Michigan legislative action thread
Posted on 03/26/2013 7:43:30 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Gaines Charter Township is located in Kent County, Michigan, about 13 miles due south Grand Rapids. Covering 36 square miles, the township has 3 unincorporated communities and around 25,000 people. A considerable portion of the township is composed of farms and small cattle ranches.
Vern Verduin has a 40 acre cattle ranch in Gaines Township and he’s never been any trouble to anyone until recently. Vern doesn’t like the way the country is being run. He sees the Obama administration as being what it is, a socialist government. So he decided to exercise his First Amendment rights of free speech when he placed two farming trailers in the pasture on his land.
On one trailer, he placed a large banner that read:
“Marxism/Socialism = Hunger and Poverty”
On the other trailer, he placed a second banner reading:
“Obama’s ‘Mission Accomplished,’ 8% Unemployment, 16 Trillion Debt”
His banners were visible from the nearby highway. Vern says that he’s had people stop and thank him for the banners. There have been people who were from other countries that did not have any freedom of speech that thanked him and hugged him for his messages.
The signs weren’t hurting anyone and they were on his own property, but they didn’t set too well with the township leaders who told Vern they were a violation of the sign codes and that he had to take them down. Their ordinance read that political signs could be no larger than 20 square feet and only displayed 45 days prior to an election and 10 days after an election.
Vern looked up the sign ordinances and discovered that other non-political signs could be up to 30 square feet and remain up indefinitely. This rankled his feathers and he dug his spurs in, ready for the fight, when he refused to remove the two banners.
The township dudes weren’t backing down either, so they fined Vern $50 for violating the township’s sign ordinance. It wasn’t the money but the principle that Vern decided to fight for. Fortunately, the Rutherford Institute came to bat for Vern and represented him in state district court last week.
John W. Whitehead, President of the Rutherford Institute commented on the case saying:
“Americans have a clear First Amendment right to freedom of political expression, whether that ‘expression’ takes place at a podium, on a t-shirt, a billboard, a picket sign, or on the side of a farm truck parked on private property as in the case of Vern Verduin. By denying this farmer the right to freely express his political views on his own property, no less, city officials have essentially done away with one of the key ingredients in a democracy such as ours, which is the right to freely speak our minds to and about those who represent us. It is our hope the courts will recognize and rectify this wrong.”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been driving along highways and have seen huge billboards off in someone’s field advertising fireworks or adult XXX bookstores and no one seems to care. I’ve also seen barns painted with huge advertisements on their sides. But let one lone cattle rancher put up a banner, not a sign, but a banner on the sides of his trailers that condemn President Obama and here comes the government telling him he can’t do that.
If Vern is forced by the courts to take down the banners, I would then hand paint the same message on the side of the trailer. It wouldn’t be a banner nor would it be a sign. How many tractor trailers do you see on the highway with some sort of wording, logo or image painted on it? His trailers would be no different than others, except the message painted on their sides. I wonder what the township sign lords would do then?
Hating-on-political-speech Nanny State PING!
Thanks for the ping!
Free speech? What the heck is that. Something makes me think the county boys would have no problem if the farmer's signs praised Zero....
I’m with the rancher.
More specifically, the Founding States had decided not to make the BoR's restrictions on goverment powers, evidenced by 1A's "Congress shall make no law," applicable to the states. In fact, regardless that FDR's activist justices misrepresented Jefferson's famous "wall of separation" words to kick God out of the public schools, the real Thomas Jefferson had clarified the following about the 1st and 10th Amendments. Jefferson had written that the states had made the 1st and 10th Amendments is part to reserve government power to regulate our basic 1A freedoms, regardless that the states had made 1A to prohibit Congress from doing so entirely.
"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be destroyed (emphasis added); …" --Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798.
The ratification of the 14A changed things, but not in the way that FDR's activist justices would like everybody to think imo. Regardless that Section 1 of 14A clearly states that it applied only the Constitution's privileges and immunities to the states, FDR's puppet justices wrongy argued that 14A applied BoR in its entirety, including 1A's prohibitions on Congress's powers for example, to the states. Here's an excerpt from Cantwell v. Connecticut which shows how justices inappropriately interpreted that aspect of 14A.
"The First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The Fourteenth Amendment has rendered the legislatures of the states as incompetent as Congress to enact such laws. The constitutional inhibition of legislation on the subject of religion has a double aspect." --Mr. Justice Roberts, Cantwell v. State of Connecticut, 1940.
But justices wrongly ignored that John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of 14A had officially clarified in the congressional record that 14A took away no state's rights.
"The adoption of the proposed amendment will take from the States no rights (emphasis added) that belong to the States." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 1866. (See bottom half of first column.)"No right (emphasis added) reserved by the Constitution to the States should be impaired…" --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 1871. (See top half of first column.)
"Do gentlemen say that by so legislating we would strike down the rights of the State? God forbid. I believe our dual system of government essential to our national existance." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe. (See bottom half of third column.)
In fact, Justice Reed, reflecting on Jefferson's statement that the states had reserved for themselves the responsibility for determining how far personal rights can be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, had officially noted that it is job of the courts to balance 10th Amendment-protected state powers with 14A-protected enumerated personal rights.
"Conflicts in the exercise of rights arise and the conflicting forces seek adjustments in the courts, as do these parties, claiming on the one side the freedom of religion, speech and the press, guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, and on the other the right to employ the sovereign power explicitly reserved to the State by the Tenth Amendment to ensure orderly living without which constitutional guarantees of civil liberties would be a mockery." --Justice Reed, Jones v. City of Opelika, 1942.
So Mr. Verduin, while working hard to be a good patriot, is arguably a victim of public schools not teaching students the Constitution and its history, as lawmakers had intended for it to be understood, as so many patriots are imo.
Got a barn?
yes.....he does. i drive by it every day. the trucks are a magnificent sight!
That's what I'm wondering. I am frequently in the townships along the west coast of Michigan's thumb (all beet farms and natural gas wells) and a lot of farmers paint social and political messages on their barns, regardless of the election calendar.
Yes, but living in the township doesn't mean that the sinage is in the township; that is, he might have his house in town but the particular spot on the 40-acres {or the entire 40 acres} could be outside the township.
I’m chiming in a little late. For some reason this thread showed up and I thought it was current, but I must have had a “stale” browser window open. Anyway, from the article...
“Vern Verduin has a 40 acre cattle ranch in Gaines Township.” “...when he placed two farming trailers in the pasture on his land.”
It sounds like the 40 acres is within the township, and the place where he put the trailers is on that land.
I’m in a township and the board and “Land Use Committee” make it seem like you’re living in a fiefdom. “You want to build? Maybe we’ll grant a building permit, maybe not. “ “Okay, we’ll sign off on a building permit, you can build on the exact site we say. No, it can’t be there, or there, or there. Yes, you have 90 acres (or 100, or 500) but there is only one, 1/2-acre site on which we’ll let you build.”
I recall one case where they approved a building permit for a house on a site that was a good 1/3 of a mile off the main road. But they would not approve a driveway permit. “Sure, you can build there— you just can’t put in a driveway...”
Sigh.
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