CLI Director Chad Adams was the featured speaker this week at
FreedomWorks/CSE chapter meetings throughout western and central North
Carolina. Stops included Mocksville, Danbury,
Burlington, Tryon, Statesville and Morganton. Adams’ speech to each
group focused on JLF’s role in public policy, the tax burden in each
area, and property rights issues including the alarming Supreme Court
decision in Kelo vs. New London,
in which the court ruled that governments can take private property for
private redevelopment. The decision has sparked an outcry. Writing in
the Greensboro News & Record last Sunday, Paul Chesser
argued the decision “creates a government life-support machine with an
unremovable power plug,” all based on the ever-expanding definition of
“public purpose.” Government, he wrote, no longer exists to serve the
people. Rather, “the number of taxpayers now must be sustained – or
even grown – to support government.” George Leef addressed the issue of
property rights in his review of Cowboys, Indians, and Spontaneous Order in the Summer issue of Regulation.
In the book, authors Terry Anderson and Peter Hill show that, among
other things, property rights were developed by Indian cultures during
the development of the American West. What’s more, the arrival of
government authority usually made life worse by undermining established
arrangements that worked well.