Yet another government theft is justified:
In a twist on this summer’s Supreme Court decision allowing a Connecticut city to seize private land and turn it over to developers, a New Jersey appeals panel has OK’d the taking of property from developers to assure the area remains as open space.
The decision by the three-judge state court, handed down Tuesday, allows the township of Mount Laurel, N.J., to take a 16-acre tract from developer Michael Procacci and his company, Mipro Homes, which planned to build 23 homes on the land.
So, if you remember the reasoning behind the Kelo case, government needs to be able to steal land from private land owners in order to collect more taxes. But the appeals panel is ensuring that a government can steal land because it wants to collect fewer taxes.
The central point has nothing to do with the various reasonings, of course. Those are just rationalizations meant to obscure the fact that the courts – government agencies – are trying to make sure that a government can do whatever it wants whenever it wants, for whatever reason.
This is not your grandfather’s America.