Who owns your land; You, or the Government?

The Declaration of Independence states that we have certain unalienable rights grant to us by our Creator, among which are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the first draft of the Declaration had these rights listed as Life, Liberty, and Property. The artful phrase "pursuit of happiness" was substituted, but intended to include property rights. If you own yourself, then you have the right to trade some of your labor for rights in property. The property could take the form of money, or corn, wine and oil, or head of sheep and cattle, or it could be real estate.

We now get to see if indeed the people do have a right to property, or if the Federal Government, and the Environmental Protection Agency actually has effective control of the land you paid for with your labor by virtue of making so expensive to get justice, that there simply is no justice unless you are George Soros. World Net Daily has the story here. The Sacketts are asking that their rights to the court not be precluded because of unreasonable cost which they could never afford.

Under the Federal Clean Water Act, the Federal Government does indeed potentially lay claim to all the land in the United States. Of course they claim all the navigable waters. But many lakes are connected to rivers, which are navigable, so they claim those as well. The most controversial of their claims, and the one which probably affects the Sacketts is the claim of "upland wetlands." If you have a low spot on your property, even a man made low spot, that has accumulated silt from rainwater filling the low spot, you have an "upland wetland." that in theory must be protected. Protection potentially means you can not use that land as anything other than something to look at. You can't walk there, or mow it, or fertilize it, or...well...do anything but look at it.  In essence, you enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that you get to pay for, and pay taxes on land that kept in the public interests.

"The reality of the Sacketts' situation is that they have been unambiguously commanded by their government not to complete their home-building project, to take expensive measures to undo the improvements that they have made to their land, and to maintain their land essentially as a public park until the property is 'restored' to the satisfaction of the EPA. They have been threatened with frightening penalties if they do not immediately obey; but they have been refused the prompt hearing they should have received as a matter of right in any court," Pacific Legal argued.

While courts have indeed upheld this claim by the Government, it is none the less a Constitutionally dubious claim, and one which is harmful to all that has made this country prosperous. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution states that private property shall not be taken for public use without due compensation. Since a person has rights in the land and waters on his own property, how is this not a taking? More to the point, if a person purchases land for a certain use, only to find that he has to maintain that property as a "park," does that not disincentive people from investing in the United States? What other property does the Government claim?  To keep the Government from doing what it is doing was the reason this provision of the Fifth Amendment was added to the Constitution.  Like every other protection of the Constitution, it has been whittled away, and watered down by interpretation, until it no longer exists.

Poll taxes were struck down as Unconstitutional because they denied many poor people, and blacks in particular, the fundamental right to vote.  If voting is a fundamental right, then how much more are property rights fundamental?  How much more should the Supreme Court uphold property and its corollary, contracts?  Yet the costs to get into court are so great as to preclude any hearing.  In the Sacketts' case, the costs to get into court are so great, that even if they win, they may no longer be able to afford to build their dream home.  You do not own the land, you rent it from the Government. 

Now, in fairness, I do have certain reservations that I will share with readers about this story. First off, the issue of any "upland wetlands" should have been resolved when the developers were developing the subdivision. These should have been clearly delineated on the plat when the owners bought the land.  One of the checks done to get a building permit should have been to see that contractor would not disturb any wetlands delineated.  If these things were not done, the Sacketts do indeed have a moral claim to harm from the developer, though how enforceable that claim is may be doubtful.