Hello Karnak,
Originally posted by Karnak
While strongly I agree with the Conservative members of the Court in this case, the moderates and Liberals ruled correctly based on the law as written.
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This really, really, really sucks. We need to have it written into law that the .gov cannot take one private party's property and give it to another private party. Not ever.
And for the public use I'd like to see the .gov to have to pay twice "fair market value".
I agree with your statements quoted above, and while I am very sympathetic to your desire, I think it's going to be more difficult to consistently do this than we think.
That is especially true when one considers that a heavy proportion of local, state, and federal revenues raised via taxation already go directly to private interests and corporations.
For instance, in 2004 the U.S. Small Business Association (SBA) made or guaranteed over 21 Billion dollars worth of credit to Small Businesses and in 2003 over 8.3 billion dollars worth of those loans were "charged off" i.e. direct unrecoverable losses.
That's 21 billion dollars of taxpayer private property that was seized and then given out to private corporations in order to assist them to earn profits. 8.3 billion dollars of which went into various bottomless black holes.
Now some would say, "well we have to do that its for the public good, it grows the economy and increases the tax base. By means of the government confiscating a little bit of the private property of individuals and giving it to corporations, everybody exponentially benefits!"
But of course those are exactly the arguments behind the corporate assistance use of eminent domain. The problem is that our reaction to seizing and redistributing
real estate to private corporations is far stronger than our reaction to seizing and redistributing money to private corporations, but ultimately its all private property in either liquid or non-liquid forms, and often, as I pointed out, someone incapable of paying their taxes will end up forfeiting real estate or other property anyway.
Constitutionally, we've dug a rather nasty hole that just keeps getting deeper.
- SEAGOON
PS: Didn't I recall reading that you lads fought a war for independence over an attempt to "recover public funds" spent on the French and Indian War via a variety of customs taxes? Whatever happened to that spirit? Per capita taxes in the colonies were under 2% and no agents of the Crown were calling for the actual seizure of real estate to benefit British corporations, funny what we are willing to endure if only the temperature is increased slowly enough. Anyone for Frog Soup?
