Anybody Wanna Buy a Swamp?

A lot of bloggers have been all over the 5th Amendment deal about the government seizing private property. If you think you actually OWN private property, I've got some bad news for you. You don't. You are RENTING it from the government. If you don't believe me, go read this, then come on back and we'll continue.

Anyhow, the main thing this decision does is to make it easier for the government to evict you from the place you are renting from them. Until now, you had to do something wrong, like not paying your property taxes, to get evicted. Now all they have to do is claim some sort of community benefit, and you are "down the road".

The other, and under-reported part of this story is the 'Just Compensation' part. Lets say someone owns a zillion acres of worthless swamp land like they used to sell by mail out of Florida. He hires a biologist to find some endangered whatever living in the neighborhood, and BINGO, it becomes of benefit to the community to create a "Lithuanian Snail Fungus" habitat preservation area, and a wheelbarrow full of taxpayer's money gets spent to buy the swamp.

More public money gets poured into grants to fund monitoring of habitat, habitat replenishment, and study after study to determine the health and size of the Lithuanian Snail Fungus population.

Meanwhile, the ex- swamp owner, and his brother-in-law the mayor, are living the life of Riley. (William Bendix - Remember?)

I've been there. I've watched it happen................