News Snipet 'Blog

Well Jack, I'm still conflicted about this. I know that homeowners want to keep their property but if I owned a home and someone wanted to pay me market value for the house plus moving expenses, I'm outta there! No question about it. As Republicans we need to help businesses as well. If the community will benefit from a hotel or shopping center and bring in more taxes from that than a few house, I'm all for it. Find me some examples of people being put "out in the street" and grandma's being sent to tenements, then I might reconsider.

 

Wife,

I guess I need to let people know where I come from on this issue. First, I grew up in socialistic and communistic countries. The first rule of socialism is to change private property ownership from a right to a privilege. When it becomes a privilege allowed at the behest of a government, then we live under tyranny. Any good Republican should recognize this, that the bedrock of this nation is freedom, and freedom is tied directly to ownership. We the people, instead of the government.

Another danger is ever making decisions based on bringing in more taxes. Taxes subjugate a people and they are the reason the revolutionary war was fought. Having worked for the government, the waste of taxpayer dollars is staggering--and that was just what I saw within one agency.

There is no justification for taking what rightfully belongs to someone else for the good of all. These are the tenets of communism, and as we see from the failed Soviet Union--they do not work.

Hope this makes sense, and thanks for stopping by!

Regards,

-Jack

 

Another quick comment, Kathy:

"Private property marks the boundary between the citizen and the State. The degree of respect the State shows for property rights will largely determine how much privacy, autonomy, and independence the citizen has." James Bovard

 

Think about it Jack, do we truly "own" our properties? No, we're taxed on them, we have to follow codes, and the city could actually boot you out and condemn your house without paying you a dime. I don't really think this is a slippery slope issue. Companies have been paying homeowners and renters money for years to vacate their homes, that's not going to change. Like I said before, the people are being paid to move. They are being paid usually top dollar for their homes and inconvenience. I'm looking at it from a fiscal standpoint. If someone is going to pay me, I'm gone.

I understand that taxes are being misspent and so on and so on, but I would rather a hotel or shopping center make up those tax dollars than me. Tax people in the stores and hotels rather than increase my own taxes on my home.

It's not like we have a shortage of homes in this country. If you receive cash for your home, especially if it's paid off, you're going to find another home with no trouble.

 

That's the point of it, Wife :) One day you won't own a home-they will all belong to the government and you will be assigned a dwelling unit, sharing a kitchen with four other families.

I wrote this to my newsletter audience:

Did you know that the primary goal of Communism is the elimination of private property?

In a nation where:

i) The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistance and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.

(ii) The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of subsistence for their support. This is called the class of proletarians, or the proletariat.

The foundation of Communism is removal of private property from private citizens and the reallocation of those properties to the government or its bourgeoisie.

The latest Supreme Court decision to widen the scope of eminent domain is nothing short of Communism. If you value your freedoms as guaranteed by the United States Constitution, go to www.newssnipet.blogspot.com

What does define Communism, if it can be summed up? G. Edward Griffin was one of the first to call the United Nations a Communist stronghold, and write about it. His seminal work concerning the first twenty years of the United Nations is a book entitled Fearful Master. It's must reading. Griffin writes, "The Communist Manifesto" says, "The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence, 'abolition of private property.'" That ends it, some might say. America has private property; therefore we are not Communists. Do we, in reality, have private property ownership in the United States?

We are allowed to purchase real estate and homes. From the outset, though, it is a ridiculous operation. The truth is, most Americans will never own a home, and with good reason. Houses are priced out of the stratosphere. A small, two-bedroom home now costs approximately $100,000. Most people must take out a loan for this, the most important purchase they will ever make. Ironically, unlike any other industry standard, the interest on this loan must be paid up front. This means most people will pay a house off twice before they will begin to pay off the actual loan amount.

Many Americans don't own their home until thirty years after they make the purchase. The ownership of this private property, however, is contingent upon a duty being paid to the government. The State claims that unless yearly ransom is paid upon land that is yours, you may not keep it. Additionally, these and other taxes are used to give away, for free, 'private' property to those who can't afford. Very communal. So ownership is based upon tribute payment, called land taxes.

James Bovard is the libertarianesque author of several books based on constitutional theory. In Lost Rights, he reminds us that, "Private property marks the boundary between the citizen and the State. The degree of respect the State shows for property rights will largely determine how much privacy, autonomy, and independence the citizen has." Yet, the attitude of American Government toward private property is flippant, at best. There is taxation. Through RICO statutes, the State can and does confiscate property on the basis of a junky-snitch's hearsay. Double jeopardy has been perpetuated, men being tried once in criminal court, and tried again by the State in civil court. Asset forfeiture is nothing more than a communistic doctrine whereby land is seized, many times despite of the fact that the victim has been found innocent, or charges dropped. Bovard adds, "Modern zoning laws presume that no citizen has a right to control his own land." Without knowing a higher-up, or greasing a palm, zoning laws progressively march into the draconian. Regional governments have picked up on this. On June 30, 2004, King County Washington declared that they would make it illegal for landowners to do anything, anything, on 65% of their own land. Redistricting has developed new suburban ghettoes, and turned once-thriving cities into ghost towns. Declaring a home historic allows government to dictate its use and renovation. Another tool that the State uses to steal land is Wetland Zoning. While this is necessary to an extent, Bush Sr., in 1999, claimed that any land that had a mere 15 days rainfall a year was wetland. That has been further expanded today. Beautification acts forbid certain usages for certain private property. Eminent domain declares the State's right of land over the citizen's.

So in a sense you are right, Wife. Private property is a myth in the United States as we move more toward a Communist state, but it is the duty of every American to preserve what freedoms we can.

 

Must I dear say Mr. Editor that communism and capitalism are one (and the same). The exact ingredients presented in the same order. The name of the product was changed to protect the Robber Barons in the East. In the West, theft is the order of the day!

Why are you so alarmed in realizing that when you awake tomorrow I can have full ownership of your property. It is my money that put the president in office. As a result, I dectate who he chooses for the court! Again, it is my money that opened the door for each and every senator and representative to enter congress. I dictate who they support for the courts! If we reason further, the conclusion must be that my money dictates my property rights, here or over there.

 

Hmm...I understand what you're saying, but it has fundamental flaws. The key element you are missing is opportunity, and that is what capitalism provides. Communism is based on egalitarianism with no room for individual initiative. I'm not saying that capitalism does not, in its purest form, have pitfalls, but to say that capitalism and communism is the same maybe a bit too simplistic a view.

If you have a chance go to Amazon.com and order Thomas Sowell's book, Amazon.com: Books: Basic Economics: A Citizens Guide to the Economy, Revised and Expanded.

(p.s. Capitalism isn't a form of government- it's an economic system. Communism is a political system with an associated economic philosophy. Contemporary United States functions under a socialist system with elements of capitalism within its economy. I think that the media has helped propogate the idea that "capitalism" is a political system comparable to communism, socialism, etc.)

I like your reference to the robber barons, though!

Thanks for your comments and come back often!

Regards,

-Jack

 

It seems like the federal government has too much power.

 

I don't like the idea of bubba politicians conspiring with bubba venture capitalists to screw John Q. Citizen out of his property. I've seen the effects of eminent domain in one case, and the home owner was screwed with a capital S.

In my mind, this isn't an issue of receiving "top dollar" for property. It seems to me that when a property owner is interested in accepting the payment, then there is no problem. But what if the property owner's family, having owned the land since Moby Dick was a minnow, chooses to retain his birth-right?

In any ED case where the issue is contested, I think that the burden should be placed on the government to show a "compelling" reason why the property being sought is essential to local or state interests.

SCOTUS does not seem to realize, finally, that this is a government OF the people, FOR the people, and BY the people. They aren't acting as if the PEOPLE have any say whatsoever and that does bother me a great deal.

 

Mustang, I could not have said it more simply and succinctly than that! Right on.

-Jack

 

Well, I'm in Los Angeles. And if some idiot offered me money for where I'd live, he'd better give me a pretty penny for it. And I know he wouldn't. He'd do some dingbat move like try to get us shut down and then swoop in on repo prices.

I live in an artist's collective and we fight tooth and nail to keep our home and use it for artists who want to spend their money and time being artists and community activists. If we lost our homes, we'd have to get 9-5 jobs and our low paying activism gigs and intermittent artists gigs would go away. And many of us work with the homeless and poverty stricken so what we provide would be gone and I bet some of us in this house would join the problem at that point. It's really kinda sad how bad it could be if you threw a dozen artists on the street.

So thanks for the heads up, Jack.

 

O, most of us Americans take our freedom for granted and think that a Communist China, Soviet Union or Nazi Germany can happen to us. When individual rights begin to be sacrificed for the collective, fabian socialism starts to get a foothold. Unfortunately in the United States we are far down the road of tyrrany without fully realizing it. I would gladly fight for your small community of artists and activists and their right to their property!

Happy 4th, O!

-Jack

 

My house is already here, I don't want to give it up regardless of that top dollar, so the Target should go elsewhere. That's the way it should be, period.

 

Jack, thank you for posting this, people really need to know more about the big picture. It really reminds me of how good our govt and media are at dividing the people between red and blue, left and right, liberal and conservative, when the real problems seem to just be the decisions our lawmakers make each day that very much deprive of us of the life and liberty the people who founded our country and wrote our constitution wanted us to have. George Carlin made a great comment, I do not know how old it is, but it had to do with either the EU or Iraqi constitution, I cant quite remember. Carlin said something along the lines of, "they should use ours. We have a great constitution that's two hundred years old and we dont use it anymore." Very subtlely and piece by piece, the very principles by which we define ourselves as a nation, seem to be eroding and taken advantage of. Yes, the govt may not ever come onto my property personally and take it from me; but it is the precedent that this fascism sets that worries me more than anything.