OPINION/COMMENTARY

Government grabbing homes – who'll be next?

Government is authorized to take private property by the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution for "public use" – not for public benefit. What is legitimate "public use"? Pretty good guidelines are offered in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution: "... forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings. ..." If government remains empowered to take private property for whatever it perceives to be a public benefit, the concept of private property will vanish; the United States will be no different from a communist nation where government decides how all property must be used. Take, for example, the Everglades Restoration Project in South Florida. Government has taken thousands of acres of private property, uprooting hundreds of private owners, to develop a project, not for government use, but which government says will result in a public benefit. The so-called benefit being the restoration of the Everglades to its "natural" condition....