The moderates on the U.S. Supreme Court gave governments the power to use eminent domain for any purpose. It was the conservatives on the bench that voted against this expansion of powers.

–Nathan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/23/AR2005062300783.html
washingtonpost.com
Supreme Court Expands Government’s Right to Seize Homes

By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 23, 2005; 3:02 PM

The Supreme Court today effectively expanded the right of local governments to seize private property under eminent domain, ruling that people’s homes and businesses — even those not considered blighted — can be taken against their will for private development if the seizure serves a broadly defined “public use.”

In a 5-4 decision, the court upheld the ability of New London, Conn., to seize people’s homes to make way for an office, residential and retail complex supporting a new $300 million research facility of the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. The city had argued that the project served a public use within the meaning of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution because it would increase tax revenues, create jobs and improve the local economy.

A group of homeowners in New London’s Fort Trumbull area had fought the city’s attempt to impose eminent domain, arguing that their property could be seized only to serve a clear public use such as building roads or schools or to eliminate blight. The homeowners, some of whom had lived in their house for decades, also argued that the public would benefit from the proposed project only if it turned out to be successful, making the “public use” requirement subject to the eventual performance of the private business venture.

The Fifth Amendment also requires “just compensation” for the owners, but that was not an issue in the case decided today because the homeowners did not want to give up their property at any price.

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the case turned on the question of whether New London’s development plan served a “public purpose.” He added, “Without exception, our cases have defined that concept broadly, reflecting our longstanding policy of deference to legislative judgments in this field.”

The majority endorsed the view that local governments are better placed than federal courts to decide whether development projects serve a public purpose and will benefit the community, justifying the acquisition of land through eminent domain. In his opinion, Stevens wrote that “for more than a century,” the high court has favored “affording legislatures broad latitude in determining what public needs justify the use of the takings power.”

New London officials “were not confronted with the need to remove blight in the Fort Trumbull area, but their determination that the area was sufficiently distressed to justify a program of economic rejuvenation is entitled to our deference,” Stevens wrote. “The City has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including–but by no means limited to–new jobs and increased tax revenue.”

Stevens added that “because that plan unquestionably serves a public purpose, the takings challenged here satisfy the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment.”

He was joined in that view by justices Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

Dissenting were justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as well as Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

In a strongly worded dissenting opinion, O’Connor wrote that the majority’s decision overturns a long-held principle that eminent domain cannot be used simply to transfer property from one private owner to another.

“Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power,” she wrote. “Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded — i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public — in the process.”

The effect of the decision, O’Connor said, “is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property — and thereby effectively to delete the words “for public use” from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.”

The ruling has broad potential implications nationwide, giving cities wider authority to condemn homes and businesses to make way for more lucrative developments.

According to the Institute for Justice, a Washington-based property rights group that represented the Fort Trumbull homeowners, local governments have used or threatened to use eminent domain to transfer property to private parties in more than 10,000 instances between 1998 and 2002.

Over the years, the power of local governments to take private property through eminent domain has gradually grown. Although that authority historically had been used to acquire land needed for roads, bridges or other infrastructure fitting the “public use” requirement, the Supreme Court in 1954 broadened the definition of the term to allow local governments to condemn slums or other blighted areas for the purpose of redevelopment.

The court’s ruling today upheld the Connecticut Supreme Court, which had ruled 4-3 that New London’s property condemnations were constitutional.

The case had been brought by nine holdout owners of 15 homes in the Fort Trumbull area, which sits on a peninsula jutting into the Thames River and includes a total of about 115 privately owned properties.

Among the holdouts was Susette Kelo, who moved into Fort Trumbull in 1997 and made major improvements to her house, which she prized for its water view. Another petitioner was Wilhelmina Dery, who was born in her Fort Trumbull house in 1918 and has lived in it with her husband for the past 60 years. In fact, the home, originally purchased by her grandmother, has been in her family for more than a century.

Although the area is described as a working-class neighborhood, the majority opinion written by Stevens noted that “there is no allegation that any of these properties is blighted or otherwise in poor condition; rather, they were condemned only because they happen to be located in the development area.”

New London adopted its redevelopment plan in January 2000, two years after Pfizer announced plans to build a new research facility nearby. The plan called for a waterfront hotel and conference center surrounded by restaurants and stores, marinas for recreational and commercial use, 80 new residences in an urban neighborhood, office space for research and development, parking lots and other retail services. The site also includes an existing state park and space reserved for a new U.S. Coast Guard Museum.

During oral arguments before the court, it emerged that the land parcels at issue were earmarked for office space and “support” for the park or marina, possibly meaning a parking lot.

In this column, Terry M. Neal wonders about the motivations of U.S. Senators that refuse to apologize for past racist behavior of the U.S. Senate.

–Nathan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/23/AR2005062300465.html?sub=AR
washingtonpost.com
Symbolic Lynching Resolution Forced Concrete Political Choice

By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, June 23, 2005; 8:12 AM

There’s not much these days that the two parties in Washington can rally around, as evidenced by the increasingly shrill tone here. You might think that one thing on which everyone in both parties could agree would be a resolution apologizing for the Senate’s failure, over many decades, to make it a federal crime for racists to hunt black people like animals and hang them from trees.

When the Senate passed just such a resolution last week, 21 senators had not signed on as co-sponsors. Three of those 21 were Democrats, who added their names the next day. Seven Republicans also signed on after the vote, leaving 11 Senators — all Republicans — who have yet to sign on as co-sponsors. Because Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) opted for a voice vote instead of a roll call vote, and the resolution passed with only a few senators actually in the chamber. For supporters of the resolution, led by Sens. George Allen (R-Va.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.), that elevated the importance of having all 100 members of the Senate sign on as co-sponsors, because it would officially put the support of each member into the record.

Left-leaning columnists, pundits and bloggers have taken the story and run with it. They’ve all noted that the missing Republican names underscore, at a minimum, the GOP’s lack of respect for African Americans.

“Who the hell, in this day and age, is against a resolution condemning LYNCHING!” blogs Rising Hegemon. Meanwhile, AMERICAblog is running its “Latest list of Republican pro-lynching Senators.”

This has been a hot topic on black radio and other media outlets around the country as well.

On Thursday, Georgia state Rep. Tyrone Brooks (D), president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, told me: “It’s sad. It’s a reminder that we’re still in an era when there are some in the body politic who still want to play to the racist elements who still live in our country, particularly the South, the Sons of the Confederacy and that sort of thing. These senators are the new Dixiecrats. Years ago, it used to be the southern Democrats [who were the problem]. But today it’s the Republicans. . . . It’s a reminder that we still have a long way to go.”

Tara Wall, an RNC official responsible for minority outreach, accused Democrats of exploiting a non-issue for political gain.

“What I can say is that absolutely we absolutely don’t condone lynching,” she said. “We support what’s been passed unanimously. Now we need to take the opportunity to move ahead and look forward. We need to focus on the next generation of civil rights by closing the wealth gap, enabling more African Americans to own their own homes, [and have better] health care reform and retirement security.”

Fight From the Right

If only left-wingers were up in arms, there would be little issue.

I called a senior Republican official in Washington and was initially given the party line: The bill passed unanimously by voice vote. There was no opposition. Any senator who opposed it could have moved to take it off the unanimous consent calendar.

Then this person called back, insisting on anonymity, to say, “Yes, in reality, this sort of thing does make it difficult for us. There is some frustration, yes.”

Whatever reasons some senators had for not signing the resolution, this official asked rhetorically, was it really worth the frustration. It’s just a non-controversial resolution, after all.

At least one longtime black Republican activist, who thinks all Republicans should have signed on, is not afraid to put his name on the record.

Harold Doley Jr., who became the first African American to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange 32 years ago, fired off an angry e-mail to the RNC this week. He told me that Frist personally called him on Wednesday to assure him that support for the resolution was unanimous and that the party was committed to diversity.

“I would have liked it if all of these senators had sponsored the bill,” said Doley, from New York, where he runs Doley Securities, one of the nation’s oldest black-owned investment banks. “But that’s not the case, and I understand it’s not the case for various reasons.”

Doley said he was already upset that after meeting with House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Tom DeLay a few years ago about increasing black personnel in key RNC and congressional staff positions, little has been done in that regard, even after he personally forwarded top Republican officials dozens of potential candidates at their requests.

“My party needs to be reaching out to the African American community as America becomes browner and blacker,” said Doley, who considers himself a moderate. “The party needs to build constituencies. Some of the right-wingers have told me, ‘Well if I’m not happy I should change my party.’ No, I’m not going to change parties. I’m going to change my party from within to try to expand its base.”

Power of Symbols

Symbolic politics is the most powerful. Symbolic politics is about messaging. It’s about code words. It’s how a politician sends subtle cues about priorities and whose interests he or she is there to protect.

Symbolic politics is Ronald Reagan launching his presidential re-election campaign by extolling the virtues of states rights in Philadelphia, Miss., where Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen killed three civil rights workers in 1964.

Symbolic politics is the “white hands” ad that former senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) ran against African American opponent Harvey Gantt in 1990. Symbolic politics is George W. Bush going to speak at Bob Jones University in the 2000 presidential election campaign.

From those symbolic events, black people ask, if you can’t respect my history how can you protect my interest in Washington?

Frist has said repeatedly that none of his colleagues asked him to schedule a roll call vote. But in news reports, aides to Landrieu and Allen contradicted him.

I called the offices of several of the senators who have not signed on as co-sponsors to give them an opportunity to explain their positions. According to the Congressional Record, these were the members who did not originally co-sign the legislation:

Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)

Robert Bennett (R-Utah)

Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.)

Thad Cochran (R-Miss.)

Kent Conrad (D-N.D.)

John Cornyn (R-Texas)

Michael Crapo (R-Idaho)

Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.)

Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)

Judd Gregg (R-N.H.)

Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)

Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.)

Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)

Trent Lott (R-Miss.)

Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)

Jack Reed (D-R.I.)

Richard Shelby (R-Ala.)

Gordon Smith (R-Ore.)

John Sununu (R-N.H.)

Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.)

George Voinovich (R-Ohio)

The three Democrats and seven Republicans — Crapo, Grassley, Hatch, Murkowski, Voinovich, Hutchinson and Smith — signed on after the resolution was passed.

I was particularly eager to chat with someone from Cochran’s office. Cochran told reporters earlier this week that he didn’t feel he could apologize “for something I did not do.”

“I don’t feel that I should apologize for the passage or the failure to pass any legislation by the U.S. Senate,” Cochran told the Clarion Ledger of Jackson, Miss. “But I deplore and regret that lynchings occurred and that those committing them were not punished.”

As the newspaper pointed out, Cochran had previously co-sponsored measures “apologizing for the U.S. government’s mistreatment of American Indians and Japanese Americans” — neither of which he was directly responsible for.

Cochran’s spokeswoman, Jenny Manley said the difference was that Native American and Japanese American apologies “were resolutions on behalf of all America,” while the anti-lynching apology dealt specifically with past Senate actions, which Cochran felt had nothing to do with him.

I talked to several Republican Senate officials. They told me that their senators merely didn’t feel the need to co-sponsor every piece of legislation that came down the pike. Enzi spokesman Coy Knobel said Enzi “in general doesn’t co-sponsor bills that don’t give specific legislative action or direction to a specific agency.”

Cornyn spokesman Don Stewart said, “at this point, it’s after the fact.” The senator absolutely supports the resolution, though. Stewart said liberal groups and bloggers are going overboard, trying to “make it a political tool. And that’s disrespectful to the families” of people who had been the victims of lynching.

Alexander’s office sent this statement from the senator, which said he did not co-sponsor the resolution because he is pushing a different measure “condemning lynching, celebrating the accomplishments of African Americans and recommitting the Senate to improving health, education and job opportunities for African Americans and all Americans.”

Bennett’s office pointed out that although he did not sign on as a co-sponsor, he did sign an oversized copy of the resolution that will be preserved in a traveling photography exhibit about lynching. Crapo, Grassley and Shelby also signed that copy, or expressed their support to Landrieu’s office.

The Choice

Really, what reasonable person thinks any of the senators who didn’t sign the lynching apology bill actually endorses that morbid practice?

The better question is, by declining to sign on to the resolution, did they practice symbolic politics, just as those who signed it also practiced symbolic politics? The senators who failed to sign the measure prior to its passage — with the exception of Voinovich — were either from southern states or states with relatively small African American populations. Only the senators themselves know their true motivations.

The lynching resolution wasn’t the kind of policy legislation that cuts taxes or increases funding to a particular project. It was a symbol that different voters interpret differently, and every senator made a choice about which voters he or she wanted to risk alienating with a symbolic message that — as Howard Dean and Sen. Richard Durbin have learned — is easy for political enemies to exploit.

Staff writer Sehrish Shaban contributed to this report.

© 2005 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive

Steve Gilliard nails it with this one:

This will be brief.

We need to be honest here: Iraq is not worth one more dead American.

People on the right and left want some deus ex machina to save Iraq, but we have., collectively, come to a simple conclusion:

Iraq is not worth dying for. Not for the warmongers on the right or the liberal hawks on the left.

It’s bad the soldiers are trapped there, but we have made it their problem, No one is willingly going to join them, and 5,000 have deserted so far.

When you ask liberal hawks to enlist, they are offended by the question.

When you ask conservatives to enlist, they are offended by the question.

And America’s parents are NOT sending their kids to die in Iraq if they can, at all, help it. No one blows up IED’s at Wal Mart.

We have a volunteer army with fewer and fewer volunteers, and people reenlisting only to save their friends. There is a time limit to their ability to be in combat. They cannot serve forever. They will have to be replaced. And fewer and fewer are willing to replace them,

What I want people to do is be honest.

If you will not serve in Iraq, and no one you know will serve, stop expecting someone else to do what you will not.

Therefore, it is time to stop calling for more troops, or the US to make Iraq safe. We cannot do this and even Americans are refusing to join the fight. It is time to look at your actions and realize, that despite your ideals, you oppose continuing this war. In practical terms, you have decided that this war is not worth your life or anyone you know. And million of Americans have joined you in this decision.

So, with this fact evident, it is time to call for US troops to withdraw from Iraq. Not save it, not add more boots on the ground. You have already voted by your actions. It is time that you match it with your words.

This column didn’t make the front page, or even the third page. It was buried on page six. Check it out. It’s about Tom DeLay’s pal Jack Abramoff. Oops! It’s late and I’ve gotta go….

–Nathan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/22/AR2005062202100.html

In this article, the many shortcomings of Day Labor are laid out. The Federal, State, and Local Governments should combine forces and do the following:
–Educate workers about their rights.
–Form task forces and target employers that violate worker’s rights

–Nathan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/22/AR2005062202087.html
washingtonpost.com
Pay Abuses Common for Day Laborers, Study Finds

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 23, 2005; A01

More than half of day laborers in the Washington area have been cheated out of their wages and one in four has been harmed on the job, according to a study being released today that tries to sketch a portrait of the informal workers.

The study is based on the experiences of 476 day laborers in the District, Northern Virginia and Maryland, who were interviewed last year by a team affiliated with the University of California at Los Angeles. It depicts the typical worker as an industrious Latin American man who earns $991 a month.

Day laborers have proliferated in the Washington area thanks to the booming construction industry and the dramatic increase in immigrants, some of them illegal. The workers have posed a dilemma for local officials, who sometimes face complaints that the laborers are unsanitary or swarm around stores or street corners, creating a nuisance.

The study was funded by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations as well as the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, which said it participated “in the hope of supporting constructive dialogue” among officials and residents about how to deal with the workers.

Abel Valenzuela, a UCLA urban planner who was the lead researcher on the study, said day laborers in the D.C. area had an unusual profile compared with those in other cities. They gather in large numbers in at least 16 places — more than in Chicago, he said. Whereas a few years ago, day laborers congregated in a handful of places such as Culmore and Takoma Park, they now are present throughout the region, the study said.

“It’s a reflection of the area becoming an immigrant entry point. You have many, many new arrivals,” Valenzuela said.

Day laborers here are more likely to work for contractors or subcontractors than are their counterparts elsewhere in the country, he said. And about two-thirds are from Central America, reflecting the makeup of the immigrant population in the D.C. area.

Valenzuela said he was still trying to tabulate what percentage of the workers had legal immigration status or were qualified to apply for it.

“I would say most day laborers don’t have [immigration] documents,” he said, but he added that many had permission to work.

Valenzuela defined day laborers as people looking for temporary jobs in a public or open-air space on a daily basis. Some day laborers in the Washington area gather at hiring sites organized by nonprofit groups, while others gravitate to more informal spots at street corners or convenience stores. The study found that more than half the day laborers live within 15 minutes of the site where they solicit work.

The report’s results confirm some widely held perceptions: The Washington area laborers are mainly men who are relatively new to the United States. Half of them have a sixth-grade education or less.

But the study also suggests some diversity. Nearly one-third of the day laborers said they had been in this country for at least six years, and about the same number reported being at least 38 years old.

One of the most striking findings of the study was the high level of abuse reported by the workers. More than 58 percent said that, at least once, a boss had failed to pay them for a job or had given them a check that bounced. That compared with 41 percent in a similar study in Los Angeles and 45 percent in New York, Valenzuela said.

Groups that work with day laborers said the findings reflected a widespread problem. Steve Smitson, a lawyer at the nonprofit group Casa de Maryland, said his organization fields about 3,000 complaints a year from day laborers and low-wage workers who have not been paid. He noted that illegal immigrants are protected by many labor laws, although many don’t know it.

“What we find is, many day

laborers are documented. But the employers just assume they’re undocumented. They assume they’re afraid to report the crime,” he said.

Officials and day laborers have begun to fight back against such behavior. In Prince George’s County, prosecutors won the conviction of a subcontractor on seven counts of failure to pay wages to day laborers. In Prince William County, five Mexican immigrants won awards totaling more than $5,000 in small claims court from contractors.

Still, the problem is rampant, according to a group of day laborers who appeared at the Shirlington Employment Center in Arlington one recent morning hoping to get help in recovering back wages.

Adonay Hernandez, 26, of Arlington said he worked three days this month installing sheetrock at a home in Reston. The contractor gave him a check for only $300, instead of the promised wage of $364, Hernandez said. Then the check bounced, he said.

“I went to the bank and they said there were no funds. He told me to go back to the bank. I’ve gone, like, four times,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez migrated a decade ago from Honduras, where he was one of 16 siblings in a poor farming family. “My friends said life here is better,” Hernandez said, and it often is. But when he doesn’t get paid, he said, he sometimes has to borrow from friends to eat.

The Community Foundation, one of the study’s backers, said in a statement that the study showed the need for more language and vocational training as well as legal aid for the workers. Communities have been divided about offering services to laborers who may be in the country illegally.

Lack of payment isn’t the only difficulty the workers face. One-quarter of the day laborers reported suffering an injury or illness related to their work that required medical attention. A majority said they had not received any type of safety training, although many said they did dangerous jobs. And half said they sought jobs seven days a week.

“If we don’t have other work, we come every day. Saturdays and Sundays, too,” said Alex Fuentes, 20, a Salvadoran standing at a corner in Arlington with other day laborers last week, hoping for a job.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company