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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Friday, March 14, 2014

Stunning Supreme Court victory vindicates property owners beset by Big Green's 'rails-to-trails' movement

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Opinion,Ron Arnold,Columnists,Supreme Court,Energy and Environment,Eminent DomainDick Welsh is not a name you'll find in Monday's huge property rights victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, but he was the biggest winner. It was his vindication.

Welsh is the Washington state property owner who became a reluctant hero as the father of the “reversionary rights” movement in 1985 when a chunk of his yard was seized so bicyclists could peer in his front window from an abandoned railroad bed that happened to be his driveway.

Big Green’s “rails-to-trails” movement and the federal amendments made in 1983 to the National Trails System Act forced Welsh into devoting more than two decades of his life operating the National Association of Reversionary Property Owners, a network for victims of land-greedy government agencies and their nonprofit green-grabber touts...... “In 2006, when the U.S. Forest Service decided to seize Marvin Brandt’s land for its ill-advised trail it knew its legal position had zero merit; nonetheless, it thought it could wear him down by dragging him to the Supreme Court where it thought it could get the court to reverse itself. The federal government’s conduct in this case is nothing less than shameful!” ........So there is still a harsh burden on property owners, placed there by people with no respect for private property or the rights that ought to go with it.   What's next? We still have to crack Big Green. When they accuse property owners of acting only in their narrow selfish interests, they're looking in a mirror.......To Read More....

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