WHAT’S THAT SMELL AND WHERE’S THAT BONE I BURIED?: It’s always amusing to see the bizarre ramblings of the “anything goes” property-rights nut-cases like Randy Weir, “Doc” Smith and the deluded anonymous sycophantic trolls who live under Charley Forster’s Planet Kaua`i blog.
In lending bandwidth and a sympathetic ear Charley has been known to promote a couple of quick-buck corporate attorneys and an out-to-lunch UH law professor trying to represent the constitutional right to be compensated for government-taken property as a right to put up a hotel or industrial factory anywhere a land-owner’s greedy little heart desires.
The problem is that these never-ever-land Brainiacas- who have apparently never heard of zoning, public nuisances and the rights of the community as a whole to tell you what you can and can’t do with your land- are actually encouraging others jump off the cliff with them.
And so, apparently acting on the precepts of this Church of Our Lady of the Presumptuous Assumptions, a group opened their very own low-cost, toxic-waste dump on 10 acres of land in Nanakuli on O`ahu.
When they hear these libertarian land-use arguments people who actually live in a community rather than a bunker often joke “what, you like open a dump next door?”. But no joking. According to a Honolulu newspaper article these people actually did just that.
“Agents from the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance served a search warrant on the lessee of the property” says the Honolulu Advertiser. “(US Attorney Ed) Kubo said officials are looking for 55-gallon drums containing chemicals along with large amounts of gasoline, hundreds of gallons of waste oil, hundreds of tires, a large number of thrown-away car batteries — still containing acid — and used automobile antifreeze liquid containing lead.
“The holes in which they are believed buried are very deep, ‘which shows a calculated attempt to hide (the items),’ Kubo said.”
The Star-Bulletin added “Kubo said: ‘It is alleged that companies would pay money to the lessee of the property to allow them to dump their waste into holes on the property.’”
Now there’s your property-rights free-market in action. It must warm the cockles of these sophomoric pranksters’ alleged hearts with pride to see someone actually do what they have been double-dog-daring them to do.
Certainly they’ll all be contributing to the defense fund for these pigs and get their lawyer buddies to defend them- unless of course they don’t believe in their own rhetoric which is apparently the case for most of these denizens of the Blog-Of-The-Unknown-Commenter who regularly leaves those flaming bag of crap on the doorstep, run away and expect others to stomp them out.
Clarification and Correction
Robert H. Thomas whom we referred to as “an out to lunch UH law professor” is not a UH law professor and does not teach law at UH although he did attend law school there and has published through UH. Thomas' nutty ideas are available at the InverseCondemnation web site. We were not referring to Professor Jon Van Dyke in this specific reference. We regret the error and any confusion it may have caused.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Because I mentioned him on my blog you think Jon Van Dyke is "an out-to-lunch UH law professor trying to represent the constitutional right to be compensated for government-taken property as a right to put up a hotel or industrial factory anywhere a land-owner’s greedy little heart desires"?
That's hilarious.
Thanks Andy - you nailed it!
-Katy
My bad Charley- I wasn’t referring to Jon Van Dyke but Robert H. Thomas http://www.hawaiilawyer.com/atty/rht/rht.htm and http://www.inversecondemnation.com/inversecondemnation/property_rights/index.html and mistakenly thought that taught law at UH when he only graduated from Richardson and has published there.
But that doesn't make sense. Robert Thomas so far as I'm aware, has never, as you accuse, "represent[ed] the constitutional right to be compensated for government-taken property as a right to put up a hotel or industrial factory anywhere a land-owner’s greedy little heart desires."
Unless you can point to an actual example...
And who then are the "couple of quick-buck corporate attorneys" I've "been known to promote"?
The smell may be your own BS.
Charley is a bit of a looneytarian at times. He sure loves that reverse condemnation site. And there are a couple of obvious Weirites over there (if not the man himself), but this is just plain BS:
"The problem is that these never-ever-land Brainiacas- who have apparently never heard of zoning, public nuisances and the rights of the community as a whole to tell you what you can and can’t do with your land- are actually encouraging others jump off the cliff with them"
Crooks have never needed fringe political types to lead them to evil. They're miles ahead already. You sure do love to play post hoc fallacy.
I've said it before: You guys wield the word "libertarian" the same way the John Birchers used to wield the term "communist." Anything to the left of Richard Nixon, pre-China, was a commie to the Birchers. Similarly, you guys ad hominem up as libertarian any calculus that takes into account property rights. There are a couple of problems with that. First, it is often inaccurate (I recognize that is not a concern with you guys, but for those sticklers among us, there it is). Second, it is a lazy man's workaround to the problem of actually confronting the substance of whatever you are attacking (again, I recognize that that's the point, but for us sticklers...).
Sorry Charlie
You are highly tuned to property rights issues that few would focus on. How many of your posts do you drag over from an obscure site devoted to property rights from a more Weirian perspective? And you come from the libertarian side in terms of your arguments. Much as Katy and Andy come from a more socialist perspective. That's libertarian with a small l.
You can whine about the label but it fits. And if you are going to label Andy as the lunatic fringe, you're going to have to grown a thicker skin yourself.
I know I shouldn’t do this but...
I don’t care what you call the philosophy that says that people have some kind of natural rights to use real estate that they have paid money for in almost any manner they wish, even with some “within the law” caveat, when they rely on rights not really there in the law as many maintain. The vacation rental issue is a perfect example. Rather than enforce the law the Council instead took one of these bizarre perversions of the plain reading of laws in some brief by attorneys who rely on some myth to convince them they have to carve out use that he community overwhelmingly rejects based on this right that no court has ever deemed anything but absurd.
You always want it both ways Charley- you support these wackos and then run away. The fact that they make classic libertarian land use arguments doesn’t make them or you libertarians in your book... whatever- call them ksjdfksjdlfkl- ists. I’m not playing semantic games. Personally I don’t dis libertarian thought if it’s competently presented and defended.
Jeff Mallen (sp?) of the Libertarian Party and I have debated and probably have more in common in many areas than we disagree upon- like land use which is basically a governmental function disagreement, where our differences lie not in the premises for the “problems” but the solutions. But he owns his Libertarian stances as I own my basically Green positions.
You and your anonymous buddies constantly take characterizations based on facts and attack the characterizations to try to claim the facts are inaccurate. A little critical reading is a dangerous thing- try it sometimes boys.
According to you guys then any constitutional scholar, no matter how socialist in outlook or sympathies, is a libertarian - guilty of recognizing the textual constitutional foundation for property rights in our legal system. And that, obviously, is an absurd postion to take.
(Andy, if you really think the right is "not really there," you might want to review the language of the 5th and 14th Amendments.)
Again, your fallacy, both of you, is erroneously asserting that any recognition of the legal consequences of property rights is reducable to libertarianism.
And that's facially absurd.
It would be like reducing to "socialism" any recognition of the legal ability of the community to circumscribe the behavior of individuals for the benefit of the community.
So how do you square my unembarrassed, enthusiastic support for a publicly funded bike path with your dreams of my libertarianism? Oh my god! I'm a socialist...and a libertarian. I must be schizophrenic.
What I don't understand is the impulse to resort to ad hominem. If the substantive points are so assailable, why not just assail them? Why always try to change the subject?
Post a Comment