Private property rights are the foundation of freedom. Now developers can pay off your local politicians and then come in and steal your property without even giving you best use price. Imagine middle class neighborhoods across America being bulldozed because developers have written up a proposal for making more money off of your property. Either it's your property or it isn't.

The United States is simply going back to feudalism. In medieval England, before the Magna Carta, in 1214 the local lord would decide what you could and could not do with the King's property.

This ruling overturns 800 years of common law and common sense. It butchers the Bill of Rights. To put it frankly, it's gone.

So many Americans are asking why the Justices would make such a decision, overtly, 180 degrees away from freedom. That's the point. It's in your face.

The big police state dog is off the porch, and they think there is nothing you can do about it.

The all-powerful Imperial State has thrown down the gauntlet. They have slapped the American people upside the head and brutally raped us, and we have put up with it. So, now they're placing what's left of American freedom on a spit so they can roast and eat us.

The founding fathers said over and over again that the level of tyranny under which we will live is the exact amount that we will accept. A group of hard-core criminals has gained control of our society. They could care less about the future of this country or the general public's welfare. What we are witnessing is a mad gold rush of corrupt politicians and corporations strip-mining western society.

We are being looted and sacked like ancient Rome by a heard of blood-thirsty
barbarians.

The only difference is the barbarians of today have high-tech public relation firms and cable news channels launching their psychological warfare barrages: "lie down, lie down, don't resist, Government loves you. Give up liberty for security. Tasering 82-Year-old Alzheimer patients is good. Mercury in vaccines is nutritious. Open borders means safety. Submit to us. Trust us. We don't lie.."

The fact is, just because the Supreme Court says we don't have any property rights doesn't mean it's true. A previous court ruled that black Americans were not human beings and thus had no rights. Would you follow a similar decree today?

Despots know the power of setting precedents. That's why they've been bragging about their unprecedented ruling. I for one am glad that the mask is beginning to slide from the demon's face. They've been land-grabbing for a long time. Now it's just going to be more overt. So let it come, and let everybody know what you are: a pack of wolves, a pack of criminals, a pack of liars, and a pack of scum.

Cities may seize homes for economic development, court rules

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled today that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses — even against their will — for private economic development.

It was a decision fraught with huge implications for a country with many areas, particularly the rapidly growing urban and suburban areas, facing countervailing pressures of development and property ownership rights.

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.

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. Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community, justices said.

"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,'' Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

He was joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

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.''

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.

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.

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.

The lower courts had been divided on the issue, with many allowing a taking only if it eliminates blight.

"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.''

She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, as well as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

END

The Day America Died

Capital Hill Blue | June 24, 2005
By DOUG THOMPSON

America as a free nation died Thursday. Death came without mercy at the hands of the United States Supreme Court which ruled, in a split 5-4 decision, that a city has the right to steal an American citizen’s property without due course and turn it over to private developers.

Death came to America after a prolonged period of life support. The United States has, for too long, been in a persistent vegetative state, brought on by a government that has abandoned the protections once guaranteed by the Constitution. The Bush administration, using fear of terrorism as a political sledgehammer, has stripped Americans of the right to counsel, the right to privacy and threatened even freedom of expression by suggesting that anyone who dares disagree with Dubya’s extremist right-wing views is a traitor to the flag.

But the Supreme Court yanked this ailing nation off life support Thursday by proving, as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said, the “Constitution is an outdated document.”

Incredible. Simply incredible. The Supremes, abandoning any reason, ruled the City of New London, CT, can seize property of private homeowners and give it to a private developer who wants to build condos and office buildings along the city’s waterfront.

“The U.S. Supreme Court destroyed everybody's lives today, everybody who owns a home,” said Richard Beyer, who will lose his property in New London.

The Supreme Court destroyed far more. It destroyed the American way of life, the American dream of home ownership and the concept that one’s property is their own and protected from those who want it for their own greedy purposes.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor voted against the court’s appalling ruling and wrote the dissent.

“Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power,” Justice O’Connor wrote. “Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner.”

Up until now, we have had to depend on the court to stop the ever-increasing encroachment by the government into our lives. The courts have been the only path left to stop the Bush administration’s assault on freedom and the Constitution.

No more. The last hope for America died when the court sided with land speculators and fatcats who already control all the other branches of local, state and federal governments with their checkbooks and political action committees.

At one time, we who called America home considered it the home of the brave and the land of the free.

No more. We ceased being the home of the brave on September 11, 2001, when a band of thugs hijacked airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Our president, seizing on the politics of the moment, used fear to turn this nation into a police state.

On Thursday, five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court destroyed the land of the free. If people cannot own property without living in fear that the government can take it and turn it over to the fatcats who own our elected officials, then we are no longer free.

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” songwriter Kris Kristofferson wrote in his song, Me and Bobby McGee.

There’s nothing left to lose. The government and the courts have taken it all.

END

Supreme Court Rules That No One Owns Their Home Gives free reign to roving land barons, their agents and banks

Cities may seize homes for economic development, court rules

The Day America Died

Capital Hill Blue | June 24, 2005 By DOUG THOMPSON

Supreme Court Rules That No One Owns Their Home
Gives free reign to roving land barons, their agents and banks

Capital Hill Blue | June 24, 2005
By DOUG THOMPSON