The Gaming Den

Edits: trying to make the link work.


one more time

--d.

I saw that story earlier today. I find it a very scary proposition to give local (corrupt) governments that much power of personal property.

Another message board I am on has already been arguing this.

The local government has always had that power for seizures. The Supreme Courts ruling states that it's under the domain of the individual States to keep local municipalities from abusing Eminent Domain.

So power was given in this ruling, it just wasn't taken away. You can still disagree with that, but we need to be upset about the right thing.

That's actually not at all clear. The state has always had the power of Eminent Domain for public use. This case dealt with seizing land for "private economic development" -- that is, it's the difference between taking your house to build a freeway, and taking your house so someone else can build a hotel on the land.

Now, it's possible to argue (and some people have been arguing, and obviously the court agrees) that generating higher tax revenues or bringing in more tourists or whatever is, in fact, "for public use" -- but if you make that argument, the definition of "public use" stretches so far that it's going to be quite difficult for anyone to escape seizure on those grounds.

--d.

Her dissenting opinion reminds me of why I'm a big fan of Justice O'Connor.

Well since the government is what makes property rights possible I really don't see this as being at all a suprise. Ideally though this should be working the other way, we should be buldozing walmarts to build homes.
This doesn't change that the best way to aquire property is to heap debt on the owners and then aquire their property at much below cost when they go bankrupt.

Also it's sad and amusing to note that america has gone to war with countries that have done this to american buisinesses calling them "communist threats".

Yeah, the government has always been able to do that. It's even done that before, in the great railway expansion (where Gould got the land to build private railroads on, whether you were living there or not), the Trail of Tears (where Cherokee mines were given away to white landholders), and he massive give-aways to Rockefeller and Carnegie.

The United States Government has always stood in favor of the rights of private property, and it has always interpreted that stance as being that private property gets to do whatever it wants. Federal troops have been used to smash strikes and end labor disputes in favor of the corporations for almost two centuries.

That's not news. The fact that the United States Government exists for the sole purpose of expanding and protecting the fortunes of the wealthy is bad, but it certainly isn't new.

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And BTW, changing this basic fact of the US system is out of purview of the courts. That means that while O'connor is on the right side of this debate, she's completely wrong as a Judge. She is almost as bad a judge as Thomas, and votes personal politics over judicial correctness like all the fvcking time.

It's nice from time to time when she's on your side - like this. But let's face it, it is her shameful disregard for the actual law that allowed her to vote W in in the first place (over an actual defeat both in Florida and the popular vote). Having people who don't respect laws as your supreme court justices is in the long run bad. It will come in your favor now and again when the laws are bad, but their very existence will make any progress you make in fixing the laws meaningless.

Hacks like O'connor have to go, whether they are currently making opinions we agree with or not.

-Username17

She is almost as bad a judge as Thomas

I'll give you O'Connor, but I'm going to have to stick up for Thomas. I absolutely disagree with him on the majority of his decisions, but you can at least say Thomas is consistent in his views. He's an originalist and sticks to it. This contrasts with Scalia who pretends to be an originalist when it suits his politics.

That's not to say Thomas doesn't believe some crazy things. If you've ever read his opinions from any Establishment clause case you'll know what I'm talking about. For those that haven't, he thinks it only means the Federal government can't establish a religion. So if the State of Alabama declared Southern Baptism the state religion, Thomas would be totally OK with that from the point of view of the US Constitution.

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As for this specific case - What tends to piss people off isn't so much that it happens as it is that they're not justly compensated. The Anaconda Mining Company takes a ton of property in the northern US through eminent domain. The difference is that they pay people Fair Market Value+20% for their homes, so people generally just take the money and go buy a better house nearby.

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1119729500[/unixtime]]But let's face it, it is her shameful disregard for the actual law that allowed her to vote W in in the first place (over an actual defeat both in Florida and the popular vote).

Funny - last I checked, popular vote had nothing to do with who gets elected president.