The House That Eminent Domain Built

Are you ready for some football? Although Michael Phelps currently dominates the sports pages, most Texans are anxiously awaiting the start of another season of Dallas Cowboys football. This will be the last year the Cowboys will play in Irving’s Texas Stadium. After that, team owner Jerry Jones will move the team into a state-of-the-art football cathedral constructed of steel, glass, and high-def jumbotrons. It is going to be a sight to behold.

Given that the Dallas Cowboys are the second-highest grossing team in the NFL, you can imagine the competition among various communities in the Dallas area to secure the new stadium. City council members from several DFW localities were frantically crunching numbers in a pitched battle to see who could funnel the most taxpayer money into the coffers of The Dallas Cowboys Football Club, L.L.C. When the dust settled, the City of Arlington was declared the “winner,” and the new stadium is under construction as we speak.

Building a world-class sports facility these days is not cheap, and as you’ve no doubt heard, everything’s bigger in Texas. The construction costs were originally budgeted at $650 million, $325 million of which is being paid by Arlington taxpayers. In order to raise the funds, Arlington increased local sales taxes. Evidently, though, the few additional pennies per transaction weren’t enough to cover the city’s commitment, so naturally the city council looked for cost-cutting opportunities. At some point early in the process, they realized that buying the land from its existing owners on a voluntary basis would be way more expensive than simply taking what they wanted, so they resorted to eminent domain.

The stadium project was originally pitched as the Kelo case was winding its way through the court system. Foolishly believing that the Supreme Court would rule in favor of protecting private property rights, the city rushed the plans through the approval process prior to the announcement of the Kelo decision. Obviously, they needn't have worried. The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of large-scale theft. In the wake of the Kelo backlash, the Texas state legislature passed SB62, a bill ostensibly designed to restrict the use of eminent domain in Texas. But even this was not enough to derail the stadium project – the bill contains an exemption written specifically for the Cowboys. The eminent domain seizures went through without a hitch.

Of course, governments must compensate the victims of eminent domain seizures, and the City of Arlington did indeed pay homeowners what it unilaterally decided was "fair market value." According to the Dallas Morning News, Arlington has tentatively agreed to sweeten the $1.8M already paid for 26 disputed properties by another $868,250.

Wow! $2.7M dollars is a lot of money! It certainly sounds like a generous offer, until one takes the extra step of dividing $2.7M by 26 homes. Once the high-powered math is complete, we discover that the city is “offering” homeowners an average of $104,000 per home. The median home price in Arlington is $127,000. And sure enough, in many cases the prices received by the former homeowners were not enough to pay off their remaining mortgage balances. But here's the real kicker - the City of Arlington provided their eminent domain victims with trailers to transport their personal effects. The city then provided them with a tax statement for the service, since the provision of "relocation assistance" is considered taxable income!

But of course one must always consider the “greater good.” So what if some people were taxed for the privilege of being kicked out of their homes and now have to pay mortgages on houses that lie somewhere beneath the 30-yard line? There’s football to be played, man! Not just any football, either - we’re talking about the Dallas Cowboys! And it’s not like the former Arlington residents aren’t getting anything out of the deal. They will have the satisfaction of knowing that they helped make the fabulously wealthy Jerry Jones marginally fabulously wealthier. And you just can’t put a price on that.

Go Cowboys.

P.S.: Check out the following quote from team owner Jerry Jones, available on the official stadium website. "I never felt that I owned the Dallas Cowboys. I know what a feeling of ownership feels like if you own a car, or a house, or some land...."

Spinning Slavery

As others have said, libertarianism is the radical notion that you don’t own other people. That’s probably one of the reasons I find the philosophy so attractive. After all, I grew up believing that slavery is wrong, so being consistent with that idea comes naturally to me.

But recently I came across a group calling itself “Americans for a National Service Act” and it dawned on me that I never really gave the pro-slavery argument a fair chance. Perhaps I’ve just been narrow-minded. Fortunately, ANSA has a website in which they explain the sunny side of involuntary servitude. Their mission is simple:

“Service Nation is a 12-month non-partisan grassroots and grass top political campaign intent on pushing the issue of National Service to the forefront of American life and convincing the next President and Congress to put into law a Voluntary National Service Act in 2009. The secondary goal of Service Nation is to set America on a trajectory to become a nation of comprehensive and voluntary national service by 2020.”

Although the ANSA website clearly states that “Service Nation does not support mandatory service requirements,” it also clearly states that one of ANSA’s tasks is to “disseminate the ideas of Voluntary and Mandatory National Service.” ANSA seems to be aware of the contradiction, but not terribly concerned with it.

“When people speak of National Service, the question invariably arises whether we are talking about voluntary or mandatory service. The answer is both. There are worthwhile ideas to be discussed with both systems. Some people believe that an incentive-based voluntary system is more politically viable. Some people think that National Service will not be effective unless it is mandatory. Certainly, with either option the devil is in the details. We need only commit ourselves to the proposition of National Service and the competition of ideas will eventually lead us to the best solution.”

Yes, indeed - a national service plan that will be comprehensive and voluntary, as well as mandatory (if voluntary doesn’t turn out to be comprehensive enough for those imposing the service on others). By 2020, Service Nation wants over 100 million Americans to spend at least a year of their lives in voluntary-but-if-all-else-fails-mandatory service to the state. ANSA feels that this opportunity should be its own reward, but they are kind enough to offer other inducements as well.

For example, one of the real selling points of this plan is that you get to choose how you will spend that year (within certain government-approved limits, of course). In fact, there are no fewer than five – count ‘em, five – areas in which US subjects could be enslaved to the state. National Security, Nation Building/Disaster Recovery, Conservation, Education, and Public HATS (Health, Administration, Transportation, and Safety). If only Kunta Kinte had had so many options!

I have to give ANSA credit – Service Nation is without a doubt the best spin on slavery since William Gilmore Simms wrote The Sword and the Distaff. But I don’t want to take the comparison between national service and chattel slavery too far. After all, being forced to spend a year of one’s life working for FEMA does not begin to match the horror of being forced to spend one’s entire life as another person’s property. Nevertheless, what is being proposed is nothing short of involuntary servitude which, despite ANSA’s ridiculous claim to the contrary, is patently unconstitutional. The text of the Thirteenth Amendment is quite clear:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Sadly, the Constitution doesn’t mean much these days, and ANSA provides yet another example of how diligently some people will work to destroy liberty - not only for themselves, but also for the rest of us. One might have thought that the concept of involuntary servitude had been thoroughly demolished by more enlightened thinking, but bad ideas seem to be much more resilient than good ones. If ANSA’s push for national service fails, perhaps they can work to reinstate some of the other horrible ideas that have been abandoned by history. Maybe next time they’ll try to force doctors to prescribe leeches, or bring back the time-honored tradition of burning witches and heretics at the stake. I’m sure they’ll be able to spin it so that Time magazine runs another cover story, this time glorifying the health benefits of a good bleeding and the sense of national purpose that will be achieved by public bonfires of those heretics who dared to suggest that the state exists to serve the individual, and not the other way around.

Something to look forward to, I suppose.

P.S.: In case you’re interested, Service Nation has a number of corporate sponsors, including Time, AARP, Target, Home Depot, and Bank of America.

Recommended Reading

The Revolution: A Manifesto: If Ron Paul had been as eloquent on the campaign trail as he is in his writing, the GOP race might have turned out very differently. The Revolution illustrates the difference between Ron Paul and virtually every other modern political figure. Dr. Paul has a coherent political philosophy. Everyone else just has a laundry list of bad ideas.

Gold: The Once and Future Money: Nathan Lewis provides an excellent analysis of the gold standard – its mechanics, its history, and the reasons why sound money is so important. Gold is written from a non-ideological (i.e., non-Austrian) viewpoint that could even appeal to non-libertarians.

The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power: Gene Healy’s overview of how the American president went from bit player to global demigod in just over 200 years.