Out of the pages of Amity Shlaes' "The Forgotten Man" - Obama: Campaigning Like It's 1936

Obama's got FDR beat. He ran up Federal spending from 18% to 24% of our economy! We are now on the path to 30% of government spending of the GDP. And as shown in Mark Steyn's After America: Get Ready for Armageddon:

"on current projections, by 2020 all it will take to finance the government of the United States is for the rest of the planet to be willing to sink 19 percent of its GDP into U.S. Treasury debt."

Obama: Campaigning Like It's 1936 - Forbes

Merrill Matthews 10/28/2011

While Republican presidential candidates are looking forward by proposing variations of a flat income tax, President Barack Obama’s tax-the-rich campaign strategy is lookingbackward—to Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 reelection campaign. FDR won his reelection, but the American people lost: Roosevelt’s new taxes on business and the “economic royalists” gave us the “Roosevelt recession” of 1937-38.

By August of 1935, Roosevelt had achieved some of his signature pieces of legislation: a new entitlement program known as Social Security, banking reform, pro-union reform, infrastructure expansion and massive transfers of wealth to the poor and middle classes. Sound familiar?

FDR also ran up federal spending significantly: from 6 percent to 9 percent of the economy.

-read on at link-

What's the worry for them, it's not their money. Second Energy Department-backed company goes bankrupt

Second Energy Department-backed company goes bankrupt - The Hill's E2-Wire

By Ben Geman - 10/31/11

A Massachusetts company that received a $43 million Energy Department loan guarantee last year filed for bankruptcy Sunday, a step certain to fuel criticism of federal green energy financing in the wake of the solar company Solyndra’s collapse.

Beacon Power Corp., which develops energy storage systems, filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.
Beacon Power had received a federal loan guarantee to help build an energy storage plant in Stephentown, N.Y., that began operating in January. The Treasury Department’s Federal Financing Bank provided the loan. ....

The Beacon bankruptcy comes roughly two months after the California solar panel maker Solyndra, which had received a $535 million Energy Department (DOE) loan guarantee in 2009, went belly up and laid off 1,100 workers.

Solyndra’s collapse unleashed a torrent of GOP-led attacks on the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program.
-read on at link-

Ultimate Cronies: Goldman Sachs & Jon Corzine - and MF Global goes bankrupt, is 1st U.S. casualty of European crisis

MF Global goes bankrupt, is 1st U.S. casualty of European crisis - latimes.com

Psychopathological, as always; The very angry first lady Michelle Obama

America causes her mental distress, abnormal and maladaptive behavior.

It forces her to get away for several weeks to Spain, Botswana, South Africa and Martha's Vineyard (is that part of America?).

She's had this condition for a long time. It was reflected in her 'vapid' college papers that were published in National Review in 2008.

CURL: The very angry first lady Michelle Obama - Washington Times

10-31-11 By Joseph Curl

Michelle’s back, and she’s madder than ever. She was already pretty angry, seemingly unhappy with just about everything. As her husband wrapped up the Democratic nomination in 2008, she let fly her real feelings: “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.” A few months into her job as first lady, her French counterpart asked how she liked the gig: “Don’t ask!” she reportedly spat. “It’s hell. I can’t stand it!”

She even seems to be mad at her silver-tongued husband. When the two were to set off on a luxurious 10-day vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, she left early - four hours early - and flew up alone. And those private vacations. She’s traveled to some of the world’s most plush resorts, taking 42 days off in the past year - that’d be eight weeks of vacay time if she held down a normal job.

Now, she is ready to spew her bilious disgust with America on the campaign trail. A dignified, transcendent first lady? No chance. Michelleis going to break with a hundred years of tradition and play the role of attack dog, heaping derision on her husband’s political opponents like no other first lady before her. ...

...Michelle will tell all who will listen that Republicans want to poison the air and water, stifle free speech, oppress the religious. She will offer not an uplifting vision of what her husband’s America could be but only a vapid view of what Republicans’ America would be.

That is the America she lives in, and by campaign’s end, it will be clear that she’s no longer “proud of my country.” Maybe she never really was.

And While they are smearing Cain, Why Not Go After Clarence Thomas for bad measure!?

The American Spectator : Doubting Thomas

Trick no Treat! Coulter: Politico's Smear Of Cain Shows Liberal Media "Terrified Of Strong, Conservative, Black Men"

Coulter: Politico's Smear Of Cain Shows Liberal Media "Terrified Of Strong, Conservative, Black Men"

Big Fat Top Heavy Corruption over everything! Teaching Your Child to be a Dictator’s Lackey

Major Strasser: What is your nationality?
Rick: I'm a drunkard.
Captain Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world.

-from "Casablanca" (1942)

Forced admiration for the UN propaganda was being foisted on the classrooms back when I went to school 1n the 1950's. Lenin, Stalin and Mao would be proud. It is Victory of the proletariat over we petty bourgeois simpletons. The Capitalist state just melts away in a perfect United Nation's World. There will be just a few 'inspired administrators' required to watch over us to keep us in line and siphon off our 'excess' funds. Just as the UN is now.

Teaching Your Child to be a Dictator’s Lackey | FrontPage Magazine

By Daniel Greenfield On October 31, 2011

Imagine your child’s school teaching him how wonderful dictatorships are by having him and his friends model their very own group of dictatorships as part of their education. Like so many other Orwellian nightmares in the American educational system, this one is very real and takes place through the Model UN program.

The Model UN program teaches American students that global government is better than national government and that the corrupt kleptocracy on Turtle Bay is the ideal state of mankind. Finally it trains them to put American presidents on trial for violating United Nations laws.

Twenty-two Model UN events are scheduled to take place in November alone and many more are set to follow month after month throughout the school year as the advocates of global government exploit the school system to indoctrinate a new generation in their roles as servants of the conclave of totalitarian regimes....

Empires have traditionally secured the conquest of provinces by taking “hostages” from the families of the upper classes to be raised in their culture and taught to admire the empire holding them captive. The Model UN extends this into the United States where the “hostages” go on living with their families, while being taught to betray their country and serve a global empire instead. The Global Classrooms project and the Model UN are vehicles for promoting a global government run by the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the People’s Republic of China and no entity that teaches students to betray their allegiance to their country has any place in the American classroom.

-read more at above link-

Right on schedule, strange how these accusations never seem to happen to Black Dems: Two women accused Herman Cain of inappropriate behavior

Exclusive: Two women accused Herman Cain of inappropriate behavior - Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman and Anna Palmer and Kenneth P. Vogel - POLITICO.com

0/30/11

During Herman Cain’s tenure as the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, at least two female employees complained to colleagues and senior association officials about inappropriate behavior by Cain, ultimately leaving their jobs at the trade group, multiple sources confirm to POLITICO.

The women complained of sexually suggestive behavior by Cain that made them angry and uncomfortable, the sources said, and they signed agreements with the restaurant group that gave them financial payouts to leave the association. The agreements also included language that bars the women from talking about their departures.

Red Diapers for Mr. Poopy Pants

Adult Babies - Mark Steyn - National Review Online

Oc. 29, 2011

There’s almost nothing you can’t get government to pay for.

Last Thursday was officially “Diaper Need Awareness Day” in the State of Connecticut. Were you aware of it? There are so many awareness-raising days, it’s hard to keep track. Maybe we could have an Awareness-Raising Day Awareness Day. At any rate, the first annual Diaper Need Awareness Day was proclaimed by Dan Malloy, governor of the Nutmeg State, and they had a big old awareness-raising get-together in New Haven. It’s not clear yet whether they’ve got an official ribbon. We’re running a bit low on ribbon colors these days: It’s not just pink ribbons for breast cancer, but also teal for agoraphobia, periwinkle for acid reflux, pink-and-blue ribbons for amniotic fluid embolisms, and pinstripe ribbons for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. We could use a Ribbon-Hue Awareness Day to raise awareness about how we’re falling behind in the race for more ribbon colors.

If you’re wondering what sentient being isn’t aware of diapers, you’re missing the point: Connecticut representative Rosa DeLauro is raising awareness of the need for diapers in order to, as Politico reported, “push the Federal Government to provide free diapers to poor families.” Congresswoman DeLauro has introduced the DIAPER Act — that’s to say, the Diaper Investment and Aid to Promote Economic Recovery Act. So don’t worry, it’s not welfare, it’s “stimulus.” As Fox News put it, “A U.S. congresswoman in Connecticut wants to boost the economy by offering free diapers to low-income families.” And, given that sinking bazillions of dollars into green-jobs schemes to build eco-cars in Finland and a federal program to buy guns for Mexican drug cartels and all the other fascinating innovations of the Obama administration haven’t worked, who’s to say borrowing money from the Chinese politburo and sticking it in your kid’s diaper isn’t the kind of outside-the-box thinking that will do the trick?

In fact, the federal government already provides free diapers for at least one lucky American. Stanley Thornton Jr. of California receives Supplementary Security Income disability checks from the Social Security Administration in order to sit around the house all day wearing a giant diaper and a giant onesie, sucking on a giant pacifier and playing with a giant baby rattle. Stanley Jr. runs a website for fellow “adult babies” called BedWettingABDL.com. I believe I first heard of the “adult baby” phenomenon some years ago in London. If memory serves, there was a club, and the members lay around in giant cribs being read bedtime stories by a bosomy nanny. Minor celebrities and possibly backbench Tory members of Parliament may have been involved. In those days, it was what we called a “fetish” and you had to do it on your own dime. Now it’s a “disability” and the United States government picks up the tab. And, if that’s not progress, what is?

Sen. Tom Coburn happened to catch Stan with his babysitter and fellow disability-check recipient on a reality show, and wondered how a chap capable of running a popular website and doing such complicated carpentry jobs as his own giant highchair could be legitimately classified as “disabled.” But the Social Security Administration said Junior qualifies, and Senator Coburn was condemned as heartless: Why, if those mean Republicans got their way, the streets would be crawling with giant babies bawling, “I want my mommy!” Conversely, if Congresswoman DeLauro gets her way and the stampede for government Huggies gets going, Stanley Thornton Jr. will still be entitled to park his giant pedal car in the disabled space while the penniless single mom from Hartford has to leave the Toyota at the back of the lot and hike in. ....

.... Congresswoman DeLauro is thinking too small: Maybe we could all be issued with free diapers. As a casual glance at the headlines suggests, there’s almost nothing you can’t get government to pay for, but that’s no reason not to demand more. At its core, the “Occupy Wall Street” movement (in the political rather than the diaper-filling sense) is a plea for ever more extended adolescence funded at public expense. Don’t knock it. Dozing around listening to drum circles all day is more dangerous than it looks. Last week, several dozen members of “Occupy Las Vegas” occupying land located under the final approach to Runway 19 at McCarran International Airport narrowly missed being hit by a 50-pound slab of what’s euphemistically known as “blue ice” that fell from the bathroom of the president’s plane. Perhaps, as a symbol of the new post-self-reliant America of adult babies, Air Force One should be fitted with a giant diaper.

.... -go to the above link-

50 pound slab of blue ice falls off Air Force One narrowly missing “Occupy Las Vegas” protesters

This was covered-up by most of the US News Sources. Thanks to Mark Steyn for pointing this story out.

Obama has been dropping blue ice on America even before he was a 'Community Organizer' in Chicago.

50 pound slab of blue ice falls off Air Force One narrowly missing “Occupy Las Vegas” protesters

Steve Miller Monday, October 24, 2011

LAS VEGAS - A group of several dozen “Occupy Las Vegas” protesters camping on Clark County land located under the final approach to Runway 19 at McCarran International Airport today narrowly missed being injured when a 50 lb. slab of “blue ice” reportedly landed within feet of their tents.

According to witnesses, the slab fell to earth seconds after Air ForceOne passed overhead while landing.

Blue ice is the frozen material formed by leaks in commercial aircraft lavatory waste tanks, a mixture of human waste and vivid blue liquid disinfectant that freezes at high altitude. The ice generally dissipates long before the aircraft lands, but there have been documented cases of blue ice clinging to aircraft surfaces until the aircraft reaches warmer air on approach to landing, then the ice may separate from the aircraft and fall to earth.

-see above link-

New York’s Marxist epicenter

Charles Gasparino: Wall Street Traders are idiots.

Occupy Wall Street’s Marxists--Charles Gasparino - NYPOST.com

October 17, 2011 By CHARLES GASPARINO

The standard portrayal of the Wall Street protesters goes something like this: Ragtag group of unemployed young adults, venting often incoherent but overall legitimate populist outrage about economic inequality. But go down to the movement’s headquarters, as I did this past weekend, and you see something far different.

It’s not just that knowledge of their “oppressors” -- the evil bankers -- is pretty thin, or that many of them are clearly college kids with nothing better to do than embrace the radical chic of “a cause.” I found a unifying and increasingly coherent ideology emerging among the protesters, which at its core has less to do with the evils of the banking business and more about the evils of capitalism -- and the need for a socialist revolution.

It’s not an overstatement to describe Zuccotti Park as New York’s Marxist epicenter. Flags with the iconic face of the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara are everywhere; the only American flag I saw was hanging upside down. The “occupiers” openly refer to each other as “comrade,” and just about every piece of literature on offer (free or for sale) advocated socialism in the Marxist tradition as a cure-all for the inequalities of the American economic system.

Read more:http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/new_york_marxist_epicenter_gVrMJIKezP82E3Gkki2IvO#ixzz1cBM2dver

$10m fee to Tea Parties But Free for Occupy Richmond - Just Like the News, Different Standards

What else could be expected from an 'open-minded', liberal Democrat mayor and city council, and a city that voted overwhelmingly (79%) for Obama in 2008.

Open Thread: Will Tea Parties Be Reimbursed? | NewsBusters.org

By NB Staff | October 28, 2011

Nationwide, Tea Party groups are upset by the double standard applied to their rallies and Occupy Wall Street protests. While Tea Party groups typically are required to pay a fee to use a park for a one-day rally, OWS protestors have set up camp in the same parks for days at no cost.

One Tea Partier, Colleen Owens of Richmond, VA, is taking action, demanding that the Richmond City Council refund the $10,000 that the Richmond Tea Party was charged for their Kanawha Plaza rallies, the same venue Occupy Richmond protestors have been using at no charge.

Owens is not the only Tea Partier demanding fairer treatment. Do you think any of the Tea Parties will be successful in having their money reimbursed? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Owens, along with others, believe that the OWS protestors are getting a free pass to break the law and not pay permit fees. According to FOX News Radio's Todd Starnes, Tea Party activists are growing increasingly frustrated with the situation:

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb-staff/2011/10/28/open-thread-will-tea-parties-be-reimbursed#ixzz1cB8KOxOK

Where the Plantation System and Racism Dominates: MSNBC

Liberals and Democrats want to make sure they only have one kind of Negro on their plantation.

Why do libs support Obama, Holder, Wright, Jackson, Rangel, the Black Caucus and the other race pimps?

TO KEEP THEM IN THEIR PLACE as their kind of Negro!

They have only hurt Black America.

Black Americans have progressed through their own self reliance, not by being lackeys to these pimps and parasites.

MSNBC Analyst: GOP Sees Herman Cain as a 'Black Man Who Knows His Place' | The Weekly Standard

OCT 28, 2011 • BY MICHAEL WARRE - short post here-

On Martin Bashir's television program this afternoon, Democratic strategist and MSNBC analyst Karen Finney said that Republicans are supporting Herman Cain because of his race:

"One of the things about Herman Cain is, I think that he makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel like they are not racist because they can like this guy," Finney said. "I think he giving that base a free pass. And I think they like him because they think he's a black man who knows his place. I know that's harsh, but that's how it sure seems to me."

"Thank you for spelling that out," Bashir responded.

This isn't the first time liberals have made this kind of charge about Cain and his supporters. During an online production of NBC's Meet the Press this week, Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland said white voters support Cain to show they aren't racist. “I think when [members of the Tea Party] can vote for a Herman Cain and hear him say the things that he says they feel like, ‘Well, you know, I can, I support this guy and...so it shows that I’m not racist and I’m supportive,'" Cummings told host David Gregory.

Liberal comedienne Janeane Garafalo told Current TV host Keith Olbermann earlier this month that Cain is popular with Republicans because it "hides the racist element" of the party. Watch that video here.

Another reason to boycott facebook! Bucks County Family Burglarized After Leaving Details About Vacation Facebook

Facebook = dumbass

Bucks County Family Burglarized After Leaving Details About Vacation Facebook « CBS Philly

October 28, 2011

NEWTOWN TOWNSHIP, Pa. (CBS) – Police in Bucks County allege a man used a friend’s posting on Facebook about going on vacation as an opportunity to steal valuables from the victim’s home.

When a Facebook friend indicated that he was on vacation, Newtown Township Police say Steve Piecznyski, 36, stole jewelry, coins and 120 DVD’s from a home on Robin Road in Wrightstown Township in late September.

Investigators say a neighbor of the victims wrote down a license plate of a suspicious car in the neighborhood and that car was later traced to Piecznyski.

According to investigators, they later realized that Piecznyski and the victim were friends on Facebook. Piecznyski was arrested on October 20th.

No, more computers will not fix our broken schools

Manhattan Moment: No, more computers will not fix our broken schools | The Examiner | Columnists | Washington Examiner

"Dance a Little Side Step"

What the Hell did he say?

Same as usual, not a damn thing.

Boehner Won't Rule Out 'Balanced Budget Amendment' That Permits Unlimited Federal Spending | CNSnews.com

By Matt Cover

October 27, 2011

(CNSNews.com) – House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) indicated at a press briefing Thursday that the House Republican leadership is not ruling out the possibility that it will support a balanced budget amendment that does not cap federal spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product or require a supermajority in Congress to increase taxes.

Italian govenment buys 19 Maserati supercars despite austerity cuts

Italian govenment buys 19 Maserati supercars despite austerity cuts

10-28-11 By Nick Squires

Italy may be in the midst of a savage austerity drive but that has not stopped defence ministry officials ordering a fleet of armoured Maseratis to ferry themselves around Rome.

The delivery of the 19 top-of-the-range executive cars has raised eyebrows at a time when the country is meant to be shaving billions off its public spending.

Opposition MPs said it was it was an outrageous indulgence at a time when the defence ministry is supposed to be reducing its budget by €2.5bn (£2.2bn) over the next three years.

Barack Obama is the decline and despair president – with Carter, part 2

Why Barack Obama is the decline and despair president – Telegraph Blogs

By Nile Gardiner October 27th, 2011

This week, The Hill newspaper published a poll that is dispiriting to anyone concerned about the future of America as the world's leading power. It was one of the most damning yet, illustrating just how far most Americans believe their country has fallen in recent years. According toThe Hill:

More than two-thirds of voters say the United States is declining, and a clear majority think the next generation will be worse off than this one, according to the results of a new poll commissioned by The Hill.

A resounding 69 percent of respondents said the country is “in decline,” the survey found, while 57 percent predict today’s kids won’t live better lives than their parents. Additionally, 83 percent of voters indicated they’re either very or somewhat worried about the future of the nation, with 49 percent saying they’re “very worried.”

The results suggest that Americans don’t view the country’s current economic and political troubles as temporary, but instead see them continuing for many years.

At the same time, international perceptions of American power are also worsening. A September report conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found a growing number of respondents in 18 countries questioning America’s ability to remain ahead of its main competitor China.

-read more at link-

Why do they keep horses and animals if they won't keep and care for them?Man Arrested For Animal Cruelty; Horse Rescue Foundation In Need Of Help

These people are mentally ill. They are akin to the people who keep dozens of cats or dogs, the woman in Connecticut with a full grown Chimpanzee that turned murderous or the suicidal loon who had dangerous wild cats and primates on his property in Ohio. Sadly, there is more of this that is hidden.

It happens too much with horses because of their large feed and other requirements. As beautiful and big and strong as Horses are, they are deceptively delicate, and they are susceptible to a broad range of maladies, this makes them high in maintenance and expense.

It is a sad allegory for human behavior. These are people who think themselves as 'do-gooders,' saving man and beast. The same thing is true with sanctimonious bureaucrats who created and perpetuated Indian Reservations and Public Housing. ♘

NorCal Man Arrested For Animal Cruelty; Horse Rescue Foundation In Need Of Help « CBS Sacramento

October 27, 2011

EL DORADO HILLS (CBS13) -– A Northern California animal rescue group may need some rescuing of its own after helping save dozens of horses in what some are describing as the worst cases of animal cruelty they’ve witnessed.

Volunteers from The Grace Foundation in El Dorado Hills were not prepared for the conditions it found on a Northern California ranch in April, where the carcasses of 25 horses littered the property, many just the skeletal remains.

“It was just a graveyard for horses,” said Beth DeCaprio of The Grace Foundation. “It was the worst case I had ever seen.”

If I Were a Liberal … I would be insane!

Jimmy Carter and Barack Hussein Obama have worked hard to level America to third world status.

Obama’s jobs bill tackles the problem of rape and murder by giving the states $30 billion … for public school teachers.

If I Were a Liberal … | FrontPage Magazine

By Ann Coulter On October 28, 2011

If I were a liberal, I would have spent the last week in shock that a Democratic audience in Flint, Mich., cheered Vice President Joe Biden’s description of a policeman being killed. (And if I were a liberal desperately striving to keep my job on MSNBC, I’d say the Democrats looked “hot and horny” for dead cops — as Chris Matthews said of a Republican audience that cheered for the death penalty.)

Biden’s audience whooped and applauded last week in Flint when he said that without Obama’s jobs bill, police will be “outgunned and outmanned.” (Wild applause!)

I suppose liberals would claim they were applauding because they believe Obama’s jobs bill will prevent these murders. Which reminds me: Republicans believe the death penalty prevents murders!

Which belief bears more relationship to reality?

In a case I have previously mentioned, Kenneth McDuff was released from death row soon after the Supreme Court overturned the death penalty in 1972 and went on to murder more than a dozen people.

William Jordan and Anthony Prevatte were sentenced to death in 1974 for abducting a teacher, murdering him and stealing his car. They came under suspicion when they were caught throwing the murder weapon from the stolen vehicle in a high-speed car chase with the cops and because they were in possession of the dead man’s wallet, briefcase and watch.

The Georgia Supreme Court overturned their capital sentences in an opinion by Robert H. Hall, who was appointed by Gov. Jimmy Carter.

-read on at link-

Why is the State subsidizing Sports (or anything else)? Christie announces Formula One racing coming to Hudson County

This is more of an ex-Governor Florio move. It is not the State's proper place to play beneficent patron to sports or arts or anything else that is none of the State's reason to exist! This applies to all levels of government!

Christie announces Formula One racing coming to Hudson County | NJ.com

By The Jersey Journal October 26, 2011Gov.

Chris Christie today announced the signing of an agreement to host an annual Formula 1 Grand Prix of America at Port Imperial in Weehawken and West New York starting two summers from now.

"I am pleased that New Jersey will play host to Formula 1 beginning in 2013, bringing one of the world's most popular and exciting sports right to our backyard. These races will showcase Weehawken and West New York, as well as our state and region to an international audience, while strengthening both the local and regional economies," said Christie.

"The three-day event will bring very positive economic activity to the region, while giving fans of the sport in our region and around the world an exciting, new venue to experience Formula 1 racing. This is another example of how New Jersey remains a leader in hosting marquee national and international sporting and entertainment events like the Super Bowl, NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, and the Ironman Triathlon in various parts of our state," he added.

-more at link-

The dreary history of how a fundamental liberty shriveled - On Tyranny and Liberty

Ms. Kelo’s home and 15 others were razed. Pfizer merged with Wyeth in 2009 and closed all company operations in New London. The Fort Trumball area has no houses, no research park, no businesses, and is now undeveloped land. However, following Hurricane Irene, officials from the city of New London announced that the citizens of their fair city could dump their branches and fallen trees at the site where Ms. Kelo’s home once sat. In short, the Fort Trumball area is now a land fill.

On Tyranny and Liberty by Myron Magnet, City Journal Autumn 2011

Would the Founders approve of the nation we’ve made?

-read the article at the above

The Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo v. City of New London decision is notorious enough, but it bears recalling in this connection, for the whole episode is objectionable in so many monitory ways. In the year 2000, the frayed Connecticut city had conceived a grandiose project to redevelop 90 waterfront acres, in conjunction with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s plan to build an adjoining $300 million research center. A conference hotel—that inevitable (and almost inevitably uneconomic) nostrum of urban economic-development authorities—would rise, surrounded by upscale housing, shopping, and restaurants, all adorned with a marina and a promenade along the Thames River. Promising to create more than 3,000 new jobs and add $1.2 million in revenues to the city’s declining tax rolls, the redevelopment authority set about buying up the private houses, mostly old and modest, on the site.

Several homeowners refused to sell, however. They loved their houses and their water views. In response, the determined city seized their property under its power of eminent domain. One resident, Susette Kelo, wasn’t giving up her little pink house without a fight, though, and she, along with a few neighbors (including one who’d lived in her house since 1918), sued the city in the state courts, claiming that its action violated the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The trial court agreed with Kelo’s reasonable assertion of the government’s fundamental duty to protect rather than invade private property, but the state appeals court disagreed, and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the city’s seizure, 5–4.

The Supreme Court’s opinions, on both sides, lay out a dreary history of how a fundamental liberty shriveled. The justices cite a 1954 precedent that imperiously expanded the rationale for eminent domain from the Fifth Amendment’s public use to public purpose to justify urban-renewal projects that tore down vast swathes of supposedly blighted property in order to turn the land over to private developers of better housing. Even if you grant the constitutionality of the new rationale, argued the petitioner in this case—who owned a prospering, unblighted department store within the redevelopment area—creating a “better balanced, more attractive community” was not a valid public purpose. Wrong, said the Supremes, in Justice William O. Douglas’s trademark fatuously whimsical language: the legislature, invoking values that are “spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary,” has the power “to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well-balanced as well as carefully patrolled.” Nor need officials, evidently empowered to define public purposes beyond the Constitution’s limited and enumerated scope, deal with property owners on an individual basis in imposing their aesthetic vision on already existing property, so the department-store owner’s liberty and property rights merit no protection from the redevelopment juggernaut.

The Kelo Court also cited a precedent, appropriately from 1984, that is hard to distinguish from a Latin American Communist-imposed land-reform scheme. Because the government owned 49 percent of Hawaii’s land and 72 private landlords owned another 47 percent of it, the state legislature passed a law forcing the private property owners to sell their land to their lessees, for just compensation. The public purpose of this social-engineering megaproject: “eliminating the ‘social and economic evils of a land oligopoly.’ ” Trying to explain his notion of “the tyranny of the majority,” the great democratic danger that he’d designed the Constitution to prevent, Madison began by observing that “those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society.” As the propertyless will always outnumber the propertied, the essence of democratic tyranny is for the poorer many to expropriate the richer few by such “improper or wicked” schemes as voting “an equal division of property,” the furthest-out extreme of tyranny that the Father of the Constitution could imagine. What would he have said about the Hawaii legislature’s property-redistribution edict and the U.S. Supreme Court that ratified it on such a rationale.

-related-

Pfizer to Leave City That Won Land-Use Case

This "Crap" is nothing new, it's everywhere! Maryland Considering Flush Fee Hike

Our town charges $250 per year as a sewer fee. It also has the trash and 'recycling' billed outside the taxes. The property taxes go up at an average of over 5% per year. They claim they are now caped at 2%, but that doesn't include the School Taxes. School taxes account for more than half the property taxes without limits on increases.

It is all a big wasteful load!

Maryland Considering Flush Fee Hike | NBC Washington

Oct 27, 2011

Fee could triple in 2015

A state task force is considering doubling, and maybe even tripling, the state's flush fee.

The fee for the Bay Restoration Fund is now $30 a year for property owners. The task force is considering recommending a doubling of the fee in 2013, and increasing it to $90 in 2015.

The fund pays for sewage treatment plant and septic system upgrades as well as cover crops that keep pollutants from running off farms into waterways.

ACORN Playing Behind Scenes Role In 'Occupy' Movement (and Move-On is behind it)

Phony Fund Rasing:

Sources said staff members also collected door-to-door for NYCC’s PCB campaign — which aims to test schools for deadly toxins —but then pooled that money together with cash raised for the teachers union and other campaigns to fund Occupy Wall Street.

Move-on's link

EXCLUSIVE: ACORN Playing Behind Scenes Role In 'Occupy' Movement | Fox News

By Jana Winter 10-26-11

The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed “leaderless” Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing “guerrilla” protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities, sources tell FoxNews.com.

The former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change (NYCC). That organization was created in late 2009 when some ACORN offices disbanded and reorganized under new names after undercover video exposes prompted Congress to cut off federal funds.

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Sources said NYCC has hired about 100 former ACORN-affiliated staff members from other cities – paying some of them $100 a day - to attend and support Occupy Wall Street. Dozens of New York homeless people recruited from shelters are also being paid to support the protests, at the rate of $10 an hour, the sources said.

At least some of those hired are being used as door-to-door canvassers to collect money that’s used to support the protests.

Sources said cash donations collected by NYCC on behalf of some unions and various causes are being pooled and spent on Occupy Wall Street. The money is used to buy supplies, pay staff and cover travel expenses for the ex-ACORN members brought to New York for the protests.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/10/26/exclusive-acorn-playing-behind-scenes-role-in-occupy-movement/#ixzz1bugjcUZs