Second thoughts now the heat is on?

New London Mulls Timing of Property Seizure
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
FOX NEWS

One of the Supreme Court's most controversial recent decisions is playing out in New London, Conn., where homeowners whose property the city wants to take for commercial use now find themselves on the receiving end of some conflicting signals.

The people who live in the houses set for seizure by the New London Development Corporation have gotten their notices to move, saying residents must vacate by Dec. 8. But now, the mayor of New London says the letter to vacate should not have been sent out.

"They jumped the gun and their attitude has been jumping the gun a lot and this was like the frosting on the cake," said Mayor Jane Glover.

The eviction notices were allowed when the Supreme Court ruled in Kelo et. al. v. City of New London that the city can seize private property for economic development projects like hotels and office space. The decision was heavily criticized.

The New London City Council has also voted "no confidence" in the Development Corporation and has demanded the agency's president be fired. But none of the recent events has changed the city council's decision to seize the property.

Glover said she still wants the tenants and property owners gone, but only after more bargaining.

"There are 90 acres there to be developed, seven people, maybe 15 dwellings are keeping that economic development from going on," Glover said. "The Supreme Court has given us the authority to just go in with a bulldozer, but I don't think the state of Connecticut or us particularly want to do that, not just because of the tenants but it's just not good politics. We were hoping the people would buy out."

But Richard Beyer, who owns two houses, is fuming.

"This hasn't been about money. This has been about them bullying us around and stripping us of our right to own property," he said.

Although the Supreme Court has ruled for the city, Beyer said he would not yield.

"All of America needs to stand up for their constitutional right to hold their property without a private corporation moving in and kicking them out of their homes for private gain," Beyer said.

With the New London Development Corporation now in turmoil, Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell is getting involved to broker a deal in anticipation of what could be a nasty end to this ongoing debate.

THIS LAND WAS YOUR LAND

New London homeowners slapped with eviction notices
Despite Connecticut governor's moratorium on eminent domain, city pushes vacate order

Posted: September 12, 2005
10:50 p.m. Eastern

By Joseph Farah
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON – Despite Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell's suggested moratorium on eminent domain cases in the state, pending the consideration of new legislation restriction property seizures by local governments, the city of New London has issued eviction notices to homeowners who lost their case before the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Kelo v. the City of New London ruling.

"They have sent us eviction letters and have given us 90 days to vacate," homeowner Michael Cristofaro told WND. "As further insult to injury, they are requiring us to send them $600-a-month rent."

He said the city officials are apparently persuaded the Supreme Court ruling last June is all they need to proceed with their plans to transfer the properties to a private party for development of an office complex.

Cristofaro said he has attempted to contact two members of the city council to see if they are aware of the plans and approve of them.

In the highly controversial Supreme Court decision, the justices ruled 5-4 that the economic development and increased tax revenue resulting from the eminent domain action qualified as "public use" under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

Though the practice of eminent domain is provided for in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, this case is significant because the seizure is for private development and not for "public use," such as a highway or bridge. The decision has been roundly criticized by property-rights activists and limited-government commentators.

The city has previously threatened the homeowners with demands for back rent dating to 2000. Officials say that since they won the case, the homeowners actually have been living on city property for the last five years since they first began condemnation procedures.

In addition, buyout offers were based on the market rate in 2000, before most of the growth in the current real-estate bubble.

The New London Development Corporation, the semi-public organization hired by the city to facilitate the deal, first addressed the rent issue in a June 2004 letter to residents, calling the alleged debt retroactive "use and occupancy" payments.

The Kelo case, named after Susette Kelo, who owns a single-family house in New London with her husband, has ignited a national uproar.

One Los Angeles advertising entrepreneur, Logan Darrow Clements, has spearheaded a campaign to have the city of Weare, N.H., condemn Souter's property, a modest 200-year-old farmhouse on eight acres, in retaliation for his vote approving the seizure of homes in connection with the case.

Clements plans to create on Souter's land the "Lost Liberty Hotel," a kind of museum commemorating the lost right to private property in America.

Because the Board of Selectmen of Weare has rejected Clements' request to condemn the property, Darrow hopes to use a ballot initiative to do the job.

RIP Justice Rehnquist

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist died on Saturday at his home in Arlington, Virginia, after battling thyroid cancer since October, a court spokeswoman said.

Rehnquist, 80, had experienced "a precipitous decline in his health in the last couple of days," and died in the evening surrounded by his three children, court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.

Rehnquist's death creates a second opening on the court, following the announced retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Leaving tonight

Well, ladies and gentlemen - you knew it would happen sometime. I have been activated, and I am deploying to Louisiana in support of efforts to help the victims of the hurricane.

Obviously, I won't be keeping a blog during that time. Hell, I'm not even sure I'll have electricity or cell service.

Keep your chins up.

Nicki

Blogger Relief Day

Via Malkin.

Hugh Hewitt is suggesting a Blogger Relief Day for the citizens of New Orleans.

Check out his blog for more details.

So long, private property rights

I meant to post this earlier, but an emergency trip to New Orleans got in the way.

It seems our government has decided that citizens do not have the right to defend their property. In the case outlined below, a court ruled that a ranch owner had to surrender his property to illegal immigrants. Let's see what NYT has to say about it:

August 19, 2005

Two Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court Fight
By ANDREW POLLACK

DOUGLAS, Ariz., Aug. 18 - Spent shells litter the ground at what is left of the firing range, and camouflage outfits still hang in a storeroom. Just a few months ago, this ranch was known as Camp Thunderbird, the headquarters of a paramilitary group that promised to use force to keep illegal immigrants from sneaking across the border with Mexico.

Now, in a turnabout, the 70-acre property about two miles from the border is being given to two immigrants whom the group caught trying to enter the United States illegally.

The land transfer is being made to satisfy judgments in a lawsuit in which the immigrants had said that Casey Nethercott, the owner of the ranch and a former leader of the vigilante group Ranch Rescue, had harmed them.

"Certainly it's poetic justice that these undocumented workers own this land," said Morris S. Dees Jr., co-founder and chief trial counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., which represented the immigrants in their lawsuit.

Mr. Dees said the loss of the ranch would "send a pretty important message to those who come to the border to use violence."

The surrender of the ranch comes as the governors of Arizona and New Mexico have declared a state of emergency because of the influx of illegal immigrants and related crime along the border.

Bill Dore, a Douglas resident briefly affiliated with Ranch Rescue who is still active in the border-patrolling Minuteman Project, called the land transfer "ridiculous."

"The illegals are coming over here," Mr. Dore said. "They are getting the American property. Hell, I'd come over, too. Get some American property, make some money from the gringos."

The immigrants getting the ranch, Edwin Alfredo Mancía Gonzáles and Fátima del Socorro Leiva Medina, could not be reached for comment. Kelley Bruner, a lawyer at the law center, said they did not want to speak to the news media but were happy with the outcome.

Ms. Bruner said that Mr. Mancía and Ms. Leiva, who are from El Salvador but are not related, would not live at the ranch and would probably sell it. Mr. Nethercott bought the ranch in 2003 for $120,000.

Mr. Mancía, who lives in Los Angeles, and Ms. Leiva, who lives in the Dallas area, have applied for visas that are available to immigrants who are the victims of certain crimes and who cooperate with the authorities, Ms. Bruner said. She said that until a decision was made on their applications, they could stay and work in the United States on a year-to-year basis.

Mr. Mancía and Ms. Leiva were caught on a ranch in Hebbronville, Tex., in March 2003 by Mr. Nethercott and other members of Ranch Rescue. The two immigrants later accused Mr. Nethercott of threatening them and of hitting Mr. Mancía with a pistol, charges that Mr. Nethercott denied. The immigrants also said the group gave them cookies, water and a blanket and let them go after an hour or so.

The Salvadorans testified against Mr. Nethercott when he was tried by Texas prosecutors. The jury deadlocked on a charge of pistol-whipping but convicted Mr. Nethercott, who had previously served time in California for assault, of gun possession, which is illegal for a felon. He is now serving a five-year sentence in a Texas prison.

Mr. Mancía and Ms. Leiva also filed a lawsuit against Mr. Nethercott; Jack Foote, the founder of Ranch Rescue; and the owner of the Hebbronville ranch, Joe Sutton. The immigrants said the ordeal, in which they feared that they would be killed by the men they thought were soldiers, had left them with post-traumatic stress.

Mr. Sutton settled for $100,000. Mr. Nethercott and Mr. Foote did not defend themselves, so the judge issued default judgments of $850,000 against Mr. Nethercott and $500,000 against Mr. Foote.

Mr. Dees said Mr. Foote appeared to have no substantial assets, but Mr. Nethercott had the ranch. Shortly after the judgment, Mr. Nethercott gave the land to his sister, Robin Albitz, of Prescott, Ariz. The Southern Poverty Law Center sued the siblings, saying the transfer was fraudulent and was meant to avoid the judgment.

Ms. Albitz, a nursing assistant, signed over the land to the two immigrants last week.

"It scared the hell out of her," Margaret Pauline Nethercott, the mother of Mr. Nethercott and Ms. Albitz, said of the lawsuit. "She didn't know she had done anything illegal. We didn't know they had a judgment against my son."

This was not the first time the law center had taken property from a group on behalf of a client. In 1987, the headquarters of a Ku Klux Klan group in Alabama was given to the mother of a boy whose murder was tied to Klansmen. Property has also been taken from the Aryan Nations and the White Aryan Resistance, Mr. Dees said.

Joseph Jacobson, a lawyer in Austin who represented Mr. Nethercott in the criminal case, said the award was "a vast sum of money for a very small indignity." Mr. Jacobson said the two immigrants were trespassing on Mr. Sutton's ranch and would have been deported had the criminal charges not been filed against Mr. Nethercott.

He criticized the law center for trying to get $60,000 in bail money transferred to the immigrants. While the center said the money was Mr. Nethercott's, Mr. Jacobson said it was actually Ms. Nethercott's, who mortgaged her home to post bail for her son.

Mr. Nethercott and Mr. Foote had a falling out in 2004, and Mr. Foote left Camp Thunderbird, taking Ranch Rescue with him. Mr. Nethercott then formed the Arizona Guard, also based on his ranch.

In April, Mr. Nethercott told an Arizona television station, "We're going to come out here and close the border with machine guns." But by the end of the month, he had started his prison sentence.

Now, only remnants of Camp Thunderbird remain on his ranch, a vast expanse of hard red soil, mesquite and tumbleweed with a house and two bunkhouses. One bunkhouse has a storeroom containing some camouflage suits, sleeping bags, tarps, emergency rations, empty ammunition crates, gun parts and a chemical warfare protection suit.

In one part of the ranch, dirt is piled up to form the backdrop of a firing range. An old water tank, riddled with bullet holes, is on its side. A platform was built as an observation post on the tower that once held the water tank.

Charles Jones, who was hired as a ranch hand about a month before Mr. Nethercott went to prison, put up fences and brought in cattle to graze. He has continued to live on the property with some family members.

But now the cattle are gone, and Mr. Jones has been told that he should prepare to leave. "It makes me sick I did all this work," he said.

Ms. Nethercott said she was not sure whether her son knew that his ranch was being turned over to the immigrants, but that he would be crushed if he did.

"That's his whole life," she said of the ranch. "He'd be heartbroken if he lost it in any way, but this is the worst way."

Rubbing salt into the wounds

This past June saw a gross travesty of justice known as Kelo v. New London handed down to us by the Supreme Court. In accordance with Kelo, local government may now seize private property and give it to whomever they damn well please, so long as they do it under the vaguely defined guise of "public good." In this case, "public good" translates into "more tax revenue."

To make matters worse for the plaintiffs in the Kelo lawsuit, the city of New London is charging them rent dating back to the time the land was condemned, going all the way back to 2000.

'I'd leave here broke'

Chutzpah is a Yiddish word meaning brazen arrogance. The cliché example is a man who murders his parents and then begs a judge for mercy because he is an orphan.

The city of New London, Conn., deserves a chutzpah award. In 2000, it condemned 15 homes so a developer could build offices, a hotel and convention center. Susette Kelo and her neighbors spent years in a legal battle that culminated in June, when the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against them.

That was painful enough. But while the homeowners were battling in court, New London was calculating how much "rent" they owe for living in the houses they were fighting to save. (The city's development corporation gained title to the homes when it condemned them, though the owners refused to sell and haven't collected a cent.)

The homeowners could soon be served with eviction notices, which is justified by the court ruling. But the rent is something else. For some, it comes to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Kelo, whose name is on the landmark case, could owe $57,000. "I'd leave here broke," she told the Fairfield County Weekly. "I could probably get a large-size refrigerator box and live under the bridge."

In a letter to the homeowners' lawyer a year ago, the development corporation justified its behavior by saying, "We know that your clients did not expect to live in city-owned property for free."

Well, they might have expected not to be bullied for exercising their right to be heard in court.

News of the city's heavy handed tactics should add to the unusual national backlash that has followed the Supreme Court's ruling. The court said state and local governments can seize homes, not just for a public purpose such as building roads or schools, but also for someone else's private profit if the city's economic future is at issue.

The court said states can curtail abuses, and legislatures have rushed to do that. Delaware and Alabama passed laws barring the taking of private property for economic development. Similar measures are pending in eight other states and Congress.

The bills have created some strange alliances. Conservatives worry about the loss of property rights. Liberals say the seizures amount to corporate welfare at the expense of low- and middle-income homeowners who lack the power to fight City Hall.

In response, Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell is urging a compromise that would preserve the homes of Kelo and her neighbors.

Unless that happens, they will be evicted - with a rent due. Talk about chutzpah.

Thanks, everyone

First of all, I would like to thank everyone for their well-wishes, support, and prayers regarding my sister.

Sadly, they have all been in vain.

After a series of bone scans, CAT scans, and MRI's, we have learned the true extent of the spread of cancer. In addition to the breast cancer and the bone cancer, which we already know about, there have been additional complications. The cancer has spread to the lymphatic system, to the spinal cord, and to the liver. According to the doctors, the prognosis is terminal. At this point, it's just a matter of time.

-Vic

Apologies

I would like to apologize for the sparcity of posts lately - especially on my end. Between work, school, and what seems like one family crisis after another, some things just had to be put on the back burner. Sadly, this blog is one of those things I had to put aside for the time being. Even my own blog has suffered from very light posting.

Rest assured, things will be returning to some semblence of normalcy in the very near future. Thanks for your patience.

-Vic

Kelo's Implications Are Horrendous

Interesting commentary from Paul Craig Roberts on further potential dangers of the Kelo decision. Cross posted at the Liberty Zone.

Here's an exerpt:

In 1981, General Motors used eminent domain against the Detroit ethnic suburb of Poletown. To make space for a GM assembly plant, 1,400 homes, 140 businesses and several churches were destroyed. Today, the exemplar of this practice is Wal-Mart.

What if Poletown had been a Chrysler plant that GM wanted to eliminate as a competitor? Under the Kelo ruling, if GM could show that its cars are more successful and produce higher taxable profits than Chrysler's, and the eminent domain authority is not in Chrysler's pocket, GM could prevail.

Today, Toyota, for example, could seek to condemn Ford's River Rouge plant, which is known to be largely obsolete, in order to obtain the site for its own economic use. There appears to be nothing in Kelo to prevent this outcome.

Note some of the implications: According to economic theory, monopoly profits are higher than competitive profits. Kelo becomes a way to get around antitrust laws and increase concentration in the name of public benefit.