Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Kelo, IOLTA and Drugs - Oh My
I’ve been sitting on these links for a couple days, waiting to get around to composing a post and making connections between disparate government policies encroaching on property. The people who say Kelo V. New London is just another brick in the wall are right, as far as it goes, but wrong in the “why be excited?” department. There’s always a last straw. There’s always the step that takes you over the cliff, where the previous steps merely walked you to the cliff’s edge. Sometimes the first step is the cliff. Sometimes the first straw is the backbreaker. Not always though. Perhaps not even frequently.
What we have here is a variant on what one of Jeff Goldstein’s commenters, George Gaskell, brilliantly wrote:
First they took our right to secede from the Union, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Southerner;
Then they came to take our money and instead issue only paper, and I did not speak out--
because I did not have very much gold;
Then they came for a tax on our incomes, and I did not speak out--
because I was not wealthy;
Then they came to socialize my retirement and health care, and I did not speak out--
because I was going to be old one day;
Then they came for my property--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
You could rewrite that with steps specific to the last part: property.
Are you familiar with IOLTA? I work for lawyers, so I knew there were checking accounts called IOLTA accounts. I’ve long wondered what the acronym stood for, finally remembering to Google it last week.
It stands for “interest on lawyer trust accounts.” Not the sort of thing I was expecting. All I knew was that one of their purposes was to handle real estate transactions, and that they absolutely had to balance impeccably or something was wrong in an “I could be in big trouble for this” sort of way.
There’s more to it than that. CATO has some history, and this article by Skip Oliva has more, particularly regarding a Supreme Court decision in a case called Phillips v. Washington Legal Foundation.
IOLTA accounts were created as a scheme to generate interest on transient client funds handled by lawyers, funneling the money to organizations run by state bar associations. Technically the interest belongs to the clients. The combination of the interest not existing until the advent of IOLTA, and presumably never had it not been created, and the fact it goes to the “good cause” of legal services for the poor means the government-sponsored theft was upheld.
Is there something worse than eminent domain, even used for unconstitutional purposes or without adequate compensation? Indeed there is, and it’s all in the name of the drug war for our own good. No more cash for you. If you carry an amount of cash the authorities deem too much, they can simply take it. They don’t even have to find drugs or charge you. If you have a lot of cash, it must be from drugs. This is outrageous on the face of it, without even looking to the Constitution for guidance.
Perhaps in the post-Kelo world, people who are outraged by one type of property rights destruction will pay attention to all of them. Think “fundamental interconnectedness of all things” people. Just because your pet violation of property is for a good cause doesn’t make it right while another is wrong. They all amount to the same thing: Evil. Anti-human, anti-life evil.
Kelo opens the floodgates of private projects that can’t bear the market, so enlist political help instead. A form of welfare, if you will. Freeport, for one, barely let the whiteout on the Fifth amendment dry before employing its license to steal.
It’s all related. It’s all wrong. Never forget that.
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?