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Jewish World Review June 29, 2005 / 22 Sivan, 5765 You can't price everything By Froma Harrop
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In the movie "Wild River," an 80-year-old farmwoman tries to
teach a government official the meaning of property rights. It is the 1930s,
and the Tennessee Valley Authority wants to build dams that would put the
woman's farm underwater. The government needs to buy her out and makes what
seems a generous officer, but she won't sell.
Putting on a show for the official, the woman orders a poor
black farmhand to sell her his beloved old hound.
She says: "I'll give you 15 dollars for him. What's the matter?
He ain't worth more than that, is he?"
Growing agitated, the farmhand replies: "No, ma'am. He ain't
worth nothing, but I ain't gonna sell him. ... You ain't got no right to
make me."
And she responds: "You know that's true, Sam. Come to think
about it, I don't have the right."
Some things don't come with price tags. That's why the
Constitution's Fifth Amendment makes good people nervous. It gives
government the power of eminent domain — the right to take private property
for public use, provided the owners are given "just compensation." What is
"just compensation" to someone who doesn't want to sell?
"Wild River" provides no easy answers. The dam-building plan
seems noble. It would end the flooding that takes countless lives. It would
bring electricity to an impoverished corner of Appalachia. Yet the audience
suffers with the woman fighting for her beat-up farm — and, against
practical reason, sees her point.
Now suppose the government didn't want her farm for a big
state-run project. Suppose it planned to give the property to Costco,
because the big-box discount chain would pay higher property taxes. Or to a
real-estate developer wanting riverfront land for a marina, health club and
restaurants. The audience would be rightly appalled.
Well, the Supreme Court has just paved the way for that kind of
abuse. The court ruled that the city of New London, Conn., could condemn 15
houses in a blue-collar neighborhood and replace them with a conference
hotel, office park and condos. Economic development, the five-to-four ruling
said, is a "public use."
That liberal justices were the majority in this awful decision
brought only stunned silence to most progressive circles. How could their
guys think it OK to take homes from working-class people and hand them to
big businesses?
In a stinging dissent, Justice Sandra Day Bless-Her-Heart
O'Connor captured the horror. "Under the banner of economic development,"
she wrote, "all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and
transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded."
The chain of events leading to this case is astounding. New
London was long an economically distressed city. It got a needed boost in
2001, when the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer opened a huge research center on
the city's riverfront. So when Pfizer executives said they wanted something
more upscale in the area, the city was happy to accommodate.
The city put together a plan to spiff up the neighborhood, and
condemned the weathered Victorian cottages and auto-body shops standing in
the way. Many property owners accepted its offer — but 15 did not, and
brought their case to the Supreme Court.
Amazingly, each state can pretty much craft its own meaning of
"public use." And, writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens noted
that the high court was deferring to Connecticut's broad definition.
Other states are also rethinking their laws. For example,
Michigan, Illinois and Washington have banned the use of eminent domain for
economic development.
In 1795, the U.S. Supreme Court called eminent domain "the
despotic power." So when employed, it had better be for a big, fat obvious
public use.
And there will still be pain. Not everyone can place an economic
value on what they love, be it an old mutt or a family farm. As the
Mastercard ads say, some things are priceless.
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© 2005 Creators Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
