The ACLU of Southern California campaigns against Prop 98, an eminent domain reform initiative. Apparently, preserving state-enforced rent control and upholding environmental regulations are more important “civil liberties” than property rights. Seriously guys. You do so much good in other areas. Why ruin it with this crap?
Romanian candidate for mayor advertises on stray dogs.
Soap.
Evil Wal-Mart pressures distributors to keep food prices low so it’s low-income customers can still afford to eat. Those bastards!
A life sentence for .03 grams of meth.
Mexican police are seeking refuge in the U.S. to escape the increasingly bloody Mexican drug war.
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TheAgitator.com
Is the article on Walmart negative? It looks pretty positive to me. Especially the last line and the discussion of how it works with suppliers to find ways to reduce their costs.
While I appreciate the ACLU when it comes to First Amendment issues and most crime issues, they are libertarian in the same sense that we think of it.
I finally let me membership lapse after I got a phone call from them once asking for my mailing address so they could send me a form letter response to an email I sent them. They also account for more junk email coming into my house than almost any other source. They’ve probably spent every sent I ever gave them just to cover the postage on the junk mail they’re now sending to me alone. :)
In any case, they are on balance an excellent organization, but they are more liberal-ish than libertarian-ish. They will be on the opposite side of the fence from libertarians on some issues.
In re the Mex police: And to think there are Americans quietly escaping to Canada to avoid ferocious US Federal assaults upon their rights and liberties because of their medicinal usage of cannabis.
Squeeze the balloon, and it bulges in the opposite direction. And only someone who is uh, er, ahem…’developmentally challenged’…(since we aren’t supposed to say ‘retarded’, right?) could fail to see the mechanics of this in operation in the DrugWar. This is just one more example of those ‘unintended consequences’ of carrying out a destructive national policy under the rubric of ‘greatest good for the greatest number’.
I love the “Soap” story, I first saw that over 10 years ago via e-mail and it’s funnier every time!
So, the ACLU is opposed to property rights, on both sides of that proposition.
Does that article mean that Wal-Mart coffee is “Fair Trade”? I’d love to see some hippies’ heads explode over that. Oh, no, wait. I’m sure Wal-Mart isn’t dealing with the officially sanctioned “Fair Trade” cartel, ’cause they’re a middle man. They’re likely paying the farmers more than the Fair Trade association does, but won’t get the smug factor of putting the logo on their coffee.
ACLU: eye of the beholder and all that. And, as long as we’re here, pot kettle.
Why doesn’t he just throw the mini-soap in the trash?
What I’d like to know is, what kind of education do people get in the U.S. if they don’t even see the similarity between the drug war and alcohol prohibition. How can a kid come out of the other side of 12 years of history and social studies thinking that, after 40 years of leaving death, destruction, and failure strewn behind it, today’s prohibition is going to turn out different than the prohibition of the 20s and 30s? Does the school system have any other purpose besides cranking out little compliant-minded automatons who proudly scurry off to the polls on election day to choose whether it will be a democrat or a republican they get to bend over in front of for the new few years?
I thought the Wal-mart story also pointed out something that wasn’t explicitly mentioned: It’s in the interest of everyone in the supply chain to be less wasteful. Smaller packages, local growers, cut out middlemen (and the paperwork and jobs and waste that goes with them). But because Wal-Mart is doing it to protect their profits, they certainly won’t get ‘credit’ with the eco-forces. To so many of them, it has to be done *against* your interests for it to really count.
I don’t understand why so many people hate Wal-Mart. I guess it’s because they are so inexpensive and their operating costs are much lower than any mom-and-pop could hope for (thereby causing them to go out of business), but they do help the community by putting more disposable income into the pockets of those that need it the most.
I can imagine their suppliers aren’t happy, tho, seeing as they have to eat up the price increases since, if they don’t, Wal-Mart won’t buy their product.
Wal Mart doesn’t lower prices “so it’s low-income customers can still afford to eat.” It does it to make a profit by selling to lower income people who otherwise would buy less. Nothing worng with that, and no reason to bash Wal-Mart, but let’s not go in the opposite direction and pretend they are paragons of community virtue either. I personally don’t shop there because it’s crowded, dirty, and the lines take forever.
Since porn outlets have moved to the internet there just aren’t that many local brick-and-mortar targets left for the leaders of pitch-fork wielding hordes to vent against.
If I seem full of shit, please keep in mind that my opinions are always totally based on irrefutable scientific supporting data, so it would be pointless to argue with me.
A little off topic, but I wish I knew how to quote others in my post, kind of like Dave Krueger quoted me. I’ve tried the [quote]example[/quote] and [q]example[/q] marks for HTML, but they never worked for me.
Anywho, Dave, your last paragraph was hilarious.
Use blockquote inside less than and greater than signs (along with the closing slash, of course). :)
#14 Dave Krueger
Use blockquote inside less than and greater than signs (along with the closing slash, of course). :)
Of course! Thanks!
Nando:
I think the point of the article is that Wal-Mart is at least realizing that prices are going up, but they’re doing what they can to change the status quo of the system to make that increase be smaller. Like dealing with the coffee growers more directly, so that the people harmed aren’t the producers, but the people who add drag to the system by taking a cut, or dealing with the local farms to lower the shipping cost, or by conceding to the prepared food manufacturers that they will not decrease their shelf space allocation if they’d reduce their box sizes.
I know there is still the ‘big bad’ Wal-Mart that will send trucks back if they’re charged too much, but I think Wal-Mart does as good a job as any retailer advocating for *both*sides of their clientele: the producers who sell to them, and the customers who buy at their stores.
Nando. This site doesn’t let me link to it directly, but if you click on my website above and then type in blockquote.jpg after my website address, you’ll see what I’m doing.
To be fair to the ACLU, they are campaigning for Prop 99, which is an eminent domain proposition with no other complications. My general rule is to vote no on all propositions, unless I have time to read the actual text. No matter what the articles and the “summaries” say they are about, they usually have something stupid stuck in there. I plan on voting for 99 and against 98, mostly because I dislike when people write initiatives that try and sneak things in, and then advertise like that stuff isn’t there. I don’t think that 98 is very well written, either.
“While proponents want California voters to believe they’ll be supporting eminent domain reform, their underlying motive for passing Prop. 98 is to eliminate rent control, eviscerate local land use planning regulations, gut environmental protections and undermine public water projects that ensure safe and adequate supply of drinking water.”
From the ACLU press release to which Radley links.
I would hesitate before casually labeling the ACLU as anti-property-rights in general and on this issue in particular. One of the areas in which the corporate Right has been spectacularly effective has been wrapping up anti-public, anti-free-market and, anti small business agendas in freedom-based and market-based language. It would be entirely within their normal behaviour to put a poison pill into an anti-Kelo initiative; it appears that they have.
Even a cursory review of the Proposition 98 shows that it also “prohibits rent control and similar measures”. What on earth does that have to do with the licensed theft sanctioned by Kelo and the takings clause which is its main component? Kelo permits thievery; rent control is merely one component of use restriction within our economy.
Far more significantly 98′s current wording may be a threat to all land use regulation. (Do you want a chemical factory next to your house? Your child’s school?)
Further, one website correctly notes that “Section 19(b)(3)(ii) of the Constitution is added to prohibit transfer property rights for the `consumption of natural resources’ to a public agency. This would limit California’s ability to implement projects to ensure a safe, stable supply of drinking water, or other projects that protect or utilize natural resources.” Basically, this will allow, for example, Haliburton to buy another Presidency and, if it wants, make sure that Californians can pay hundreds of dollars for a gallon of water. Just think of it! All of the corruption of Iraq brought to your doorstep thanks to 98!
The fact that eminent domain in its current form has to go is a no-brainer. How one goes about it is not. If I’m drowning I want a lifejacket thrown to me; giving me exactly that but with an angry adder clinging to it is not helping me.
Is Haliburton going to buy all the 7-11s, too? Because you can buy a gallon of water there for 2 dollars.
I second anmeng’s comments. There are two propositions on tomorrow’s ballot in California. Prop 98 does away with the Kelo decision plus does away with rent control. Prop 99 simply does away with the Kelo decision. I have no problem with the ACLU asking people to vote no for Prop 98 and vote yes for Prop 99. I also have no problem with the landlords getting together and drafting a proposition to do away with rent control. Of course, such a proposition stands no chance of success here and the landlords know it. I have always disliked the practice of tacking unrelated bills together. If a bill (or proposition) cannot be passed on its own merit, it should not be passed at all.
The soap story is funny, but it isn’t actually true. See http://www.snopes.com/humor/letters/soap.asp
perlhaqr: How many independent oil companies have you seen lately? And how did Enron work out?
You can make a cute phrase, but cute doesn’t cut it if you don’t have a point underneath it.
Rent control is also thievery. Both eminent domain abuse and rent control deny property owners the right to do what they want with (and get full value for) their property.
Matt Moore, you are arguing that there is no difference in kind no matter what the difference in degree. That’s an ideological position, not an analytical one. Eminent domain means that the state has the right to take away your property; rent control is merely a fiscal limitation on the degree of profit; it’s not even a limitation on the use that you make of the building, because you can choose to operate the business nonetheless or choose not to own a rental property at all. You may find the restriction unacceptable, and that’s fine. But to argue that stealing somebody’s wallet is the same as telling them that they can only put $100 into it instead of $120 is not logically sustainable.
Taking a wallet with 20 bucks in it and taking 20 dollars from a wallet with 120 bucks in it are the same thing. Theft is theft. You just think one type of theft (rent control) is justified while the other (eminent domain abuse) is not. I disagree.
By this logic you could choose to dodge eminent domain abuse by not owning any property at all.
Emminent domain propositions have been used in several states as the headline issue in what is actually the agenda of some “property rights” groups formed by real estate owners.
Their primary agends is an assortment of radical changes to existing laws that affect them, without going through the legislature. They would eliminate zoning, environmental laws and anything that conceivably decreases the value of property.
Separate issues should not be combined like this, where voters can easily see the hot-button issue but are less likely to see ALL the issues.
There’s lots of indignation on the net about these various propositions- search for “property rights”.
Credit goes to the backers of the Kelo-only proposition.
I support all those measures. Glad y’all who support some property rights have prop 99 to fall back on, though.
[...] of all Americans, but it’s really just an unprincipled left-wing lobbying group. Recently, the ACLU of Southern California opposed Proposition 98, a California initiative that would have reinforced state constitutional protections against [...]
As I have noted at CEI’s OpenMarket.org, The ACLU claims to exist to protect the civil liberties and constitutional rights of all Americans, but it’s really just an unprincipled left-wing lobbying group.
The ACLU attacked Prop. 98 for seeking to ”eliminate rent control,” and ”restricting the government’s power.” Imagine that! Restricting the government’s power! That’s what most civil liberties guarantees do, after all: restrict government power. But the American Civil Liberties Union doesn’t have much to do with civil liberties, anymore, unless the beneficiaries are left-wing constituencies, like alleged terrorists.
While the ACLU was busy claiming that banning rent control is somehow a threat to civil liberties, it was also fabricating many new rights out of thin air: such as the alleged “right” of swastika-wearing neo-Nazis to force restaurants like the Alpine Village Inn to serve them (in a case described by Professor David Bernstein at Volokh Conspiracy); an alleged “right” for illegal alien employees to demand that their citizen co-workers not say derogatory things about them, even outside their presence (see Aguilar v. Avis Rent-A-Car System); and an alleged ”right” for one Massachusetts man to perform oral sex on another man while on a public stage.
The ACLU in California is a “vigorous proponent of hate speech regulations,” notes law professor David Bernstein, and its Massachusetts chapter supports campus speech codes, ignoring that pesky First Amendment (which was, after all, written by dead white males — the ACLU is a big supporter of racial quotas, unsuccessfully arguing in Coalition for Economic Equity v. Wilson (1997), that minorities have a constitutional right to racial preferences that overrides state constitutional equal-protection provisions banning all racial discrimination). A prominent ACLU lawyer in Massachusetts, Nancy Gertner, argued that rape law should be redefined so that mere consent to sex is not enough, claiming that sex should only be allowed after express, explicit permission of the sort that precedes a medical operation.
[...] rights of all Americans, but it’s really just an unprincipled left-wing lobbying group. Recently, the ACLU of Southern California opposed Proposition 98, a California initiative that would have reinforced state constitutional protections against [...]