The Power of Government

Thomas Jefferson said,  “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”

We all need a solid government structure, accountable to the people. But the government only has the power delineated in the Constitution. We must remember that the Constitution is a restriction on the powers of government and not a restriction on citizen rights.

The pandemic of the last few months has shown us how powerful the government can be. We have seen businesses closed and many lives ruined from the fallout. Families being separated and not allowed to say final goodbyes to loved ones and children not allowed to attend school. 

Much of it has made no sense. Big box stores with hundreds of customers were okay. Apparently, there’s no danger of exposure to these hundreds gathered together. But small businesses, serving a few customers a day, are way too dangerous. Mass gatherings for protests are fine but mass gatherings for church services or funerals are not allowed.

If you have a restaurant, you can open with restrictions, but if you own a bar the danger is too great. That is unless you make your own beer and are considered a brewery. Then the virus will apparently not be attacking in your establishment. See how selective these executive orders have been. They make no sense.

Regardless of how one feels about the shutdown and whether it was necessary, there should be some justified reasoning behind the decisions. There seems to be no thoughtful, data driven consideration in these selections.

I decided to go back and look at another abuse of government power that really upset me. The Kelo decision of 2005. A landmark Supreme Court 5-4 decision is known as one of the most controversial decisions in history. Let me refresh your memory.

Suzette Kelo and her neighbors lived in a lovely community that overlooked the water in New London, Conn. Some of these homes had been in the families since the 1800s.  Pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, had built a plant next door to the neighborhood in 1998. Pfizer decided they needed more space along with condos and commercial development. The city decided that this land would be of better use and bring in more tax revenue. The city delegated its eminent domain power over to the New London Development Corporation, a private company, to take the neighborhood for development. Almost anything can be justified when powerful entities with eminent domain power set out to establish “economic development”. There is almost nobody more in favor of economic development than yours truly, but not at the expense of violating rights of citizens and ignoring  the constitution.

Home is the one place on earth where we feel safe and protected. Imagine being one of these New London homeowners and begging and pleading for ten years, before numerous government entities, to be allowed to keep your home. And in the end, homeowners were booted out of their homes by the power of government. This should never happen.

Now for the rest of the story. Government does very few things well. It is not designed that way. The New London project was no exception. It has been a dismal failure. The property is a vacant field today fifteen years after the initial taking. The city has spent $80 million dollars of taxpayers money on the project and there has been not one brick laid or a single wall built.

Adding insult to injury, Pfizer closed the New London plant in 2010, shortly after its tax breaks expired. This cost over 1,000 jobs and is a deadly blow to the city.

There was some good that came from this decision. Forty four states have passed some sort of protection from this form of government overreach. This remains, in the minds of many, one of the biggest mistakes ever made by the Supreme Court. In 2012, Justice Antonin Scalia said, “There have been three cases wrongly decided by the Supreme Court and two of them have been undone and one of them soon will be. They are Plessy, Dred Scott and Kelo.” Let’s hope he is right and the injustice will be undone.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor had this to say after the Kelo decision: “The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”

The power of eminent domain was created for governments to have power to “take with just compensation given” property for public use. Government buildings and highways are considered public use.  It is not meant for the government to take a property in order to allow another private entity to develop a more desirable structure. 

The Constitution, nor our rights guaranteed within, are suspended because this or that might bring better incomes or outcomes. It’s like Moses’ tablet of the Ten Commandments. It is cast in stone.