Posted on 11/11/2002 1:36:55 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Now that the Republicans have full control of the presidency and both houses of Congress for the first time in 60 years, we will find out whether the party practices what it preaches.
One of the principles to which Republicans have paid lip service over the last 25 years is property rights. But is that commitment real?
One man eager to find out is a very wealthy businessman in California who has used his wealth to support mostly Democrats over the years. His name is Angelo Tsakopoulos.
His reward for all that political involvement – millions of dollars worth – has been to be told by his government that he can't farm his land the way he wants, he can't run his ranches the way he wants and he can't develop his properties the way he wants.
The latest example is a Ninth Circuit Court ruling prohibiting him from "deep plowing" former pastureland into farmland suitable for vineyards and orchards.
Why? Because plowing equals pollution, says the government.
The land in question contains "seasonal hydrological features, such as vernal pools and swales" that would be affected, the government maintains, by plowing. In layman's terms, the land is wet part of the year – swampy. Plowing might endanger those swamps and the little sea monkeys that live in them.
Tsakopoulos, unlike most farmers and ranchers in his predicament, has the money to take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court – and is doing so.
But, interestingly, President Bush's Justice Department has filed briefs opposing Supreme Court review. Justice claimed it was correct to find that plowing equals pollution.
Now, I don't like Tsakopoulos. I don't like the causes he supports. I don't like the politicians he funds. But that's not the point. This is his land. What he wants to do with it is of no concern to the government. What he wants to do with it is of no concern to his neighbors. What he wants to do with it is not pollution – it is improvement.
Turning over soil is not pollution. Pollution is adding something injurious to the environment. If turning over soil is pollution, agriculture in this country is in deep trouble.
Maybe you think Tsakopoulos is getting his just deserts. Maybe you don't feel a bit sorry for him. Maybe you think the Bush administration should stick it to him for supporting Democrats.
This is very shortsighted and dangerous thinking. Because property rights should not be used as a political football. Property rights are the basis for our very freedom in this country. If any man's property rights are threatened, all of our property rights are threatened. If the government can arbitrarily reduce the value of Tsakopoulos' land, just think what it can do to you.
As the Bush administration gets ready to reorganize with new support for its political agenda in the House of Representatives and the Senate, it would be wise to consider the case of Angelo Tsakopoulos – and all the other farmers and ranchers out West who are losing their rights to work their land.
It's time for the Republicans to live up to their rhetoric in support of property rights. It's time to get the federal government's nose out of other people's business. It's time to rethink the volumes of rules and regulations crafted to trip up just about any property owner. It's time to renew our national commitment – our constitutional commitment – to property-owners' rights.
The government has proved over and over again it is a lousy steward of natural resources. Individual property owners, with their own stake in the value of their land, have a much better track record.
This is not the Soviet Union. Nor do we want America to go the way of the Soviet Union. It's time for the government to back off – sell off the land it has been accumulating at astonishing rates and at great expense to the taxpayer, repeal the Endangered Species Act and a thousand other pieces of obnoxious legislation meant to control people rather than to protect the environment, and dump all those judges who sit over the people so contemptuously and piously like those in the Ninth Circuit.
Good article JH2!
Politics suck. Politics suck objectivity out and insert irrationality in. Sometimes a small error will be compounded over and over until it becomes a massive problem.
First of all, there is no such thing as "Restoring Property Rights." Property rights are an unalienable, natural right. We the People instituted our government to SECURE those rights....So here is Joe Farah expecting the government to give us back our power now that Republicans have control? Who is he trying to kid?
You haven't seen anything until you've seen Act 250 in Vermont!
The problem starts with the idea that government has rights in the interest of the society at large which outweigh the needs of private individuals. According to the United States Constitution, the foundation of our system of government, it is the individual who is endowed by Nature and Nature's God with rights and our elected representatives are to protect certain clearly defined aspects of those rights, and do no more. If it ain't in the Constitution as a role of government, it ain't the role of government, plain and simple.
Property ownership begins with income. When what I work to earn, my income, is taken by the government with impunity, there is no other private property that I can legally deny government access to. My income is my most basic and most private property. Or was.
We could address the fact that environmental boards are not elected by the people; the idiocy of placing the non-existent "rights" of "endangered species" above the clearly defined and Constitutionally protected rights of man; how politicians use the reams of rules and regulations piled on over the years to skirt the law themselves or to hand favors to others; the unfairness of it all. But all these issues come down in the end to the premise that government has rights. It does not.
In my thinking, this last election was the last great hope of mankind - a Republican majority in control of American government. I was wrong. When I heard Rush Limbaugh say openly on his program yesterday that we ought not to expect President Bush and our Republican majority in the House and Senate to simplify the tax code, I knew my hopes had been in vain.
I'm trying to think of a time when unconstitutional legislation was overturned, deleted, changed, rolled back, or otherwise nullified. I can't. I can only think of times when right-thinking citizens and voters were thrown bones to pacify them.
It will happen again now, even with Conservative rule in America. We will get another tax cut, or a "permanent" tax cut, but tax law itself will not change, government will not be reduced to its rightful place according to the Constitution, and the rights of American citizens as outlined therein will not be recognized.
I am forced to conclude that nothing short of revolution will accomplish the reduction in government which every one of us expected and was promised with the election of every Republican. They will tell us "it takes time," or that "we don't have enough votes," or "the Democrats are blocking us," or any number of things. But the fault will be their own, and perhaps ours for believing them.
As opposed to formers like Reagan and Gingrich, these guys are the new vote-buying-with-taxpayer-money generation. They're all proud of themselves when they steal another issue from the Dems.
Sigh. I was really hoping somebody would tell me I am wrong, and how.
OK, you're wrong. So, if you can't think of a plan, I did.
I see. Sorry, I thought freedom was about doing it for one self. My mistake.
With a carefully constructed precedent, we can bust this whole house of cards or know that we might as well start shooting. The problem is to find people with the balls, talent, and money to start. Too many, when they get the idea, all look to the government for legislation that is tantamount to permission. It isn't necessary! We can just go ahead and do this and sue when they get in the way using the same damned laws so often used against us. First, however, we must set the trap correctly and that will take a convocation of some talented people. That will take capital I don't have or you would already be reading about it in the papers.
I keep telling people, "It's in the book." What I get is, "That's too hard," "I'm too busy," "I don't have time," "We're fighting for our lives, can't you help us!"...
Sigh. I'm just one average guy who broke the bank to do this. What am I missing?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.