High Court OKs Personal Property Seizures

[reconeil]

ONLY: "The right of a government to appropriate private property for Public use" was; "Settled" way-back-when,...and/or as EMINENT DOMAIN is so defined.

NOWHERE and except by some recent black-robed and omnipotent gods was it ever: "Settled", in that The State could ride roughshod over any Private Citizen's Private Property and turn same over to another Private Citizen or Private Concern and/or Private Corporation,...primarily so that both The Corporation and The State could MAKE MORE MONEY from such a quite lordly take-over.

The Corporation MAKES MORE MONEY from ripping-off or acquiring valuable private property at a song, and The State gleans MUCH MORE MONEY IN TAXES, merely by pretty-much stealing some shlub's private property. The ex-property owner simply gets officially and/or royally-screwed,...and that's that

Years ago such type steam-rollings over The American Public by corporations in collusions with governments were called: "Graft", "Corruption", "Pay-offs" and such.
Shouldn't matter that now authoritarian lords call such a blatant and combined corporate/government self-servingness merely: "EMINENT DOMAIN".
ANY HONEST PEOPLE,...know that's just not so.

Neil

[Advisor]

Maybe we have a RICO case here!!

[Arrow]

Andy...

All good reasons as to why they would have taken the case. Thank you for taking time to answer me. I'm workin' on staying healthy. My brothers words come back to haunt me when I don't want toexercise. "Take care of those legs" he said. He got the last word after all!

Miss Annette. Her and I got disconnected(not sure how)through the time ofmy brothers sickness and her going back to work full time.Tell her I love her.She's one in a million to me. I hope to see her face again before I leave the planet.

Be good to yourself Andy,

Arrow>>>>>>

Neil...

I agree with your post unless I'm missing something here. And I think we are insome pretty good company considering the rulings of Justice O'Connor and Thomas.

Arrow>>>>>>>

[Andy]

I know what your saying and I'm all for rights of the individual. I mentioned the Quabbin as an example because my mom's side of the family had a bunch of relatives who had lived in Endfield Ma. Grandpa paid to have several of them re-burried.

That said if you'd really like to get mad, read most anything about the Railroad Barron's and their state sanctioned land grabs of the 19th century. Or check out the history of the subways in New York and Boston, both of them were privately owned for many years, both used emanate domain and knocked down existing dwellings.

Neil, I made some comments because it seemed some people thought this idea, this ruling, was something new.

Arrow, I know your legs are private property, but there should be a law requiring them to stay just they way they looked when we met. (Annette says, "Hi girl!")

Stay Healthy,
Andy

[Packo]

Andy.....it is a NEW ruling. What they did to get the resevoir was the correct use of Eminent Domain. Now what they are saying is that the government has the right to buy your property so they can sell it to a developer to, let's say, put up a hotel. That is much different. The railroads were deemed, and the deeming was correct, a public good and usage. Food, people, goods, etc all moved by train. Just at the time trains were owned by private citizens, and made a profit. Now they are owned by the gov and lose money every year....nonetheless, this was about the only private industry that ever gained through E.D. Now, if I want to bulldoze your home and all the ones in your neighborhood and put in million dollar homes, I don't negotiate with you, I tell they city, they come and take your home, and sell me the land. Yes, the city has to pay you.....but what THEY decide fair market value is, is left up to them. I'm sure they will give you a good deal. This is not the same as it has always been.

Nice to see you back!

Pack

[Arrow]

Andy....

Hi girl! back to your girl! You are funny! I am laughin' so hard I've got tears in my eyes.

You and Annettetake care of each other for all of us,

Arrow>>>>>>>

[reconeil]

I know: "The devil is in the detail",...and basically why political governments can get away with blatant absurdities that Private Sector Citizens would normally go to jail for.

Hey,...even the most simple things are purposefully made quite confusing, when governments get involved. Politicians and political appointees thrive off of such,...since believing that such make them ACTUALLY NEEDED somehow by The Public.
Most, ACTUALLY are not.

So then, let's cut through all the diversions about EMINENT DOMAIN, and go right to the definition of same.

eminent domain n. Law. The right of a government to appropriate private property for public use, usu. with compensation to the owner.

Does anyone see anything about governments INSTEAD appropriating such PRIVATE PROPERTY for friends or friendly corporations,...so that "They" can all MAKE MORE MONEY and while no: "Public use" whatsoever will ever be used for same property? I sure-as-hell don't see or read any such big brother nonsense like that, out of The ACTUAL & TRUE Definition (not The Supreme Court's variation or version).

Neil

P.S. Arrow,
If O'Conner and Thomas were part of The Dissenting Votes(?),...we're all on the same page and/or in total agreement.
If not, and they were part of the quite asinine majority of Lordly Justices' quite friend/self-serving private property ruling and/or latest national travesty,..."If the shoe fits (all 5 should) wear it".

[Arrow]

"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.Justice O'Connor, with whom The Chief Justice, Justice Scalia, and Justice Thomas join, dissenting. Over two centuries ago, just after the Bill of Rights was ratified, Justice Chase wrote:

"An act of the Legislature (for I cannot call it a law) contrary to the great first principles of the social compact, cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority ... . A few instances will suffice to explain what I mean... . [A] law that takes property from A. and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a Legislature with such powers; and, therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it." Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 388 (1798) (emphasis deleted).

Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power. Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded--i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public--in the process. To reason, as the Court does, that the incidental public benefits resulting from the subsequent ordinary use of private property render economic development takings "for public use" is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property--and thereby effectively to delete the words "for public use" from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Accordingly I respectfully dissent.

Posted by Arrow on 06-24-05 06:32 PM:Justice Thomas, dissenting.

Long ago, William Blackstone wrote that "the law of the land ... postpone[s] even public necessity to the sacred and inviolable rights of private property." 1 Commentaries on the Laws of England 134-135 (1765) (hereinafter Blackstone). The Framers embodied that principle in the Constitution, allowing the government to take property not for "public necessity," but instead for "public use." Amdt. 5. Defying this understanding, the Court replaces the Public Use Clause with a " '[P]ublic [P]urpose' " Clause, ante, at 9-10 (or perhaps the "Diverse and Always Evolving Needs of Society" Clause, ante, at 8 (capitalization added)), a restriction that is satisfied, the Court instructs, so long as the purpose is "legitimate" and the means "not irrational," ante, at 17 (internal quotation marks omitted). This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold, against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a "public use."

I cannot agree. If such "economic development" takings are for a "public use," any taking is, and the Court has erased the Public Use Clause from our Constitution, as Justice O'Connor powerfully argues in dissent. Ante, at 1-2, 8-13. I do not believe that this Court can eliminate liberties expressly enumerated in the Constitution and therefore join her dissenting opinion. Regrettably, however, the Court's error runs deeper than this. Today's decision is simply the latest in a string of our cases construing the Public Use Clause to be a virtual nullity, without the slightest nod to its original meaning. In my view, the Public Use Clause, originally understood, is a meaningful limit on the government's eminent domain power. Our cases have strayed from the Clause's original meaning, and I would reconsider them.

[BLUEHAWK]

When all the law, and the unlaw, and the scofflaw is said and done, it just does not "sit right" sometimes when a person's home is "taken" by a government by any procedure whatsoever in peacetime.

Obviously, any government can do pretty much as it damn pleases, but taking a person's home is a whole different deal, regardless of the "rights" government has given itself or what courts decree.

When I worked for the City of San Francisco, my job made it necessary for me to sit through innumerable Commission hearings, especially of the Park and Recreation Commission. That is where a lot of Eminent Domain action takes place.

Not one of those proceedings was anything less than brutal. But one does come to mind that might be worth repeating.

A family lived in a house, the backside of the property was (as is often the case in that city) basically an unbuildable rocky steep hillside overlooking a city park... as I recall, there were some scraggly grasses surviving on it. Neverthless, they owned it, fair and square. The Perk & Wreck decided they just HAD to have that, because it overlooked "their" 10 acre park. So, naturally, they forced the family to sell it to them, a worthless piece of nothing, for "fair market value" So, now, the park property reaches to the family's exact fence line. Swing sets nor sand boxes have yet to appear.

Now, one can say that they got fair value. But, did they? The value of real estate in Frisco never ceases going up. What would have been wrong with the Commission just "letting" the family keep their property until and when and if THEY sold their house! At that point, they would be getting the maximum value, not the Commission's opinion of what "fair" was at the time. We can ALL be quite sure that the Commission calculates its political power in the city based in a very large measure upon the "fair market value" of the property it controls. Indeed, we can also be quite sure that the appraisers they choose when "buying" property are not the same ones they use when toting up their net worth in front of City Council and the District Attorney either...

I once saw a very fine film about the residents of the valleys above New York City, whose homes became subject to Eminent Domain so that NYC could build enormous reservoirs for water supply. One could argue that such a thing was a good or useful application of Eminent Domain... after all, the City of New York needed a LOT of water. But, for people who wanted to live peaceably in a little valley as far from the megalopolis of NYC as they possibly could, to discover that they were being required to give their land and home in order to actually ENCOURAGE and FEED the voracious beast to their south, had to have been an ethical terror most of us will never, please God!, ever have to face.

When government intentionally causes heartbreak to innocent people, it has done so much harm... harm and even anger that will never, ever, go away... and which compounds every time they pull stunts like that.

[reconeil]

You have to admit that it's-pretty-damn-sad when innocent American Citizens get treated almost as harshly authoritarian and omnipotently as guilty Chinese criminals do, by their Governments and Courts?

Still, and in fairness to The American System of Justice, at least here the families of those loosing their cases to The Big Brother States and State don't have to pay for the ammo needed for executing any Looser. Here, just paying Court Costs for being officially steam-rolled over by rulers and friends,...suffice.

"God Bless America".

Neil