SCOTUS renders Fifth Amendment invalid
Once again, the liberal wing of the SCOTUS proves that liberals “love” the “little people.”
Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize HomesBy HOPE YEN
ASSOCIATED PRESSWASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 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.
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[...] On one hand, we have the Socialist Democratic Party which is advicating having the government steal more of my paycheck in the form of tribute taxes. This is, of course, on top of the almost 30% of my pay the government is already taking. The Democratic Party is already waging war on my own personal belief system – that everyone should be held accountable for his or her own life, and not beholden to the Mommy State to take care of his or her every need. Democrats even foster the belief that my personal property can be taken at the whim of a greedy State, or that my car can be towed so some politician can get his cut of the towing fees. On the other hand, the Theocratic Republican Party is expanding government spending at a rate that makes Bill Clinton look like a miser on par with Ebeneezer Scrooge. In addition to the runaway spending, the government is bloating to a size of epic (and catastrophic) proportions. Legislation based upon religious ideals is being passed left and right, with no evidence of restraint. Judges are forcing parents to teach their children to follow “mainstream” religions (read: Christianity), or requiring people to either go to church or go to jail, and no one so much as yawns. [...]