Category: property rights

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First Amendment rights property rights too much government

California Crackdowns

A government agency practicing extortion . . . who’d’a thunk it?

In 1987, the California Coastal Commission lost a Supreme Court case about its attempt to demand beach access from property owners in exchange for building permits. One justice said it was practicing extortion.

Nevertheless, the agency still dictates what land owners must do to receive permits — which are required even to move piles of dirt around. In one instance, the unelected Commission ordered that most of an owner’s land be given over to farming. The Pacific Legal Foundation is fighting this insanity in court.

Richard Oshen decided to produce a documentary about the CCC after friends told him how it was interfering with their own property. The agency had even gone so far as to prohibit them from tape recording its inspection of their land.

Oshen spent years conducting interviews. He even managed to film a conversation with CCC head Peter Douglas in which Douglas downplayed the agency’s dictatorial powers. But Reason magazine reports that Douglas now wants to revoke the permission he gave to use that interview. He’s also demanding to see a pre-release version of the movie — either to try to prevent its release or just on general principles of harassing critics of tyranny.

I’ve reported on the commission before. It behaves as a kind of environmentalist mafia operating under color of law — and clearly the CCC is no fan of free speech.

Let’s hope that Douglas fails, Oshen succeeds, and California land owners get a reprieve.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights responsibility

Downwind in New London

It is at its worst at night, when the wind lets up and the fog is low.

“It” is the stench from the sewage treatment plant in New London, Connecticut.

Citizens have been complaining for some time. It’s not exactly a new problem.

And the whole issue suggests, to me, that the government of New London, which is ultimately responsible for the sewage treatment system, should have been paying closer attention to this basic — most basic, most very, very basic — service.

It is not as if the city of New London hasn’t spent millions on its sewage system. It’s just that the money has been ineffective. Especially on weekends, or nights, when the smell is worse.

There’s a pattern here. New London condemned Fort Trumbull neighborhood homes to give to the New London Development Corp. The city was sued by one of the owners, Suzette Kelo, and the case went to the Supreme Court. The city won. The homes — including Ms. Kelo’s — were paid for at government-determined rates, the area razed.

And yet Pfizer has not moved in. The whole area remains flat.

And stinky.

It turns out that Fort Trumbull neighborhood home-owners had been complaining about the stench before the whole Kelo cased blew up.

We’ve been saying there’s something rotten in New London for a long time. We just didn’t know how literally correct we were.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights

Shilling For Billionaires

Ever since the Supreme Court endorsed radically expanded use of eminent domain, in 2005’s Kelo v. New London, we have witnessed pitched battles between governments eager to trample property rights and citizens fighting to protect those rights.

Among recent efforts is a Missouri initiative to reform the eminent domain process, led by Ron Calzone with Missourians for Property Rights.

Alas, it’s all too easy to ignore the suffering of human beings whose property rights are violated by “legal” means when you neither see these human beings nor hear their stories. This is why critics of flipping property from the hands of rightful owners to the claws of rapacious opportunists with political pull must be grateful to the producers of Begging for Billionaires: The Attack on Property Rights in America.

The film exposes how city governments “brazenly seize property after property from the powerless” to turn over to well-connected players “for the pettiest of non-essential ‘economic development’ projects,” many subsidized by taxpayers. Neighborhoods flattened, lives uprooted.

Among other stories, we learn that of James Roos, property owner of an area called “blighted” who created a controversial mural to oppose eminent domain abuse.

Friends of liberty and property can defeat the enemies of these rights. Begging for Billionaires dramatizes why we must do so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights

Justice in St. Paul

Imagine being on the edge of your seat for some 20 years. It’s a long time to wait for anything, especially about whether you can keep doing business on your own property.

That’s what Karen Haug and her company, Advance Shoring, have endured since the early ’90s. That was when the port authority of St. Paul, Minnesota announced plans to grab the company’s property for somebody else’s private use.

Advance Shoring, founded by Haug’s father in 1960, has been fighting the grab ever since.

The port authority has now officially abandoned its plan, agreeing to seek to acquire the property only by voluntary means. Haug says: “I’m breathing a sigh of relief for our business and employees. . . . Now we can return to running our business.”

As so often in battles to protect innocent Americans against eminent domain abuse, some credit must go to the Institute for Justice. In publicly heralding the port authority’s decision, Lee McGrath, of IJ’s Minnesota chapter, urged city officials to recognize that “the port authority’s past uses of eminent domain are now illegal under Minnesota’s 2006 reforms,” and to strip the port authority of its power to condemn properties.

The port authority, for its part, seems annoyed that there’s been publicity about its defeat. They say they’d been hoping to keep the matter quiet.

Poor fellows. I weep for them; crocodiles have such tears.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights too much government

Let This Woman Be Tree-Free

If the government isn’t trying to take something from you, it’s trying to push something on you. Or both.

Marion Smith is a 79-year-old widow living in Brooklyn. Ecologically pious bureaucrats are trying to stick her with a tree she doesn’t want. A friend, Nancy Cardozo, reports that they were even threatened with arrest for daring to object to the project.

Marion is disabled, and cannot rake leaves. Six years ago, a tree that had been in the same spot died, not long after her husband died. Years later, the city removed the stump, and a city worker assured Marion that no new tree would be planted there. So she paved the area.

The city worker who now came to plant a new tree proved inert to any appeals. “Sorry, I have the contract and I have a big payroll,” he told Marion and a neighbor trying to help her out. He had to put the tree there.

The city insists that it has a right to put the tree anywhere it wants on the sidewalk, since it owns the sidewalk. The city also says that if anybody slips on the leaves in front of Marion’s home, she as homeowner will be liable.

Maybe somebody could plant an idea about common sense and common decency in the minds of all concerned?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights too much government

Slumdog Eminent Domain Victims

Does cinematic celebrity protect a person against arbitrary governmental stomping, or bulldozing, of one’s human rights to property?

Maybe it does if you live in Beverly Hills. But the answer’s a big No if you dwell in a Mumbai slum targeted by a government touting a sanctimonious “cleanup” agenda. Why? Because callously uprooting lives is part of the allegedly “acceptable” cost of that “cleanup.”

Mumbai officials have destroyed yet another shanty home of a child who starred in the popular and multiple-Oscar-winning movie “Slumdog Millionaire.” The victims are the family of Rubina Ali, who played Latika in the film. Rubina says, “I’m feeling bad. I’m thinking about where to sleep.”

Her family had not even been given any notice when cops swooped in to supervise the demolition. The week before, the home of Azhar Mohammed Ismail, who played Jamal as a child in the movie, had also been flattened. Rubina and Azhar lived in the same part of Mumbai.

One would think that fame might have helped these kids catch a break from functionaries eager to forcibly reorder the world no matter what damage is done to innocent victims in the process; perhaps they might be sensitive to the bad publicity. No such luck.

Not that whether your rights are respected should have anything to do with whether you’re a movie star. Being a human being should be enough.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights too much government

Controlling the Message

In Portland, Oregon, the difference between Constitutional takings and just plain theft by government can be seen in bright neon.

The “Made In Oregon” sign on what used to be called the Bickel Building, on Burnside Street, is something of a landmark. It’s huge. It used to say “White Stag Sportswear.” It still features a white stag atop the sign. To much hullabaloo, every Christmas season the white stag’s nose gets lit, red.

Over the years, the sign’s ownership has changed. Now there are political rumblings to condemn the sign and make it public property, so to “control its message.” That’s city councilor Randy Leonard’s notion. Mayor Sam Adams (certainly not my favorite Sam Adams) and Commissioner Nick Fish have batted around the idea to buy the sign.

Jeff Alan, of the Cascade Policy Institute, makes the obvious point: If the city has a half million dollars to buy the sign, why not spend that money on real needs — like road repair or something — rather than on a neon sign?

How different were things back in 1925, when a portion of the Bickel Building, upon which the sign stands, was condemned to make room for the Burnside Bridge.

That displayed a commonsensical notion of public use.

Buying — or, worse, forcing the sale of — a sign to signal an official message? That’s Orwellian . . . if it even makes that much sense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights

Poison Ivy League

Columbia University officials may care about advancing human knowledge, and about nurturing young people. Their moral sensibilities may be highly refined when it comes to academic pursuits. But such virtues apparently do not prevent these guardians of learning from acting like thugs when thuggery seems convenient.

Columbia wants to expand into an area of Harlem called Manhattanville and is willing to abuse the state’s eminent domain power to do so. Who cares about morality and rights, or the foiled lives and livelihoods of innocent people, when there’s property to be nabbed, right?

It’s quite a scam, actually. Columbia has acquired many buildings in the neighborhood, but is not maintaining them. Because of Columbia’s own run-down buildings, the state has formally declared the neighborhood to be “blighted.” If the entire area is now condemned, full ownership can be transferred to Columbia. Which will clean things up immediately.

Meanwhile, Nick Sprayregen, the owner of several well-kept buildings in Manhattanville, is having trouble renting out units of his self-storage business because of the specter of Columbia’s eminent-domain grab. Plus, the firm that New York State used to determine whether the land is blighted had also been employed by Columbia itself — to advocate government approval of its expansion and possible use of eminent domain.

In short, we have only a perverse pretense of due process here. Columbia flunks Ethics 101 but gets an A in con artistry.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights

Good Property Rights Make Good Neighbors

The California Coastal Commission sought to tear down a fence on private property. The fence, on the property of Martin and Janis Burke in Torrance, California, marks the boundary between public land and private land.

This seems like a benign enough purpose. The “private” part of “private property” means you get to keep people off your property, no?

The fence also serves a wider public purpose. It stops hikers from climbing to an unstable bluff at which two people have actually died. Remove the fence and it become easier to veer off public property, easier to reach the unstable bluff, easier to die.

The story appears to be another case of bureaucrats with too much time on their hands, too eager to interfere in the lives of others in the name of some value allegedly superior to individual rights. In this case, even to individual lives.

Fortunately, the Pacific Legal Foundation, representing the Burkes, recently won a victory over the commission. A California court says the commission lacks the authority to force the fence down.

J. David Breemer, Principal Attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, notes that the foundation has a track record of deflecting the excesses of the California Coastal Commission.

One moral of the story: Property rights are a “good fence” against the predations of abusive government. They, too, should be allowed to stand.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom property rights

Barbed Logic

Bill Malcolm has grown potatoes, onions, asparagus and other veggies in his garden in Marlbrook, Worcestershire, for eight years. Unfortunately, in the past four months he has been burgled three times. Thieves stole £300 worth of garden tools. (That’s not weight, that’s British currency.)

So Mr. Malcolm erected a wire fence with a row or two of barbed wire on top. To discourage thievery.

A professional thief could make short order of the fence. But our English gardener figured that it wasn’t the pros who had stolen from him. So he proceeded.

And then came the Bromsgrove district council, which ordered the gardener to take down his fence . . . or have it be taken down by force of law.

Why?

The local government was afraid it might get sued by a thief who scratched himself on the barbs of the wire.

The fact that the thief would have been in the wrong, for trespass and for intent to steal, that didn’t matter to the council. They were only afraid of being sued.

They gave friendly advice to Bill Malcolm: Not to leave his tools at his garden, in the shed, but to take them home with him.

If you think this is idiotic, I haven’t told you the punch line. That same government, a few weeks before, said not to lock sheds, in case burglars damaged them while breaking in.

It’s nice to know what government is for, eh? That is, insanity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.