Using Eminent Domain to Screw the Little Guy in Spring Valley, New York
Probably what will cheer you up this morning is a story about eminent domain abuse paid for by you. If so, you’re in luck, gentle reader.
Officials in Spring Valley, New York, which is about 20 miles north of Manhattan, have been seizing properties in the village’s 15-block downtown area for the past decade and flipping them to private developers. Federal community development block grants helped pay for the acquisitions.
From The Journal News:
Mercy Anim can’t bring herself to drive down Main Street, where she had cared for young children at her day-care center before being displaced by a condo complex as part of the village’s urban renewal project.
She never found a spot to reopen Little Angels. The condo builder offered her pre-manufactured trailers to care for infants to 12-year-olds. She chose to close in 2009.
“My heart was so broken,” Anim said. “I’ve never driven on the street since I closed. They took away from me the children and their parents. I want to cry. I don’t go to Spring Valley no more.”
Village leaders, two of whom are now under federal indictment for extortion and wire fraud in an unrelated matter, demolished Anim’s business and several others in 2009. What they haven’t done is pay Anim for improvements made to the property. They’ve offered $96,000. Anim’s appraiser says she should be getting north of $1 million.
In the meantime, the developers, aided further by a variety of state and local subsidies, built senior housing as well as expensive condominiums designed to meet kosher standards.
Back to The Journal News:
[The developers] are accused of steering the condos to ultra-Orthodox Jews and discouraging non-religious people from buying units.
The NAACP filed a complaint after people tried to buy a condo, saying they were given more expensive prices and the runaround.
The village could be liable to repay HUD up to $1 million for not reporting the sale of property to the developer, according to a HUD audit.
Former officials say everything is above board; they knew going in that the condos would go to Orthodox Jews. But that may violate federal fair-housing rules all the same. HUD is investigating.
That’s little consolation to Anim: “I had an investment in that building,” Anim said. “They put up condos to benefit certain people. I can’t believe this can happen in America. Eminent domain is not supposed to be used that way.”
Liberty Without Apologies: It Was My Idea First! [Arguing Against Copyright & Patents] by Kyle Stephens March 28, 2013
[Asderathos: I TOTALLY disagree with this article, I simply post it as a challenging concept which I hope to be better equipped to rebut someday.]
This form of intellectual property is not the form that (some) libertarians have come to abhor. The form of intellectual property that exists today comes is more often than not in the form of copyrights, patents, regulations, laws, etc. (many of the things that Libertarians dislike.) Therefore, it is only natural for Libertarians to dismiss this type of intellectual property without distinguishing this form of intellectual property from true intellectual property.
The Stateless Equilibrium
The stateless market society—a peaceful social arrangement based on voluntary relations among individuals in which the state is not present—is not a popular idea. Many people believe that this society would lack the capacity to define and enforce property rights, and that this would result in chaos, tyranny of the rich or in a reversal to a state. This belief has led to a widespread dismissal of the stateless society paradigm.
Murray Rothbard is by many considered the champion of the stateless society doctrine. However, even Rothbard conceded that “there can be no absolute guarantee that a purely market society would not fall prey to organized criminality.”
While it is true that absolute guarantees for any social outcome are generally inappropriate, I argue that there are good reasons to believe that outcomes like chaos, tyranny of the rich, or even “organized criminality” in the absence of a state are unlikely.
To show this, I will assess the core economic forces that govern the development of any society and ultimately hold it together. This will show how the internal economic features of a stateless society provide incentives for nonviolence and cooperation and disincentives for violence, theft, and extortion. This analytical journey will also lead us to the realization that the glue that keeps state societies together in their current form may be nothing other than fear of an imagined enemy. As far as humans can overcome this fear, they can open the path to a stateless society.
Some Great News! - U.S. Supreme Court Let’s St. Louis Protest Sign Stay Put
Score one for Free Speech!
Full article here.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage MEP on Housing, Property Jan 2012 (by ukipmedia)
UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage talks to Property Tribes TV about housing
Rich People Wasting Money on Building Libertarian Islands Now
This guy is such a jackass and is obviously very ignorant about the subject matter at hand.
I can’t see how you can call your self a Libertarian and be part of the Bilderbergers. Its just a place were his other elite friends in the one world order can go.
Newt’s record on private property rights
Newt’s record on private property rights
Which, to no surprise to me, aren’t very good.
Another big government hack who chooses government over private property.
This morning on “Meet the Press,” former Speaker Newt Gingrich repeatedly insisted that he and the other candidates should be evaluated based upon their respective records. Fair enough. As it happens, Gingrich may be the only nominee who actively sabotaged an important conservative reform effort. Even though the protection of property rights was a plank in the Contract with America, and the enthusiasm of the property rights movement had been important in the GOP takeover of Congress, Gingrich personally prevented property-rights-protective reforms of the Endangered Species Act from passing the House and then gave one of the most liberal members of the Republican caucus and environmental activist groups a de facto veto over environmental legislation. These machinations were documented in an article in The Environmental Forum, a magazine published by the Environmental Law Institute — an article Gingrich cited favorably in his own book on environmental policy. Does Gingrich still believe he made the right choice? What should conservatives make of this part of his record? Are there any other candidates who betrayed conservative principles so directly and with equivalent results? I’m still waiting for the former Speaker to address this part of his record (if he has, I have not seen it).
EPA’s Latest Power Grab
Chris Horner explains the EPA’s latest power grab involving private property rights in Idaho.
Via - CEIdotorg
When private industry makes a mistake, it gets corrected and goes away. As governments make mistakes, it gets bigger, bigger and bigger and they make more, more and more because as they run out of money, they just ask for more and so they get rewarded for making mistakes. In the meantime that is exactly what we are doing by subsidizing companies which are failing, we have a reverse Darwinism, we’ve got survival of the unfittest, the companies and people that have made terrible mistakes are being rewarded and other people are being punished and being taxed.
"You cannot use deadly force to protect your property" -- The Police
The police in Milton, KS arrested a homeowner after he shot two (of four) people attempting to rob him. An officer in the video below – still researching for names – states, “You cannot use deadly force to protect your property, or if someone’s running away from you not being a threat.” Ugh, where to start with that statement. Does this officer realize that officers around the world are using tasers, pepper spray, rubber bullets and flash bangs who are “not being a threat” to anyone. Or that officers are justified by their peers if the kill someone holding what they think to be a weapon but turns out to be nothing lethal at all – like a water nozzle.
Title:
EPA goes after property owner for building on their own land.
Source:
Uploaded by FederalJacktube6 on Sep 28, 2011
Property Rights in the 21st Century
Uploaded by LearnLiberty on Aug 25, 2011
Tim Sandefur, Principal Attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, discusses how the evolution of law in the United States has affected our property rights. Beginning with discussions of the founding fathers, Tim describes how our rights, especially property rights, have eroded as a consequence of progressive ideas and judges. To reverse this cycle, Tim states that we must strengthen the philosophical arguments of private property rights.
Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.
