This just in...you now have no property rights

Check it out:
Supreme Court Ruling in Conn. Case


So, by this ruling...if your local municipality can justify that a new development will garner a sufficient amount of funds (via taxes) for the municipality (over what you pay with your property taxes), they can now seize your property (giving "fair market value under E.D.". Doesn't matter if you wanna keep that house your great-great grandfather built barehanded, money is money...Wanna live on the coast? Better be rich, or the stormtroopers are coming to move you.

Although of course It is a disturbing thing - this has been happeneing already.

I knew some people where the city decided on a fair market value and forced them to sell their house becuase of an Airport Expansion. And everyone in the whole neighborhood.

So though this decision supports it, Im not sure this sort of thing wasnt already common place around the US?

These are very sad times to be an American but where is the rage among the citizenry? Where are the flag wavers who so laud the freedoms symbolized by a flag and written by quill pens in our constitution? Why are we not rallying in the streets against this sort of attrocity? Why because we are gluttonous lazy bastards who say it won't happen to me so who cares. So long as we keep eating the feces being spoon fed to us by this exceedingly power hungry government we will continue on our path towards surfdom. We will own nothing and be forced to rent our piece of land from govco with the hopes we will not be uprooted by some big business thug who wants another multi use over inflated highrise. This is just too sad.

Eminent Domain...sucks.

The way that it was written in the 5th Amendment is that it land would be taken for public use. If it is being used for other houses to be put up for more taxes, then its not public use, its greed.

Justice Sandra Day O'Conner wrote this in her dissent:



This will not stand.

*shakes head*

Unfortunately, rage won't cut it. This is a Supreme Court decision. It may get struck down at a later time, but: 1. Lifetime appointments 2. Judges think that they can never make a bad ruling.

This has been this way forever - If they want your land for a road or anything, they take it and give you fairmarket value.


Sheesh, have you not read or seen The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy ??

When I bought my house I cringed at the location and zoning - mine is potentially a prospect for Eminent Domain thingy.

It is a sad and scary thing.

Taking your land for a Road or a school is one thing. That is supported in the constitution. Taking your house to put in a Super Wal*Mart is entirely different.

Fairmarket value...hmmm...So, what if I find this piece of land (Im a land speculator...hence my cool hat), I buy it knowing that traffic patterns and the direction of growth in the area will soon have buyers beating a path to my door. Now, just as interest in my land is building, the local government decides that the developers (that I'm in negociations with) would garner more taxes with their condos than I will with my empty lot...so they seize, pay me the amount for my lot (not what I could get for it...the base and trimmed appraised value), and sell it to the same developers.

Now, take it one step further.

Said developers go to the municipality knowing how much I'm asking and exactly how much I paid for the lot. They grease the local muckity-mucks. And viola! They get my lot at base market value, that I speculated and obtained solely because I knew that development was coming (which would run the price up). Except they get it for exactly what I paid (minus the taxes I've paid over the intervening period). I bought it, paid taxes on it...but ultimately I am legally demoted to being not a land owner, just a land placeholder for people with connections and more cash.

Now the practise, and the abuse, has the official imprimatur of the Supremes. Brought to your house by the liberal wing of the court, of all things - whereas the conservative wing went against big business and wealth, and supported the little guy.

I can almost see eminent domain as justified for public works projects like roads or other infrastructure, but to seize property to turn it over to private developers is insane. How in the hell did they rule in favor of this?! Yay greed! I'm completely shocked and disgusted.

1) This was a split decision, 5-4. If just one justice changes his or her mind, it could be reversable.

2) The fifth amendment prohibits government from seizing land for public use without fair compensation. There's nothing in the language that prevents Congress from prohibiting the government seizure of land for private use with a Federal law (though state's rights advocates might find it hard to swallow).

3) Constitutions can be amended. This issue is one of which bipartisan coalitions are made. Both left and right have reasons to hate the idea of taking private land away from one private owner to give or sell to another private owner.

Yep, eminent domain for public projects (airports, freeways and the like) can be rather worrying, but is clearly protected even before this decision. Of course since these are things that taxpayers will actually be paying for, there are some financial limits to how far a government can go (not hard limits to be sure, but use of taxpayer funds will usually stick in enough folks craw to gather a reasonably sized opposition, look at stadium initiatives).

Of course with the new decision, the taxpayers will not be on the hook, no obvious structure to point to and say "Our tax dollars at work" either happily or sarcastically, and no compelling financial interest for other citizens in the jurisdiction as their taxes are not being used for purchase. Some will flock to fight it on grounds of principal or fear they could be next, but not likely as many. And if it faces less resisitance, one wonders how fair these fair value estimations will really be.

Basically, I don't like this decision. I'm all about economic growth and efficiency, but that's just a bonus for protecting private property rights, not the other way around. For me anyway.

Don't get me wrong, there is a place for E.D in America...just around my area, a good number of houses were bought and demo'd to make way for a network of new firestations. This was a publically motivated project, was needed, and logical in the placement of the new structures (best coverage for the local grid). But E.D. for the sake of pulling more taxes from one private owner over another is blatently wrong...and now where is the oversight? The Supremes have decided, precedent is set, unless we get lucky and the things Arcadia wrote come to fruition..

Arcadia, while I hope one of those options will change this, only one of them seems likely in the near-term.

The Supremes could reverse this themselves, but quite likely they will not even give themselves the chance, any similar case will probably be ignored and left to the current interpretation. They could, and quite likely will change this decision eventually, but it could be a damn long while.

The consitutional amendment approach seems even less likely. Bipartisan to be sure, but a bit technical and not considered a truly pressing issue for most. Kind of like redistriciting, though a bit easier sell to be sure.

Now the second option has possibilities. The Feds could pass a law barring this but could likey avoid it on a federalism grounds, but both parties have been a bit less faithful to their historical fed-state balance of late, so there is a shot. Of course, state legislatures (or constitutions) could do this but then there could be a conflict of interest. While states probably do a fair share of eminent domain, not sure state governemtns would be likely players in this kind of private ED, and may be more willing to put a stop to it. Ballot initiatives could take care of this too perhaps.

Basically, I think your second option is probably the lowest hanging branch and best to focus on. Options 1 and 3 are the best to settle the issue in one stroke, but with the lowest probability of success in the near to medium term.

The swing vote appears to have belonged to conservative Anthony Kennedy, who swung it right into the laps of developers.

The rest of it I abscribe to the fact that we've crossed over into Bizarro world.

hmmm option 2 could be passed by many of the states in alternative. Since the State law would say only use land for Public use in agreement with the 5th ammentment to the US consititution

True it could lead to a challenge based on precident -

Which could then result in option 1 taking place.

I have a theory (sadly, I'm wrong alot...but I digress) on the political makeup of the Supremes that voted for/against:

The last ruling they made before the flag burning one was another property sieze-type situation involving a hotel in San Francisco. The hotel (which musta been seedy prior) wanted to update some rooms from residential to tourist use and upgrade their property. The courts deemed that doing this would cause hardship and undue restriction on poorer local residents...or something along that line. So, finally it made it to the Supremes...who sided with the lower courts.

So...the Supremes that supported that ruling had to go this way on this ruling to stay cohesive and seemingly unbiased in their logically flawed thinking concerning the whole municipality seizure question...

Read all about it...

Hooray - first flag burning, now this - our government is so out of touch with what is important to regular citizens of this country that it truly is scary. I can't believe anyone except real estate developers could possibly think seizing land to build condos or an office building (or as Eboni said, a Super Wal-Mart) is a good thing. What the hell are they thinking?

As a few bloggers have noted, this has been a dismal year for SCOTUS. Except for the wine decision. Hmm, maybe that was to get us liquored up to ignore this and the Raich decision? Too bad that logic didn't work for Raich.

This has been the case for many years. Like 80 or 90 years. They have always done that. We can look at this way, the Native Americans was given land. The government found out Farmers wanted it, or there was gold or some other thing like that there. We told the NA to move. The USA government has done this for a long time, now you at least get money for it.

The municipalities are thinking renovation, baby. Facelifts like New York's Times Square, Baltimore's Inner Harbor, the Seattle waterfront, etc, etc, bring in flocks of yuppies with their yuppie taxes and bistros and boutiques, which are ever so much more attractive than working class people with working class problems.

From a constitutional standpoint, the only argument I can think of for this decision is that it's not specifically prohibited by the constitution. But it's clearly in violation of the spirit of the constitution - the only allowable seizures mentioned in the fifth amendment are for public use, and those only after fair compensation is given.

It's a stunning betrayal of the public trust. But we should be getting accustomed to those by now.

So let me see if I have this straight:

1. The government can come into my locked house when I am not home, rifle through my underware drawers, log into my computer and pose my avatar on various sex balls, and they are not required to get a warrant or to even tell me that they were there.

2. On the inuendo of a neighbor (or a marked increase in electricity consumption because of a bum fridge compressor), the government can get a warrant that allows them to kick my door in at 3:00 AM, drag me out of bed, rip my house apart looking for drugs, not find them, but confiscate my house, car and belongings anyway - forcing me to go to court to get them back.

3. If a neighbor decides to walk into my back yard to smoke his evening joint without my knowledge, the city can sieze my home because of drug activity on my property, even if I was unaware of it.

4. And now, the government can sieze my property (with renumeration according to their perception of fair value) merely because they will get a better tax payoff if they build a seaside resort or a mall (not to mention personal payoffs). So it then becomes their best interest to devalue my property (think code violations, property taxes and reduced allocation of resources such as police and fire).

Of course devaluation of renumeration is not even an issue if they can sieze the property through other means.

Welcome to our Brave New World.

.

Native Americans were never considered citizens, they were the 1800's version of "enemy combatants" (and were treated 1 kabillion times worse than those wussies at GITMO). They were herded onto unwanted land, then when the land became useful, they were herded somewhere else...much like how prisoners have no say if the prison gets moved, they are just forced to move with it (or move it). And, besides properly applied E.D. (which is supposed to be for the public good, and has always paid fair market) citizens did have the ability to air greviences and be recompensated whenever a municipality stepped over the line and attempted to deprive them of private property...but, now that is all gone. The only excuse the municipality needs is that MO' MONEY will be made by the seizure...