Garrett M. Vonk

In a closely watched case, petitioners from New London, Conn. challenged the government’s use of eminent domain to take and pay for private property and use it for private economic development.

Home and business owners’ contention that economic development doesn’t qualify as public use “is supported by neither precedent nor logic,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote.

The decision was 5-4, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist and others dissenting.

Government Power to Take Property Backed by Top Court - a more complete article from Bloomberg.

Argh! I don’t get it. People don’t seem to understand that local governments are just people. Ideally, governments shouldn’t have “special” rights that people don’t have, because they’re just other people…

Maybe it’s just because I’m a dork about things like this, but reading this news article makes me physically angry. The highest court in the land has decided that we can only really own property if it’s being used in a sense that pleases the local government’s idea of “economic development”. Haven’t we yet learned that letting the government elite decide who can own what leads to crippling corruption? OH WAIT, IT ALREADY HAS IN AMERICA.

Anybody remember the Walmart in Alabaster, Alabama? They wanted to tear down some homes and put up a Walmart, but several property owners held out and said no to Walmart’s payoffs. The development company building the ‘mart had friends in the local government who decided to condemn the homes and kick out the rightful landowners, because the sales tax revenues from the Walmart would be higher than the measly property taxes the landowners paid. People had their homes STOLEN from them to benefit a CORPORATION, and by extension, the local government. That’s the same thing that’s going on in this case. Pfizer wants to build a plant, but not everybody will sell. The local government is worried that this might mean they wouldn’t get the plant built in their district, or whatever, so they boot the residents out.

Is this America? Isn’t the government supposed to be in place to protect our rights, not subjugate our rights to whoever could benefit from it economically the most? The local government in a Kansas town did the same thing, stealing, under the guise of legitimacy, a car dealership from its owner to replace it with a BMW dealership, because that means more tax revenues. If the government gets to decide what economic activity is the “most appropriate” for privately-owned property, what’s to stop them from taking yours and mine? I’m going to become a property-owner in about 22 days, and it infuriates me even more because of that. If the city government up and decides that my home, the one that my wife and I go to work every day to be able to own, isn’t the most efficient use of the space, isn’t going to provide them adequate tax revenue, they can take a fucking bulldozer, rip it to pieces, and write me a check for whatever they decide, now with the blessing of the Supreme Court.

If that happens, I’d worry about me. I’d be that crazy guy who has to be dragged out of the home at the point of a gun, because I would not consent to this crap… I wouldn’t be a part of this game, because if you allow it to happen, you legitimize these looters with whatever laws they want to wave in your face saying that A is not A, that your home is not your home, and that your life is not your own.

If your life is not your own, they may as well kill you, because if you consent to the looting, you’re giving your life away anyway.

I think I’ll make a donation to the Castle Coalition the next time I have some extra cash.

This sentence in the Bloomberg article caught my eye. (my emphasis)

The ruling is a setback for property-rights advocates angered by what they said is an increasingly common practice, now used thousands of times a year.

The phrase “property-rights advocates” makes me flabbergasted. I thought… I thought there was some organization I heard of once that was made up of property-rights advocates… What was that called, again? Hmm… Oh yeah, it was THE GOVERNMENT. The fact that people who respect property rights are now apparently a fringe activist group blows my mind, it really does.