But the Supreme Court said we could!

Okay, this isn’t what I had intended on writing tonight … maybe I’ll cover it in a section to this rant later, maybe I’ll run out of time and put it into an article tomorrow. While looking around for interesting tidbits I came across two of the words I most hate to see together … Eminent and Domain.

You may be sick of hearing me ramble on about it, but if you want me to stop you’re going to have to do one of three things:

1. Stop reading the blog


2. Revoke the right to freedom of speech so that the government can lock me and any others that speak out against eminent domain, or


3. Do something to stop the governmental land grab.

Now the basis of Eminent domain is not the problem … the problem is in the abuse of the power by government. The power to seize land for governmental use, it seems, wasn’t enough … they needed the power to seize land for private development in order to increase their power (ala tax base … spending power). The idea being that the government knows what the best use of all land is, and ownership grants no rights.

And there in lies my problem with the situation – The government does not generally care about what is best for the citizens, rather it cares what will give it the most money and power while still getting it re-elected.

If you strip away the right of ownership then what does freedom become? If I am free to say what I want, but the government can walk up and take my house away at their whim, am I really free?

[‘But it’s not at their whim’ some say … ‘they have to have a project that needs the land … and they have to compensate the owners.’ … Yeah, right, whatever. If they don’t want to buy at the price I set, then they don’t get to buy, but the government can come in and say, ‘here’s compensation now get off Property_Developer_03921734’s property’ … considering that they are not even required to pay the ‘appraised value’ used for property taxes the amount of compensation could be (and usually is) a small percentage of the market value of the property in question.]

The latest governmental land grab to make the news is Riviera Beach, Florida where the mayor is saying that they are going to “rescue and relocate individuals” like some urban wildlife conservation project.

Another, often used justification, is that the areas are ‘slums’ … but then what happens when all the ‘slums’ have been redeveloped into high rise, expensive, condos and restaurants and some developer comes along and wants to develop a new luxury condo, but there are all these middle-class suburban homes in the way whose owners don’t want to sell at the cut rate price he’s offering?

Another reason that the ‘poorer’ sections are often targeted is that they can rarely afford any legal counsel in the matter, are less educated, and don’t garner as much ‘sympathy’ as people of more means generally want the areas cleaned up anyway and therefore are willing to turn a blind eye to the abuse of power because it isn’t them being effected.

The fact of the matter is that these people OWN these homes and the property on which they are built. It should be their choice if they wish to sell or not, if the price is appropriate or not … this should not be the choice of the government. But that is where we stand in this country.

The Supreme Court has spoken on the matter and their ruling was that it was acceptable for state and city governments to seize private property for the sake of private development. Thankfully this has sparked a LOT of debate over the issue of eminent domain, and has prompted many states to pass constitutional amendments to prevent (or at least curtail) the abuse of this power.

Where this will go from here remains to be seen, but I fear that if people do not wake up and realize that the government is slowly gathering all of the power of wealth and ownership to itself, then we will soon find ourselves living at the whim of the government. Employed by the government, housed by the government, fed by the government, slaves to the government.