My take on Solberg Airport Expansion and Property Values

The eminent domain battle between the New Jersey township of Readington (my home town) and Solberg Airport, which began in 2006, reached a new stage in May when a court ruled in favor of Solberg Airport. Eminent domain was initiated to prevent the development of Solberg Airport’s unused land, possibly into a housing development or airport expansion. The court concluded that Readington’s attempted use of eminent domain against the airport was a "manifest abuse of power." This was the third consecutive court loss for Readington, which cost the taxpayers and the Solbergs millions of dollars in legal fees and other related expenses.

In my last post, I addressed and rebutted a 2/15/15 letter published in the Hunterdon County Democrat titled Inverse Condemnation, in which John Kalinich Jr. claimed that if the Solberg’s expand their airport (which has been in operation since the late 1930s), it would harm property values for surrounding residents, resulting in “inverse condemnation.”  Today I want to present my opinion on the viability of the claim that property values would be harmed or significantly impacted by an expanded airport. This post is presented in a “for what it’s worth” spirit, since I am not any kind of expert on property value assessments.

I left these comments supplemental to my main comments posted below Kalinich Jr.’s letter:

As an aside, and for what it's worth, let me express my opinion on the question of the effect a larger airport would have on surrounding property values. There has been a lot of hyperbole on this issue. During the Fall campaign, the Allen/Ghatti campaign sent a campaign flyer around quoting from a letter published in the Hunterdon Review (as I recall). The letter claimed that Solberg Airport expansion would reduce home values by “hundreds of thousands of dollars.” That would essentially make my house worthless. Really? Who could take that assertion as anything other than hollow scare talk?

Personally, I find it hard to see how an expanded Solberg Airport would be all that negative for property values in Readington. Solberg is an existing airport established in the 1930s. I don’t see how it’s any more innocuous than highways, industrial parks, or the like. Everybody who lives here today moved in knowing they were moving into a town with an airport. Aviation is a mature industry. It is integral to our society, and has well-established safety and other standards. We lived in Cranford, just a hundred yards from the Garden State Parkway, our backyard bordering on an industrial park, a few miles from Newark airport. We had no problem in 1977 quickly selling our Cranford home at a nice profit from the price we had paid just 5 years earlier, after which we moved to Readington in 1978.

We have friends who lived in Rahway for years, under the flight path of jets accessing Newark Airport. Many times we sat with them in their backyard as low-flying commercial jets flew low overhead. Yes, they were noisy, but hardly a life-disrupting factor. Well, our friends moved to North Jersey in 2014. They had no trouble selling their house in Rahway, which went for close to their asking price of $300,000—just slightly less than the assessed value of my home—after only two weeks on the market. Last summer, as we sat with them on the deck of their new house, what looked to me like a corporate jet passed low overhead, heading for Teterboro Airport. They paid over $1 million for their new home. People everywhere live with airports. Everywhere, homes around airports are bought and sold. Planes flying overhead can be an annoyance. But so are leaf blowers.

Related Reading:

Solberg Airport: Who Shapes "Community Character"?

Election 2014: Eminent Domain and the "Limits of Rights"

Development is Not ‘Inverse Condemnation’

The eminent domain battle between the New Jersey township of Readington (my home town) and Solberg Airport, which began in 2006, reached a new stage in May when a court ruled in favor of Solberg Airport. Eminent domain was initiated to prevent the development of Solberg Airport’s unused land, possibly intro a housing development of airport expansion. The court concluded that Readington’s attempted use of eminent domain against the airport was a "manifest abuse of power." This was the third consecutive court loss for Readington, which cost the taxpayers and the Solbergs millions of dollars in legal fees and other related expenses.

I don’t know where the battle goes from here. But I do know that the debate among residents will continue. That being the case, I want to address a letter published in the Hunterdon County Democrat in February 2015 titled Inverse Condemnation. In his letter, John Kalinich Jr. claimed that if the Solberg’s expand their airport, it would lower home property values, resulting in “inverse condemnation.” (A previous letter writer used the term “reverse eminent domain.)

Having followed this issue for many years, it is apparent to me that the alternative to litigation is the inevitable expansion of Solberg Airport into a jetport capable of 24/7 operations in good weather and bad. The litigation is all that stands in the way of the resumption of the Solberg's development plans. Without it, we will again be at the mercy of the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration because they have jurisdiction over approval and preemptive authority over our municipality. We learned, much to our dismay, in the decade between 1995 and 2005 that the township has no meaningful say in the matter of an airport expansion.

Thor Solberg has testified under oath during the trial that he will expand his airport. Now Don Baldwin is trying to lay the groundwork for a full political takeover of the Township Committee in the June primary. He and the Solbergs know that this would be, by far, the easiest way to accomplish the Solberg's expansion goal. An expansion would rob Readington residents of the property value in their homes. An inverse condemnation! Solberg's financial gain would become our financial loss.

All of the actions taken by the Township Committee to budget for the trial and deal with increases were transparent and fully compliant with the law, and certainly not unusual or underhanded as Holman and Baldwin would have us believe. The costs of the trial are a necessary investment in the future of our township and I am happy to pay my share to protect my investment in my home here. [emphasis added]

I left these comments:

John,

Let’s get our terms straight. In this context, “condemnation”—or eminent domain—means only one thing; forcible taking of private land by governmental action. There is no such thing as “inverse condemnation.” There is only condemnation. There is no condemnation action against your property. There is against the Solberg’s land. Eminent domain is strictly a government action. No private person, acting as a private person, can initiate any condemnation.

What about property values? There are many things that affect property values; highways, industrial parks, schools, housing developments, railroads, shopping malls, pipelines. Should all of those things—and anything else deemed by existing property owners to be bad for property values—be stopped? Indeed, “value” is in the eye of the beholder. Many people once believed—and some, sadly, still believe—that a neighborhood sale to the “wrong” racial or ethnic neighbor will drag down his property values. Should communities be allowed to legally bar certain family from buying homes based on their ethnicity?

This would be NIMBYism run amok. If the peaceable use of our land were at the mercy of anyone who alleges a loss of property values—real or imagined—we wouldn’t have an advanced industrial society. Or a free society. Or any kind of civilized society.

No one has a “right” to any particular resale value. No one has a “right” not to be affected by other people’s property usage. There is only the right to the peaceable use of one’s own property, possessed equally and at all times by all. The question is not, does person A’s use of his land ‘affect’ person B? When people live amongst each other, there are no end to ways in which one person’s actions can affect another. The only valid question is, does person A’s use of his property violate the property rights of person B; by, for example, polluting person B’s property? Then and only then can person A be stopped. But it is never just to take person A’s property from him against his will.

Put more specifically, does the expansion of Solberg Airport objectively infringe on other people’s right to be physically safe and secure on his property, or in his use of his property? I don’t know all of the issues involved in airport expansion. Perhaps there are valid reasons for preventing airport expansion. That’s to be hashed out in an objective forum under due process. One thing that is certain: the Solberg’s have a right to use their land in any legal and peaceable way they please, just like the rest of us—so long as their use doesn’t violate the rights of others. They have a right to apply for approvals for airport expansion, and surrounding property owners have a right to present their case against if they believe expansion would violate their property rights. But no one has a right to use eminent domain—i.e., legalized theft—as a means of preventing Solberg’s plans.

For the record, I have no ties to the airport vested interests. I spoke briefly with Don Baldwin on a couple of occasions. My wife and I met John Broten [a township committeeman who ran against and defeated the incumbents who initiated the Solberg eminent domain lawsuit] on one occasion. I have never met any of the Solberg family. I am neither pro- or anti-airport. I am a citizen concerned about the steady erosion of our rights and liberty by a government increasingly used as a tool of special interests seeking to impose their values on others by legalized force. As I said in my pre-election letter last October, Is any taking just?, eminent domain “contradicts every fundamental premise of America.” All around the country, eminent domain is increasingly trampling people’s property rights, including homeowners. None of us are safe from eminent domain. It is a cancer that must be stopped. You say “All of the actions taken by the Township Committee to budget for the trial . . . were transparent and fully compliant with the law.” Perhaps. But that only confirms how corrupt our law has become. As I said in my letter, “That our government has the power of eminent domain doesn’’t mitigate its immorality . . .”

I live in Readington. I’d prefer the airport stay as is. But if keeping it that way means continuing the legal action against Solberg Airport, violating their property rights, I’d prefer to live with an expanded airport. You say you are “happy to pay” your “share” of the trial costs. Well, I’m not, and no one has the moral right—and shouldn’t have the legal right—to force me to continue doing so against my conscience and convictions. If you and like-minded residents want to pool your money privately and voluntarily and attempt to buy the land in a private contract with the Solbergs, for the purpose of purchasing and preserving the land in question, you are free to do so. But you have no right to use the municipal government to force others to join you. The proper purpose of a government is to protect, equally and at all times, every individual’s right to act on his own judgement. Readington’s condemnation proceeding violates that purpose. For practical, philosophical, and moral reasons, the eminent domain suit against Solberg Airport must end.

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Kalinich Jr.’s term “inverse condemnation” is another manifestation of the blurring of the distinction between government force and private voluntary action. The failure to know or acknowledge the difference is a major cause of the growth of rights-violating government controls. For a clarification of this issue, see Harry Binswanger, The Dollar and the Gun.

Related Reading:

An Open Letter to Al Villani Concerning Solberg Airport in Readington, NJ

Solberg Airport: Who Shapes "Community Character"?

Big Government vs. Big Business; or, Political Power vs. Economic Power

Solberg Eminent Domain Ruling and Zoning

In the letter by Readington Township, N.J. Committee candidates Liz Duffy and Ben Smith, Readington has options following Solberg ruling, which I discussed in my last post, Duffy and Smith wrote:

One thing to keep in mind is that In addition to the decision on the eminent domain suit, the township is now also faced with defending against the lawsuit filed by the Solbergs to have the entire 700-plus acres zoned for airport use. That suit had been stayed pending the outcome of the eminent domain action, and will now be re-activated if no appeal is filed.

In my last post, I argued against Duffy and Smith’s collectivist claim that they “are in the best position to represent the interests of the entire Township.” Zoning powers are an outgrowth of collectivist thinking. As such, zoning is integral to the matter of Readington’s attempted eminent domain seizure of Solberg land. The township forbids Solberg from expanding or developing by zoning those uses into illegality. The eminent domain action grew from Solberg’s lawsuit challenging the zoning ordinance blocking the Solberg’s plans.

So zoning is at the root of the eminent domain controversy. But zoning powers themselves are illegitimate because they are contrary to the proper purpose of government, which is to protect individual rights, including property rights. Zoning violates rights, so the state has no legitimate authority to dictate private property use, so long as the use of one’s property doesn’t violate the rights of others.

But since we have zoning, any landowner has a right to seek zoning changes in pursuit of the peaceable use of his own land. There’s nothing sacred about zoning powers or zoning maps. The Solbergs have the same rights as anyone else, and deserve not to be threatened with eminent domain—which is nothing more that legalized Mafia-like aggression—for seeking zoning changes needed to use their land as they judge best. Property rights should be the standard for decision making.

Property rights—the right to use one’s property as one pleases—doesn’t mean a landowner can do whatever he wants regardless of the effect on others. If resident “A” believes his rights—his use and enjoyment of his property, or his physical safety and security—will be infringed by resident “B’s” use of his property, then “A” can fight to stop “B’s” use. But the burden of proof is on “A”. If the municipal officials really had the interests of township residents at heart—rather than some undefinable “interests of the entire Township”—, they would seriously consider the rezoning, based on respect for the property rights of the Solbergs, and the valid concerns of residents as these concerns relate to their property rights, which means being safe and secure in the use of their property. If surrounding residents can demonstrate, in an objective forum, that airport expansion would violate their rights—i.e., initiate physical force against them—they would have a valid argument for stopping airport expansion.

The Solberg’s lawsuit to overturn their township’s zoning of their property is no justification for eminent domain aggression, because there is no justification for eminent domain.

Related Reading:

NJ's "Affordable Housing Crisis" - It's the Zoning, Stupid!

Eminent Domain- Always an Abuse

How Property Rights Solve Problems—David R. Henderson for the Library of Economics and Liberty

Solberg Eminent Domain Ruling and Collectivism

The battle over Solberg Airport in my hometown of Readington Township, NJ will reach a new stage soon. The battle involves the long-running attempt to seize Solberg land through eminent domain in order to prevent development of the property into a larger airport capable of handling corporate jets, or into housing. The battle has split the township, and elections have become a de facto referendum on the Solberg issue.

In the last election, two pro-eminent domain township committee incumbents were defeated by two anti-eminent domain challengers. This election will once again pit two pro-eminent domain candidates—Liz Duffy and Ben Smith—against an anti-eminent domain team, Larry Lelah & Deb Lyons.

All the candidates that will face the voters in the June 2, 2015 primary are Republicans. Generally, no Democrats run in Readington, so the winner of the primary is usually in effect the winners of the November general election by virtue of running unopposed.

This new stage of the Solberg battle was set by Readington’s third court loss, in which the Solbergs are fighting to protect their land from eminent domain seizure. In this latest court decision, N.J. Superior Court Judge Paul W. Armstrong labeled Readington’s action “a manifest abuse of the power of eminent domain.”

In reaction, Duffy and Smith penned a Letter describing Readington’s options going forward:

1. Appeal Armstrong's decision. An appeal would be a small fraction of the cost of the trial and the years of discovery leading up to it. If we win on appeal, the township would not have to pay the Solbergs' legal fees, and the land around the airport would be preserved.

2. Don't appeal, and let the judge's ruling stand. In this case, the township would pay the Solbergs' legal fees, and the parties should go back to the positions they were in the day before the taking. This means the Solbergs would have an airport on between 50-100 acres surrounded by 600-plus acres of land zoned Agricultural-Residential.

Duffy and Smith support option 1, and concluded their letter with:

These critical decisions should be made by people who have the interests of the entire township in mind; not by candidates hand-picked and supported by the most vocal supporters of the Solbergs. Can you imagine a Township Committee with four out of five members that the Solbergs and their closest supporters helped elect negotiating with the Solbergs? We are in the best position to represent the interests of the entire Township.

“Most vocal supporters” happen to be a majority of the township’s voters, many of whom are not merely supporters of the airport or of the Solbergs, but conscientious opponents of eminent domain (such as me).

I left these comments:

Beware politicians peddling undefined collectivist slogans, like this one:

“We are in the best position to represent the interests of the entire Township.”

Just what are those “interests,” and who determines them?

It is not in the interests of the Solbergs to be forced into “negotiations” with township officials, while those officials hold over their heads the threat to take their land if they don’t agree to township demands. That’s Mob-style “negotiating.” Good faith negotiation implies voluntary give-and-take on both sides, with each side having the right to say no to any offer without threats of aggression to coerce an “agreement.” A negotiation in which one side is holding a gun to the head of the other party is not a negotiation. It is “an offer that you can’t refuse”—literally.

It’s not in my interests to be forced to finance, through my taxes, what I consider a grossly immoral and un-American action against a Readington neighbor, while that neighbor is stuck with huge legal expenses just to protect their property and their right to use it in any peaceable manner they choose. Nor is it in the interests of any other Readington Township resident who opposes their township officials’ eminent domain aggression.

There are no “interests of the entire township,” apart from the diverse interests of the individuals who comprise the township. Neither Duffy, Smith, or anyone else have any right to declare themselves the township interest czars claiming the authority to impose their idea of “the interests of the entire Township” on everyone else. There are only the interests of individual residents.

The “option” of negotiating with the Solbergs from a position of aggression as the final arbiter is no option at all for those whose land is threatened, or for those forced to finance the threat against their consciences and convictions. The fact that our constitution wrongly grants the power of eminent domain to government officials does not mitigate its immorality. Differences among residents should be worked out without the threat of force, and with due respect for private property and other individual rights.

Related Reading:

Solberg Airport: Who Shapes "Community Character"?

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

Collectivism vs. Individualism in Letters

The Rise of Collectivism and the Fall of the Constitution

Non-Objective Law and the Malignant Nature of Eminent Domain

Eminent domain is another example of the malignant nature of non-objective law. How do you fight against private property seizure when “public use or public purpose” is the justification? Based on those rationalizations, how do you stop the expansion of eminent domain into wider and wider applications? What, exactly, are you fighting against?

I’ve written about my New Jersey hometown of Readington Township’s ongoing fight to seize a large swath of Solberg Airport land—not for “public use," as with a highway, or for a “public purpose," such as turning one private landowners’ property over to another’s to develop so as to generate tax revenues for the town—but to preserve as “open space,” which wouldn’t be used or generate any revenues for “the public”. So far, Readington has been rebuffed by the courts. The courts apparently don’t see “preserving” land from development as a valid application of eminent domain, which would appear to be another expansion of eminent domain's reach.

But, by the nature of eminent domain, there’s no logical limit to its potential. To illustrate the point, let’s revisit an issue I’ve written about before—the seizing of mortgages through eminent domain. It involves Newark, NJ and other cities that

want to expand their use of eminent domain to seize mortgages in order to pressure lenders to the “negotiating table” and thus “help” homeowners with underwater mortgages receive a reduction in principal.

Newark has since elected a new mayor, who is plowing ahead with the mortgage extortion.

I left these comments on the related article:

This proposed expansion of eminent domain shows why the government’s power of eminent domain should be completely expunged. It is tyranny, and tyranny, as history has shown, begets tyranny.

In this case, the eminent domain threat to property rights will, if sanctioned by the courts, extend the threat beyond property. As I noted in my 2013 article for the Objective Standard:

The proposed use of eminent domain to seize mortgages is an attack on the sanctity of contracts, a bedrock of rule of law and economic freedom. Whatever the legal outcome, this latest effort to expand its use highlights the open-ended danger of eminent domain and the need to end the rights-violating practice as such.

Eminent domain contradicts every fundamental principle of America, and the Founders should never have allowed it into the constitution. The Founders couldn't have imagined how it would be abused. The malignant nature of eminent domain is now obvious. We need a constitutional amendment to modify the Fifth Amendment “takings clause” to eliminate the phrase “without just compensation” so the clause reads simply, “nor shall private property be taken for public use.” No amount of compensation justifies the forcible seizure of private property against the owner’s will.

Experts recognize that applying eminent domain to mortgages is a long shot. But, on what grounds? Proponents claim that burdensome mortgages lead to property abandonment, which leads to lower home values, blight, and ultimately to lower tax revenues for the municipality. Does anyone doubt that someone, someday, could manufacture a “public purpose” out of that?

So, the next great expansion of eminent domain could extend beyond property, to contracts, a crucial foundational building block of the market economy.

Related Reading:

NJ's Consumer Fraud Act: Non-Objective Law in Action

Newark Seeks to Use Eminent Domain to Extort Principal Reductions from Lenders

Eminent Domain- Always an Abuse

Election 2014: Readington Voters Make My Day

The Republican electoral sweep is welcome, but sharply tempered by the fact of social conservatives’ hold on the party. Nonetheless, there are bright spots. In an Election Day editorial, the Left-leaning New Jersey Star-Ledger hyperbolically predicted a planetary meltdown if the GOP captures the Senate. The editors cited three potential committee chairmen in an effort to derail the GOP juggernaut:

• Jim Inhofe, Environment and Public Works Committee, who “doubts climate change ‘is even a problem for human existence,’ and says it was invented by ‘alarmists’ who want to make ‘energy suppression. . . .the official policy of the United States.’”

• Ted Cruz, Subcommittee on Science and Space, who “would oversee most agencies seeking federal funding for scientific research, and whose perverse incuriosity can be condensed with his theory that ‘the problem with climate change is there’s never been a day in history of the world in which the climate is not changing.’”

• Ron Johnson, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, who “has called conservation groups an ‘environmental jihad,’ he has voted three times to rescind all carbon emission regulations. . .”

Well! What better endorsement for Republicans can one want? The Left has dominated the scientific funding and debate over climate change for far too long. Maybe, with these three in charge of key committees, rational viewpoints will get a fair hearing in Washington. Maybe they’ll even call Alex Epstein in for expert testimony.

More broadly, at the very least, the Obama agenda could be stymied.

For me, the highlight of Election 2014 was the apparent victories of John Broten and Sam Tropello over incumbents Julia Allen and Frank Gatti for Readington Township Committee. Readington is my home town. As reported by Renée Kiriluk-Hill for the Hunterdon County Democrat, the challengers pulled about 5600 votes against 5000 write-in votes for Allen and Gatti. (As of this posting, the write-in votes were still being counted, so the final results are not yet official.)

As I’ve noted, the Township’s eminent domain assault on Solberg Airport, designed to head off either airport expansion or other development, was the big issue in the township. I have been actively fighting against this action; e.g. click here and here. Broten and Tropello have vowed to work to stop it. Allen and Gatti, long-time office-holders in Readington, initiated the action some seven years ago, and ran an aggressive campaign to hold their seats and continue the assault.

So, for me, It was very satisfying that an electoral majority—albeit a slim one—saw fit to stop the injustice of eminent domain in Readington.

As to the national scene, congratulations to the GOP. Whatever the reasons for their “wave”, they now have yet another chance to advance a pro-liberty agenda.

Related Reading:

My Challenge To the GOP: A Philosophical Contract With America

Eminent Domain- Always an Abuse

Election 2014: Eminent Domain and the "Limits of Rights"

In my election 2014 letter to the Hunterdon County Democrat, Is Any Taking Just?, I wrote: “The November election will pit John Broten and Sam Tropello against Julia Allen and Frank Gatti for Readington Township Committee.” Another letter by Abraham Farsiou, Rights Have Limits, took the opposite view on the same issue of Eminent Domain against Solberg Airport, endorsing Allen and Gatti.

It’s a long letter, but I addressed the fundamental issue raised by Farsiou in these comments. Quoting from Farsiou’s letter, I wrote:

“Some say the Solbergs have a right to do whatever they want with their property. However, the community in which you live sets up certain standards and there are certain zoning and other restrictions that we all have to abide by. These restrictions are put in place for the good of the community as a whole and to carry out the will of its constituents. For example, I rightly would not be able to put up a gas station in front of my house.”

Wrong. The standards that govern rights are to be found in the factual requirements of human life, not the arbitrary whims of the “community.”

A “community” is an abstraction denoting the individuals who comprise it. When someone invokes “the good of the community as a whole,” he is saying that his values and interests take precedence over the values and interests of others, and aims to impose those values on other community members by governmental force—i.e., at gunpoint.

But no individual or group such as a voting majority has any right to declare, in effect, “The community, c’est moi!, and anoint themselves the arbiters of the community good, or claim the title “the will of its constituents.” America is not based on the rule of the collective over individual subjects. That collectivist notion is as far removed from America’s ideals as one can get, and to the extent it has taken root in American culture is the extent to which America has moved away from its promise of freedom. America, in its original conception, is based on the sovereignty and sanctity of the individual, each of whom possess unalienable rights that can not be overridden by King, Cleric, dictator, “community standards,” or majority mob.

This is where rights and their limits come in. Each individual rightfully has domain over his own life, including his property. That domain takes the form of freedom of action in pursuit of the values one judges his own life and flourishing to require. Unalienable individual rights protect that freedom. Freedom of action does have limits, but those limits are not arbitrarily set by “the community.” The freedom that rights protect is based on the objective fact that to live according to his nature, men must be free from physical aggression imposed by his fellow man. The limits of freedom can be summed up in the truism: “Your rights end where my nose begins.” In other words, one’s freedom to act ends where aggressive acts of force against others begins. Likewise, others’ freedom ends where aggressive force against you begins: “One man’s rights end where the next guy’s nose begins.” In other words, the principle of unalienable rights carries the moral obligation not to initiate aggressive force against others. Rights bannish initiatory force from human relationships, thus subordinating society and government to the same moral law that individuals must abide.

Indeed, in a civil, moral, free society, the “community” is bound by the same limits as its individual members. Just as no number of individuals can privately gather into a mob, march on a neighbor, and run him off his property, so neither can that same mob camouflaged as “the community” hide behind legalities do it, using government as the hired gun. Clearly, seizing others’ land through eminent domain in the name of the community, community “character”, will of the voters, or any such collectivist rationalization is an un-American, rights-violating act of aggression, and the action against Solberg fits that description “to a T.”

It follows that the right to  “do whatever they want with their property” includes only peaceable, non-aggressive uses that does not violate others’ rights. One may not, for example, set up a shooting range without an appropriate buffer to protect one’s neighbors. Bullets flying into one’s neighbors’ property is aggressive force that intrudes on the neighbors’ use of his property. Aside from such uses, every individual has the right to use his land as he judges best. If the Solbergs apply for airport expansion, it is their right. If surrounding community members can prove that such expansion violates their rights—i.e., in some way physically interferes with the use of their property—they can come forward in the approval process.

Airport expansion is not the fundamental issue. Individual rights is the issue, and the only rational, fair basis for resolving the airport controversy. Zoning powers, like eminent domain, has evolved way beyond government’s legitimate function. Rather than objectively resolve land use conflicts according to rights-based standards, zoning has become a tool for politically powerful voting blocs to dictate land usage according to arbitrary community standards. But zoning is an issue for another day. For now, the first thing Readington voters should do is stop bloodying the nose of our neighbor, and vote to end the aggression against the Solbergs by voting for Broten and Tropello for RTC.

Related:

See my comments to Farsiou’s previous letter, Solbergs and Special Interests.

As to the Solberg’s alleged “lack of good faith negotiating with our township officials,” I exploded that fallacy in my comments to The threat of a jetport worst thing for Readington.

Related Reading:

The Rise of Collectivism and the Fall of the Constitution

Collectivized “Rights”—Ayn Rand