Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Is your property yours? Maybe not.

Professor Bainbridge and Kevin both take a look at a case before the Supreme Court that has BIG implications for all of us. It's about the way cities are using their power to take your property, pay you what they decide is a fair price, and then sell or give it to someone else. Kevin's got a very good breakdown of what's been happening with this, and why it appears that the SCOTUS may lack the integrity/balls to rule as they should, so I won't try to repeat or compress it.

This boils down to, if SCOTUS rules(literally, in this case) with the government, we're screwed. It means your city or county can literally steal your home or business so they can sell or give it to someone else who they think can 'better' use it; and their idea of 'better use' could be anything from apartments, to a condo complex, to some business they think will pay more money in taxes(i.e., pay us off and we'll rob the citazens for you).

This is profoundly depressing. The highest court in the land appears to care not for the document it is supposed to protect and defend, caring only for the way the words can be twisted and warped to serve what they've decided is a 'good idea'. If you disagree, tough shit, because the all-high court knows better than you peasants!

And the question becomes, what do we do about it?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The first time it happens we make as big of a deal out of it as possible. Blog swarm it. Get O'Reilly on it. Get some of the cast from "Little House" on it. They'll recognize.

Firehand said...

There's lots of noise being made about this; the problem is, a lot of the clowns in charge don't really care, they figure they can just bull their way through it.

I really, really hope SCOTUS comes down on the right side on this. Otherwise, it has the potential to get monumentally ugly in the future.

Firehand said...

There's lots of noise being made about this; the problem is, a lot of the clowns in charge don't really care, they figure they can just bull their way through it.

I really, really hope SCOTUS comes down on the right side on this. Otherwise, it has the potential to get monumentally ugly in the future.

Firehand said...

There's lots of noise being made about this; the problem is, a lot of the clowns in charge don't really care, they figure they can just bull their way through it.

I really, really hope SCOTUS comes down on the right side on this. Otherwise, it has the potential to get monumentally ugly in the future.