Supreme Court Sides With Government in Second Land Rights Case

[kskiska]

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court said Monday that people who lose state lawsuits claiming the government improperly took their property cannot count on federal courts for help.

Land rights is a major issue at the high court this year, and so far the justices have made it tougher for people to win lawsuits claiming that local and state laws amount to an unconstitutional "taking."

The biggest of three cases dealing with government authority to seize properties will be decided in the next week, before the Supreme Court begins a three-month break.

In Monday's decision, the justices ruled against a historic San Francisco hotel that wanted to convert rooms - previously designated for permanent residents - to accommodate tourists.

more…
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBQBW537AE.html

[newswolf56]

1. If the news article is correct...

...then this decision legalizes rent control, which is wonderfully good news in this age of skyrocketing rents and ever-more-obscene landlordly greed.

Indeed, it is increasingly obvious rent control is the ONLY way to provide affordable housing in America. Home ownership and even affordable rent is now increasingly forever out of reach of the rapidly expanding underclass into which ever more working families are being flung by the punish-the-poor viciousness of the Bush economy.

In this context, the fact that Janice Rodgers Brown is so venomous an opponent of rent control is no doubt precisely why her appointment was so important to BushCo. (Brown is referenced in the full text of the report.)

It is a serious error to regard Bush as stupid: he is not stupid at all, just infinitely reactionary (and infinitely cunning), his politics more maliciously social Darwinist than probably any U.S. president in history, his economics as deliberately savage as a slave-whip.

But history will have the final damning word: history will say of Bush that he is the president who made Marx and Marxism again relevant to Americans.