WHEN PRIVATE PROPERTY IS NO LONGER ‘PRIVATE’

Five anti-Constitution lawyers who are “justices” on the United States Supreme Court have determined for America’s 300 million citizens that their private property can be seized by government to generate more tax revenues for government.

The U.S. Constitution protects private property from government seizure, except for only such “public uses” as roads, bridges and other such infrastructure needs.

As mobster Tony Soprano would say, “Forget about it!”

But Soprano is a mobster, not a voting member of the powerful U.S. Supreme Court.

Is there any difference today between a mobster and a judicial lawyer?

The U.S. Constitution is clear about private property. Your private property can only be confiscated by government for public uses such as roads and bridges and other vital public necessities.

Our Constitution explicitly says the taking of your private property can only be done, lawfully, if there is “just compensation.”

That’s not happening in America any more.

Government is stealing private property for bigger tax revenues without meeting the “just compensation” standards set for in the Constitution. Your home may be worth $200,000, but government appraisers can reduce it to $100,000. It’s their game to play – and they hold all the cards.

It’s happening in Connecticut, New Jersey and other states. Private property owners are losing the costly legal battle because of five liberal Supreme Court justices who serve for life on America’s highest court.

The latest knock-out punch for private property owners in coastal New Jersey came about a few days ago with this headline in Gannett newspapers in the Garden State:

COURT: TOWNS CAN TAKE LAND FOR OPEN SPACE

What? Open space?

Since when did “open space” (private land about to be developed) become a critical public use?

When five judicial lawyers say so, that’s when.

The New Jersey Superior Court Division just overturned a lower court’s verdict regarding the town of Mount Laurel’s decision n 2002 to condemn the vacant 16-acre High Pointe tract owned by MiPro Homes, LLC.

The developer already had obtained planning board approval to build 23 homes. Construction for utilities already had begun.

“The township acted legally when it condemned the land and did not need to determine a specific preservation use because that (open space) is a public purpose,” the court ruled.

Local officials and environmental groups praised the decision, but the developer called it disastrous.

“We’re elated,” said Mount Laurel Mayor Gerry Nardello. “Hopefully we can move on and go on pursuing more open space”(compliments of private property owners).

This is the same Mount Laurel town in South Jersey that sued – and won – a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that the state (the taxpayers) must pay for “affordable housing” for those who cannot afford to buy a house.

Insane? What else can you call it?

The judge who wrote the decision, Frederick Hall, said it was up to the State Legislature to decide how to fund the cost of building thousands of homes at millions and millions of dollars so everyone in New Jersey can afford to live in their own home. Yes, a private property home.

The attorney for the Mount Laurel developer on the “open space” issue had this to say about the Appellate Court’s ruling: “This decision undoes 60 years of zoning and planning in the state in one fell swoop. It disregards completely the need for open space and concentrates only on the municipality’s ‘right’ to take property – not because it needs it but because it wants it.”

The same thing happened in Middletown, New Jersey, a sprawling suburb just south of New York City. Middletown adopted a Master Plan in 1993 and included a 200-acre site for a Town Center on the community’s major roadway. The State Master Plan promoted Town Centers in the 1990s as an effective way to save open space by concentrating future development in one core hub.

Five years after a prominent hometown family submitted an application for a 137-acre Town Center (not 200 acres), the township mayor and committee decided, arbitrarily and capriciously, they no longer wanted to prevent sprawl, but rather rezone the land for an adult community. The case has been in the courts three years, and the town so far is winning the battle. This is ostensibly an “open space” issue, although an adult community would cover the land with little compact homes for those over 55 years of age. Go figure!

The City of Long Branch on the Jersey Shore also seized several private homes along the beaches so a developer could build expensive waterfront condos selling for a half-million dollars and more.

Only the wealthy can now afford to live on Long Branch’s beautiful beachfront. Those who owned their own homes there for 40 or 50 years were wiped out by the “economic need for Long Branch to make more money on expensive condos.”

It’s all about money and greed, folks. Government will do anything it can to rake in more tax dollars, even if t means kicking innocent people out of their own homes, many of them senior citizens.

God Bless, America!

(Gordon Bishop, a national award-winning author, historian and syndicated columnist, is the recipient of 8 Congressional Commendations and New Jersey’s first “Journalist-of-the-Year” – 1986/New Jersey Press Association.)