Magnifisyncopathological

Los Angeles Times: An Eminent Domain High Tide

It's across the inlet from Palm Beach, but this town - mostly black, blue-collar and with a large industrial and warehouse district - could be a continent away from the Fortune 500 and Rolls-Royce set.

But Riviera Beach's fortunes may soon change.

In what has been called the largest eminent-domain case in the nation, the mayor and other elected leaders want to move about 6,000 residents, tear down their homes and use the emptied 400-acre site to build a waterfront yachting and residential complex for the well-to-do.

The goal, Mayor Michael D. Brown said during a public meeting in September, is to "forever change the landscape" in this municipality of about 32,500. The $1-billion plan, local leaders have said, should generate jobs and haul Riviera Beach's economy out of the doldrums.

And since the only thing standing in their way are individuals, what's the big fucking deal, right?

Opponents, however, call the plan a government-sanctioned land grab that benefits private developers and the wealthy.

One would dearly hope that these opponents also recognize the existence of the converse problem: government-sanctioned land grabs that benefit "the public" and the poor.

"This is a reverse Robin Hood," said state Rep. Ronald L. Greenstein, meaning the poor in Riviera Beach would be robbed to benefit the rich. Greenstein, a Coconut Creek Democrat, serves on a state legislative committee making recommendations on how to strengthen safeguards on private property.

Again, the problem is not that the poor are getting robbed. It isn't even that the rich are getting robbed.

It's the robbery that's the real issue. And I think it's hilarious a politician (let alone a democrat) seeks to strengthen property rights. Here's a clue, Mr. Greenstein, even though it might appear as a brain-teaser: your income as a state representative and the resources used to operate the legislative committees you're on are derived from property rights violations. The existence of your job, in my opinion, is prima facie evidence of at least a modest disrespect for property rights. Normally, of course, it is much worse than just mere disrespect.

"You have people going in, essentially playing God, and saying something better than these people's homes should be built on this property," said Carol Saviak, executive director of the Coalition for Property Rights, based in Orlando. "That's inherently wrong."

"Unfortunately, taking poorer folks' homes and turning them into higher-end development projects is all too routine in Florida and throughout the country," said Scott G. Bullock, a senior attorney for the Institute for Justice, based in Washington. "What distinguishes Riviera Beach is the sheer scope of the project, and the number of people it displaces."

Man, there are times when I want to see these groups win their lawsuits. I want to see them win because I want to see the end of eminent domain. But at the same time, I know that there isn't a court in the land that'll entertain a serious challenge to the practice because the state badly needs that excuse to exercise power. Being able to legally steal land is absolutely fundamental to government.

The small potential for a lower court to grow a pair and stand up to this shit would be negated by higher court rejection. I certainly don't see the vaunted Supreme Court taking the proper stand on this, and that's where a serious challenge would end up.

By the way, a serious challenge wouldn't pull any punches and would not limit itself to just a specific instance of eminent domain "abuse." It's all abuse and the challenge should directly reject and question one of those sacrosanct "Constitutional rights" in the 5th Amendment. So not only is taking this to the Supreme Court a guaranteed waste of time, you'd have to take your case to Congress (!!!) and then three-fourths of the states (!!!).

Yeah. Good luck asking tens of thousands of people to neuter their power.

In Florida, the law allows local officials to take private land for redevelopment if they deem it "blighted." In May 2001, a study conducted for the city found that "slum and blighted conditions" existed in about a third of Riviera Beach, and that redevelopment was necessary "in the interest of public health, safety, morals and welfare."

The heights of arrogance! And what's really frustrating is that this shit is everywhere! People picked by a subset of a subset of the population who appoint others to tell you your house sucks so bad it ought to be leveled so something nice and shiny can go up in its place.

A skeptical [Martha Babson], who lives in a single-story, concrete-block home painted aqua that she shares with parrots and a dog, did her own survey. For three months, she walked the streets of Riviera Beach photographing houses classified as "dilapidated" or "deteriorated" by specialists hired by the city.

The official study, she said, was riddled with errors and misclassifications. Lots inventoried as "vacant" (one of 14 criteria that allow Florida cities or counties to declare a neighborhood blighted) actually had homes on them built in 1997, she said. One house deemed "dilapidated," she found, was two years old.

[...]

For 25 years, Bill Mars has sold and serviced luxury sportfishing boats in Riviera Beach. He hasn't been told yet, he said, whether a place in the redevelopment zone has been kept for him.

Under the plan, his sales and service center is supposed to make way for an aquarium.

"If you look at our business, we're one of the shining stars of Riviera Beach," Mars said. "Yet no one has come to us to say, 'We're going to take care of you and relocate you.' " That despite the plan's incorporation of a "working waterfront," including boat sales and repair.

That these assholes can't get reality straight is standard fare: it is to be expected. Why so many persist in the perfect delusion that politicians are the best people to make these decisions still confuses me.

Rene Corie has lived for nine years in a custard-yellow home near the Intracoastal. When the house was earmarked for acquisition under eminent domain four years ago, the 56-year-old seamstress became so depressed she couldn't put up her Christmas tree. She and her husband decided to fight City Hall in order to keep their home, or at the least, be paid a fair market price for it.

"We tried to elect a new mayor, we went around to churches, we stood on street corners with signs," Corie said. "When we got home from work, me and David would get into the truck and go door to door, and all day Saturday and Sunday."

Corie said she could be served at any time with another letter of acquisition for the house and the double lot it sits on. "My home is no longer my own," she said.

Mrs. Corie, with all due respect, I have to repeat what I asked of Clarence Thomas earlier this year:

Where the fuck have you been for the last hundred or so years?

Here's the ugly truth: the home you live in is not yours in the sense of rightful ownership by an individual. You may think it is and damn if I wish you were correct. However, all you need to do to dismiss that notion is scan the local ordinances, county codes, state laws, and federal regulations. Each level of government is currently telling what home-possessors may or may not do with, in, around, or to their homes on a daily basis and ever since this country's birth.

Mayor Brown and Floyd T. Johnson, executive director of the Riviera Beach Community Redevelopment Agency, did not respond to repeated requests from The Times for an interview.

As much as I'd enjoy berating these people over this, I don't know if I would want to actually engage them in the argument I'd want to make.

The redevelopment agency's website says the plan will "create a city respected for its community pride and purpose and reshape it into a most desirable urban [place] to live, work, shop, and relax for its residents, business and visitors."

In past media interviews, Brown has said his city was in dire need of jobs, and that if officials weren't allowed to resort to eminent domain to spur growth, Riviera Beach could perish. '

Because to them, the individual is subordinate to the collective. People who think like that fundamentally reject one of my premises, making any discussion with them significantly harder.

Why would you talk about how great your cat is to someone who hates felines?

Dee Cunningham, who made an unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2003, said the blueprint was written to benefit developers. Her own flower shop has been classified as "functionally obsolete" under the plan and could be razed.

"People here are so stressed out from being under threat of eminent domain," said Cunningham. "It's like living in Iraq with a bomb threat."

What's especially difficult to hammer into the heads of morons is that even if her flower shop is a busted-up shack at the mercy of a stiff breeze and a flaky electrical connection, that does not somehow negate her right to determine what happens to the place. If her place hasn't sold a rose in months and loses money every day she opens the doors, that is her business, literally and figuratively.

Residents affected by the plan are supposed to be eligible for new homes elsewhere in Riviera Beach and compensation for business damages.

That these people are offered "compensation" is a heaping of insult upon injury. Not only are they presented with an offer that isn't rooted in good faith and peaceful voluntary exchange, but what's being offered is either directly or indirectly from taxpayers! The robbers aren't just robbing you; they are robbing everyone else to compensate you!

The whole fucking system is rotten from the center outward.

The owners of another business in Riviera Beach's downtown accuse local leaders of not enforcing city codes in order to produce the decay that redevelopment is supposed to remedy.

"They want to leave everything in a dilapidated condition so it seems to everybody and to the government like it's blighted," said Mike Mahoney, a Riviera Beach native who runs Dee's T-Shirts.

The irony is knee-deep in these parts.

Some foes of the redevelopment plan have attended seminars in Washington organized by property-rights advocates to learn how to better fight to save their homes.

Some residents have accepted offers from developers and moved out; others have retained lawyers to try to get a better price from the city. Still others are waiting to see what happens, noting the troubled history of local redevelopment efforts. "This is the fourth eminent domain CRA plan I've seen since I've been here," said Mars. "I survived those, and I may survive this one too."

Babson said she was counting on the Florida Legislature, as well as public interest kindled by the recent Supreme Court case, to halt the developers.

"We're definitely in Tiananmen Square: one little guy in front of all of those tanks," Babson said. "We've slowed them down, but we haven't stopped them."

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

I'll tell you something and I'm loathe to point it out.

There are precious few ways of peacefully stopping a robber from taking your possessions. Talking, asking, and pleading will only help when dealing with robbers with a conscience and I'm sure you see the general futility of hoping to find one of those. Now consider that in this case and in every other eminent domain case across the country, you are up against repeat offenders who have been involved in the robbery of others since they entered office. Since the Kelo vs New London decision, it is obvious to me that eminent domain for lofty public purposes will remain firmly established as legal.

Leaving you with the one effective way to stop a robber: you physically defend yourself. Unfortunately, the construction foreman or the cop isn't going to arrive at a "holdout" alone these days. When they know the resister is one of those loony property rights people who has been complaining about tyranny, usurpations, individual rights, and self-defense, they won't go in by themselves. They know better. They know what happens when someone takes a principle seriously.

I like how Ms. Babson mentions Tiananmen Square. It was the final result of two groups of people taking their principles seriously. One group consisted of people who wanted the individual to at least have a token of respect in their government-dominated society. The other group consisted of people who wanted the individual to remain a numbered cog in a larger, more allegedly important machine.

"Tiananmen Square" is appropriate because it is not a metaphor.