Your Beta is a little sticky. I couldn’t get the page to load for new comment, then when I stopped loading, it came up only in text. Maybe it has a few kinks to work out, but that’s okay, because I’m into kinky. Back to the subject, does anyone remember when we had a country ruled by laws? Or, does that date me?

Back to the subject, does anyone remember when we had a country ruled by laws?

Oh yes I’m only 15 but I vaguely remember. Those laws were good. Yup. Isn’t living in a capitalist country just great?

The diehard atheists here should love this law - it means that smaller churches that provide no revenue to the city could be seized and turned into a casino!

I know how you feel guys. I’m so shocked, I’m still trying to lower my eyebrows to a relaxed position.

Hello...new here and still reeling from this outrageous ruling.
If the citizens of this country sit idly by and allow this to stand, it will serve as the final nail in the coffin to any shred of lingering optimism I ever held for our country. If we don’t discover a way to wrestle back the control of this country from the clenches of corrupt political and corporate interests we might as well all just call it a day and zip our lips like the obediant little serfs we are.

more and more reasons to move to another country, eh?

And let them win? (as much as I get a hoot out of Canadians) I think not. We’ve been silent and servile too long and it’s part of the reason why we now find ourselves in this uncomfortable spot with our government setting up housekeeping in our backyards.
Last I checked, ours was still supposed to be a representative government. That we elected officials to represent the will of the people...met any of we the people recently who agrees with this ruling who didn’t have an Inc. tacked on his/her name?

Not to come off as hysterical but...whose skewed sense of reasoning could deem it moral and just to seize the property of one private property owner only to pass it along to another?

Highways and public works and ‘necessary’ growth is one thing but to evict people to erect a coutry club they probably could never afford to enter seems so patently absurd it would send me into gales of laughter were it not actually occuring. Where am I missing their logic?

WHAT THE FUCK?  It’s like a runaway train!  We are now officially fucked.  You used to be able to retreat to your property to escape THEM, now they can snatch it all away in 30 seconds.  And I thought the IRS was bad about snatching up people’s property and selling it off (and if it was a “mistake” you don’t get shit back).  Now ANY part of the gov’t can.  WHAT THE FUCK?

[W]hose skewed sense of reasoning could deem it moral and just to seize the property of one private property owner only to pass it along to another?

I have terrible news, hippies—George Bush and the Republican Party are the ones who could have stopped this, if they had been able to appoint a “conservative” (preferably libertarian) justice.  Kelo is as bad as they say it is, and the “liberals” delivered it to us.

I have terrible news, hippies—George Bush and the Republican Party are the ones who could have stopped this, if they had been able to appoint a “conservativeâ€? (preferably libertarian) justice.  Kelo is as bad as they say it is, and the “liberalsâ€? delivered it to us.

I wonder what led you to believe this would be “news” to us. You may personally feel that many here are intrinsically mislead but I challenge you to convince too many that we’re similarly uninformed.
My outrage doesn’t respect party boundaries, and unlike some, my loyalty isn’t deaf, dumb and blind.
As for Bush and the Reps just itchin’ to accomplish great things for our country? No pun intended but, bring it on.

Wow trying to reduce this complex issue to a Repub-Dem issue, sorry wake up.
The problem goes back to court decisons early this century.  I think in Minnesota, for example, corporations have the same rights as individuals due to court rulings.  Corporate power must be balanced by “we the people”. 
A corporation is a construct to concentrate and use money, it is not mortal.  Free market does not mean free for all thats why there is an S.E.C.  There is a terrible price to be paid for this judgement, not today or tomorrow but down the road the repercussions are not pretty.
I am not an American, but this ruling angered me soooooo much when i read it the other day.  This assumes that city council is always “doing the right thing” and that people are not corrupt or corruptable.  Does studying and prcticing law for 40 years rot out common sense?
I am so annoyed I am not sure...AArgg.. get active and fight this america!

get active and fight this america

I intend to...somehow...no worries I’ll, hopefully, arrive there as soon as my head stops spinning.

Some of your thoughts mirrored my first...they couldn’t forsee an inevitable escalation in corruption? It’s an outright invitation. But considering this ruling comes down from the bureaucracy that permits legalized payoffs why should any of us be surprised?

There is an eminent domain case going on in my hometown of Normal, IL where the city council wants to take land from my neighbor to give to hotel developers.  Constitutional considerations mean nothing to that council.  They have as much resistence to the prospect of new tax revenue as a drunk 16-year-old boy would have to free hookers. 

Nor will corporations show any restraint for the prospect of community goodwill.  They know people have short memories.

It is very depressing, indeed. We are well on our way to being a corporate-owned country. I’d love to believe one political party or the other could stop it, but the Democrats are desperate for corporate support and BuschCo seems unable to say “no” to anything corporations want.

Bo$$, I have no problems with America being a capitalist society. Overall it’s worked pretty well so I’m not one to complain too much about it. That said you can take a good thing too far.

Unsomnambulist, I suspect it would be a cold day in hell before any company or government clerk would try to use Eminent Domain on an active church no matter how small. Wal-Mart has been rather aggressive with the practice already and it’s been a PR nightmare for them. Trying to use it on a church would almost certainly bring about legislation to limit the practice.

Dean, I’m not moving. I’m going to stay here and see if I can’t bring about some change in the direction I think is good for the country. One way to do that is to help spread the word and see if we can’t get enough folks riled up to make a difference.

Talis, you pretty much summed up my feelings on the use of ED and there are ways we can fight back. One way is to write your representatives and let them know you want laws to protect your property rights. This can be done at the local, state, and national level. You can find your representatives in Congress using the tools at Congress.org in addition to seeing how they’ve voted on recent bills.

Brendon, I consider myself more or less a liberal with major libertarian leanings, but simply because I do identify with one particular group doesn’t mean I agree with every single thing that group decides is correct nor does it mean I have absolute trust that other members of said group will always decide issues the same way I would. The Supreme Court is made up of human beings and is as fallible as any other human institution as a result. This decision is disappointing, but not entirely surprising.

A key item to remember here for those who have lost hope is that we are a nation of 50 member states.  A handful of states (including Montana which is where I live) has all but prohibited eminent domain for commercial purposes.  Eminent domain has always existed and is exercised differently in each state.  The Supreme Court decision has just ruled it constitutional so there is really no change there (please correct me if I am wrong.) If you want to fight this law then organize to have your local governments put the leash of eminent domain.

A key item to remember here for those who have lost hope is that we are a nation of 50 member states.

Normally I would agree with you, John, but the current Administration as well as the recent SCOTUS rulings show that the feds don’t give a damn about States’ Rights and they will trump States’ Rights whenever they feel like it.

Normally I would agree with you, John, but the current Administration as well as the recent SCOTUS rulings show that the feds don’t give a damn about States’ Rights and they will trump States’ Rights whenever they feel like it.

There is one problem with your observation.  Who do you go to if you want to invoke eminent domain?  You don’t go to the white house to boot someone off a strip on land in Texas, you go to the local government.  In this case the states have the final say on the use of eminent domain. 

To clarify what I have written above, this supreme court ruling is not really creating a new law.  It is simply ruling an existing practice to be constitutional.  This sets a legal precedent for future challenges on the issue.

Lordklegg got to the nub of it. When the Enlightenment thinkers and our Framers talked about natural rights they were talking about rights for people. Our thinkers (and doers) were looking to the past for models of ways to govern and considering the economic circumstances of their present. The role of large corporations was not something that they had to deal with. I think it was T. Roosevelt who said “people have rights, corporations have privileges.” Well said, but (surviving) corporations have plenty of resources to promote their self interest.

In Missouri we have DOF’s Normal Illinois all over the place. Don’t even get me started on development in the flood plain AFTER (sorry) 1993. The city of St. Louis has taken to declaring what appear to be perfectly good neighborhoods blighted in order to clear the way for area redevelopment plans. Also, Missouri has something called the TIF (Tax incentive financing). You got it, tax breaks for developers. All of this may eventually work out for the greater good (one of Pop Tarts’ economic trade offs), but it sure doesn’t seem like it.

Talis, think big, think devious. Lets turn country clubs into strip malls.

Les’s recommendation is a start. However, the chances are pretty good that you won’t like the feedback you receive. I sure don’t.  Getting things changed seems like a tall order because it is. But, as one example of a place to start, consider that you only have Congressman. If you don’t think he or she is serving your interests, work for a candidate who you believe will do a better job. I suggested Congress because turn out is low in off-year elections and approval ratings are really low. (Articles of impeachment--you bet.) Everyone has a tipping point. Mine was the Freeman report on the unexplained exit poll results. (Note to self: tip a little further.)

A couple questions:

Who decides the real value, and what recourse do you have to challenge it? My property was worth X, but it’s next to a golf course, so maybe it’s X+Y, and it’s gone up in value lately, so it’s worth even more than that, but then the bizarre SEV calculations say it’s worth about .75X...which figure will be used for an offer for my property by the local government? And do the payouts take into account any tangible and intangible costs such as move costs, loss of old trees and such that may be on the property, etc.

Also, didn’t the Michigan SC just rule against eminent domain for private business, and does this help those of us who live here?

The thing that gets my attention (and should get some policymakers’ attention as well) is that there are very few people (without an Inc. in their name, as Talis noted) on either side of the ideological divide that approve of this ruling. I took the time to review the entire 58-page decision and found the majority’s reasoning to be tortured, contrived and wholly unconvincing.

When reading Justice O’Connor’s dissent, I found only insignificant details that I wasn’t fully in agreement with. I even found points in Justice Thomas’ pedantic and tedious dissent to agree with, like this one:

Allowing the government to take property solely for public purposes is bad enough, but extending the concept of public purpose to encompass any economically beneficial goal guarantees that these losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities. Those communities are not only systematically less likely to put their lands to the highest and best social use, but are also the least politically powerful. If ever there were justification for intrusive judicial review of constitutional provisions that protect “discrete and insular minorities,� United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U. S. 144, 152, n. 4 (1938), surely that principle would apply with great force to the powerless groups and individuals the Public Use Clause protects. The deferential standard this Court has adopted for the Public Use Clause is therefore deeply perverse. It encourages “those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms� to victimize the weak.

I never thought I’d see the day when I agreed with Clarence Thomas, but there you have it.

In Missouri we have DOF’s Normal Illinois all over the place. Don’t even get me started on development in the flood plain AFTER (sorry) 1993. The city of St. Louis has taken to declaring what appear to be perfectly good neighborhoods blighted in order to clear the way for area redevelopment plans. Also, Missouri has something called the TIF (Tax incentive financing). You got it, tax breaks for developers. All of this may eventually work out for the greater good (one of Pop Tarts’ economic trade offs), but it sure doesn’t seem like it.

Ah, just like Chicago, where movie theater developments in bad neighborhoods bringing minimum wage jobs get TIF (among other developments replacing small businesses with condos or low wage jobs), and a bicycle shop in one of the 10 wealthiest neighborhoods in the city is somehow in a “blighted” stretch (coincidentally where developers want to put up a condo building).

Hey, you can’t fight city hall, inc.

I grew up in Texas. People there have lots of guns, and a sort of folklore-y inclination to their use in certain cases. In Texas at least, I think there will be, shall we say, “extralegal backpressure” to the wanton use of the power this new decision provides corporations and local governments.

And I can’t see the thing standing, long-term, no matter what the Supreme Court says. This was literally an insane decision arrived at by a series of small, seemingingly-sane steps. Now that we have the insane, anti-American end product before us, there will be a great series of horror stories, and eventually there will be new local, state, and national laws to stop it.

The sooner the better, of course.

Thank you Les. I actually have, in the past, availed myself of my congressman’s ear and with good results. Although we do have a few ideological differences he’s, basically, a decent man...and can boast one remarkable attribute--he actually listens to his constituency, even when they contact him individually (all the more remarkable). Each matter I’ve brought to his attention he has responded to in a timely fashion and often via a personal, leisurely phone conversation (followed up by paper, of course). I find this all the more remarkable as he’s a Rep and I am not. In part, because of this, I can also say with some certainty that he holds the distinction of being the only Rep I’ve voted for in good conscience.

decrepit,

They have as much resistance to the prospect of new tax revenue as a drunk 16-year-old boy would have to free hookers.

lol I think you’ve summed this up quite nicely.

Vern,

Talis, think big, think devious. Lets turn country clubs into strip malls.

Thinking big could be a problem...thinking devious? Now you’re talking my language.

I never thought I’d see the day when I agreed with Clarence Thomas, but there you have it.

Len, thank you for posting the (very interesting) quote and link.
I have to say, I’ve been heartened, and not a little surprised, by the degree of bipartisan agreement and outrage over this ruling. These justices may have inadvertently set into motion something that could, finally, rally both sides together a bit and begin to heal that divide. Okay, okay so I’m deluding myself, but what’s a little harmless fantasy?

Benior, a little bright spot--in a nearby community local government was attempting to declare ED over some generational, family farms. Due to local outcry (wtg ppl) they’ve now, backed down.

In Texas at least, I think there will be, shall we say, “extralegal backpressureâ€? to the wanton use of the power…

lol Hank, I don’t doubt it, Sir;)
Like you, I predict eventual individual resistance and bloodshed and regardless of regional propensity for frontier justice because this ruling steps all over the ‘Texan’ in all of us.
Yes, it probably will be overturned, at some point. Still, it sickens me that, in this day and age, US citizens will, likely, lay down their lives to protect their home from an unjust seizure.
Something very sinister is at work within this country, and it would be kinda nice if we could ferret it out before the bloodletting begins.