One of the most sacred and wonderful things in the United States of America has been the dedicated preservation of your private property rights.
A constitutional right designed in the shadow of medieval feudalism where lords dictated when you had land and when you did not, the now-infamous decision by the Supreme Court has reversed a 200+ year history and certainly unraveled the threads of liberty our forefathers wove together.
Now, as long as cities need your property and can make more money on it, they can take it. And so just like that, this decision has paved the way for your property to be seized at any time, and your intent, your future, your plans for it, are meaningless. Completely meaningless.
It also renders laughable the myth that liberals, liberal judges, or liberal politicians have
any concern whatsoever for the "little guy" as they claim, and
every concern in the world for government expansion and government
power.
I knew an elderly old woman who lived in a run-down city in the eastern region of San Diego County. Her family purchased several acres about 110 years ago to farm, and of course San Diego exploded around this old farm and its farmhouse. The house itself is about 105 years old, an ancient historical landmark in California where most structures of its day were made of clay and are long dissolved. Some land was sold by previous family members. But 15 acres around the old farmhouse remain, and it stands out like a beautiful sore thumb amidst the decrepit strip malls and cheap apartments over-built around it.
As the last survivor in the family besides her children, this woman repeatedly turned down offers by developers and the city, a city whose
own poor planning caused the area to become "blighted." She knew the pennies they offered in the 70's and 80's were nothing compared to the potential in the years to come. What a smart woman she was; land there is now so prized, it makes the previous offers and "fair market values" comparable to the nickel sale of Manhattan. Her perseverance paid off. Her children, to whom she was so devoted she lived in a house where you could see the ground through the rotting floors, became rich.
If the city, who you recall caused its
own demise by over-building low income apartments and trashy strip malls, if this same city had the power of this Supreme Court ruling behind it, it would have declared her house “blighted†(it was rundown, she was an 80 year old woman caring for a large farmhouse on a Social Security pension). The historic house would have been razed and the last acres of an entire family's history sold off and forgotten, forever. Her children would have split just thousands between them instead of the millions realized, thanks to their tough old broad of a mother. Because she was willing live and work hard to create a good future for her children, that dream--a dream every American ought to be able to pursue--was realized, tenfold.
THAT, my friends, is what the Supreme Court decision means to the average American. You no longer have the right to hold onto your own property for the future. If your family was lucky or smart enough to have bought property years ago, and some wealthy neighborhood has been built around it, kiss your dreams good-bye. "Fair compensation" is a vacuous platitude in the context of 200-300% property value increases in high demand communities (California in particular). A $300,000 fair market payout for a landgrab today is a lost opportunity to hold onto what will be a $1,000,000 property in just a few short years.
So stay tuned, everyone; MediaWatchblog has been never been as motivated to galvanize. And we are galvanizing. Watch out Ikea, we've found you are a culprit in a similar city landgrab, and we're ready to take you out, right at one of your busiest and largest stores, the one right up the street from me in THE OC. You, and anyone like you.