Tag Archives: private property rights in America

Why We Need To Protect Property Rights

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In 2010, I posted an article about the relationship between property ownership and the wealth of a country. The article essentially said that countries that supported private property ownership tended to be more wealthy than countries that did not. People who own things take better care of them, and property ownership is a way to pass wealth down to the next generation. As someone said–“You don’t wash a rented car.” Unfortunately, Mayor Mamdani of New York City is not aware of the relationship between property ownership and wealth.

On Wednesday, Hot Air posted an article about Mayor Mamdani’s quest to end private property. The post includes the following X post:

?ABSOLUTELY HISTORIC: 

Mayor Mamdani just unveiled his “Block by Block” housing plan to build and preserve HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of affordable homes across New York City.

The plan includes 200,000 new affordable rent-stabilized homes, billions for NYCHA repairs, stronger tenant protections, and a massive crackdown on slumlords.

“When New Yorkers can afford a home, they can afford to dream.”

This is the LARGEST municipal housing transformation proposal in modern NYC history.

Sounds good, but let’s look at the details. Notice that the homes he is talking about are rent-stabilized–not privately owned!

The article notes:

His headline program will be the new public housing projects, which everybody knows will be models of cleanliness, civility, and livability. 

Right? 

But those are just the tip of the iceberg, and not remotely the point of his program. More city-run housing units, in a city where the government is already the biggest slumlord and abuser of tenants in the country, are just more of the same failed welfare-state policies that have been around for decades. 

Mamdani has bigger plans, as he hinted at in his campaign, and confirmed with his appointment of communist nepo-baby Cea Weaver. 

Cea Weaver doesn’t believe in private property and wants homeownership eliminated, and Mamdani has a plan to begin this path through increased regulation of “slumlords.”

A “slumlord” is basically anybody who gets complaints from tenants, and it is mighty easy to organize tenants to complain about their landlords, especially when you create NGOs to organize them to do so.

The goal is to rack up complaints, charge huge fines, and foreclose on landlords who cannot afford to pay for all the fines.

…You see the strategy? It’s actually quite genius, if you want to implement communism in a society where doing so is especially difficult. Rather than putting everybody you dislike against the wall, you pile up the regulations, selectively enforce them against chosen targets, seize the property, and hand it over to government-approved groups and individuals. 

Hopefully this plan will be before a court soon and will make its way to the Supreme Court. This is a direct attack on private property ownership.

The Value Of Private Property Rights

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In 2010, I wrote an article about the relationship between private property rights and poverty. The source of the article was a post by John Stossel at Townhall. The conclusion of the article was that enforcing property rights and the rule of law breeds prosperity. Unfortunately, New York City is on the verge of forgetting that principle.

On Monday, The Post Millennial reported:

The New York City Council has passed what has been called the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) that will force private building owners to offer up their property to nonprofits and government entities before they make any private sale, effectively causing massive delays in property sales and other regulatory hurdles in the Big Apple’s housing industry.

In the scenario that it is passed, NYC will have the largest COPA program in the country. The act forces landlords to offer their property to the city as well as nonprofits before the building can be sold on the public market. The lawmaker who sponsored the law, Council Member Sandy Nurse, claims that it will be a win for New Yorkers.

“Corporate interests and big real estate tried their hardest to block the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act with a misinformation and fear-mongering campaign, and they failed,” Nurse said about the law’s passage, per Pix 11. “Today marks the beginning of a new social housing era in New York City… COPA levels the playing field and makes it possible to preserve and create thousands of permanently affordable homes across our city.”

The act dictates that landlords must first tip off the government entities and nonprofits that qualify, and “may not take any action that will result in the sale of such covered property to a person other than” those entities. Then the owner must sit on that property for 25 days as it is up for sale to the nonprofits, which can submit a statement of interest.

According to JD Supra:

COPA applies to to Class A multiple dwellings with four or more dwelling units, subject to several important limitations and timing thresholds. Owner-occupied properties for residential purposes with five or fewer units are expressly excluded. (Let’s see how long that provision is honored.)

Beginning one year after the legislation’s anticipated 2027 effective date, COPA’s scope expands. Properties may qualify as a Covered Property based on hazardous or immediately hazardous housing violations, expiring affordability restrictions, or other criteria established by HPD through future rulemaking.

The law is billed as something that is going to create affordable housing. Actually, it will simply create chaos in the New York City real estate market.

This is a definite infringement on private property rights. I hope there is a lawsuit filed as soon as the Mayor signs the bill into law.

UPDATE: Mayor Adam’s vetoed the bill on New Year’s Eve. The City Council needs a two-thirds majority to override that veto.

A Total Misuse Of The Law

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The American legal system has become so complex that someone with no respect for the law and the idea of getting something for nothing can use that complexity to his advantage. It costs a lot of money to pursue a case in court, and there are those among us who routinely take advantage of that fact.  An article posted in yesterday’s New York Daily News illustrates that point.

A family in Springfield, Ohio, was visiting a dying relative in another state. When they returned home, they found that someone had moved into their house, changed the locks, and filed legal papers claiming ownership of the house.

The video is posted on YouTube:

 

The family that actually owns the house will now have to go through a court battle to get their house back. The sad part of this is that the man who stole their house has done this a number of times before and has actually taken possession of a number of houses in this way.

One of the foundations of our society is private property rights. If we as a society are not careful to guard those rights, our society will fall into anarchy. Hopefully this man will be charged to the fullest extent of the law, and the idea of taking over other people’s houses without paying for them will become less attractive.

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Protecting The Property Rights Of Americans

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The Blaze is reporting today that Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have introduced legislation to limit the government’s power of eminent domain, the seizure of private property without the owner’s consent. This is the link to the actual legislation introduced.

The law, The Protection of Homes, Small Businesses and Private Property Act of 2012, coincides with the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Kelo v. the City of New London, which allowed the City of New London to arbitrarily take private property from one person and give it to another with the intent of increasing the city’s tax base.

On December 1, 2009, I reported on the outcome of that property seizure (rightwinggranny.com):

So let’s look at where we are now.  The taking of the property was used to lure Pfizer Pharmaceutical Company to New London to build a research center.  Pfizer Pharmaceutical Company arrived, built its New London research center on the seized property, and this week announced that it was closing the plant.  Most of the plants 1,400 employees will be relocated to nearby Groton. 

Now the City of New London won’t even have the tax revenue from the people who once lived in that area of New London.  They will simply have a vacant research center.  Poetic justice at its best.

The Supreme Court made the wrong decision in Kelo–they seriously undermined the property rights of Americans. Please follow the link above to the article at The Blaze to read about recent misuses of eminent domain. Thank goodness for Senators like John Cornyn and Rand Paul who are willing to stand up for individual property rights.

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Alabama Gets It Right

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Regular readers of this blog are familiar with Agenda 21. I have written about it a number of times (one example–rightwinggranny.com). Essentially, Agenda 21 is a UN-backed program to end private property rights in America.

Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about a move made by the Alabama legislature to pre-empt Agenda 21:

Agenda 21 has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate, but it may not have to be if in a second Obama term the Environmental Protection Agency pursues it by stealth, as it has other environmental agendas that make war on the free enterprise system and rights we hold dear.

One of those is property rights. “Land … cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market,” Agenda 21 says.

“Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes.”

The article reports on what the legislature in Alabama has done:

…Alabama recently passed Senate Bill 477 unanimously in both of its houses. The legislation bars the taking of private property in Alabama without due process and says that “Alabama and all political subdivisions may not adopt or implement policy recommendations that deliberately or inadvertently infringe or restrict private property rights without due process, as may be required by policy recommendations originating in or traceable to Agenda 21.”

We live in a representative republic that theoretically honors states’ rights. It is encouraging to know that one state recognizes the potential problems that could be caused if the federal government continues to usurp those rights. Hopefully other states will follow the example of Alabama.

 

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The End Of A Nightmare For An American Family

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Mike and Chantell Sackett bought a building lot near Priest Lake in 2005. They planned to build a house there. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had other ideas. As I reported in rightwinggranny on January 9, 2012, the lot is less than an acre and is just 500 feet from Priest Lake on its west side. It is separated from the lake by a house and a road and has no standing water or any hydrologic connection to Lake Priest or any other body of water. Nevertheless, the EPA declared their lot a wetland and threatened to fine them $30,000 every day that they did not return the lot to its original condition. Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled on the lawsuit that followed.

CNBC reported today:

In an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court rejected EPA’s argument that allowing property owners quick access to courts to contest orders like the one issued to the Sacketts would compromise the agency’s ability to deal with water pollution.

“Compliance orders will remain an effective means of securing prompt voluntary compliance in those many cases where there is no substantial basis to question their validity,” Scalia said.

In this case, the couple objected to the determination that their small lot contained wetlands that are regulated by the Clean Water Act, and they complained there was no reasonable way to challenge the order without risking fines that can mount quickly.

The value of this case is that it gives Americans a way to fight the EPA when it interferes with private property rights. Since the EPA is one of the ways some people in our government plan to institute Agenda 21(see rightwinggranny) and begin to end the concept of private property in the United States, this is a very important decision.

These are two quotes from United Nations leaders regarding private property:

“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class–involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work air conditioning, and suburban housing–are not sustainable.”  Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the UN’s 1992 Earth Summit

“Land, because of its unique nature and the crucial role it plays in human settlements, cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principle instrument of the accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes.”  This is a quote from the 1976 UN Conference on Human Settlement, held in Vancouver, Canada. Under “Section D. Land,” of the Report of Habitat, which came out of the conference. It is from the preamble and speaks of the private ownership of land.

These quotes are from rightwinggranny on December 14, 2011. I am sure the Supreme Court will be called upon to rule on private property rights in the future. The President we elect in November will have a major role in deciding who sits on the Supreme Court. If you value American’s property rights, you will vote for a Republican in November. Otherwise, you may find yourself with a Supreme Court that does not support private property rights in America.

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