Kelo v. New London

As I'm sure you know, this week, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that private property is no longer private. Of course, we have not enjoyed private property in the literal sense in many years, but enough protections remained in place to create the veneer of property rights. That veneer may have been blasted off by this ruling. The purpose of this ruling is to allow local governments the ability to economically rehabilitate a blighted area by buying out property owners and leasing the land to private commercial interests. Of course in addition to creating jobs and improving the economic health of the area targeted for renewal, this scheme is an ideal opportunity for government to increase tax receipts. Low income residential housing doesn't provide nearly the revenue to the city or county that a movie theatre does and a farm may not provide as much as a factory outlet mall, so it is then in the rational interest of governments to continue to look for more property that can be "renewed" and, hence, redistributed from private citizens to governments who then lease to private commercial interests. It is economic conservativism corrupted to its ickiest and it is the property rights of every America that suffer as a result. Read a Reason interview with the stunned attorney for the complainants in this case here.