You Think it's Your Land

Stories of people paying more in taxes than they do on their mortgage:

"You don't have any choice -- you pay it or you have to move," said Leonard Gilbert, whose taxes on his Rogers Park home are jumping from $4,604 to $6,513 unless the protection bill passes. "I pay more in taxes now than on my mortgage."

Eminent domain abuse post-Kelo.

What is fueling this movement to take our property away from us, aside from increasingly onerous property taxes?

Liberal Democrats and their allies among professional planners, whose theme song could be Woody Guthrie run amok---

"You think it's your land, it's really "our" land, from California, to the New York Island, old Chicago suburbs, we'll pave them over, this land was made for "community"."

For turning it all into wealth-destroying high-density no-man's land---the communitarian vision. Soon we'll all be landless, toothless, broke wards of the state.

Here's an upcoming seminar in Chicago on Dec. 12th, from one of its proponents, Prof. Eric Freyfogle, University of Illinois:

With ballot initiatives similar to Measure 37 in Oregon sweeping the country, the idea of "protecting" private property rights from regulation is again at the forefront of public debate. Eric Freyfogle, Max L. Rowe Professor of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has spoken and written widely on private property and land conservation for numerous years. Embedded in today's political debate, Freyfogle contends, are two quite different visions of land ownership — a highly individualist vision put forth clearly by the "property rights" movement and a more murky, communitarian vision that would enjoy greater support if better understood.

Come hear about this hot-button political conflict that threatens to challenge even long-standing land use rules.

Professor Eric Freyfogle received his J.D. degree summa cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School. Since 1983 he has taught property, environmental law, and land use courses at the College of Law of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of a wide-ranging inquiry into private rights in nature: The Land We Share: Private Property and the Common Good (2003). His other books include the recently published Why Conservation is Failing and How It Can Regain Ground (Yale University Press, 2006), as well as The New Agrarianism (2001); Bounded People, Boundless Lands (1998); and Justice and the Earth (1993).

Ah yes, people who like to own their property are viewed as "highly individualistic" and if we only weren't so ignorant we could see what's good for us---a communitarian approach. Why bother building up our home equity nest egg to help with our retirement? ( Wasn't the "common good" one of the Democrats emerging themes this election?) And of course our tax dollars are supporting this guy.

Liberals like to claim they don't want to get into our bedrooms---but they don't need to---they just take the house.