Supreme Court Backs Thieves’ Rights
Before the ink has completely dried on the Supreme Court’s assualt on the natural rights of the sick to mitigate their own suffering with medicinal marijuana, they have just decided that local governments along with wealthy and/or politically well-connected individuals and corporations can conspire to take private property from individuals.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
Washington — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments can force property owners to sell out and make way for private economic development when officials decide it would benefit the public, even if the property is not blighted, and the new project’s success is not guaranteed.
The landmark 5-4 ruling provided the strong affirmation state and local governments had sought for their increasing use of eminent domain for urban revitalization, especially in the Northeast, where many city centers have decayed, and the suburban land supply is dwindling.
Opponents ranging from property-rights activists to advocates for elderly and low-income urban residents argued that forcibly shifting land from one private owner to another, even with fair compensation, violates the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits the taking of property by government except for “public use.”
But Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority Thursday, cited past cases in which the court has interpreted “public use” to include not only such traditional projects as bridges or highways, but also slum clearance and land redistribution. He concluded that a “public purpose” such as creating new jobs in a depressed city can also satisfy the Fifth Amendment.
The court should not “second-guess” local governments, Stevens added, noting that “promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government.”
Stevens’ opinion provoked a strongly worded dissent from Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote that the ruling favors the most powerful and influential in society and leaves small property owners little recourse. Now, she wrote, “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.”
To parphrase Don Corleone from The Godfather: the government’s “going to make you an offer that you can’t refuse.”
If private citizens conspired with their friends to take private property, it would be called any number of things: stealing, theft, extortion, RACKETEERING, and illegal.
But when the government conspires with private corporations or individuals to do the same, it’s called economic development, legal, and “in the public interest.”
A is A, my friends. Everything is what it is, not something else.
When a gangster puts a gun in your face and steals your property, thus depriving you of any choice in the disposition of your assets, it is called a robbery. It’s still a robbery when the wealthy and their politician friends do it, only they and their co-conspirators on the Supreme Court call it altruism and economic development. And the average citizen, schooled in irrational thinking since birth, is dumb enough to buy it.
It’s economic development allright; economic development for thieves.
The redevelopment program at issue in Thursday’s case is a plan by New London, Conn., to turn 90 acres of waterfront land into office buildings, upscale housing, a marina and other facilities near a new $300 million research center being built by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The plan is also expected to generate hundreds of jobs and, city officials say, $680,000 in property tax revenue.
New London, with a population of about 24,000, is reeling from the 1996 closing of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, which had employed more than 1, 500 people.
But owners of 15 homes on 1.54 acres of the proposed site had refused to go. One of them, Susette Kelo, had extensively remodeled her home and wanted to stay for its view of the water.
The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld the city’s plan, so the homeowners, represented by lawyers from the libertarian Institute for Justice, appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
According to the institute, the New London plan, which was approved by the City Council in 2000, is typical of what it calls “eminent domain abuse,” with more than 10,000 condemnations involving a transfer of property from one private party to another either filed or threatened in 41 states from 1998 to 2002.
If there’s anything to be learned from this case is that stealing, once it is legalized is a cancer that grows unchecked, much like a cancer.
The Naval base that had provided “economic development” to the area originally was built with stolen property, which government officials like to call taxes. That was done for “the public good.”
Then when government officials closed the base, it destroyed the economy, opening the door to the current theft, once again under the guise of “economic development.”
When a economy is built upon theft, it is kept afloat by more theft. This decision by the Supreme Court shows just how desperate the government has become to keep our economy afloat, given that theft has played an increasingly important role in economic growth in recent decades.
Pfizer, like all drug companies profits greatly from scientific research that is done at NIH and financed with stolen property they call taxes. When our government talks about foreign aid to countries for health care, they are really talking about subsidizing companies like Pfizer. Money taken from taxpayers goes overseas where the local governments take their cut and then whatever is used for drugs, ultimately comes back to Pfizer and other drug companies. Using another country as middle-man launders the transaction to disguise the fact that it’s a forced taxpayer subsidy of large U.S. corporations.
In addition, large companies like Pfizer survive on loans from banks backed by the Fed which are a form of counterfeit currency, due to the magic of fractional reserve banking.
The creation of counterfeit currency by banks, is another form of legalized, government-backed stealing. When bankers can make billions in interest on money which was fabricated out of thin air, people who make their living through honest work are left behind in the dust. It doesn’t take a genius to see that somebody who has to earn his/mer money through labor, can never compete with a printing press.
When the government seizes private property to hand over to a large corporation, they are just piling one theft on top of many that have preceeded it. The “redevelopment” will be financed with money counterfeited by that banks. All that counterfeiting causes inflation which is another form of stealing. It increases the money supply in a localized area, inflating the price of everything–which is what many mistake for “economic development.”
For example, as housing prices escalate rapidly as they have in recent years to due to the many laws that subsidize the real estate, construction and banking industries, the value of savings and wages goes down.
Who is left behind? Those who don’t own real assets like real estate and those who have had their property stolen to finance the scheme in the first place.
The War in Iraq has been another tool to take money from the pockets of working Americans and hand it over to corporations. It is financed with stolen property and fiat currency.
And anyone who has read The Creature From Jekyll Island understands what happens when a project turns out to be unprofitable. The corporations can’t pay back their loans, putting the banks in danger of collapse. The Fed and Congress step in and print up some more money for them, and to eliminate any risk to the banks, the loans are “government-backed.”
That means that when the corporation can’t pay it back, the loans must be repaid with more taxes (a theft) or more newly printed currency which causes inflation, and devalues the labor, savings and retirement accounts of working class people.
Inflation is a hidden tax, a way to disguise the theft of the value of money behind the mask of economic growth. It’s really just another way to shift wealth from those who work to those who steal.
Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision gives the theives and racketeers yet another weapon to use against honest individuals who work for what they have in life. It is further evidence that the notion of earning what one has in life is a little to “old fashioned” for those who determine what is legally right and wrong in our country.
Yesterday was indeed a very dark day for this country. And the sad truth is that most Americans don’t understand why. Both the decision and the failure of most people to see it’s full meaning are evidence that individual rights which are human rights are rapidly disappearing in the one country that used to defend them so vigorously.
| Go to Home - Most Recent Posts
July 5th, 2005 at 10:27 pm
[…] ngs of this sort. Or perhaps they have been emboldened by the U. S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to take private property for the sake of […]