FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED MARCH 18, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Lone property rights case before the court this year
Property rights have spent long, dark decades in this country since the
rise of Woodrow Wilson and his "Progressives," 90 years ago.
In the end, the "Progressive" -- or collectivist, or redistributionist,
or socialist ... whatever chameleon colors they've adopted most recently --
doesn't believe a private person can own anything, down to and including
our own bodies, our children, or the fruits of our labor.
All these things belong to some mythical "social collectivity," you see,
on whose behalf the current ruling class can seize, transfer, or
re-allocate anything and anyone, from the third of your paycheck you never
see, right down to children puled out of loving homes and placed in
far-more-dangerous "foster care" because parents resist pertussis
vaccinations or try to take them off their government-mandated Ritalin.
Of course, America grew great precisely because free citizens were
allowed to work hard and store away their earnings for a rainy day,
investing the surplus in various private enterprises.
The opposite theory is that wiser government "managers" should seize
whatever's needed so press gangs of conscript workers can complete the new
steel mill on time to meet the "five-year plan." And if that sounds good to
you, I understand there are currently plenty of job openings in many a
"workers' paradise," such as scenic downtown Smolensk.
So champions of restored American property rights -- I among them --
sounded premature hosannas when the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to finally
reverse this erosion, handing down its landmark 1990 decision in the case
Lucas vs. South Carolina Coastal Council.
Lucas owned a building lot on one of the barrier islands off the coast of
South Carolina. Flood control regulations barred him from actually building
anything on it, but the authorities denied they'd "taken" his property
under the Fifth Amendment, since he was still allowed to hold title ... and
pay property taxes. Thus, no one owed him anything for merely taking away
the productive (start ital)use(end ital) of his property.
Until the court spoke, that is. The Lucas decision held there could
indeed be a regulatory "taking," that government had to ay a land owner
"just compensation" as required under the Fifth Amendment, even if they
only "took" the land by passing regulations sufficient to render it
unusable.
"Unfortunately, the Lucas case didn't turn out to be the watershed that
some editorialists and legal commentators predicted," explains Harold
Johnson, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento.
"Regulators and courts have gotten around the rule of Lucas by, among other
strategies, creatively discovering residual value even n heavily regulated
properties."
Three weeks ago, attorneys for PLF traveled to the Supreme Court to argue
the case of 80-year-old Anthony Palazzolo, who for 40 years has been denied
the right to develop 18 acres of salt marsh that he owns in Westerly, R.I.
"Because he would be permitted to build a single family home on a small
parcel next to the salt marsh, the R.I. Supreme Court refused to recognize
a compensable taking," attorney Johnson explains. "Never mind that the
house would be worth at most $200,000, less than a tenth the value of the
salt marsh area if he could build homes or a beach club on it."
Mr. Palazzolo is seeking $3.1 million -- or the right to build his beach
club, where there would be calm waters, an 8 p.m. curfew and "no drunks."
As he looked over the marsh and pond this January, Palazzolo pointed to
nearby cottages and told a reporter for the Providence Journal-Bulletin:
"People did what they wanted around here and nothing happened. I ask for
permission, and I get nowheres."
One technicality the land-grabbers are using in Mr. Palazzolo's case is
that he used to hold the land in the name of a corporate entity. And
although the new development restrictions were put in place after that
(start ital)corporation(end ital) bought the property, when he transferred
ownership into his own name that constituted a new "acquisition"; the new
"buyer" should have been aware the restrictions were in place.
"That theory relegates property rights to second-class status," answers
attorney Johnson. "You wouldn't be barred from challenging a city
government's First Amendment violation merely because the offending law was
on the books when you moved to town and you were 'on notice' of the
violation."
Many among the eco-extremists squawk that if the high court holds for
Palazzolo -- a decision is expected this spring -- it could become
prohibitively expensive for bureaucrats to wave their magic wands and
declare vast swatches of the American landscape off limits for productive
use, the better to "protect the habitat of the threatened yellow mealworm,"
or whatever.
Well, good. There's a price to be paid for such arrogance, and the
government has no right to impose that price on unwilling victims. Pay up
-- from your constitutionally limited revenues -- or downsize your
rapacious schemes.
(Briefs at
http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supreme_court/docket/2000/febdocket.html#99-20
47.)
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. Subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to
Privacy Alert, 1475 Terminal Way, Suite E for Easy, Reno, NV 89502. His
book, "Send in the Waco Killers" is available at 1-800-244-2224.
***
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved,
as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V.
Debs (1855-1926)
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and
thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless eries
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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