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Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Eminent Domain!
Well, well, well. Did you know that the government can force you out of business, destroy your home and ruin your life if it's for "the Public Good"? The Supreme Court has ruled that Big Businesses can stomp all over small businesses, steal their property and squish their buildings! It seems the eminent domain laws have been twisted beyond comprehension for the purposes of making the rich richer. All across the country people are being forced off their land so developers can build more expensive homes and shopping malls with really cool water fountains so the cities can reap more tax dollars! There was once a time when "eminent domain" could only be used for government purposes. Now it can be used by anyone with enough dough! Isn't that swell? The US Constitution has become nothing more than toilet paper as it has been so horribly manipulated by the Supreme Court! . There is no longer freedom of the press, freedom of speech and now there is no freedom to even live in your own home. The rich have taken over this country and the Supreme Court basically says "fuck everyone else"!
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Below is the letter to the editor that my mother had published this week on this very topic.
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Is Anybody Home?
Do you think they’ll ask first when they come to bulldoze your home, or mine? Would it matter? The Supreme Court has just ruled that it is okay for our private property to be effectively stolen from us in the name of the greater good – economic development.
Whose economics and what development? And who will decide what is in the greater good? Those who have the power and wealth to do so, of course. And those who have just decided that the pocketbook of a few takes precedence over the ownership of many – an ownership earned through our blood, sweat and tears and that of our ancestors; property that has many times been in American families for generations. Seems very interesting timing with the advent of the Trans-Texas Corridor already planning a path of destruction across Texas, don’t you think?
This comes much too close for comfort on the heels of the proposed expansion of the police powers under the Patriot Act. Surely anyone familiar with history can not help but be reminded of the beginning days of the Third Reich when homes and businesses were confiscated and of the horror that followed. Nor the saying that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. We are on a very slippery descent to an America that would have been unimaginable half a decade ago.
These realizations run ice water thru my veins and bring terror to my heart, while others smile and allude to the prayer life of those making these decisions. As our current and close world seems to be escalating into one I don’t even recognize, or want to know, the words of Revelation seem more and more clear.
In my younger days at Brook Avenue, Lake Air, Richfield and MCC, I often wondered how an entire race of people concentrated in one country could be overcome without resistance by what started as a small movement. And in my many hours in the pews at Columbus Avenue Baptist, I was equally baffled by the idea that one person or system could control the buying and selling of the entire world.
With our present computer technology and cashless society, I no longer wonder about the latter, which is well in place. As for the former, I watch the news every day as the erosion of the rights and freedoms we take for granted occurs without any major dissent from the populace.
Don’t get me wrong; I know where our real home is and that there are no bulldozers there; and I yearn for that time to be accomplished. But my prayers are for all of us in the very difficult years ahead.
Benjamin Franklin once said “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”. That is often translated these days into the warning to be careful when you give up freedom for security because you will soon find you have neither.
Is anybody really home?
You mom sounds terrific!
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