- WASHINGTON (AP) -- A divided
Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people's
homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision
anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war
with individual property rights.
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- The 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut
residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office
complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their land except
for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize
blighted areas.
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- As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences
for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate
tax revenue.
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- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a key swing
vote on many cases before the court, issued a stinging dissent. She argued
that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even
if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers.
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- Connecticut residents involved in the lawsuit expressed
dismay and pledged to keep fighting.
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- "It's a little shocking to believe you can lose
your home in this country," said resident Bill Von Winkle, who said
he would refuse to leave his home, even if bulldozers showed up. "I
won't be going anywhere. Not my house. This is definitely not the last
word."
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- Scott Bullock, an attorney for the Institute for Justice
representing the families, added: "A narrow majority of the court
simply got the law wrong today and our Constitution and country will suffer
as a result."
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- Writing for the court, Justice John Paul Stevens said
local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development
project will benefit the community. States are within their rights to pass
additional laws restricting condemnations if residents are overly burdened,
he said.
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- "The city has carefully formulated an economic development
that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including
_ but by no means limited to _ new jobs and increased tax revenue,"
Stevens wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H.
Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
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- "It is not for the courts to oversee the choice
of the boundary line nor to sit in review on the size of a particular project
area," he said.
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- At issue was the scope of the Fifth Amendment, which
allows governments to take private property through eminent domain if the
land is for "public use."
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- Susette Kelo and several other homeowners in a working-class
neighborhood in New London, Conn., filed suit after city officials announced
plans to raze their homes for a riverfront hotel, health club and offices.
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- New London officials countered that the private development
plans served a public purpose of boosting economic growth that outweighed
the homeowners' property rights, even if the area wasn't blighted.
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- "We're pleased," attorney Edward O'Connell,
who represents New London Development Corporation, said in response to
the ruling.
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- The lower courts had been divided on the issue, with
many allowing a taking only if it eliminates blight.
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- "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of
another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,"
O'Connor wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens
with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including
large corporations and development firms."
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- She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice William
H. Rehnquist, as well as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
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- Nationwide, more than 10,000 properties were threatened
or condemned in recent years, according to the Institute for Justice, a
Washington public interest law firm representing the New London homeowners.
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- New London, a town of less than 26,000, once was a center
of the whaling industry and later became a manufacturing hub. More recently
the city has suffered the kind of economic woes afflicting urban areas
across the country, with losses of residents and jobs.
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- The New London neighborhood that will be swept away includes
Victorian-era houses and small businesses that in some instances have been
owned by several generations of families. Among the New London residents
in the case is a couple in their 80s who have lived in the same home for
more than 50 years.
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- City officials envision a commercial development that
would attract tourists to the Thames riverfront, complementing an adjoining
Pfizer Corp. research center and a proposed Coast Guard museum.
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- New London was backed in its appeal by the National League
of Cities, which argued that a city's eminent domain power was critical
to spurring urban renewal with development projects such Baltimore's Inner
Harbor and Kansas City's Kansas Speedway.
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- Under the ruling, residents still will be entitled to
"just compensation" for their homes as provided under the Fifth
Amendment. However, Kelo and the other homeowners had refused to move at
any price, calling it an unjustified taking of their property.
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- The case was one of six resolved by justices on Thursday.
Still pending at the high court are cases dealing with the constitutionality
of government Ten Commandments displays and the liability of Internet file-sharing
services for clients' illegal swapping of copyrighted songs and movies.
The Supreme Court next meets on Monday.
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- The case is Kelo et al v. City of New London, 04-108.
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- http://tinyurl.com/87ftp
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- Comment
- From Ra
- 6-29-5
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- So people have thought a man's home is his castle.
- But they also thought they escaped to freedom.
- Home a castle, Ha!
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- They didn't know that when the government said "home"
it meant "tax home" and It doesn't recognize a man.
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- The government "recognizes" only "human",
an animal, as a production asset. Similarly though loosely, the relationship
of the aphid and the ant; When the ant needs better production it removes
the old, for food, and replaces it with a new aphid. . . future Soylent
Green as the old, maybe?
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- How's this article below to prove "citizens"
will pay exaction of every kind, and not otherwise? 42USC1981 "Civil
Rights".
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- A few known Points of interest before reading the article.
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- All land will be a best use. "land" is not
earth, but the interest and power to control exclusively. "use"
means taxable business activity carried on by a legal entity. The legal
entity is the "resident" or citizen SUBJECT. Notice the "Connecticut
residents" "lost". But what else would we expect from subjects?
Subjects have no higher authority than the Crown. In all actuality, when
you have your head on straight about the reality, the "state"
merely retained its original rights from a mutinous crew. A citizen/resident
has no rights against the "state", because the "resident"
benefits economically from the corporate policies of the "state",
and not independently.
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- A "home" in its definitive "legal"
form means business, stemming from the concept of "corporate home"
a business enjoying "state" benefit of limited liability and
most specifically identified, "tax home". In other words, there
is paid protection to carry on business. The "state" being the
protection racketeer.
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- Notice critically in the article, the highest use of
all land is "in order to generate tax revenue". This presumes
the preeminence of force not peace. It also means the protected exclusive
power to control obligates a duty to pay the protector.
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- The "tax home" was never a castle, and we can
see this fact in this article of the decision.
- Everything is a business activity and "government,"
that protection racketeer, controls all businesses or uses, none being
immune. Said another way, See: Senate document No. 43, 73rd Congress, 1st
Session, at "The ownership of ALL PROPERTY is in the State; individual
so-called "ownership" is only by virtue of the Government, i.e.,
law amounting to mere USER, and USE must be in accordance with law AND
SUBORDINATE to the necessities of the State." --emphasis for this
discussion.
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- Or again a reference from our friend:
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- Brown v. Welch, 116 Ind. 117 (1866) aff,d. Contracts
Payable in Gold. Senate Resolution No. 62 (April 24, 1933) (The ultimate
ownership of all property is in the State; individual so-called "ownership"
is only by virtue of Government; i.e., law, amounting to mere user; and
use must be in accordance with law and subordinate to the necessities of
the State. The fact that citizens, at a given time may prefer specie to
currency, or vice versa, cannot prevent Congress from enacting those laws
which it deems necessary to the maintenance of a proper monetary system.);
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- Government {a foreign development corporation} ORS 174
and 28USC3002, has paramount authority to DICTATE how its corporate assets
maintain best use. i.e., "generate tax revenoo". Corporations
use human resources, "to the highest yield of the human investment".
This is an ORegon benchmark principle, or as shown in the article the need
for, "jobs and increased tax revenue,"
Justice John Paul Stevens."
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- The originating "investment", what is called
the "Civil Rights", was the right of the government to impose
exaction . . . OF ANY KIND. 42USC1981.
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- The Plantation runs solely on an economic development
model, the most production by the least cost; See the 1933 "New Deal"
reformation, reflected in the ORegon Benchmark "highest yield of the
human investment".
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- Freedom wasn't one of the invested "Civil Rights";
See 42USC1981.
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- Consider the question, Can I waive the "Civil Rights"
to pay exactions of every kind.
- How can the outcome of this case be otherwise when the
only thing the "government" invested was the right to pay exaction
of every kind?
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- Slaves don't possess anything on the plantation, never
have, never will.
- This "liberty" is the right the king has to
impose any obligation, even exaction, upon the subject.
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- Exaction means fraud. It is the fraud imposed to justify
involuntary servitude, what by any weight and measure is considered slavery.
Any "Resident" "volunteered" to accept that. The government
invested that right into its resource assets, to slave and like it.
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- So, if volunteered involuntary servitude is your only
Civil Rights, who's your Daddy?
- If you don't think the state is not your jealous Daddy,
try leaving "home".
- Talk about terrorism and domestic abuse!
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- Internationally, Liberty means freedom for compliance.
- Where did the Moroon get the idea Compliance meant Freedom
when it only means liberty.
- Slaves as subjects do as they are told, or else.
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- What's the difference between modern "liberty"
and slavery?
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- None that I can see.
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- What then is the purpose for these "blessings of
liberty" and who are "we the people" relying upon this fraud
upon freedom.
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- And what is, what can be, the "just compensation"
spoken of in the article?:
- "Under the ruling, residents still will be entitled
to "just compensation" for their homes as provided under the
Fifth Amendment"
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- Their "homes" would have been by the government
itself deemed not valuable enough that they are condemned. What is "just
compensation" for a condemned interest? and it is only an interest
because no man possess a defensible castle against a superior force. What
part does the king take in his failure to adequately provide that the current
"use" maintain its value? Does "just compensation"
include set-off? But the same government makes the final determination,
doesn't it? And it conspired against the current "use" to undermine
it. What is Just to any master that it truly compensate any slave?
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- By this supreme court decision, we can see we live on
a plantation in the current Middle Ages. Contribute sufficiently and don't
fall from master's favor or you might find yourself in the street. . .
but the king outlawed homelessness too, and hunting, and fishing, and,
and, because as an antecedent right these didn't contribute anything to
generate revenoo, did they?
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- What's a condemned slave to do?
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- Blessed are those without a home because there is no
limited liability against the king's racketeering "charity".
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- And this case did involve a NEW London, didn't it?
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- I hope people start seeing the light soon.
- These chains are chaffing my skin.
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