Supreme Court Removes Property Rights from American Citizens
I offer the following excerpts from an article from the Associated Press for your consideration. Normally I try to keep to issues of a religious nature, especially those that concern our Holy Father, Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church. But as I will explain later, this issue is thick with moral ramifications that should not be lightly dismissed. For the full story, please click on the link at the bottom of this post.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses - even against their will - for private economic development.
It was a decision fraught with huge implications for a country with many areas, particularly the rapidly growing urban and suburban areas, facing countervailing pressures of development and property ownership rights.
The 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.
As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.
"The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including - but by no means limited to - new jobs and increased tax revenue," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.
He was joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," O'Connor wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, as well as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
This legal development is in some ways as frightening as the Dred Scott decision of a century and a half ago, which cast negro slaves as non-persons as well as the more recent Roe vs. Wade decision which, of course, made abortion freely available at any time and for any reason. The Roe vs. Wade decision, I might add, also classified another group of people as non-entities: the unborn.
This most current decision does not go so far as to remove the status of person-hood from anyone, but it does continue the disturbing trend of removing or reducing rights which were previously taken as "unalienable" by our founding fathers. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were once viewed as unalterable characteristics of our American society but since Roe vs. Wade, the right to life has been removed from many of our citizens by the Supreme Court, substituting nearly unrestricted sexual license in it's place. Now the same liberal cabal of five justices on the Supreme Court has removed a basic underpinning of everyone's pursuit of happiness, namely the right to buy and own private property. I wonder what worthless monstrosity will be offered in return for this injustice? Perhaps homosexual marriage, legalized bigamy and a lowering of the age of consent.
Of course, we can still buy property, but can we really own it if a person, corporation or municipality with more political connections can be allowed to covet it for their own and have it condemned for their own enrichment? Reasons must be provided for the seizure of private property to be sure, but can something as trivial as an increase in the tax base justify removing a couple in their twilight years from the only home they have known for fifty years? Instead of reaching a fair market price for properties, which has always been whatever the market would bear, a developer may now drag the local government into the purchasing process with the motive of hijacking property from reluctant land owners for what will, I am sure, be a great deal less than what they could have gotten on the free market. No longer will someone be able count on buying a piece of undeveloped property with the plan to sell later at a higher price when land becomes more scarce, nor will someone be able to preserve the ancestral farm if they wish...at least they won't if Donald Trump decides that he can use the property better than the original owner.
Consider yourselves warned: this is just another nail in the coffin of this society in which we live. The penalty for the Dred Scott case was ultimately the Civil War which many people at the time considered Divine Retubution for the sin of slavery. What will be the divine penalty for the sin of abortion and the resulting moral chaos? Perhaps the loss of our pursuit of happiness for now but later, the Supreme Court may also remove our right to liberty as well. Once upon a time, only some of the people in this country were slaves. In the near future perhaps all of us will be.
Supreme Court removes property rights
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses - even against their will - for private economic development.
It was a decision fraught with huge implications for a country with many areas, particularly the rapidly growing urban and suburban areas, facing countervailing pressures of development and property ownership rights.
The 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.
As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.
"The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including - but by no means limited to - new jobs and increased tax revenue," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.
He was joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," O'Connor wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, as well as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
This legal development is in some ways as frightening as the Dred Scott decision of a century and a half ago, which cast negro slaves as non-persons as well as the more recent Roe vs. Wade decision which, of course, made abortion freely available at any time and for any reason. The Roe vs. Wade decision, I might add, also classified another group of people as non-entities: the unborn.
This most current decision does not go so far as to remove the status of person-hood from anyone, but it does continue the disturbing trend of removing or reducing rights which were previously taken as "unalienable" by our founding fathers. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were once viewed as unalterable characteristics of our American society but since Roe vs. Wade, the right to life has been removed from many of our citizens by the Supreme Court, substituting nearly unrestricted sexual license in it's place. Now the same liberal cabal of five justices on the Supreme Court has removed a basic underpinning of everyone's pursuit of happiness, namely the right to buy and own private property. I wonder what worthless monstrosity will be offered in return for this injustice? Perhaps homosexual marriage, legalized bigamy and a lowering of the age of consent.
Of course, we can still buy property, but can we really own it if a person, corporation or municipality with more political connections can be allowed to covet it for their own and have it condemned for their own enrichment? Reasons must be provided for the seizure of private property to be sure, but can something as trivial as an increase in the tax base justify removing a couple in their twilight years from the only home they have known for fifty years? Instead of reaching a fair market price for properties, which has always been whatever the market would bear, a developer may now drag the local government into the purchasing process with the motive of hijacking property from reluctant land owners for what will, I am sure, be a great deal less than what they could have gotten on the free market. No longer will someone be able count on buying a piece of undeveloped property with the plan to sell later at a higher price when land becomes more scarce, nor will someone be able to preserve the ancestral farm if they wish...at least they won't if Donald Trump decides that he can use the property better than the original owner.
Consider yourselves warned: this is just another nail in the coffin of this society in which we live. The penalty for the Dred Scott case was ultimately the Civil War which many people at the time considered Divine Retubution for the sin of slavery. What will be the divine penalty for the sin of abortion and the resulting moral chaos? Perhaps the loss of our pursuit of happiness for now but later, the Supreme Court may also remove our right to liberty as well. Once upon a time, only some of the people in this country were slaves. In the near future perhaps all of us will be.
Supreme Court removes property rights
Labels: Catholic, Catholicism
posted by Norm Johnson @ 11:18 PM
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