Time to Change the Retirement Plan
Posted by TFG on June 24th, 2005
A very, very bad day for liberty and constitutional government. And an especially bad day at the Supreme Court for property rights. I’ll blog more extensively on this later — and I suspect we may hear from John Eastman on it as well — but the short version is this:
The Court ruled today that a city government can “take” private property — from unwilling owners — not just for the government to use itself for traditional purposes like publicly owned rail lines, power lines, schools, parks, etc., but to transfer it to some other private owner for a purpose the government favors. The Court reasoned that this qualifies as a “public use” under the Fifth Amendment. (Con law folks will recognize this reasoning as the inevitable legacy of the Court’s Midkiff decision from 1983-84). This means, essentially, if the government doesn’t like what you are doing with your property, it can take it and give it some other private owner who it approves of.
I’m already staring “takings” in the face, as the TxDOT plans to expand the highway in front of my alleged “ranch” from a two-lane road to a four-lane divided highway. That’s going to be approximately 150 feet deep into my frontage that will be just gone. Sure, I’ll get some nominal square-foot fee that’s nowhere near market value. But, at a minimum, that’s a “public good takings” that is, if not real thrilling, is at least established in the law and philosophically understandable but more importantly, an easily understood principle of risk/reward at purchase time.. Now, though, it looks like just about any revenooing entity can pop in and kick me out in whole should they decide they want something “better.” Looking at the balance sheet of the Tiny Bidness, that would not be hard to do…say, a popsicle stand, or some-such.
Oh, yeah — in other federal government tomfoolery boneheaded idiocy, a completely out-of-things-to-do Congress has re-passed the flag-burning amendment. Superb.
So, screw it. I’ll move to Mexico. I hear that down there, if you buy a judge, they stay bought.
June 27th, 2005 at 8:55 am
What a bunch of crap huh? What happened to life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Some real estate developer can come in and say “hey Buck wanna sell your place” and if you tell him no, then he can come back and just take it away from you and build condos on the rivers edge! Think it can’t happen? Just hide and watch ,it will probably start down on the Guadalupe first because land prices are higher there and there are more people in a smaller area, We’ll keep our eyes peeled and report back on anything new.Welcome to the United Socialist States of America!