Category: property rights

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property rights regulation

Death of a Cemetery

property rights, meadow, cemetery, graveyard

Not everything worth fighting for, or against, is being taken up President Trump and Elon Musk. There are other battles. For a moment, at least, let us direct our attentions closer to home to consider the causes taken up by, say, the Institute for Justice and Pacific Legal Foundation.

Unlike a taxpayer-​funded NGO, always on the march to push big government or social decay, these organizations go to bat for people around the country who are being abused by local governments. 

As an example, take a current IJ case, Brooks Township in Michigan, which has been struggling to prevent Peter and Anna Quackenbush from opening a business: a cemetery. 

This was to be a “green” burial forest that the township board blocked because it disliked the idea.

After losing a court fight over a proposed ban of all new cemeteries as a way to block Peter and Anna’s particular cemetery, the township is now seeking to impose an ordinance dictating that “No new cemetery shall be created, installed, constructed or instituted … unless a written cemetery permit has first been approved and issued by the Brooks Township Board under this Ordinance.”

In other words, a de facto ban by a Board that has made clear its determination to stop Peter and Anna from opening a cemetery on their own property. If this ordinance is allowed to stand, no permit will be issued to them. It’ll be the end of the cemetery. 

Worth fighting against.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

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Fifth Amendment rights property rights

Forfeiture Gang Foiled

Nevada, civil asset forfeiture

The Institute for Justice has won a major civil forfeiture case in Nevada.

A district court ruled that the Nevada Highway Patrol — which had grabbed a man’s life savings despite no legitimate suspicion of wrongdoing — can’t try to circumvent state law against arbitrary civil forfeiture (stealing) via a loophole called “federal equitable sharing.”

Even when states reform their laws to prevent police from robbing innocent people, the “equitable sharing” program often “lets them give the forfeiture to a federal agency in exchange for a kickback,” IJ reports.

Gangsterish.

The victim in the present case was Stephen Lara. In February 2021, officers pulled Lara over, detained him for more than an hour, then confiscated the $86,900 in life savings that he happened to have with him, cash that he had saved to buy a house. (He didn’t trust banks.) The Patrol never accused him of any crime. But they tried to keep his money.

With the help of Institute for Justice, Lara got it back — six months later, soon after his case received major publicity. But he and IJ continued to pursue the case, hoping to obtain a ruling that the state constitution prohibits anyone from using the federal program to evade state law.

They have now obtained such a ruling.

If it is allowed to stand, the nightmare of civil forfeiture is over for innocent Nevadans. But the state may appeal. Then it’s up to the Nevada Supreme Court to affirm the obvious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Fifth Amendment rights property rights

Property Rights for Competitors

Kelo, eminent domain, property rights, IJ, Institute for Justice

New Year’s Resolution for the U.S. Supreme Court: follow the Constitution.

That’s not what happened in 2005 when, by a 5 – 4 majority, the court determined that governments in this country could enjoy an almost unlimited power of eminent domain. The mere prospect of a more taxable commercial entity or mere desire to appease some constituency would suffice to legally justify violating the rights of innocent property owners.

This Kelo v. New London decision was applauded by abusers of power, derided by defenders of property rights. The latter leapt into action, fighting for legislation in 47 states to give property owners firmer protection.

One exception was New York State, where the town of Utica recently used the power of eminent domain against Bryan Bowers and Mike Licata.

These business partners had established a cardiology service to compete with that of CNY Cardiology group, right next door. CNY begged the city to let it turn the Bowers Development building into a parking lot. We need a parking lot there, said CNY; right where our lower-​priced competitor is sitting.

The city said okay.

Enough, says Institute for Justice, which is representing Bowers Development and all of us by petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit Kelo.

IJ President Scott Bullock believes that it’s “high time for the Supreme Court itself to … remove this blot on its jurisprudence and restore constitutional guardrails to the use of eminent domain.”

Please resolve to give America a favorable outcome, justices.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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judiciary property rights

Lost Justice, Long Island

Brinkmann's, Institute for Justice, IJ, property

You can’t win them all.

The Institute for Justice and its clients, Ben and Hank Brinkmann, suffered a defeat in a recent eminent domain case, Brinkmann v. Southold, New York, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take the case.

IJ notes that the three justices in favor, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, “took the unusual step of recording their votes publicly.” But four votes were needed.

The two brothers own a chain of hardware stores. In 2016, they found an apparently ideal place for a new store in Southold, New York.

Although the property they bought was commercially zoned, the town government imposed one arbitrary and expensive obstacle after another to prevent construction. Finally, it used eminent domain to seize the property.

Though blatant, the town’s arrogant and capricious behavior was accepted by lower courts.

“Government shouldn’t be able to get away with these abuses of power,” the brothers say, “and shining a light on them like we did with the help of IJ will continue to build public support so that one day no one will have to go through what we have.”

Sometimes, when the bad guys go all out to violate the rights of people who are willing to go all out to defend those rights, unfortunately it’s the bad guys who “win,” if you want to call getting away with it a victory.

But the good fight is itself a kind of victory, and it will lead to victories for others.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment property rights social media too much government

The Squirrel vs. The State

squirrel, government, regulations

“Squirrel!”

In an age of short attention spans and viral memecraft, the latest cultural moment regarding a squirrel could influence more minds about politics than all the quips, speeches and gaffes of Trump and Harris combined.

The news is not hard to understand. “Wild squirrel that was taken in by Mark Longo seven years ago was confiscated after conservation officials received reports of ‘potentially unsafe housing of wildlife,’” is how The Guardian put it on Halloween. 

“An orphaned squirrel that became a social media star called Peanut was euthanized after New York authorities seized the beloved pet after a raid on his caretaker’s home, authorities said,” was Saturday’s Guardian update.

After the six- (or ten-) officer raid and after the execution, the deluge: ire and satire flooded the meme-o-sphere.

Not a few governments enforce laws against taming wild animals. One concern is rabies, though the rabies danger of a squirrel rescued as a baby and raised indoors must be preciously close to ZERO. When individuals own tigers and other predators, the danger is obvious — but certainly P’nut was not such a concern.

This is just the way the modern State operates: bureaucratically, with lumbering indifference to property rights (the squirrel was indeed owned, and housed privately), liberty (sans harm, the case to leave well enough alone is pretty clear), and common sense (Andy Griffith would not have put down the squirrel; he would have told Barney Fife to put down the revolver). 

How ridiculous and cruel government can be!

Maybe the last half dozen of undecided Americans will pull the lever, Tuesday, for less nonsensical government intrusion because of it.

It certainly doesn’t make the meddler class look good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: We also mourn the passing of Fred the Raccoon, a fellow rescuee at P’Nut’s Freedom Farm, also confiscated and executed by the State of New York for the same trivial infraction of his owner: not licensed by the State.

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Fourth Amendment rights media and media people property rights

The Realism of ‘Rebel Ridge’

Rebel Ridge, Civil Asset Forfeiture, law, police, abuse, corruption

Some viewers of the popular Netflix film Rebel Ridge say that it’s unrealistic. But a certain crucial assumption of the story is very realistic indeed.

The movie assumes that some cops are bad cops. More specifically, it assumes that bad cops often have arbitrary legal authority to do bad things. In the movie, what gets the ball rolling is the arbitrary authority conferred by America’s civil forfeiture laws.

These laws permit officers to confiscate cash on your person if they merely have a suspicion, or pretend to, that the cash is ill-​gotten. They needn’t have evidence that it’s drug money or bank-​robbery proceeds. 

The suspicion is enough.

And even if you can show that the money was acquired by your own hard work and withdrawn from your bank account in pursuit of a legitimate end — buying a truck, bailing a cousin out of jail (the reason that the protagonist carries cash in Rebel Ridge) — that’s typically not the end of it. It’s rare that the law-​empowered thugs who violated your property rights just say “Oops!” and hand your property right back.

J. Justin Wilson of the Institute for Justice observes another realistic portrayal of injustice in the movie, “over-​detaining defendants to keep them quiet.” In real life, though, such over-​detention may have as much to do with bureaucratic sloth as with malice directed toward a particular prisoner.

The solution, says Wilson, is not revenge, but the kinds of legal reform IJ fights for. The movie, on the other hand, leaned more on revenge.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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