A Revolting Development

I doubt if there has been a more dangerously bad decision by the Supreme Court in the past 50 years than the one on Eminent Domain. Nothing previously done by any branch of the federal government has provided such a blow to individual rights.

The court majority, in a decision which grossly distorts the intent of the Founding Fathers, not to mention over 200 years of historical application, has turned the definition of "public use" upside down, making it now mean "private use which has a public benefit." The land-grab projects of overtly private entities such as real estate developers and hotel chains now qualify, under this repugnantly misconceived decision, as the basis for local community governments to condemn and seize the houses and properties of any citizen it wants to thus disenfranchise, allowing the developers to put up buildings and businesses with a greater tax yield.

Something like this could be done previously, but only if the houses in question constituted a "blight." But now, perfectly fine homes (maybe the one you’re sitting in) can be targeted for seizure. Oh yeah, the stipulation is that the homeowner has to be compensated at a "fair market value," but what’s the value on a house that you’ve put years of work into, raised your kids in, bonded with your neighbors in, the home that puts you in the school district that you and your children are an intrinsic part of? What’s the compensation for that? Answer. None.

One of the reasons this country grew to be great was its respect for the rights of the individual and his property. The floodgates are now open to a new era, one of crass exploitation of land, one of utter corruption of local governments now under intense pressure to do the bidding of the rich-market fat cats. This pressure will take the form of (what’s that funny, misleading word?) lobbying by these monied entities: heavy barrages of campaign funds, parties, trips, dinners, and for those who don’t cooperate, less pleasant forms of coercion, including smear campaigns, and heavy funding for their opponents.

So welcome to your new America. One last note worth making is that, in it’s typical style of inflating the trivial and ignoring the important, the mass media gave this epochal sea-change of a story the quick brush-off.