A Home is Not a House
Our American Constitution reads "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation being given". In the Kelo decision, the Supreme Court ruled that cities may take your home and give it to a private developer for commercial development.
The Kelo decision was fundamentally wrong. 'Takings' are for public use, not for private profit. Casino parking lots and baseball stadiums are not legitimate public uses of anyone's land.
The fundamental question is simple: Does your home belong to you? Or does it belong to whichever leisure-suited lounge lizard most recently bribed the right public officials?
If elected President, I will seek legislation to reverse the Kelo decision. I will seek legislation to protect your home, and everyone else's home, too.
How will that legislation work? Congress may lawfully set a standard for just compensation, so long as that standard is more generous than that set by the courts. The basis of that standard is simple. A home is not a house.
A house is a collection of bricks and nails and pipes and wooden sticks. A home is memories and emotional ties, the yesterdays that live in sunbright windows and shadowed lawns. When the government takes your home, it takes not only the wood and brick and stone and mortar, it takes part of your life. Just compensation pays you not only for the nails and gutters, but for the laughter and tears your home remembers.
If you own a home, and have no plan to sell, just compensation
should include not only compensation for the material property but also compensation
for the pain and suffering of your loss.
What is that just compensation? If the land is taken for public purposes, there
should be a set standard. Doubling or
tripling the market price of the home is appropriate. This is a just
price, based on the loss of the time and memories that turned the house into
the owner's home.
The value of some things cannot be reckoned in dollars, so there is no just
price for them. Congress should say so: If land were taken from one person, and
given to another private person or commercial use, no possible cash payment can
compensate the original owner for the emotional pain of seeing their property
in the hands of someone else. Just compensation is impossible, so public
takings for private use should be forbidden.
Protect your home! Elect me
President! If elected. I will work
diligently to reverse the Kelo decision.
To help spread my message, please give generously to my campaign. You can give on the internet at
http://phillies2008.org/donation .
