House Votes To Undercut High Court On Property
The Kelo decision has caused such massive public outcry that politicians are seizing on the opportunity to portray themselves as friends of the ordinary property owner. Bills aimed at preventing the use of eminent domain for economic development are moving through several state legislatures, including here in Illinois. And now Congress is getting into the act:

The House voted yesterday to use the spending power of Congress to undermine a Supreme Court ruling allowing local governments to force the sale of private property for economic development purposes. Key members of the House and Senate vowed to take even broader steps soon. Last week's 5 to 4 decision has drawn a swift and visceral backlash from an unusual coalition of conservatives concerned about property rights and liberals worried about the effect on poor people, whose property is often vulnerable to condemnation because it does not generate a lot of revenue. The House measure, which passed 231 to 189, would deny federal funds to any city or state project that used eminent domain to force people to sell their property to make way for a profit-making project such as a hotel or mall. Historically, eminent domain has been used mainly for public purposes such as highways or airports. The measure, an amendment to an appropriations bill, would apply to funds administered by the departments of Transportation, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said they will push for a more inclusive measure that would apply to all federal funds.

The Volokh Conspiracy - - Eugene Volokh on Takings, Kelo, and privatization

The funny thing is that, in Kelo v. City of New London, it is the (mostly liberal) majority's test that would give the government flexibility to serve public goals by taking property and selling it to private parties, when the government thinks the private parties will be better positioned to provide the public benefit. And it is the conservative dissenters' test that would give the government a strong incentive to own and operate various enterprises itself, or insist that whoever owns and operates them labor under the burdens of being a "common carrier."

civilrights.org -- New Reality Show to Exploit Stereotypes for Suburban Dream Home
Here's a press release found by Nancy Levy that ocmes from a civil rights website. They are upset over a new ABC reality show:

A new ABC reality TV series has sparked outrage from fair housing advocates, who say the show could give homeowners the idea they can engage in housing discrimination and stereotyping without any consequences. According to ABC's web site, in "Welcome to the Neighborhood," seven diverse couples will compete to win a beautiful dream home on a "perfect" suburban cul-de-sac in Austin, Texas. Each week of the six-week series, the competing families will participate in a "challenge" given by three neighborhood families who will serve as "judges." ABC's web site states that "the three neighborhood families who will be judging the competing families all love their quiet, picturesque community and are used to a certain kind of neighbor--one who looks and thinks just like them." The families who will be choosing their neighbors are white. The competing families include an African American family, a Latino family, an Asian American family, and a white gay couple who has adopted an African American baby boy.

Drought in Chicago - Parts of Midwest Bake in Summer Heat
In case anybody was wondering, we are experiencing drought conditions here. It hasn't rained more than a few drops in many weeks. Lawns are brown, plants are dying, trees are in danger, the wells most communities in Lake County get water from are drying up and having to be drilled deeper...oh, and developers are dumping a bazillion gallons of water on their new subdivisions to get the lawns and artificial lakes jump-started.

The Advocate - Proposal: Replace Souter's home with 'Lost Liberty Hotel'
Time for the Great Karmic Wheel to make a great big U-turn in Justice Souter's direction?

Institute for Justice $3 Million National Campaign Tells Lawmakers: “Hands Off My Home”
Campaign Seeks to Protect Homeowners & Small Businesses After U.S. Supreme Court Eminent Domain Ruling
Fred Pilot called my attention to this:
Through IJ’s Castle Coalition—a nationwide network of citizen activists determined to stop the abuse of eminent domain in their communities—the Institute for Justice today announced the “Hands Off My Home” campaign to give ordinary citizens the means to protect their homes from government-forced takings for private development. The Institute also made an initial commitment of $3 million to fund the national effort to combat eminent domain at the state and local level. IJ made the announcement less than one week after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Kelo decision allowing governments to take property from the rightful owner only to hand it over to another private party for his or her private gain.

My Way News: Chinese riots
As China transforms its economy major civil disturbances are becoming common. The scale of this privatization, much of it dealing with land ownership rights, probably dwarfs even what happened in Eastern Europe. The social dislocation is beyond anything the West has experienced. Just keeping things in perspective...

BEIJING (Reuters) - Thousands of Chinese rioted in a dispute sparked by a lopsided roadside brawl, set fire to cars and wounded six police officers in an outburst likely to worry communist leaders in Beijing desperate to cling on to power. The official Xinhua news agency, in a rare report on a local disturbance, blamed Sunday's riot in Chizhou in dirt-poor eastern Anhui province on a few criminals who led the "unwitting masses" astray. The violence was the latest in a series of protests which the Communist Party, in power since 1949, fears could spin out of control and become a channel for anger over corruption and a growing gap between rich and poor...Protests have become increasingly common in China, fueled by corruption and the widening wealth gap, but authorities are keen to quickly quash dissent and preserve stability...There were more than 58,000 protests, many of them over land rights disputes, across the country in 2003, a Communist Party-backed magazine, Outlook, has reported. This month, villagers in northern Hebei province protesting to keep their land were attacked by a group of armed hired toughs. Six farmers were killed and 48 injured in the ensuing battle.

AB 1098 Assembly Bill - Bill Analysis
The ever-alert Fred Pilot noticed this intriguing paragraph in a bill introduced in California to improve member access to HOA and condo association records. The passage is from the arguments against the bill contained in this bill analysis:


The public policy concepts adopted by the California legislature in 1985 established CIDs to relieve the tax burden from local government. The ability to collect assessments to sustain the infrastructure was afforded as well as establishing equitable servitudes via a contract (the CC&Rs) with the owners. In doing so it (the Legislature) did not envision these volunteer driven communities to mirror government. Therefore, CIDs were not given the protection and insulation afforded to government and elected officials.
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Let's unpack this. It seems to reflect the following view: state government "established" residential private governments in 1985 so that local governments wouldn't need to raise property taxes. (Keep in mind that in 1978 Proposition 13 made it impossible for them to do so.) So, CIDs are a way for government to circumvent limits on taxation that were put in place through direct democracy. And CIDs are intentionally illiberal. You are going to get more local government whether you want it or not, and if you won't pay for it, you will get it on the cheap.

Now, keep in mind that what the voters wanted in passing Prop. 13 was a cut in property taxes through reduction in government spending. What they got was an additional level of government that is now costing them a fortune in assessments, along with a ton of headaches. Add up the property tax bill and the assessments, and then you see the real cost of local government in the post-Prop. 13 era.

And how can people continue to view HOAs as always being purely private institutions, when you read something like this? It is becoming obvious that HOAs are, in some places, an extension of the local state. They clearly have the potential to be used by government to extent it's taxing and service delivery capacity and its power--even if the voters have said, "no, thank you."

Comment?

BostonHerald.com: Housing bubble trouble - Mass. home sales plunge 11.1 percent
Did you hear something go "pop"?

The bubble hasn't burst, but the air may be leaking out. Massachusetts may be finally entering a buyer's market for homes, experts said yesterday after new data showed the volume of single-family house sales plunged in May by the largest amount in nearly three years. About 4,142 single-family homes sold last month, down 11.1 percent compared to the same period last year. It was the second straight month in which the number of year-over-year home sales declined in the Bay State, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reported.

BBC: 160k price for laundry 'house'
Coming soon to California...laundry houses.
A former laundry room and kitchen could be turned into an 8ft wide one- bedroomed townhouse worth £160,000 if its owner gets the go-ahead.

Vicksburg attorney indicted in drive-by shooting - The Clarion-Ledger
Now, there's a headline you don't see every day.

Watley Review: New York City Invokes Eminent Domain to Acquire New Jersey

I told you the Kelo decision would have bad repurcussions.

Buoyed by the Supreme Court's decision to expand cities' power of eminent domain, New York City filed today to acquire the state of New Jersey for commercial development. "New York has been facing some very difficult economic decisions," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "Building viable economic development strategies for the city has been our number one priority. We think that the Supreme Court decision really opens a door for us, and will allow New York City to finally resolve some of these intractable issues."

BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | Island fort for sale at 150,000 pounds

If I were interested in moving to a gated community--I said if--this would be the one.

If you are struggling to get on the property ladder in the UK, how about buying a fort just off the coast? Stack Rock Fort, about 800 yards off the west Wales coast near Milford Haven, is for sale for £150,000. The 19th Century fort - complete with a couple of cannons - dates back from the time of Napoleon, when it was initially built as a defence for the river Haven. But it has nowhere to sleep at present, and the new owner will have to sort out sewage, water and power.

George Will gets off the best pithy summary of Kelo...
The question answered yesterday was: Can government profit by seizing the property of people of modest means and giving it to wealthy people who can pay more taxes than can be extracted from the original owners? The court answered yes.
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And that's what it comes down to. Your municipality can force you and your neighbors out of your own homes and replace your entire neighborhood with yuppie townhomes and condos in order to increase property tax revenues.

TCS: Tech Central Station - They Can't Take That Away From Me... Unless They Can
A great article on Kelo and eminent domain, from law professor Stephen Bainbridge. Here's a great line:

After news of Napoleon's victory in the Battle of Austerlitz was conveyed to British Prime Minister William Pitt, Pitt pointed to a map of Europe and said: "Roll up the map; it will not be wanted these ten years." In light of the Supreme Court's decision to side with New London, we might just as well roll up the Takings Clause of the Bill of Rights, because we won't need it any longer.

Eminent Domain Watch
That's a blog about eminent domain, with lots of reactions to the Kelo decision.

Wall Street Journal on Kelo
This is an excellent explanation of the decision, the dissents by O'Connor and Thomas, and why developers who are cozy with local governments now have free reign to profit by snatching your land. Market price now goes out the window. Owners of valuable property will be low-balled by well-connected developers who can now threaten to take the property and have a judge set the price. I think this is one of the worst USSC decisions in decades.
Libertarians must be furious. They just saw the USSC hand them their head in Raich v. Gonzales, the medical marijuana case that says there is no practical limit to the commerce clause (see last paragraph of snippet that follows), and now this. I wonder if libertarians can use these cases to make some headway as a third party? What's the point of sticking with the Republicans if you end up with justices like Kennedy, who won't respect limits on government that are actually written into the constitution?

The Supreme Court's "liberal" wing has a reputation in some circles as a guardian of the little guy and a protector of civil liberties. That deserves reconsideration in light of yesterday's decision in Kelo v. City of New London. The Court's four liberals (Justices Stevens, Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg) combined with the protean Anthony Kennedy to rule that local governments have more or less unlimited authority to seize homes and businesses....
So, in just two weeks, the Supreme Court has rendered two major decisions on the limits of government. In Raich v. Gonzales the Court said there are effectively no limits on what the federal government can do using the Commerce Clause as a justification. In Kelo, it's now ruled that there are effectively no limits on the predations of local governments against private property.

Local10.com - Problem Solvers - Attorney General Chastises Davie HOA For Restricting Police Vehicles
Via Fred Pilot and Jan Bergemann, a link to more on the HOA that thinks police cars are bad for property values. Plus, you can vote on it!

A man's home is... somebody else's piggy-bank - Glenn Reynolds - MSNBC.com
Read the Instapundit on the horrible Kelo decision. Here's a sample:

I predict that this will be a big political issue, on both the left and the right. For Bush and the Republicans it's a big vulnerability -- if they don't do anything about it, many conservatives will stay home in disgust at the next election. On the other hand, if they do something -- like, say, backing Congressional action to limit takings for private use -- they'll offend wealthy real estate developers, merchants, and influential local populations. They'll be squeezed, and I don't think that "help us confirm our judges to reverse this" will be a sufficient answer, though they'll try to make it one. On the left, it's seen (rightly) as a victory for the hated Wal-Mart, and as a rule whose burden is sure to fall mostly on the poor. (When did a city ever level a rich neighborhood for this sort of thing?) On the other hand, the left isn't big on limits to government power, especially in the economic sphere. It's certainly a hot issue on talk radio and in the blogosphere already. I suspect it'll stay that way through the 2006 elections.

Tampa: Don't feed the birds! They are ingrates. Plus, you aren't allowed to feed them. Or kill them.
Zephryhills, Florida - Some people who live in a subdivision in a Pasco County community are finding out feeding sandhill cranes has some expensive consequences. State fish and wildlife biologists have verified cranes fed by residents have destroyed screened porches, vinyl siding and car door mirrors and finishes. The birds have caused thousands of dollars damage at nearly a dozen homes in the Oak Run subdivision. Wildlife biologists say it is illegal to feed sandhill cranes in Florida...It’s illegal to harass or injure sandhill cranes, punishable by a $5,000 fine and/or five years in prison.