifth Amendment. The
court said that the Pfizer project, even though it would not be available
in almost any way to the "general public" for use, nonetheless
would be of "benefit" to the general public in the form of
increased jobs and tax revenues to the city.
So…if a city or county can make a little extra cash off of your
house, well, then your house is up for grabs.
Do you live on a nice spot, but your house is worth a mere 500,000
or million dollars? Well,
then if Bill gates wants to build a 10 million dollar house right on top
of yours, the city can just come in and take your home…because after
all, a 10 million dollar home pays more in property tax than a 1 million
dollar home. Do you have a
small business in a nice location? Too
bad, because if Wal-mart wants that location, they are bigger than you,
and so…OUT YOU GO!
And
none of that is an exaggeration. Think
it is? Listen to this:
UPI
reported on October 4th that Officials of a poor, predominantly
black Florida town plan to relocate about 6,000 residents to make room for
a billion-dollar yachting and housing complex.
The
coastal community of Rivera Beach in Palm Beach County may use eminent
domain, if necessary, to claim 400 acres of land for the project, The
Washington Times reported Monday.
"This
is a community that's in dire need of jobs, which has a median income of
less than $19,000 a year," Mayor Michael Brown said. "If we
don't use this power, cities will die."
The
U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld the use of eminent domain for economic
purposes, ruling against a group of New London, Conn., homeowners fighting
a proposed corporate development.
Dana
Berliner, a lawyer who represented the New London homeowners, warned,
"Once someone can be replaced, so something more expensive can go
where they were, every home and business in the country is subject to
taking by someone else."
So…it
seems that the "blight" in the neighborhood of Rivera beach is
that a bunch of working-class people, many of whom are poor…well, it
appears that they are the blight that the city needs to remove.
Because obviously those residents will not be moving into the
multimillion dollar homes or joining the yacht club any time soon. If you are rich, you can get the government to take people's
property away and give it to you.
But
beware of this: There is
always someone richer than you. If
they do end up doing this deal, and taking those 6,000 people's homes and
filling them up with a few hundred rich folks…I hope that Pfizer comes
by in 10 years and decides to build a new oceanfront research facility
there. I guess I would enjoy
the stunned looks on the faces of those folks as they suddenly became the
"less desirable economic option."
Four
of the nine Justices of the Supreme Court dissented in this astonishing
decision. At least we know 4
of them are sane! In his
dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said :
Long
ago, William Blackstone wrote that .the law of the
land
. . . postpone[s] even public necessity to the sacred
and
inviolable rights of private property.. The Framers embodied that
principle in the
Constitution,
allowing the government to take property
not
for .public necessity,. but instead for .public use..
Defying
this understanding, the Court replaces
the
Public Use Clause with a . .[P]ublic [P]urpose. . Clause,
or
perhaps the .Diverse and Always Evolving
Needs
of Society. Clause, a
restriction
that is satisfied, the Court instructs, so long as
the
purpose is .legitimate. and the means .not irrational,. This deferential
shift
in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against
all
common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose
stated
purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased
tax
revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the
Pfizer
Corporation, is for a .public use..
So.
Pfizer and it's shareholders can get rich and richer off of private
property taken by the government by force.
What happened to a government of the people, by the people and of
the people? When did that get
rewritten as a government of the corporations, by the politicians and for
the Almighty Dollar? Look, as
a Liberal Republican I am as much for commerce and profit and freedom of
business as the next guy, even if that guy's a conservative. But that is supposed to be because profit and business
actually BENEFIT the population at large, not steal their homes away from
them.
Many
of the stands I take seem to have a liberal bent, however, what is
interesting in this case is how 2 of the 4 dissenting justices are
arch-conservatives, and it is conservatives even more than liberals who
have taken a fierce hold of this issue and are fighting tooth and nail to
get it undone. Of course, the
Right-wingers are somehow accusing the left of being the masterminds of
this nonsense, and while that's obviously not true, it IS true that
several of the Justices who voted FOR this atrocity are liberals.
So, as I said before, and as I state with the entire purpose of my
show: NEITHER side is
"ALWAYS" right!!!
People
need to think, and think seriously, regardless of whose party they are
registered as. The notion
that an elected official, just because he's elected, can somehow
"know what is best for us all" and therefore be granted the
right to take my home is utterly astounding and absurd, and the
Conservatives are utterly on-the-money when it comes to fighting this as
hard as they can. What
astounds me, however, on the reverse coin, the Conservatives think it is
entirely logical and rational to give the exact same authority to somehow
"know what is best for us all" in the hands of non-elected
bureaucrats in the FBI, NSA or CIA to just search our personal records or
record our phone calls or emails or whatever they want all as part of the
Patriot Act. Do they
think that because a bureaucrat wears three letters over his breast
pocket, that makes him or her omnipotent, but if that EXACT same person
were over at the County Planners office, well then, they are JUST NOT TO
BE TRUSTED.
Crazy,
I say.
Let's
all get clear that the constitution exists so that the PEOPLE are the ones
DIRECTLY benefited by the government and PROTECTED by it. That's all it is there for.
It is NOT there to steal our property or to listen to our private
phone calls, no matter what the reason or which bureaucratic office they
stem from. The point of the
Constitution is to protect THE PEOPLE, that's us, that's you and me, from
having ANY of those things done to us without EXTREME justification and
OVERSIGHT. That means, that
to take my property, you are supposed to PROVE to a judge that the PUBLIC
will get to use what becomes of my property and that the PUBLIC directly
benefits from it. To listen
to my phone calls, you have to PROVE to a judge that you have GOOD CAUSE
AND REASON to suspect that I am now or will soon commit a crime.
Oversight. Cause.
Justification. Not just willy-nilly, just-because.
So,
once again, BOTH sides need to look more closely at their own positions,
then see if they are being hypocritical about another position very
similar. If they did it
honestly, I think it would be an eye opener.
If someone is a member of the FBI it doesn't make them bad or good,
and if someone is a member of the town council, it doesn't make them bad
or good either. Be cautious,
all of us, and protect us from the abuses of power from EITHER.
I
close again with my favorite words of Abraham Lincoln that this "…government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
From Matthew Thomas,
The Moderate Fanatic, I'm signing off until December 31st.
I will be taking next weekend off for the Christmas Holiday, but I
will join you back here on New Years Eve morning, December 31st,
at 11:00 AM. Merry Christmas
and Happy Holidays to you all
