David McElroy

If you have a clear deed  to property, you own it outright and can do whatever you want with it. Unless, of course, the state wants it to build a school or public building. Or to give it to a developer to build shopping centers and fancier homes. Or to build a stadium for a baseball team.

Since that’s true, do you really own property in this country? Or do you just have the use of it until a politician’s whim decides to put it to another use?

Here in Birmingham, the city government is planning to build a new stadium and “entertainment district” that will center around the return of a minor league baseball team that wisely fled to the suburbs 20 years ago. Mayor William Bell said Monday that the city is ready to use eminent domain to force property owners to sell.

In Latin, eminent domain means “supreme lordship,” and that’s exactly what it means in English, too. The state owns you and the property that’s allegedly yours. The state is the supreme lord over you. Don’t forget that. But also don’t forget why you’ll be better off without the state.

When George W. Bush was president, the anti-war left spoke and demonstrated strongly against U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Now that Barack Obama is president — and is bombing Libya and continuing to fight in Afghanistan — most of those people are strangely quiet. Could it have anything to do with their loyalty to the Democratic Party?

Before Bush was president, conservatives loudly complained about federal spending and any expansion of the welfare state. But once Bush was in office — and expanded government massively through foreign invasions, military spending and a brand-new program to give prescription drugs to old folks — those same people mostly kept quiet. Could it have anything to do with their loyalty to the Republican Party?

It’s no secret that politics is filled with hypocrisy and positions that shift depending on who says what and who holds power at the moment. Still, we like to believe that we’re intellectually honest and it’s the other person who’s being the hypocrite.

In some ways, it’s easier for me to be consistent, because I never have to worry about “my allies” getting elected to anything. For those of us who’ve given up on politics and oppose the whole stinking system, it’s easier to say, “A pox on both your houses.” I wonder, though, at the ability of the human mind to justify things when I see libertarians compromising their beliefs for possible short-term election gains. (Did anyone mention Bob Barr?)

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You know your city government is in trouble when its people are so incompetent that they can’t even balance their checkbook and come up short by $420,000 one month. That’s the current situation in Oakridge, Ore.

For a small city with an annual budget of only $3 million, a mistake of $420,000 is a pretty big deal. Because the city adopted its budget based on faulty information, it starting spending money based on the new budget — only to find itself going broke when the income wasn’t matching the outgo.

The city is currently seeking a loan to cover the shortfall, but the city’s planning commissioner — an unpaid position — is out soliciting local citizens to lend the city the money if banks turn them down. The city says it’s just “Plan B.”

At least one local man wasn’t happy to be asked to lend money to the clowns at City Hall. “Why would I loan them money if they can’t even balance their checkbook each month?” asked 87-year-old Eddie Roberts.