Property Rights and Eminent Domain
 

We must stop special interests from violating property rights and literally driving families from their homes, farms and ranches.

Our country’s founders would roll over in their graves if they saw the takings clause in the Fifth Amendment used to justify booting people out of their homes for the profit of private developers and tax-hungry local governments. The Su­preme Court’s Kelo decision said govern­ment power could be used to condemn private homes and churches to benefit a huge pharmaceutical corporation and a large property developer.

Today, we face a new threat of wide­spread eminent domain actions as a re­sult of powerful interests who want to build a NAFTA superhighway through the United States from Mexico to Canada.

We also face another danger in regula­tory takings: Through excess regulation, governments deprive property own­ers of significant value and use of their properties — all without paying “just compensation.”

Property rights are the foundation of all rights in a free society. Without the right to own a printing press, for example, free­dom of the press becomes meaningless. The next president must get federal agen­cies out of these schemes to deny prop­erty owners their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property.

American Independence and . . . You!

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Paid for by the Ron Paul 2008 Presidential Campaign Committee.