Another 'Right' Down The Liberal Drain

This is the government taking your property and selling it to someone else, with the reasoning being getting more tax revenue. In all cases so far, that 'someone else' has been developers. What was that blurb in the U.S. Constitution about the government being responsible for protecting our private property rights? Today the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead. Always looking for ways to get money from their constituents, both republicans and democrats are salivating at the tax bonanza that awaits the end of private property rights in this country. This is where your private property begins to be thought of as profit centers for politicians and developers.

In affirming the decision, Justice John Paul Stevens resolved a question that had surprisingly gone unanswered for all the myriad times that governments have used their power under the Fifth Amendment to take private property for public use. The question was the definition of "public use."

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor objected that "the words 'for public use' do not realistically exclude any takings, and thus do not exert any constraint on the eminent domain power." She added: "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall or any farm with a factory." "The government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more," Justice O'Connor said. "The founders cannot have intended this perverse result."

The Supreme Court abridges our 1st Amendment rights to freedom of speech in the name of McCain-Feingold, which BTW has failed miserably and nobody cares anymore. Now, they have rendered 5th Amendment private property rights a thing of the past.

© Copyright 2006 Ross Calloway. Last update: 8/30/2006; 1:05:00 AM.