« Bizarre Love Triangle | Main | Just-tits Is Served »
June 26, 2005
Class War Declared
Hell has officially frozen over.
There's been a controversial Supreme Court decision, and not only do I agree (vehemently) with the conservative minority opinion, but with conservative commentators like Glenn Reynolds. (I know, start looking for the four horsemen.)
The Court decided 5-4 that people's homes can be seized not just for eminent domain for the greater public good, but for private development that may generate greater tax revenue. The case stemmed from a case in New London, Connecticut, where a private developer wants to rip down a working class neighborhood in order to build a riverfront hotel, health club and office complexes.
The decision means that cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue. You read that right; the rich can now seize the homes of the working class, in order to build projects that none of the working class can afford to live, work or play in. The rich can now take the homes of the poor in order to build further playgrounds for the rich.
Amazingly, the five jackassed idiots who've effectively declared class war on the working class in this country aren't the usual conservative suspects. The five jackassed classist idiots were the court's lefties: Ginsberg, Breyer, Kennedy, Souter, and Stevens.
I can't begin to write the fury this decision elicits in me. This is for all intents and purposes a return to feudalism. The wealthy have been given greater right to land than the poor -- and if the rich want something the poor have purchased... too bad, Joe Six Pack, because Chaz Limousine Liberal now has the trump. If you're a worker who saves and buys his low-end row house or buys into a working class neighborhood, it must feel so comforting to know that even though you bought your home, made the payments, built equity, and lived your life there... it's not yours; it still can belong to some rich puck at the drop of his well-heeled hat.
Malcolm X once was asked if he predicted a civil war in this country; the questioner obviously expected Malcolm to invoke some sort of race war. Malcolm answered instead that while he did indeed expect that there could be a civil war one day, he believed instead that it would likely be a class war, with the poor of all races rising up against the wealthy. Decisions like this week's make such an uprising all the more justifiable. And those five "justices" ought to be the first five people whose homes are seized to make way for a strip mall.
