Let’s Get This Right, Shall We?
I’m hearing altogether too much nonsense all around regarding the Kelo decision by the Supreme Court the other day. I posted about it, here.
Yesterday, I saw Billy Beck point to this, an Institute for Justice scorecard on the number of new eminent domain actions to transfer property from one private entity to another since the Supreme Court decision.
My question is: where have you been? If the end result is that I’m forced to sell my home that my grandfather built and I was raised in, for $X.00, against my will, then what in the hell do I care that they’re running a freeway through the place, erecting a baseball stadium so some future president can make a few mil, or putting in a new shopping mall? And why do you care about such meaningless distinctions?
Both Billy Beck and Greg Swann had perfectly right-on posts on this. Here’s Greg:
The implication in the blowfly swarm seems to be that the families in
New London would be better off had they been expropriated for a fire
station or a feminist history monument. The problem is not ‘just
compensation.’ The problem is not ‘cui bono?’ The problem is the
doctrine of eminent domain in se. It’s fun to laugh at the
conservatives, who are all for state’s rights when it comes to buggery
laws. But the root problem is government as such. Abuse is necessarily
and obviously baked in the cake. If you don’t want government abuses,
what you don’t want is government itself. Acceptance of this simple
fact is the first step to recovery from a life of error and
disappointment.
And Billy:
You can look around and see the light starting to dawn
on some them. It’s as if they never before knew that the United States
government could take what it want from them, when it wanted to.John Paul Stevens — the guy with the opinion — wrote that "Promoting
economic development is a traditional and long accepted governmental
function, and there is no principled way of distinguishing it from the
other public purposes the Court has recognized," and he is absolutely right. Two writers at The Houston Chronicle drew the explicit connection to things like "roads, parks or libraries", and they’re
absolutely right. Nobody should be offended suddenly at the idea of
stealing peoples’ property, and it really is grimly hilarious observing
the general hue & cry now that the targeting is so much more…
"progressive", don’t you think?
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Thank you.
Finally a rational take on eminent domain. Taking with out permission is still stealing, no matter who you are.
Best regards,
M.J. Taylor
Editor
from Reason to Freedom
ReasonToFreedom.com/
Walter,
The only argument even worth considering is that of providing right of way to guarantee access to the land someone owns. I can dismantle it, but it would take more time and space than I want to spend here to do it.
But what is it about the Post that gives it some special status? All it is is a service that should be paid for by those willing to pay for it, and provided by those willing to investe the needed capital in creating the necessary infrastructure.
And what buildings are you referring to? Courts and the like, OK, maybe, but what else? What other kinds of buildings have some special quality that makes them public by necessity?
Goverment's job is to protect rights. You don't do that by taking rights from some to provide them to others. You don't protect rights by providing services at someone else's expense.
The government does serve a function valuable to property in establishing uniform titles and protecting you from becoming landlocked. The authorization of post roads can reasonably justify taking land neded to interconnect and to provide needed arsenals and post offices.
The rights of way should remain common, and the buildings public. The Dodgers should not have used the sheriff to avoid paying a fair price for their stadium.
The point that this post, the posts I referenced, and Kyle's comment makes is that what you so conveniently call "consitutional support for taking" is stealing. All the Supreme court did was clarify that a heretofor implied meaningless distinction was, in fact, totally meaningless.
In effect, this decision by SCOTUS affirms that the consitution grants authority to steal, so long as for "a good cause."
Of course, since conservatives have nothing to hang their hat on but the consitution, this sends them all scrambling to butress a meaningless distinction that lay bare and in ruin.
Good luck with it all. Of course, alternatively, you could turn to rational philosophy as a giude to how society ought to be ordered, rather than a mostly arbitrary consitution. Just a suggestion.
I was referring to the constitutional support for taking, and what I believe are limitations on that authority. I believe the recent decision overstepped that authority.
One teach an ordinarily intelligent child that it is wrong to take things that belong to others.
It is utterly astounding to me that grown, intelligent adults subscribe some kind of bloody alchemy by which this principle is no longer valid simply because the constitution say so.
I am never going to understand what these people do in their minds in order to achieve this ethical back-flip.
Beck:
"I am never going to understand what these people do in their minds in order to achieve this ethical back-flip."
Simple: they aren't doing anything at all, in their minds.