National New and other articles
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who apprches that jewel.
Unfortunately,nothing will preserve it but downright force.
Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.
Patrick Henry
"Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property....Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." Thomas Paine
PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE NEWS
A closer look at how the Supreme Court Kelo Private Property Decision has changed private property rights in the United States.
What about property? The Constitution Protects you from the Government coming in to take your property without paying you your fair value, right? Wrong.
Thanks to the disastrously broad interpretation by the Supreme Court of the Eminent Domain Clause of the 5th Amendment, the Government may take your land and your home if its use would provide a “public benefit”. This loosely defined and poorly understood legal term is so malleable that as long as the local government can make some argument as to expected “benefits” to the community from the taking of the land, the recent Supreme Court ruling means that the government can take your land and your home, even if the land will be transferred to another private property.
The Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London, Connecticut, could take the private property of Suzette Kelo, raze the home that she and her family had lived in for generations, and sell the land to private developers, because the proposed use of the land would invigorate an economically depressed neighborhood and, thus, confer the “public benefit” of more tax dollars to the tax collector.
Legally the court’s decision is not as noteworthy as the controversy that it has generated from the press. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides that the government can seize property for public use, as long as it fairly compensates the owner. The state has always been able to exercise eminent domain for public use; now it has merely changed that term of art to “public benefit.” Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the case is that the city seized property from a private citizen and sold it to another. There was no public use.
The public use requirement, combined with the “just compensation requirement serves to limit further the government’s limited domain power. This requirement ensures that the taking is legitimate. The government has no right to condemn your property and sell it to your neighbor, no matter how much it chooses to compensate you and no matter how much your neighbor compensates the government. Accordingly, the government has no authority to take your property, under any circumstances, no matter what it says, and no matter what it pays you, for private use. For decades, however, courts have sidestepped the public “use” requirement with the rule that takings that indirectly “benefit” the public may also be considered “public use.”
The Kelo Case represents a disturbing precedent in the law, but it also shows that those who refuse to cow to the government are not always beaten down. The mass of public sentiment favoring the homeowners in the Fort Trumbull area led to a swift, nationwide government action in their support.
Manageing Growth With Fairness: Regulatory Takings Test (private property) Of Smart Growth Policies
Greenspan: ‘True Revolution’ to End Welfare State Impasse
Thursday, 05 Jan 2012 07:46 AM
By Forrest Jones
The U.S. welfare state has "run up against a brick wall" of economic reality and fiscal book-keeping and only a "true revolution" involving major entitlement overhaul will improve the economy, says former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.
In the United States, the rise of the tea party among Republicans coupled with the shift to the left of many Democrats have made it very difficult for the country's leaders to agree on policy.
Look at last year's debt-ceiling fiasco as an example.
"A political tsunami has emerged out of our past in the form of the Tea Party, with its ethos reminiscent of rugged individualism and self-reliance," Greenspan writes in a Financial Times op-ed piece.
The ‘Unthinkable’ Could Happen — Wall Street Journal
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The tea party "has so altered the distribution of votes within Republican Party’s House caucus that the party's center has moved closer to the tea party."
Alan Greenspan
Compromise must ensue eventually, and that will likely include reform to entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security, programs that have expanded without funding to match.
"The only viable long-term solution appears to be a shift in federal entitlements programs to defined contribution status," Greenspan writes.
That means more and more Americans will have to contribute more to their retirement plans, which Greenspan recognizes will be difficult.
"Cutting back on benefits that are 'entitled' is going to be a far harder political task than curbing federal discretionary spending. We have created a level of entitlements that will require a greater share of real resources to fulfill than the economy seems likely to be able to supply."
One thing is for sure: the sweeping change is coming to the U.S. economy.
"We face a true revolution, not so much in the streets but in the fundamental choices the American people will have to make to secure our fiscal future," Greenspan writes.
"Arithmetic demands it."
A U.S. Treasury report finds that the government's net liabilities swelled by more than $1 trillion for 2011.
The Financial Report of the United States showed the government's liabilities exceeded assets by $14.785 trillion, up considerably from $13.473 trillion a year earlier, according to Reuters.
There was some good news: the government's net operating cost, or deficit, dropped to $1.313 trillion for the year ended Sept. 30 from $2.080 trillion the prior year, largely due to declines in expected future payments under government pension programs.
Tax hikes, it seems, might be unavoidable, the report finds, as a deficit remains a deficit even it narrows somewhat.
"Restoring fiscal $1.313 trillion sustainability will require substantial additional changes, including tax reforms to increase revenue and changes to make our entitlement programs sustainable over time," U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says in a letter accompanying the report, Reuters reports.
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Read more: Greenspan: ‘True Revolution’ to End Welfare State Impasse
Important: Can you afford to Retire? Shocking Poll Results
Check out the info. Always know, the T.E.A. Party is the PEOPLE, DC can't take us talking back.
White House proposes 0.5 percent pay increase for federal workers
By Ed O'Keefe
(Andrew Harrer - Bloomberg) The White House will propose a 0.5 percent pay increase for civilian federal employees as part of its 2013 budget proposal, according to two senior administration officials familiar with the plans.
The modest across-the-board pay jump would be the first increase for federal workers since before a two-year freeze began in late 2010. Raises for within-grade step increases and promotions have continued during the freeze.
The proposal, which requires congressional approval, differs from Republican plans supported by lawmakers and presidential candidates that would freeze basic pay rates for one more year. Some of those plans also call for denying within-grade raises. In recent weeks, GOP lawmakers have called for extending the pay freeze as a way to pay for a payroll tax extension.
But, “a permanent pay freeze is not an acceptable policy,” one of the senior administration officials said Friday. “While modest, a 0.5 percent increase reflects the belt-tightening we must do in these difficult times.”
The officials were unauthorized to speak publicly on the matter, but said that the White House notified agency budget offices about the decision Friday morning so that agencies could complete their 2013 budget requests.
The White House is expected to formally unveil its fiscal 2013 budget proposal in early February. No decision has been made yet on a potential pay raise for uniformed military personnel, the officials said, though lawmakers and federal worker unions traditionally push to ensure pay parity between civilian and military personnel. Pay parity was the standard practice for many years before 2009.
The proposal would save about $28 billion over the next decade and $2 billion in fiscal 2013 under the caps authorized by the budget control measures passed last summer, the officials said.
But the pay bump is well below the 3.6 percent cost of living adjustment that went into effect this week for Social Security recipients and most federal retirees to keep pace with inflation. It is also far below private sector earnings, which climbed roughly 2 percent in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Federal worker union leaders voiced tepid support Friday.
William R. Dougan, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, called the move “a breath of fresh air for all those who serve their country every day.”
But John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the nation’s largest federal union, said the move “doesn’t make me yell and cheer.”
“Clearly I don’t think it comes close to paying federal employees what they’re worth, but at the same time, it also breaks this terrible pay freeze that has been put on us,” Gage said. “And hopefully it will carry through, and we will avoid any pay freezes that might come from the payroll tax deduction negotiations.”
Gage said “a real threat” remains that Republicans will successfully enact a pay freeze as part of the payroll tax negotiations. AFGE and other unions believe Republicans should focus on raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans instead of federal employees, the vast majority of whom are middle-class wage earners.
Lawmakers who track federal personnel issues were not immediately available for comment.
The federal government employs roughly 2 million civilian federal employees, with about 85 percent living and working outside the Washington area. The federal sector added about 2,000 new jobs in December, according to employment statistics released Friday.
Staff writer Eric Yoder contributed to this report.
Denise Cattoni
Illinois Tea Party
Illinois State Coordinator
Tea Party Patriots
A Raise for Governent Workers....humm
