Free Republic

Former Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown is waging war on California suburbs because of global warming, says Joel Kotkin, a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. Brown is concerned about the alleged environmental damage caused by the suburbs. He wants to compel residents to move to city centers or to high-density developments clustered near mass transit lines: • Brown has threatened to file suit against municipalities that shun high-density housing in favor of building new suburban single-family homes, on the grounds that they will pollute the environment. • He is also backing controversial legislation -- Senate bill 375 --...

Attorney General Jerry Brown sued the county in April 2007, charging that a general plan update approved a month earlier would worsen global warming. The general plan, a blueprint for growth through 2030, projects more homes and increased traffic as the county's population continues to increase. It was the first time the state sued a public agency for not taking into account global warming. State and county officials hailed the greenhouse reduction plan that the county agreed to as groundbreaking. Julie Rynerson Rock, the county's director of land-use services, said the county's plan will be the most far-reaching in the...

Land reform in South Africa is a key ANC policy but it is going badly wrong. Rosie Goldsmith, Reporter for Radio 4 Crossing Continents, met black claimants and white farmers who are caught in the struggle over land. Bernhard Mojapelo is university educated, with a good job in the city. But his main passion in life is for a vast stretch of barren rural scrubland. Thanks to South Africa's land reform, he and his tribe have been able to lodge a claim for it. "Land is a source of life," Bernhard says. "When we were dispossessed and driven away from...

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre said on Wednesday he had filed a lawsuit against Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) and its Countrywide unit to prevent the mortgage lenders from foreclosing on homes in his city, which he aims to make a "foreclosure sanctuary."

JONESBORO, Maine - When John Cox heard about plans to turn 87 miles of inactive rail bed in Washington and Hancock counties into public trails, he hoped someone would start a petition against it.

A fisherman turned drug smuggler turned retired old salt, Floyd Brown claims he can find his way back here – one of the last Florida frontiers – without a compass from anywhere in the Gulf of Mexico. It's a skill, he says, he put to use more than once when he ferried bales of marijuana from Latin America to the Shark River in the 1970s. A direct descendant of the 19th century pirates who first settled here in these 10,000 islands, Brown is like many residents in Everglades City. Together they've managed to engineer a modern day coup in Florida:...

THE SAD ROAD TO SOCLIALISM What happens When Private Property is No Longer a Right by John Loeffler Contributor, Steel on Steel Radio Program Co-host, Financial Sense Newshour July 18, 2008 “But if the government undertakes to control and to raise wages, and cannot do it; if the government undertakes to care for all who may be in want, and cannot do it; if the government undertakes to support all unemployed workers, and cannot do it; if the government undertakes to lend interest-free money to all borrowers, and cannot do it; if .... ‘The state considers that its purpose is...

The demolition of the makeshift Fenway Park, carved by young Whiffle-ball enthusiasts out of a vacant municipal lot in Greenwich, was inevitable. In contemporary America, the ball field, right down to the U.S. flag flying in the outfield, was as The New York Times described it: a "liability nightmare, inappropriate usurpation of green space, unpermitted special use (and) drag on property values." Traffic and drainage were issues, too. So were the NIMBY neighbors whose first impulse upon arriving home from work to the sounds of kids playing outdoors — getting exercise, learning valuable life lessons, having old-fashioned, unsupervised fun and...

County Board members on July 19 voted 4-1 to support a scaled-back proposal that will legalize accessory-dwelling apartment units in single-family neighborhoods, but caps the number of units that can be approved each year. The vote wrapped up an often cantankerous, six-month community debate, and came at the tail end of a seven-hour hearing in which critics of the accessory-dwelling proposal significantly outnumbered proponents. That lopsided ratio of opponents to supporters may have been the key factor why board members agreed to limit the number of accessory units approved each year to just 28. The number was chosen because it...

“The most spectacular period of economic growth in our history is over,” they wrote, because “government is destroying two vital instruments of that growth—the system of contract rights and the large corporation.”1 Constitutional and electoral constraints on political plunder have proven ineffective, Jensen and Meckling wrote, as the courts, politicians, and regulators have revoked or attenuated property and contract rights and have attacked freedom of association as well, “especially in the civil rights arena.”2 With regard to the stock market, Jensen and Meckling forecast that because of the instability of property rights caused by government intervention, investors have become much...

HOME owners could be forced to turn their houses green before they can sell them under a proposal before the State Government. Planning Minister Justin Madden yesterday refused to comment on the proposal. The Master Builders Association wants laws to make it compulsory for owners of all existing homes to meet minimal environmental standards before they are allowed to sell them. The changes will cost each homeowner hundreds of dollars but the MBA says buyers of newly built homes are already being forced to meet five-star standards and they shouldn't be the only ones bearing the burden of helping the...

Henry Kissinger was reported to have said, “Control the food and you control the people.” Controlling people is as simple as controlling food, water and energy through a variety of controls. “No Farmers No Food,” the bumper sticker distributed by The Adopt a Farm Family ministry, is a message of warning. The Adopt ministry was started by Mary Myers, wife of Peter Myers, former Deputy Secretary of Agriculture who served in the Reagan Administration. She confided to me that God had instructed her to “watch over the food.” At that time there appeared to be no reason for concern. Now...

When George Michael placed a cross on the side of his lakefront mansion, neighbors assumed the decoration was simply a display of the man's religious faith. What his neighbors didn't know is that Michael had decided to convert his $3 million residence into the Armenian Church of Lake Bluff, qualifying him for a nearly $80,000 break on his annual property tax bill. Now, locals are questioning whether the property is a church at all. Village officials wonder how they'll be able to make up the lost revenue, and residents worry that their share of the tax burden will grow as...

Jury to York County: Highpoint land worth $17.25 million A York jury awards a Lancaster developer an additional $10 million for his former property. Daily Record/Sunday News Article Last Updated: 07/17/2008 07:35:36 AM EDT LATEST TRIAL UPDATES 3:33 p.m. -- Jury returns with a verdict. The jury decided the county should have paid a Lancaster developer $17.25 million as fair market value for his Lower Windsor Township land, when it seized it for a park. Peter Alecxih has received $7.5 million for the land so far. County solicitor Mike Flannelly said the county has 30 days to appeal, and it...

A company in Massachusetts says it trademarked the name “Rail Runner” in the nineties. And now they want New Mexico to stop using it. "Rail Runner Incorporated filed what's called an opposition to the use of New Mexico Rail Runner on September 2, 2006 with the trademark trial and appeal board of the U.S Patent and Trade Mark Office," said a spokesman for the East Coast company. The company makes a machine that they say makes it easier to move containers from trains to semis. The East Coast company is now waiting for a decision from the patent and trademark...

H.R. 415, sponsored by Rep. Barney Frank, would amend the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act to designate a commercial river since the 1800’s as part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. http://propertyrightsalliance.org/index.php?content=hr415

The Santa Fe Southern Railway says state government's Rail Runner commuter train route is being built across a piece of land the state doesn't own. Santa Fe Southern, which operates a tourist train along the rail route through Santa Fe that is being converted for use by the Rail Runner, has filed suit against the state Department of Transportation saying the department intends to put Rail Runner tracks across a tract still owned by Santa Fe Southern. Santa Fe Southern sold its 18 miles of tracks and railroad right of way between downtown Santa Fe and Lamy to the state...

Editorial: Assessment ruling won't serve state well Monday's state Supreme Court decision striking down an assessment by the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority was one more nail in the coffin of California's quality of life. Not that the court was unreasonable. The justices were interpreting Proposition 218, as convoluted and mean-spirited an anti-tax law as California voters ever passed. The 1996 initiative aimed to tighten the rules set by Proposition 13 to make it even harder for government to raise revenue, and it's succeeding all too well. Californians must come to grips with the kind of place they want...

A federal appeals court in Chicago has ruled that fair-housing laws do not extend to permitting a Jewish resident to nail a mezuzah to a door frame, prompting an outcry from the Jewish community. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling on Thursday (July 10), decided the federal Fair Housing Act does not accommodate a resident’s religious requirement to affix the Jewish emblem to a doorway, if the ban on hallway displays applies to everyone regardless of religious beliefs. The case stems from the condominium association at Shoreline Towers, a Chicago housing complex, enforcing a rule...

(IsraelNN.com) An American court of appeals has ruled in a split decision against the right of Jews to post the traditional mezuzah on the doorposts of a condominium apartment if the bylaws of the building prohibit signs and objects on outside doors. The mezuzah contains parchment with verses from the Torah and is an ancient tradition commanded by the Torah before the Exodus of Jews from Egypt. We cannot create an accommodation requirement for religion. In the 2-1 decision, the court stated, "The hallway rule ... is neutral with respect to religion. It bans photos of family vacations, political placards,...

California high court strikes down Santa Clara County open space tax The California Supreme Court today struck down a special fee on Santa Clara County homeowners used to pay for open space acquisition, possibly wiping out more than $50 million collected over the past seven years for parks, trails and other services. In a unanimous ruling, the justices found that the 2001 special assessment by the county's Open Space Authority violated Proposition 218, a 12-year-old voter-approved law known as the "Right to Vote on Taxes Act." Proposition 218 was designed to limit local governments' ability to raise revenue without voter...

Washington state wildlife biologists who conducted a "howling survey" believe a gray wolf pack may be living in western Okanogan County. Washington state wildlife biologists who conducted a "howling survey" believe a gray wolf pack may be living in western Okanogan County. Biologists conducted the survey in the area on July 7. They made wolf-like howls in several areas, and heard both adult and juvenile howls in response. The Department of Fish and Wildlife says that if confirmed, it would be Washington's first known resident wolf pack since the species disappeared from the state in the 1930s. While individual wolves...

A Cumbrian hill farmer who planned to build a sheep shelter in the fells, near Buttermere, may have to pay thousands of pounds for an archaeological dig after evidence of an 800-year-old dairy farm was discovered on the land... Buttermere hill farmer, Willie Richardson, who owns his own farm, Gatesgarth, one of the biggest in the Lake District... has been waiting eight months for a decision from the Lake District National Park Authority (LDNPA) on his plans for the 1,235 square metre shelter at Gatesgarth Farm, Buttermere. Now the work has been delayed indefinitely after an archaeological officer visited the...

Many angry landowners have contacted us about a plan that, contrary to good public policy, will negatively impact property rights of rural Texans from Roberts to Jack County. The brand-new Roberts County Fresh Water Supply District No. 1, acting as an alter ego of businessman T. Boone Pickens and Mesa Power Pampa, LLC, has launched a private venture that may force landowners in 11 counties to submit to the power of eminent domain so they can pump water from the shrinking Ogallala Aquifer and sell wind-generated electricity. This new governmental entity is composed of only five people, all employees or...

Welcome to Hyattsville, population 15,000, where the downtown looks more like New York City and the neighborhoods more like Iowa. The City Council this spring passed a law reaffirming residents' rights to grow vegetables on front lawns. Three months later, some residents have 8-foot-high corn patches in front of their homes, and neighbors say they don't mind. "I think some people might consider different types of landscapes unsightly, just like different painting schemes or building additions - which may increase or decrease property values - but it is still permitted by our code," Mayor William F. Gardiner said. Residents always...

WEB VOTE Should Disney be able to stop employees from bringing guns to work? Yes. No.

Small-town leaders in Central Texas think they’ve found cracks in the Trans-Texas Corridor’s armor. By PETER GORMAN BARTLETT — Sitting in Lois and Jerry’s Restaurant, surrounded by a blue-jean and overalls lunch crowd, Mae Smith and Ralph Snyder don’t look like giant-killers. In fact, the small-town mayor (5’ 2”) and the salvage shop owner (6’ 6”) look more like a Mutt and Jeff comedy team. But along with mayors, business leaders, and farmers in Bell County, north of Austin, and their counterparts in several other parts of the state, Smith and Snyder are taking on a Texas Goliath — the...

Prince William County, Virgina's crackdown on illegals - one year later. From the Washington Post. Gotta love this first part. It seems not all people fully appreciate the great multi-cultural influences that diversity brings to a neighborhood. The family that planted corn in the front yard of their $500,000 home is gone from Carrie Oliver's street. So are the neighbors who drilled holes into the trees to string up a hammock. Oliver's list goes on: The loud music. The beer bottles. The littered diapers. All gone. When she and her husband, Ron, went for walks in their Manassas area neighborhood,...

Walt Disney World fired a security guard on Monday after he protested the company's decision not to allow people with concealed weapons permits to keep guns in their cars on Disney property. Disney terminated Edwin Sotomayor, 36, of Orlando for violating three Disney employee policies, essentially for failing to cooperate with an internal investigation, said spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez. Sotomayor vowed to continue his fight. At issue is Florida's new law that allows people with concealed weapons permits to keep firearms in their vehicles in employee parking lots. Disney advised its employees late last month that the theme-park resort is exempt...

ONTARIO — Although he lives just a few hundred yards from the longest-running nuclear power plant in the United States, Kevin Taillie has a recurring nightmare of a bulldozer — not a nuclear blast — leveling his house. The 46-year-old has lived his entire life in a modest, one-story cottage adjacent to the Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in Ontario, Wayne County. Now, after a four-year legal clash with Ginna owner Constellation Energy Group that has cost him more than $100,000, Taillie is on the verge of eviction. The power plant overlooks the southern shore of Lake Ontario, about 20 miles...

In a case that could determine how far local governments can go in limiting forest-clearing across entire watersheds, a state appeals court ruled Monday that a King County law went too far. Rural property-rights advocates hailed the decision as repudiating excessive regulation, while environmentalists said it could degrade some of the county's most pristine streams and further jeopardize Puget Sound's threatened chinook salmon. A three-judge Court of Appeals panel ruled that the 2004 clearing and grading ordinance — part of a package of laws collectively but imprecisely called the critical-areas ordinance — is an indirect but illegal "tax, fee, or...

BIG SUR -- As flames swirled toward their family homestead, the Curtis brothers figured they'd get no help and had no choice: The only way to hold on to their 55-acre compound would be to fight fire with fire. In the end, the controlled burn they set helped save the homes on their beloved Apple Pie Ridge -- but not without major consequences.

Exactly as some legal experts predicted, Boulder's courts saw a spike in claims of "adverse possession" filed by people apparently trying to beat the clock on changes to the controversial land law. Of the 25 active adverse-possession lawsuits in Boulder County -- where a person or company claims someone else's land after trespassing on it for at least 18 years -- 15 of those cases were filed in June Some of those cases were filed just hours before changes to the law went into effect last Tuesday, court records show. The changes, drafted by a bipartisan group of state legislators...

Bobby Jindal signs bill giving employees the right to have firearms in their automobiles "on company property".

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- A new state law went on the books Tuesday saying people could bring guns to work if they kept them locked in their car. Disney, though, said it was exempt from the new law and its 62,000 employees needed to keep their guns at home. Friday, a worker who protested the park’s decision told Channel 9 he was suspended. The worker was well aware that he could end up losing his job when he took the gun to work Friday morning, but said that the principle at stake means enough to him that he was willing...

hursday,Do you ever wonder why America initiated and then dominated the oil exploration and discovery industry. Its because Thomas Jefferson decided that along with the monarchy, the aristocrats and landed titles, the American Revolution would also throw out the (literally) medieval notion that although a man could own his own land, what was under it belonged to the king.

Sheriff's detectives conducted a proper search of the home of a youth pastor even without a warrant, a Manatee County judge ruled Thursday. The ruling shot down a defense challenge and now means prosecutors can use videotapes and hidden cameras seized in the voyeurism investigation last year. Authorities did not need a warrant to search the home of Bethel Baptist Church youth pastor Matthew C. Porter because a friend who had been house-sitting agreed to let detectives inspect Porter's home in Ellenton, Manatee County Judge George K. Brown Jr. determined. The detectives, the judge said, acted reasonably. Investigators say Porter,...

...So when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought June 4, Hartridge decided it was only right to let her front lawn die to save water. "The whole water conservation ethic is very important to me," said Hartridge, a state employee who bikes or rides the bus to work. But that ethic didn't agree with her neighbors, or with the city. Before Hartridge could plan new landscaping, a neighbor complained to the city about her brown lawn, and the Code Enforcement Department slapped the family with a citation. Their small brick home was declared a "public nuisance" in violation of...

The Prince George's County Revenue Authority, its tax receipts sputtering as home prices plunge, has adopted a novel way to brake the slide. By cracking down on front lawns that resemble used-car lots and on trucks parked in residential areas, the authority reckons it can collect some of the $15 million in unpaid tickets and make neighborhoods more attractive to potential home buyers and prospective businesses. "A lot of the enforcement is for aesthetics because things are disorderly looking, but we also want to increase property values and make the community more livable," said Troy Thompson, director of parking operations...

A Nigerian couple who are victims of a mortgage mix-up filed a lawsuit Monday in Williamson County against the company that removed everything they owned from the house, including family heirlooms, furniture and even food from the pantry. Bobo and Joy Dickson are suing Field Asset Services Inc. for failing to return their property. The lawsuit seeks money for the lost property plus compensatory damages, and called the company's conduct "malicious, callous and wanton." EMC Mortgage Corp., the Lewisville company that held the previous owner's loans, has apologized to the Dicksons. On Monday, EMC's parent company, banking giant JPMorgan Chase,...

Homeowners: 'Someone Is Going To Get Hurt'SANFORD, Fla. -- Families in a crime-ridden Central Florida neighborhood are arming themselves with shotguns and talking about adding electric barbed wire to stop thieves targeting their homes. "Somebody is going to end up getting hurt," resident Andrea Fine said. "The homeowners are tense. We are all on edge. For the first time in my life I'm really scared to live in my home."

WINTER - Wind chimes play softly in the trees along the sawdust-paved foot path leading to the rural home of Febe Dancier and Machel Piper. Bumper stickers plastered on the women's van near the road leave no doubts about how they feel about government and war. At the end of the path in a clearing stands a tiny, rustic cottage straight out of a fairy tale. It's mostly made of mud, straw and tree limbs and adorned with dangling beads, banners and glass bottles. Herbs fill neat rows of jars on a shelf. The home has no electricity, indoor plumbing...

Governor Vetoes Eminent Domain Legislation Override Sought as Lawmakers Enter Final Day of Session Governor Minner has vetoed legislation which would have placed tight restrictions on when a government could resort to the use of eminent domain to confiscate property. Legislation passed in the General Assembly last week would have kept a government from using eminent domain to promote economic development. Businesses near the Wilmington riverfront have been concerned that the city wants to take their property to keep development moving forward. Some of those property owners will be on hand to urge lawmakers to override the Governor's veto. Lawmakers...

RULE 445. WOOD BURNING DEVICES (a) Purpose The purpose of this rule is to reduce the emission of particulate matter from wood burning devices. (c) Definitions (4) FIREPLACE means any permanently installed masonry or factory-built device used for aesthetic or space-heating purposes and designed to operate with an air-to-fuel ratio greater than or equal to 35-to-1. (18) WOOD BURNING DEVICE means any fireplace, wood burning heater, or pellet fueled wood heater, or any similarly enclosed, permanently installed, indoor or outdoor device burning any solid fuel for aesthetic or space-heating purposes, which has a heat input of less than one million...

Thousands of shorefront property owners and builders across the state are on a crash course to understand a new permit system that goes into effect tomorrow. Effective July 1, a state shoreland permit is required for excavation, filling and construction within 250 feet of shore if minimum standards for maintaining the lot's natural state are not met. Those standards are outlined in the new Comprehensive Shoreland Protection Act (RSA 483-B). ...... "It is impossible to figure out unless you are an engineer or a scientist," he said. "My basic thing is that the restrictions are so strict. In my mind...

Norman Baker is an American hero who has been detained against his will for more than three years. His "crime": owning too much property. 
 His sentence: a court-appointed guardianship on the brink of costing him everything he spent his life building.

...A clear majority wants smoking banned in all homes, even if children are not present, and even if the smoke is not drifting into an adjoining dwelling. This could expand the latest front in the war to protect nonsmokers, says the man who started the nonsmokers’ movement by getting smoking first restricted and then banned on airplanes and then in workplaces and public places, and who is racking up victories in the battle to ban smoking in private dwellings and cars...

CONFER: Protecting property rights By Bob Confer The Tonawanda News When our founding fathers penned the Declaration of Independence they noted we are endowed with unalienable rights which include “…Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Happiness was used as an all-inclusive term, but it had its basis in the property rights of the individual. This focus was borrowed from the writings of British philosopher John Locke who emphasized life, health, liberty, and property rights in writings that appeared over a century before the Declaration. Recognizing Locke’s influence on our nation’s principles is the key to understanding just exactly what...

In her two great works--The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Economy of Cities—Jane Jacobs explained that effective economic development and urban renewal arise from the bottom up as the product of thousands of enterprises and people working on their own without a master plan, rather than from the top down, as planned by politicians or bureaucrats. The vibrancy and diversity of city markets and neighborhoods lie in “the creation of incredible numbers of different people and different private organizations, with vastly differing ideas and purposes, planning and contriving outside the formal framework of public action,” she...

Dear GOAL members, We urge you to contact your local Senator and urge them not to support S.540. Amended Version of Bill Could Close all Land to Hunting that is Not Posted as Open! During this present legislative session, GOAL has alerted our members to a bill that all sportsmen and wildlife conservationists should be concerned about. S540 "Resolve Establishing a Wildlife Management Commission" is designed to "end run" the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife seven person board and give the animal rights extremists a platform from which to spread their propaganda. Keep in mind that the only wildlife management...