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Supreme Court Rules Private Property Can be Seized
slew writes "CNN is reporting that the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in a case where a local community seized private houses for commercial development (not public works) under the guise of eminent domain. Needless to say, the little guy loses to the commercial developer this case...
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and the funny part is that the people who dealt this wonderful winning blow were the very democrats who griped about it all along. get your fact straight nubcakes....
Welcome to the Republican America.
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If you're going to be completely irrelevant to any rational discussion, why not go all out? Why don't you whip up an essay on the price of rice in China?
I'm not the first one to suggest this, but here's how it should work.
1) When you go to pay your property taxes, you declare the value of your home. You can declare whatever you want, a penny or a fortune, it's your call.
2) When you declare the value, your house goes onto a website, think of it as the ultimate government ebay. Anyone who wants to can bid, including you. At the end of the auction, the highest bidder (which might be you) gets your home for the specified price, and pays property taxes on the price paid. Obviously the thing should have quite a few warnings so people don't accidentally get outbid, and if you win the auction then you just pay the taxes and you're done, but that's the basic idea.
This would solve most of the problem. People would have an incentive to declare the value of thier property truthfully, and the government would get the taxes it actually deserves. If some private entity wants to buy you out, then the price of your home goes up sharply in the next auction, and you have to pay the increased property taxes on that new value to hold them off. Economic development could continue (where it's profitable enough to entice the homeowners), and everyone is happy.
The problem with the current situation is that people can have home values assessed for next to nothing, and yet not be willing to sell for a king's ransom. This happens in NYC all the time, people complain every year if their homes get assessed at even half the market rate, many of them are declared to be worth only a few percent of the market rate, and yet nobody sells. It must be infuriating to a developer, people have super valueable houses, and yet it costs them nothing in taxes (because of low assessments), so there's no way to ever get them to move out when the value skyrockets. They're all holding out for the highest possible bid, and screwing the city out of a lot of property taxes. Clearly something is rotten there, and if the municipal government strikes back, well, neither side is a saint.
Congradulations, lefties, you've just formally subordinated one of the most basic human rights to the good of big corporations. How do you like them Apples?
Considering there are zero "lefties" on the SC, you can blow that out your ass.
Clearly, you are a lunatic.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Clearly, you are what is wrong with the world.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Yeah... no. Like most Libertarian nutjobs, you leave out a sentence or two: "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." -The Fifth Amendment Originally intended, that meant the Federal Government couldn't build a road over your house/farm/brothel without paying you first. As for the states... anything goes! They didn't specifically give up a right to change how they seized land for public use. Little thing called the 10th Amendment. Not too freaking hard to understand. To complicate your simplistic thinking further, the 14th Amendment, as interpreted by "activist" judges, did not mean the Bill of Rights automatically applied to the states. Nope, occured on a amendment by amendment basis. Silly, no?