Local Government Can Be Just as Corrupt and Oppressive as the Federal Government

This video was featured on the Cato blog by my colleague Ilya Shapiro. It is so disgusting and reprehensible that it should be widely shared. Please forward this post to as many people as possible. Kudos to the local Fox affiliate for some great work.

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Questions for Elena Kagan

I don’t know what will happen when the Senate Judiciary Committee grills Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, but I hope at least one member reads George Will’s column and uses some of his suggested questions. They are all worth reading, but here are my three favorites: 

The government having decided that Chrysler’s survival is an urgent national necessity, could it decide that “Cash for Clunkers” is too indirect a subsidy and instead mandate that people buy Chrysler products? …Can you name a human endeavor that Congress cannot regulate on the pretense that the endeavor affects interstate commerce? …Should proper respect for precedent prevent the court from reversing Kelo? If so, was the court wrong to undo the 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregating the races with “separate but equal” facilities is constitutional?

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Let’s Celebrate Some Inspiring News on Property Rights

This new video from the Institute for Justice celebrates the backlash against the Supreme Court’s reprehensible Kelo decision that allowed politicians to seize private property for the benefit of commercial developers and other campaign contributors.

The best part of the video comes shortly before the three-minute mark, when the narrator notes that the corrupt politicians of New London, CT, have not received any additional tax revenue as a result of stealing Susette Kelo’s house. Sometimes, as I noted in an earlier blog entry, there is poetic justice.

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Another “Eminent Domain” Scandal

Ever since the Supreme Court’s odious Kelo decision, which allowed a city in Connecticut to seize a woman’s home for the benefit of a politically-connected big corporation, there has been a deep concern that this would open the door to more examples of government-sanctioned theft. George Will is particularly (and appropriately) vicious in his analysis of how corrupt politicians in New York are seeking to steal private property to benefit a rich developer:

The fight involves an especially egregious example of today’s eminent domain racket. The issue is a form of government theft that the Supreme Court encouraged with its worst decision of the last decade — one that probably will be radically revised in this one. The Atlantic Yards site, where 10 subway lines and one railway line converge, is the center of the bustling Prospect Heights neighborhood of mostly small businesses and middle-class residences. Its energy and gentrification are reasons why 22 acres of this area — the World Trade Center site is only 16 acres — are coveted by Bruce Ratner, a politically connected developer collaborating with the avaricious city and state governments. To seize the acres for Ratner’s use, government must claim that the area — which is desirable because it is vibrant — is “blighted.” …The condo of Daniel Goldstein, his wife and year-old daughter, which cost Goldstein $590,000 in 2003, is on part of the land where Ratner’s $4.9 billion project would be built — with the assistance of more than $1 billion in corporate welfare from the state and city governments, which are drowning in red ink. The Goldsteins’ building would not seem blighted to anyone not paid to see blight for the convenience of the payers. Which is of constitutional significance. …Enter Ratner, with plans to build a huge complex of high-rise residences, commercial properties and a basketball arena for the NBA’s New Jersey Nets, which he bought. The city and state governments salivated at the thought of new revenues — perhaps chimerical — to waste. The problem was, and is, that people live and work where Ratner wants to build. So blight had to be discovered. It duly was, by a firm that specializes in such discoveries. New York’s highest court ratified that finding, 6-1. But a week later, Columbia University, which has plans for a $6.3 billion expansion in Manhattan, was stymied in its attempt to wield the life-shattering power of eminent domain against several local businesses that do not want to be shattered. A state court held, 3-2, that condemnation proceedings had been unconstitutional. The court said the blight designation was “mere sophistry”: “Even a cursory examination of the study reveals the idiocy of considering things like unpainted block walls or loose awning supports as evidence of a blighted neighborhood.” The idiocy was written on Columbia’s behalf by the same firm the Empire State Development Corporation hired to find blight at the Brooklyn site. Both Columbia and Ratner are operating in partnership with the ESDC, an arm of the state government. Both Columbia’s and Ratner’s attempts at seizing property are “pretextual takings,” using trumped-up accusations of blight to concoct a spurious “public use” for a preconceived project.

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Poetic Justice for Susette Kelo

The Kelo case was one of the most reprehensible Supreme Court decisions in recent history. The Court said it was okay for a local government to seize a private home solely to please a big corporation. So it is morbidly satisfying to see that the strategy has backfired for the town. Tim Carney reports for the Washington Examiner:

Susette Kelo’s little, pink house in New London, Conn. — like the houses of all her neighbors — is now a pile of rubble, overgrown with weeds. But Pfizer, the company that called for the demolition in order to build a new research and development plant, announced Monday it is packing up and leaving town in order to cut costs after its merger with fellow drug-giant Wyeth. New London now has a wasteland where a neighborhood once stood, and no jobs or business to show for it. It’s another travesty of central planning. …Kelo, and other residents who didn’t want to move, sued to block the condemnation. They lost, but they fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. There, the four liberal justices joined with moderate Anthony Kennedy to rule in favor of the developers — the takings were perfectly legal. …the takings in New London begin to sound like a great progressive victory: government, triumphing over the exploitive notion of “property rights,” helps the many at the expense of a few. But, New London was really another example of political cronyism and politicians using the might of government in order to benefit well-connected big business at the expense of those poorer and less influential. Consider that the head of the New London Development Corporation was Claire Gaudiani, who was married to David Burnett, the Pfizer executive who wanted “a nice place to operate.” Pfizer vice president George Milne also sat on the development corporation’s board. …Pfizer got its loot – free land, special tax breaks, and government-funded clean-up of the neighborhood (including clearing out the unsightly neighbors) – and the area prepared for economic “rejuvenation,” as Justice Stevens put it. It didn’t work out that way. The Fort Trumbull neighborhood Pfizer had bulldozed today consists only of “weeds, glass, bricks, pieces of pipe and shingle splinters,” according to the Associated Press.

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