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How respecting property rights help homeless people, Louisville Corporate Welfare, and Supreme Court Decisions

By Theresa Camoriano

1.       How respecting property rights help homeless people – For the past few weeks, a drama has been playing out at Wayside Christian Mission in Louisville.  The mission, which houses and feeds homeless people, wants to expand its facility, but the neighbors are opposed.  The neighbors have been trying to use historic preservation regulations as a way to prevent Wayside from expanding, saying that its buildings need to be preserved and cannot be razed for the expansion, even though Wayside agreed to use the historic facades in its expansion.  Instead of offering to buy Wayside’s property at a price that would entice it to move to a new location, they have been trying to use historic preservation to get the government to do their dirty work for them on the cheap.  Fortunately, Wayside was able to apply political pressure of its own by having churches encourage their members to send postcards to the mayor and other officials.  In the end, the historic preservation regulations were not imposed, a buyout offer was made and accepted, and Wayside will be building somewhere else.  It is very unfortunate that Wayside had to apply political pressure just to have its property rights respected, but fortunately, in the end, they were respected, and now Wayside will be able to use its resources to help the homeless people it serves.  What do you suppose would have happened to a property owner who had less political clout than Wayside?

2.       Louisville Corporate Welfare -  Mayor Jerry Abramson has decided that Louisville should spend over $17 million to buy the Water Company block, which has been appraised for $7 million, in order to give it to developers to bring in restaurants and entertainment.  This was sprung on the Metro Council members, who apparently learned of it from reading the newspaper.  The Democrats rubber stamped the Mayor, and the Republicans all voted against the proposal.  Unfortunately for the taxpayers and honest businesses who operate without government handouts, the Democrats and the Mayor won.  Many thanks to Hal Heiner and the other Republicans for opposing this form of corporate welfare.  If it makes good economic sense to develop the area, it will be done with private money on a voluntary basis.  It will not be necessary to bribe businesses to come in.  And if it does not make sense to develop the area, then the Mayor and Democrats on the Council will just be giving a handout to their friends, and the venture eventually will fail or will require more taxpayer subsidies to stay alive. 

3.       Supreme Court Heller Decision on D.C. Gun Ban – While it is good that the court decided in a 5-4 decision to overturn the D.C. gun ban, it is frightening that one of our most basic human rights – the right to self-defense – is just one Supreme Court justice away from being lost.  Many liberal commentators are saying that the Supremes have overturned their own precedents in the Heller decision, but they never cite the cases that are being overturned or tell us the facts and holdings of those cases.  Could that possibly be because they are not telling the truth and the court is not overturning its own precedents?  It would be easy enough for them to cite the cases if they exist. 

One commentator said that it just stands to reason that the more guns there are the more gun crimes there will be.  That is totally contrary to the evidence and makes absolutely no sense.  What matters is not how many guns there are but rather who has them.  If the criminals have access to guns (which will always be the case), and if the law-abiding citizens are disarmed, then crime rates increase, as the potential criminals know their risks are low.  However, when the law-abiding citizens have guns with which to defend themselves, then potential criminals tend to back off, because their risks are higher, thus reducing the crime rate.   Those four Supreme Court justices and the commentators who want to deprive law-abiding citizens of their right to use guns to defend themselves and their families from vicious criminals ought to be ashamed.  They should try walking around the dangerous streets of D.C. at night wearing a large sign that says, “I am unarmed,” which is essentially what they want the law-abiding residents of D.C. to do.

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