“I am seriously considering becoming a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in New Jersey's 3rd Congressional District. Our great country is headed in the wrong direction, and it’s clearer every day that career politicians are incapable of solving the problems we face,” he said in a statement issued this afternoon. “I am grateful for the tremendous support and encouragement I have received while talking to people throughout South Jersey about running for Congress and I look forward to having more to say on this subject in the weeks ahead.”

jerseyhoya wrote:Pfizer to Leave City That Won Supreme Court Land-Use Case

Rococo4 wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Pfizer to Leave City That Won Supreme Court Land-Use Case

thank you david souter!

jerseyhoya wrote:

Rococo4 wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Pfizer to Leave City That Won Supreme Court Land-Use Case

thank you david souter!

I'm moderate on a bunch of things, and can see the other side most of the time and everyting, but not on something like this.

It's someone's $#@! house. They own the land. They've done nothing wrong. It's theirs. Making them leave so office parks and condos can be built is evil.

jerseyhoya wrote:I mean, I'm no legal expert, clearly, but it just seemed so wrong and unAmerican.

Anyway, Nate Silver with a nice post on Democrats and 2010. Plenty of time for the Dems to minimize damages, and there are steps they can take, but right now next year looks like it might be awesome.

dajafi wrote:I don't think I've ever talked to anyone who liked that eminent domain decision. Property rights are pretty fundamental in our society.

Anyone care to make the case for it? Crashburn's usually good for some raw contrarianism... PtK maybe?

TenuredVulture wrote:

dajafi wrote:I don't think I've ever talked to anyone who liked that eminent domain decision. Property rights are pretty fundamental in our society.

Anyone care to make the case for it? Crashburn's usually good for some raw contrarianism... PtK maybe?

I'd actually be pretty shocked if PtK really approved the application of eminent domain in Kelo. Remember, the key beneficiary was supposed to be a big pharmaceutical company.

The only defense of the Supreme Court decision was that the definition of public use was up to state legislatures, not federal courts. The idea that a federal court was not equipped to determine for every burg and hamlet and city in the US a generalizable definition of public use.

Where the court messed this up though is the fact that in in most localities, there really isn't much accountability one way or another. Local governments and planning boards are often dominated by a local elite that has much to gain by controlling the levers of local government. And information of what is going on in local government is difficult to come by, making it difficult to challenge those vested interests via elections.

dajafi wrote:But to me it's even more fundamental than that. Don't $#@! with someone's property. If they want to sell it to you, great. But you can't just $#@! take it <liberaltechnocrat>especially not for an irresponsible exercise in dumb-assed smokestack chasing.</liberaltechnocrat>

I mean, yes deference to the legislature--but not where the legislature has a fundamental misread of basic constitutionally protected rights.

This classic Politico piece - in as much as it regurgitates almost comically process-oriented Beltway wisdom - fails to mention a few things about Obama's spending in his first year.

Item one: the recession.

To treat the stimulus package as if it were something he just felt like doing - because he's a big government maniac - is a lie, a piece of propaganda that has seeped into the lazy Beltway desire to describe everything - even now - into the big government/small government, red-blue paradigm.

Item two: The health insurance reform almost painfully tries to pay for itself - something that Bush's Medicare entitlement didn't even pretend to do.

Item three: there's a big big difference between spending on green and infrastructure investment and slashing taxes or increasing Medicare entitlements.

The way in which cynical and amnesiac Republicans have tried to portray this as classic big government liberalism is a lie. You can debate the merits of each initiative, but this is obviously not an administration as fiscally reckless as the last one. Mercifully, they have a chance to show it in earnest next year. And to call the bluff of those Republicans yelling about spending while having absolutely no plans or ideas for cutting it.

dajafi wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

dajafi wrote:I don't think I've ever talked to anyone who liked that eminent domain decision. Property rights are pretty fundamental in our society.

Anyone care to make the case for it? Crashburn's usually good for some raw contrarianism... PtK maybe?

I'd actually be pretty shocked if PtK really approved the application of eminent domain in Kelo. Remember, the key beneficiary was supposed to be a big pharmaceutical company.

The only defense of the Supreme Court decision was that the definition of public use was up to state legislatures, not federal courts. The idea that a federal court was not equipped to determine for every burg and hamlet and city in the US a generalizable definition of public use.

Where the court messed this up though is the fact that in in most localities, there really isn't much accountability one way or another. Local governments and planning boards are often dominated by a local elite that has much to gain by controlling the levers of local government. And information of what is going on in local government is difficult to come by, making it difficult to challenge those vested interests via elections.

But to me it's even more fundamental than that. Don't $#@! with someone's property. If they want to sell it to you, great. But you can't just $#@! take it <liberaltechnocrat>especially not for an irresponsible exercise in dumb-assed smokestack chasing.</liberaltechnocrat>

I mean, yes deference to the legislature--but not where the legislature has a fundamental misread of basic constitutionally protected rights.

dajafi wrote:I overstated my position a bit for effect. I'm not saying that eminent domain should never be employed, under any circumstance. But I would say that the "public interest" justification should be pretty close to inarguable.

Not sure gay marriage is a comparable issue--I agree in theory, but public opinion sometimes follows the law. I don't think there can be much argument that civil rights (some of which were passed legislatively, but for which the ground was laid by judicial decisions) are more broadly supported in the South today than they were 45 years ago.

TenuredVulture wrote:

dajafi wrote:I overstated my position a bit for effect. I'm not saying that eminent domain should never be employed, under any circumstance. But I would say that the "public interest" justification should be pretty close to inarguable.

Not sure gay marriage is a comparable issue--I agree in theory, but public opinion sometimes follows the law. I don't think there can be much argument that civil rights (some of which were passed legislatively, but for which the ground was laid by judicial decisions) are more broadly supported in the South today than they were 45 years ago.

My only point is that people make a mistake when they see the judicial branch as the one that will right all wrongs. Congress did manage to pass key civil rights legislation in the 60s. Many court cases concerning civil rights are based on those statutes, especially the Voting Rights Act. I would argue that civil rights are more secure with the statutes in place then they would be otherwise.

Indeed, I am increasingly concerned with a court that seems to have little compunction in overturning statutes regulating business. If only anyone who said they believed in judicial restraint was sincere.

Heilbrunn, reviewing The Ground Truth in NYTimes Book Review wrote:The Lies They Told

....For all the trillions of dollars lavished on it, for all the talk about confronting new security threats, for all the exhortations to reinvent government, America’s defense establishment, as John Farmer reminds us in “The Ground Truth,” continued to fight the cold war more than a decade after it had ended....

....Farmer explains that his hope is to lay some conspiracy theories to rest “by identifying and establishing the deception that actually did occur.” Surprisingly, however, he contends that the administration’s account of 9/11 “didn’t provide a pretext for aggression, as did the government’s manipulation of intelligence regarding the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” But this isn’t quite right. There is, in fact, an intimate connection between the two.....

TenuredVulture wrote:Except that everyone agrees that there are legitimate uses for eminent domain. Roads and schools need to be built somewhere. There are some really interesting eminent domain cases--in Hawaii, for instance, 72 landowners held 47% of the land, government held 49%, and everyone else had 4%. Land reform under eminent domain required the sale of some of the land to others. Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff was a unanimous decision in 1984. So, as you can see, precedent has given state and local governments wide latitude at determining what counts as public use.

So, yes, we agree that what happened in Kelo was an injustice. However, it might be reasonable to argue that the Supreme Court is not the forum for the redress of all injustice.

I would make a similar argument concerning gay marriage--I believe in marriage equality, but I believe that it is better to establish gay marriage legislatively rather than judicially.

wiki wrote:However, the aftermath of the Midkiff decision failed to achieve the stated purpose of the redistribution legislation which was incapable of creating new housing because it only transferred title from the land lessor to the lessee-homeowners who already occupied existing homes on the subject property. As soon as the former lessees acquired fee simple titles to their homes, those became attractive to Japanese investors and speculators who paid outlandish prices for those homes (largely located in the upscale Kahala and Hawaii Kai neighborhoods), causing a ripple effect throughout the island. Home prices on Oahu, far from falling as intended by the legislature, surged upward and more than doubled within six years.