Measure 49 backers are continuing their victory dance today. And, why not? They won. But property owners in Oregon lost. They may be in the minority but property owners still have rights:
...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.You may remember this part of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution; it comes right after the part about being a witness against yourself.
Measure 37 added teeth behind this and Oregon's law by requiring a time limit and the end of unreasonable takings of people's property. This has all but gone away with M 49. By passing it, the voters have ceded other people's property rights to the state and the central planners.
Randal O'Toole, an Oregonian and Cato Institute Senior Fellow, has just come out with a must read book for every Oregonian and Washingtonian, "The Best Laid Plans, How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook and Your Future.
Today he published an open letter to popular Portland blogger Jack Bogdanski to express how this tax professor and influential blogger's backing of M 49 harmed Oregonians' rights and how he bears some responsibility for misleading them. Here's where you can find the letter. The following are some particularly on point observations from the letter:
If we treated any of the other freedoms the way we treat property rights — saying, for example, that you can print anything you want as long as the government censors no more than 90 percent of it or that you can worship in any of the 10 percent of churches approved by the government — there would be a revolt. But for some reason, the Supreme Court has decided that property rights don’t merit the same protection as other rights, and you and 61 percent of other Oregon voters apparently agree.
I don’t expect to change your mind. But the next time you criticize the PDC for subsidizing some condo tower, the next time you fret over a high-cost streetcar line, the next time you chortle over some inanity committed by Portland’s city council, I hope you feel a pang of guilt. Because you had a choice, and you chose density, congestion, and subsidies over freedom and property rights.
7 comments:
Kudo's to the hicks in sticks who had the most to lose let the commies in the city tell them how to live.
How anyone who looked at who was for and against let this crap pass deserves what they are going to get.
Unfortunately, the rest of us are so much collateral damage.
Victoria, would that be collateral damage or intended consequences (as opposed to unintended consequences)?
In the comments of the open letter a commenter writes,
"As for Jack Bog, the guy is smart but he isn’t anything close to fair minded or reasonable. Dialogue with such people is a waste of time."
Spot on. Bog has banned me from his blog and deleted my comments several times. Mind you, not for being rude, or using foul language, or anything like that. Simply for stating a different opinion. Just that. The man has no interest in anyone's opinions other than his own. It's a bit scary that he has any dominion over students.
Scottiebill,
You're right, of course, they DO intend to hurt the people.
Zeb,he's a professor, of course he may engage in censorship and preach his own position.
Just saying that what the commenter said, that he isn't fair minded or reasonable, is correct.
Where I went to law school the exchange of ideas --not the censorship of them-- was part and parcel of the process. It was how lawyers learned to argue.
Measure 49: A con after all
Hasso Hering
Democrat Herald
editor
There were enough conditional clauses in Measure 49 that some of us thought the whole thing was a con. Now a memo from the state Department of Land Conservation and development seems to prove it.
Voters approved this measure in the election that ended Nov. 6. Among the claims made by the proponents was that the measure, while stopping big claims to develop land under Measure 37, would allow small claims to go ahead. Also, 49 would go beyond Measure 37 by allowing small M37 claimants to transfer their development rights to others.
On Friday, 10 days after the voting was over, the DLCD issued the draft of a memo as “preliminary guidance” to county planning departments.
The gist of this guidance was that the only Measure 37 claims that could go ahead were those that had acquired a “vested right” to do so. But no single action on the part of the owners — not even having gone through all the Measure 37 steps and been issued a building permit — would give them a “vested right” to go ahead.
And oh, by the way, even in the unlikely event anyone had obtained a vested right under Measure 37, “Ballot Measure 49 does not make a vested right obtained under Ballot Measure 37 transferable.”
In other words, all the campaign promises and statements by the backers of Measure 49 are not likely to be borne out without somebody — probably a court — deciding one case at a time whether in that case a vested right had been established.
The backers of Measure 49 are not stupid. They knew what they were doing. The way they wrote the measure, and the way they phrased the ballot title, was designed to pull the wool over Oregon’s eyes. Some of us who opposed the measure suspected this before election day. The guidance now issued by the DLCD confirms it.
The measure was phrased to make it seem to affirm some property rights, but in fact it fairly invited an interpretation that did the exact opposite.
Seen in the light of the DLCD memo, the ballot measure was a deception, one that is costing some of our fellow citizens tens of thousands of dollars.
In coming elections for state offices, voters have reason to remember the legislators who brought them this fraud. (hh)
Klatu said: Right on Hasso Hering.
Maybe next time the people of Oregon will
vote for property rights.
At least they turned down
Measure 50.
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