Friday, June 24, 2005
Olek V. New London Case
In all the fuss over Kelo, we’ve missed another important decision. Luckily we have Coyote Blog all over this one. From the cited article reporting Olek V. New London:
The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people’s advertising space—even against their will—for alternate advertisers who promote economic development or higher taxes.
Once again, O’Connor was a dissenter:
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who has been a key swing vote on many cases before the court, issued a stinging dissent. She argued that “This makes me so mad, I could, I could… aw, forget it. I’m retiring this year to a Pacific island anyway, so y’all are free to screw up this country as much as you want”.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
I’ve so far made four posts on the topic of Kelo V. New London, and four updates to boot. They were:
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Well, five, if you count my being inspired about a Constitutional Convention and toying with the idea of snagging the relevant domain.
This is another such post regarding, or at least inspired by, the Kelo decision. It will not be the last, or even the last today. If the topic bores you, feel free to skip these, but it really should interest galvanize everyone, the caveat provided by Justice Kennedy notwithstanding.
Anyway, I mentioned, in an IANAL (nor do I play one on TV) sort of way, the bizarre practice the Supremes have followed in allowing bad precedent to build on bad precedent, with nary a nod to the “source code” in the Constitution.
As it turns out, Skip Oliva just recently posted about the problem of what is known as stare decisis; “the longstanding policy of common law courts to adhere to precedent irrespective of its merits.”
His post, at Mises Economics Blog, was inspired by Raich, which relied similarly to the later Kelo decision on bad precedent, rather than actual Constitutionality. As he told me yesterday:
Today’s Kelo decision only accentuates the need to deal with the problem of “stare decisis.”
I wanted to give this a proper post, rather than a quick link, so I delayed it until today.
This is not only not a new issue, it is downright ancient, and was in the thoughts of the founding fathers. He quotes at lenth from Thomas Paine, in small part:
Government by precedent, without any regard to the principle of the precedent, is one of the vilest systems that can be set up. In numerous instances, the precedent ought to operate as a warning, and not as an example, and requires to be shunned instead of imitated; but instead of this, precedents are taken in the lump, and put at once for constitution and for law.
Either the doctrine of precedents is policy to keep a man in a state of ignorance, or it is a practical confession that wisdom degenerates in governments as governments increase in age, and can only hobble along by the stilts and crutches of precedents. How is it that the same persons who would proudly be thought wiser than their predecessors, appear at the same time only as the ghosts of departed wisdom? How strangely is antiquity treated! To some purposes it is spoken of as the times of darkness and ignorance, and to answer others, it is put for the light of the world.
It’s an excellent post, and an excellent point being made. It concludes, remember pre-Kelo, with respect mainly to Raich at the time:
There is also the question, under a doctrine of precedents, whether even the Supreme Court can overrule its prior decisions. A number of justices have maintained over the years that after a certain period of time, an erroneous decision must be respected by the Court to prevent a loss of public confidence in the judiciary. This was the majority’s justification for reaffirming Roe v. Wade in 1992.
When faced with a decision as constitutionally baseless as Raich, the lower courts should make every effort to expose the flaws in the Supreme Court’s reasoning and precedents. Such behavior will no doubt be condemned as “judicial activism� by conservatives (and many leftists), but that is a false argument. True judicial activism occurs when a court exercises jurisdiction in a case without proper constitutional or statutory authority. That was the basic lesson of Marbury v. Madison. Similarly, a commitment to judicial restraint requires the federal courts to dismiss as unconstitutional any federal prosecution of a person accused of illegally growing marijuana for medicinal purposes, yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to the contrary notwithstanding.
Yet oh so applicable in either case, and beyond.
It makes sense that precedent was a known problem at the time of the Revolution. English common law was all about precedent. Whatever inspiration we may have drawn from it, this is the United States, not the United Kingdom.
Perhaps the Court forgetting who and what we are is the root of the problem.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Weaponized Banana
This is the term I came up with spontaneously the other day for banana Sadie gets onto the floor, rather than into her, so you can then step on it and be grossed out.
Carnival of the Recipes Is Up
Dana at Note It Posts, who apparently approves of kiwi, has this week’s Carnival of the Recipes. We’re in it with the baby formula fruit smoothies concept.
Happy Birthday
To my maternal grandmother, Hazel, turning 89 today. She’s my last living grandparent or great-grandparent, and her house was the scene of the recent bunch of family pictures.
When I was born, I not only had four grandparents, but also at least three great-grandparents alive, and scads of great and great-great aunts and uncles. So many I never really had a good handle on who was who. For Sadie, my grandmother has the same role as her mother did for me; an extra, especially old, but cool, grandmother to visit.
Here she is with Sadie:
Climb Every Box, Pull every Cord, Despite All Your Toys, Get Easily Bored*
Sadie likes to crawl under Deb’s desk and tug on her mouse and keyboard cables, or even just hang out distractingly. She won’t be deterred. We’ve had success with the phone, and almost as much success with the VCR and DVD, but she thinks it’s a game when it comes to the desk.
When she started in this morning, I walled Deb in. On one side of her, there is already an obstruction designed to prevent Sadie accessing the fan on a post there. On the other side there is a box of baby clothes. I added two boxes of books, making a protective arc around Deb’s corner.
Sadie proceeded to climb over a nine and a half inch tall box, the lowest one in her way. Doh!
* Apologies to Deb and others who can’t stand The Sound of Music.
Rights, Dissent… What’s Not To Crush?
While we were all distracted by the Raich and Kelo travesties, the absurd flag burning amendment, and the silly Durbin and Rove puff-ups, Congress was lubing up the slippery slope, dangerously crushing porn. Crushing it under rules and reams of paper. Don’t like porn? Well, mind precedent and the slippery slope. The government won’t use lube elsewhere when they come for you.
Happy Birthday
To blogger Paul Burgess, who willingly tells us he is 49, and has a rundown of what he was doing in some other years at this time. He pines for a flying car, and makes me wonder whether he’s looking forward to the movie version of Fantastic Four.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Your Daily Sadie
Recipe (sort of): Baby Formula Fruit Smoothies
For lack of a better recipe this week, and now that the secret is out so it won’t sound so odd that we are trying to have Sadie drink some formula, I thought I would tell you about baby formula fruit smoothies. See, the nursing well has been running a bit dry, and we thought Sadie might still need the nutritional value she would get from nursing. Thus the bit of formula to fill the gap.
Trouble was, she hated it. Thus the need to get around that…
We made four ounces of formula per the package, mixing it in the blender/food processor.
Add some fruit and blend as needed to eliminate chunks. We used mango, kiwi and peach. We didn’t measure, but it was enough to thicken and color the drink.
Other fruits can be used as well. Banana is an especially good candidate.
The caveat: It clogs the holes in the sippy cup, or at least it did for us.
The benefit: She loved it. It was quite tasty, which formula by itself is not so much.
Another use: The smoothy mixes nicely with baby cereal and she loved that too.
There you have it; a recipe for the younger set. Really young.
Will the Money Be Followed?
Now that the Supremes have given the Constitutional Seal of Approval to seizing private real property for any reason whatsoever, crony capitalism has become likewise Constitutionally protected. Just follow the money in the Kelo case - I have no doubt that a substantial amount made its way from the developer to the city officials who pushed the property condemnation through.
I’ve been thinking along the same lines. I wonder how long it will take for someone - hello the watchdog press? - to start investigating all the relevant officials and influential “pushers” in an effort to follow said money or other means of undue persuasion.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Holy crap!
Constitutional Convention
Just for giggles, I investigated the availability of constitutionalconvention.com, only to find it was already taken. Oh well. And no, I am not going to offer to purchase it from the speculator current owner.
Be The Bat
Via Joe Katzman, Forbes has a nifty piece on Bruce Wayne’s finances and what it would cost you to get into a similar gig, as much as possible without access to, you know, high tech prototype military hardware.
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts (Updated)
Via Rand Simberg, here another angle on what the fallout from Kelo can reasonably be expected to be. In addition to my thinking about what it could do to the real estate market, there is the possibility of using this decision to take out previously safe “we just don’t like it” real estate uses…
Private gun ranges, airfields, RV tracts, hunting preserves, fishing resources, minority religious congregations, newspapers—all are now fair targets for seizure and closure “for the economic benefit of the people.
Let the games begin. The goal: don’t live in the wrong place or use your property for the wrong purpose without adequate payoff to or influence with the powers that be, and don’t get the wrong people mad at you for some reason unrelated to that which they will invent for seizing your property in retaliation.
Update:
On the other hand, analysis at SCOTUSblog of Kennedy’s concurring opinion seems to indicate that communities may not get away with running roughshod. I guess we’ll see…
Another Update:
SCOTUSblog has a metablog discussion specifically for Kelo and related issues.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
John Hoeven Meets Julie Neidlinger
Julie Neidlinger wants to get the attention of Governor John Hoeven of North Dakota. Seems like a good idea to me!
Are you a blogger? Perhaps you’d like to help her out too…
Bad Precedent
Another thought I had about the Kelo decision is that they seem to be going by precedent.
Think about it: Do you go back to the Constitution and use that as the supreme arbiter, or do you go primarily with precedent, even if it’s wrong?
This is the most recent in a string of related decisions, and owes the absurd outcome to those decisions. But… how is that right when a given decision can be wrong, or not in keeping with the philosophy of a particular Court? And what’s philosophy got to do with it anyway? Either you can read and are willing to uphold the Constitution, or not. They are not, whether it’s about wheat, marijuana, or the sanctity of your property. Which, come to think of it, is what those cases all had in common.
Not that you ever really own real estate, since you rent it for property taxes and it can be taken if you fail to pay. The locality, in a sense, owns it in the first place, but still, you “own” the right to use it as you see fit and to pay that rent-like tax. The Constitution doesn’t give them the right to evict you for just any reason. At least, it didn’t until some feeble-minded oligarchs weighed in.
Glenn has an additional post on the case, discussing political ramifications and the like.
As mentioned at the end of my previous post, go to Arguing With Signposts for the most comprehensive link roundup.
Coyote Blog has a good post on the topic, which he has covered for some time.
Really. Let’s start throwing out bad precedent, and get us some judges who aren’t afraid to question those who came before them.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Via Gay Orbit and SCOTUSblog, the Kelo decision is in, and it’s a sad day in a string of many for The Constitution. Apparently some of the Supreme Court Justices ran out of toilet paper and needed something to replace it.
Thomas dissents, naturally:
I cannot agree. If such “economic development� takings are for a “public use,� any taking is, and the Court has erased the Public Use Clause from our Constitution, as Justice O’Connor powerfully argues in dissent. Ante, at 1—2, 8—13. I do not believe that this Court can eliminate liberties expressly enumerated in the Constitution and therefore join her dissenting opinion. Regrettably, however, the Court’s error runs deeper than this. Today’s decision is simply the latest in a string of our cases construing the Public Use Clause to be a virtual nullity, without the slightest nod to its original meaning. In my view, the Public Use Clause, originally understood, is a meaningful limit on the government’s eminent domain power. Our cases have strayed from the Clause’s original meaning, and I would reconsider them.
As do O’Connor, Rehnquist, and Scalia, with Thomas.
Main Kelo V. New London page, via SCOTUSblog, links to those and the rest.
The string of property decisions of which this is but the last straw are some of the worst jurisprudence imaginable, and collectively enough of a body slam to enfeeble The Constitution beyond all recognition and rational applicability.
Perhaps our grandchildren will get themselves a new one and do a better job writing it.
Update:
Kevin also covers it nicely. His post made me think about the possible connection between real estate values/bubbliness and the concept of takings to increase tax revenues through alternate use. I also hadn’t read the majority opinion at all, so I wasn’t aware that Stevens had couched it as a states rights issue, of all things. We won’t correctly interpret or enforce the federal Constitution because protecting property is up to your state? Doh.
Update 2:
Steven Taylor also comments on the decision, and points to a comprehensive roundup at Arguing With Signposts.
Kelo-related posts:
Will The Supremes And Bad Lawyering Perpetrate A Constitutional Travesty?
United States Constitution, 1788 - 2005: Promise Unkept
Bad Precedent
Additional Kelo Fallout Thoughts
Will the Money Be Followed?
Kelo and Raich: The Root of the Supreme Court Problem?
Olek V. New London Case
Kelo and "Fair" Value
Boycotting Can Be Hard
Becker and Posner on Kelo and Eminent Domain
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
Sama on Kelo, Disney, and Boston's West End Tragedy
Was Kelo The Lost Battle That Won The War?
You Thought The Kelo Outcome Couldn't Be Worse?
Then and Now
If you really want to geek out economically, here’s where I found inflation adjustment factors to be able to compare past costs and incomes with current (2004) ones. Turns out that my income now is the equivalent of $9460 the year I was born.
One of the reasons I keep repeating the housing bubble mantra is that a mortgage on a pretty decent, typical house in 1979 comes out to $587 in today’s dollars. Try getting a house for that! No wonder it feels like what I think of as affordable. My 1979 income would be $21,560 - higher than an amount a crazy girl at my high school chided me as meaning “rich” at the time. The payment on the same house now would be $2100 in actual “what the house would sell for and what a 20 year mortgage would be” terms. That’s an $823 mortgage payment in 1979, adjusted backward only for constant dollars, rather than wealth transfer.
Wow. I mean, I knew it was bad. I knew real estate had outpaced reality. But, wow.
Related:
Rents, Housing and Inflation
Your Daily Sadie
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
For Bloggers Only: This Was Interesting If Slightly Long
Just in case you were wondering…
It is very nearly impossible to pack anything at all if Sadie insists on helping. Heh.
Happy Birthday
To blogger John Cole, who always struck me as older than 35. He’s still a youngster!
And in the “here we go again” department today we have this:
Exhausted? Check.
Queasy? Check.
Grouchy? Check.
Insanely freaking happy? Check.
See?
Yeah, I didn’t believe just one. 
I suspect the official due date will be 2/23, but I’m going with my calculations for the moment, which gave me 2/21. We’ll find out if I’m right July 5th when I see my midwife for the first time.
Yay!
Interesting List
There are some in here I didn’t even realize originated in films, and took to be long-coined phrases so useful that everyone uses them. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” for example.
“Having never gained the recognition he deserved in his own lifetime…”
Sometimes the writing of an obituary by the decedent or his family is not such a good idea:
Alas the stolen election of 2000 and living with right-winged Americans finally brought him to his early demise. Stress from living in this unjust country brought about several heart attacks rendering him disabled.
The rest of it sounds like something my mother would write for me, if she knew enough details, but that’s to be expected. It’s just sad to be made an embarrassment in death, even if it’s self-inflicted.
It’s also quite easy to leave if you’re that unhappy. Blaming your death on politics? Killing yourself or allowing yourself to lapse into death? Not worth it. You’re not making a point. You’re being a spectacle. Besides, when the whackier elements of the right try to take over, alienating the bulk of the people who voted for them, you want to be around to say “told you so.”
Via Caerdroia
Carnival of Edloe
Edloe hosts Carnival of the Cat Vanities this week. Pictures ensue.
Lying Spammy Bastards
THIS IS GOING TO BE OUR FINAL EFFORT
We have sought to contact you on quite a few periods and this will be our last contact!Your present home loan certifies you for up to a 3.70% lower rate.
However, due to our previous attempts to contact you did not succeed, this will be our last attempt to close for you the lower rate.
Really? The last one? Cool!
Except… if it’s the last contact, why do I keep receiving copies of this? Sheesh.
Your Daily Sadie
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Me and my big plans.
So for the last couple of days I’ve had a little problem: every time Sadie hears me typing she goes absolutely batshit crazy. So I suppose light posting on my part is likely to continue until I can convince her that it isn’t child abuse for mommy to talk to the nice people on the internet a few minutes a day.