I've decided to create a new award for California that violates at least two Constitutional or Tea Party principles: the "Golden Goosie", Willie Brown, eminent domain mortgages, San Bernardino County
Ah hem. Drum roll please. And the winner is...Willie Brown, former mayor of San Francisco!
(Brown's back-room deals in San Bernardino County violate both the Founders' intent of eminent domain and the rule of law--contract law, that is!)
Willie Brown and friends are behind "eminent domain" mortgage bailout in San Bernardino County that "sticks" it to loan issuers--those "big, bad banks". (First heard about the story on KKLA-AM's Frank Pastore Show at 6 p.m., Tuesday, July 17, 2012).
The shorthand is CA is taking the devastating SCOTUS eminent domain case--Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005)--to new lows: A municipal mortgage bailout that keeps owners in foreclosing properties, re-evaluates the loans, keeps taxes going into government coffers and "sticks" the loan issuers with a loss that will have the long-term consequences of discouraging business investment in troubled communities.
Imagine what incompetent, Progressive mayors, county supervisors or city councils could do with this to appease over-under constituents and get votes while destroying property rights or free market principles.
So CA citizens, taxpayers and property owners, bend over because Brown's greedy secret is a pinch-me fantasy for underwater homeowners and bankrupt municipalities in the Golden State to get revenues, be popular and kick future community growth squarely in the buttocks.
Let's hear it for the "Golden Goosie" and Mr. Brown, a former mayor and assembly speaker, that just keeps on giving taxpayers in the Golden State a poke and a pinch where the sun doesn't shine.
In California, that's hard to do.
Karen Kenney is publisher of "The Patriots Almanac"
