Not One, But Two, Things To Rant About.

First, let me say that I think eminent domain is a load of horse puckey. For those of you who don't know, eminent domain is the law that allows the federal government to seize your house, business, or other property, so they can knock it down and put "public works" projects in its place.

However, the U. S. Supreme Court, in a moment of total insanity, has decreed that the government certainly knows how to use land better than the land's legitimate owners do, and as such, local governments - city level, to be specific, can seize your property for any use they feel benefits the community.

What this means to you and me is that there's no longer any reason to buy a house. If the government can come along and swipe however many years of your hard labor that have gone into paying your mortgage as they want to, with no reason in mind other than that they feel like it, what's the point?

Now the case in specific was very simple. The city government of New London, Connecticut, wanted to seize the homes of many residents, for the purpose of putting in an "office park." Why? What clear public good does seizing the homes of your citizens serve? Ooo! Ooo! I know! Higher tax revenues.

What, was I right?

Why yes, yes I was. Higher tax revenues for the city government are the "clear public good" that is served by seizing the citizens' homes. Now, to me, this seems like a big case of "your own damn fault," and here's why. When the city government started making noises about doing this, the citizens could just as easily have unelected the jackass city councilmen who dreamed it up, and elected new ones. But, see, instead, they took it to the Supreme Court - and now they've screwed it up for the rest of us.

Here's why: the U. S. Supreme Court is the final authority on matters of this nature. There IS no appeals court, no way to tie it up or hold it back. What this means is that if the City of Houston, which is well known for its ridiculous willingness to steal from the public pocket using property taxes, decides that you, as a homeowner, aren't paying them enough, they can just bulldoze your house and put in an apartment complex. Or an "office park." Or any other damn thing they please that brings them more money, because as the Supreme Court says,

Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community, justices said.

"The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including — but by no means limited to — new jobs and increased tax revenue," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

So, without further ado, let me make this perfectly clear: The government's right to steal from you is more important than your right to own your own home. In fact, the government's "right" to assess and levy taxes is the most important thing it does, clearly, as its ability to gain higher tax revenues is more important than the property rights of its citizens.

New London, Connecticut: WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP THIS INSANITY!?! CAN'T YOU DUMB BASTARDS VOTE!?!

On a different note, some of you may remember a few weeks ago, the MPAA made a huge production of announcing that they'd busted a major pirate and captured $30 MILLION in pirated DVDs and DVD-producing equipment. Well, now they're being sued for slander - apparently their representation of events to the media weren't ENTIRELY accurate.

Basically, see, movie companies don't produce all their DVDs themselves. What they do is outsource their production lines to other companies, like New Century Media Corporation, which then actually manufacture the DVDs you buy at Blockbuster. So, what the MPAA is crowing so delightedly about basically consists of sending their illegal, not-a-duly-constituted-authority-pseudocops to one of their own contractors, shutting them down for less than a day, seizing the products of one legal copyright holder under contract to New Century, and then bragging about a hugely inflated "piracy bust."

In fact, what they did was seize $10,540 worth of Genius Products, Inc.'s DVDs, for no reason that they were willing to give and 24 DVD stampers worth about $3600 apiece - and then reported the value of the bust based, they claimed, on the value of all the DVDs those stampers could be used to produce in the future.

Let me stress one BIG thing here - the organization that did the seizure, the Southern California High Tech Task Force, has no legal standing whatsoever. It is not a duly constituted legal authority, although it "cooperates" with local law enforcement - which means they phone in a lot of tips.

The MPAA was so desperately in need of a high-profile "victory" over the evil pirates that they raided one of their own contractors? WTF is going on here? I would not only sue, I would be screaming for criminal charges against all and sundry, and trying to force an investigation into the relationship of the MPAA with "local law enforcement." Internal Affairs needs to be involved in this.

Carson and Jennifer Yu, (proprietors of New Century Media,) my hat is off to you. I hope you win your case, and own their asses in court. It's about time someone put the MPAA on a choke chain. Its escalatingly hostile behavior towards its customers, and now its employees and contractors, has been across the line for far too long with no end in sight - thank you for being willing to fight them on this.