Comments on: Early Draft of the Kelo opinion surfaces

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 13:28:14 +0000

g: This whole thing seems to be an A-Team episode waiting to happen. You know how they all go. A restaurant owner is being pressured to sell his place to someone else but he refuses, they call the A-Team… guns are fired but nobody is hit… a car is flipped but everyone walks away… I love it when a plan comes together.

By: Randolph Fritz

Randolph Fritz — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 03:08:49 +0000

By the way, this case was litigated by the right-wing “Institute for Justice”, which turns out to have initially been funded by the hard-right Koch family foundations, run by two deeply unscrupulous and wealthy brothers. The IJ is now soliciting donations under the name “Castle Coaltion”, which I suppose will protect people who own castles.

“Just because you’re on their side doesn’t mean they’re on your side.”

By: Minh-Duc

Minh-Duc — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:51:11 +0000

Compare with my county, the county next door is in “economic distress.” Let tear down the whole county. If you cannot tell the different between a slum and an average but not wealthy neighborhood, you surely belong in the Supreme Court.

By: David Moles

David Moles — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 19:41:39 +0000

Do “blight” and “economic distress” have specific meanings at law? (I mean, I’d say that Contra Costa County, CA, is blighted by overpriced subdivisions… does that count?)

By: Pat

Pat — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 13:46:24 +0000

When O’Connor figures out how to explain her specific endorsement of takings for urban renewal of blighted areas, and her specific objection to takings for urban renewal of economically distressed areas, then and only then will I respect her opinion in this case.

By: jet

jet — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 04:00:12 +0000

When it comes down to it, this ruling makes perfect sense. If the Commerce Clause means that the federal government can regulate wheat grown in your backyard for pure personal consumption because you would have had to purchase that wheat if you hadn’t grown it. Then confiscating private property go give to another party as private property because some 19th hole board meeting decided that a few jobs and some tax revenue would be created, can be considered “public use”. What a crock of utter shit. Lawyers get so caught up in their own words that anything sounds reasonable after they rubbed their asses on it.

The only good thing to come out of Kelo was the O’Conner showed she might have some balls and actually gives a shit about the Constitution after all. Other than that, it was just more damage to the Consitution furthering the concept that it can mean what it explicitly does not.

By: Randolph Fritz

Randolph Fritz — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 23:38:54 +0000

Brett, it’s very unlikely that your property would be taken for redevelopment; by and large takings are used areas where development would not otherwise occur.

By the way, so far as I can tell, a decision in favor of Kelo et al would have primarily protected residential landlords, especially slumlords, from urban renewal. I don’t think it would have particularly protected most homeowners from loss, since they are much more at risk from bad financial luck and of course renters are not even considered. Despite all talk of the rights of people to their homes, the arguments in favor of Kelo et al. seems to me not to address those rights.

By: Minh-Duc

Minh-Duc — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 15:43:15 +0000

John,

Here is the different, here is a good analogy when it come to conscription. (1) The government conscript you to fight WWII or (2) the government conscript you, and then lease you out to work for a major corporation.

By: goatchowder

goatchowder — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 06:48:49 +0000

Ah, shit. Now that they’ve done this, there’s no hope of the residents and landowners of Arlington suing Bush and his backers for stealing “The Ballbark at Arlingon” from them.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 04:05:09 +0000

It’s hard to see how any substantive (as opposed to procedural) constitutional restriction on takings of property can be justified when the 5th and 13th amendments are read as permitting conscription.

By: Pat

Pat — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 03:26:57 +0000

Wow, you’d almost think they were interested in the rule of law, precedent, and in making judicial decisions that are better thought out than the “we know improper takings when we see it” ruling by the conservative minority.

But that can’t be it, it must just be some bizarre psychological reason.

By: David T. Beito

David T. Beito — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 23:56:43 +0000

Yes…..it is really quite interesting that so many on the left are so willing to defend this coercive and massive redistribution of wealth from working class homeowners to private developers and big corporations.

By: Lisa Williams

Lisa Williams — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 16:11:17 +0000

This seems like a perfect time for local legislatures to come to the rescue. I admit, I hadn’t been paying too much attention to this case. I thought, well, sometimes a highway or some other public building has to be built…then I heard that New London was tearing down someone’s house to give the property to a private developer because they believed that what got built would produce more tax revenue.

I guess I better go out and paint my fence before my town decides to take my house, bulldoze it, and put a 7-11 there; after all, commercial property tax rates are almost twice residential rates where I live.

As a citizen that’s not the way I want things to work. I’d support a law in my state banning municipalities from taking property by eminent domain for purposes other than creating public amenities (roads, police station, etc).

By: David Sucher

David Sucher — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 15:14:57 +0000

Whenever I read cant such as “…comprehensive economic revitalization plan executed as part of a government program to fix a region that had been condemned as economically distressed…” I know the writer is pulling my leg. Or at least I hope so. The very idea that govt can do anything more for economic development that provide sound weights and measures and honest courts—ok, WPA-type projects in extremis are fine with me too—is preposterous. I don’t think that anyone can cite even one eco development program which used condemnation and was successful. The economy simply doesn’t work that way. Eminent domain is NOT an essential of the sort of eco devlopment projects which succeed.

By: JR

JR — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 14:06:36 +0000

I thought the use of government power for the benefit of big business was called crony capitalism, not communism. And I hadn’t imagined that Marx would consider the tumble-down houses of working-class families to be “bourgeois property.” But I’ve gone back and checked the Manifesto, and I see now that it reads:

The multi-nationals have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Corporations of all nations, unite!

So I guess I was wrong. Thanks for the correction.