I know I’m not supposed to ask this

but… Why do stupid people seem to go out of their way to, well, look stupid?

Challenging Kelo

I was heartened to read this in today’s Patriot Post:

The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment states: “…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Completely ignoring the words “public use,” last year the Supremes held that a city could forcibly take your home to build a privately owned shopping mall (Kelo v. New London). In
response, the House recently passed a bill that would overturn Kelo (no odds yet on whether the Supremes will let such a nefarious law stand, if indeed it becomes a law), and many states have considered bills that would, in effect, restore the Takings Clause to our jurisprudence. That is, if the government takes your home, it must be for a public purpose and they must pay for the right.

Well, that sure got some folks in a tizzy. Turns out that these newfangled counterrevolutionary (read: constitutional) laws may cover a significant portion of land-use restrictions. These laws not only reinstate the public-purpose test, but they might also reinstate the just-compensation part. In other words, the government would actually have to pay for the right to prohibit you from using your land as anything other than a public park.

At the risk of sounding like 1960s radicals, we say “Right On!” Horror of horrors, paying when you take private property. Why, with this sort of potential collapse of the social order, it might soon be legal to eat junk food in New York City.

I’ve long thought that rent control and even zoning laws are an unconstitutional “taking”. I hope this trend catches on.

Predicting the Future

Here’s a valiant try at predicting life in 2000, published in 1950. It’s an object lesson in just how hard it is to predict the future. Some of the guesses are laughably wrong. And yet…

Fast jet and rocket-propelled mail planes made it so hard for telegraph companies all over the world to compete with the postal service that dormant facsimile-transmission systems had to be revived. It takes no more than a minute to transmit and receive in facsimile a five-page letter on paper of the usual business size. Cost? Five cents. In Tottenville the clerks in telegraph offices no longer print out illegible words. Everything is transmitted by phototelegraphy exactly as it is written—illegible spelling, blots, smudges and all. Mistakes are the sender’s, never the telegraph company’s.

That’s pretty close on the cost, if not the speed.