Redevelop Eminent Domain: Urging Gov. Schwarzenegger To Take Action
In an op-ed special to the SacBee, Timothy Sandefur writes: “Last summer, the Supreme Court shocked many by ruling in Kelo v. city of New London that local governments may seize homes and businesses, and transfer the property to private developers to build shopping centers, hotels or other for-profit projects.”
The outcry over the ruling led lawmakers in more than 40 states to propose limits on eminent domain. In California, several bills in the Legislature and two proposed ballot propositions being circulated for signatures address the threat to homes, businesses, churches, farms and other property. Yet to this day, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said nothing about this issue.
Although the Constitution allows government to seize property only for “public use,” the Kelo ruling declared that this phrase really means “public benefit.” Therefore, whenever bureaucrats think that seizing property and giving it to someone else will create jobs, increase the local tax base or benefit the public in some other way, they can do so through the power of eminent domain. Victims of eminent domain are entitled to compensation, but they often receive far less than the property is worth.
California is one of the nation’s leading abusers of eminent domain. Between 1998 and 2003, the state seized 233 properties and sold or leased it to private developers. California’s laws define terms such as “blight” so vaguely that bureaucrats can seize virtually any property they wish in the service of powerful developers.
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May 6th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
If we, as Americans, don’t have the right to own property securely and without fear of government seizure, then we have no other right because it is the most basic of all of them.
Now that the guvmint can take any land with impugnity, what separates it from, say, Bolivian practice? Or Venzuelan? Russian? Or for that matter, English at the time of George II?
Those mentally undernourished Ivory Tower blockheads told the citizens of this country last year that, to quote Spock, the “needs” of the many are more important than the needs of the few. Screw him, screw them, and screw the pinkos and flat-out Reds teaching that crap to the brainless nitwits who can’t read English as it’s written in the Constitution of the United States.
This is the end result of teaching to the lowest common denominator. The teachers can’t read, the students can’t think, and those of us who see it happening sound like chicken littles to brainless, brainwashed barbarians who see nothing wrong with it.